11/30/15

Kelley talks Solarize South Dakota

Dakota Midday really is the only locally-produced program on Bill Janklow's idea of public radio worth listening to.

A taped broadcast of Charles Michael Ray's interview with Don Kelley can be heard here.

Former teevee host Ted Koppel has been an NPR contributor for decades and to pump his new book he sat for an interview on The Diane Rehm Show. Koppel is convinced that an inevitable cyber attack on the US could take down the grid for days, even months causing food shortages and mayhem.

Renewable energy strengthens communities in Indian Country.
The Interior Department has sent out $195 million in offers to landowners on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota and South Dakota. The $3.4 billion Cobell settlement provided $1.9 billion for Indian landowners who want to sell (pdf) their fractionated interests. DOI will pay "fair market value" as required by the Indian Land Consolidation Act. Participation is entirely voluntary. Any land that is acquired will be returned to tribes. [Indianz]
Ice storms routinely knock out electric power on reservations sometimes resulting in lost lives.
A college on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation will receive about $1 million in federal funding for a $2 million renewable energy project. The grant will be used to help install 636 kilowatts of solar power at five buildings at Sitting Bull College. Officials say the project should decrease short-term energy costs by 20 percent, saving about $74,000 a year. Standing Rock is one of 11 tribal communities slated to split up nearly $6 million in federal money for clean energy projects. The 3,600-square-mile reservation straddles the North Dakota-South Dakota border. [Associated Press]
Microgrid technologies are destined to enhance tribal sovereignty and free communities from monopolistic utilities.

Alleged Noem paramour turns over records

It's common knowledge that Kristi Noem has had intimate contact with men who are not her husband.
Lawyers for former Rep. Aaron Schock R-Ill. said Friday they are voluntarily providing records sought by federal prosecutors in order to avoid a “prolonged legal battle.” A grand jury subpoena was issued to Schock seeking campaign and congressional records the day before he resigned his Illinois congressional seat in March.
Read it here.

No, Aaron Schock is not gay but he is as corrupted as South Dakota's At-large Representative is.

Noem is famous for sleeping with the enemies of the good.

Big Government is when it helps the little guy but when it greases Republican donors it's essential services.

Democrats = safe. Republicans = cheap.

11/29/15

Cannabis effective treatment for autistic kids

Morbidly obese Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has signed a bill into law that authorizes parents or primary caregivers to administer edible cannabis to symptomatic children at school.

Exposure to genetically engineered organisms is believed to be a vector for the development of autism in afflicted foetuses but while some parents of autistic kids want politics to treat symptoms, some want results.
“Let’s say a new patient is an 11-year-old boy, weighs 75 pounds and suffers with severe non-verbal autism. The ACT Now software allows us to track patient-driven data in a HIPAA-compliant, cloud-based platform, so the physician or consultant can compare cannabinoid sequencing charts from a global database of matching patient conditions. “To make the medicine available to a wider population, we needed to take the project out of Colorado, because we couldn’t transport medication across state lines. That’s why we’re here in Ukiah,” says Chad Ruby, COO of United Cannabis. [Ukiah Daily Journal]
But in South Dakota quibbling over whom is qualified to treat patients is overrunning the discussion.
A task force spawned by a bill from the 2015 legislative session that mandates certain insurance plans cover a costly but effective treatment for children with autism is meeting in Pierre. The new law requires certain insurance plans to pay for applied behavior analysis therapy. [KSFY teevee]
Cannabis is effective therapy for diabetes, too.

The Cherokee Indian Tribe of North Carolina is considering legal cannabis.

In Republican households feeding junk food to kids alters the gut-brain connection: a leading cause of autism.
We won’t know for a while whether South Dakota voters will face a ballot measure that would change the criminal penalties for possessing one ounce or less of marijuana and marijuana paraphernalia. The LRC estimated there would be 3,174 fewer convictions annually, with an estimated reduction of prison and jail costs totaling $731,742 each year. [Bob Mercer]
Governments don't create autistic kids, Republicans and parents exposed to environmental contaminants do.

11/28/15

Criming while white: another christianic terrorist kills three

When Republicans like Carly Fiorina keep repeating hateful lies about "baby parts" expect somebody to act on it.
The news of the shootings Friday at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic spurred many officials and organizations to issue statements.
Read it here.

Speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast President Barack Obama counseled Americans to remember that christians are disproportionately guilty of genocidal atrocities.

What are your thoughts? Do the attacks in Colorado Springs change the game and has it forced the world to deal with the threat of radical christianic terrorists more seriously or aggressively?




11/26/15

Cops' lives suck: South Dakota home to nanny state fascism

Little wonder cops abuse their families, alcohol, drugs, food, power, detainees and even occasionally murder their wives.
Welcome to the land of “Weird Laws that Make No Sense,” where South Dakota lawmakers are apparently running a masters course in absurdity. The freedom to control what substances you decide to put into your own body; to move freely, unimpeded, across whatever arbitrary boundaries politicians have established; to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures; and without fear of excessive fines and cruel and unusual punishments. In a free society, smoking a plant in one part of the country, traveling to another, and then landing in jail for having a few of those plant metabolites still in your system, ought to be considered the height of “cruel and unusual.”
Read that here.

South Dakota's Republican Party blowhole has been pouring putridity over efforts of groups trying to put cannabis rights reform in front of the state's voters.

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.

While admitting he has just recently availed himself the services of a pawn shop Pat Powers is stumbling drunk through a nanny state minefield decrying proposals that would mean more consumer protection from predatory pawn brokers and quickie loan joints while upholding that same state's mandate to deny drug therapies to patients with life-threatening medical conditions.

