1/30/25

New Mexico, Colorado exploring additional geothermal potential, whither South Dakota?

At least as early as 2011 the Four Corners region was seen as a geothermal powerhouse where Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories assembled plans for energy development. 

In 2021 the Bureau of Land Management sold a geothermal lease in Hidalgo County, New Mexico despite a 2016 blowout near a $43 million geothermal electricity plant erected by Cyrq Energy in 2013 when Republican Susana Martinez was governor. Cyrq Energy has four working geothermal projects including Lightning Dock Geothermal Power Plant near Animas. It's a 15.3 MW binary geothermal plant with two production wells and 7 injection wells that sells power to Public Service of New Mexico (PNM) with firm baseload power. In December, 2024 the BLM sold geothermal leases on seven parcels totaling 4,468 acres in Doña Ana County.

Using an enhanced geothermal system (EGS) at its Project Red site in northern Nevada Google-financed Fervo Energy completed a full-scale, 30-day well test able to generate 3.5 megawatts or enough electricity to power over 2,600 homes full time. Fervo employs a hydro-shearing process and believes it can deliver about 400 megawatts by 2028 or enough electricity to power 300,000 homes at once from half a dozen other sites across the western US. In 2024 the BLM approved the Fervo Cape Geothermal Power Project in Beaver County, Utah which has the potential to generate up to 2 gigawatts (GW) or enough energy to supply over 2 million homes.

Colorado could tap orphaned oil and gas wells to supply hot water for electricity generation especially now that the state is falling behind on its own self-imposed emissions-reducing mandates.
Colorado is interested in geothermal as a way to supplement other renewable energy resources, as the state looks to end coal production by 2030 and reach 100% net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. [What is geothermal energy, and how are states in the Mountain West promoting and regulating it?]
In South Dakota’s Black Hills the US Department of Energy, New Mexico's Sandia Labs, Los Alamos National Laboratory, South Dakota School of Mines and others are collaborating on the potential for generating electricity using EGS but Hot Springs, Belle Fourche, Philip and Midland also enjoy untapped geothermal resources.

1/28/25

Former Rapid City cleric blasts administration over raids

Sanctuary or the right of refuge is the ancient implied inviolate protection of the oppressed through ecclesiastical immunity where refugees and fugitives are afforded adequate time for penitence free of persecution from political and legal interdiction adopted by the Roman Church centuries ago.

Born in Omaha, Blase Cupich was raised in a catholic household, attended a Benedictine elementary school, a diocese high school then graduated the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul. When this interested party lived in Rapid City in 1998 he was made bishop by John Paul II and was consecrated in a ceremony at the Rushmore Plaza Civic Center. In 2004 when some in the cult wanted to ban Senator Tom Daschle from the Eucharist because of his defense of reproductive rights Cupich called it "cherry picking" and in 2008 he called racism a sin.

In 2018 Cupich's predecessor was accused of covering up sex crimes in Pennsylvania after a grand jury found the church hid predator priests from prosecution.

Today, Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago is pushing back on plans by the Trump Organization to raid churches and schools.
“The Catholic community stands with the people of Chicago in speaking out in defence of the rights of immigrants and asylum seekers. Similarly, if the reports are true, it should be known that we would oppose any plan that includes a mass deportation of U.S. citizens born of undocumented parents,” he said. “For members of faith communities, the threatened mass deportations also leave us with the searing question, ‘What is God telling us in this moment?’” he asked, calling for a collective examination of conscience. [Cardinal Cupich: We oppose any immigrant mass deportation plan]
Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and General Michael Flynn are modern Falangists financed by the John Birch Society. Many catholic schools are in the Hillsdale bubble because the curriculum ignores the church’s role in the Native American Genocide and Opus Dei is a cult of Fascists.
Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, in a separate statement also criticized some of Trump's wide-reaching executive orders on immigration. ['Look in the mirror': Vance knocks Catholic organization for criticizing Trump immigration policy]
In 2023 Pope Francis sacked an apostate who endorsed the phrase: "You cannot be Catholic and be a Democrat" and today Francis calls the deportation scheme a "disgrace." 

1/27/25

Grassland fire danger grips South Dakota again



The grassland fire danger index will reach the very high category Monday and Tuesday for much of South Dakota where Republicans don't believe humans are responsible for desertifying the planet but push watersheds to the brink anyway.

