Fox News personality Pete Hegseth was taught the importance of washing hands during an interview with South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem.
Hegseth, who has degrees from Princeton and Harvard, has notoriously argued against hand washing.
“I don’t think I’ve washed my hands for 10 years,” Hegseth said on-air in 2019. “Really. I don’t really wash my hands ever. I inoculate myself. Germs are not a real thing. I can’t see them, therefore they’re not real.”
On Wednesday, Noem praised hand washing as an alternative to vaccines.
"Still Pete, the number one thing that people can do to slow down the spread of a virus -- go wash your hands," she claimed, despite vaccines actually occupying the top of the list.
"Go wash your hands. I'm shocked by the amount of time that I have to go remind people of that," she said, as Hegseth appeared to roll his eyes.
In a tweet, Aaron Rupar captured the video of the moment:"
Kristi Noem: "The number one thing that people can do to slow down the spread of a virus -- go wash your hands." (Getting vaccinated and masking will do more to protect you from an airborne virus than washing your hands.)
Nincompoopery doesn't get much more Mel Brookesque than this. Pandemic or not, it's a good practice to wash one's hands, though stopping an airborne virus might be better affected through other means.
Photo: We'd shake Governor Kristi Noem's hand, especially if she were wearing those oddly spotless gloves. Hegseth? Pandemic or not, we're not getting near this one.
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We were especially fond of her role as Rose Nylund, St. Olaf, Minnesota's woman of the year. The role and her daft stories reminded me of many of the storytellers I listened to as a child. White herself was from Illinois, but the silly riffs rang true to this former Minnesotan.
She was just a few weeks from her 100th birthday.
Here's one of the St. Olaf, Minnesota, stories, the Great Herring War:
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When member of Congress go rogue, the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) is supposed to step in. It’s an independent and non-partisan panel established by the House in 2009, tasked with investigating misconduct and making referrals to the House Ethics Committee. When lawmakers cooperate, that is. And increasingly, they’re not.
In 2021, 14 House lawmakers were referred to the OCE for investigation. Six of those 14 absolutely refused to cooperate with the investigation, a rate of 43%, which has never happened before. In its first year, the 111th session of Congress in 2009-10, it carried out 68 investigations and just three members refused to cooperate. This fall, OCE was investigating improper financial conduct in four separate cases, and two of the members—both Republicans—flatly refused to meet with the investigators or provide any requested documents. That’s how it works these days, apparently.
The two Republicans are Rep. Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania and Rep. Jim Hagedorn of Minnesota. Kelly is being investigated for stock purchases by his wife that investigators say are tied to his work in Congress. Hagedorn is accused of steering federal contracts to companies his staffers’ relatives own. Kelly’s office didn’t respond to The New York Times’ request for comment, but Hagedorn’s attorney said they were bypassing this non-partisan independent committee and working directly with the House Ethics Committee, where House colleagues are in control.
Photo: Congressman Hagedorn, front left, red shirt) at a campaign event in Rochester.
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The main takeaway from Wednesday's meeting? Subpoenas have been issued to officials who investigated Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg's September 2020 killing of Joseph Boever--and those called will give public testimony on January 18 and 19.
A House impeachment committee will subpoena officials who investigated Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg's involvement in a fatal crash.
The move came following a second day of the committee meeting behind closed doors Wednesday with its special counsel.
The committee wants the officials to testify Jan. 18 and 19, during the second week of the legislative session. The committee said the testimony will be open to the public.
The House Select Committee on Investigation wants to hear from Department of Public Safety Secretary Craig Price. Committee members also want to hear from other officials who investigated the 2020 fatal crash that took the life of Joseph Boever.
House Speaker Spencer Gosch says the committee spent two days sifting through information provided by the executive branch. Gosch says committee members also discussed what they want Special Counsel Sara Frankenstein to pursue.
“We continued the review of the large investigative file that was provided to us by the Department of Public Safety,” Gosch says.
Earlier this year, Ravnsborg pleaded no contest to two misdemeanor traffic offenses stemming from the fatal crash. A spokesperson for Ravnsborg was not immediately available for comment.
The impeachment committee's main task is crafting a written report that will recommend whether House lawmakers should impeach Ravnsborg. If the House votes to impeach, the Senate will decide whether to remove Ravnsborg from office.
The committee is poring over materials gathered from investigations surrounding the crash. Those materials include hundreds of documents and hours of video and audio. In November, House lawmakers voted to eventually make the investigation materials public. The committee will meet on Jan. 17 to discuss redactions.