Now he's bashing fellow Republican, Steve Hickey for being part of a drive to end predatory lenders.

Yes, the initiative and referendum processes are blunt instruments but they're the people's weapons to resist the tyranny of one-party rule.

Divining the alternate universe where Randy Scott still cruises the Moody County back roads while a Hellbent Bill Janklow serially lurks at every intersection in South Dakota's ideological landscape is one of the most flagrant examples of putting the best possible face on the decriminalization of Citibank's prospectus that has ever been perpetrated by an entrenched Republican spin machine.

It's becoming increasingly apparent that this phenomenon is no accident: it has been manufactured to make the state a corporatist tax haven for an exclusive set of Republican fascists while $2.5 trillion languishes in South Dakota banks.

When democracy is outlawed only outlaws will have democracy.

11/24/15

Gender dysphoria and autism linked to phthalates, ag practices

What happened to the good Republicans?

Quack Fred Deutsch and South Dakota's extremist legislature have declared a culture war on adolescents and teenagers.

No serious discussion of issues associated with gender identity can be undertaken without the studying the effects of phthalates and other plasticizers on human genetics.
And there are a great many chemicals to which such women may be exposed environmentally with the potential to affect thyroid hormones, among them PBDEs, PCBs, BPA, various pesticides, perfluorinated compounds and certain phthalates. [What are we doing to our children's brains?]
Packaging, packaging, packaging! Phthalate-laden bottled water alone makes up 1.5 million tons of plastic each year.

New analysis has revealed that consumption of sugary drinks results in some 184,000 deaths worldwide each year.

How Coca Cola, Archer Daniels Midland, and News Corpse have fattened themselves and us on sugar water is patently offensive and criminal. Drilling for the petroleum to make containers that end up in landfills is malicious and hateful especially when exposure to plastic can cause hormone changes that can lead to gender dysphoria.
A new study published in Social Science & Medicine suggests that taxation that depends on the number of calories or amount of sugar per liter may be the best approach and could even encourage manufacturers to produce and promote healthier alternatives. Last year, Mexico became the first country to implement a nationwide sugar-sweetened drink tax when it introduced a tax of one peso (around $0.07) per liter – about 10 percent of the price. As well as being a possible approach for sugar-sweetened drinks, this dose approach to taxation could also be effective at controlling unhealthy food consumption, and even fuel consumption.
Read it here.

Mexico has slowed its consumption of beverages with added sugar by taxing the industry.

Treating patients in a surge of obesity, doctors in the United Kingdom are urging lawmakers to pass a 20 percent tax to pay the medical costs to the national health care system.
Chicago consumers of soda pop, energy drinks and other sugary beverages would be taxed — at a rate of a penny per ounce — to curb soaring obesity rates, bankroll school physical fitness programs and chip away at the $30 billion pension crisis at the city and public schools, under a plan proposed Wednesday. [Chicago Sun-Times]
Autism is caused by faulty gut/brain connections even in nanny states like South Dakota. Genetically engineered sugar beet seed contributes to the spectrum disorder in kids.

Cannabis is an effective therapy for autism and it usually only kills by keeping it illegal. Hemp was made illegal in part by lobbyists hoping to build a plastics industry.

Advertising is a gateway drug; it should be subject to increased taxation, too.

I am not convinced that a person's sexual preference is determined at conception or at birth. I have lived with or near more LGBTQ people than many have and every story is different: from hatred of a parent to exposure to hormone-producing environmental contaminants and lack of circumcision. Women bullied or abused by men for most of their lives or men growing up with a cold or absent father have been reasons given for personal choices.

I began life left-handed but my father switched me because of his experience in the military which is geared for the right-handed; and, although I've never had sexual contact with another man so far in 61 years there was a time when androgyny seemed right for me.

This reporter has been chronicling gender bending chemicals in the environment from its beginning. Pfizer's war on humanity is being prosecuted by quacks like Fred Deutsch and their red state fascists.

Here are twenty ways to just say no to plastic.

The specter of Janklow operatives sabotaging Governor George Mickelson's plane still haunts me. Mickelson was South Dakota's last good Republican.

Bake a man a pie and he'll learn to divide by seven. Teach a man piety and he'll crucify the apples then say they died for his sins.

11/23/15

UNL study: ag responsible for uranium leaching into High Plains Aquifer

In a newly-completed study 78 percent of groundwater samples found with unsafe concentrations of uranium were also contaminated with nitrates from industrial agriculture.
The researchers from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln estimate that nearly 2 million people in California and the Great Plains live over groundwater that has been contaminated with uranium, which can cause health problems. Data from roughly 275,000 samples from two of the nation's largest aquifers — the High Plains aquifer and the Central Valley aquifer in California — were examined for the study. Those two underground stockpiles supply water for irrigation and many communities rely on the aquifers for drinking water. The High Plains Aquifer stretches underneath some 174,000 square miles in parts of South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Texas. [Mitchell Daily Republic]
At Crow Butte near the headwaters of the White River above Crawford, Nebraska Canadian-based Cameco, Inc. has obtained rights to use 9,000 gallons of water per minute to extract raw uranium ore through 8,000 holes bored into the Ogallala and Arikaree Aquifers.

The foreign miners have already pumped about half a billion gallons of radioactive waste water into disposal wells and have rights to bury more. Two years ago Cameco, the world’s largest uranium producer, paid a million dollar fine for environmental damage in Wyoming.
In 2011, the total water stored in the aquifer was about 2.96 billion acre-feet, an overall decline of about 246 million acre-feet (or 8 percent) since pre-development. Change in water in storage from 2009 to 2011 was an overall decline of 2.8 million acre-feet. The overall average water-level decline in the aquifer was 14.2 feet from pre-development to 2011, and 0.1 foot from 2009 to 2011.
The High Plains Aquifer, also known as the Ogallala Aquifer, underlies about 112 million acres (175,000 square miles) in parts of eight states Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming. The USGS, at the request of the U.S. Congress, has published reports on water-level changes in the High Plains Aquifer since 1988. Congress requested these reports in response to substantial water-level declines in large areas of the aquifer. --news release, US Geological Survey, links added.
A breach like one at the Gold King Mine in Colorado would send toxic, radioactive waste into the Oglala Lakota Nation and into the Missouri River.

