8/31/24

Wyoming Republicans turn on firefighters, tribes as drought conditions worsen

Gillette, Wyoming is a scary place. It's where ecocide is encouraged and mercury from coal burning power plants is released into South Dakota's watersheds and beyond.
The Campbell County Fire Department is asking that people be patient during the ongoing wildfires, understanding that these past several days have been stressful on landowners and firefighters alike. And it’s caused some high-tension situations between residents and firefighters. “Our members have been threatened with bodily harm while standing their ground and completing their assignments,” the fire department wrote in a Facebook post. [Fire department asks residents to be understanding and patient with firefighters]
As of Friday Wyoming wildfires have cleared nearly a half 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 ranchers who rely on moral hazard to survive. Northeastern Wyoming is under a fire weather watch through Sunday as wind gusts reach thirty five miles per hour, low humidity prevails and temperatures rise to as much as twenty degrees above normal.

Tension is high in the Mountain West after threats from South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem and Wyoming US Representative Harriet Hageman so local Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service offices and employees are on alert for militant zealots bent on violent disruptions or worse as federal agencies assess resource management plans

On the Wind River Indian Reservation tribal members are furious as Earth haters Hageman and Senator John Barrasso advance a land and water grab within Eastern Shoshone boundaries without council consultation

8/30/24

SD Senate candidate graduate of Santa Fe's Southwestern College

South Dakota District 34 Senate candidate Kehala Two Bulls earned her Masters in Counseling from Southwestern College in Santa Fe where she met her husband, artist Marty Two Bulls, Jr.. Ms. Two Bulls was recently selected as a Billie Sutton Leadership Institute Fellow.
She said managers and stewards need to be open to learning about traditional Indigenous practices of forest stewardship and prescribed burning. Many are revisiting these time-honored methods of managing fire-adapted ecosystems. “The key to continuing to evolve our understanding through ongoing study, while drawing wisdom from Indigenous forest management interfaces that coexisted with period fire for centuries before modern fire suppression policies. [Two Bulls work with CASA will make her an effective legislator]
Preservation is a weak spot in the Republican agenda and if enough people believe forest and rangeland resilience is a bankable position the South Dakota Democratic Party needs to exploit it by fielding candidates who can convince voters to reject politicians like John Thune, Kristi Noem, Mike Rounds and Dusty Johnson who work for the grazing, mining and logging profiteers at the expense of public lands

Southwestern is home to the New Earth Institute which recently hosted the Heart of Nature Summit 2024. New Mexico is home to twenty three Indigenous nations.

8/29/24

Schweitzer: "throw 'em out!"

Democrat Brian Schweitzer was governor when this scrivener was last living in Montana but after leaving office he chose not to run for the US Senate allowing raving lunatic Steve Daines to sashay into the seat. 

The sometimes bombastic but widely-liked Schweitzer became chairman of the board of Stillwater Mining Company, Montana's largest revenue producer. Schweitzer isn't a progressive by any stretch of the imagination but his populist appeal makes him a regional favorite among Democrats even though he has promoted coal and the Keystone XL pipeline. In 2021 Schweitzer raked Montana Republicans for giving special treatment to South Dakota-based NorthWestern Energy when the utility burned down the town of Denton calling it "a fine mix of Socialism and Crony Capitalism to match Russian President Vladimir Putin." 

Today, the Montana Legislature is at least as demented as South Dakota's and the state's Earth hating governor is bleeding taxpayers for disaster relief just like Kristi Noem is.
Montana has never had more elected Republicans than we do today. Republicans control all the branches of government. These tax increases were placed on your shoulders without the help or consent of any Democrat. The Montana Republican Party is now the party of higher taxes and more government spending. Montana’s largest two property taxpayers are Northwestern Energy and BNSF Railroad. They each got millions of dollars in tax cuts. Northwestern sent the loot to corporate headquarters in South Dakota and then raised your electric rates. BNSF sent the stash to Fort Worth, Texas and increased freight rates to ship Montana’s wheat crop to Portland. Refineries, pipelines, transmission lines and mines all got big tax breaks and did not invest more in Montana or hire more Montana workers. They just sent your money to their shareholders. You gave the Republicans a chance and they raised your taxes. Throw'em out! [Schweitzer, Republicans raised your property taxes]
In 2015, an email from a concerned Montanan alerted this blog to a move by the Park County Commission to redirect funds awarded in a lawsuit that were intended to clean up soil contamination now in repose within the city's unlined landfill resulting from decades of spills by Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway. Empire Builder passengers blamed BNSF Railway for the derailment near Joplin in 2021 because in much of the Mountain West that railroad owns the track bed over which Amtrak operates and kills grizzlies in conflict with the Endangered Species Act. 

