SDGFP wants to kill native bighorn sheep but mountain goats are the real problem

After the six Rocky Mountain goats that came from Alberta, Canada in the early 1920s escaped a facility in a South Dakota state park named for a war criminal but because of a dead-end gene pool they peaked at about sixty head so SD Game, Fish and Plunder began transplanting goats from Colorado in 2007. The State of South Dakota began a goat season in 1967 but only two were killed in 2022 after only two licenses were issued. 

Non-native goats are aggressive and even killed a hiker in 2010 in Olympic National Park so the feds removed them. But even after contractors working for US, the People shot scores of invasive goats from helicopters between 2019 and 2022 in Grand Teton National Park a herd is rebuilding. Those critters are the descendants of goats released by Idaho Fish and Game sometime before 1977. Today, they're at odds with efforts to reintroduce native bighorn sheep in the Black Hills. Bighorn sheep are native to the region but because of uncontrolled hunting they were extirpated from the Hills by the early 1900s. 

In 2002 the Grizzly Gulch Fire opened nearly 13,000 acres of overgrown and beetle-killed ponderosa pine but invasive weeds and cheatgrass moved in because cars and hunters have killed off the elk, white-tailed and mule deer. After they were reintroduced in 2015 bighorn sheep have taken up residence in Deadwood where they have become accustomed to some protection from predators like cougars. 

So recently, the SDGFP Commission approved one license to kill a bighorn sheep in the Hell Canyon (site of the 2000 Jasper Fire), Deadwood, and Rapid City herds, two licenses in the state park named for a war criminal, three licenses for the Elk Mountain herd and one license for auction. 

Spearditch Canyon has become home to at least twenty five goats so it's just a matter of time before one kills a looky-loo or a biker.

Dump your Tesla for a Scout!

Back in the mid 1970s the International Harvester dealer in Brookings, South Dakota debuted a Scout Terra. It was four wheel drive El Camino cool but really doggy with its automatic transmission and four cylinder Nissan diesel engine so the last one rolled off the line in 1980. IH rebranded as Navistar International Corporation in 1986 then entered a strategic alliance in 2016 with Volkswagen who bought the company in 2021. Herb loved "Binders'' too and we talked about driving that Terra right up until he left the Earth. Now, a factory in South Carolina is producing electric Scouts under the International® banner.

Here in New Mexico the two Tesla dealerships are on the Nambé and Santa Ana Pueblos to skirt state laws. It's become very complicated for the tribal governments especially now that a barely legal alien from South Africa is finding out after fucking around and gutting resources to Native communities.

 

Deep borehole could be resurrected after Summit defeat

In 2016 the Department of Energy and Republican former President Heather Wilson of the South Dakota School of Mines later Air Force Secretary in the first Trump term a Rapid City firm specializing in toxic waste floated the idea of a deep borehole in Spink or Haakon Counties where contaminated materials could be dumped. Albuquerque-based Valero Energy, a chemical company that is was one of Heather Wilson's favorite benefactors and has an ethanol processing scheme in Aurora, South Dakota has given Republican now US Senator Mike Rounds at least $10,000 in campaign contributions. 

Then because the state relies on taxpayer help to finance improvements to infrastructure, South Dakota received nearly $27 million from the Federal Railroad Administration in both 2022 and 2023 through what’s known as federal Short-Time Compensation program. Aurora sits on the tracks of the Rapid City Pierre and Eastern Railroad which also go through Haakon County.

After public outcry scuttled its eminent domain scam federally subsidized Sioux Falls, South Dakota chemical company POET, that enables nitrate pollution to grow corn for ethanol, entered an agreement to transport waste carbon dioxide through Nebraska in an existing natural gas pipeline to a sequestration site in Wyoming. After being denied permits Summit Carbon Solutions is petitioning courts to end litigation where they are the plaintiffs.

Some Great Plains states, such as Minnesota and Wyoming, report on the total tonnage of hazardous materials carried by rail in their states, but South Dakota does not. In an email response to questions, Jack Dokken, the air, rail and transit program manager for the South Dakota Department of Transportation, said the federal government is responsible for regulating rail shipments in South Dakota, but the state can respond to a release of hazardous materials. [11 billion-pound mystery: The chemicals South Dakota trains carry]

Republican then-US Representative Kristi Noem balked at the idea of storing nuclear materials underground but as governor she 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.

South Dakota is a sacrifice zone so if Earth haters like Pat Powers believe CO2 can be transported safely trains carrying it through Brookings to a site West River then buried under the Pierre Shale should be perfectly fine, right?

Area man training drone pilots in Ukraine

Luke Fitch is the oldest son of Steve and Lynn. This morning the BBC reported on Ukrainian drone superiority in its war of resistance. Luke is owner-operator of Santa Fe-based Altitude FX.

The American president and his VP trying to shout down Zelensky will go down as one of the most disgraceful moments in American history.

