Stace Nelson giving up on corrupt Pierre

It looks like Republican Governor Kristi Noem will have a hand-picked legislature.

Stace Nelson, who is known for challenging establishment politics and was responsible for introducing legislation in 2018 that led to chislic being named the official state “nosh,” is stepping aside as a District 19 Senator serving in the South Dakota Legislature. In an email sent to area newspapers Sunday afternoon, Nov. 17, Nelson said he is retiring from politics, effective Dec. 10, for reasons that include being slowed by military service-related injuries. “It is with regret, but relief of having survived South Dakota’s corrupt politics, that I will retire permanently and completely from politics,” he wrote. [Freeman Courier]

Few dispute the reasons educated people continue to flee my home state of South Dakota. The state is struggling to keep white workers, infrastructure is crumbling, industrial agriculture is failing, South Dakota churches are girding for gun violence, meth is replacing alcohol as the state’s drug of choice, Pierre’s culture of corruption and rape violence threaten open government, socialism is quietly replacing free enterprise, pheasant numbers are dwindling, environmental degradation is increasing, wildlife are being exterminated to make way for disease-ridden domestic livestock and exotic fowl, jails far outnumber colleges, ag bankers continue to enslave landowners and the state’s medical industry triopoly operates without scrutiny.

Republican District 19 State Senator Stace Nelson is a conservative christian (go figure), albeit a decorated Marine, who spent a career brutalizing the people within his charge as a monolithic executor of forced compliance through intimidation.

His anger and controlling personality are pathologies, contraindications of the power drug he uses to fog a world that doesn’t conform to his delusions. He shoves his creation superstitions down the throats of his virtual victims and crams the hose of his coerced military patriotism into any orifice that his captives leave unprotected. The glaring difference between Nelson, a former military police investigator, and Ted Klaudt is that Nelson offended legally under the auspices of the Marine Corps.

Yes, eight month winters, tornadoes, flooding, habitat destruction and now wildfire potential returns to the chemical toilet, perpetual welfare state and permanent disaster area that is South Dakota.

Wyoming moving closer to expanding Medicaid?

Like South Dakota and because of the race hatred projected at an African American president and at American Indians Wyoming is another red state that would rather die of cancer, mercury and lead poisoning instead of adopting Medicaid expansion. That is, until now.

Under Section 638 of the Indian Self Determination Act of 1975, government agencies like the Indian Health Service can enter into contracts with federally recognized tribes and allow them to manage funding for their own programs. [Eastern Shoshone Tribe Considers Taking Over IHS Clinic Management]

Gillette is a scary place. It's where ecocide is encouraged and mercury from coal burning power plants is released into South Dakota's watersheds and beyond. The Campbell County Hospital in Gillette has written off millions in noncollectable debt.

The legislature's Joint Revenue Committee approved a proposed bill that will ask Gov. Mark Gordon to explore options for Wyoming's participation in expansion and determine whether it's financially viable for the state. Eventually lawmakers would need to approve a Wyoming plan. The Wyoming Department of Health says some 19,000 Wyomingites could get health insurance under expansion. [Legislative Committee Endorses Medicaid Expansion Bill]

From 2015:

Specifically, the CBO determined that maintaining sequester-level cuts would lead to 500,000 fewer jobs and 0.4% less growth in 2016, and 300,000 fewer jobs and 0.2% less growth in 2017. Many Americans have been led to believe the emerging crisis is solely about Planned Parenthood funding, and that may be somewhat true. However, at the rate Republicans love killing Americans’ jobs and retarding economic growth that the CBO warned is the result of not addressing sequester cuts, pundits should consider the real impetus for the looming crisis is the GOP’s rejection of eliminating their precious sequester.

Read that here.

The “unimaginable horrors” comment came from U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., during testimony to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee in Washington about his bill to force the Indian Health Service to undergo a wide-ranging audit. The tribe is alleging that the federal government has failed to uphold its legal obligation to provide health care to tribal members, in part by temporarily closing the Rosebud emergency department in 2015.

Read the rest here.

Kinda makes you sick, init? Yes, the South Dakota Republican Party is a death panel. Jean Rounds, the wife of South Dakota's junior senator went out of state for medical care.

I like the idea of rolling the funding for TRICARE, Medicare, the IHS and the VA together then offering Medicaid for all by increasing the estate tax, raising taxes on tobacco and adopting a carbon tax. Reproductive freedoms should be included with conditions just like the military does under TRICARE.

Rapid City @RegionalHealth solidifies its position as a medical industry monopoly in western South Dakota and NE Wyoming. https://t.co/ozcb8pZJbg

— interested party (@larry_kurtz) November 17, 2019

Salmon are spawning in most contaminated waters in South Dakota

The death of the Missouri River ecosystem in South Dakota began with the European invasion, was accelerated by the Homestake Mining Company and sealed with the construction of the mainstem dams. Today, the US Army Corps of Engineers has cancelled Spring Pulses on the Missouri River not because of low flows but because the sediment is so poisonous it would kill the very species it says it's trying to preserve. Endangered pallid sturgeon, paddlefish, catfish and most other organisms cope with lethal levels of mercury throughout the South Dakota portion of the Missouri River.