Now, wildfires are raking Republican-held property again in Montana where welfare ranchers are hoping to cash in on yet another disaster declaration while the governor refuses to debate his election challenger.

Does that AP image look familiar to you South Dakotans? That's because Mrs. Noem coopted it.

Learn more at the Daily Montanan.

8/27/24

Canadian company will test local control, tribal stewardship

Recall that the South Dakota Republican Party ceded authority to the US Environmental Protection Agency and Nuclear Regulatory Commission for uranium mining after the legislature realized there is no competent oversight from state agencies. 

Rising in the Wyoming Pumpkin Buttes the 300 mile long Cheyenne River flows through Indian Country and Powertech USA, part of Canadian firm Azarga Uranium, now enCore Energy, wants to mine near Dewey northwest of Edgemont on a tributary of the river despite warnings of high risk from a securities firm. 

So, to maintain local control Fall River County voted to make uranium mining a nuisance in 2022

Now, Canada-based Clean Nuclear Energy Corporation wants to drill through the water-bearing Inyan Kara Group on School and Public Lands property in Fall River County. The project is less than a mile from Craven Canyon where pictographs and rock art of the Lakota, Cheyenne, Mandan, Hidatsa, Ponca, eastern Dakota, and other Native American cultures are protected on the Black Hills National Forest.
Great Sioux Nation and Biden Administration representatives opened a path to joint stewardship of the Black Hills National Forest on Aug. 22. The leaders of their respective nations signed a memorandum engaging federal land managers with tribal experts in consultation, planning, and employment on sacred ground. The document is based on a federal template for MOUs. The directive’s title defines the intent: “Collaboration with the Great Sioux Nation Tribes in Relation to Forestry Planning, Healthy Forest, Workforce Development and Stewardship in the Black Hills National Forest.” In it, the tribes stipulated that their cooperation waives no treaty rights. Across the country, the Forest Service has entered into 180 similar stewardship accords with tribes. [Sioux Nation, U.S. Forest Service forge joint stewardship framework for Black Hills]
In 2000 now-dead Republican South Dakota Governor Bill Janklow sold the state cement plant in Rapid City to Grupo Cementos de Chihuahua (GCC). Democratic legislators voted against Janklow's folly because GCC was exempted from mineral severance and was allowed to mine on ground owned by School and Public Lands. Limestone-rich state trust land near Dewey was leased for a dollar for 99 years and could be renewed twice so for three bucks GCC received the mineral rights for 297 years and school kids got screwed. During the 1980s and 90s the cement plant returned about $11 million a year but in 2013 the legislature had to kick in $4 million to the plant's retirement system and South Dakota still surfs the bottom for America's education dollars.

South Dakota's Trump-drunk governor has rejected some $70 million in federal funds for greener energy development.

8/26/24

Wilson should withdraw from SDPUC race amid SDGOP disintegration

This interested party is a thirty five year Democratic donor and volunteer for DSCC, DCCC and DLCC charged with South Dakota as a territory but nobody in those organizations believes a Democrat could win any statewide race in the red moocher state. 

So if Democrat Forrest Wilson withdraws from the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission contest Libertarian Gideon Oakes has a very strong chance to defeat Earth hater Kristie Fiegen. Republicans are militantly divided over the utility of eminent domain for private enterprise for pipelines to move carbon dioxide but are just fine with employing it for the entrepreneurial transport of oil and gas.