Read more about indigenous action from Debra White Plume's piece at Indian Country Today.

The President of South Dakota School of Mines, Heather Wilson, is the Lydia Rodarte-Quayle of the state's crony capitalist meth lab. Wilson wants to bury radioactive waste in South Dakota.
To clinch the contract extension, Sandia labs officials hired high-priced consultants — including Heather A. Wilson, the former New Mexico congresswoman, who allegedly was paid $226,000 — to write up a “contract extension strategy.” Among the tactics allegedly suggested by Wilson was “working key influencers” by targeting then-Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s staff, his relatives and friends, and his former colleagues at another federal lab — all with the goal of keeping Lockheed Martin in charge of Albuquerque-based Sandia. Lockheed “engaged in deep and systemic corruption, including paying Congresswoman Heather Wilson $10,000 a month starting the day after she left office for so-called consulting services that had no written work requirements.” [Washington Post]
Volcanic clays like bentonite mined near Belle Fourche make radioactive waste repositories such as the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, New Mexico possible. Workers at Wipp are threatening to strike shutting down the dump.

Bonus: the railroad from Belle goes right into Brookings, brought to you by Kristi Noem!

Huh, one of Heather Wilson's favorite benefactors, Albuquerque-based Valero Energy, gave Tike Mike Rounds $10,000 last cycle.

When Black Hills Corp. greases candidates like Heather Wilson while South Dakota's Board of Minerals and Environment makes conflicts of interest harder to find and the Public Utilities Commission is stacked with Republicans, the blur of the revolving door is vertiginous.

At least one South Dakota Republican calls it the "fed's war on energy" when it's really Big Energy's war on the Earth.
Debra White Plume (Wioweya Najin Win), Executive Director of Owe Aku, is an Oglala Lakota grandmother and water rights activist who is taking on Cameco, the world’s largest producer of uranium, near her homeland on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, in South Dakota. From traveling through the lands, providing training camps, speaking engagements, strategic planning meetings, prayer circles with the Cheyenne Nation, Lakota Nation, Diné Nation, Apache Nation, Annishanabe Nation (Canada), Gila River Nation and Palestinian allies, the message is out there to continue to resist, to engage, to empower, to act collectively, to never give up.
Read it here.
Powertech/Azarga proposes a uranium mine split between Fall River County and Custer County threatening water uses and availability in those areas. This project is loaded with red flags for both water and public health. The economic fate of the Black Hills is at stake. The EPA has proposed rules changes for In Situ Recovery to protect valuable water resources. They recognize that ISR activities use significant volumes of water and state "the ISR process does directly alter groundwater chemistry, posing the challenge of groundwater restoration and long-term subsurface geochemical stabilization after the ISR operational phase ends." They also acknowledge that the lixiviants used can liberate other elements, particularly heavy metals, and that the migration of these outside the production zone can potentially contaminate surrounding aquifers. [Letter, Rebecca Leas]
With uncanny accuracy Gary Heckenlaible predicted the failure of the Gilt Edge Mine south of Deadwood now a Superfund site. He was also a strong champion for reproductive rights and a valiant opponent of the Dewey Burdock uranium mine.


CIA, LBJ, George HW Bush conspired to murder JFK

If i could go back in time i'd kill baby Prescott Bush.

On 22 November, 1963, Central Intelligence Agency 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 during 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.

As we circle back to the events of 11 September, 2001 it's important to remember that had SCOTUS actually heard Bush v. Gore and ruled for Al Gore rather than upholding Jeb’s secretary of state the entire head-lopping W performed on the chain of command would have been avoided. Gore would have retained Bill Clinton’s security agency as the intelligence apparatus was connecting the dots Mossad and IDF were leaving ahead of the event. Angel would not have been in the air that day if the plot had been uncovered.

That the buildings were dropped into their footprints with explosives during what some describe as a coup is entirely plausible.

Yes, I believe that 1, 2, and 7 were "pulled." And, when you're appointed POTUS by your brother(s) or your father, you lop all the heads of those with whom you do not agree when you come to office because you're focused on deposing Saddam, the winner of the first Gulf War.

CIA analysts threatened to resign ahead of the attack because they knew they'd be blamed for the failures of the Bush White House.

Two Supreme Court Justices expressed regrets in the ruling that put a war criminal in the White House:
Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens said Thursday night that he’s come to the realization that the rationale behind the court’s Bush v. Gore decision that effectively decided the 2000 presidential election “was really quite unacceptable” because it differentiated between so-called “hanging chads” and “dimpled chads.” That distinction, he told a gala event for the liberal watchdog group Public Citizen in Washington, “violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.” All votes should have been considered the same way, he explained. Former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor recently expressed regret that the court had taken up the case at all, and Stevens said he was “pleased to hear” about O’Connor’s shift. [Alex Seitz-Wald, Salon]
No Middle East leader is more unstable than Bibi Netanyahu.