South Dakota still among most federally dependent states

In 2024 South Dakota dropped to 49th in financial literacy and 50th in financial knowledge and education despite the Republican former governor's pathological Pollyannaism. The state was the 43rd best economy in the US, 51st in percentage of businesses owned by women and 50th in innovation potential. Because of talent flight and brain drain in 2023 South Dakota was among the least innovative states, ranked 50th in venture capital spending per capita, 47th in R&D spending and 51st in share of tech companies. 

Creighton University's Ernie Goss and supply managers are sounding the alarm again about the Trump tariffs, economic uncertainty and the potential for retaliation. Only nine percent of bankers see a potential of growth in the coming six months and economic optimism plummeted to 45.7 in February from 61.4 in January over concerns about global economic tensions and rising tariffs. Farmland prices sank again, farm equipment sales fell for the eighteenth straight month and retail sales are at the lowest levels since the pandemic.

WalletHub's newest surveys reveal South Dakota is now 40th in innovation but 50th in its share of technology companies, 48th in R&D spending per capita, has dropped to the third best state for doctors but 11th most federally dependent, 4th in rank for government dependence and is now 16th in medical environment rank.

South Dakota ranks as the third-best state for doctors, in part because physicians have one of the highest starting salaries in the country, at $5,330 per month. The state ranks particularly high when it comes to the yearly salaries for psychiatrists ($273,000) and general internal medicine physicians ($318,000). In addition, doctors in The Mount Rushmore State pay less for malpractice insurance premiums than people in most other states. South Dakota also ranks well in the number of physician assistants per 1,000 residents, and has around 8.5 hospitals for every 100,000 residents, which is one of the highest numbers in the country. [Best and Worst States for Doctors (2025)

Cimpl Meats in Yankton has released some 250 workers after American Foods Group said the location isn't profitable and is moving its operations to Missouri. 

Threatened species, Forest Service, Wyoming, warring ranchers, sheriff, politics colliding in northern Black Hills

Forty five years ago this interested party logged in the Buckhorn and Moskee, Wyoming areas of the Black Hills when it was home to some of the last old-growth ponderosa pine stands in the region. We operated a belt-driven portable sawmill powered by a John Deere tractor on private ground where I cut and skidded some huge bug-killed trees. 

In 2020 the State of Wyoming completed the purchase of some 4349 acres of private land surrounded by the Black Hills National Forest near the border with South Dakota in the Grand Canyon area near Moskee in Crook County about seven miles east of Sundance. 

It's home for 63 species of birds, 30 mammals, 8 reptiles, 4 amphibians, 38 plants identified as critters of greatest conservation need and include the northern goshawk, northern pygmy-owl, least weasel, smooth green snake, the threatened northern long-eared bat and black-backed woodpecker. Wyoming is a fence-out state so the parcel is at risk to cattle encroaching from neighboring allotments and private property but Crook County Sheriff Jeff Hodge has refused to ticket the livestock owners who complain the cost of fencing is prohibitive. 

Grazing on federal lands is a privilege not a right and the Forest Service issues tickets for noncompliance but can also allow permits for trespass.

No legal fix has yet been found for the state land lease issue in the Moskee area that left two ranchers at loggerheads over grazing rights [sic]. However, Bearlodge District Ranger Patrick Champa visited the Crook County Commissioners last week to explain how the U.S. Forest Service has been working with the Office of State Lands and Investments to tackle the problem once cattle are turned out for the year. USFS does not require fencing on its leases. [Mediation ongoing for Moskee grazing issue]

Now, extended drought in the region is causing a bump in the number of pine beetles like Dendroctonus ponderosae and Ips pini so Neiman Enterprises has compelled the BHNF to request comment on proposals for commercial logging on 8,000 acres of National Forest System land four miles south of Beulah, WY and on 6,372 acres and fuel treatments on a total of 15,170 acres of NFS land on the South Dakota side of the border. 

Spearditch Republican Randy Deibert, a monetary recipient of Neiman largesse, is all for the projects even as the Norbeck Society and the group, People for Sustainable Logging in the Black Hills are sounding the alarm on over-logging on an already-stressed BHNF. 

Dave Mertz is a retired natural resource officer for the BHNF who attended a 2024 roundtable discussion in Spearditch hosted by South Dakota's lone US Representative Dusty Johnson who sicced two fellow Republican congress members on Regional Forester Frank Beum and BHNF Supervisor Shawn Cochran. Cochrane was the sixth different leader in 2023 alone and 11th in the past seven years. Mertz just told an interested party that the Allowable Sale Quantity or ASQ on the BHNF should be about 40,000 hundred cubic feet (CCF) and that despite increased timber sales the closure of Neiman's mill in Spearditch is only a matter of time.

HMC responsible for 'death map' in New Mexico

Beginning in 1958 Homestake Mining Company gouged uranium from New Mexico leaving piles of waste rock laden with selenium causing cancers and thyroid disease in its wake. 

It was made a Superfund site by the US Environmental Protection Agency in 1983, plaintiffs filed a lawsuit, the mill closed in 1990 and in 2001 HMC merged with Barrick Gold. In 2019 because the Trump Organization despises Native Americans uranium mining was fast-tracked in and around Indian Country where tribes already suffer from diseases and birth defects wrought by radioactive contamination.

