People's Republic of Brookings gets more federal pork

Let's see: the city owns a research park, the hospital, the liquor store, the water, the phone company, the power company, an entertainment venue, the golf course, it's home to South Dakota's largest public university and a federally subsidized cheese and dairy industry.

Sens. John Thune and Mike Rounds and Rep. Dusty Johnson applauded the USDOT’s decision and sent out the joint press release to announce it Wednesday afternoon. The announcement follows requests from the delegation to DOT Secretary Elaine Chao for the project’s funding. “With the help of the infrastructure funding awarded by DOT, the City of Brookings will be able to move forward with this important project, which will relieve congestion, improve safety, and spur economic growth,” Thune said. [Brookings gets $18.7M grant for I-29/20th St. S. interchange]

These clowns won't support combating bulging jails and prisons but will wholeheartedly jump on the bandwagon to save a town where a Democrat could win a legislative seat unless Republicans practice a little more socialism.

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 and now a socialized internet are all fine with Republicans in South Dakota but then they insist single-payer medical insurance is socialized medicine.

Welfare ranchers worried Tester bill will expose American meats as contaminated

Every ag product, meats both wild and domestic not grown organically in South Dakota is contaminated with neonicotinoids, glyphosate, dicamba, DDT, mercury, lead, cadmium, PFOs, E. coli, Shigella, Legionella and other toxins. That's probably true everywhere in the United States. Country of Origin Labeling was repealed in 2015 to shield American meat from scrutiny.

Montana Senator Jon Tester has introduced a resolution to reinstate Mandatory Country of Origin Labeling. National Cattlemen’s Beef Association Policy Division Vice Chairman Todd Wilkinson says while his group backs voluntary COOL, but having the mandatory designation reinstated could prove costly for America’s cattle producers. He says since Mandatory COOL was struck down by the World Trade Organization reinstating the program could trigger retaliation from Canada and Mexico, which are top markets for U.S. beef. [WNAX]

In countries that import American meats concerns are mounting that chronic wasting disease (CWD) and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE or mad cow disease) have made their way into the food web.

In 2017 beef products dispensed in South Dakota vending machines were recalled by the US Department of Agriculture after a routine inspection revealed Bovine tuberculosis. During that outbreak in South Dakota Republican former legislator Betty Olson blamed deer for bovine TB while praising the destruction of the cougars, coyotes and wolves that control deer. She wondered why Game, Fish and Plunder hadn't slaughtered every wild critter in northwestern South Dakota.

Rodeo stock were ultimately established as the carriers.

Photo: cattle are depositing manure contaminated with bovine growth hormones and antibiotics into a critical Black Hills watershed.

Missoula Democrat wants to restore passenger rail through southern Montana

Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) and this blog follow each other on Twitter. As rail coal traffic dies Tester wants to restore the North Coast Hiawatha line after Amtrak ended service in 1979 or about the time an interested party moved to Missoula from Deadwood.

But Missoula County Commissioner Dave Strohmaier is continuing his decade-long pursuit of bringing rail service back to the southern portion of the state, this time by forging a coalition of counties interested in seeing the locomotives pass through their areas of the state once again. The rail line Strohmaier is focused on would connect Missoula, Helena, Bozeman, Livingston and Billings to other lines leading to major hubs like Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis and Chicago. [The Missoulian]

Two congressional neighbors now newly elected Democratic governors in Colorado and New Mexico have been pledging to develop passenger rail along the Front Range and southern Rockies.

The poll found 85 percent of people supported the use of passenger rail on the Front Range, with 88 percent of northern Front Range respondents supporting the idea. Some members of the Southwest Chief & Front Range Passenger Rail Commission would like to see it put on the ballot next year, an accelerated timeline for the plan. CDOT just hired a contractor to look into key questions about the project's feasibility, including which preexisting rail lines the train would use and who would oversee it. [Colorado Public Radio]

Amtrak struggled with service on the Empire Builder through Montana during the Bakken boom and still suffers congestion through North Dakota. Douglas and Gillette, Wyoming continue to kill people and strangle traffic so passenger rail would bring some order to that chaos. Meanwhile the Trump Organization and the Koch Brothers are pledging to kill passenger rail service while vehicle traffic between the Black Hills, Cheyenne and Denver continues to increase just like it is between Denver, Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Many get the idea of a future I-25E but now is the time to connect the Southwest Chief to the Empire Builder at Shelby, Montana through Denver, Cheyenne and Gillette, too. It would intersect with the North Coast Hiawatha line at Laurel, Montana.