George Weasel Bush created the Islamic State and ordered troops out of Iraq at the end of his failed tenure.
They’re convinced because they interpret foreign affairs through the prism of Bronze Age biblical prophesy. Without getting bogged down in the colorful details of Christian eschatology, the story runs something like this: In order for Jesus to return and establish his Kingdom, the state of Israel must first be conquered by an invading army (preferably Persian or Arab) – because God says so. The unfortunate part (if you’re Jewish, at least) is that before Christ descends from the clouds, a holocaust of sorts must occur, resulting in the deaths of 2/3 of Israel’s people. For certain Christians, then, Israel must exist as a state (which is why they defend it so passionately), but it must also suffer immensely so that Christians can escape physical death in the form of the Rapture. [Salon]
Meanwhile, Senate Republicans are struggling to remain relevant.

Zionists, terrorists, war criminals: just a few truths being spoken to power.






11/22/15

Minnesota docs: end American football in public schools



Update, 1730 MST, a University of South Dakota coach is retiring ahead of his sport's descent into the dustbin of history: Sioux Falls Argus Leader.

............

Duh.
Dr. Steven Miles said an outright ban on youth football would be unrealistic. But he is among the first to recommend removing football from schools, where the pressure of school spirit or being the only kid big enough to play nose guard can rope players into a sport in which 5 percent to 20 percent of players suffer concussions each season. Miles, who has studied war crimes and torture, is surprised he hasn’t received more criticism, considering how Friday night varsity games are embedded in American culture.
Read it all here.

American football is a tool of fascism.

11/21/15

Ellsworth bragging about killing kids; drone pilots suffering 'the good kill'



America has become the Hamiltonian Empire Thomas Jefferson warned us about.

Peace is Our Profession? "War is an unbelievably profitable business." "MICHAEL HAAS: Yes, the term "fun-sized terrorists" was used to just sort of denote children that we’d see on screen."
Col. Gentry Boswell spoke for a half-hour and took questions for another half-hour Friday during a Black Hills Forum and Press Club event at the Hilton Garden Inn in Rapid City. “As you can see just from the number of weapons we drop, pardon the pun, but business is booming,” Boswell said.
Read more about the civilian massacre here.

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]
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 now it's taking its toll on American airmen in South Dakota and other remote locations.

President Thomas Jefferson warned that a standing army and the right to bear arms are mutually exclusive. He was also a reader of Thomas Malthus.

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


11/20/15

Hawks campaign scraping bottom

Few have ever thought Pat Powers was right about anything but he sure is spot on when it comes to Paula Hawks.

Hawks' sputtering campaign has been trolling me for money but she has said exactly zero about what most Democrats and young voters want to hear. Unless she says at least something about getting cannabis off Schedule 1 or says something new or refreshing her campaign is doomed.

If she had had any brains she would have focused on the Statehouse instead of jousting at a well-funded actress/whore like Krusti Noem.

Whining about Republicans while offering no alternatives is evidence of stupidity not leadership. As my dad would have said, "she's dead from the ass both ways."

The South Dakota Democratic Party should abandon the primary process and nominate their candidates at the state convention.

Shit or get off the pot, Paula.

11/19/15

Today's intersection: tribal economic development and Yellowstone bison

Tribes don’t want help from the State of South Dakota or any other western state unless it’s government to government.

Pay the tribes for the Black Hills, move BHNF out of USDA into Interior then give tribal governance over a new national monument that includes the national grasslands, Bear Butte and the Slim Buttes. Include land held by the US Bureau of Land Management.

Create wildlife corridors connecting those lands with others throughout the Greater Missouri River basin and release the 1000 bison Montana wants to kill into one of those corridors.

Here’s one plan:
This is offered as a remedy for buffalo overgrazing the Lamar Valley in Yellowstone National Park: Reintroduce overproduction of YNP bison to the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge and the adjacent Bureau of Land Management lands within the Lewistown District north of the CMR.
Montana is unique in the west for its federal land, coupled with YNP as our treasured source of pure bison, for reintroduction into the CMR. Since most of our federal land is leased to domestic cattle and sheep grazers at a low price of $1.69 animal unit month for a cow and calf or five sheep, it is only fair that domestic cows and sheep share the public grass with bison. The province of Saskatchewan has established two Canadian National Grasslands parks north of the U.S. border where brucellosis-free and genetically pure bison are being reintroduced.
We continue suffering from 27 years of poor management — through YNP boundary shooting by tribes and licensed shooters — after 58 percent of the bison were slaughtered in 1988-89. National disgrace and embarrassment due to lack of practical management continues while at the same time failing to manage bison numbers within YNP.
Bison populations can be controlled through bison reintroduction to the CMR, licensed fair chase hunters harvesting bison within the CMR and Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks managing the hunt. The goal is a sustainable number of bison in the CMR in balance with the production of native grasses and with domestic cattle and sheep.[LTE: Joe Gutkoski, president, Yellowstone Buffalo Foundation, Great Falls Tribune]
Corridors over public and private land to the Fork Peck, Crow, and Northern Cheyenne nations then into Wyoming's Thunder Basin National Grassland beyond to North and South Dakota merely takes the political will to do it.

Northern Colorado has just added a bison herd. The Oglala, Pawnee and Comanche National Grasslands are not far away.

The relatively small distance between the Canadian River and the Rio Grande reminded me again how the earliest humans, thwarted by glaciers, the dire wolf, and Smilodon on everything north of the Sangre de Cristos terminating at Santa Fe, blazed the Pecos Trail from west to east into The Great Plains to find an inland paradise teeming with prey. Human successes likely contributed to the extinction of those two species and most camelids some 11,000 years ago.

After the herds reach sustainable levels agreed upon by the stakeholders allow private and other public herds like the one at Wind Cave National Park with microchips to join the public herd and be harvested according to the market or population pressures. Hybrid herds should be assessed on a case by case basis and some individuals could join the main herd.