This is the state's first-ever impeachment proceeding against a statewide officeholder.
The South Dakota legislative committee considering the impeachment of state Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg in connection with a fatal accident decided to broaden its investigation into the matter, Wednesday, Dec. 29.
The nine-member Select Committee on Investigation met over two days in the Capitol building, almost entirely behind closed doors. The committee came back into public session late Wednesday afternoon and unanimously voted to expand its request for additional information from Ravnsborg and subpoena a number of officials and investigators involved in the original investigation.
Those the committee will subpoena will include Department of Public Safety Secretary Craig Price, who oversaw the investigation into Ravnsborg, several investigators and a crash reconstruction expert.
The committee will next meet Jan. 17-19. . . .
The meeting of what's technically known as the Select Committee on investigation, is the latest event in a saga begun by what happened on a South Dakota highway the evening of Sept. 12, 2020.
In August, Ravnsborg pleaded no contest to two misdemeanor unsafe driving charges related to the collision. In September, he reached a confidential settlement with Boever's widow, Jenny Boever, avoiding a potential civil suit.
While the collision had put Ravnsborg in potential legal peril, it also made him persona non grata to many state elected officials. Gov. Kristi Noem, a fellow Republican, called on Ravnsborg to resign or face impeachment.
Ravnsborg, who is a state official directly elected by voters and doesn't report to the governor, has steadfastly refused to resign and is instead running for a second term as attorney general. Opposing him in a Republican primary is Marty Jackley, the former attorney general and one-time candidate for governor, who was defeated by Noem.
An October poll of South Dakotans found strong support for the removal of Ravnsborg by the Legislature, showing 67% strongly or somewhat supporting removal, with 14% opposed and 19% undecided.
A bipartisan legislative committee voted to broaden its investigation into Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg on Wednesday following two full days of meeting behind closed doors.
The House Select Committee on Investigation passed four motions unanimously in its quest to reach a decision about whether Ravnsborg should be impeached by the full House surrounding his actions during and following a Sept. 12, 2020 accident in which he struck and killed Joe Boever.
The motions allow the committee, through its special counsel, Rapid City lawyer Sara Frankenstein, to begin a discovery process to collect additional evidence, including interrogatories of Ravnsborg and others involved in the investigation.
The committee also voted to subpoena several law enforcement officers involved in the investigation to testify before the committee in open session on Jan. 18 or 19. They include Craig Price, the secretary of the Department of Public Safety, two investigators from the North Dakota Bureau of Investigation who helped South Dakota, a South Dakota state trooper and John Daly, accident reconstruction expert retained by the state.
Another motion authorized Frankenstein to subpoena documents from the Department of Public Safety, Daly and the Hyde County State’s Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted Ravnsborg and ultimate agreed on a plea deal in which the attorney general agreed to plead no contest to two misdemeanors.
A spokesman for Ravnsborg did not reply to a message for comment.
What’s clear, coming out of Wednesday’s conclusion of the two-day meeting, is that the committee of nine House members has an immense amount of work ahead.
The committee was originally scheduled to meet in executive session – behind closed doors – all day Tuesday and the first half of Wednesday before opening to the public. But the closed portion of the meeting stretched into Wednesday evening while reporters and members of the public, including Nick Nemec, Boever’s cousin, waited in a hallway outside the Capitol room where the committee was meeting. . . .
Photo: Ravnsborg's Taurus, via Rapid City Journal. From the New York Times' transcription:"“We know that his face came through your windshield,” one investigator said. The vehicle also had an imprint from at least part of the man’s body on the hood, an investigator said, adding that “at some point he rolls off and slides into the ditch.”
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We first saw a link to Philadelphia Inquirer photographer Charles Fox's moving feature, 'I had to be prayed home,' on the personal Facebook page of Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate Enemy Swim district chair Crystal Owen.
Go read the feature--it's a disturbing story of a government plan of forced assimilation that ripped through indigenous families and communities. And it's a moving story of families who found their relatives.
Or didn't. As my next-door neighbor--a SWO citizen who adopted three Dakota brothers out of the foster system--said midday, "There are still a lot of family members out there."
While visiting the Tekakwitha Nursing Home to sing for residents, 13-year-old Denise Owen was led away from the rest of her boarding school group by a nun. A special surprise awaited her.
