9/30/20

State of South Dakota snubs tribes, will sell railroad right of way to Kansas polluter


South Dakota's rail board is made up of two Democrats and five members of the Republican American Nazi Party. A majority has voted to put all of the state-owned track up for sale.

Watco Companies owns some 43 shortline railroads in North America and Australia but in Chicago the firm has been accused of environmental racism after the US Environmental Protection Agency found high levels of manganese, lead and arsenic in the soil on the city's Southeast Side. Chicago is a notorious railroad bottleneck where spills of toxic materials are myriad. Based in Pittsburg, Kansas Watco's biggest customer is Koch Industries, a major campaign contributor to Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem. 
After USEPA required Watco to install air monitors for manganese, the facility in February 2019 committed to stop handling unpackaged manganese. However, throughput data reported under a zoning change adopted in response to community pressure shows massive amounts of the neurotoxin moving through several other Southeast Side facilities. The monitoring data also shows significant spikes in manganese, indicating that harmful emissions are not under control despite USEPA’s enforcement actions and the City’s regulations. “If Lincoln Park had these levels of lead, arsenic or manganese, the Mayor would do everything in her power to fix it,” said Peggy Salazar, director of the Southeast Environmental Task Force. “When this happens in the Southeast Side or the West Side, no one seems to care about the consequences that our kids have to live with. We are calling for an end to environmental racism in Chicago.” [Natural Resources Defense Council]
Despite those revelations the State of South Dakota intends to sell the former Milwaukee Road right of way from Mitchell to Rapid City to Watco instead of deeding it back to the tribal nations signatory to the Fort Laramie Treaties of 1851 and 1868.

The move comes after catastrophic plunges in commodities prices, numerous wrecks and water breaches on track owned by Rapid City, Pierre and Eastern Railroad (RCPE), a subsidiary of Genesee and Wyoming operating just north of the former Milwaukee line on a nearly parallel trackbed. The Trump Organization's Department of Transportation headed by the wife of Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has just awarded more than $5.6 million in grants to upgrade infrastructure and enhance rail safety in the red moocher state that is South Dakota including $2.24 million for the RCPE mainline.

Recall that in 1997 the perpetual welfare state received $23 million from taxpayers for going without Amtrak service then TEApublican former governor, Mike Rounds squandered it on an airplane for his personal use now Republican Governor Kristi Noem is using it to campaign for Herr Trump.

This blog spoke to a RCPE executive in 2015. She said that the line connecting Rapid City to Crawford and Dakota Junction, Nebraska is active and hauling bentonite south from Colony, Wyoming to the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway and to the Union Pacific but building two east-west rail systems exclusively for freight in South Dakota is lunacy. 

The same geology that thwarts RCPE along the Bad River from Fort Pierre to Wasta and forces engineers to rebuild I-90 between Reliance and Rapid City and I-94 between Mandan, North Dakota and Billings, Montana every year also makes construction of the Keystone XL pipeline untenable.

Photo: rail switch on the former Milwaukee Road at Stamford in occupied South Dakota.

9/29/20

Sioux Falls diocese scraping the barrel for officiants

Joe Biden or not the Roman Catholic Church believes their pederastic officiants can transubstantiate bread and wine into the body and blood of a Jew who has been dead for some 2000 years then offer that to a Mass. How is that even normal? 

Although nothing untoward ever happened to me as an altar boy for Fr. Louis J. Miller at Our Lady of Good Counsel a high school girlfriend told me their family attended Mass in Aurora because Miller had done something bad in Alaska then was transferred in the late 1950s to the Elkton parish under Sioux Falls cleric, Lambert Hoch. Hoch was born in Elkton. Marlboro-smoking, scotch-drinking Louis Miller was elevated to monsignor, built a gorgeous church and grade school, coached St. Mary's basketball then was nearly decapitated in a life-ending automobile accident near Pierre in 1968. Fr. Leonard Fox, the bean-counter who succeeded him and assigned to pay the bills was a greasy sleazeball who drove me from catholicism.
 