1/25/25

Haaland clearly the frontrunner for NM governor

My home state of South Dakota will suffer brain drain for years to come and New Mexico has its own set of challenges but living where the Republican Party is virtually meaningless and Democrats rule is well worth it. 

In 2012 Martin Heinrich defeated Republican Heather Wilson, his predecessor in Congress and today thanks to efforts led by Senator Heinrich bison have become America's National Mammal, Amtrak's Southwest Chief is still chugging, the Gila River is no longer in danger of being diverted, Chaco Culture National Historical Park enjoys greater protection from the extractive industry and he is leading the reform of the Mining Law of 1872. He is a smart, telegenic, pragmatic statesman in a state where a Democrat can easily keep the seat.

Now, after securing the release of Leonard Peltier from federal prison former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland is refocusing her attention home in New Mexico and Sen. Heinrich is staying to fight the Orange Julius in DC. 
His decision not to launch a gubernatorial campaign could clear the way for former U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to be the highest-profile candidate in the race. She attended the opening day of the 60-day New Mexico legislative session in Santa Fe this week and received a loud ovation from Democratic lawmakers when introduced in the House chamber. [Martin Heinrich rules out run for governor, citing high stakes in Washington]
The Earth haters will likely nominate Nella Domenici who lost bigly to Sen. Heinrich.

In 2012 I organized for @Barack Obama in Indian Country. Our mission was simple, leave no voice unheard. Today that mission has never been more important.

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— Deb Haaland (@debhaalandnm.bsky.social) January 24, 2025 at 8:19 PM

1/24/25

Wyoming Republicans will likely doom another Indigenous historic site


Exploiting the gap between the Cordilleran and Laurentide ice sheets during the Wisconsin Glacial Episode Clovis people came down the Little Missouri River and were likely the first humans to see the Missouri Buttes and Devils Tower. The divide between the Little Missouri and the Belle Fourche drainages is not very wide: less than a mile just west of the Missouri Buttes. At that location it's not difficult to visualize how the people migrating into the region at least 12,000 years ago seeking shelter and food sources found their way into lands free of glaciation. 

There are at least 23 prehistoric sites near Devils Tower National Monument, some of which are archaeological treasures eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. So in 2023 during a review of its resource management plan (RMP) the Newcastle, Wyoming office of the US Bureau of Land Management identified the Little Missouri Antelope Trap as an area of critical concern or ACEC. 

Ogden Driskill is an Earth hating Wyoming legislator running cattle near Mahto Tipila in the Belle Fourche River watershed. 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. Crook County is home to the Little Missouri Antelope Trap. 

Since at least 2021 Wyoming's two Earth hating US Senators have introduced legislation that would cancel Indigenous culture at America's first national monument so the preservation of another ACEC is likely doomed especially now that a US president who hates Native Americans is slashing history.
"In the interior, there are a series of wooden juniper drive-line structures and there is a physical antelope trap where Native American Indian tribes came to hunt for significant periods of time across the land-scape," says Chad Krause, Field Manager for the BLM's Newcastle Field Office. There's only one existing ACEC in the management area overseen by the Newcastle Field Office. The cur-rent plan, which was approved in 1999, includes Whoopup Canyon east of Newcastle. "It has petroglyphs that are around 11,000 years old," Krause says. The proposed area has public access via the Little Missouri Road and is a popular hunting area for – unsurprisingly – antelope. What made this site stand out, he says, was partly the information gathered from the tribes and partly the manageability of the location. [BLM proposes new protected area]
Learn more at Salon.

ip image.

1/21/25

SD agro-terrorists push bill to hide ecoterrorism

We all know South Dakota is a chemical toilet

In 2015 concern over the further contamination of shallow aquifers that supply water to a third of East River caused the Clay County Planning and Zoning Board to table for the second time in as many weeks changing ordinances governing concentrated animal feeding operations or CAFOs. In 2018 South Dakota State University President Barry Dunn told WNAX radio that state residents should just accept the fact that the Big Sioux River is a shit hole

But now an Earth hating South Dakota legislator from Madison wants to allow eminent domain and trespass for some pipeline operators but also wants to protect CAFOs from scrutiny. Casey Crabtree admits that the cases of criminal trespass at CAFOs don't even exist but ignores the fact that those operations are in fact agro-terrorists themselves. 