But the best news is the circular firing squad taking place within the SDGOP where fundraising has ceased to exist after Governor Kristi Noem signed SB 201 which some call the "Landowner Bill of Rights" further splitting the South Dakota Republican Party and caving to the Green New Deal.
The agenda was executed almost exactly as it was promulgated, without any of the drama and contention predicted by naysayers like those at Dakota War College. It was a shame that their gaslighting probably convinced some state central committee members not to attend. [Stu Cvrk, Report from the South Dakota GOP Special Meeting on 24 August]

8/23/24

Gaia turns her attention to Wyoming, red state failure

As the so-called Freedom Caucus threatens to burn down Wyoming Mother Nature is beating those Earth haters to the draw. The House Draw Fire is clearing everything in her path.
Johnson County Fire Control District 1 is fighting the blaze along with Clearmont Fire, Powder River Fire, Wyoming State Forestry, Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest [S]ervice. Seventy firefighters are deployed. [Northern Wyoming Wildfire Explodes To Nearly 200,000 Acres, Others Also Burning]
Some Wyoming legislators just said screw it after the Freedom Caucus sank its claws into Cheyenne and Democrats aren't even bothering to run because of threats on their lives. So, turnout for the state's primary election barely registered as voters just stayed home as an expression of disgust for the extreme white wing of the Wyoming Republican Party.
Going into Tuesday, members and allies of the Freedom Caucus controlled about 26 votes in the 62-member House. By midnight, the caucus appeared to have secured at least 29 seats, according to an analysis by WyoFile of the complete but as yet unofficial results. The Freedom Caucus was also able to elect one of its own members, Rep. Chip Neiman (R-Hulett), to be the second-ranking officer of the body in 2023. Gov. Mark Gordon was the biggest donor to the Wyoming Caucus, personally giving $30,000, while the two largest donors to the Freedom Caucus were William and Jeanie Haas of Hulett, who donated $30,000 each. [Wyoming Freedom Caucus gains power, but November will determine statehouse control]
The good news? Wyoming's suicide rate has more than doubled as the stingy state refuses to expand Medicaid and men are five and a half more likely to take their own lives.

8/21/24

South Dakota, Wyoming facing scorched earth

Restoring and rewilding American ecosystems are parts of the Green New Deal but it may already be too late for red states South Dakota and Wyoming.

If domestic livestock grazing really reduces fuel loads why is extreme fire danger still a thing in Republican ranch country? In western South Dakota and in most of Wyoming moderate and severe drought is worsening so pastures in those states are poor to very poor according to the latest data from the US Department of Agriculture's National Agricultural Statistics Service.
Wyoming and South Dakota reported the largest negative change. Wyoming saw 66% rated good to excellent, down 6 points from the previous week, and saw an 11-point increase in poor-to-very-poor grazing areas. South Dakota saw a drop of 8 points to 22% good to excellent and a 14-point increase in poor-to-very-poor ratings. [Progressive Farmer]

8/16/24

Freedom to die: Sturgis means death without dignity


Suicide by violent means is epidemic especially in red states like South Dakota and Wyoming so Republicans just go pffft when twelve bikers die during the Sturgis Rally. Yes, South Dakota's Trump-drunk Republican governor sells the state as one of the freest in the nation and even continual sobriety checkpoints have done little to discourage inebriated drivers from operating motor vehicles in Mrs. Noem's state. 

But, hypocrisy reigns supreme at the highest levels of power in South Dakota so residents endured another Rally where this year nearly a half a million attendees spent an average of a thousand dollars each so the sitting governor can crow about her leadership and self-reliance while moral hazards pay the bills. Hotels, motels and campgrounds in the Hills jack up their rates and fill to capacity so a murder of fat white Republican crows can swill alcohol, stuff their faces, buy Trump t-shirts and children for sex then kill themselves and each other with reckless abandon.

During the Rally riders loop through Aladdin to Hulett and Devils Tower then back through Sundance, Wyoming where, not coincidentally, Rapid City Regional now Monument Health has a "Sturgis Market" branch. Highways are often crowded to overfull and drunken bikers can be seen weaving over every roadway in the Black Hills. Deer are unpredictable and now join bighorn sheep, released by the South Dakota's GOP wildlife 'management' arm, as opportunities for bikers to die. 

