12/20/24

Former SD FLDS compound owner sued after fencing public land in CO

At the courthouse in a South Dakota county named for a war criminal Patrick Pipkin and members of a religious splinter group bought a 140 acre compound for a fraction of its value in 2021 that was built in 2005 by now-jailed polygamist Warren Jeffs. The cult was not delinquent on property taxes but the acreage was sold at a sheriff's auction to settle a $2.1 million judgment against the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints or FLDS and the towns of Hildale, Utah and Arizona City, Colorado. In 2023 the parcel sold for $5,237,475 to SDR Training Center, a nonprofit church registered in South Dakota. 

Pipkin has admitted to being manager of Blue Mountain Ranch of Colorado—a summer camp for at risk adolescents but he and his co-owners transferred title to it to a Nevada trust in 2023 and he recently stated he still lives there. In October a group led by Pipkin called the Free Land Holders claimed and fenced some 1460 acres of public land in the San Juan National Forest near Mancos, Colorado so the feds sued in November in part citing watershed protection.
The Free Land Holders argued their ownership with local enforcement, saying they do not respect the jurisdiction of the U.S. Forest Service. Their argument was based on esoteric interpretations of the U.S. Constitution, the Louisiana Purchase Treater [sic], and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The Free Land Holders' methods align with the Sovereign Citizens movement, an extremist anti-government sentiment that believes the government is illegitimate. However, the Free Land Holders have claimed they are not part of the sovereign citizens movement or FLDS. [Community hosts celebration of public lands near Mancos in response to land grab attempt]
Learn more at the Colorado Sun. Image: KUSA teevee.
Earlier this month an FLDS member in Arizona was sentenced to fifty years in prison after being convicted of trafficking girls as young as 12 for sex slaves. 

According to a comment at a Faceberg page the real owner of the compound near Pringle and mostly surrounded by the Black Hills National Forest is Paul Elden Kingston, a polygamist believed to have some 40 wives, over 300 kids and preaches "bleeding the beast." Kingston is an accountant and attorney who has served as the Trustee-in-Trust of the Davis County Cooperative Society (DCCS), a Mormon fundamentalist denomination and part of the Latter Day Church of Christ with assets in the $150 million range.

12/19/24

Blogger's home town going through some things

Back in 2017 Elkton Public School was experimenting with new teaching methods.

In 2018 People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals or PETA urged Brookings County Sheriff Martin Stanwick to file criminal charges against Elkton Locker and Grocery, Inc. after a worker abused a lamb

In 2023 two men died when their Kia Sorrento struck and derailed a freight train in Elkton. Earlier this year the Elkton School Board accepted the resignation of a teacher who invited a registered sex offender to speak where this blogger attended and graduated high school. 

On Tuesday Sheriff Stanwick spoke to the Brookings County Commission after four students threatened harm to Elkton Public School.
“I have two officers over there today (Tuesday) visiting a school assembly to talk about how serious it is to say that they’re going to shoot up the school or — we take it serious,” Stanwick said. “I have zero tolerance for anything that’s said. We charge it with a terroristic threat and the paperwork goes to the state’s attorney’s office for follow through.” [Multiple Elkton school threats occupy sheriff's attention]
The late South Dakota Democratic Governor Dick Kneip grew up in Elkton and my sister is a former Elkton-Lake Benton High School Spanish teacher who has been tutoring students in math with English as a second language.

Yep, after DonOld Trump and Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem made violence against brown and LBGTQ people acceptable the racist chickens have come home to roost even in rural communities.

 

12/18/24

Today in hypocrisy: GOP landowners say CO2 pipelines bad but DAPL good

Cognitive dissonance doesn't exist within TrumpWorld because hypocrisy is having its way with reality in the folds of those folks. 

So to nobody’s surprise, Earth hating Republicans turned on American Indians when in the days after Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration a career criminal commanded the US Army Corps of Engineers to expedite the Dakota Excess pipeline that violated tribal sovereignty, repeatedly cut funds for Indian education, moved to privatize Native trusts, cut foreign aid to countries with high Native populations and praised Brazil's extreme white wing autocrat who laid waste to Indigenous lands in the Amazon.
A federal judge this week allowed 13 more Republican-led states to intervene as co-defendants in the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s new lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. “The Corps has failed to act and failed to protect the tribe,” Standing Rock Chairwoman Janet Alkire said in an October press conference announcing the lawsuit. In a separate federal court case, North Dakota seeks $38 million from the United States government for costs the state says it incurred responding to the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. [13 more GOP states sign on to oppose Standing Rock Sioux in new lawsuit over DAPL
But wait, there's more! 

Irony is just another casualty of Wyoming's wildfires which cleared nearly a million acres of fences, power lines, dry grasses, sagebrush, ponderosa pine and juniper in Republican ranch country even as the Biden administration reaches out to those serial ecoterrorists who rely on moral hazard to survive. 

The Small Business Administration makes Economic Injury Disaster Loans available when the US Secretary of Agriculture designates an agricultural disaster. Primary Wyoming counties receiving bailouts are Campbell, Converse, Niobrara and Weston but Custer, Fall River, Lawrence and Pennington Counties in South Dakota will also receive federal handouts per the rewards of democratic socialism.
Federal dollars are available to help Wyomingites recover from this year’s large, persistent wildfires. Some 850,000 acres burned in Wyoming this year – the majority on private lands. [State creates guide for navigating federal funds for wildfire recovery on private lands]
And speaking of pooping in your own water supplies then begging for pipeline boondoggle money for lawns, golf courses, feedlots, a ramen factory, the Bismarck Trail Ranch and Rally campgrounds with tax dollars spent on carving through Native America for white privilege instead of empowering communities to harvest snowmelt and rainwater rural communities are still dependent on politicians who exploit need.