But lobbyist and ecoterrorist American Farm Bureau Federation is pushing a bill that would bar what used to be South Dakota's environmental watchdog from even releasing the locations of CAFOs in the red moocher state to anyone unless required by federal law. CAFOs in the chemical toilet routinely violate state regulations and flagrantly flout federal pollution standards.
The restriction on obtaining information about CAFOs worries Jay Gilbertson, manager of the East Dakota Water Development District, which promotes conservation and management of water resources in eastern South Dakota. "But when it comes to animal feeding operations, if you really want to know, you have to go to Pierre, and try to get in the DANR building and dig through the paper files? That would just be silly." [Bill to protect farms from spying could limit access to CAFO data]
Add the absence of cultural fire, the extirpation of apex predators, the resulting rise of mesopredators, increased numbers of domestic livestock then stir in a melange of industrial chemicals with climate change and voila: red state collapse on parade!

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.

And, in a surprise to no one the grassland fire danger index will be in the very high category again Wednesday for much of the perpetual welfare state and permanent disaster area.

1/17/25

Cook, Hickey contrast Hitler, Trump

After Orson Welles' 1938 radio broadcast of War of the Worlds Adolf Hitler cited the ensuing panic as "evidence of the decadence and corrupt condition of democracy" then modeled his final solution on the Native American Genocide. 

Today, Republican is not just another word for Earth hater; it's another word for Nazi

Steve Hickey is from Kansas City, Missouri and is a Republican former South Dakota legislator and Sioux Falls pastor now teaching at Alaska Christian College. He and this interested party agree on some things like executive clemency for Leonard Peltier and reconciliation with the tribal nations trapped in South Dakota through land repatriation.

Dr. Edith Cook is an educator who was an assistant professor at Dakota Wesleyan University, lives in Saratoga, Wyoming and writes a weekly column for the Cheyenne Post.
Then Trump became part of the ‘80s debt craze: going bankrupt, and defaulting on payments for his Atlantic City Taj Mahal Casino. By 1992, Trump’s efforts collapsed under the weight of unserviceable debt, “a victim of his own prodigality as the recession deepened.” [Cook: Comparing Reagan and Trump]
In 1993, Trump henchman, Roger Stone constructed ad copy and radio scripts depicting the Mohawk Nation as violent criminals and drug dealers so Donald Trump could erect a casino. Then, after losing a lawsuit to the Tribe Trump declared war on Native America and in 2020 he used the Hitlerian model and launched a biological weapon on tribal communities. 

Now Republicans like Steve Hickey suffer from a disease that influences their eschatologies because they worship a supernatural extraterrestrial as the ‘son of god’ and believe It is coming to Earth to rule under a one-world government.
Like Trump, Hitler was duly elected by the people, in spite of a criminal record—he actually did time for a coup he attempted in Munich, but the voters didn’t care, or didn’t mind. Beginning in 1933—the year of Hitler’s ascent to the chancellorship—a new “Nazi Religion” infused German churches. It demanded that all pastors sign an oath of allegiance to the Führer, to National Socialism, and to the German state, the “Reich.” Hitler ‘s rise to power seemed the answer. Dietrich Bonhoeffer would have been a man for our times, had he lived in our space. As it is, his courage must remind us to stand tall and call upon our resources to cope with the days ahead. [Cook: Watching Hitler]
Hickey is also a scholar who studies Dietrich Bonhoeffer and calls him a martyr but he is also a Trump apologist

After deleting his social media accounts in 2021 Hickey is reporting at his resurrected Faceberg page that he is in the hospital with five blood clots in his lungs following a double lung transplant.

Dying in a bunker by his own hand can't come soon enough for DonOld Trump.

1/16/25

South Dakota politicians likely covering up Parkinson's risks from ag chemicals

This blog has been covering Chinese company Syngenta since 2010 questioning whether an elected South Dakota attorney general was getting kickbacks to cover up the effects of pesticides like atrazine on fœtal development and infants born to mothers residing near corn and soybean fields even after the US Environmental Protection Agency warned of their use

In 2011 plaintiffs in Kansas were dropped from a federal class action lawsuit that named Syngenta liable for a genetically modified (GM) corn seed scam but in 2017 a jury ultimately awarded affected farmers nearly $218 million in compensation. South Dakota's GOP congressional delegation stumbles all over itself to protect donors like Syngenta from their accountability for the state's impaired waters

Monsanto, the company that owned a strain of Franken-maize, the only genetically modified product approved for cultivation in the European Union, tried to acquire rival Syngenta in 2015 but was absorbed itself by Bayer — another chemical company that buys Republican politicians and pollutes the waters of the United States.