Pennsylvania used a grand jury for the statewide investigation of predator priests and the Philadelphia Diocese is the bishopric of former Rapid City primate Charlie Chaput but don't expect suspected incel Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg, a former altar boy, member of the Church of the Holy Roman Kiddie Diddlers and who is now suspected of manslaughter to take on both South Dakota Dioceses.
At Ss. Simon and Jude Catholic Church in Flandreau, St. Peter Church in Colman and Our Lady of Good Counsel in Elkton, the Rev. Melvin Kuhn has replaced the Rev. Doug Binsfeld. Melvin Kuhn, 55, grew up on a farm in central Illinois, attended Catholic schools, earned a college degree in agriculture and worked for the Department of Agriculture before answering his call to the priesthood. “I’m just thankful to be a priest. I started late. If there wasn’t a shortage of priests, I might not have gotten a second chance,” he said. [Moody County Enterprise
The Order of the Presentation opened St. Mary’s in Elkton where I attended grade school but the nuns were from the Dominican and Benedictine Orders, too. They were Commies who taught us Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and Puff, the Magic Dragon.

Photos above are from probably 1964 or ‘65. This scribbler is the tall kid wearing a bishop’s mitre in the middle of the upper left pic. 

9/28/20

Democrat Ahlers surging in South Dakota US Senate race

 

In a campaign fundraising email to supporters Senator Reich Mike Rounds (earth hater-SD) said he believes the Democratic blue wave is building momentum even in my home state and that "South Dakota could be the sleeper race that delivers Democrats a majority in the U.S. Senate." One of the least effective members of Congress, Rounds, bragged he could build a $9 million war chest in 2013 but has less than $2 million in the bank today. 

Dan Ahlers is a Dell Rapids businessman and former state legislator.
Dan Ahlers, a Democrat, is running against Mike Rounds, the coward who refused to impeach Trump thereby allowing the deaths of 190,000 Americans. We need an independent thinker, a true South Dakotan, as our U. S. Senator and not a man so afraid of Trump that he ignores all of his lies and deceit. [Editorial, Native Sun News Today]
Former Governor Rounds was elected to the US Senate with cash from the Kochs’ National Federation of Independent Business. The so-called “Americans for Prosperity” is a Koch-soaked dark money group with an agent in Sioux Falls. South Dakota's GOP legislators and candidates enjoy millions in lobbyist benefits from the Kochs and their American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC.

Rounds continues to play the cancer card releasing another video pimping his stricken wife and pleading with doubtful supporters to continue funding his crusade toward a second term.  In her bid to drive Rounds onto the ash heap of history upstart Republican primary contender Scyller Borglum has appeared with Governor Kristi Noem to raise awareness of youth art in South Dakota.

I’m a twenty year volunteer for DSCC, DCCC and DLCC charged with South Dakota as a territory but until now nobody in those organizations believed a Democrat could win any statewide race in the red moocher state. 

Ahlers has even been endorsed by South Dakota Republican former US Senator Larry Pressler.

Photo: Rounds poses with morbidly obese Brookings-based blogger Pat Powers.

9/27/20

Medicine Root will scrub white man's name from tribal community

This blogger has been arguing for Lakota names on South Dakota's geological features for nearly thirty years. 

A state park, a peak, a county and a town in the Black Hills, a county and national forest in Montana are named after a murderer. During the Battle of Greasy Grass on the banks of the Little Bighorn River in Montana George Custer attacked the encampment where the elderly, women and children were hidden and during the Washita Massacre he held a similar contingent as hostages and human shields. 

Crow Peak or Paha Karitukateyapi just outside Spearditch is translated as "the hill where the Crows were killed" stemming from a battle between the Lakota and Crow Nations. The Crow allied with Custer and the United States Army believing they would reclaim the Black Hills. Custer’s name is on a peak in the Black Hills National Forest and should be removed. It's time to strike his name from the Custer National Forest, too. George Custer, Phil Sheridan, George Crook and William Harney all committed crimes against humanity yet their names still besmirch numerous government and geographical features. Crook City near Whitewood and Crook's Tower, one of the 7000 footers in the Black Hills, were named after a war criminal. 