Yep, the grassland fire danger index will reach the very high category again Thursday for much of occupied South Dakota.

12/17/24

EAFB propping up Mideast drug trade for Trump

A "woke" US military is responsible for the slaughter of hundreds of thousands in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and beyond.

And, as if it isn't bad enough that Senator John Thune (Earth hater-SD) is a tool for Donald Trump and the military/industrial complex in a state where the US Air Force aids and abets pilots who kill children he wanted to bring a doomed fighter jet to Sioux Falls in 2015 after contractor Lockheed Martin gave him $40,000. 

The Trump Organization is an equal opportunity money launderer for the CIA and other Deep State actors for decades. So, there is little doubt in my mind that damning evidence linking the Trump Organization to Russia was destroyed by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on 9/11 and it’s impossible the Obama administration didn’t know Donald Trump was being installed through a vast white wing conspiracy with hostile foreign actors. 

On Trump Organization orders bombers from Ellsworth Air Force Base near Rapid City targeted Taliban drug facilities to prevent harm to "innocent Afghan civilians" all the while escalating its war on civilians to protect the friendly opium fields. But, after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered hits on Americans in Afghanistan the air war was suspended and the Biden administration got smeared with it.

In 2018 KSA Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the murder of Jamal Khashoggi who was investigating the Trump Organization and Jared Kushner's blood money infusions so a cynical observer might wonder how long Trump has been laundering proceeds for Syria's $10 billion captagon industry. 
In Syria, a single pill of the stimulant costs a few cents to produce. But that pill can be sold elsewhere in the Middle East—the only part of the world where captagon is a popular drug—for as much as twenty-five dollars, especially in wealthy cities such as Riyadh. Michael Kenney, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh who researches the transnational drug trade, told [The New Yorker] that although the term “narco-state” is often misused, it describes Syria perfectly. Assad’s regime has become dependent on captagon, much the way Bolivia’s government relied on the cocaine trade in the early eighties, and the Taliban stayed afloat on opium revenue during the years that it was fighting U.S. forces for control of Afghanistan. Pills can be shipped overland through Jordan; sent north to Turkey, then taken by boat to their destination; or delivered to one of Syria’s ports, such as Latakia, and shipped to ports in the Red Sea. [How Syria Became the Middle East’s Drug Dealer]
In September EAFB fired a second commander in just two months "due to loss of trust and confidence" after a scathing report revealed "an unhealthy organizational culture that permitted degradation of airmanship skills." 

Contractors say the B-21 Raider isn't expected to be delivered until maybe 2030 so a bomber base in South Dakota with morale problems and an exceedingly poor flying record and ties to Trump's drug operation might never see the new mission.

To boast US settler colonialism and remind Indigenous Americans of prolonged bloodshed EAFB will will conduct a B-1B flyover Tuesday at the start of the Lakota Nation Invitational basketball tournament.

Alex Gibney on "The Bibi Files," Netanyahu's Corruption Case & How Endless War Keeps Him in Power

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— Democracy Now! (@democracynow.org) December 17, 2024 at 9:45 AM

12/16/24

Today's intersection: SDLEG budget cuts and video lootery

South Dakota is the second most gambling addicted state according to a WalletHub survey conducted in April. Nevertheless, wealthy Earth haters like Troy Erickson of Rapid City want to raise video lootery limits so those least able to pay will continue to sustain red state failure even though the best place for addicts can buy meth is at bars with video lootery terminals.
“I think we’ve been blocked by the governor more than anything,” Erickson said. As of November 30, there were 1,398 establishments and 11,092 terminals, up from 1,363 and 10,666 the year before. State government’s general fund received $163.9 million from video lottery during the budget year that ended June 30. [Video lottery businesses plan to seek increases]
Yes, the state that calls itself conservative depends on federal Social Security benefits to pay the property taxes that bankroll ecocide and pay the bulk of South Dakota's bills while video lootery drives poor residents even further into despair. 

The move comes as the state's Republican governor urges legislators to cut millions from higher education instead of reducing the number of South Dakota counties to 25 and turning Northern State into a community college.
Our governor is proposing public tax dollars paid by us property owners to be used to pay for tuition at private Christian schools. This appears to “prefer religion over non-religion,” and should be challenged by our lawmakers in Pierre. However, if the government prefers to route our property tax dollars to Christian schools, those churches affiliated with these schools should be taxed. [Gov. Kristi Noem disregards constitutional principles]
Mrs. Noem is presiding over spikes in childhood obesity, violent crime, record suicide rates, homelessness, acute hunger, mass incarceration, coverups and a poisoned environment. There are no checks on executive power, the governor's cronies routinely raid the state's general fund, teachers' salaries surf the bottom of the US, wage slavery is the state's biggest claim to fame so corruption and graft have become ordinary even as residents spend less forcing budget cuts.

Yes, the grassland fire danger index will reach the very high category again Monday for much of the red moocher state.

12/14/24

Pike with two heads reportedly caught in Black Hills lake

Back in April State Representative Scott Odenbach (R-Spearditch) shared several graphics at his Faceberg page from the state's 2022 report of impaired waterways in South Dakota with concerns that Spearditch Creek might look like the Big Sioux River one day. With a hundred or more septic systems and acid mine drainage in that watershed leaching into the creek that scenario is not impossible.

The accompanying image of a two-headed non-native pike appears on the FB page of a Rapid City bait and gun shop. Hormones flushed into septic systems or administered to cattle grazing on the Black Hills National Forest, antibiotics, selenium, ag chemicals, heavy metals and pesticides like endosulfan and the fungicide carbendazim can produce these mutations. The admin at the Rooster's page is refusing to tell visitors from which lake the frankenfish was caught although speculation is centered on Sheridan Lake just downstream of Hill City on Spring Creek which has been impaired for at least a century. 