Like the former Burlington Northern Santa Fe rail bed from Edgemont, South Dakota to Deadwood has become the Mickelson Trail the former southern Montana right of way is home to the Route of the Hiawatha Trail.

There are 43,560 sq.ft./acre; a 50 ft. x one mile railroad right of way is 264,000 square feet or about 6 acres; the Santa Fe Southern Railway is 18.1 miles long or around 110 acres. How expensive could it be?

Imagine a time when portions or all track is elevated for wildlife egress through a future corridor between El Paso, Texas, the Canadian River in New Mexico and the Amtrak station in Shelby then on to the Yukon River in Alaska intersecting with a tunnel under the Bering Strait connecting South and North America to Russia and the rest of Eurasia.

Dakota Rural Action still suing Republicans over water quality

Quality of water affects quantity of usable water! Especially when it comes to human & livestock uses. #CantDrinkOil https://t.co/3wuUjZRwbn

— Dakota Rural Action (@DakotaRural) October 31, 2019

South Dakota's GOP/Koch-owned Public Utilities Cartel (SDPUC) is expected to shoo in TransCanada's permit to seize water and land as they do with each utilities' requests for rate increases.

Three permits are for the taking of public water from rivers (the Cheyenne, Bad, and White), and two permits are for use of previously-appropriated water permitted for livestock watering that would serve as back-up supply for TransCanada’s construction worker man camps. Dakota Rural Action and other contesting parties recognize that this water belongs to the people of South Dakota, and that the Water Management Board, as trustee of our water, has the authority to say no. And, through the course of these hearings, we are building a powerful case that the Board has the responsibility to say no to a foreign corporation with a devastating history of spills and leaks that have damaged land and water in this state and others in which they operate. [Dakota Rural Action]

Nearly every moving stream, intermittent or not in South Dakota, has supported a pre-settlement Amerindian or European explorer pulling and propelling a canoe over it. Most of it is impaired today.

Royal Dutch Shell is abandoning its efforts to drill in the Arctic in part because of tanking oil prices but another Republican donor continues its land grab in South Dakota. So-called 'Americans for Prosperity' a Koch-funded group with a lobbyist based in Sioux Falls signaled to legislators that they will lose campaign funding from the Kochs unless they act to reverse the progress the US Environmental Protection Agency has made in South Dakota.

Genesee & Wyoming, the parent company of the Rapid City, Pierre and Eastern Railroad, conducts the business on the west end of its holdings and operates on the right of way that intersects the proposed Keystone XL pipeline at Philip. Had the Quinn Dam just upstream of a RCPE washout failed one of its first casualties could have been the Keystone XL pipeline where it's proposed to cross the Bad River.

Rail cars carrying diluted bitumen could be loaded there then be transported through Pierre, Huron and maybe Brookings then south through Sioux Falls to the depot at Cushing, Oklahoma; but, the same geology that thwarts railroads and forces engineers to rebuild I-90 between Reliance and Rapid City and I-94 between Mandan, North Dakota and Billings, Montana every year also makes construction of the Keystone XL pipeline untenable.

Running a bomb train through white towns won't fly when you can build a leaky pipeline through stolen treaty ground so it's hard to imagine these projects going through cemeteries where people of European descent are buried.

More West River residents losing their minds

Which parts of seven month winters, rampant racism, chilling effects on civil rights, an extremist legislature and living in a chemical toilet escape you people?

Farm bankruptcies in the United States jumped 24 percent in September to its highest level since 2011. The trade war and two years of adverse weather have been tough on producers. [WNAX radio]

A study recently published in the Journal of Rural Health found the suicide rate for farmers is not only the highest of any occupation in America, it's spiking because of a lack of ready access to mental health care services. Last year the Rapid City Journal blamed the South Dakota Republican Party for spikes in suicides and depression. So has a Sanford executive.

"The National Council for Behavioral Health came in and sent consultants to look at the community and what the needs and the availability of mental health services in Rapid City," said Dr. Katy Sullivan, Director of Behavioral Health Services at Regional Behavioral Health Center. "What it could mean for us as a mental health community would be greater collaboration and more of a chance to find ways to think outside of the box and find different, effective, and more cutting-edge treatment. [KEVN teevee]

Rapid City Regional enjoys a virtual medical industry monopoly in western South Dakota.

Still another study just concluded cannabis is an effective antidepressant therapy for some patients while keeping it illegal creates paranoia, anxiety and stigmatization. Cannabis is an effective treatment for Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).

#SouthDakota https://t.co/oFKB59JUJY

— interested party (@larry_kurtz) October 25, 2019