Revisionist history turned the Wounded Knee Massacre into a battle but Senator Mike Rounds (NAZI-SD) said he won't vote for the Senate companion to the Remove the Stain Act that would rescind Medals of Honor for twenty war criminals responsible for the slaughter of children, women and men in 1890 at Wounded Knee in occupied South Dakota. But he and the South Dakota Republican Party are hardly the only racists in the colonized American West. 

Outside Yellowstone National Park the Hayden Valley memorializes Ferdinand V. Hayden who advocated for the extermination of tribal people and Mount Doane is named for Lieutenant Gustavus Doane who led a massacre of the Piikani, part of the Blackfoot Confederacy. One reason Republicans don't like Common Core history standards is that the curriculum long-ignored by textbooks includes genocide and near-extermination of American Indians by European colonialism.

The South Dakota Board of Geographic Names spent more of their time on renaming the Squaw Humper Dam than on the proposal to change the name of a local jurisdiction to Oglala Lakota County. Now Bismarck, North Dakota is considering a change for a mal-named park. 

Democratic former Representative Kevin Killer backed the name change of the South Dakota county from one based on white conquest and helped get the issue passed in 2015. He is a recipient of a Bush Foundation grant. 
Sunday night, the Medicine Root District executive board voted unanimously 4-0 to change the name of the community of Kyle to Little Wound. “This decision is something I really applaud, it’s the right thing to do,” said Kevin Killer, past SD state legislator who led the movement to change the name of Shannon County to Oglala Lakota County, “there’s not enough time to put together a referendum vote by the general election but they should take the issue to the county commission.” 

9/26/20

Front Range passenger rail not happening any time soon


Combined with some $5 million it has set aside, $1 million from the state and a $5.6 million federal grant Amtrak will conduct track and infrastructure improvements for the Southwest Chief between Trinidad, Colorado, Lamy and Los Cerrillos, New Mexico. 

Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway and the Rio Metro Transportation District, which operates the New Mexico Rail Runner, will lay new ties along a 31-mile stretch of track south of Raton Pass, replace some 12 miles of bolted rail with welded rail between Lamy and Los Cerrillos and complete installation of a Positive Train Control system. 

Earlier this year Game of Thrones author George RR Martin and two other New Mexico celebrities purchased the Santa Fe Southern Railroad and the depot in Lamy. The State of New Mexico bought the track bed that Amtrak's Southwest Chief uses from just north of Lamy to Behlen south of Albuquerque from the BNSF Railway when the Rail Runner was built. BNSF owns virtually all the rail rights of way in New Mexico. SFSR was featured in the Breaking Bad episode, Dead Freight
“Our past and current investments, from Kansas through Colorado and New Mexico, demonstrate our commitment to the Chief route and also preserve this segment for eventual inclusion in a north-south connection along the Front Range between Denver and Albuquerque, via Colorado Springs and Pueblo,” Bill Flynn, Amtrak’s president and CEO, said in a news release. [Albuquerque Journal
Amtrak has long expressed interest in establishing passenger rail service along the Front Range but that "project is a long way away from reality." 

As rail coal traffic dies Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) and the Big Sky Rail Authority have moved nine counties to restore the North Coast Hiawatha line through southern Montana after Amtrak ended service in 1979. A Front Range route would connect the Southwest Chief to the Empire Builder at Shelby, Montana through Denver, Cheyenne and Gillette, Wyoming and intersect with the North Coast Hiawatha line at Laurel, Montana.

ip photo is of the Lamy depot.