The leftover slurry was piped into two unlined earthen pits, the largest the size of 50 football fields and filled with over 21 million tons of uranium mill tailings. Over time, the uranium tailings decayed into radon gas; meanwhile, radioactive contaminants seeped into four of the region’s aquifers. Residents compiled a list of neighbors who died of cancer — they called it the Death Map. In fact, the conditions necessary for contaminants to infiltrate a fifth aquifer in a single generation — not a thousand years — could already be in the making. The future of the site seems all but predetermined: a wasteland in the truest sense, and a national sacrifice zone. Adding to the uncertainty is a recent announcement that the Trump administration intends to cut personnel at the EPA by up to 65 percent. “We’ve been poisoned to the gills,” says Christine Lowery, the Cibola county commissioner. [Poisoning the well]

Nearly a century of residue from Homestake and the Black Hills Mining District affects millions of cubic yards of riparian habitat all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Although the Oahe Dam was completed in 1962 sequestering most of the silt the soils of the Belle Fourche and Cheyenne Rivers are inculcated with arsenic at levels that have killed cattle. Endangered pallid sturgeon, paddlefish, catfish and most other organisms cope with lethal levels of mercury throughout the South Dakota portion of the Missouri River. 

Tailings from uranium mining have been detected in Angostura Reservoir in the southern Black Hills and in northwestern South Dakota cleanup in the Cave Hills area went for decades without remediation.

Wife of Brookings Earth hater makes plea for Medicaid protection

So, the more Republican South Dakota gets the stingier and more cruel the residents become. Not only has the SDGOP failed Indigenous Americans by not expanding Medicaid it has failed veterans and the elderly: its historically loyal voter base. But hey, if Tony Venhuizen wants to feed from the Qochtopus gravy train he has to prove he’s numbed to the misery, hopelessness and despair his father-in-law and political party have heaped on South Dakotans. 

South Dakota is 51st in elder care protection. 

Michelle Powers is married to a Republican Brookings blogger who smears Democrats and principled conservatives who don't bend the knee to the South Dakota Republican Party establishment. They have a bunch of sick kids suffering from hellish diseases but she lives in Spearditch which is just about as far away from her husband as she can get and still live in that miserable state. 

My own personal connection to Medicaid comes from my 20-year-old daughter who has a developmental disability. My other connection to Medicaid comes from my role as chief executive officer for Northern Hills Training Center (NTHC), a community-based support provider, where our mission is to “support people to have meaningful lives”. For NHTC, almost 90 percent of the funds we receive are generated through the Medicaid program. Significant cuts to federal Medicaid funding will place additional financial strain on the state budget, forcing us to absorb the increased costs. State budgets must prioritize mandatory Medicaid services, leaving optional services like NHTC as a community-based service vulnerable to reductions. [Why should you care about Medicaid funding?]

That SDGOP condones, encourages and even pays Pat Powers to threaten, malign, bully and libel women while their party standard-bearers preach the protection of women is a measure of hypocrisy that strains human gauges. He has long been banned from this forum and other South Dakota related sites because of a constant stream of bigotry, misogyny and other hate speech. Pernicious Pug Powers, who makes a stopped clock look like a well-greased machine, salts his blog comment section with a seemingly infinite variety of aliases that threaten or jeer his political enemies.

Another day of red flag warnings for failed red state

Yes, the grassland fire danger index will reach the very high and extreme categories Sunday and Monday for most of the failed red state of South Dakota.

The 2025 calendar year runoff forecast above Sioux City is 22.1 MAF, 86% of average. The runoff forecast is based on current soil moisture conditions, plains snowpack, mountain snowpack, and long-term precipitation and temperature outlooks. Mountain snow normally peaks near April 17. [Defense Visual Information Distribution Service]

South Dakota falls down on passenger rail

From my inbox.

The South Dakota Senate Stumbles

The enthusiasm from South Dakotans has been overwhelming this past year after the FRA Long-distance Service Study recommended Amtrak serve the Mount Rushmore state for the first time in its nearly 54 year history!

Regrettably, earlier this week the South Dakota Senate voted down House Concurrent Resolution 6008 on the Senate floor Monday 18-17. This comes after it passed the House Transportation Committee 13-0, House Floor vote, and Senate Transportation Committee 6-0 (with one absence).

The following statement was made during the Senate floor debate: “I did some research on Amtrak. Sometimes, you can get 90% funding for that, which is great, I think we heard that. However, they’ve done this in other states and they’ve measured that it costs almost $100,000,000 per mile of line. That’s a big number, even if you take the 90% for federal coverage, that’s $10 million per mile to put a passenger rail service in.”

Questions remain where these cost examples were found or what led them to worry about “eminent domain” being needed to bring Amtrak to the State. 

South Dakota Amtrak Facts, FRA Long-Distance Study

First, the FRA Amtrak Daily Long-Distance Service Study was very clear that it was only evaluating existing legally-secured railroad rights-of-way for service; there would be no “Greenfield” alignments. Cost estimations for new track were limited to “New track connections to connect the end-to-end route.” In the case of the route across South Dakota, no new track connections or eminent domain would be needed for the proposed route via Pierre.