Steve Hickey gets it:
Step one isn’t an economic development task force as is evidence by why this well-intentioned idea is experiencing difficulties getting tribes to even come to meetings. Step one is the Truth and Reconciliaion Commission. If we want to move into a good future together we need to put the past on the table, and the present animosities and ongoing injustices. Natives culturally value honor and we think they value money like we do. [comment, Steve Hickey]
If SDGOP wants to interact with tribal nations it’s because there is federal money to funnel into the Governors Club.

There are three American Indians sitting in South Dakota's legislature.

The legislatures of Montana, South Dakota, Wyoming and New Mexico should be drafting cannabis compacts with tribes and pueblos, identifying needs, and raising the resources to rewild the West.

Weiland, Frankenfeld riding waambulance all the way to the bank

Of course, South Dakota is corrupt but nobody will ever do anything about it except whine.
According to a May poll, 91 percent of S.D. voters, regardless of political affiliation, support tough anti-corruption reforms like these. Protectors of the status quo and the special interests who support them are going to do everything they can to malign our effort. They will portray the proposal as something it isn’t. They will dismiss it as unrealistic. They will attack us personally. Our challenge is to stick to facts and principles, and pass a tough anti-corruption law that will transform that failing integrity report from an “F” to a sparkling “A” for excellence. If We The People – conservatives, moderates, independents, libertarians and liberals – do that together, if we approve the Government Accountability and Anti-Corruption Act, we can and will end status quo politics and restore integrity to South Dakota politics. [Rick Weiland, Don Frankenfeld]
Waaah, fucking waaaah and mail a check.

When 15 percent of eligible voters turn out for elections Rick and Don are just farting in the bathtub they're sharing.

Wake up and smell the cannabis, dudes.

East River? Who cares?

The Wanblee district should be in Oglala Lakota County then Jackson should be rolled into Haakon, Jones and Lyman Counties. Stanley and Sully should be rolled into Hughes. Mellette, Bennett, Todd, Gregory and Tripp should be one county. Dewey, Ziebach and Corson should be a county. Butte, Harding and Perkins should be one. Lawrence and Meade should be one, Fall River and Custer should be one.

The entire state should offer early absentee voting.

Fine. Stanley might be happier being in with Lyman and the others. East River is a dead zone.

you miserable bastardos. everything east of the missouri river is cleveland. sorry i even brought it up.

11/17/15

Award-winning RCJ cannabis series features Central City pioneer

The Gannett Company should buy Lee Enterprises which owns the Rapid City Journal and 45 other daily newspapers.

Media cripple Lee has presented its President's Award for News Excellence to a Journal series.

The July reports written and photographed mainly by Assistant Managing Editor Chris Huber with able assistance from Seth Tupper examined the debate over therapeutic cannabis in South Dakota.
The series featured on-the-record stories of people who feel compelled to break state law in order to obtain the relief they say marijuana provides them. The judges said the series "offers a very personal look into legal risks of those who use the drug and informative reporting intended to help frame a more intelligent debate on medical marijuana."
Read it all here.

Among the stories is Central City's Brad Morgan, who canvassed Deadwood for signatories to Initiated Measure 24. Brad and this reporter have been friends for twenty years.

His resilience and energy compelled the construction of my template for South Dakota's legislature to consider.

The State of Colorado is hiring a deputy cannabis coordinator.

Chart of the Week: Momentum Building for Marijuana Legalization Via Ballot Measures

11/16/15

Koppel: cyber attack on grid just a matter of when

Former teevee host Ted Koppel has been an NPR contributor for decades and to pump his new book he sat today for an interview on The Diane Rehm Show. Koppel is convinced that an inevitable cyber attack on the US could take down the grid for days, even months causing food shortages and mayhem.

Ice storms routinely knock out electric power on reservations sometimes resulting in lost lives.
A college on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation will receive about $1 million in federal funding for a $2 million renewable energy project. The grant will be used to help install 636 kilowatts of solar power at five buildings at Sitting Bull College. Officials say the project should decrease short-term energy costs by 20 percent, saving about $74,000 a year. Standing Rock is one of 11 tribal communities slated to split up nearly $6 million in federal money for clean energy projects. The 3,600-square-mile reservation straddles the North Dakota-South Dakota border. [Associated Press]
Microgrid technologies are destined to enhance tribal sovereignty and free communities from electric monopolies.

After a century of exploitation Black Hills Corporation has announced a $70 million dollar cathedral to capitalism in occupied Rapid City.

Several utilities are based in South Dakota because of the state's regressive tax structure. Meanwhile, the state just raised taxes on those least pay to pay them...again.

Getting off the grid now has never been easier and net-metering only gives control to corporatists: just do it.

Cops' lives suck: FBI kills Peltier art installation

Our Lady of the Arroyo took me to Bridge of Spies yesterday: a film that reminds viewers just how fucked up the American justice system can be.

Leonard Peltier is a Prisoner of War.
Born in Grand Forks, North Dakota, Peltier attended school in Flandreau, South Dakota and lived in Washington state for years. He has denied being involved in the execution-style killing of the FBI Special Agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams. But his accounts have varied and in his 1999 memoir, admits he shot his rifle during the shoot-out with the FBI agents while saying he didn't hit them. His son, Chauncey Peltier, said there is no evidence his father killed anyone. He has been exhibiting his father's paintings around the country to raise awareness about his father's attempt to gain a presidential pardon. [Pierre Capital Journal]
There is little doubt that South Dakota's attorney general, Marty Jackley, is grasping at the straws propping up the Janklow legacy after the Wounded Knee standoff that made Leonard Peltier a prisoner of war.