Boomers will recall that in 1977 the Mexican government was spraying paraquat on cannabis crops. Today, paraquat is marketed as Gramoxone, a Syngenta product linked to Parkinson's disease after multiple studies determined agricultural workers exposed to the poison face much higher likelihood of nerve damage. In 2021 Earthjustice sued the EPA challenging its reapproval of paraquat and in 2024 California passed legislation that required the Department of Pesticide Regulation to reevaluate its use after some 350,000 pounds were applied in that state during 2023 alone.

Paraquat is also a hormone disruptor that inhibits the production of testosterone and can cause gender dysphoria and birth defects in developing fœtuses.
The company, Syngenta, says that paraquat, which it produces under the name Gramoxone, "is safe for its intended and labelled use." Clayton Tucholke, who used Gramoxone for years on his farm in LaBolt, South Dakota, and has since been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, says otherwise. ['Burns me to a crisp': Farmers allege link between popular herbicide paraquat and Parkinson's disease]
A cynical observer might suspect that China is retaliating after being ripped off by the State of South Dakota in the Bendagate scandal

EPA could issue a final report Friday after considering 90 new scientific studies submitted by the Michael J. Fox Foundation. Whatever the ruling lawsuits will continue as plaintiffs argue Syngenta has an obligation to disclose harms from paraquat but hides them from consumers then pays off politicians like Marty Jackley

Learn more about the paraquat/Parkinson's link in the journal Nature.

1/15/25

Goss, bankers wary of tariffs, see grim future under Trump

Back in 2018 Republicans like Senator John Thune (Earth hater-SD) were calling Trump tariffs a "Band-Aid" and a "false sense of security" especially for farm states

Today, Creighton University's Ernie Goss and ag groups like the National Corn Growers Association are sounding the alarm again about the Trump tariffs because of economic uncertainty and the potential for retaliation.
“Recession would be probably too strong of a word, but certainly it’s going to be slow going for the year in my judgement, and it’ll be a little bit slower than in 2024," Goss said. [Bill Janklow's idea of public radio]
Goss and the Business Conditions Index track the economies of nine midwestern states where supply managers remain pessimistic with some 41% signaling a recession and a significant drop off in the near future.
Looking ahead six months, economic optimism, as captured by the December Business Confidence Index, sank to 52.8 from 55.6 in November. A weak regional economy slowed purchases from abroad as the import reading slumped to 42.1 from November’s 49.1. [Mid-American Economy]
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.
And don't forget, as the rhetoric from the White House increases and the push to act on taxes, trade, and immigration pressures the Republican Congress to act, there's still a Farm Bill to write, regional conflicts to influence, and a federal debt limit to raise. [CoBank: 2025 rural economy will be 'squeezed, hobbled, slowed']
In Iowa where the Republican governor is among the most hated in the US cancer rates are off the charts and the list of impaired waterways increased again.

Thune is pessimistic that the incoming administration has the political capital to end the gains under Bidenomics. Read that here.

1/14/25

Trump's ag secretary scheduled to appoint BHNF resource committee

So, after the Trump Organization gutted the National Environmental Policy Act then was thrown from the White House Hulett, Wyoming-based Neiman Enterprises closed its Hill City, South Dakota sawmill and is threatening to shutter another in Spearditch announcing layoffs and production cutbacks while blaming the US Forest Service. Neiman bought an Oregon mill in 2020 but lumber prices are depressed as wildfire salvage floods markets. 

Dave Mertz is a retired natural resource officer for the Black Hills National Forest who attended a roundtable discussion last March 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 told an interested party in July, 2024 that the Allowable Sale Quantity or ASQ on the BHNF should be about 40,000 hundred cubic feet (CCF) and that the mill in Spearditch will also close. One cubic foot of lumber is six board feet.