Also upstream of Sheridan Lake is the former Continental Lumber Company which was purchased in 1998 by Neiman Enterprises who renamed it Rushmore Forest Products then shuttered the sawmill in 2021. Residual chemicals from those operations add to the pollutants in Spring Creek.

Invasive northern pike are also being pulled from Stockade Lake just downstream from a town named for a war criminal that is also suffering massive sewage contamination.

12/12/24

South Dakota 51st in elder protections: WalletHub

Source: WalletHub

The South Dakota Republican Party isn't about growth; it's about keeping Social Security recipients alive long enough to pay the property taxes that sustain red state failure. Contending tribal nations enjoy racial preference lawyers and political appointees in the previous administration attempted to deny Medicaid benefits to some three million Native Americans even after Republicans cut funding to the Indian Health Service. 

In my home state of South Dakota the Republican governor chose to infect thousands (some reports say millions) with the Trump Virus putting its entire population at risk. Kristi Noem's biological war on her own constituents created dire circumstances sending nurses out of state, forcing people over 65 into the workplace and driving the closures of nursing homes and a private college. Influenza preys on the elderly and the poor: two demographics South Dakota has in abundance so it comes as little surprise that South Dakota is failing its oldest residents

There is a growing movement among Democrats and others to fund Medicare for all but I like the idea of rolling the funding for Obamacare, TriCare, Medicare, the Indian Health Service and the Veterans Health Administration together then offering Medicaid for all by increasing the estate tax, raising taxes on tobacco and adopting a carbon tax. 

Yes, socialized agriculture, socialized dairies, socialized cheese, socialized livestock production, a socialized timber industry, socialized air service, socialized freight rail, a socialized nursing home industry, socialized water systems and now a socialized internet are all fine with Republicans in South Dakota but then they insist single-payer medical insurance is socialized medicine.

Learn more at South Dakota Searchlight.

Congress and the Biden administration put enhanced federal #HealthInsurance subsidies in place in 2021. But that extra help is set to expire in 2025, potentially subjecting millions of people to higher premiums, reports @stateline.org of @statesnewsroom.com .

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— South Dakota Searchlight (@southdakotasearchlight.com) December 12, 2024 at 8:15 AM

12/11/24

Ikes trumped Noem after McCook Lake flooding

So, what’s not to like about six (seven? eight?) month winters, rampant racism, chilling effects on civil rights, an extremist legislature, living in a chemical toilet, sacrifice zone, perpetual welfare state and permanent disaster area? 

Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem is from the government and says she's here to help but is she really? Recall US Representative Noem voted against federal disaster assistance when acts of god ravaged blue states. But when a tornado hit Castlewood Mrs. Noem praised that god for sparing her campaign war chest because science karma chickens came home to roost where the governor is a climate change denier

At least as far back as 2011 Republicans wanted to gut the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service so it comes as no surprise the Trump Organization wants to privatize the agencies. In 2022 South Dakota was tied for first place with three other horrible red states where the loss amounts from climate disasters caused a billion+ dollars in damage since 1980. North Dakota had 45 billion-dollar climate disasters since 1980 and my home state had suffered 38 and is still getting pounded.

In April the Federal Emergency Management Agency was finalizing flood insurance so Mrs. Noem aimed floodwaters at McCook Lake because she knows the Feds will pay the bills; but it wasn't the State of South Dakota that raced to help, it was the Isaac Walton League of America or Ikes. Now, Noem is facing pushback from those who doubt her ability to run the Department of Homeland Security, FEMA's parent agency.
Renae Hansen, the Chapter’s caretaker, had been monitoring the weather and water levels. Once it became clear the flood was going to be catastrophic, she used Facebook Live to keep the community up to date. And she would continue to work at the hub of a makeshift—but effective—emergency response system in the absence of a state or local agency that could immediately help. Hansen says it was four days before the Red Cross provided assistance and five days before the South Dakota Office of Emergency Management got involved. [Ikes in Action: "A Beacon of Aid" in a Time of Crisis: McCook Lake Chapter Steps in to Help a Flood-Ravaged Community]
My great-grandfather Ulysses Kretsinger donated about seven acres to the local Ikes chapter who built their clubhouse above Medary Creek about two hundred feet from our farmhouse near Elkton. Maybe the Ikes' most ambitious achievement was the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972 that's now at risk to Kristi Noem's Earth hating political party

A cynical observer might expect that if she's confirmed for DHS Mrs. Noem will slow-walk or even deny compensation for victims of disasters in blue states like New Mexico.

Learn more at AlterNet.

By the way, this was from NOAA's critical Arctic Report Card, so here's a reminder of what the soon-to-be-running-the-government authors of Project 2025 want to do with that agency

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— Dave Levitan (@davelevitan.bsky.social) December 10, 2024 at 12:34 PM

12/9/24

Native kids still slipping through education cracks

After consultations with stakeholders the New Mexico Public Education Department hopes to provide instruction that is relevant to English language learners and Indigenous students alike by adding ethnic, cultural and identity curricula to the state's social studies standards by emphasizing tribal sovereignty, social justice and sustainable futures. Yet, while many New Mexico schools offer Indigenous languages some still struggle with student absenteeism.
Schools also must navigate distrust dating back to the U.S. government's campaign to break up Native American culture, language and identity by forcing children into abusive boarding schools. Algodones Elementary School, located about midway between Santa Fe and Albuquerque, has made progress in earning some trust from families and students. The school serves a handful of Native American pueblos along New Mexico's Upper Rio Grande. About 95% of Algodones' students are Native American, and the school strives to affirm their identity. It doesn't open on four days set aside for Native American ceremonial gatherings, and students are excused for absences on other cultural days as designated by the nearby pueblos. One Algodones parent, Jennifer Tenorio, told the AP that one huge difference is that the school offers classes in the family’s native language of Keres. She said it’s helped her son to feel more connected to his tribal culture while simultaneously being more inspired at school. [Chronic Absenteeism at Indigenous Schools]
Arabic, Mandarin and Spanish in South Dakota schools? Sure, that's cool; but learning where students are steeped in Native languages is giving the next generation of Indigenous people opportunities to preserve their heritage. And, in South Dakota white evangelicals steal money slated for American Indian education and murder their families when the jig is up then place a complicit attorney general at the head of the investigation. 