As Wyoming's economy retools from oil, coal and a history of workplace deaths the state has become a more desirable tourist destination especially during the Rally where dying is just part of the fun. Republicans in Wyoming chalk up biker deaths as necessary for the common weal just as South Dakota GOPers do.

Yet, one Earth hating legislator, quack Fred Deutsch, raises campaign cash gallivanting around the red moocher state with a crusade calling a death with dignity by physician assisted suicide "Don't Eat Grandma" or something. Deutsch isn't interested in compassion because he wants big government nanny state control over every aspect of peoples' lives except during the Rally but abhors cultural diversity and perceives the electorate as rabble. These are "pro-life" people who rabidly embrace state-sponsored killing of persons convicted of capital crimes right out of the ALEC playbook and forces Social Security recipients to keep paying property taxes so that income isn’t taxed by a red moocher state like South Dakota.

The good news? Sure, bikers are just tools of the state but hospitals, bars and mortuaries cut a fat hog during the annual orgy and so did the law enforcement industry who seized over $71,000 through civil asset forfeiture and selective interdiction.

Today in 2003, Republican then-U.S. Representative and former four-term Governor Bill Janklow ran his Cadillac through a stop sign and killed 55-year-old motorcyclist Randy Scott.

ip image.

8/15/24

SDGOP, WYGOP devolving into political cannibalism

Republican secretaries of state in both South Dakota and Wyoming are frogs in boiling water as members of their own parties prepare to dine on their four legs. 

SDSOS Monae Johnson is the first entree on the menu as Republican woman haters called "Life Defense Fund" sued her in a challenge that they say would remove Amendment G from the November ballot.
In its amended complaint, Life Defense Fund argues that if it wins, Johnson could issue a statement prior to the election instructing voters to disregard Amendment G, the abortion amendment. [South Dakota secretary of state now a defendant in abortion rights case]
Tension is high in the Mountain West after threats from South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem and Wyoming US Representative Harriet Hageman so local Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service offices and employees are on alert for militant zealots bent on violent disruptions or worse as federal agencies assess resource management plans.

Ogden Driskill is an Earth hating Wyoming legislator running cattle near Devils Tower National Monument in the Belle Fourche River watershed. WYSOS Chuck Gray said he's receiving death threats.
With just over one week before the 2024 primary elections, Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray has formally requested that several county clerks around the Equality State redo tests of voting machines. “To do this a week ahead [of the election] is absolutely deplorable,” Wyoming Senate President Ogden Driskill (R-Devils Tower) told WyoFile. “It’s a blatant move to try to force hand-counts of our ballots.” [Secretary of State calls for retests of voting machines 8 days before Wyoming primary elections]
In 2023 Driskill was co-sponsor of a resolution that called on the federal government to amend the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 and allow horses wrangled from public lands to be diverted to meat processing domestically for shipment abroad. But even Driskill isn't white enough for some Trumpers and faced a solid write-in campaign from a former chair of the Crook County Republican Party.
“Senator Driskill’s false attacks on my integrity are inappropriate and defamatory,” Gray told WyoFile in an email. “It’s deeply disturbing because with his wrong and defamatory accusations, Senator Driskill is doing the very thing that he is accusing the Freedom Caucus of doing.” [WY Freedom PAC returns $25K donation to Crook County GOP after Driskill files complaint]
Blocking the vote in Indian Country is hardly a new phenomenon since South Dakota and Wyoming have been doing it for decades. 

After its dismissal by a US District Court judge Laramie, Wyoming lawyer Tim Newcomb has appealed his lawsuit to the state's highest court against Gray to bar Donald Trump and US Senator Cynthia Lummis from the general election ballot under the Disqualification Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Learn more at WyoFile.

8/14/24

Noem failures are driving more educators from South Dakota

Teachers' wages in red states like South Dakota surf the bottom because Republicans are Balkanizing education amid a fight over ideological purity and in my home state academic freedom is under attack from a reactionary, Earth hating, self-dealing, authoritarian governor. Kristi Noem is directly responsible for the closing of Presentation College where many of South Dakota's teachers were trained.
New Associated School Boards of South Dakota Executive Director Heath Larson said that vacancies are up about 100 from the end of July last year to the same time this year. That’s been following a trend of rising openings each year with a little less than a month to the start of classes in the state. The total openings as of the end of July sat at 353, up from 256 the year prior. Before that, there were 225 headed into the 2022 school year. [Teacher vacancies up in South Dakota with new year around the corner]
Yes, pollution, crashes, blackouts, anthrax, Legionella, shigella, bovine TB, suicides, flooding, wildfires, hail, ecocide, crime, corruption, disease, drought, destruction, distrust and dependence: these are the Noem years. 