Second, it is perplexing to try and understand where the Senator found these numbers for “$100,000,000 per mile of line.”

The Denver to Minneapolis/St. Paul route referenced in HCR 6008 has an estimated total of $6,276 to $8,160 Million for the “passenger specific costs” of the entire route (with one year operations added). Over the 1,136 miles of the entire route, that works out to only about $5.5 million/mile - $7.2 million/mile. Even when considering freight “capacity related projects” that may additionally be needed, this is still considerably less than the $100 million/mile referenced during the floor debate. Additionally, there is reason to believe some of these costs are inflated from realistic estimates. The study does not include the benefits of economies of scale from overlapping segments and infrastructure such as stations that would be used for multiple services. These costs would further be reduced by using the “categorical exemption” clause the FRA can approve to remove burdensome red tape of the environmental review process. 

Nationally, costs for similar passenger rail projects can be compared. Examples include:

• The 90mph Northern Lights Express (Twin Cities to Duluth) project being developed in Minnesota has been estimated to cost up to $600 million for the 152 mile length or $3.95 Million/mile. 

• The highly-successful higher-speed $6 Billion Brightline Florida project over its 235 mile length averages out to $25 million/mile. Operating at speeds up to 125mph, this has turbocharged real estate investment around their stations, the primary motivation for their service. Brightline’s projects are considerably higher due to the higher-speeds involved, urban congestion, and using a greenfield alignment along a state highway; issues that will not impact the routes across South Dakota. Former Florida Governor and current US Senator Rick Scott was even an investor in Brightline. 

• The 2020 Washington State East-West Rail Study found that reimplementing service would only cost $6.1 Million/mile in 2025 dollars, even though the study undercounted potential ridership and benefits, and overestimated infrastructure costs.

100+mph across the South Dakota prairie? Yes please!

South Dakota Transportation Spending 

South Dakota has been spending considerable sums for other transportation projects around the state; many times exceeding the costs for passenger rail transportation. 

The state is funnelling over $1 billion dollars into roadway expansion around the Sioux Falls metropolitan area with the $210 Million, 8.7 mile, South Veterans Parkway ($24 million/mile), $49 Million 85th Street interchange project, and a further $800 million announced last September. 

West River the state is spending $72 Million rebuilding an existing 15 miles of US Highway 385 in the Black Hills ($4.8 million/mile). 

The widening of E. 10th Street in Sioux Falls and creation of the Veterans Parkway necessitated procurement of privately-held land. If the SDDOT has been able to safely and satisfactorily navigate these examples, I have every faith in their ability to assist development of passenger rail services on existing lines within our state. We owe it to our economy and further generations to ensure this investment is made for our continued prosperity. 

The continuing consolidation of the aviation industry has endangered service to many smaller airports including those in South Dakota. If it were not for Essential Air Service subsidies, Aberdeen, Watertown, and Pierre would not have public air service (about $15 million/year).

While highways and airports are important, for our interconnected transportation network, rail should also receive the same amount of support from our legislators. 

In conclusion

In conclusion, I cannot blame any of our SD Senators (or House members) for voting down this resolution. After over 50 years of deliberate exclusion by power-players in Washington D.C., it will take some time to advocate and educate our State representatives on what these services will mean for our citizens and how much they truly cost. Public citizens need to keep advocating and educating their elected officials on these matters. 

East Coast Elites trying to throw us off the map are not going to make their over-built projects any cheaper. We deserve good quality service, too. 

Expanding Amtrak to South Dakota is feasible, cost-effective, and achievable. With hard hitting leaders on the national level like Senator Thune, Senator Rounds and Representative Johnson, we can make that happen! If it were not for US Senator Francis Case, we would not have I-29 between Sioux Falls and Fargo. 

If you attend a Legislative Cracker Barrel this weekend, please consider asking your state Senator how they voted on the resolution and explain their reasoning in light of the facts laid out here.

Together, East River and West River, we can accomplish so much, including this long-need expansion of Passenger Rail service to our state. We owe it to our successors to do all in our power to make it happen!

Dan Bilka, March, 2025

Bankers, farmers finding out as Trump fucks around

One hundred percent of the failed state of South Dakota is under some level of drought.

A cynical observer might suspect bankers provided gloomy outlooks to the Rural Mainstreet Index during the Biden years especially in midwestern swing states to sink Democratic Party prospects. But today, Creighton University's Ernie Goss and supply managers are sounding the alarm again about the Trump tariffs, economic uncertainty and the potential for retaliation. 

The RMI fell for the 17th time in 18 months and a survey of bankers in ten Midwestern states revealed a dismal outlook after the February score fell to 38 on a zero to 100 scale where 50 is growth neutral. Only nine percent of bankers see a potential of growth in the coming six months and economic optimism plummeted to 45.7 in February from 61.4 in January over concerns about global economic tensions and rising tariffs. Farmland prices sank again, farm equipment sales fell for the eighteenth straight month and retail sales are at the lowest levels since the pandemic. 

