10/30/15

Sturgis Rally slaughter makes 2015 deadliest year for motorcyclists


ip file photo

Looks like Dennis Daugaard and Marty Jackley aren't the only people with blood on their hands.
In 2015, 31 people have died in motorcycle crashes in the state, 50 percent higher than the 15-year average and the most in recorded history. The Department of Public Safety says records go back to 1963. [KELO teevee]
Good job, South Dakota! You've killed at least thirty one people, maimed hundreds, and raised some $30 million not to pay teachers or end the shortage but to settle the lawsuits pending over the carnage in Sturgis.

At least sixteen bikers died during the 2015 Sturgis Rally beheading the old record of eleven in 1990. We don't know how many are in ICU on life support or brain dead on a vent.
Regional Health officials say they saw a record-breaking number of visits to their hospitals during the 75th Sturgis Rally with more than 1,100 visits to emergency rooms and Urgent Care facilities. That number is up from the 618 patients they saw during the 2014 Rally. Rapid City Regional Hospital President Mike Gibbs says for as many people who died outside of the hospital due to Rally-related incidents, just as many died inside a Regional facility. [KEVN teevee]
South Dakota's law enforcement industry is crowing that they have no reports of any stabbings or shootings during the 75th Rally bacchanal.
With the official end of the 75th rally, the highway patrol data shows that the number of crashes (injury and non injury) are double what they were last year; and deaths are three times higher than 2014.
Read the death roster and about the failures of Dennis Daugaard and Marty Jackley to protect visitors here.

Looks like this blog is not the only media outlet that believes the Sturgis Rally contradicts South Dakota's purported image of wholesomeness.
Aside from the criminal charges that have been handed out are the numerous injury and fatal crashes. The Department of Public Safety said there have been 29 Sturgis-related injury accidents and three fatalities thus far. Those numbers undoubtedly will rise. South Dakota seriously needs to consider whether the Sturgis event is worth the trouble it causes. That's because we think the event is not worth the drugs, deaths and troubles.
Read it all here.

When Lewis and Clark explored the Missouri River and beyond some men in tribes would urge their wives and daughters to trade sex for things like iron kettles and axes. Now American Indian women are still being traded, many of them at the deadly 75th Sturgis Rally.

The Jackley-booted Division of Criminal Investigation undercover sex traps in South Dakota have netted 29 arrests in recent years. This year they baited then caught four men at the Rally.
"When you have large events like this, there's a criminal element and we've experienced in the past some child predators out and about in the community. We've taken it upon ourselves in law enforcement to do certain operations really to protect children," South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley said. [KELO teevee]
Marty is pimping young women, busting men merely responding to adverts, then grandstanding in front of gullible teevee audiences using a free press to burnish his telegenicity.

The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is a known criminal enterprise trafficking women and children while living in the Black Hills with the blessings of South Dakota's law enforcement industry.

Amnesty International recommends full decriminalization of the sex trade.

Crimes are what the other guy does but in South Dakota during the Rally nobody cares.

These aren't cannabis-related fatalities: they're wholly owned by the alcohol industry and subsidized with taxes collected by the State of South Dakota.

As hypocrisy reigns supreme at the highest levels of power in South Dakota residents suffered another Sturgis Rally where this year less than a million vehicles entered the town and about a million spent an average of a thousand dollars each so the sitting governor can crow about his leadership and self-reliance while moral hazards pay the bills.

10/29/15

SD Dems should advocate for renaming, putting BHNF under tribal stewardship


On September 22, 2015, the Pennington County Democratic Party passed a resolution calling for the renaming of Harney Peak, the highest mountain [*] in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The resolution states that public comments received by the U.S. Board of Geographic Names included support of the name change by a descendent of General William S. Harney and a descendent of Little Thunder, a leader of a Lakota village destroyed by Harney in 1855. The resolution further states that the existing name of the peak is highly offensive to Native people. [press release]
* Odakota Mountain is the highest natural peak in the Black Hills.


Of course, the South Dakota Democratic Party should urge President Obama to dissolve the Black Hills National Forest, move management of the land from the US Department of Agriculture into the Department of Interior; and, in cooperation with Bureau of Indian Affairs Division of Forestry and Wildfire Management, rename it Okawita Paha National Monument eventually becoming part of the Greater Missouri Basin National Wildlife Refuge. Mato Paha (Bear Butte), the associated national grasslands and the Sioux Ranger District of the Custer/Gallatin National Forest should be included in the move.

From Ernestine Chasing Hawk:
In 2008, during a campaign stop in Sioux Falls then Sen. Bara[c]k Obama gave Great Plains Indian tribes a ray of hope on the outcome of the century’s long legal battle over “theft of 48 million acres of their homeland.” However one of the key elements to resolving the issue is “bringing together all the different parties” and with each passing day their “window of opportunity” shrinks as time ticks away for the Obama-Biden administration.
Attorney Mario Gonzales has been litigating the "Black Hills Claim" for most of his life. He contends that the commission charged to make peace with tribes inserted language into the document signed in 1868 that Red Cloud had neither seen nor agreed to in negotiations.

Several tribal nations manage mixed forest/rangeland, some in cooperation with other states.

