7/12/19

Industrial cannabis won't replace subsidized corn in South Dakota


In South Dakota Republicans enjoy socialized agriculture just as Kentucky Republicans once made bank on socialized tobacco but Kentucky lost that subsidy so industrial cannabis (hemp) makes some sense there.
Kentucky has been regulating hemp since pilot programs were allowed under the 2014 Farm Bill and U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., was instrumental in federally legalizing hemp in the 2018 Farm Bill. Four South Dakota legislators recently traveled to Kentucky for a "hemp tour" and then continued the discussions on Thursday with Kentucky agriculture and law enforcement officials, as well as leaders of a Kentucky-based hemp processing business and national hemp business coalition. [Sioux Falls Argus Leader]
But replacing the ecocidal corn/ethanol subsidy in South Dakota with hemp acres is a bridge too far for Republicans who run for office on habitat destruction in my home state. Besides, the Chinese Ring-necked Pheasant isn't wildlife but it is a canary in a chemically and genetically engineered corn mine. They don't eat grasshoppers but wild geese and turkeys sure do while the pesticide industry that greases Republican politicos don't give a whit about anything but profit. South Dakota's legislature is dominated by Republicans who ignore the effects of the Anthropocene and lobbyists line up to stuff their pockets with cash.

What’s not to like about six (seven? eight?) month winters, rampant racism, chilling effects on civil rights, an extremist legislature and living in a chemical toilet, perpetual welfare state and permanent disaster area? As long as oil prices stay depressed ethanol will stay in style but this progressive really doesn't care what happens East River because it’s already destroyed but West River can still be rewilded and preserved. I want to see money for West River land owners who would put their ground back into native grasses to be exempt from property taxes and lease that land for wildlife corridors. I want to see domestic livestock confined to internment camps East River where Hutterites will ultimately control all the ag ground there.

Why anyone would want to buy hybrid genetically engineered cannabis seed from Bayer CropScience/Monsanto or some other earth hater every year remains a mystery. It costs about $50,000 to plant 20 acres of CBD-rich GMO hemp so let your non-tribal corn ground laden with glyphosate go fallow for five years and see if you can get organic certification for your value-added harvest.
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7/10/19

CWD outbreak linked to the extermination of apex predators, overuse of weed killers

The South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks Commission approved the most restrictive options presented to the commissioners on Tuesday when it comes to transporting mule deer, whitetail deer and elk carcasses into and around South Dakota. The commission is scheduled to make a final decision on the proposed restrictions during its Sept. 8 meeting, and if approved, the restrictions would go into effect on July 1, 2020. [Sioux Falls Argus Leader]
Way back when, Bob Newland posted my inaugural blogospheric essay at The Decorum Forum. In the comments, I added:
Evidence exists that sudden aspen death is attributable to non-point sources of pollution, ie. POEA, polyethyoxilated tallowamine, a surfactant present in Monsanto's Roundup®, is a prime suspect. POEA interferes with mycorrhiza and their ability to metabolize water. Malathion®, a widely used insecticide and legion for its toxicity, also contains a surfactant.
I have been covering effects of the surfactant POEA for nearly three decades. Today, wapiti (elk) in the Mountain West are dying en masse from Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) that some researchers say results from the federal government feeding those cervids in close proximity. Hay fed to those animals is likely contaminated with Roundup®.


Figure 2. Glyphosate usage over the last two decades. It has been estimated that the production of glyphosate is increasing with a rate of about 40 tons per year. Adapted from Benbrook (13).
Heather Swanson and Ryan Prioreschi monitor wildlife with the City of Boulder. The mountain lions know that something is wrong. A number of years ago, Swanson and her colleagues studied which deer mountain lions prefer to attack. "The mountain lions were definitely preferentially selecting deer that had chronic wasting disease over those that were negative," she says. "And for most of the ones that they had killed, we had not detected any chronic wasting disease symptoms yet. So certainly the lions were able to key in on far more subtle cues than we were." Unlike us, the lions know that while a deer might look sleek and alert, it's actually a ticking time bomb. That's one of the weird things about this disease. It isn't like the usual viral or bacterial illness. The infection can sit in a herd, crawling from animal to animal, for years before people notice anything is wrong. "Through time (it) degrades, essentially, their brain tissue," says Swanson. [Bent Out Of Shape: Could A Mysterious Animal Epidemic Become The Next Mad Cow?]
Environmental pollutants in the umbilical cord blood of infants? How conservative.
Meanwhile, Monsanto continues to sell Roundup formulas with POEA in the United States. The Pilliods’ expert toxicologist Dr. William Sawyer said that POEA makes the Roundup formula 50 times more toxic. [Two billion dollar judgment against Bayer/Monsanto in glyphosate cancer trial was “devastating rebuke” to company’s science]
From GM Watch:
In a new research published in the high ranked scientific journal Toxicology, Robin Mesnage, Benoรฎt Bernay and Professor Gilles-Eric Sรฉralini, from the University of Caen, France, have proven (from a study of nine Roundup-like herbicides) that the most toxic compound is not glyphosate, which is the substance the most assessed by regulatory authorities, but a compound that is not always listed on the label, called POE-15. Adjuvants of the POE-15 family (polyethoxylated tallowamine) have now been revealed as actively toxic to human cells, and must be regulated as such.
Studies have shown POEA can break down tissue that protects the blood-brain barrier leading to prion disease.
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists developing methods to measure POEA in the environment have shown that it’s a complex and variable mixture of related compounds, and that POEA is still a common additive in several newer agricultural and household glyphosate formulations. [Measuring POEA, a Surfactant Mixture in Herbicide Formulations]
Kill off apex predators like wolves and cougars; spray neonicotinoids glyphosate and POEA on everything then wonder why cervids contract a prion contagion like Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD).