Recall Republican former South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds won election to the US Senate for advocating the dissolution of the US Department of Education so he is currently sponsoring a bill that would eradicate the DoE and curtail federal funding for kids.
In South Dakota, the chronic absenteeism rate for Indigenous students was 54% in 2022-23, significantly higher than the state average of 21%. That differential was the largest of the 34 states included in the AP data. State data shows that 68% of Native American public school students complete high school, compared to the state average of 91%. [Native absenteeism challenges SD educators: 'There's no silver bullet']
In a related story, an Earth hating US Senator is blocking a bill that would preserve the Wounded Knee memorial so a tribe trapped in North Carolina can gain federal recognition and open a casino – but the irony is dizzying in its hypocrisy

The White House Tribal Nations Summit is underway and hopes are high that President Joe Biden will issue an executive clemency order freeing Prisoner of War Leonard Peltier.

Biden-⁠Harris Administration Announces New Actions and Historic Progress Supporting Tribal Nations and Native Communities Ahead of Fourth Annual White House Tribal Nations Summit. indianz.com/News/2024/12...

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— IllumiNative (@illuminative.bsky.social) December 9, 2024 at 8:48 AM

12/8/24

Gaia poised to cleanse parts of South Dakota?

Yes, the grassland fire danger index will again reach the very high category today and tomorrow for much of Kristi Noem's failed red state. The three federally supported reporting stations that monitor fire weather in the state are at risk of being eliminated. 

Learn more at the Tri-State Neighbor.

12/7/24

Prairie pothole region doomed to Earth hating Republicans, socialized ag

A thousand years ago before watersheds were drained and grasslands became cropland muskrat were so plentiful on the Northern Plains their harvest sustained some cultures where wild rice or Manoomin also flourished. Since its creation this blog has been covering the destruction of the Prairie Pothole Region but now it may be too late to save those wetlands.

Today, South Dakota's governor is a committed Earth hater and the legislature is dominated by Republicans who ignore the effects of the Anthropocene so lobbyists like the American Farm Bureau Federation are lining up again to stuff their pockets with cash. The reasoning is hardly mysterious: it's all about the money hunting and subsidized grazing bring to the South Dakota Republican Party depleting watersheds and smothering habitat under single-party rule. South Dakota's experiment introducing an exotic species has just not been able to keep up breeding a bird unable to adapt to the state's brutal weather and climate science-denying legislature. 

And, after massive failures of state agencies like South Dakota Game, Fish and Plunder invasive species like zebra and quagga mussels are taking over waterbodies as diving ducks like the Canvasback, Redhead, Bufflehead, Lesser Scaup, Common Goldeneye and snow geese are being eliminated.
The loss of wetlands is particularly concerning for waterfowl populations, especially in the Prairie Pothole Region, often referred to as North America’s “duck factory.” This region, which spans much of northeastern South Dakota, is one of the most important breeding grounds for ducks. The small, shallow, seasonal wetlands are critical nesting habitats teaming with the bugs ducklings consume. Yet, these same wetlands are among the most vulnerable to drainage for agricultural purposes. And pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers can kill wetland bugs. [‘Wild places are worth fighting for’: Concern grows for receding South Dakota wetlands]
It's not just the Northern Plains at risk to Republicans the Ogallala or High Plains Aquifer is being depleted six and a half times faster than its recharge rate and nearly all the groundwater sampled from it is contaminated with uranium and nitrates from industrial agriculture.


Spearditch resident and Republican former legislator, Kay Jorgenson is standing up to a governor who wants to gut public broadcasting in South Dakota while Minnesota Public Radio covers Indigenous love for the land.

Learn more at Progressive Farmer.

12/5/24

Bill Janklow's idea of public broadcasting in Noem's crosshairs

South Dakota's Earth hating and Native loathing governor wants to cut funding for Bill Janklow's idea of public broadcasting in the most remote areas of the state.

Ryan Howlett is Chief Executive Officer for Friends of SDPB.
The per capita rate for South Dakota can be higher because the population is lower in South Dakota than other states. It’s also more costly to provide service in rural areas and much of South Dakota is rural, Howlett said. The $5.5 million from the state covers the engineers and infrastructure needed to operate and maintain the 23 TV and radio stations as well as the towers, Howlett said. Also in danger is the daily coverage of meetings during each legislative session. Howlett said then-Republican Gov. Dennis Daugaard established this program to provide media coverage independent of any state agency to serve as a watchdog. [SDPB says Noem’s cut would put programming at risk]
Within the New Apostolic Reformation, dominion theology supposes christians must control the seven “mountains” of government, education, media, arts and entertainment, religion, family, and business in order to establish a global christianic theocracy and prepare the world for Jesus’ return.
Pages 246–248 of Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership outline its scheme to end the status of NPR and Pacifica radio stations as “noncommercial education stations,” moving them from the desirable low end of the radio spectrum so religious programming can replace the prime 88 to 92 FM frequencies. [Project 2025’s threat to public media must be resisted]
Mrs. Noem is up to her areolae in this stuff. Recall that in 2022 she refused an invitation to debate Democratic contender Jamie Smith on SDPB because it appeals to smart voters instead of to her base of boorish boneheads.