The opening of cell doors for some people convicted under federal law came up in an interview with Huffington Post.
President Barack Obama plans to grant clemency to federal offenders "more aggressively" during the remainder of his presidency, he said in a sit-down interview with The Huffington Post on Friday. "If we can get some action done at the federal level, that will make a difference in terms of how, I think, more and more states recognize it doesn't make sense for us to treat nonviolent drug offenses the way we do," Obama said. Commutations grant federal prisoners early release. [excerpt, Obama: I'll Use Clemency Power 'More Aggressively']
Calls of executive clemency for Peltier have been getting louder and a plea for his release sits at the tip of President Obama's pen.
Through 6 former Presidents and President Obama's 1st term in Office, Millions of Individuals world-wide (including Judges, Attorneys, Statesmen & Dignitaries) have rallied in support of Clemency for Wrongly Incarcerated Native American Human Rights/Environmental Rights Activist Leonard Peltier. [petition]
Only one American Indian was pardoned under the Bush regime. ProPublica's Dafna Linzer and Jennifer LaFleur reveal mostly unsurprising results (to me) of a study co-published in the Washington Post. Here is an excerpt from the first of two articles:
Blacks have had the poorest chance of receiving the president's ultimate act of mercy, according to an analysis of previously unreleased records and related data. Current and former officials at the White House and Justice Department said they were surprised and dismayed by the racial disparities, which persist even when factors such as the type of crime and sentence are considered. Obama officials believed changes in the pardon system could be made by executive order.
Former GOP South Dakota legislator, Steve Hickey of Sioux Falls has given voice to executive clemency for Peltier.

Leonard Peltier should be pardoned this year, Mr. President.

11/15/15

Would you want Denny Daugaard sitting on your death panel?

The best line of the Democratic debate in Iowa last night came from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when she said she wouldn't want Republican Governor Terry Branstad running her health care.
Clinton was asked about her previous support of a single-payer system that would require the government, instead of private insurers, to pay for health care costs. Clinton responded, saying the “revolution never came. I waited, and I’ve got the scars to show for it.” She called Obamacare a “great accomplishment” and said she doesn’t think “we should be defending it among Democrats. [Des Moines Register]
She certainly sprinted away from anyone else in the presidential field last night.

According to court documents released to the Associated Press Dakota Dunes-based slaughter house BPI was in the business clique that raised concerns about a state official that Brandstad tried to force from office.

When confronted with the specter of seven shotgun deaths linked to corruption in his office South Dakota Governor Denny Daugaard basically said, "shit happens."

Is that what you want from the executive running your health care plan?

South Dakota is still among the most corrupt in the US getting another’F’ in the State Integrity Investigation.

11/14/15

Thoughts on Paris attacks: radical christianity has murdered millions


Every war is a banker's war so when there is an attack against civilians always suspect a CIA/Mossad/IDF false-flag operation first.

Israel took organs from Palestinians.
Powerful new evidence emerged yesterday that the United States dropped massive quantities of white phosphorus on the Iraqi city of Fallujah during the attack on the city in November 2004, killing insurgents and civilians with the appalling burns that are the signature of this weapon. Ever since the assault, which went unreported by any Western journalists, rumours have swirled that the Americans used chemical weapons on the city. [Peter Popham, The Independent]
Recall that the Boston Marathon bombers studied American right wing extremism before their attack.

South Sudan was founded by christianic terrorists.

Governor Ronald Reagan used chemical weapons on students at Berkeley.
That the United States and Great Britain orchestrated the overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected prime minister in 1953 is well known, but it wasn’t until last week’s 60th anniversary that the CIA openly acknowledged its role in planning and executing the coup. The new level of candor should lead to a new level of reflection about the price of such over-reaches of power. Costly reverberations from the coup continue. [Editorial, Eugene, Oregon Register-Guard]
Yes, I believe that 1, 2, and 7 were "pulled." And, when you're appointed POTUS by your brother(s) or your father, you lop all the heads of those with whom you do not agree when you come to office because you're focused on deposing Saddam, the winner of the first Gulf War.

CIA analysts threatened to resign ahead of the attack because they knew they'd be blamed for the failures of the Bush White House.

Speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast President Barack Obama counseled Americans to remember that Christians are disproportionately guilty of genocidal atrocities.
A large number of independent studies have agreed that since the 9/11 mass murder, more people have been killed in America by non-Islamic domestic terrorists than jihadists. That fact is also apparent in the new SPLC study of the 2009-2015 period. Federal agencies must reinvigorate their work in studying and analyzing the radical right, helping law enforcement agencies around the country understand and counter the very real threat of domestic terrorism from the milieu that produced mass murderer Timothy McVeigh. [Southern Poverty Law Center]
Catholicism is hope like syphilis is charity.
We call it the European Invasion but modern academics have a more anodyne term, “Columbian Encounter.” Whatever you call it, the civilizations invaded or encountered left physical evidence on the land that far exceeds what could have been done by Native Americans in the numbers commonly thought to have lived in 1492. With the climate change crisis driving methods for measuring CO2 in the air far into the past, scientists got interested whenever CO2 spiked up or down. One spike downward coincided with the Columbian Encounter. The working hypothesis is that the CO2 went away because it was absorbed by the foliage that took over indigenous farms gone fallow when about 50 million people, farming 1.3 hectares per person, died as a result of the European Invasion. Like most crimes, the Columbian Encounter has left physical evidence, enough physical evidence to put the claims that the Americas held only small bands of nomadic hunters in the same category as denial of the Holocaust. [excerpt, Steve Russell, Indian Country Today]
The indigenous population at the time of European arrival in what is now the United Snakes was about 25 million: today it is around 2.5 million.

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.

According to historian Clay Jenkinson, Thomas Jefferson would be surprised that there are any American Indians still alive at all in 2015.