Photos courtesy of interested party.





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NM cannabis task force begins work

Speaker of the New Mexico House Brian Egolf not only supports legalization for all adults he serves as legal counsel for the state's therapeutic cannabis leader, Ultra Health. Calling itself "New Mexico's No. 1 cannabis company" Big Dope Ultra just opened facilities in Clayton near the borders with Texas and Oklahoma. Keeping the industry from the clutches of a monopoly has been contentious.

The New Mexico legalization task force is beginning work on legislation today.
After eight years under the Susana Martinez administration (a government that was, to say the least, inhospitable to the plant and its medical benefits), the new governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, is making strides in the state's medical program. Patient license renewal now requires fewer hoops, and more conditions qualify for permission to use cannabis. Plus, producers are permitted to grow more plants. As a result, New Mexico's patients and cannabis providers find themselves in a very different environment than they did less than a year ago. One of the other positive externalities of medical cannabis is the mainstreaming of the plant as a treatment. The reduction in stigma cannot be understated. Cannabis is rapidly shifting from something associated with stoner culture to a legitimate field of medical study and a legitimate business operation.
Get the whole story here.
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7/8/19

South Dakota continues to drive women out of state for medical care


1. A pregnant woman is the patient.
2. Ectopic pregnancies kill women.
3. Rich women have full reproductive rights while women at the lower income margins suffer chilling effects on those rights. Women in South Dakota drive to Omaha, Sioux City, Billings, Bismarck or Fargo for their procedures. Those who can afford it simply jump on a plane and fly to Albuquerque, Minneapolis, Denver or elsewhere. Imagine a woman on the Standing Rock or Pine Ridge doing that.
4. South Dakota’s repeated attempts to restrict access to medical care are not only mean-spirited, they're discriminatory anti-choice extremism.
5. "Pro-life" is simply code for white people breeding. African-Americans terminate pregnancies at about the same per capita rate as white people do but don’t take their jobs. Latinas, however, have fewer abortions per capita but the extreme white wing laments it's hemorrhaging jobs to Latinos.
6. No foetus in the United States has any civil rights until the third trimester. Republicans preach civil rights for human zygotes but deny the protections of the First, Fourth and Ninth Amendments to people who enjoy cannabis.
Planned Parenthood North Central States spokesperson Aleena Kaleem instead attributed the decrease to "the incredible barriers women in the state face when seeking abortion care, including an onerous 72-hour waiting period and often long-distance travel." "The barriers to abortion that women face in South Dakota are medically unnecessary and unfairly burden women who need to arrange child care or time away from work," Kaleen continued. Of those 9,910, 111 were performed on patients from South Dakota who traveled to Minnesota. [Inforum]
But, applaud the nutball Republican efforts diverting attention from the party’s culture of corruption where murders and their covers up are commonplace by clogging the legislative session with christianic religionist argle-bargle.

Any registered nurse with half a brain will leave for Minnesota, Colorado or the Southwest the instant they graduate so the work force in South Dakota will just get stupider and more Republican.


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7/7/19

Medicaid expansion, ACA have made abortions in North Dakota safer, rarer

Not only has the South Dakota Republican Party failed American Indians by not expanding Medicaid it has failed veterans and the elderly: its historically loyal voter base. But its more progressive neighbor to the north has seen the light.
The number of induced abortions performed in North Dakota slid for the fourth straight year in 2018, marking the lowest figure since recordkeeping began almost four decades ago, according to new state data. Tammi Kromenaker, the director of the state's sole abortion clinic, the Red River Women's Clinic in Fargo, cited Medicaid expansion and the Affordable Care Act's contraceptive mandate, which the Trump administration has tried to roll back. "The (ACA) continuing to cover birth control, and with no deductible and no co-pay, that is huge for so many families," Kromenaker said Friday, July 5, noting that North Dakota is following a national trend in seeing abortion decline. [Number of abortions continues to slide in North Dakota]
1. A pregnant woman is the patient.
2. Ectopic pregnancies kill women.
3. Rich women have full reproductive rights while women at the lower income margins suffer chilling effects on those rights. Women in Alabama, Georgia and South Dakota who can afford it simply jump on a plane and fly to Albuquerque, Minneapolis, Denver or elsewhere for their procedures. Imagine a woman on the Standing Rock or Pine Ridge doing that.
4. South Dakota’s repeated attempts to restrict access to medical care are not only mean-spirited, they're discriminatory anti-choice extremism.
5. "Pro-life" is simply code for white people breeding. African-Americans terminate pregnancies at about the same per capita rate as white people do but don’t take their jobs. Latinas, however, have fewer abortions per capita but the extreme white wing laments it's hemorrhaging jobs to Latinos.
6. No foetus in the United States has any civil rights until the third trimester. Republicans preach civil rights for human zygotes but deny the protections of the First, Fourth and Ninth Amendments to people who enjoy cannabis.

Socialized agriculture, socialized dairies, socialized cheese, socialized livestock production, a socialized timber industry, socialized air service, socialized freight rail, a socialized nursing home industry and now a socialized internet are all fine with Republicans in South Dakota but then they insist single-payer medical insurance is socialized medicine. South Dakota’s repeated attempts to restrict access to medical care are not only mean-spirited, they're discriminatory anti-choice extremism. But, applaud the nutball Republican efforts diverting attention from the party’s culture of corruption where murders and their covers up are commonplace by clogging the legislative session with christianic religionist argle-bargle.

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