9/25/20

SDDENR has become the Department of Ecocide and Natural Ruination



Country of Origin Labeling was repealed in 2015 to shield American commodities from scrutiny because every ag product, meats both wild and domestic not grown organically in the United States and South Dakota is contaminated with atrazine, neonicotinoids, glyphosate, dicamba, DDT, mercury, lead, cadmium, PFAS, E. coli, Shigella, Legionella plus other toxins and pathogens. 
Ivermectin has been shown to be toxic to dung beetle larvae, and the conventionally managed systems had a 66 percent decrease in dung beetle occurrence when compared to the regenerative systems. Livestock managers experiencing poor breakdown of manure pats coupled with continued pest problems should consider reducing or eliminating ivermectin while also exploring options for improve herd management and forage-quality options. [Manage livestock for beneficial species]
David Ganje is an attorney based in Rapid City who practices environmental law. 
The Department of Agriculture is principally chartered to deal with supporting agriculture and economic development related to ag. It is agriculture’s advocate on behalf of the state. The Department of the Environment and Natural Resources is a regulatory agency meant to oversee, for good or ill, activity that affects the air, water, and earth in the state. The DENR is an agency whose effectiveness political leaders would prefer to dilute. The DENR is the real target in this merger. [GANJE: Combining departments is a mistake]

South Dakota is a perpetual welfare state, a permanent disaster area and a chemical toilet by design. Until Democrats seize power nothing will ever change.

9/21/20

Citibank squirming after being outed as money launderer


South Dakota Republicans have their heads crammed so far into Frank Farrar's colon they can all kiss Wall Drug's Teddy Hustead on the lips in there.

Bankster and former South Dakota Governor Frank Farrar has sat on Citibank and Wells Fargo boards. Elitism in South Dakota is Denny Sanford and Dana Dykhouse and careers in usury get your names on an underground lab, public buildings and a football stadium.

How are 64+ county seats and their bureaucracies either conservative or sustainable? They're not; but, it is the way Republican cronyism and patronage built barricades to democracy by providing benefits of the public dole to those who say they deplore big gubmint in a state that hates poor people.

It's obvious this phenomenon is no accident: it has been manufactured to make the state a corporatist tax haven for an exclusive set of Republicans while over $3 trillion languishes in South Dakota banks. Divining an alternate universe where Randy Scott is still cruising the Moody County back roads while a Hellbent Bill Janklow is lurking at every intersection in South Dakota's ideological landscape is easier than imagining the decriminalization of Citibank's prospectus.

Current Republican Governor Kristi Noem is a graduate of the Koch Brothers' American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC, an anti-think tank think tank that teaches how wedge issues raise campaign dollars for the extreme white wing of the Republican Party. 

Republican former Governor now US Senator Reich Mike Rounds, one of the least effective members of Congress, was elected with cash from ALEC-backed National Federation of Independent Business. South Dakota's GOP legislators and candidates enjoy millions in lobbyist benefits from ALEC. In a campaign fundraising email to supporters Rounds said he believes the Democratic blue wave is building momentum even in my home state and that "South Dakota could be the sleeper race that delivers Democrats a majority in the U.S. Senate." Rounds, who bragged he could build a $9 million war chest in 2013 has less than $2 million in the bank today. The so-called “Americans for Prosperity” is a Koch-soaked dark money group with an agent in Sioux Falls. 
 
According to accountant and State Senator Susan Wismer (D-Britton) there are about $900 billion in 105 trusts alone.
South Dakota is fast becoming a mini-Switzerland for the world’s rich. Analysts and local politicians estimate that $250 billion to $900 billion is now stashed in South Dakota trusts by the likes of Chinese billionaires looking to keep their fortunes out of reach of the government, Europeans looking to avoid taxes and Americans looking to shield wealth from spouses. Yet South Dakota’s trust laws may be difficult to challenge. Trusts in South Dakota are perpetual, meaning a wealthy family can put assets into a trust that are held in perpetuity, rather than for a limited period of time. The state also gives trusts sweeping privacy and asset-protections against creditors, business partners, lawsuits or ex-spouses. Adding to its attraction, South Dakota has no inheritance or capital gains or income taxes. [Billionaire divorce uncovers secretive world of trusts in South Dakota]