Until now Republicans weren't anxious to write a new farm bill because the agriculture recession made the Biden/Harris administration look bad. And, Republicans in congress stalled immigration reform because it makes sense to Earth haters that after he was elected again the Orange Julius Fat Nixon would run America into the dirt so banks can foreclose on the whole dealio to massage auction price points. 

Beekeepers, including some in South Dakota, are facing devastating losses due mostly to insecticides while Bayer might even pull Roundup® over cancer concerns and mounting losses to lawsuits. 

Learn more at NPR.

Timeline cleanse on march to doomsday

All sixteen horses were in the same place at the same time and with the arrival of two new breeding age stallions no doubt the mares are pregnant again.

In a landmark victory for wild horse protection, the United States District Court for the District of Colorado has overturned the Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) controversial Adoption Incentive Program (AIP), ruling that it violated multiple federal laws by failing to undergo required National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and Administrative Procedures Act (APA) requirements. The court found it was “not hard to imagine” that slaughter of wild horses could be “fairly traceable” to BLM’s actions regarding the national AIP program, and noted the legally required need for vigorous public comment and agency review, which the BLM failed to conduct. [Federal Court Overturns BLM's Controversial Cash Incentive Adoption Program]

But with the end of civilization at hand having more ponies is probably a good thing, right?

Odenbach: make America great again but not upstream of my house

It's no secret South Dakota is a chemical toilet since Republican is simply another word for Earth hater. Recall that the South Dakota Republican Party ceded authority to the US Environmental Protection Agency and Nuclear Regulatory Commission for uranium mining in the Black Hills after the legislature realized there is no competent oversight from state agencies. 

But several months ago House Majority Leader 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. A Canada-based company with an office in Lead (where they don't pay any corporate income taxes) wants to mine on 46,000 acres in the Spearditch Creek watershed leased from Barrick, another Canadian exploiter. The Black Hills region is a de facto part of the American Redoubt so Rep. Odenbach is tapped into the survivalist real estate boom, too. 

He penned an op-ed published in an East River paper.

Dare we ask, do we want or need more open-pit mining in this area? Will another hundred septic tanks upstream from your house make your quality of life better? HCR 6010 is just saying the quiet part out loud. [VIEWPOINT | Protecting the Black Hills]

Odenbach's resolution has Democratic support but how can a legislator who believes America is only great when Republican presidents are in power revere an executive who is slashing the EPA, promising to clearcut the Black Hills National Forest, pledging to mine public lands sacred to Indigenous peoples, erasing the workforce and putting septic systems in sensitive habitats all in the name of making America great again?

Stripping public lands, ending sanctions on Russian timber and slapping tariffs on Canadian lumber? What a shocker.

Red flag warning for red states is all too familiar

The first tornado ever recorded in South Dakota in February and now red flag warnings in red states alert Earth haters to their peril.

Welcome to Hell, Trumpers.

NorthWestern Energy drafts bill to shield Montana utilities from wildfire liability

Since 2018 millions of home insurance contracts have been dropped as companies like State Farm and lobbyists like the American Property Casualty Insurance Association acknowledge humanity's role in a burning planet. 

Now, as utilities scramble to avoid liability for wildfires, insurance companies are bilking homeowners in the wildland urban interface and denying coverage interfering with mortgages, real estate values and property ownership. NorthWestern Energy, Pacific Gas and Electric, Xcel, Black Hills Energy, Hawaiian Electric Company and Public Service of New Mexico or PNM are all responsible for massive blazes causing billions in damages. 

In 2021 power lines owned by NWE caused a wildfire that destroyed most of Denton, Montana and liability lawsuits from that incident are still being litigated. Drafted in part by NWE, Kalispell Earth hater Amy Regier is lead sponsor of Montana House Bill 490 that would protect utilities from liability for wildfires they start.

Some of the state’s largest insurance companies also spoke against the bill, because it would make it harder for them to recover costs associated with fire damages. They said that could ultimately lead to homeowners paying higher premiums, or could cause companies to stop insuring homes in Montana. The state auditor’s office opposed the bill for similar reasons. [Bill would shield utility companies from wildfire liability]

A wildfire sparked by a distribution line owned by Mountrail-Williams Electric Co-op killed two people in North Dakota in 2024. Power lines owned by Southern California Edison are being blamed for the Eaton Fire.

On Monday Democratic former South Dakota legislator, Nick Nemec told an interested party that a wildfire in his part of Hyde County right now would be catastrophic. 

The grassland fire danger index will be in the extreme category Tuesday for much of South Dakota and Nebraska. 

Ecoterrorist ETP launches SLAPP suit against water protectors

Back in 2009 Greenpeace activists rappelled over the face of the Abraham Lincoln carving at Mount Rushmore National Memorial, unfurled a 65 foot by 35 foot banner and urged President Barack Obama to act on a warming planet blaming ecoterrorists like Energy Transfer Partners for uncontrolled carbon emissions. 