Case No. 1, the first USDA Forest Service timber sale, was conducted by the BHNF near Nemo. Now, the Mountain Pine Beetle is vigorously opening view sheds, doing its part to keep even Box Elder and False Bottom Creeks running as September overtakes the Black Hills making a mockery of humanity's best efforts at forest policy.
The BGN’s policy is that if a public presentation is made, a vote on that issue will automatically be deferred until at least the next meeting. After months of public meetings and comment periods, the South Dakota Board on Geographic Names (SDBGN) voted 4-1 to leave the name of William S. Harney attached to the peak. The original name submitted for the name change was Black Elk Peak, which was later changed to “Hinhan Kaga (Making of Owls),” by the SDBGN. The SDBGN forwarded its final recommendation as well as packets of materials including comments from a large number of interested parties, results of its meetings and audio files to the U.S. board for consideration. A vote is not anticipated until early 2016. [Carrie Moore, Harney name still up in air]
Heȟáka Sápa (Black Elk) returned to Lakota ways after he realized the Roman Church was committing crimes against his people.
Damian Costello's monograph on Black Elk, the Oglala holy man, is the latest in a growing number of scholarly contributions to the controversial topic of Black Elk's religious identity. Was Black Elk truly a wicasta wakan, a holy man, who only became a Catholic convert as a result of the colonial pressures endemic to the reservation system? Or was Black Elk actually a devout catechist, whose "Great Vision" was unnecessarily bereft of its Christian message because John G. Neihardt desired a romanticized and non-Christian Indian narrative? First, tribal nations such as the Lakota are still under the yoke of colonialism and, as such, are engaged in a process of decolonization rather than postcolonialism. Second, taking [Lamin] Sanneh's perspective and arbitrarily applying it to early twentieth-century Lakota history only serves as a way of making excuses for historic wrongs that both Protestant and Catholic churches committed against the Lakota people. [excerpt, Black Elk: Colonialism and Lakota Catholicism (review)]
This blogger has been arguing for Lakota names on South Dakota's geological features for at least twenty years. It is the opinion of this blog that if the mountain is named for Black Elk it should be in the Lakota language: loosely translated as Paha Heȟáka Sápa.

In the early days of South Dakota statehood Indian agents embezzled federal funds meant for tribal nations, just like James McLaughlin did.

Little has changed.

Back in July, a group representing dwarves asked the McLaughlin High School to change the name of its mascot. Now, the school on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation has voted to discontinue the school's mascot after receiving a request from a national group representing Little People. There was little opposition in the community to removing the "Midgets" from its roster.

Yet, white people still misappropriate American Indian themes in Watertown, Sisseton, Estelline and in other South Dakota towns.

One professional football player said it this way:
“The Native American perspective, just like the Afro-American perspective, was left out of the history classes I took in school. I knew when I was growing up there was slavery in my own culture, but they never talked about that in the history books. They mentioned it, but they swept aside what it was like for the people that actually lived it. So it’s nice to be able to come here and learn the other side of the story from an Indian perspective.” [Indian Country Today]
The spectacle of thousands of hybrid buffalo being rounded up by white people is fifty years old: Ki-Yi on steroids.
But the image of white students dressed in Indian regalia and carrying spears amid a backdrop of drumbeats rubbed many the wrong way. Tribal leaders are represented by a chieftain and princess, who initially wore mock headdresses and eagle feathers during a pageant that for years also included simulated scalpings, presumably to honor Native culture. [Stu Whitney]
And:
"There is a lure, a fascination with the Old West and visualizing what it might have looked like hundreds of years ago when there were millions of bison roaming the Plains," said Craig Pugsley, head of visitor services at the park. Bison by the millions once roamed the Great Plains and were a foundation of Native American culture, but the coming of the white man to the region caused the species to be hunted to the brink of extinction. [Pierre Capital Journal]
Get a war criminal's name off a South Dakota state park, a county and a town? What a great idea!

Meanwhile, homicides in Rapid City are overwhelmingly represented by American Indians and a white family is selling a tourist trap once camp for Sitting Bull.

It's no secret that South Dakota wants to wipe out the cougar population in the state but allowing the killing to continue on federal lands serves nobody but Republican donors who graze cattle for little or nothing. If deer and elk numbers are down it's because South Dakota motorists have been killing them at rates far higher than the national average.
The lone Native American voice at public hearing Oct. 1 on the South Dakota’s mountain lion hunting season, asked the Game, Fish and Parks Commission to end the licensed killing of Puma concolor. “It’s not hunting; it’s just killing,” said Lloyd Goings of rural Lawrence County. “I spent two tours in Vietnam, and I know what hunting is. There’s a lot more challenge to hunt a person than to hunt a mountain lion,” he said. Spearfish resident and environmentalist Tatyana Novikova also called for closing the upcoming mountain lion hunting seasons due to lack of hard data on population.
Read more about red state collapse here.
According to State Farm insurance records, South Dakota is always among the top 10 in deer vehicle crashes, despite a low human population. In 2015, according to State Farm, South Dakotans face a one in 73 chance of hitting a deer on the road, especially during autumn.
Read that here.

The northern long-eared bat is headed for extinction but Dennis Daugaard doesn't care even though the Black Hills critter preys on the mountain pine beetle as does the threatened black-backed woodpecker.
He says that organizations unaffiliated with South Dakota make important decisions on wildlife and other matters dear to the people of South Dakota. He mentioned that not all of these groups know what is best for his state. The federal government inserts itself and overlays another level of regulation,” said Daugaard. "Not because the federal regulation is better or the state regulation is inadequate, but just because the federal government can, and does.” [KSFY teevee]
It should come as no surprise that Daugaard denies living in the Anthropocene.

Brown County has seen steady outbound migration of intellectuals and other Democrats leaving fat, white, graying Republican zombies dying in nursing homes to turn out the lights while Indian County is solid blue.

Habitat destruction, watershed ruination, native species extirpation, rampant ecocide, statewide corruption: this is today's South Dakota.

It's time for the State of South Dakota to abandon Bear Butte State Park that it claimed through colonization and remand it to the tribes for governance so they can restore its name to Mato Paha and for the US Park Service to add the name Mahto Tipila to Devils Tower National Monument.