Today, the Black Hills Resource Advisory Committee is struggling to fill its fifteen seats after announcing requests for members in early December, 2024. Category A delegates primarily work with people in the logging, grazing and extractive industries. Category B representatives collaborate with watershed associations, environmental groups, archaeologists and hunters. Category C commissioners liaise with state and local government officials, tribal leaders, citizen groups and people involved in education. 

Applications are due 3 February; RAC applicants must live in South Dakota, preferably in Pennington County, Custer County or Lawrence County but because a Republican Earth hater has been nominated to become the next agriculture secretary and if DonOld Trump is actually inaugurated Democrats will find themselves locked out of selections for the posts.
It’s unclear what is ahead for these protection efforts as the incoming advisors to president-elect Donald Trump are recommending he waive environmental reviews to boost mining of rare earth elements according to reporting from Reuters. Lilias Jarding said the Black Hills Clean [W]ater Alliance will have to be ready to respond in real time if there are any proposals. The area is considered a sacred landscape and traditional spiritual homeland by the Oceti Sakowin but also many neighboring tribes: Cheyenne, Arapahoe, Arikara, Hidatsa, Mandan, and Crow Tribes. There are places within the Black Hills that are sacred to all these tribes, including the lands of the withdrawn area. [Water protection was made possible by diverse grass roots efforts]
The Black Hills National Forest Advisory Board is scheduled to meet on Wednesday.

Also on Wednesday the grassland fire danger in Fall River County will return to the high category.

1/10/25

Trump, Republicans inciting violence against federal employees, stealing presidency



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— Mike Luckovich (@mluckovich.bsky.social) January 7, 2025 at 2:24 PM

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

Now, ginned up by Trump's attacks on judges, poll workers, hospitals and public officials will increase in number and severity according to the US Marshals Service. Trump adherent, Representative Harriet Hageman (Earth hater-WY) is calling for wiping out the deep state by targeting federal workers and Wyoming's governor is fanning that wildfire by rejecting at least two Bureau of Land Management resource management plans. In Wyoming members of the so-called Freedom Caucus are preparing to crash the legislative session in Cheyenne so maybe that's the next storm front of the End Times.
In the days and months leading up to a fatal July 4 shootout in Yellowstone National Park, federal prosecutors say Samson “Lucas” B. Fussner sent signals that he was planning “pro white nationalist violence.” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeremy Gross and FBI Special Agent Eric Barker laid out the allegations in a verified complaint that seeks to have Fussner’s SUV, four guns and various magazines and ammunition forfeited to the government. Gross contends that all of the items were connected to a plot to carry out an act of terrorism. “In attempting to carry out an attack on the employee dining room at Canyon Lodge, and in actually shooting at federal [National Park Service] employees, Fussner intended to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct,” Gross wrote. [Yellowstone National Park shooter planned ‘Pro White Nationalist Violence,’ feds say]
It’s impossible to imagine a more committed insurrectionist than the Republican Party’s standard bearer who gleefully incites his disciples to bloodbaths for his political enemies.

But, if Chief Justice John Roberts administers the Presidential Oath of Office to Donald Trump he is violating the two oaths he took.
I, _________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as _________ under the Constitution and laws of the United States; and that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.” [Supreme Court of the United States]

1/9/25

Blue state Minnesota compels pipeline company to work with tribes at sacred site


So, how is it that Republicans are militantly divided over the utility of eminent domain for private enterprise for pipelines to move CO2 but are just fine with employing it for the entrepreneurial transport of oil and gas

In 2012 and 2013 ONEOK drove piplelines through sage grouse habitat in eastern Montana and Wyoming with little pushback from residents even though a segment of a newly-built high pressure TransCanada gas pipeline exploded 20 miles west of Gillette, Wyoming. In 2018 ONEOK drove yet another gas pipeline that runs parallel to its existing ones right through at least 23 prehistoric sites near Devils Tower National Monument, some of which are archaeological treasures eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. Even though the US Army Corps of Engineers is required to perform archaeological surveys of major river and stream crossings imagine these projects going through cemeteries where people of European descent are buried. 