In 2014 Republican South Dakota then-Representative Kristi Noem enjoyed a $2500 face lift from ETP, the Texas company that gave nearly $321,000 to Republicans that cycle hoping to buy permits for an ecocidal 1,100-mile pipeline intended to move 450,000 barrels of North Dakota crude daily to Illinois. After the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe filed for an injunction against the US Army Corps of Engineers to stop the disastrous project in 2016, American Indian activists launched an international wave of resistance to the Texas grab on water crossings and trust lands in northern plains states. 

After National Guard troops and other mercenaries brutalized many of the thousands of demonstrators camped on federal land near Cannon Ball, North Dakota over 800 people were arrested or charged between early August, 2016 and late February, 2017. Trump apparatchiks even referred to the Indigenous Americans and their compatriots as jihadists or insurgents. In August, 2017 attorneys for Greenpeace and other water protectors called on a judge to dismiss as an attack on free speech the predictable frivolous lawsuit filed by ETP in the aftermath of the civil protest.

In 2020 in a major victory for the Native American tribes and environmental groups fighting against the project a federal judge ordered the Corps to conduct a full environmental review. Then in 2024 the Biden administration and Congress affirmed tribal sovereignty and told the Corps that their Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the Dakota Excess pipeline underestimated its climate impacts.

Energy Transfer, the Big Oil corporation behind the Dakota Access Pipeline, is seeking $300 million in damages from Greenpeace USA and Greenpeace International, accusing these organizations of playing a central role in organizing the Indigenous-led resistance to the pipeline back in 2016. The lawsuit is one of the largest Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP) cases ever filed, and one of the biggest cases to go to court in North Dakota. Trial begins on February 24, 2025. These types of cases masquerade as ordinary civil lawsuits, but their true purpose is to retaliate against those who speak out against harms. Such meritless lawsuits are meant to silence or bankrupt opponents by dragging defendants through a long, lengthy, expensive legal process. [Greenpeace organizations go to trial on high-stakes SLAPP lawsuit that could redefine protest rights]

Learn more at the North Dakota Monitor.

40 acres for sale near Madrid, New Mexico

For sale: forty acres of high desert solitude just west of Madrid, New Mexico. Property is about ten miles from I-25 and five miles from NM 14. 360 degree views of at least four mountain ranges atop a sprawling mesa in a blue county in a deep blue state. The self-reliant community of about a hundred other properties spread over twenty five square miles generates its own electricity and access to an affordable, strong, reliable wireless cooperative is readily available. There is a shared well with a currently non-functioning pump on the property. Santa Fe is about 35 miles away and Albuquerque is some 50 miles away. 

Listing linked here.

Author: Trump intended to run the world, updated

Update, 22 February: this post has been and is being edited. 

Call me old fashioned, but being Russia’s KGB agent “Krasnov” since 1987 should disqualify Trump from being President of the United States. Retroactively, immediately, and forever.

— Andrea Junker (@Strandjunker) February 22, 2025

It's an open secret that the Trump Organization is an equal opportunity money launderer for Russia, the CIA and dark state financiers for decades. The Guardian reported on it back in 2021 and it got them sideways with Elon Musk so they left Xitter. 

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 installed through a vast white wing conspiracy with hostile foreign actors with the full knowledge of US Senators like John Thune. 

Michelle Obama knows all of this, too since they are threatening her daughters and according to reports Elon Musk is using his own son as a human shield. Trump's assault on black leaders is retribution for the Obama agenda.

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 and Tulsi Gabbard have been laundering proceeds for Syria's $10 billion captagon industry. 

A second ex-senior KGB spy chief said, Trump was recruited and worked as a Russian intelligence services asset for many years. And what they both said aligns with the Mueller report and the Senate Intelligence Committee report that Marco Rubio supervised.

Former Chairman of Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee (KNB) Alnur Mussayev claims that the Soviet KGB recruited Donald Trump before the collapse of the USSR, assigning him the alias Krasnov. He claimed that the U.S. political elite is well aware of Trump’s dependence on the Kremlin but cannot openly acknowledge it due to the country’s global standing. [Inside Soviet recruitment: Kazakhstan’s former security chief claims Trump was a KGB asset]

### 

Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump stole the 2024 election by lying to Latinos and Black men about migrants taking their jobs; and through stochastic terrorism they threatened violence against millions of people especially of color who otherwise would have showed up at polling places to vote. And with the confirmation of Kash Patel the Federal Bureau of Investigation is on the path to become the Stasi, the repressive secret police that crushed dissent in East Germany until 1990.

Anne Applebaum is an American journalist and member of the Council on Foreign Relations who covers "Putinism," calls what is happening in the US executive branch, "regime change" and is married to Poland's version of the US Secretary of State. She talked about her latest book, Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want To Run The World  on NPR's Fresh Air. 

Hungary's Viktor Orbán steals elections, is a darling of the far white wing, has been a kleptocrat for decades and is likely the successor to the captagon trade.