10/28/15

Mercer: Gant, Powers spun records black hole


Bendagate and the Westerhuis murders send pretty strong signals to anyone who might be considering blowing the whistle on South Dakota’s 1 percenters.

Will Pat Powers end up dead in a shelter belt with a shotgun tied to a tree or will he take out his entire brood, torch his house and turn a firearm on himself?
Secretary of State Shantel Krebs asked the state Department of Legislative Audit to take a look through the office records after she took over on Jan. 5. Turns out she had good reason to wonder about what occurred under her predecessor, Jason Gant. [Bob Mercer]
Former public employee Rose Mary Woods Pat Powers has wiped more servers than Charmin has wiped Pat's ample bottom.

Powers has the temerity and raw balls to put up a blog post berating the Flandreau City Council for denying a reporter access to an executive session.

Recall that Sen. Stan Adelstein called for an investigation of Jason Gant and the Secretary of State's alleged collusion with former employee, Powers to engineer an ALEC-inspired red map strategy.
The legacy of Republican Jason Gant’s single term as South Dakota secretary of state includes the withdrawal of public records that had been available on the SDSOS website. He changed the system so that business records older than a few years aren’t available. The records remain listed as part of search results, but a “U/A” appears where there once was a hyper-link. Secretary of State Shantel Krebs hasn’t been able to correct the situation, yet, and perhaps never will be able to afford such a project without the Legislature approving extra funding for the project. Gant’s change of the system came in the wake of the EB-5 scandal.
Read more from Bob Mercer about wiped servers linked here.

From Ryan Lengerich of the Rapid City Journal:
If Gant decides not to resign, Adelstein said he will ask colleagues in the House of Representatives to call for an impeachment at next year's legislative session. Doing so would cause a distraction Adelstein said he would rather avoid by having Gant resign. “We have more problems in South Dakota than incompetence and a possibly dishonest Secretary of State," Adelstein said. “I don’t want these matters shoved aside for something like an impeachment.”
The Rapid City Journal believes an investigation should be conducted so does the Watertown Public Opinion.

There was a rumor floating around about a week ago that South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley is preparing indictments for former SD Secretary of State Jason Gant and his henchman, Pat Powers for their roles in deleting documents pertinent to Bendagate and the events leading up to the Westerhuis murders.
In the wake of what we’ve seen in the last two years — and frankly, what we still don’t see now — an ethics commission seems like a reasonable consideration for this state. It’s too bad the idea probably won’t go anywhere this winter. On the other hand, maybe that fact only reinforces the case for such a panel. [editorial, Yankton Press & Dakotan]
Read more at Dakota Free Press and at the Northern Valley Beacon.

Marty Jackley has the dirt on all the potential statewide candidates and the cold blooded intensity of a psychopath.

We all know this thing goes so much deeper. How much deeper?

Powers has long been banned from this and other South Dakota related sites because of a constant stream of bigotry, misogyny and other hate speech.

Pierre Curiam: Kristi Noem cheats on her husband; John Thune cheats on South Dakota

Shantel Krebs is the source for this 2010 post about Kristi Noem's extramarital love life. Krebs and this reporter had a twenty minute phone conversation the day before the post went up. In a phone interview Steve Cutler would not go on the record about being a witness to intimacy between Noem and Jim Meidinger.

It's common knowledge that Krebs, Joni Cutler and other South Dakota legislators loathe Noem.

Shantel was giddy about spilling her guts during our phone conversation and provided me with eyewitnesses to the affair that nobody wanted to go on the record about. What really stuck in Krebs' craw was that KELO teevee buried the story replete with first person accounts of public intimate contact between Noem and her paramour.

Krebs supported Chris Nelson, hated Noem and gleefully gave me names of people to call who also hated Noem which I did.

Until Shantel admits her phone conversation with me and/or the tipster comes forward this is all on me and from the viral traffic at interested party about this, my credibility is obviously more feared than doubted.

Noem just got back from a taxpayer-funded junket to Egypt: the goddess Isis only knows with whom she slept there.

Shantel Krebs has reportedly denied speaking to this reporter but lying is par for the earth hater political course.

When asked on a 100 Eyes broadcast Jonathan Ellis said Kristi Noem might cite her achievements as passing human trafficking legislation [(not that it's done any good in South Dakota) ed.] and doing some stuff on the farm bill.

Damning with faint praise in my view as Noem's party marches ever closer to the Hamiltonian Empire Thomas Jefferson warned us about.

Democrats=safe sex. Republicans=cheap sex. Not just the Dan Nelson scandal, John Thune had a long-time affair with Nancy Naeve formerly of KSFY teevee but who knows who he's hooked with up now.

South Dakota is a sanctuary state for white collar crime, though. Thune's family came from Europe and Canada just two generations ago. His mean-spirited attack on sanctuary cities comes as the Center for Immigration Studies exposes his party's EB-5 corruption.

Senator John Thune and Representative Kristi Noem voted against the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act but now want to tap into funds provided in the Act to bring more cops to reservations.

10/26/15

Cops' lives suck: South Dakota trooper a victim of his own psychopathy

Little wonder cops abuse their families, alcohol, drugs, food, power, detainees and even occasionally murder their wives.

A notorious South Dakota State Trooper found himself on the losing side of an altercation with freedom fighters.
Authorities say four suspects are in custody after the assault of 34–year–old South Dakota Highway Patrol Trooper, Zac Bader. State public safety officials say Trooper Bader suffered serious, but non–life threatening injuries and is currently hospitalized in intensive care and listed under stable condition. Officials say Trooper Bader initiated the traffic stop at mile marker 70 on Interstate 90 when he was assaulted [KSFY teevee]
Recall that back in 2012 the morbidly obese, power hungry Bader accosted a Montana family instead of policing Sturgis Rally traffic.