Learn more at South Dakota News Watch.

8/12/24

Trump brings his dishonored drug dealer to Montana rally

In 2011 this interested party met Senator Jon Tester when sixty five Democrats welcomed him to the Jefferson County Fairgrounds. An organic farmer, Tester even shared a stage later that year with then-Prince Charles and addressed the Future of Food conference at Georgetown University. 

Sen. Tester still does the work and in 2023 he enjoyed the fourth highest approval rating of any US Senator. Today, nearly sixty percent of all Montana voters support his efforts in an increasingly hostile red state. Tester is working toward restoring the North Coast Hiawatha and finding funding for the next phase of the project through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill while his Small Community Air Service Enhancement Act boosts airport improvements in eastern Montana counties. Treasure County was the latest to join the Big Sky Passenger Rail Authority as nineteen Montana counties, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai, Northern Cheyenne and Apsáalooke Nations bring the former North Coast Hiawatha to life. 

Career veterans' advocate, Tester has known about the monopolistic nature of rural hospitals for decades. And, after Amtrak's Empire Builder derailed near Joplin, Montana many of the injured passengers were unable to find medical care because area hospitals were overwhelmed with unvaccinated Republicans.

After Donald Trump's plane was diverted to Billings where he still owes $43,000 from a 2018 visit he stiffed eight thousand of his supporters for an hour and a half before introducing his disgraced and demoted drug dealer to the audience.
Trump brought Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, a former physician to the president, on stage to air his animus for Tester six years after Tester helped tank Trump’s effort to put Jackson in as the Secretary of Veterans Affairs in 2018 by bringing to light complaints Jackson had overprescribed certain medications and was drinking on the job. “This man tried to destroy me. He tried to destroy my family. I’ve been waiting for six years to get back here for this night, to be with this man right here, to come after (Tester),” Jackson said, calling Tester a “Swamp hippopotamus.” [Trump rallies thousands in Bozeman in support of GOP Senate candidate Sheehy]
Convicted felon Trump owes El Paso, Texas over a half million dollars and screwed Albuquerque out of $211,000 after a mudfest there.

8/11/24

Today's intersection: dumped wind turbines and energy giants

NextEra is the fourth-biggest US energy group after ExxonMobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips.
The story began with the company NextEra Energy, a large Florida-based clean energy developer. Often, expired turbine blades end up in a landfill. The fiberglass components are tough to reuse, creating a weak recycling market. Xcel Energy now owns the wind farm, but the company says it can’t move the blades because it doesn’t own them and described the situation as “isolated.” Xcel is still sensitive to the issue because the blade junk is not exactly building goodwill in a wind-rich area. [‘Seriously, this sucks’: How a small Minnesota town was left with a giant pile of wind turbine blades]
Xcel Energy is responsible for part of the methane bubble over the Four Corners area and worse. In 2015 the Minneapolis-based utility even sued to prevent the hookup of a solar generating station for a Minnesota company and enjoys frequent rate hikes from the South Dakota Public Utilities Cartel (SDPUC). Several utilities are based in South Dakota because of the state's regressive tax structure — Northwestern Energy and Black Hills Power among them. In South Dakota the three elected Republicans on the PUC have taken a position opposed to net metering and the state's Koch-soaked legislature has considered but declined to pass legislation on the issue. No corporate taxes, a compliant regulator, a dearth of environmental protection and cheap labor make South Dakota the perfect dumping ground for earth killers like coal and eyesores like wind farms. 