There, in another room in the Sisseton, S.D., facility, was her newborn sister, Rose Anne. Denise got only a glimpse of the infant, lying in a bassinet in a long-sleeve shirt and a diaper, before another nun ordered her to leave. Denise was not supposed to see her sibling, soon to be adopted.
It would be 50 years before they saw each other again.
Rose Anne, who would be raised by a Glenside dentist and his wife, became a child of the country’s American Indian adoption era, a decades-long forced assimilation of Native children first established under the Indian Adoption Project, which started in 1958 and evolved to include 50 private and public placement agencies across the United States and Canada, where the so-called Sixties Scoop was coined to describe the mass removal of children from Native homes. During the next 20 years, almost 13,000 Native children would be adopted. . . .
According to a 1969 report by the Association on American Indian Affairs, between 25% and 35% of all Native children were placed in adoptive homes, foster homes, or institutions; and about 90% of those children were being raised by non-Natives.
That was the case for Rose Anne, who, at the age of 3 months, was handed over to Salvatore and André Petrilli. The white couple of Italian and Irish descent had struggled to have their own biological children, and it was André's interest in American history and a phone conversation with a priest from St. Joseph’s Indian School in Chamberlain, S.D., that led her to seek a Native adoption through Catholic Charities.
Eventually, a new birth certificate reflected the new name of Kelley Elizabeth Petrilli, the child of two Caucasian parents. Her American Indian heritage was wiped away on paper. A Montgomery County Orphans Court clerk with the last name of Custer gave the final stamp of approval to the adoption.
Just as boarding schools that began in the late 1870s were meant to assimilate Native children, so was the goal of the 1960s and ’70s adoptions. Rather than dealing with government-induced problems developing on reservations — including crushing poverty and lack of working utilities and sustainable quality child care — government programs focused on adoption for the growing Native population. It was a strategy that redirected the financial responsibility to the private sector and created a savings of approximately $100,000 per child compared with what it would cost to send them to boarding school, according to researcher David Fanshel in a study for the Child Welfare League of America. . . .
‘Love doesn’t provide identity’
Kelley Petrilli, now Kelley Bashew, did not suffer a childhood of abuse. The Petrillis provided a loving, middle-class home with summer vacations, Phillies season tickets, a backyard treehouse, and private schools. Eventually, the couple would have five biological children, but Bashew was always told she was “the chosen one.” However, she always knew she was different, and felt isolated in white suburbia.
“You’re an Indian! You’re an Indian!” one of her cousins would taunt. “No, I’m not!” Bashew would scream back, a denial that still embarrasses her and causes her pain.
“When I was younger, I wanted to be white. I still feel guilt about that,” said Bashew, who lives in Meadowbrook. “I just wanted to fit in and be like my sisters. … I did not like being tall and brown and different.”
Bashew’s adoptive parents never hid her Native American heritage. She was taken to powwows in the Philadelphia region, and books of Native American history and folktales were in the home. Yet at school, in the predominantly Irish and Italian Catholic Melrose Academy in Elkins Park and later at Germantown Academy, Bashew’s image wasn’t reflected in anything in her environment.
“Even in loving families, Native adoptees live without a sense of who they are,” White Hawk explained. “Love doesn’t provide identity. Because through adoption, we are living away from our homelands, away from our communities, away from our families. We don’t have a sense of who we are as an Indian person. We only have a sense of survival and making it work and trying to fit in.” ...
When Bashew turned 50 in 2013, her friend Robert Graham encouraged her to explore her Native roots and biological family. She expected arduous research and hiring a private investigator, but with the help of Graham and fellow Dakota adoptee Adrian Grey Buffalo, she quickly found and was soon put in touch with her mother — Lillian Owen, then 87 years old — and eight living siblings.
Bashew made her first return to Sisseton in the Lake Traverse Indian Reservation that July. The journey was without qualms or nervous apprehension for Bashew. However, most of the siblings did not know about their youngest sister, as Lillian, now 96, continues to keep the details of that painful chapter to herself. That meant for one of her older sisters, Crystal Owen, the discovery was “shocking.”
Her mother’s house was filled with 20 relatives when Bashew walked in.
“I was just drawn to [my mother]. … I knew I was supposed to be there,” she recalled.
The two hugged and cried. . . .
Bashew was prayed for before she was taken to Pennsylvania, before she felt the isolation in white culture. And she said she had long felt and experienced the guidance and protection of the ancestors who had preceded her. In Native philosophy, life is a circle and not linear. It had taken decades, but now she said her circle was complete.