Trooper Bader, shield 73, asked Mr. freegan to join him in the squad car then told him that probable cause was a six-inch crack in the Subaru's windshield. While the otherwise nicely-behaved dog in the back seat of the squad car watched, Bader asked that since Montana has a medical cannabis (cop said "marijuana") law, did Mr. freegan have a card?

After Mr. freegan refused to answer citing his Fifth Amendment rights, Herr Bader announced that he and the weaponized dog would do a walk-around.

The subsequent questioning of Mrs. freegan elicited similar recitations including her view that South Dakota's state police was harassing her family.

Something apparently got through to Trooper Bader: he issued no ticket for the cracked windshield; but, he cited Mr. freegan for possessing paraphernalia and Mrs. freegan for knowing of the paraphernalia then sent the family on their less-than-merry way.
If a police officer in your community has a history of misconduct, can you find out about it? It depends where you live. In some of these states, the law explicitly exempts these records from public view. In others, records are secret in practice because police departments routinely withhold them under vague legal standards or in spite of court precedents. Police disciplinary records are confidential personnel records under South Dakota Codified Law § 1-27-1.5(7).
Read which states hide bad cops here.

The Rapid City Journal agrees with me: cops' lives suck.
Gunfire deaths of police officers in 2015 are actually down over the same period in 2014, but over the last year, six officers appear to have been targeted specifically because they worked in law enforcement, according to the Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, which tracks officer deaths. TV coverage has been extensive on a number of racially charged incidents, including the killing of black teenager Michael Brown by a white officer in Ferguson, Mo.; the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody in Baltimore, Md.; and the shooting of Walter Scott by a white police officer in South Charleston, S.C. Those incidents, some of which led to criminal charges against officers, have fueled an atmosphere of backlash, with some fringe groups calling for retaliation against police. [With officers killed, and suspect deaths, it's a tough time to be a cop]
But, South Dakotans already know this, right?

Today's 100 Eyes broadcast was dominated by news that South Dakota's legislature is inching closer to the kurtz cannabis template after the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribes tests its sovereignty from the state where it is trapped. More from KSFY teevee here.

South Dakota vilifies teachers especially those who won't carry firearms into classrooms but hides the records of psychotic behavior presented by bad actors like Trooper Bader from public view: self-reliance or moral hazard?

Montana voters could legalize cannabis

Synthetics are killing people and destroying lives so one Anchorage, Alaska woman is offering to trade cannabis for a manufactured poison called "spice."
Nicole Crites said she’s been kicking around the idea for some time. Beginning Saturday, she plans to seek out spice users on the streets and offer them the opportunity to trade their outlawed synthetic drugs for a legalized alternative. Crites said for every gram of spice a person is willing to destroy in front of her, she will reward them with twice the amount in free marijuana. [KTUU teevee]
Montana has been battling Big Pharma and Big Booze since at least 2004 when the state legalized cannabis for therapeutic purposes.
Anthony Varriano, a sports reporter in Glendive, wants us all to live the high life. As of Oct. 5, Varriano was approved to begin collecting signatures for a constitutional initiative that would give adult Montanans “the right to purchase, consume, and possess marijuana, subject to age limitations set by the Legislature or through the ballot initiative.” Because it would amend the state constitution, Varriano’s proposal requires 48,349 voter signatures before it can appear on the ballot. Officially, the recreational pot measure is titled CI-115, but Varriano submitted it as “Amendment 420.” Varriano said marijuana is safer for human consumption than alcohol, tobacco and peanuts. “Peanuts kill 200 people per year,” he said. [Bozeman Daily Chronicle]
Montana's legislature meets in odd-numbered years and will not convene until 2017 and will have to cope with liberalized cannabis laws pending in neighboring Canada while New Mexico shares a border with Mexico also considering ending prohibition.

Cedric Black Eagle of the Crow Nation sits on the board of CannaNative.

The industry has been grappling with energy costs and the use of pesticides.


10/24/15

South Dakota mired in the past

South Dakota's legislature can write a bill that would adopt legislation similar to Minnesota's medical cannabis law but worthy of Federal Drug Administration scrutiny where real medicine could be sold by pharmacies, legalize for adults then allow Deadwood and the tribes to grow under California organic standards and distribute on reservation and off-reservation properties under a compact putting the gaming commission as the administrative body to tax and regulate.

Because cannabis is illegal under federal law, and use of the term "organic" is regulated by the US Department of Agriculture, a licensed cannabis business cannot be certified as USDA organic.

In my view edibles should only be available to patients suffering from debilitating diseases, disorders or conditions and be dispensed by pharmacists and taxed like other prescriptions.

Home growing for personal enjoyment should look like this California model.

For the record, I do not support widespread growing of hemp: it is an invasive species and capable of overgrowing native grasses.

Tribes can do this by themselves and the South Dakota Legislature should be kept out of the cannabis loop completely unless Deadwood chooses to be the non-Native test bed off-reservation. Nations trapped in South Dakota and in other states with off-reservation properties are already testing cannabis law.

Tribal casinos are already in the banking business as the cannabis industry is looking for places to enter the financial markets.

Jonathan Ellis said on an Argus Leader's 100 Eyes broadcast that cannabis sales could produce more revenue than video lootery does without the social costs.

Whatever perceived evils surrounding cannabis already exist and continuing to reward a black market is neither conservative nor sustainable. Unrestrained capitalism has killed millions during the war on drugs with zero results: a moral hazard instead of self-reliance.