From a piece by Stephen Rex Brown in the New York Daily News:
A 15th century Catholic decree permitting Europeans to seize Indian land in the New World is a load of papal bull. That was the message Tuesday from the Onondaga Nation, which is calling on the new Pope to revoke the so-called Discovery Doctrine, which evolved from a papal decree written by Pope Nicholas V in 1455. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg cited the doctrine in a 2005 ruling against the Oneida Indian Nation. The ruling affirmed the government’s sovereignty over lands, even if they’re sold to an Indian tribe.
His Eminence is calling on his American flock to turn out Republicans for their belligerence on human-caused climate disruptions.
Pope Francis has apologized for the sins and "offenses" committed by the Catholic Church against indigenous peoples during the colonial-era conquest of the Americas. History's first Latin American pope "humbly" begged forgiveness Thursday during an encounter in Bolivia with indigenous groups and other activists and in the presence of Bolivia's first-ever indigenous president, Evo Morales. Francis noted that Latin American church leaders in the past had acknowledged "grave sins were committed against the native peoples of America in the name of God." St. John Paul II issued a sweeping apology in 2000 for the sins of the church in the past and in 2001 sent an email apologizing for missionary abuses against the aborigines of Oceania.
Read that here.
Another researcher, Bonnie Duran, an associate professor at the University of Washington, calls this a “colonial health deficit.” Not only does this new study illuminate the long-term effects of the suffering of Holocaust survivors and Native Americans, but it also suggests an intriguing avenue for future research: whether victims of other historic or ongoing genocides, such as America’s black and brown population or the millions of those killed in U.S. wars in the Middle East, also suffer from a colonial health deficit. [Native Americans Have ‘Always Known’: Science Proves Genetic Inheritance of Trauma]
The members of the Family Heritage Alliance aren’t christians, they’re christianic domestic terrorists raising money with hate speech.

How is one group’s defacing of a national landmark in New York Harbor a symbol of theocracy any different than the effect of white people defacing a natural landmark as a symbol of democracy in the occupied He Sapa?

1. The Army of God

2. Eastern Lightning, a.k.a. the Church of the Almighty God

3. The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA)

4. The National Liberation Front of Tripura

5. The Phineas Priesthood

6. The Concerned Christians

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.

if the expansion of the Powder River Training Complex ever gets off the ground. 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 now it's taking its toll on American airmen in South Dakota and other remote locations.

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?

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.

What are your thoughts? Do the attacks in Paris change the game and has it forced the world to deal with the threat of radical christianic terrorists more seriously or aggressively?


11/13/15

Holy Roman Kiddie Diddlers in heat of 'Spotlight'

The leader of the Roman Church is cleaning house of pederastic predators but is taking heat from Republicans for his stance on curbing human-induced climate change and from progressives for his intent to canonize a colonizer accused of raping children.
The upcoming release of a movie detailing the Boston Globe’s 2002 investigation into the Catholic Church’s cover-up of clergy abuse may bring up “horrific memories” for New Mexico victims of sex abuse, Santa Fe Archbishop John Wester said. In a recent letter to Archdiocese of Santa Fe priests and parishioners last week, Wester said that the movie “Spotlight” is a chance for the faithful to pray for abuse victims. New Mexico was at the center of similar scandals years before the Boston stories. The Diocese of Gallup, which serves a large part of the Navajo Nation in New Mexico and Arizona, filed for bankruptcy in 2013 as lawsuits mounted over claims of clergy sex abuse. [Albuquerque Journal]
After a cassock with ties to the Sioux Falls diocese resigned amid clergy crimes, jaws are dropping.
A day after the deadline for filing clergy abuse claims against the St. Paul and Minneapolis archdiocese, interim Archbishop Bernard Hebda described the number of victims who stepped forward as “staggering.” With the full list of creditors now in sight, the archdiocese will begin working in bankruptcy court with the victims’ committee, insurance companies and others to review the claims. Hebda argued that a speedy end to the bankruptcy proceedings is good for everyone. [StarTribune]

South Dakota's legislature is hiding clergy crimes while Minnesota is prosecuting predator priests. A Sioux Falls cleric is closely tied to Archbishop John Nienstedt, a defendant in the case.
Ramsey County Attorney John Choi on Friday criminally charged the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis for its "role in failing to protect children and contribution to the unspeakable harm" done to three sexual abuse victims of former priest Curtis Wehmeyer. Wehmeyer said he asked the archbishop a couple of times, 'Are you aware of my past? Are you aware of my record?' Wehmeyer said that Nienstedt brushed it off and replied, 'I don't have time to look into that stuff.'" [Minnesota Public Radio News]
Nienstedt is Chairman of the Board of Trustees for the University of St. Thomas where Sioux Falls Bishop Paul Swain serves on the Institutional Advancement Committee.  
Pope Benedict XVI appointed Paul J. Swain as the eighth bishop of Sioux Falls on August 31, 2006 and he was consecrated as Bishop of Sioux Falls on October 26, 2006. Bishop Swain previously served as a member of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee for the Protection of Children and Young People.--bio, Catholic Diocese of Sioux Falls.
Catholic congregations and South Dakota's legislature have engaged in obstruction of justice for decades.