Learn more from NPR about the fear forcing media to appease the Orange Julius as he targets journalists and a free press.

12/4/24

He Sapa Restoration Act could be introduced next year

In the years after a second historic Wounded Knee incident attorney Mario Gonzalez filed the federal court case stopping payment of the Black Hills Claim award to the Oglala Lakota Nation. Gonzalez argued that the commission charged to make peace with tribes inserted language into the Fort Laramie Treaty signed in 1868 that Red Cloud had neither seen nor agreed to in negotiations. In 1987 New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley introduced the Sioux Nation Black Hills Act that would have returned 1.3 million acres to tribes signatory to the treaty but it died amid squabbling among the interested parties. 

In 2018 prisoner of war Leonard Peltier applied for executive clemency then again in 2020 for a compassionate release because of the coronavirus outbreak but both were denied because Donald Trump detests American Indians

In 2022 members of the Oceti Sakowin Oyate held a two-day conference to educate the next generation of Lakota leaders about the history of the Black Hills Claim.

Ahead of the 2023 White House Tribal Nations Summit and as part of the Cobell settlement the Interior Department's Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations, some three million acres in fifteen states were returned to tribal trust ownership. Earlier this year the Interior Department and Bureau of Indian Affairs approved the use of $31 million so the Klamath Tribes could acquire nearly 90,000 acres of private land within their historic reservation boundaries for ecosystem restoration and economic development.

Now nation to nation talks are coalescing around the He Sapa Restoration Act that would remand public lands to the Oyate with hopes of introducing it in the US Congress in 2025 but some elders believe it doesn't go far enough.
The bill would not affect the titles of private lands. Though those lands would be cataloged as part of the land identification process, they would remain in possession of the title holders. As drafted, the act does not relinquish any existing claims for treaty land and seeks to establish a pathway for land return to tribes. The group will fine-tune the draft over the next few months and seek sponsors. Philimon Two Eagle, Sicangu Lakota, attended on behalf of the Sicangu Treaty Council. Two Eagle, the council’s executive director, said the treaty council decided not to support the legislation over concerns it would diminish the original treaties and be dead on arrival. “We want these people to vacate our land. There is no such thing as land back. Vacate these lands,” Two Eagle said. [Native leaders draft bill to regain some of sacred Black Hills]
Colorado's mineral extraction industries have effectively stolen over $500 billion from the Apache of Oklahoma, Cheyenne & Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, Comanche, Kiowa, Northern Arapaho, Northern Cheyenne, Shoshone, Ute Tribe of Utah, Southern Ute, and Ute Mountain Ute. Under the 1906 Antiquities Act and the America the Beautiful initiative President Joe Biden has moved to create the 400,000-acre Dolores River Canyon Country National Monument in Mesa and Montrose counties in Colorado but imagine the blowback if Pres. Biden remands that land back to the Ute Nation.

Pres. Biden has invited representatives from the 574 federally recognized tribes to what is likely the last Tribal Nations Summit for at least four years since the Orange Julius will likely cancel it again like he did during his other term. During the summit Joe might even order the release of Leonard Peltier.


12/2/24

Better late than never Bidenomics producing results

According to the most recent findings from WalletHub 75% of Americans expect a recession if Donald Trump was elected, 60% thought the economy is improving and 68% are concerned that cutting interest rates will make inflation worse. 

Creighton University's Ernie Goss follows the economies of ten midwestern states including South Dakota's and back in May he acknowledged President Joe Biden's leadership. But until now Republicans weren't anxious to write a new farm bill because the agriculture recession made the Biden/Harris administration look bad. 

Today, Goss' Rural Mainstreet Index is showing improvement.
The region’s overall reading for November climbed to a soft 50.2 from October’s very weak 35.2. It was the highest reading since July of last year. The index ranges between 0 and 100, with a reading of 50.0 representing growth neutral. According to trade data from the International Trade Association, regional exports of agriculture goods and livestock for 2024 year-to-date climbed to $8.73 billion from $8.64 billion from the same period in 2023, for growth of 1.1%. Goss and Bill McQuillan, former Chairman of the Independent Community Banks of America, created the monthly economic survey and launched it in January 2006. [Rural Mainstreet Economy Soars to Highest Level in 15 Months]
A cynical observer might suspect bankers provided gloomy outlooks to the Index for at least five months especially in midwestern swing states to sink Democratic Party prospects just as Republicans in congress stalled immigration reform because it makes sense to Earth haters that after he was elected again the Orange Julius would run America into the dirt so banks can foreclose on the whole dealio to massage auction price points.

Trump, competing technologies are dooming Earth, oil and gas downwind states

At least as far back as 2011 Republicans wanted to gut the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service so it comes as no surprise the Trump Organization wants to privatize the agencies. 

Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico is part of a network created by NOAA's Chemical Sciences Laboratory to monitor anthropogenic aerosols in the Earth's gases of life even as emissions released by oil and gas extraction in the Permian Basin threaten Texas and the other horrible red states on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. NOAA wants to be able to detect whether Solar Radiation Modification (SRM), sometimes called solar geoengineering or albedo modification, is happening. Sandia is also home to the Plasma Research Facility and is operated by a subsidiary of Honeywell International under contract with the Department of Energy.
Laura Swiler, a senior scientist at Sandia, developed an algorithm that could take an observed aerosol plume from any source — say, a volcanic eruption, or a large wildfire — and look backward in time to estimate its size and point of origin. It’s a hard problem, Dr. Swiler said, because “the aerosol plume is moving.” [The U.S. Is Building an Early Warning System to Detect Geoengineering]
In New Mexico's Second Congressional District the oil and gas industry operators in the Permian Basin just abandon hundreds of orphan wells leaving the state and feds to do the work to cap them. Some eighty percent of the world's oil transactions are priced in dollars subject to enforcement actions by the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice. But we all know Texas is a failed state. From wildfires to being the 50th freest state to enriching New Mexico's cannabis retailers to gas pipeline explosions to hurricanes: the Lone Star State is in turmoil
The wind carries the faint perfume of hydrocarbons — hints of plastic, hints of glue, hints of gasoline — picked up as it crosses the most productive portion of the most productive oilfield in the country, the Permian Basin. As the wind blows north, the dust and chemicals turn the morning sky from a light blue to a hazy white. In a couple of hours the air will carry the sizzling tang of ozone, eyes will burn, lungs will ache, and distant landmarks will lose their detail and filter into shades of light gray. It envelops passing cars with a potent vapor that smells like a mix of fingernail polish and paint thinner. The resident of the nearest house, which sits about 1,000 feet away, wouldn’t talk about the oil well next door. [The EPA Stalled and Then a Fix for New Mexico Oil and Gas Pollution Evaporated]
Disadvantaged populations have been subject to environmental racism for decades and in 2014 Nobel Prize winner, Professor Paul Krugman warned Americans that Earth haters want to destroy America.

12/1/24

Forest Service, BLM about to revisit Trump's bad old days

One third of the Earth's tree species is at risk to extinction according to the United Nations.

Fuel treatments on the Santa Fe National Forest helped contain the Medio Fire in 2020 and were accelerated after President Joe Biden took the oath of office. But it’s probably a straight line from the Trump Organization's Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue and crashes in morale within the US Forest Service to current conditions on the SFNF and others in the National Forest System. Extreme wildfire conditions caused embers from the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire to create spot fires some four miles from the main burn. 

Northern New Mexico doesn’t really have a viable timber industry and to this interested party the Calf Canyon/ Hermits Peak Fire was a blessing in disguise for hardwood release despite the estimated 62 million trees burned, the lawsuits and misery in its aftermath. A recent study revealed that heavy metals in the suppressants and retardants that the Forest Service and other agencies use against wildfires leach into waterways. Prescribed fire is used extensively by the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service with few pushbacks from sawmills. But, take fire off the the Forest then listen to extractive industry guys like Frank Carroll saying public land management is broken.
The woman who headed the Santa Fe National Forest during the largest wildfire in New Mexico history and was given a temporary assignment in the aftermath of the devastating blaze will remain in Washington, D.C. Former supervisor Debbie Cress, who headed the Santa Fe National Forest for about a year and a half, has taken a permanent position with the U.S. Forest Service office in Washington, D.C. [Santa Fe National Forest supervisor not coming back to N.M.]
Some New Mexico ski areas opened after recent heavy snows and the aspen bowl above Santa Fe was white while everything that is covered in pine and spruce was dark

Remanding lands in the public domain to the tribal communities from whom they were seized can’t happen soon enough. But as much as this interested party would like to see a Forest and Land Management Service within the Interior Department a Trump administration consolidation will cause catastrophic damage to both agencies. Pending budget cuts are already putting essential recreation, conservation work and firewood going to tribal communities at risk.
When the Rio Gallinas flooded this June, a deluge of ash and chemicals used in fire retardants ran down Hermit’s Peak into the Rio Gallinas watershed, causing high turbidity in the drinking water in Las Vegas, New Mexico. In fact, the dreaded words “historic” and “unprecedented” were used to describe the wind in the spring of 2022 — which is to say, the Forest Service fucked up very specifically. Setting the stage were decades of settler-colonizer fire suppression practices, along with the rapid warming of the planet, creating a tinderbox of trees and undergrowth dead or brittle from disease, bark beetles, not enough water and too much heat. [The aftermath of the Hermit’s Peak and Calf Canyon Fires]
Current BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning was selected as President of The Wilderness Society as the incoming administration threatens the agency's health again.


ip image of Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire captured 22 May, 2022.

11/29/24

Donald Trump scares the hell out of Gary Johnson, too

Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson called GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump a "pussy" during a 2016 Libertarian presidential debate in Mississippi after Trump referred to "Little" Marco Rubio using the “P” word but these days Johnson is based in Santa Fe and Taos where he skis, rides his bike and says he no longer smokes. 

Born in Minot, North Dakota Johnson also suffered through several Aberdeen, South Dakota winters as a kid. Both having fled the Republican Party Johnson and his running mate former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld, campaigned in South Dakota during the tainted, likely illegitimate 2016 election. Weld talked in Spearditch as part of his whirlwind tour and Gov. Johnson did very well in Lawrence County and at 7.9% was the best in the whole state. 

As recently as 2023 Johnson said he'd support Bobby Kennedy, Jr. if he ran as a Libertarian but this year he voted for Chase Oliver, the Libertarian nominee. Kennedy gathered nearly 10,000 votes in November or about one percent of New Mexico's electorate.
"Half of what Trump does is good, the other half is crazy. Sure, I've got concerns just like everybody else does. He's gonna get elected, he's gonna be in office. He's that same [age.] I mean, here it is—this is what we're talking about, and there are legitimate concerns. I didn't vote for him. I think Trump has alienated a lot of Republicans, I'm one of them. Having been governor for two terms, what I recognize is, [when] you're the party nominee, you control the party." [Who's Gary Johnson Voting For?]
In a related story, failed and pathetically old like Trump, NMGOP chairman Steve Pearce is not running for reelection.