A recent study has found that cannabis is not a gateway to abuse of stronger compounds.
The researchers based their conclusions on data gathered from Monitoring the Future, an ongoing study of the behaviors, attitudes and values of American high school students. Roughly 15,000 high school seniors are assessed each year. Paul Armentano, deputy director of the pro-marijuana group NORML, said the study findings weren't surprising. "Science has consistently shown that environmental factors, such as ready access to other illicit substances, and personal traits, such as a propensity toward risk-seeking behavior, are associated with the decision to move from marijuana to other illicit substances," Armentano said. "But marijuana's drug chemistry likely does not play a significant role, if any role, in this decision." [Marijuana Study Counters 'Gateway' Theory]
But pull numbers out of your rectum and distribute them to fellow inmates at your own peril: go to the South Dakota Democratic Party's website, Facebook page and twitter feed and see evidence of a lack of leadership, even lifelessness.

Despite lies from SDGOP, video lootery, payday loan sharks, domestic violence and homelessness are inextricably linked putting children at risk to more catastrophic consequences far more often than has happened in states that have legalized or lessened penalties for casual use of cannabis.

South Dakota should pass a corporate income tax, reduce the number of counties to 25, turn Dakota State University into a community college, and adopt my cannabis template: the kurtz solution painted on a thumbnail.

10/21/15

Cops' lives suck: JD Tippit murdered by Bush-assisted JFK conspiracy

On 22 November, 1963, CIA operative George HW Bush was photographed at the entrance of the Dallas Book Depository on that fateful day in Texas.

G Gordon Liddy murdered Officer JD Tippit in Dallas in a botched plot to replace President John F Kennedy's body to hide the evidence of multiple shooters and nearly every member of the DPD was in on the conspiracy.

JFK's fatal head shot was fired from a storm gutter at nearly point blank range.

George W Bush spent nearly the entire month of August, 2001 in Texas preparing for the false flag narrative to follow the next month. The two Georges, Jeb and Marvin Bush are directly responsible for the events of 11 September, 2001. Why? Because the business of war is in their blood.






10/20/15

Source: Mike Rounds talking to family about resigning US Senate

Breaking: a source close to the Rounds family just left me an email confirming suspicions that Mike Rounds is talking about leaving the Senate as the US Department of Justice closes in on his role in the Bendagate affair.

Earlier today this reporter received word that even after Jean Rounds asked him not to run for US Senate Tike Mike knew he had to to prevent South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley from probing his pile and to keep Brendan Johnson from opening his investigation to the public.

Expect an announcement from the office of the US Attorney for the District of South Dakota that an indictment of Rounds is being prepared and Randy Seiler to announce Joop Bollen has been offered immunity from federal prosecution.

Bollen is a Future Fund recipient and SDGOP campaign contributor. Bob Mercer's request to see Richard Benda's autopsy report and investigation proving he was shot in the abdomen was denied by a Republican-owned court in South Dakota. A report from a SDGOP-heavy legislative committee blamed the dead Benda, a former Governors Office of Economic Development employee, for the EB-5 scandal. Future Fund cash is a slush fund and feature of the Bendagate scandal that helps make the Big Sioux River a foreign dairy-driven chemical toilet while the State of South Dakota routinely operates in an ethics vacuum often aborting efforts to reduce opacity.

My home state truly is a perpetual welfare state living the low life.

10/17/15

Open Cut perfect place for an ice climbing park

Well, it's that time of year again.

Not long after Homestake Mining Company announced its intent to close operations in Lead, we were listening to this NPR story about an ice climbing park in Ouray, Colorado, a former mining town that has remade itself by farming ice.

My daughters' mother turned to me and said: "Wow, they should do that in the Open Cut."

It was if she had spoken with the Voice of God. I called for an appointment and met the very next day with Bruce Breid, the general manager charged with the mine's mothballing, an aerial photo of the pit displayed on the wall behind his desk.

"What a brilliant idea, Mr. Kurtz, we have water here, here, and here," Mr. Breid said, pointing to locations at the rim near the Homestake Visitor Center. "Can you provide a legal instrument holding Homestake harmless?"

Right. There was that.

Though not a climber myself, more research led me to locals, some of whom had actually climbed some of the natural seeps deep in the pit while working for subcontract miners.

The horseshoe-shaped bowl directly under the Visitors Center is geologically sound, anchors for top roping easy to place. I have spoken to every Lead mayor since; the desired property is in the city limits. Barrick, the current owner has resisted any discussion of the concept. The Authority governing development of the Lab looks at me like deer in headlights.

The Open Cut contributes about 11% of the water to the mine being pumped for the Lab, the ice climbing park would add another 5000 gallons or so. If a clay liner would be applied to the floor of the pit, the resulting reservoir (yes, acidic mine runoff mostly) could be tapped for emergency fire-fighting or diverted to the treatment facility for water from Sawpit Gulch in Central City: some of that is already happening.

The pit is home to some very porous rock; filling the pit with water would only succeed in filling the emerging lab. Barrick wants the wall of the pit to "spall," ie. move loose material from the walls to the floor. Accelerating this process would serve the purpose.

Ice climbing is driving the economies of several former mining towns like Bozeman, Montana; Durango and Ouray, Colorado; and Cody, Wyoming.
The organizers of North America's first mixed climbing competition for teenagers hope an event held here will be a starting point that will launch the sport into the Olympics. But, what is mixed climbing? It is ice climbing — with ice axes and foot spikes called crampons — without ice. Ice climbing, essentially, on rock. It was popularized in 1995 in Vail, Colo., as a means to an end — when the ice doesn't flow all the way down, climb the rock to get to the ice. The reason Adam Markert thinks mixed climbing should be an Olympic sport is because spectators in every country with TVs tuned to the games will see it, maybe start thinking about it, talking about it and then, hopefully, doing it. Markert — school teacher by day, rock climbing coach by night and one of the competition's organizers — described climbing as a culture, and he wants it to grow. [Four Corners Daily Times]
Ojo Caliente near Santa Fe is a sought-after destination for locals: it's fabulous. Behind the Deadwood Convention Center there is a rock bench large enough for a slightly smaller open air hot water spa.