In southwestern Minnesota Pipestone National Monument is still an oasis but now it's surrounded by Earth hating Republicans, glyphosate-saturated cornfields and overkill concentrated animal feeding operations or CAFOs.
On Tuesday members of the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission rescinded a September decision to grant a specific route permit for a gas line near Pipestone National Monument, a site sacred to tribal nations. Magellan Pipeline Company supplies over half of the gasoline, diesel and jet fuel used by consumers in eastern North Dakota, eastern South Dakota and western Minnesota. The company is owned by ONEOK, Inc., an Oklahoma-based company. [Minnesota regulators require studies along possible routes before pipeline construction near sacred site]
It's not impossible Pipestone will be an Amtrak stop someday.

1/8/25

Number of refugees moving to South Dakota accelerating

According to United Van Lines people are leaving South Dakota 52.8 percent to 47.2% inbound but data released by Atlas® Van Lines reflected a 57% outbound trend which is the largest exodus since 2019. No South Dakota cities were even considered in the WalletHub active lifestyle study although Spearditch actually made Outside Magazine's list of best mountain towns in 2022 but was completely outstripped by Taos, Durango, Telluride and Bozeman. 

In 2024 South Dakota dropped to 49th in financial literacy and 50th in financial knowledge and education despite the Republican governor's pathological Pollyannaism. The state is 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. Quizzically known as the Land of Infinite Variety the state is 40th in overall innovation, 45th in innovation environment, 50th in share of technology companies and is still 47th in R&D spending per capita. South Dakota is 24th of states where workers are fleeing their jobs, 35th in women's health and safety, 47th in road and bridge infrastructure and 51st in elder protections.

But as young people and Democrats flee South Dakota more people of color are doing the work in the red moocher state. Meat processors and industrial agriculture employ the greatest numbers of Hispanics in South Dakota. Spanish speakers prop up the federally subsidized dairy industry East River but in Huron Karen refugees slaughter and process turkeys. The crony capitalism that keeps South Dakota one of the worst states for the working class decimates lands promised to native peoples by treaty while my home town of Elkton struggles to find enough housing for migrant workers who often live in squalor. 

South Dakota is home to about 39,900 recent immigrants or about 4.3% of the state's population and more than 280 refugees resettled in South Dakota so far in July during the fiscal year 2024 compared to 206 in all of 2023. 

The extreme white wing in South Dakota is losing it not because nearly half of students qualify for free or reduced lunches and some 3,500 students receive special education support but because new residents in South Dakota are migrants from Muslim countries like Afghanistan, South Sudan and Ethiopia. Nebraska and Iowa are also seeing surges in immigration but Brookings and Moody Counties in South Dakota are homes to more people from Guatemala and other Central American nations

1/6/25

Tribal Nations trapped in South Dakota, other states share funding for buffalo restoration

American Prairie (APR) near Malta in north-central Montana got its first American bison from Wind Cave National Park in occupied South Dakota in 2005. The group hopes to have native animals grazing on some 5000 square miles or about 3.2 million acres of private land including 63,000A. in Phillips County connected with corridors to federal land stewarded by the Bureau of Land Management and to the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge. Total land including the purchase of 36 ranches is as big as the State of Connecticut or the size of Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks combined. 

Adjacent is the Fort Belknap Reservation where the Nakoda and the Aaniiih manage a range with more than a thousand bison so building a tourist destination helps economic development for the entire region. Two recent acquisitions totaling 12,534 acres bring APR's deeded and leased property to more than 475,000 acres despite an appeal by the State of Montana and a bunch of Earth haters who failed to stop the non-profit from grazing bison on eighteen BLM allotments in five counties. A recent decision by the BLM allows for 7,969 animal unit months at $1.35 per AUM of permitted use with a 1:1 conversion from cattle to bison. 

And, after Montana's Earth hating governor lost his second appeal to stop American Prairie's leases on public land he's suing Yellowstone National Park over its planned expansion of bison territory into lands managed by the US Forest Service. That Republicans in Montana's executive branch and welfare ranchers are angry about the Interior Department ruling means it's the right thing to do. Since Republicans own the seats of power in Montana they whine YNP neglects its commitments to the management of the park’s buffalo population in order to decrease the spread of brucellosis to cattle but know wapiti spread it far more often than bison do. 

