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 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 today for much of the red moocher state.

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 it in 2021. Residual chemicals from those operations add to the pollutants in Spring Creek.

Invasive northern pike can also be found in Stockade Lake just downstream from a town named for a war criminal that is also suffering massive sewage contamination.

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

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

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

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.

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.

 The good news? Drought could bankrupt the entire region and one hundred percent of South Dakota's land area is desiccating. 

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.

Scientists still do not know how many wetlands lost protection in last year’s crippling of the Clean Water Act by #SCOTUS. A study in @ScienceMagazine said the range of possible protection loss is between a fifth of nontidal wetlands to nearly all of them. https://t.co/b6yd9rkGpb

— Union of Concerned Scientists (@UCSUSA) October 26, 2024

In a recent episode of "This American Land" from @PBS, John Devney, Chief Policy Officer of Delta Waterfowl, discusses the importance of preserving shallow wetlands in the Prairie Pothole Region for waterfowl populations.https://t.co/nPt84Ij2OX

— Delta Waterfowl (@DeltaWaterfowl) October 17, 2024

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.

The Governor's budget address has recommended what amounts to deep cuts to South Dakota Public Broadcasting’s budget, amounting to a 65% decrease in our state budget allocation.https://t.co/N7ZPT85aT2

— SDPB (@SoDakPB) December 4, 2024

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.

Last month I caught up with leaders from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe about their 8 year battle against DAPL https://t.co/L3yT0SdzXT

— Amelia Schafer (@ameliaschafers) December 4, 2024

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.

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.

Learn more at Oregon Public Broadcasting. 

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