A Texas group calling itself American Stewards of Liberty with ties to the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion presented anti-Earth resolutions to a receptive Otero County Commission and the San Juan County Commission heard two resolutions dealing with land use issues after watching ASL's Margaret Byfield's dog and pony show. Byfield has been lobbying the Yankton, South Dakota County Commission appearing for a second time in the mostly Democratic district near the Yankton Sioux Nation.
Wind power has stirred a storm in Yankton County. The proposed development is the Swan Lake wind project from NextEra Energy Resources. [Wind energy proposal fans flames at Yankton County Commission meeting]
Ice storms and other calamities driven by anthropogenic climate hijinx routinely knock out electric power often resulting in lost lives and the inevitable cyber attacks on the US will take down the grid for days, even months causing food shortages and mayhem but the addition of virtual power plants or VPPs can change that handling some twenty percent of peak power demand by 2030.
Two years ago, NextEra Energy agreed to a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice related to accidental eagle fatalities at certain wind farms owned or operated by the company in Wyoming and New Mexico. The resolution resolved past fatalities and provided a framework that allowed NextEra Energy to move forward without a continued threat to the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. [Florida Firm Proposes 600-MW Wyoming Wind Project Near Jim Bridger Plant]
The cost of subsidizing, manufacturing, transporting, erecting, maintaining then removing and disposing of just one wind turbine eyesore bat and bird killer would take a thousand subscribers to energy self-reliance. Microgrid technologies are destined to enhance tribal sovereignty, free communities from electric monopolies and net-metering only gives control back to utilities enabled by moral hazard

Utilities are not your friends so don’t tie your photovoltaic system to the grid but if you use it as a backup keep your own electricity completely separate from the utility that reads your meter.

ip image: a residential solar array powers two houses on a Santa Fe County property.

8/10/24

Howdy Doody Dusty breaking bad?

Roundup® is a threat to human life and is known to cause birth defects and spontaneous abortions despite assurances from manufacturer Bayer but high levels of glyphosate, a known endocrine disruptor, are still found in oats, chickpeas and corn sugars. 

Recall Mandatory Country of Origin Labeling or MCOOL was repealed in part to shield American chemical companies from scrutiny because every ag product, meats both wild and domestic not grown organically in the United States is contaminated with atrazine, neonicotinoids, glyphosate, dicamba, DDT, mercury, lead, PFAS, E. coli, Imazalil plus other toxins and pathogens. 

In 2018 Earth killer Bayer Crop Science gave South Dakota Republicans some $8000 including $1500 each for Kristi Noem and now-disgraced former Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg. Digging into Bayer's plan reveals the deadly truth: it wants to sell fungicides, pesticides and access to proprietary technology to farmers. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) has been analyzing pesticide data from the federal Department of Agriculture and the results are alarming.

Particularly concerning is Imazalil, a carcinogenic fungicide that can alter hormone levels especially in children and adolescents. In 2020 it was detected on 90% of citrus not grown organically in the United Snakes. DCPA (dimethyl tetrachloroterephthalate), sold under the brand name Dacthal, was banned in Europe in 2009 but until recently was still widely used in the US on kale and other greens as are neonicotinoids, pyrethroids and some 20 other pesticides. Also banned by the European Union are the organophosphate insecticides acephate and chlorpyrifos that can harm developing brains but the Trump Organization refused to block chlorpyrifos from being used on US produce.

Earth haters have a disproportionate influence on the farm bill and to nobody's surprise it's the usual suspects who spend the most money. More than even the defense lobby lavishes on politicians the US Chamber of Commerce, Bayer, American Crystal Sugar, the American Farm Bureau Federation and the Koch cabal flood Republicans in congress with cash according to research compiled by the Union of Concerned Scientists. 

According to Open Secrets Republican South Dakota US Representative Dusty Johnson’s campaign committee harvested $4,000 from political action committees affiliated with Bayer during this election cycle and $1,000 in each of the 2020 and 2022 cycles. To spite preservationists like the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Center for Biological Diversity Johnson signed a letter to Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack urging US Department of Agriculture's Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service or APHIS to roll back a ban on purchasing or utilizing M-44 ejector devices that kill family members on public lands. 
The provision builds on an earlier proposal introduced by Reps. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) and Jim Costa (D-Calif.), two members of the House Agriculture Committee. Bayer helped craft that measure, then circulated it among lawmakers to rally support before later pushing the House to add it to the farm bill, the people familiar with the effort said. The House doesn’t yet have a vote scheduled on that package, which expires Sept. 30. In the meantime, Bayer also has sought to reshape federal, state and local laws, hoping to erect a blockade against future lawsuits. That measure could effectively shut down some of the lawsuits against Bayer, legal experts said. [Bayer lobbies Congress to help fight lawsuits tying Roundup to cancer
So, Mr. Johnson needs to be held accountable for coddling a would be dictator and building a war chest on the Big Lie, for his failures to support Medicaid, for voting against marriage, for not moving on immigration reform and for his culpability in driving talent from South Dakota. 