9/18/20

Migratory bird deaths another warning of human-caused climate disruptions

 

Global warming has been accelerating since humans began setting fires to clear habitat, as a weapon or just for amusement. Evidence that we humans have eaten or burned ourselves out of habitats creating catastrophes behind us is strewn throughout the North American continent. European settlement and the Industrial Revolution in the New World took hardwoods for charcoal then humans allowed fast-growing conifers to replace lost forests. Desertification driven by agricultural practices, overgrazing, concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and urban sprawl have turned much of the United States into scorched earth

Have we reached Peak Human? Should Liberals and Progressives just say, "to Hell with biodiversity" and join the earth haters in a final orgy of death, consumption and/or prayer? Coexist or kill them all and let Gaia sort 'em out? 

Last August warblers, swallows and flycatchers began dying in large numbers throughout the southern Rockies. Scientists studying them are noting their emaciated conditions and reduced body fat.
Austin Fisher, an independent journalist, videotaped a scene near Velarde by the Rio Grande. Dead birds littered the earth, a scene repeated across New Mexico. The huge die-off is part of a broader problem. Bird species are having a difficult time in our modern era. Their habitat is being destroyed — with breeding grounds such as grasslands and the Arctic tundra particularly hard hit. Cats are eating them to the tune of 2.6 billion birds yearly in the United States and Canada. According to the Audubon Society, the U.S. has lost one out of four birds in the last 50 years. That means 3 billion fewer birds today than in 1970. The die-off of 2020 is a singular event, but given the heating planet and continued climate disruption, it will likely be repeated. [Dying birds offer timely warning to humans]

9/17/20

Judge rules for victims of torture in South Dakota catheterization cases

South Dakota has the most draconian cannabis laws in the US and until recently members of the the law enforcement industry could even force catheters into urethras to test possession by ingestion. Forcing a catheter into someone's urethra without consent is rape, even torture. The practice had been encouraged by disgraced Republican former US Attorney and South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley. 
U.S. District Judge Roberto Lange has approved a settlement in a case that says South Dakota law enforcement’s practice of using forced catheterizations to obtain urine samples from suspects is unconstitutional. The ACLU of South Dakota and attorney Jim Leach of Rapid City filed the Fourth Amendment case on behalf of several individuals against the city of Wagner and the Wagner Police Department, the city of Pierre and the Pierre Police Department, the city of Sisseton and the Sisseton Police Department, and the South Dakota Highway Patrol along with individually named law enforcement officers. In the case, the plaintiffs said they were held down and subjected to involuntary catheterization after police obtained search warrants for urine samples to detect the presence of drugs, a violation of the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches. [press release, ACLU South Dakota]
Earlier this year the group South Dakotans for Better Marijuana Laws submitted to a Republican secretary of state over 50,000 signatures in support of a ballot measure that if passed would allow adults 21 and older to possess and distribute up to one ounce and cultivate up to three plants for personal use. If passed, the measure would also direct South Dakota's extremist legislature to establish therapeutic and industrial cannabis (hemp) programs. 

Legalization, inspections and regulation of a product that so many people enjoy is reasonable public policy that align with our life safety goals. But today, South Dakota's law enforcement industry is worried cannabis reform will lead to less revenue for police departments. Policing for Profit has allowed the Division of Criminal Investigation to provide military armaments for the industry throughout South Dakota. Prostitution will be legal in my home state before cannabis laws are reformed.