And Hungary's a very important country for Americans to understand because Hungary is a country that elected democratically a leader, Viktor Orban, who then initially - mostly legally - slowly eliminated many of the checks and balances, many of the institutions of Hungarian democracy, making it impossible for him to lose an election. So he culled the Hungarian civil service by changing labor laws, replacing professional civil servants with members of his party. He changed the nature of the Hungarian courts over a period of time. He captured Hungarian media, both through putting pressure - financial pressure on independent media, empowering oligarchs and people around him, businessmen who are close to him to buy or take over Hungarian media and then transform their nature. And slowly over time, he also repeatedly changed the constitution, which enabled him to change the way elections are run. [Journalist describes Trump's movements as a 'regime change' towards authoritarianism]

It sure looks like the Trump Organization intends to fire the scientists working for the public good so more microplastics, antibiotics and pesticides can be broadcast throughout the food web and introduced into wild spaces while the elites and shareholders enjoy the spoils of capitalism.

Earth haters could appeal after federal judge rules in Gila cattle case

All waterways in the US Mountain West are endangered and that cattle have been allowed into national forests and other public ground is a crime that needs to end. 

Whether it’s American Prairie’s bison grazing on Bureau of Land Management ground in Montana or the US Department of Agriculture killing cattle on the Gila National Forest or shooting wolves from helicopters or running over them with snowmobiles or bailing out ranchers after wildfires socialized grazing just isn’t enough to keep some Republicans happy. 

After the 2022 Black Fire erased 325,000 acres of the forage base for elk and other cervids on the Gila removing rampaging cattle became an imperative to protect wilderness so contractors with the US Department of Agriculture's Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service or APHIS shot some 84 invasive beeves in 2022 and 2023. Managers with the GNF knew there were still critters infesting public lands so officials took comments on another round of lethal removals but decided not to pursue those plans after the Forest Service found just twenty. 

In 2023 the Center for Biological Diversity sued the US Fish and Wildlife Service because of that agency's failure to better protect the Gila River from erosion caused by livestock and wild cattle. 

Earlier this year US District Court Judge for the District of New Mexico James O. Browning ruled that feral cattle on the Gila are not domestic livestock in a 241 page response to a lawsuit brought by the NM Cattle Growers' Association and other petitioners who graze livestock on public lands for pennies per head. The Cattle Growers’ Association is not known for accuracy or precision and an appeal of the decision had not been announced at post time.

The Forest Service contended in their response to the suit that the feral cattle in the Gila — descendants of a herd abandoned in the 1970s on the Redstone grazing allotment at the northern edge of the Silver City Ranger District — have not been raised or kept by humans for generations, so therefore do not qualify as livestock. The cattle, the Forest Service argued in the response, are destructive to the riparian areas of the Gila Wilderness and also pose a danger to hikers and others who go to the forest for recreation. [Cattle Growers skeptical of ruling in feral cow case]

Polluting pork industry GOP Nebraska governor calls for nitrate study

Republicans in red states are howling because the federal government is buying land to protect it from desertification so groundwater depletion and the absence of public land is draining the Ogallala or High Plains Aquifer 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. 

In 2008 after Nebraska's 1978 median nitrate level doubled lab tests showed a few municipal wells were exceeding the US Environmental Protection Agency limit for uranium when samples jumped as high as 57 parts per billion. In 2011 one irrigation well just four miles from a municipal water source tested 322 parts per billion of uranium or more than 10 times the legal limit for drinking water set by EPA. 

In a 2015 study researchers from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln reported that 78 percent of groundwater samples from the Ogallala Formation found with unsafe concentrations of uranium were also contaminated with nitrates from farming. Researchers learned that nitrates at levels near the 10-parts-per-million legal limit release uranium into the state’s groundwater, which provides drinking water for 85 percent of Nebraskans.

Towns in Nebraska are stepping up sampling municipal supplies where nitrate levels are still rising but the owners of private wells are not. Jim Pillen, the state's Republican governor is a major contributor to nitrate impairment but he wants a study that will pin the blame on farmers. Suggesting that irony is not completely dead, wells in the Republican River basin are the most severely threatened by nitrate poisoning. 

Bacteria in human bodies can turn nitrate, a colorless, tasteless and odorless chemical, into nitrite and then convert it to nitrosamine, a known probable carcinogen. Out of nearly 29,000 private well owners the state reached out to, only 3,478 samples were sent back. The state study happened because it’s a step toward Pillen’s goal of reducing overapplication of nitrogen fertilizers, said Laura Strimple, the governor’s spokesperson, in an email statement. [Many Nebraskans still under threat of high nitrate in drinking water, report finds]

After public outcry scuttled its eminent domain scam federally subsidized Sioux Falls, South Dakota chemical company POET, that enables nitrate pollution to grow corn for ethanol, has entered an agreement to transport waste carbon dioxide through Nebraska in an existing natural gas pipeline to a sequestration site in Wyoming according to a press release.

Metal tariffs could restart landfill mining

Brohm was an Australian company recruited by a now-dead Republican governor who gutted environmental protection in South Dakota. In the pre-cellphone days Brohm and this former Twin City Fruit marketing associate shared a radio telephone party line where managers plotting an environmental disaster at the Gilt Edge site unwittingly leaked the news to anyone listening. 