Learn more at South Dakota Seachlight.

8/9/24

Basic income would buck panhandling in stingy Sioux Falls

Homeless veterans are often refugees from combat and despite lies from the South Dakota Republican Party video lootery, meth, loan sharks, domestic violence and homelessness are inextricably linked putting children at risk to more catastrophic consequences far more often than has happened in states that have legalized or lessened penalties for casual use of cannabis.

But, in miserly Sioux Falls compassionate conservatism is very dead because Paul TenHaken is a homophobic, christianic Republican mayor of a small city in a red flyover state who wouldn’t even vote for Jesus Himself if He ran as a Democrat. In the 2018 election TenHaken dominated the Sioux Falls general election in every area of the city but not in the core where unhoused people are trying to survive. Hizzoner wants the more fortunate to give money to religionist institutions instead of to the people who need it.
In response to an increase of calls of public nuisance, TenHaken said the city has removed benches, removed access to landscaping, and even dyed fountains. [Sioux Falls city leaders urge residents to stop giving money to panhandlers]
2020 presidential candidate, Andrew Yang wanted to implement a universal basic income of $12,000 a year and guaranteed income (GI) demonstration projects are underway in several states including in Colorado and New Mexico where cannabis is legal. Minnesota is still working on a basic income proposal but South Dakota is one Earth hating state where food insecurity is rampant.
The Denver Basic Income Project (DBIP) is a program providing unconditional cash transfers to unhoused people living in Denver. The aims of the program are to test the feasibility and impact of guaranteed income for unhoused people.
All payment groups showed significant improvements in housing outcomes, including a remarkable increase in home rent and ownership, and decrease in nights spent unsheltered.
Participants reported positive shifts in financial wellbeing, with an increase in financial stability and a greater ability to pay bills and reduced reliance on emergency assistance.
Additional data analysis reveals that DBIP participation is tied to substantial cost savings in public spending and a large reduction in public service utilization, including emergency room visits, hospital nights, and jail stays.
Want to fix prison overcrowding? Legalize cannabis. In fact, cannabis taxes have raised the standard of living in bluer states. 

8/6/24

Walz was cannabis leader in Congress

When former Representative Tim Walz was running for governor in 2017 legal cannabis was a favorite topic in Minnesota's Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party primary. In 2020 the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act of 2019 or MORE Act would have removed cannabis from Schedule 1 but legalization remained in the hands of the states. The bill's lead sponsor in the Senate was Vice President-elect Senator Kamala Harris.
Tim Walz, the second-term Minnesota governor with a folksy demeanor and a swath of experience inside and out of government, gained a spot on the Democratic ticket as Kamala Harris’ vice presidential choice. [Kamala Harris taps Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as Democratic running mate]
As of May, 2024 forty seven Native cannabis retailers are operating fifty seven stores in nine states for a gain of some thirty percent since January, 2023. Nations in Minnesota and New York lead non-tribal retail growth in those states but in California and Michigan the industry is reaching full flower very quickly, too. In Minnesota, the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe is constructing a 50,000-square-foot cultivation facility that will dwarf any state-licensed operations which are capped at 30,000 square feet. 

Minnesota US Senator Tina Smith is a leader in the call to have cannabis completely descheduled and is signatory in a letter to US Attorney General Merrick Garland and Drug Enforcement Administration chief Ann Milgram.


8/3/24

SDFB couple indicted in federal fraud case

Carved from the Great Sioux Nation, the Buffalo Gap and Fort Pierre National Grasslands in South Dakota are managed from a US Forest Service office in Nebraska.