9/15/20

SDAG Ravnsborg kills Joe Boever, walks free

Republican South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg is an incel and serial lawbreaker having been cited eight times for breaking speed limit laws in five South Dakota counties and in two Iowa counties. On Saturday night he struck and killed Joe Boever just west of Highmore then with help from the Hyde Country sheriff who would charge Ravnsborg with potential felonies he left the scene. This scandal should trigger a long awaited cascade of revelations about the culture of corruption surrounding the Republican establishment in South Dakota but so far it looks like the fix is in. The weapon Ravnsborg used to kill Boever is a 2011 Ford Taurus apparently equipped with an event data recorder (EDR). It was damaged so badly it had to be towed. 
Most recently, Ravnsborg was cited twice in 2018. Once in October 2018 in Beadle County for going 40 mph in a 35 mph zone and for going 80 mph in a 65 mph zone in Pennington County. [KELO teevee]

9/12/20

Perpetrators of 9/11 attacks could buy land owned by South Dakota Powerball winner


Draining fragile aquifers and quietly lobbying for more water from the Gila River is the House of Saud who owns land in Arizona where it raises alfalfa to ship to Saudi Arabia. They are buying up land all over the United States because they have a Jewish agent. Now we know how South Dakota Republican Chair Dan Lederman gets the cash to buy off flakes like Gordon Howie. 

Yes, the Trump Organization's Bureau of Land Management is paying a Powerball winner to board feral horses but now Neal Wanless is fleeing the chemical toilet that is South Dakota. 
Adam York, spokesman for Hall and Hall’s Robb Nelson who is handling the sale, told the Capital Journal via email that the ranch, with 50,000 acres, four homes and many other features, is on the market for $41.15 million. “It is home to 3,000 yearlings, 1,600 cow/calf pairs and about 1,000 wild horses,” according to York. [Pierre Capital Journal

Sleaze and crime built Lederman's business. He spent $50,000 to buy a seat in South Dakota's corrupt legislature flaunting the same class by throwing it away resigning after the 2015 session then forcing his way into the chair of South Dakota's earth hater party. That he would steer criminals like Mohammed bin Salman into South Dakota is completely within his crooked wheelhouse.

9/11/20

9/11: American plutocrats celebrate the destruction of democracy

The Supreme Court of the United States caused 9/11. 

Al Gore would have retained Bill Clinton’s security apparatus as the intelligence community was connecting the dots Mossad and IDF were leaving ahead of the event. Angel would not have been in the air that day if the plot had been uncovered. 

Yes, I believe that 1, 2, and 7 were "pulled." That the buildings were dropped into their footprints with explosives during what some describe as a military/Deep State coup is entirely plausible. As we circle back to the events of 11 September, 2001 it's important to remember that had SCOTUS actually heard Bush v. Gore and ruled for Al Gore rather than upholding Jeb’s secretary of state (massive election fraud in Ohio notwithstanding) the entire head-lopping W performed on the chain of command would have been avoided. And, when you're appointed POTUS by your brother(s) or your father, you lop all the heads of those with whom you do not agree when you come to office because you're focused on deposing Saddam, the winner of the first Gulf War. CIA analysts were threatening to resign ahead of the event as the Bush cabal bobbled the ball. 

There is little doubt in my mind that damning evidence linking the Trump Organization to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and beyond was destroyed on 9/11. It’s impossible the Obama Administration didn’t know Donald Trump was being installed by a hostile government. The Deep State put Trump in the White House because they're the Mob, too and he’s leveling the other guys’ poppy fields and heroin distribution with bombers from South Dakota while leaving the friendly opiate trade to flourish. The Trump Organization is an equal opportunity money launderer doing it for CIA and other Deep State actors for decades. 

The Bushes and Trumps are competing crime families with ties to the assassination of President Kennedy. On 22 November, 1963, CIA operative George HW Bush was photographed at the entrance of the Dallas Book Depository on that fateful day in Texas. G Gordon Liddy murdered Officer JD Tippit in Dallas in a botched plot to replace President John F Kennedy's body to hide the evidence of multiple shooters and nearly every member of the DPD was in on the conspiracy. JFK's fatal head shot was fired from a storm gutter at nearly point blank range. George W Bush spent nearly the entire month of August, 2001 in Texas preparing for the false flag narrative to follow the next month. The two Georges, Jeb and Marvin Bush are directly responsible for the events of 11 September, 2001. Why? Because the business of war is in their blood. Donald Trump's father, Fred is a JFK assassination conspirator hence those dox are being held up, too. 