Instead of Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, the Department of Livestock is the governing arm for bison that leave the protections of the park and is party to the lawsuit.
In an email to [Montana Free Press], Buffalo Field Campaign Habitat Coordinator Darrell Geist criticized the state’s motivation for filing the lawsuit. [Montana sues Yellowstone National Park over bison management plan]

These days only about 500,000 bison inhabit North America and less than 1 percent of their historic range, just 3 percent of the Earth’s land surface remains untouched by human development and a sixth mass extinction is underway. So, with help from the InterTribal Buffalo Council that started with nineteen tribes and now enjoys the membership of 83 Nations who own 25,000 American bison in 22 states, the Eastern Shoshone Nation will apply a $3 million grant to grow their herd and enhance cultural resilience.

“There’s a big effort to get buffalo out of Yellowstone to tribes,” said Jason Baldes, a Montana State University graduate who is the Shoshone Tribal Buffalo representative. “A lot of tribes are interested in those Yellowstone genetics to enhance the heterogeneity of other herds.” Perhaps even more impactful, however, are three grants of $21.25 million to the InterTribal Buffalo Council to restore and manage native grasslands ecosystems for tribal buffalo restoration in Montana, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Florida, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming. [Buffalo rematriation: Grants boost efforts to transfer Yellowstone bison to tribes]
In 2023 the National Park Service rehomed 300 bison in the South Unit of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park to the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation and Standing Rock Sioux. 

In April, 2024 with Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland in attendance and in cooperation with Colorado State University ITBC moved five yearling bulls and five heifers with Yellowstone genetics to the Taos Pueblo. Then with ITBC efforts Grand Canyon National Park sent a hundred critters of some 380 from the North Rim to the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe in September.

1/4/25

Odenbach would bleed the beast to pay welfare farmers


It's no secret South Dakota is a chemical toilet since Republican is simply another word for Earth hater. And because growing corn for ethanol is unsustainable and the failures of South Dakota's Republican governors and legislature to control pollution nitrates have ruined wells and poisoned watersheds. Industrial agriculture is ecocide and for those of us who love the Earth shucks like farm subsidies are greenwashing but ironically many Republicans actually benefitting from reduced greenhouse emissions decry the sequestration of carbon as caving to the Green New Deal.

Several months ago 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.
I’m very interested in eminent domain reform. I think the basis that we have had for the arguments to have carbon capture pipelines, and assuming that, that the assumptions underlying the Green New Deal and the Inflation Reduction Act that says carbon is this bad thing that we have to sequester and liquefy and use eminent domain to pipe across people’s land and then only put it back underground in North Dakota are based on a false premise, the false premise being that that this carbon dioxide is something besides plant food and that it’s the main driver of so called climate change. [Odenbach looking forward to Legislative session as house majority leader]
Global warming has been accelerating since humans began setting fires to clear habitat, as a weapon or just for amusement. Evidence that we humans have eaten or burned ourselves out of habitats creating catastrophes behind us is strewn throughout the North American continent. European settlement and the Industrial Revolution in the New World took hardwoods for charcoal then humans allowed fast-growing conifers to replace lost forests. But leaving dead or dying conifers on the forest produces methane, an even more dangerous greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide is. Now, desertification driven by agricultural practices, overgrazing, concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and urban sprawl have turned much of the United States into scorched earth. 

In Iowa voluntary buffer strips and other conservation practices have simply failed desertifying parts of the state and causing the Raccoon River to be named one of the most endangered waterways in the United Snakes. Most of the corn grown in the US is fed to domestic livestock but a third of it will be processed for ethanol this year and subsidies of up to $700 an acre are the incentives to plant even more next year. 20 of Iowa's 99 counties are devoted exclusively to food that is ultimately burned for automobile fuel but according to Iowa State University some land impacted by pipelines never recovers from the disturbance. 

And speaking of pooping in your own water supplies then begging for pipeline boondoggle money for lawns and golf courses in Spearditch plus feedlots, a ramen factory, the Bismarck Trail Ranch and Rally campgrounds with tax dollars spent on carving through Native America for white privilege instead of empowering communities to harvest snowmelt and rainwater rural communities are still dependent on politicians who exploit need.
But the huge amount of money that came into the state with the COVID relief money, that all went to more water. We’ve put hundreds of millions of dollars into water projects for development, for developers, etc. We did a bill a few years ago to up the amount of money spent on the riparian buffer strips program. That program works when you use it. And if you study this before, when the ecosystem, if you will, was balanced, and we had wolves and we had predators, they kept the deer out of these river bottoms. So you had willows and you had aspens and you had cottonwoods and you had trees and you had grass, and so it filtered the water, and we don’t have that anymore. [Odenbach]
But, Scott Odenbach is clearly just another christofascist hypocrite so since the Black Hills region is a de facto part of the American Redoubt Odenbach is tapped into the survivalist real estate boom, too.