Cops' lives suck: misconduct in PDs rampant

South Dakota would rather spend money on bad cops than on good teachers.
In a yearlong investigation of sexual misconduct by U.S. law enforcement, The Associated Press uncovered about 1,000 officers who lost their badges in a six-year period for rape, sodomy and other sexual assault; sex crimes that included possession of child pornography; or sexual misconduct such as propositioning citizens or having consensual but prohibited on-duty intercourse. "It's happening probably in every law enforcement agency across the country," said Chief Bernadette DiPino of the Sarasota Police Department in Florida, who helped study the problem for the International Association of Chiefs of Police. [Associated Press]
Right-wing extremists are attacking cops.
In Las Vegas on June 8, a man and a woman entered a local pizza restau­rant and shot and killed two Las Vegas Metro Police offi­cers, Alyn Beck and Igor Soldo, who were eat­ing lunch there. The num­ber of offi­cers killed by right-wing extrem­ists more than dou­bled in the 1990s, then increased by 50% more in the first decade of the 2000s. Five offi­cers have been killed by right-wing extrem­ists since 2011, not count­ing the Las Vegas incident.
Read more about the militant wing of the Republican Party here.

Flandreau, South Dakota is searching for a police chief for the fifth time in two years.

The Rapid City Police Department is enjoying a record arrest orgy.

Teacher merit pay would create the same corruption endemic in the South Dakota police industry. Policing for Profit through asset forfeiture bolsters the law enforcement/corrections industry: self-reliance or moral hazard? Get a load of the list of law enforcement agencies in South Dakota.

As hypocrisy reigns supreme at the highest levels of power in South Dakota residents endure Policing for Profit and civil forfeiture so the sitting governor can crow about his leadership and self-reliance while moral hazards pay the bills.

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

Kill video lootery alone and the need for all that police interdiction becomes a fraction of what it is now. Want property tax relief, South Dakota? Adopt my template.

11/12/15

Obese recovering drunk Bush-appointed activist judge slowing environmental protection

Last year through the US Environmental Protection Agency the White House moved to more closely identify the sources of non-point pollution. Despite a judge's ruling EPA is going forward with a new federal rule protecting small streams, tributaries and wetlands.

Republican Ralph Erickson was appointed U.S. District Court Judge by war criminal George W. Bush in 2003.
According to a 2007 profile in his law school alumni magazine, North Dakota Law, Erickson is a recovering alcoholic who at that time had been sober for 17 years. [Obscure N.D. judge takes lead role in fight over Obama rule]
As the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers seek to identify sources of pollution being created by industrial agriculture Erickson's preliminary injunction covers up instances of ecoterrorism being committed by GOP donors.
Similar requests for preliminary injunctions were denied by judges in West Virginia on Wednesday and in Georgia on Thursday who agreed with the EPA and Corps that the matter belonged before a federal appeals court. Attorneys for the EPA and Corps say the Clean Water Act is already unclear and that the revisions will clear up confusion stemming from Supreme Court decisions in 2001 and 2006 on which streams and wetlands fall under federal authority. Erickson acknowledged that implementation of the rule would provide increased certainty as to what constitutes jurisdictional waters because some people will be removed from the WOTUS definition, such as owners of an intermittent wetland more than 4,000 feet away from an established tributary.
Read more about the activist judge in the Dickinson Press.

The Waters of the United States legislation seeks to give authority to the EPA to use some teeth to enforce the rights of people downstream to have clean water even from some sources that the US Geological Survey has already identified as impaired.

The Corps of Engineers has always had purview over water that flows into bodies that can support navigation.

Nearly every moving stream, intermittent or not in South Dakota, has supported a pre-settlement human or European explorer pulling and propelling a canoe over it.

In South Dakota, once it leaves its source, all surface water that flows from or through private property is owned by the state.

Property owners can harvest and possess rainwater and with a permit can pump from aquifers; but, the moment runoff reaches another body of water outside that boundary, contaminated by whatever residue it encounters along the way, within state borders, it's the property of the State of South Dakota.

Unfortunately, in South Dakota, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources is governed by those same offenders and therefore effectively neutered.

Republicans and their toadies are decrying government overreach while WOTUS architects regroup for another round in Congress.
Senate Republicans charged Wednesday that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) relies too heavily on politics in its regulations and not enough on science.The accusation is one of the main reasons that the GOP is backing the EPA Science Advisory Board Reform Act, which would overhaul the membership and operation of the EPA’s main outside boards for scientific advice and for guidance on air pollution rules. The Obama administration has threatened to veto the House’s legislation. It has repeatedly said that the reforms are not necessary and would hamper the board’s important work. [The Hill]
South Dakota's Republican junior senator is chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee subpanel holding the hearing on the bill.

Politics is what happens when your own gored ox is added to the pork of congressional sausage-making.
The Obama administration is promising to rewrite its proposed Clean Water Act rule to ensure that farmers have clear guidance about what streams, ditches and ponds will be regulated. Speaking to the National Farmers Union annual convention in Wichita, Kansas, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said the final rule is being prepared for White House review, and that the administration still intends to complete it this spring. Her remarks won't satisfy the Farm Bureau. Don Parrish, the group's senior director of regulatory affairs, noted that the administration hasn't committed to any changes in the definitions yet. “What constitutes ‘destroy and pollute' in EPA's eyes are different from what farmers might think,” he said. [Agri-Pulse]
A transcript of McCarthy's remarks are linked here.
The EPA argues it isn’t expanding its authority, just clarifying it, and that the change will protect the country’s water supply. [Sioux Falls Argus Leader]
This year South Dakota's GOP congressional delegation is stumbling all over itself trying to protect donors like Monsanto and Syngenta from their accountability for the state's impaired waters.

Concern over the further contamination of shallow aquifers that supply water to a third of East River has caused the Clay County Planning and Zoning Board to table for the second time in as many weeks changing the county ordinances governing Confined Animal Feeding Operations or CAFOs.

Republican attorneys general from mostly red states, including a grandstanding Marty Jackley, sued to shield their campaign contributors from sunlight.

South Dakota deserves better than a GOP congressional delegation protecting their donors instead of guarding safe water, food and shelter for families.