Drilling for hot water is not cheap, but investors would find that a well will produce enough hot water to ease pressure on the Maitland Drift filling the former Homestake Mine being dewatered for an underground laboratory.

Lead should take some advice from Hill City and Hot Springs.

Build it and they will climb it naked.

10/15/15

Rapid City facing another pay to play scam: self-reliance or moral hazard?



You have to admit: Hani Shafai has balls.
Like many people in Rapid City, we've been waiting to see if there was any remaining hope for the proposed President's Plaza project to resurface as a way to revitalize a prominent downtown lot. Now we have our answer, and we are happy to hear that Mayor Steve Allender and developers Hani Shafai and Pat Hall are working to bring the project first proposed in 2006 back to the table for a site on the southwest corner of Fifth and St. Joseph streets. Shafai and Hall, of Dream Design, would build the tower within a tax-increment financing district, and the city would use Vision Funds and revenue from the TIF to finance the garage. And many questions remain: What guarantee do we have the developers will complete their end of the bargain? How and when will TIF tax collections generate enough money to cover the costs? Is there any chance the city would be stuck building an expensive parking garage wholly on its own with no help from the developers? How do we know that a major project like this, once started, won't languish or turn into an unfinished downtown eyesore? [editorial, Rapid City Journal]
Of course Shafai was invited to Governor Daugaard's pheasant killing contest. Shafai also appears on the Governors Hunt list and also on the invitation to the 2011 Custer State Park Buffalo Roundup.

Recall the slush fund called the Governors Club: Shafai appears with Doyle Estes, who donated polluted swamp land for a soccer complex. Also appearing on that list is Roger Tellinghuisen, now managing cash resources for the complex. He enjoyed a $75,000 legal services contract after being attorney general for the state.

Richard Benda, the now-dead GOP apparatchik, appears on at least one list with Shafai. Yes, thanks to Jason Gant and Pat Powers that file is gone. Shafai, a Future Fund recipient, gave the current South Dakota governor a generous campaign contribution.

South Dakota's previous governor showered $75 million in Future Fund cash on campaign donors without disclosing who they were.

South Dakota has routinely operated in an ethics vacuum often aborting efforts to reduce opacity.

A Muslim, Shafai's google search reveals myriad cushy plums in Pennington County.

How this culture of corruption scandal is not racketeering remains a mystery.




10/14/15

Hearing rumors....

I heard a rumor today that South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley is preparing indictments for former SD Secretary of State Jason Gant and his henchman, Pat Powers for their roles in deleting documents pertinent to Bendagate and the events leading up to the Westerhuis murders.

CONSIDER IT NO MORE THAN A WILD RUMOR AT THIS POINT.
In the wake of what we’ve seen in the last two years — and frankly, what we still don’t see now — an ethics commission seems like a reasonable consideration for this state. It’s too bad the idea probably won’t go anywhere this winter. On the other hand, maybe that fact only reinforces the case for such a panel. [editorial, Yankton Press & Dakotan]
Read more at Dakota Free Press and at the Northern Valley Beacon.

Pat has yet to deny that he is being treated for pancreatic cancer.

DWC: earth rapers are johns in Noem prostitution efforts

Read it all here.

1 Black Hills Harley-Davidson $10,800 $10,800 $0
1 Blackstone Group $10,800 $10,800 $0
3 Impala Asset Management $10,000 $10,000 $0
4 Honeywell International $8,000 $0 $8,000
5 PricewaterhouseCoopers $7,500 $0 $7,500
5 UBS AG $7,500 $0 $7,500
7 Wall Drug Store $7,400 $7,400 $0
8 Orthopedic Institute $6,000 $6,000 $0
9 National Assn of Insurance & Financial Advisors $5,500 $0 $5,500
10 1st Financial Bank USA $5,400 $5,400 $0
10 Bluestem Capital $5,400 $5,400 $0
10 Dlorah Inc $5,400 $5,400 $0
10 First Premier Bank $5,400 $5,400 $0
10 Kirby Financial $5,400 $5,400 $0
10 Lewis Drug $5,400 $5,400 $0
10 LG Everist Co $5,400 $5,400 $0
10 Meier Group $5,400 $5,400 $0
10 Moyle Petroleum $5,400 $5,400 $0
10 Peterson Management $5,400 $5,400 $0
10 Western Oilfields Supply $5,400 $5,400 $0

Data from Open Secrets.

Clinton runs away with debate field; Albright wears Jackrabbit brooch to SDSU

Watching former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dominate the ridiculous CNN forum in Las Vegas seemed like a bit of a rout. I even turned it off after hearing her views on cannabis are not as evolved as Senator Bernie Sanders' are.

South Dakota State University hosted another former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, who shared the dais with former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle.
"The reporter said, 'Why are you wearing a snake pin?' I said, 'Because Saddam Hussein compared me to an unparalleled serpent.' And I thought, well, this is fun," Albright said, noting she has a pin for every occasion. She wore a Jackrabbit on Tuesday, but her discussion with SDSU students is not about how to dress for success. Albright and Daschle spoke to a sold out crowd at Larson Memorial Concert Hall in the Performing Arts Center. Albright is the first former Cabinet member to visit Brookings since former Secretary of Agriculture Robert Bergland appeared at State in fall 1981. Albright was the 64th secretary of state, then the highest-ranking woman in the history of the U.S. government. She is currently a professor in the practice of diplomacy at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service.
Read that here.