11/27/24

Today's intersection: Hag, sheriff sideways over constitution

A movement to assign ultimate law enforcement authority to county sheriffs was advanced by a christian identity minister in the 1970s but is now being coopted by groups like the Freedom Caucus, Tactical Civics, the Proud Boys and other white christianic nationalist cults.

She's known as Harriet the Hag on Faceberg and now she is proving it. As the so-called Freedom Caucus that swept her into office assails Wyoming's Capitol arguing for constitutional sheriffs Teton County Sheriff Matt Carr is being attacked by the Hag. Jackson is a blue dot but not a sanctuary city in a sanctuary county yet she singled out Carr alleging non-cooperation with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE.
“It’s just scary how this misinformation can be put out there,” he said. Hageman painted a different picture in her newsletter. “My team learned just last week that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement recently conducted an operation in Teton County,” Hageman said in an email sent out to constituents. But Carr said his office does cooperate with ICE and pointed to ICE’s procedures — particularly skipping a judge’s signature — as a key problem with “detainer” requests. “If they get a judge’s signature, I will hold them all day, every day,” Carr said. “We still operate under the Constitution of the United States of America, and I think that’s something that should resonate with Hageman’s office.” [Hageman alleges Teton County sheriff's 'foiling ICE's efforts']
Red states should be careful what they're wishing for.

Under the Trump Organization's direction ICE performed mass hysterectomies, helped to strip funding for enforcement of the Violence Against Women Act and stonewalled investigations of missing and murdered Indigenous women or MMIW cases. 

Trump adherent, Hageman is calling for wiping out the deep state by targeting federal workers and Wyoming's governor is fanning that wildfire by rejecting at least two Bureau of Land Management resource management plans. 

Learn more at Wired.

“Perhaps someone owns a painting company .. They’ve got a competitor they hate. Simply call up your local ‘Constitutional Sheriff,’ .. let them know that your opponent is employing migrants. In comes the Army .. Even if it’s all fake.” @fpwellman.bsky.social fpwellman.substack.com/p/mass-depor...

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— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla.bsky.social) November 18, 2024 at 12:12 PM

11/26/24

All dressed up but now what?

Not that anyone’s going to do anything about it, but it might be good to remember that, as an adjudicated oath-breaking insurrectionist, Mr.Trump is constitutionally disqualified under Sec. 3 of 14th Am from taking the oath as president on 1/20/25 unless 2/3 of both houses lift the disqualification

Just weeks before Donald Trump led his attempted autogolpe Stewart Rhodes was inciting the Oath Keepers to civil war. Rhodes formed the white supremacist militia in 2009 after Barack Obama was elected POTUS but is now serving an 18-year prison sentence for seditious conspiracy for his role in Trump's insurrection. 

After bankrupting Ammon Bundy and sending him into hiding Idaho's St. Luke's bolstered security protocols amid threats from the state's Republican Attorney General and others in his party. Idaho is the third most lucrative state to practice medicine just behind Montana and South Dakota as doctors flee persecution from militants like Dorothy Moon, the Bircher who's Chair of the Republican Party there. Raúl Labrador is an Earth hater and Mormon who was born in Puerto Rico, elected to Congress in 2010 with support of the John Birch Society, was Chair of the IDGOP before becoming attorney general and says he believes a fertilized egg is an unborn child.

American Redoubt guy, James Rawles is still blogging away about preparedness for the End Times and awaiting orders as his orange god's transition gaggle is barred from talking to the Biden administration.

Montana's chorus of anti-education legislators included Basin's own Alan Hale, until he died. Today, the state's legislature is no longer recognizable as a democratic body but rages on as a Trumpian horde and Jefferson County is every bit as rabid as any in Montana.

Lee Newspapers and the Montana State News Bureau are running a series on Tactical Civics, a militia group wondering what's next after their Proud Boys brethren were told to "stand back and stand by."
"If we have 50 members, where are they?" a woman named Cathy asked the group. The disappointment that night has been expressed in interviews over the past six months with current and former Tactical Civics members who spoke to the Montana State News Bureau for this series. Travis McAdam, with the Southern Poverty Law Center, said historically such groups have lost momentum during Republican presidential terms. After Jan. 6 and the resulting prosecutions, those networks were decimated, sending mobilization efforts back to the local and regional levels with plans to rebrand themselves as forces for good, McAdam said. ['The Heat’s Off': Will Trump's next presidency stall Tactical Civics growth in Montana?]
In Wyoming members of the so-called Freedom Caucus are preparing to crash the legislative session in Cheyenne so maybe that's the next storm front of the End Times. 

Trump World's man for secretary of Defense has close ties to a Moscow, Idaho-based white christofascist cult that aims to turn America into a theocracy.

11/25/24

Today's intersection: the Corps, the courts and property rights under Trump's Project 2025

During President Barack Obama's tenure the US Department of Transportation swatted ExxonMobil with a million dollar penalty after the Environmental Protection Agency released an overview of cleanup efforts in the aftermath of the 2011 breach of the Silvertip pipeline that spilled 63,000 gallons of crude oil into the Yellowstone River upstream of Billings near Laurel, Montana

Summit Carbon Solutions wants to dig a ditch for a $4.5 billion pipeline vulnerable to rupture and rip up over two thousand miles of unceded tribal lands where thousands of Indigenous Americans are buried then pump carbon dioxide to some sacrifice zone in occupied North Dakota ostensibly to be sequestered. But, Republicans are militantly divided over the utility of eminent domain for private enterprise for pipelines moving carbon dioxide and building solar and wind farms but are just fine with employing it for the entrepreneurial transport of oil and gas. 