And there's probably more salmon to be found in unusual places in South Dakota because of this year's flooding, said Geno Adams, fisheries program administrator at South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks. An angler submitted a photo to the state agency this week of a salmon caught in Firesteel Creek, a tributary of the James River near Mitchell. "We encourage people to harvest those salmon if they catch one, if they want to. You can throw it back, there's nothing illegal about it," he said. [Sioux Falls Argus Leader]

As South Dakota's GOP congressional delegation seek to block efforts by the US Environmental Protection Agency as it works to identify the sources of pollution the state's residents are getting scared.

The Firesteel Creek watershed begins in the Wessington Springs area and ends at Mitchell. The farming community along this watershed is likely responsible for the high concentration of nitrogen from crop fertilization runoff. This nitrogen is responsible for the yearly algae bloom in Lake Mitchell. Recently it has been noted the lake also has a high concentration of fecal bacteria. That indicates livestock along the creek are also poisoning our water supply. Farming and land management preferences do not trump the safety and well-being of 15,000-plus citizens. [LTE, Lake pollution needs to be fixed]

Working with EPA, South Dakota's US Attorney stepped in after the state's Republican-owned Department of Ecocide and Natural Ruination (DENR) discovered a California man's damming of Bear Butte Creek violating federal Clean Water rules. But if you think DENR is going to come down on GOP donors you have another think coming.

David Ellingson and his Ortonville, Minnesota-area honey-producing family sued the EPA for not regulating the neonicotinoids killing their colonies. I worked for their operation one summer between semesters at South Dakota State University. It was one on the most fascinating lessons of this life. South Dakota beekeeper Adee Honey Farms also blames neonicotinoids for colony losses according to WNAX.

Every ag product, meats both wild and domestic not grown organically in South Dakota is contaminated with atrazine, 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.

Eeeek! Is that a ghost? Our mistake...that’s a pallid sturgeon in a tank! Every year, wild pallid sturgeon are captured and held at Gavins Point National Fish Hatchery for the captive broodstock program. More: https://t.co/2Q2YxYk3cG Photo:@USFWS pic.twitter.com/IgaV440FMX

— US Fish and Wildlife (@USFWSMtnPrairie) October 24, 2019

Cannabis initiative advanced by Democratic former US Attorney awaiting decision from SDSOS

The group South Dakotans for Better Marijuana Laws has submitted to a Republican secretary of state over 50,000 signatures in support of a ballot measure that would allow adults 21 and older to possess and distribute up to one ounce and cultivate up to three plants for personal use. If accepted and passed the measure would also direct the South Dakota's extremist legislature to establish therapeutic and industrial cannabis (hemp) programs.

“We are proud to have submitted petitions on behalf of over 80,000 South Dakotans who believe that voters should decide our state’s marijuana and hemp laws,” said Brendan Johnson, a former United States Attorney who is the sponsor of the legalization ballot initiative. “Right now, there are South Dakotans with serious health conditions who are forced to break the law in order to access effective medical treatments that allow them to live healthier and more productive lives, and that is unacceptable,” said Marijuana Policy Project Deputy Director Matthew Schweich, who has worked on successful marijuana reform ballot initiative campaigns in Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Utah. [press release, Marijuana Policy Project]

Democrats have been leading and running election campaigns on destigmatizing cannabis and legalizing for adults for decades.

As Partner Attorney at Robins Kaplan LLP, Brendan Johnson, former US Attorney for the District of South Dakota and son of retired Democratic Senator Tim Johnson, helped the South Dakota chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union win the Constitution and Libertarian Parties' lawsuit against Republican former Secretary of State Shantel Krebs.

It's widely believed Johnson will enter the 2020 Democratic US Senate primary in South Dakota.

More about South Dakotans for Better Marijuana Laws linked here.

Holm: South Dakota Republicans are destroying rural health care

Rick Holm is the Prairie Doc. His program airs on KBRK radio in Brookings, on Bill Janklow's idea of public teevee and his column appears in my hometown paper the Elkton Record, in the Brookings Register and about sixty other rural South Dakota newspapers. By not expanding Medicaid under Obamacare South Dakota Republicans are decimating rural health care.

In the July 2019 issue of South Dakota Medicine, a survey of family physicians practicing in this state found much lower burnout rates in family docs practicing in rural areas (25 percent) compared with those practicing in larger metropolitan areas (51 percent). Evidently, some social aspects of rural practice seem to confer a protective effect against burnout. This new data should be helpful when young physicians are looking for the most satisfying places to practice. [Holm, Vermillion PlainTalk]

South Dakota's medical industry triopoly operates without scrutiny and at least one Sanford Health executive believes it's time to expand Medicaid in the state.

If South Dakota's policy makers had any balls whatsoever they’d bring legislation that would compel the medical industry to post the costs for all procedures. So if these hospitals are monopolies like utilities are, or even oligopolies in their markets, why isn't there a voter-elected public commission to regulate pricing?