The Forest Service detected fraud and a grand jury indicted members of the South Dakota Farm Bureau. USA v. Maude, et al was brought by the US Attorney for the District of South Dakota and is being heard by US Magistrate Judge Daneta Wollmann, a Trump era appointee. If convicted the defendants face $250,000 in fines and ten years in federal prison.

On 20 June, Charles and Heather Maude of Caputa, South Dakota were charged with crimes against the United States after they “knowingly stole, purloined and converted” land on two allotments within the Buffalo Gap National Grassland. Charles is represented by an attorney employed by the Federal Public Defender's Office and Heather is charged with two counts and is being represented by private attorneys.

Maude Hog and Cattle has been providing product to Wall Meats which is heavily subsidized by the USDA. Charles Maude has received nearly $300,000 in ag subsidies since 1995. 

Livestock grazing isn't a right; it's a privilege and it's ruining public ground throughout the American West. Some 58% of grazing permits on federal land in critical habitat go without review. White Republican welfare ranchers are, of course, howling government overreach but also wail when eminent domain is applied for the public good. Fueled by Donald Trump and Republican politicians like Kristi Noem, Harriet Hageman, Dorothy Moon and Ammon Bundy white christian nationalists are the latest perpetrators of malicious attacks on public employees and on the grid.

8/2/24

Midwestern Trump states still suck: Goss

Creighton University's Ernie Goss follows the economies of nine midwestern states including South Dakota's. 

His July Rural Mainstreet Index declined to 50.7 from 51.3 in June and bankers reported an eleventh straight month of negative growth. Farm equipment sales have been depressed for a year and farmland prices are expected to drop again because regional exports are down nearly $200 million from the same period as last year. 

South Dakota's manufacturing exports fell nearly eleven percent for a second month and supply managers are pessimistic about future trends as Trump state weakness continued and the employment index slumped below growth neutral for a seventh straight month. The RMI indicates that South Dakota's wholesale price gauge fell for the fifth straight month while exports of agriculture goods and livestock were down in July by a whopping 49.1% from the same cycle in 2023. Goss said the Mid America Business Conditions Index slipped slightly to 46.7 in July from 46.9 in June.

WalletHub reports that red states are in deeper financial distress than blue states. North Dakota and Iowa saw big jumps in unemployment claims in states where Republican governors are among the country's least popular. Kristi Noem's popularity hovers at nineteenth just behind Nebraska's Earth hating governor. South Dakota also saw an increase in bankruptcy filings while the state is 42nd in credit score ranking and 15th in the number of people in financial distress in large part because of high medical and energy costs.

8/1/24

Johnson's call for civility is vertiginous in its hypocrisy

Now that Howdy Doody Dusty Johnson and the national Republican Party are drowning in Donald Trump's zone of shit which Republican will have the courage to take him out? Thomas Matthew Crooks was a real martyr and came just millimeters from saving American democracy but after the incident in Pennsylvania Trump and his disciples turned on the media.
We’ve all seen and felt the tension rising over the last several years, and we know the temperature and hateful rhetoric has gone well over its boiling point. Too often, we view those with differing opinions as enemies, rather than fellow Americans. Our country is not well-served by that. Anger is a powerful short-term motivator, but it isn’t a foundation for successful marriages, churches, businesses, communities, or careers. We must have thoughtful discourse among engaged citizens, not emotional attacks of enraged partisans. [Johnson: A call for civility]
So, Mr. Johnson needs to be held accountable for coddling a would be dictator and building a war chest on the Big Lie, for his failures to support Medicaid, for voting against marriage, for not moving on immigration reform and for his culpability in driving talent from South Dakota. 

But he certainly knows which side of his bread gets buttered so the extreme white wing of the Republican Party owns him lock, stock and schlock. Johnson went from being a likable moderate to becoming just another tool of the oligarchs and globalists who hoard trillions in South Dakota’s banks and trusts because, hey, that’s where the money is. 

Republican welfare ranchers ginned up by the likes of South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, Wyoming's US Representative Harriet Hageman, disgraced former Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin, American Stewards of Liberty rabble-rouser Margaret Byfield and others are plotting violence against public land managers in the West.

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