When Bashew went to the Lake Traverse Indian Reservation in 2013, her visit coincided with the final day of their Sundance, the annual ceremony of sacrifice and healing.
Hearing the Dakota language for the first time brought her to tears. Sitting beside her mother and seeing her sister Crystal dance brought a healing as it stirred something deep in her soul. She now had the desire to absorb and learn about her culture and to be part of her people, the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate.
“I think that’s the peace I’ve been looking for my whole life,” Bashew said. “I have given so much to the wasichu [white man’s] world. Now it’s time for me to go back there to learn who we are and all the things I missed.”
Lenny Hayes, 52, who like Bashew is a Dakota from Sisseton, spent a childhood in foster homes. He was raped by older male students in a Native boarding school as a 10-year-old. He is now a mental health therapist helping those, especially in the Native LGBTQ community, who suffered similar traumas.
When he dies, Hayes says, he wants to have a sit-down with the Creator and ask him why he had to experience such hardships. He still carries the scars of his childhood, and the healing process continues. He has learned, however, how to cope in a way that is not self-destructive.
“I don’t hate the people who have hurt me. Because if I hate them, it also prevents me from healing. ... I’ve also had to learn to forgive myself,” Hayes said. “Forgiveness is about you. It’s not about the person who did the harm to you.”
Read the entire article at the Inquirer.
Photo:Kelley Bashew was born Rose Anne Owen in Sisseton, S.D., but was adopted by Salvatore and André Petrilli, a suburban Philadelphia dentist and his wife.CHARLES FOX / Staff Photographer.
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On Monday, the Minnesota Court of Appeals issued this nonprecedential opinion:
A21-0857 Northeastern Minnesotans for Wilderness, Respondent, vs. Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, et al., Respondents, Twin Metals Minnesota LLC, intervenor, Appellant. Affirmed. Judge Michael L. Kirk. * Ramsey County District Court, Hon. Laura Nelson.
Opponents of Twin Metals Minnesota LLC's plans to mine copper, nickel and other minerals from a deposit on the outskirts of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness notched at least a modest win Monday, as the Minnesota Court of Appeals affirmed the public's right to seek further review of the state's current mine-siting rules.
Those rules ban nonferrous mining in both the Boundary Waters proper and in a buffer zone surrounding it. However, they do not preclude nonferrous mining in the area that Twin Metals aims to develop at Birch Lake near Ely.
In a statement issued Monday, Becky Rom, national chair of the Campaign to Save the Boundary Waters, hailed the ruling, saying: "The Boundary Waters is a national and state treasure. Today's strong legal decision by the Minnesota Court of Appeals clears the way for a much-needed examination by the state of whether the nation's most-toxic industry should be allowed in the same watershed as America's most-visited wilderness."
One of the group's chief concerns is the prospect of harmful sulfides from the copper-nickel deposit leaching into the water system and surrounding environment.
But Twin Metals contends its mine would pose little risk to the environment. In a statement, the company said: "The underground Twin Metals mine will have minimal surface impact, and utilize dry stack tailings management, which is lauded by environmental groups and endorsed by more than 140 NGOs (non-governmental organizations) as the gold standard for tailings management in the mining industry." . . .
A Minnesota appellate court affirmed Monday that a wilderness advocacy group has standing to challenge state rules restricting copper mining sites.
The ruling means that Northeastern Minnesotans for Wilderness' efforts to block a proposed copper mine near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness can continue.
Minnesota's 29-year-old nonferrous mining siting rules prohibit mines in the Boundary Waters but allow them along waters that flow into the popular outdoors getaway. The wilderness group filed a lawsuit in June 2020 arguing the rules should be amended to prohibit mining along waters that flow into the area as well.
The lawsuit is designed to block Twin Metals Minnesota's plans for a massive copper-nickel mine in the Rainy River Headwaters. The wilderness group fears run-off from the mine would flow north into the Boundary Waters. . . .
The Star Tribune also ran the Associated Press story.
We're pleased with the court's decision.
Photo: "Two paddlers make their way down the Kawishiwi River near Ely. The group American Rivers has again named the Kawishiwi one of the 10 most endangered rivers in the U.S. because of the potential of polluted mine waste from the proposed Twin Metals copper mine. Forum News Service file photo" via Minnesota court upholds group's right to challenge mine-siting rules near Boundary Waters.
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The slow motion impeachment process in the case of South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg takes additional steps in South Dakota, just as seasonably cold weather descends on the Rushmore State.