Interior Secretary nominee, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum champions the CO2 pipeline project that aligns with President Joe Biden’s push for the Green New Deal. Yet, until the Trump Organization seizes absolute power any pipeline required Army Corps of Engineers permits for water body crossings and those usually require environmental reviews that heavily involve the Interior Department. But at post time federal agencies are refusing to meet with Trump nominees to begin transition until he signs the standard ethics and transparency pledges required by every incoming president. 

In the ag portion of the Project 2025 text is an outline for unlimited corporate access to public lands and national forests despite a timber glut and sawmill closures so expect corporations with access to mineral rights run roughshod over landowners. So, it looks like Republican Earth haters who voted for a convicted felon and rapist for POTUS could see their property rights just go away.
The Iowa Supreme Court on Friday sided with Summit Carbon Solutions in an appeal filed by a Hardin County landowner who has fought the company from gaining access to his property to conduct a survey ahead of the construction of a carbon pipeline. The South Dakota Supreme Court recently ruled that surveys or examinations of property that included more than minimal soil disturbance were not allowed. [Iowa Supreme Court Sides With Summit]
Yes, the EPA and US Fish and Wildlife Service are within the Executive Branch and as Commander in Chief the president could simply order the Corps and all to stand down with or without involving an activist Supreme Court of the United States dooming private property rights to utilities that aren't your friends.

After the Trumpians take power and begin to break things, when everyday people start to notice disruptions and negative impacts, will the propaganda machines ensure that the blame is placed not on the current admin, but on liberals and leftists, trans people and immigrants, academics and activists?

— Kate Starbird (@katestarbird.bsky.social) November 24, 2024 at 5:00 PM

11/24/24

Today's intersection is the last best continental divide

Self-identifying sovereign citizens are overwhelmingly white christians using a cherry picked, maladapted interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment to rationalize its commitment to a pending race war using links to the federal storming of Ruby Ridge in Idaho and at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas culminating in the Oklahoma City bombing during a Democratic president's term. 

Also during President Bill Clinton's term in 1996 a standoff between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Montana Freemen, a christian "patriot" group with roots in Washington State and accused of billions in fraud, lasted for 81 days near Jordan, Montana. 

During Pres. Barack Obama's tenure a group of armed thugs including a retired Air Force master sergeant from South Dakota allied with mormon Cliven Bundy occupied a national wildlife refuge in none other than Harney County, Oregon.

In 2020 the nearly 50,000 acre Huff Fire burned through Jordan and in 2022 a Republican preacher was tossed from a Sidney congregation after committing multitudinous sins of debauchery, embezzlement and worse during Pres. Joe Biden's term. 

Now, migrating Republicans from California and Washington State are warping elections in Montana where conservatives in the eastern district detest Californians even as real estate values soar putting people in the margins who voted for the Orange Julius farther into the boonies where jobs are scarce. So, contradictory occurrences are making Montana politics very weird and the clash of rich Catholic Californians in the Bitterroot Valley with rural eastern Montana-born Protestants and a record number of Indigenous legislators is already building to the 2025 legislative session destined for explosive results.
Tactical Civics, founded in Texas by retired engineer David Zuniga, seeks to establish so-called citizen grand juries in each county across the United States, telling its followers that they have the power, ordained by God through the U.S. Constitution, to initiate criminal charges against government officials they deem corrupt. In his book, "Grand Jury Awake," Zuniga deems the official story of 9/11 attack as "ludicrous" and past Democratic presidents to be "conductors" for Satan in a spiritual war against Americans. In the sequel title calling for members to form county militias, Zuniga writes that Tactical Civics will develop a training program, to prepare them to act as law enforcement for the county grand jury and, eventually, dispatch them to observe ballot counting. [Rewind: How Tactical Civics ideology traces the Montana Freemen blueprint]
Since this interested party left Montana in 2011 three Earth haters have moved into the state for every two Democrats making it ripe for another Copper King era.
It’s not quite the same as the Copper Kings — who at their peak controlled elected officials from both major parties — but Democrats see parallels. “What do they say — history doesn’t repeat itself but it rhymes,” said Monica Tranel, the defeated Democratic candidate in a western Montana House district. “It is very evocative of what happened in the early 1900s. It’s very much a time of change and turmoil and who has a voice.” Driving the growth are transplants from western states dominated by Democrats, especially California, where more than 85,000 Montana residents originated, or about 7.5% of the population, Census data shows. Almost half of Montana residents were born out of state. [An influx of outsiders and money turns Montana Republican, culminating in a Senate triumph]

ip image.

11/21/24

Commercial teevee created Trump: part n

Until the Vietnam War school shootings were rare and scattered but after commercial teevee brought the carnage into every American living room something changed. 

So how did we get here and how did a career criminal like DonOld Trump reach his under-educated, gullible audience? People exposed as children to teevee are more likely to vote for populist politicians.
Television has conditioned us to tolerate visually entertaining material measured out in spoonfuls of time, to the detriment of rational public discourse and reasoned public affairs. In this eloquent, persuasive book, Neil Postman alerts us to the real and present dangers of this state of affairs, and offers compelling suggestions as to how to withstand the media onslaught. Before we hand over politics, education, religion, and journalism to the show business demands of the television age, we must recognize the ways in which the media shape our lives and the ways we can, in turn, shape them to serve out highest goals. [Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business]
College graduates make up 43% of the electorate and 55% voted for Vice President Harris while 56% of voters without degrees voted for Trump because Generation X is a disease.

When anyone over 45 stops to ask themselves how TF did we get to a point where a cancelled TV game show host, who is wildly unfit for the office of dog catcher, much less a SECOND term as president got elected, Neil Postman tried to warn us decades ago.

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— Darick (@darickr.bsky.social) November 20, 2024 at 10:14 AM