John Thune's rejection of Trump was a ruse. He already knew Donald Trump was a sleaze from his basketball buddy Jim Comey. That's right: the vast white wing of the Republican Party was going to beat Hillary Clinton at any cost even if it meant colluding with a sworn enemy of the United States, destroying the presidency and taking down the republic. So Thune made Congress look the other way as Russia and Cambridge Analytica conspired with Facebook to hack the election. 

And, had former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton been elected in 2016 Paul Ryan would be president today. Her campaign knew that if Hillary won the rabid Republican House would have impeached her, the Senate would have removed her before the 2018 midterms and Trump would be on the sidelines egging them on. Somebody (Robert Mercer and Cambridge Analytica) promised Paul Ryan the presidency had Clinton been removed and Tim Kaine met an unfortunate end but that all crashed when Trump was installed. There’s no way in Hell the GOP would have given a President Kaine the time to choose a Veep. 

Clinton sat in with the most sophisticated intelligence community on the planet, ferfucksake! She and her campaign knew the Russians, the Trump campaign, Mike Pence and the Republican Party were hacking the election and the battle over her private emails proves it. The tarmac meeting between Bill Clinton and Attorney General Loretta Lynch was to deliver a thumb drive containing the Steele Dossier to the Justice Department. It was likely an open secret Trump was already under the microscope. Hillary's campaign was phoned in at best so they gave Trump and the GOP all the rope they're using right now to hang themselves.

9/9/20

WalletHub: South Dakota's women still suffering inequality

Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem's anti-civil rights actions are no accident. She's is a graduate of the Koch Brothers' American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC, an anti-think tank think tank that teaches how wedge issues raise campaign dollars for the extreme white wing of the Republican Party. South Dakota's GOP legislators and candidates enjoy millions in lobbyist benefits from ALEC. Noem is a former Snow Queen who convinced her own daughters to compete in beauty contests. 

South Dakota's crusade against equal rights for women is being propelled by incel Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg — an obese, extraordinarily homely confirmed bachelor and a member of the Church of the Holy Roman Kiddie Diddlers with little hope of attracting a mate himself. 

In 2018 South Dakota ranked 50th in women's 'workplace environment‘ and 38th overall in WalletHub's Best & Worst States. The red moocher state climbed to 32nd in 2019 but sank again in 2020 to surf the bottom for women’s equality at 38th and 41st in empowerment. 

Noem has never supported the Violence Against Women Act and if her #metoo abusers were Democrats she'd be singing like a cardinal. Kristi Noem is a MILF. Is she compliant, infidelitous, or simply a jaded career politician who's used to trading her favors for advancement? 

Read WalletHub's results here.

9/8/20

Former Rapid City pulpiteer booted from Duluth bishopric



In South Dakota at least thirty two members of the Church of the Holy Roman Kiddie Diddlers have been credibly accused of preying on children and vulnerable adults but don't expect suspected incel Jason Ravnsborg, Attorney General and former altar boy to take on both South Dakota Dioceses. Cleric Don DeGrood has just replaced Paul Swain installed to lord over some of the slush fund that buys silence from Ravnsborg and South Dakota's corrupt legislature.
 
Part of the international crime syndicate that is the Roman Church Avera Health is a federally-subsidized hospital operating as an oligopoly, funneling money to parishes paying settlements or hush money for the sins of predatory priests paid for by insurers and patients. Marcin Garbacz has been bleeding the beast, though. When it was the bishopric of Bob Gruss, Garbacz liberated at least $260,000 from the Rapid City Diocese. Gruss has since been shuffled into the Saginaw, Michigan diocese, itself wracked with abuses committed by pederastic pulpiteers. 