Women bring humanity to everyman's dark world.

10/13/15

Cannabis a gateway to White House, Congress

If Democrats want to bring bigger buzzez to their campaigns they'd better learn to wake and bake.
In other words, the Democratic contenders for president can easily grab this issue by the horns, and they won’t be taking a big risk. By strongly voicing support for medical marijuana legalization, the candidates would have the political, economic and moral calculus all on their side — a rarity as far as hot-button issues go. They would also spur enthusiasm amongst the liberal base, and as an added bonus, they’d have a new issue on which to brand Republicans as being out-of-touch with the times (not that there’s any shortage of such issues).
Read it all here.

Tonight's Democratic presidential forum should be fun and stark contrast to the fear and loathing from the other major party. The candidates on the fringes sometimes drive substantive probes into caverns often unexplored beyond the concocted reality scripted for the junkie teevee user.

Bernie Sanders, Martin O'Malley and Rand Paul could force leading contenders to actually talk about issues dear to young, progressive voters.

There really should be a bong on each podium.

A nanny-state GOP blogger in South Dakota is making shit up.

Marty Jackley may be a psychopathic sociopath and claim anything he wants; but no, state officials can't legally go onto Flandreau Santee Sioux tribal lands and arrest people for cannabis. Even if he believes he can doesn't mean he will. Jackley's blather is simply posturing for his acolytes.

South Dakota State Representative Mike Verchio's actions are those of a colonizer who would introduce a field crop from Asia into tribal nations to compete with native grasses and write legislation that would give county or state control over grow operations on reservations like California Public Law 280 does.

Gannett's Jonathan Ellis believes the South Dakota Republican Party is on the losing side of cannabis prohibition.

Led by Democrats, Wyoming's legislature is slated to tackle numerous cannabis bills.

That South Dakota Republicans prop up illegal drug use and project an ethics black hole while ignoring a potential revenue source is just more evidence of red state collapse.

Not just Jared Polis in Colorado.
One of the things that makes me most proud to call myself an Oregonian is that my state has the greatest political champion of cannabis reform in Congress. I am of course referring to United States Representative Earl Blumenauer from Oregon. Way before cannabis reform went mainstream and politicians started jumping on the bandwagon (which is fine), Earl Blumenauer was talking about cannabis reform with anyone that would listen.
Read that here.

South Dakota: adopt my template.


10/9/15

Ellsworth drone mission makes Rapid City a target

South Dakota's Republican senior US senator is crowing about the drone mission at Ellsworth Air Force Base being secure. But how safe are soft targets in Rapid City from a retaliatory strike?

Recall that the Boston Marathon bombers studied American right wing extremism before their attack.

South Dakota Republicans love the foetus but hate actual non-white, non-christian children discarding them as collateral damage.
"We're seeing problems in the MQ-1/9 community at both the major command and base levels that can be solved quickly," said U.S. Air Force Col. Troy Jackson, C2ISR Operations division chief and CPIP officer in charge. "Airmen in this career field are being exhausted with no end in sight; we want to fix this." [Rapid City Journal]
South Dakota's US senators trumpet success after prostituting stolen Lakota ground by bringing the current heavens-based smart-executor of civilian death, the Predator drone, to Ellsworth Air Force Base, cementing the continued commitment of South Dakotans to rain white phosphorus and dismemberment on children, women, and men of color for decades to come.

Ellsworth Air Force Base has begun practice-bombing parts of Montana, Wyoming, North and South Dakota. Damage to ranch land values, wildlife habitat and to quality of life is expected to be in the millions if not more. Can't wait for bombers to buzz Betty Olson's house.

Rapid City sez: fuck you, Mr. President; but, thanks for the dough.

US imperialism created the Somali refugee crisis where ISIL chickens are coming home to roost in Minnesota now Syrians are fleeing another Israeli/American war of aggression and taking its toll on American airmen in South Dakota and other remote locations.

But you know what scares me? Someone from Yemen, Afghanistan or somewhere rolling a truck bomb into Rapid City Central High School or the School of Mines after an Ellsworth-based drone pilot targets a wedding party or religious service.

It's just a matter of time until Hell comes to breakfast.

FLDS compound among Seiler's first chores

Despite my protestations President Barack Hussein Obama has nominated Democrat in name only Randy Seiler as US Attorney for the District of South Dakota.
Seiler actually was sworn in Tuesday in a quiet ceremony in Pierre by U.S. District Judge Roberto Lange, based on his appointment by U.S. Attorney Gen. Loretta Lynch.
Read the disappointing news here.

Maybe now he'll do something about interstate crimes.
Next Wednesday, Oct. 14, the state Water Management Board under the Department of Water and Natural Resources meets to decide on a permit application from the Fundamental Church of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) in Custer County. We would hope the board turns down this application because it is wrought with fraud. The secretive organization (we won’t call them a religion) attracted the wrath of neighbors by running their heavy equipment at all hours of the day and night. It’s characteristic of FLDS spokesmen to lie to us “infidels” who are non-FLDS members. They lied from the very beginning when their building permit application said they were going to construct a hunting lodge. We don’t need to have any more FLDS members coming to the Custer County compound. [Custer County Chronicle]
What should we expect in a county named for a war criminal?

Read more about religious freedom here.

Last month, God punished the polygamous sect with torrential flooding flushing the heathens down a local river just like Randy Seiler should do with Republicans in Pierre.

10/8/15

SHS as governor a waste of resources

It’s impossible for me to imagine either Stephanie or Max Sandlin living in a wasteland like Pierre.

But, if she does decide to plug her nose to move to Pierre in 2019 she needs to overcome her loss to a novice like Kristi Noem, would have to redeem herself by taking Kristi on again in the House race and serving in DC for a term could help her chances in the gubernatorial contest.