I am no fan of Earth hater, Lee Schoenbeck because he helped to cover up catholic crimes against children and vulnerable adults so when a lame duck like he is turns on his own party members it’s pretty obvious nobody pays any attention to Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment anymore especially in a failed red state like South Dakota. So, go pop some popcorn then read through the comments under Mr. Schoenbeck’s screed linked here and see for yourselves how broke and broken the South Dakota Republican Party is. Be aware that Pernicious Pug, Pat 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 and even his readers.  


ip image: Nipple Butte is just north of Lookout Mountain near the stupid little white ditch.

1/2/25

Today's intersection: huge retailer targets Brookings then fire destroys downtown businesses

When this blogger was growing up in the 1960s and 70s Brookings, South Dakota was the closest bigger town where my mom and dad drove to shop—Spies Super Valu, Coast to Coast Hardware, Wong's, Pizza King, JC Penney, maybe even Brost's and if we were lucky enough we'd go to the State University campus to get a shake. Downtown was home to the College Theater where our Junior class went to see Romeo and Juliet. Main Street was a favorite drag in high school and often a loud happening place when this student was at SDSU

The Brookings S & L Department Store with its trippy overhead trolley system that flew invoices to cashiers from the sales floor and delighted youngsters had roots in Elkton and ultimately influenced the founders of Target but the location in Sioux Falls was gutted by a 1948 fire. 

Now, Brookings owns a research park, the hospital, the liquor store, the water, the phone company, the power company, an entertainment venue, the golf course and home to South Dakota's largest public university and a federally subsidized cheese and dairy industry but parts of town are poisoned with forever chemicals from a rebranded medical products manufacturer.

And today there is much jubilance about Target moving onto the outskirts of Brookings but also significant sadness about the fire that took the 145 year-old Brost Building, so far, plus several businesses and apartments downtown. So this humble blog can't be the only murmur mourning the mortality of Main Street, Murika but here we are. 
Minneapolis-based Target Corporation currently has nearly 2,000 stores across the United States. About 30 are near college campuses, according to the company’s website. Target stores nationwide range in size, with the typical store averaging about 125,000 square feet. The Brookings Target store is expected to be 127,000 square feet. [City trumpets Target as Brookings Marketplace anchor tenant]
Dad actually hated the town despite being born in the Brookings Hospital and spending most of his life in the county but that's not really what this post is about. It's more about the outpouring of local support after the blaze but fires in downtown Brookings aren't a new phenomenon and because of the ages of most of those buildings on Main they're all at risk to a runaway conflagration. The park just south of Nick's Hamburgers is there because of a fire and dollar stores have lured lower income shoppers away from downtowns cutting up the retail pie even where Walmart and Target don't exist. 

Deadwood rebuilt itself after a catastrophic fire in the historic district and Hot Springs is recovering, too.
In the meantime, Grunewaldt Properties LLC owner Kevin Grunewaldt said structural engineers are coming up from Sioux Falls to assess the conditions of the walls of the buildings that are adjacent to the now-collapsed one that housed Brost’s, including the one he owns at 314 Main Ave. The affected businesses in his building are Johnson & Richter Creative, The Nook Bookstore, Emerald Grace Clothing Co., Prairie Soul Studio, Greenleaf Accounting and Hand Tied Floral. Nearby businesses also dealing with the fire’s impact include Seven Songbirds Boutique — with half of its back ceiling collapsing during firefighting efforts — and The Exchange, which sustained water damage, he said. [Blaze destroys Brost's Fashions, displaces residents in downtown Brookings]
Mr. Grunewaldt spoke in opposition to a mask mandate during a city council meeting in 2020 so a cynical observer might suspect he's a Republican Earth hater sweating lawsuits while haranguing his insurance company to expedite his claim settlement so he can get tenants out of those nasty old buildings downtown and into something a little pricier maybe near the new Target out by I-29!

Image lifted from the Downtown Brookings Faceberg page.