Mike Mulloy was interim sermonizer in Rapid City since August 2019 until the diocese learned he sexually abused a minor in the early 1980s. 
The diocese commissioned an independent investigation into the allegation, which a review board then agreed merited a full investigation according to canon law. The diocese informed the Holy See about the development. Mulloy received a summary of the allegation against him and subsequently submitted his resignation as the bishop-elect of Duluth. [Pope Francis accepts resignation of Duluth Bishop-elect Michel Mulloy after abuse allegation]

9/7/20

Poor ranching practices drive eastern Montana wildfires

Eastern Montana is ablaze because it’s overrun with dry invasive cheatgrass but as a Republican stronghold avoids criticism from Republicans. Explosive tall grass, brush and ponderosa pine understory are driving wildfires on private ground in a region where bison would have been clearing fine, flashy fuels just 150 years ago. The nearly 50,000 acre Huff Fire burned through the white supremacist town of Jordan, known as the home of the Montana Freemen. The Bobcat fire near Roundup in Musselshell County is estimated to be 41 square miles in size. Rain and snow are expected to slow or even stop the spread but forecasts project warm weather is expected to return to the northern Rockies.

9/4/20

Lewis & Clark water system to expand as Big Sioux River suffers CAFO development

South Dakota's socialized dairies are wreaking habitat havoc all along the state's border with Minnesota and like most of East River, southwestern Minnesota and northwestern Iowa are Republican strongholds where dairies, swine units and other concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) have devastated water supplies by contaminating wells with nitrates. 
Several neighbors and others spoke in opposition of a request by farmer Troy Randall for permission for a 6,500-head dairy in southern Moody County. Randall who lives at 24250 479th Ave., southeast of Trent, is seeking a conditional use permit for a Class A Concentrate Animal Feeding Operation that eventually will be owned by John Bidart. Bidart, who is from California, owns Wildwood Dairy south of Egan, the most recent dairy to open in the county. But most of the neighbors and residents of the county who attended the meeting spoke against allowing the dairy to be built, expressing concerns about the environment, flies and dust, roads, health and way of life. Well driller Jim Lacey of Trent said he is concerned about water issues with the dairy. “The water is going to make it into the Sioux River, folks. It’s a long-term thing we’re looking at,” he said. “That isn’t a position. It’s facts.” [Residents criticize dairy proposal
Now, because of environmental degradation driven by CAFOs officials with the Lewis & Clark Regional Water System (LCRWS) want to expand output from its current 45 million gallons per day to 60 million gallons per day. 
The third pipeline segment consists of 12.6 miles of 24-inch transmission pipeline located between Beresford and Sioux Center and involves crossing the Big Sioux River. [Lewis & Clark officials propose expansion]
This isn't self-reliance; it's moral hazard. Instead of empowering communities to harvest snow melt and rain water rural communities continue to be dependent on politicians who exploit need.

9/2/20

Montana legalization campaign spending $2.3 million to reach voters

In June the Montana Democratic Party endorsed legal cannabis for all adults so the campaign to legalize has had little opposition. Now New Approach Montana and its allied advocates intend to spend some $2.3 million to imprint the state's two initiatives in voters' minds.  
Federal Communications Commission filings show the ads will appear across weekday programming, day and night. Viewers of local news broadcasts, Family Feud, Judge Judy, Ellen and This Is Us will all get to know New Approach Montana's pro-marijuana messaging beginning Oct. 13 — a few days after ballots are mailed. The campaign has so far raised more than $4.7 million. [Helena Independent Record]
Democratic Governor Steve Bullock is running for the US Senate in Montana. “'Gov. Bullock believes the criminalization of marijuana has ruined the lives of too many Americans and cost taxpayers too much money imprisoning non-violent offenders, and supports legalization and taxation of marijuana with appropriate regulations to prevent abuse,' his campaign told USA Today. ‘The governor will work to remove barriers at the federal level that conflict with states’ decisions to have medical marijuana or legalize it outright.’”