If SHS has learned anything it’s that she’s over getting into any election where she could lose. Her campaign would have to expose John Thune for the political opportunist he is and it would take a boatload of money to do that.

On Monday's 100 Eyes broadcast the conventional wisdom suggested that if SHS beat Noem in 2016 Kristi wouldn't run for governor in 2018.

South Dakota needs an executive who would go to Pierre, treat the sewage and flush the culture of corruption into Lake Sharpe.

Honestly? I believe there isn’t a single Democrat in South Dakota with the gonads to do that although Cory Heidelberger would make an excellent governor and he's used to living in shit hole towns like Pierre.

If Democrats want to make a difference in Pierre we should be twitter-bombing the White House to put a radical into the US Attorney’s office because Randy Seiler is sandbagging as acting USA for the District of South Dakota. Seiler lives in Fort Pierre so he’s been doused in SDGOP kool-aid.


10/6/15

Gant, Powers deleted files pertinent to Bendagate, Future Fund

Pat Powers is grousing about the lack of transparency in Moody County but helped to delete files on the EB5 scandal during his brief stint as a paid hacker for Jason Gant and the South Dakota Republican Party.

More SDGOP bilge is surfacing even as the rats abandon the sinking ship.

According to Shantel Krebs at least half a million documents have been deleted from the South Dakota Secretary of State's servers.
"I want to clarify that the corporations system or website was on an outside server. And it was not on the state's information and technology--state sanctioned and state secured--server," Krebs said. "We're sitting at about 90,000 of those documents reviewed so far; we started at the current year and are working our way backwards. We started at 2015 and we're done with 2014 and 2013 and we're working on 2012," Krebs said.
Read more about the crimes committed by Jason Gant and Pat Powers here.

The entire state system recently underwent a complete failure as files on the events leading up to the Westerhuis murders were being purged.

Krebs has also exposed Kristi Noem as a philanderer.

10/1/15

Harrisburg episode overshadowing Dakota Access ecocide

The hypocrisy of Republicans wanting to arm teachers while systematically ending funding for public education is simply barefaced drunkenness.

Entire front pages and trillions of electrons are being dedicated as hysteria grips southeastern South Dakota after a shooting incident at Harrisburg High School.

But Energy Transfer Partners and the Republican-owned South Dakota Public Utilities Commission are using that event to drown out its intent to commit ecocide after SDPUC voted against an environmental impact study of its Dakota Access pipeline route.

After watching how easy it is to pull the wool over SDPUC's eyes TransCanada is ending its efforts to engage landowners and has decided to go straight to Nebraska's GOP-owned Public Service Commission.

Man-camps in North Dakota are becoming ghost towns and Royal Dutch Shell is abandoning its efforts to drill in the Arctic in part because of tanking oil prices but one Republican donor continues its land grab in South Dakota.
The Dakota Access Pipeline’s permit hearing before the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission will last two weeks in Pierre and see testimony from landowners, pipeline representatives and commission experts. A march against the pipeline took place Saturday at Lyon Park. Opponents marched down Phillips Avenue to Falls Park, where speakers talked about the upcoming hearing and their concerns over potential leaks, water contamination and other issues. “We really want people to be aware of what’s going to happen with this pipeline hearing,” said Peggy Hoogestraat, a landowner and vocal opponent of the project.
Read more about Chris Nelson's conflicts of interest here and here.

Last cycle, Representative Kristi Noem enjoyed a $2500 face lift from Dakota Access' parent, Energy Transfer Partners, the Texas company that gave nearly $321,000 to Republicans and less than $27,000 to Democrats.

South Dakota can provide few skilled workers for such excessive ruin so labor will come from outside the state except for pimps exploiting women in the sex trade.

NorthWestern Energy, another client applying PUC lubrication after priming the election pump, is expecting to achieve orgasm at the hands of Nelson, Chairman Gary Hanson and Kristie Fiegen any minute now.

Note Iowa's Steve King was greased by Energy Transfer Partners. Value in that state's farmland is in free fall.

While prices slide, Charlie Hoffman likes the idea of condemning South Dakota land so a Canadian company can sell refined tar sands bitumen to China and Bakken crude can create jobs - for pimps.

As GOPers like don Juan Thune, Tike Mike Rounds and Krusti Noem plot how to jam the Keystone XL pipeline up America's armpit girls as young as ten are for sale in the Bakken.
Over the past six months, Forum News Service has investigated an emerging issue in the Bakken oilfield region of western North Dakota: sex trafficking, including the trafficking of children. We reviewed hundreds of documents and conducted more than 100 interviews with law enforcement officers, victim service providers, victims rescued from the sex trade and experts who have examined the issue regionally, nationally and internationally. In the past year, federal and state courts in North Dakota have charged seven people with offenses related to sex trafficking or felony facilitating or promoting prostitution. The cases involve allegations in Bismarck, Minot, Williston and Dickinson, including the case of one man who pleaded guilty to enticing women to travel to the “fracking areas” to work as prostitutes and two accused of operating brothels in Oil Patch cities. [Billings Gazette, links added.]
At least one South Dakota Republican calls it the "fed's war on energy" when it's really Big Energy's war not just on the Earth but on women and girls, too.

A quick google search finds no archaeological assessment has ever been done along the route in South Dakota by Energy Transfer Partners while some was done in Iowa. Other than uncovering human remains it begs the question: if approved, what other archaeological or paleontological finds could halt construction?

Remember the last time anyone in South Dakota won three awards for environmental reporting? Me neither.

Armed guards in schools but no archaeology cops to assess impacts to lands sacred to the first Americans is Republican hubris writ large.