I've preached this for going on forty years. It takes trucks, tub grinders and balers dedicated to specific materials to recycle on a regional scale. The United States has thousands of mountains of glass cullet from the municipal waste stream just waiting to be repurposed. We sell millions of tons of salvage material to India and Asia to be recycled while tearing up our own ground mining for virgin minerals while metals and plastics, that could be petroleum, are buried in landfills.

Disadvantaged populations have been subject to mining-driven environmental racism for hundreds if not thousands of years and in 2014 Nobel Prize winner, Professor Paul Krugman warned Americans that Earth hating Republicans want to make America one big strip mine. 

In September Sibanye-Stillwater mining company in Montana announced the ending of some 800 jobs after Russia flooded the world palladium market sinking Democratic Senator Jon Tester's reelection. Montana Tunnels Mining, Inc. in Jefferson County is in bankruptcy after a century of pollution and tax fraud.

Currently, the US is 100% reliant on foreign sources of the gallium that's used for integrated circuits and light emitting diodes or LEDs. According to the US Geological Survey the nation imports most of its bauxite and alumina so instead of ripping up ground in America recycling aluminum is mostly working but there is so much metal buried in landfills that if we mined those we'd import even less. Electronic waste containing copper, gold and platinum is valued at nearly $100 billion but only 4% is repurposed while new mines are currently being permitted in Montana and Arizona. 

Today, visitors and skiers at Terry Peak in the occupied Black Hills are increasingly concerned by the encroachment of a massive tailings pile and ever-widening mining scars from decades of scorched earth. But the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming are hardly the only public lands plundered by foreign companies under cover of the General Mining Law of 1872 that was enacted to settle Civil War debt and rob Indigenous peoples of their homes and human rights. 

Until it closed in 1939 the Tererro Mine in the headwaters of the Pecos River took gold, lead and other metals then left piles of toxic waste rock in their place. After major flooding in 1991 when sulfuric acid, aluminum and zinc swept into the river miner Freeport-McMoRan was held responsible for the deaths of some 100,000 Rio Grande cutthroat trout and for the subsequent decades of acid mine drainage.

Learn more from the World Economic Forum.

SD county named for a war criminal whining about maintaining FS roads

A state park, a peak, a county and a town in the Black Hills are named after a murdererous war criminal.

The United States Forest Service paid Custer County $166,978.15 to maintain its roads in the county that the public travels on, also known as Schedule A roads in county highway department parlance. At the Jan. 22 meeting of the Custer County Commission, county highway superintendent Jess Doyle presented an update to the commission that showed in 2024 the county spent nearly $1.7 million in county taxpayer money maintaining those same roads, showing that while the Forest Service does give the county some money—and free gravel—the cost of maintaining its roads still far exceeds what the county receives to do so. Also discussed at the meeting was the National Wilderness Preservation System, in which there is potentially nearly 7,000 acres of county land that the government is eyeing as potential designated Wilderness area. The lands are already part of the Black Hills National Forest. [War Criminal County Chronicle]

Now imagine if the county commission was landlocked within a tribal preserve where access is limited by that government instead of enjoying the fruits that the National Forest System provides to the towns in the Black Hills. 

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.

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 the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management.

Colorado rethinking semiautomatic rifle ban as Trump seizes power

Colorado is considering the ban of some semiautomatic firearms but now that American democracy is facing a constitutional crisis Governor Jared Polis says he's skeptical about restricting those weapons after Donald Trump began his Fujimori-style autogolpe and civil war is looming.

One Democratic cosponsor, Sen. Marc Snyder of Manitou Springs, now says he won’t vote for the measure, citing doubts over its reach and concerns from his constituents. The governor said in deciding whether to sign or veto the bill he wants “to make sure it doesn’t interfere with legal, law-abiding gun owners in our state for hunting, for home defense or sport.” [Colorado Senate debate on bill banning manufacture, sale of semiautomatic guns delayed amid negotiations with Jared Polis]

Trump's "Coup Klux Klan" has been assaulting Colorado neighborhoods threatening local control, angering American citizens who know it's only a civil violation to be in the country without authorization and as of Friday no one has been charged but communities are bracing for violent blowback.

“If they don’t trust law enforcement, they probably won’t go to them and tell them, hey there is a dangerous thing happening in my neighborhood,” said Laura Lunn, an immigration attorney at the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, who works out of the GEO detention center, which houses immigrants. “When you blur the lines between these different agencies, you are causing distrust within the community of both agencies.” [Immigration raids in Colorado, both highly visible and cloaked in secrecy, rattle advocates and local authorities]

Trump is escalating militant tactics that mirror Ruby Ridge and Waco but his actions are deeply reminiscent of the 1992 autocoup perpetrated by Alberto Fujimori who dismissed the legislative and judicial branches of the Peruvian government and claimed their powers for himself. Like Fujimori Trump is a career criminal and convicted felon whose offspring are reactionary toadies.

Jared Polis is a patriot who supports the Second Amendment, the US Department of Education and the expansion of passenger rail.