I’ll suggest casually that the committee’s attorney, Sara Frankenstein, is really our attorney, working on our dime. We the people are the clients, and we’d like to hear what our attorney and our legislators have to say about impeaching the Attorney General.
On the good side, the House Select Committee’s agenda indicates the legislators will not adjourn Wednesday until 5 p.m., suggesting we could get three and a half hours of open discussion of the fate of a statewide elected official who killed a man through recklessness over fifteen months ago and remains in office enforcing laws that he broke.
Frankenstein does indeed work on the public dime. [end update]
A select committee of South Dakota House members will meet this week to begin deliberating whether Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg should be impeached for striking and killing a pedestrian last year.
The nine-member committee will have access to the evidence collected by investigators when it meets Monday and Wednesday.
"This will be the first dive into it," said Rep. Jamie Smith, D-Sioux Falls.
The meeting starts at 10 a.m. According to an agenda posted Monday, the first day will be conducted under executive session under an attorney client privilege. The first half of the second day will also be under executive session. Wednesday the committee could take action.
Ravnsborg struck and killed Joe Boever on the night of Sept. 12, 2020, near Highmore while returning from a political dinner in Redfield. . . .
House Speaker Spencer Gosch appointed the select committee, which will have access to the evidence and make a recommendation as to whether the full House should consider impeaching Ravnsborg, whose term as attorney general ends in a year.
Smith said he anticipates getting an overview of how the proceedings will work and setting up how the committee will deal with the evidence.
"I don't anticipate coming to a conclusion in two days," Smith said.
Rep. Jon Hansen, one of the nine members, said he doesn't have a feel for what the committee might recommend. To him, it matters whether Ravnsborg was driving on the shoulder of Highway 14 at high speed when he struck Boever.
"Honestly, it comes down to where he was on the road," said Hansen, a Dell Rapids Republican and the House speaker pro tempore.
When he reported the accident, Ravnsborg said he was driving in the middle of the highway, but investigators contend he was on the shoulder.
A two-day session on whether impeachment articles against Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg begins Tuesday.
A majority of the proceeding will take place behind closed doors.
The group is looking at Ravnsborg's conduct following a fatal car crash that left South Dakota resident Joseph Boever dead. The attorney general pleaded no contest to two misdemeanors.
The committee appointed Rapid City attorney Sara Frankenstein as special counsel for the group.
Republican Speaker of the House Spencer Gosch says the meetings will be discussions between the committee and its attorney.
“Our special counsel will be there. As with everything, this will be the first meeting with have with our special counsel,” Gosch says. “So, we just need an opportunity to sit down and discuss matters with her and how to proceed forward.”
The first day of the House Select Committee on Investigation will be in executive session. At the end of day two the group will convene publicly for discussion and further action.
Gosch says these two meetings are only the beginning for the impeachment inquiry.
The legislative panel analyzing whether to recommend the impeachment of South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg will work in secret for much of the next two days.
The special House committee on Monday posted an agenda that shows executive sessions for all of Tuesday and for Wednesday morning.
The panel of nine representatives is scheduled to return to open public session at 1:30 p.m. CT Wednesday for “discussion and any action to be taken with regard to discovery.”
This will be the group’s first gathering since its organizational meeting November 10, according to its chairman, House Speaker Spencer Gosch.
Earlier talk had pointed to the House deciding whether to impeach yet this year and the Senate taking up a possible trial either before or during the first week of the 2022 legislative session that opens January 11.
Asked whether he expected the committee would have a recommendation prior to January 11, Gosch indicated there’s no timetable at this point. “Due to the unprecedented nature of this process, any predictions would be pure speculation,” he told KELOLAND News.
A vehicle driven by Ravnsborg struck and killed pedestrian Joe Boever on the night of September 12, 2020. Boever was walking on the shoulder of U.S. 14 at the west edge of Highmore. Ravnsborg never appeared in court and had his defense attorney plead no-contest to two second-class misdemeanors. He settled out of court with the widow, Jenny Boever.
The House passed a resolution November 9, 2021, establishing the investigation committee. This is believed to be the first time that the South Dakota Legislature has taken formal steps toward impeaching a state official.
The resolution calls for legislators who aren’t committee members to have access to anything the committee gathers or receives. Said Gosch, “As for materials, we will abide by the resolution that was passed during special session.”
The committee recently hired Sara Frankenstein, a Rapid City attorney, to serve as its legal counsel.
The South Dakota Constitution lays out the steps for impeachment, including a requirement that a majority of House members are necessary for an impeachment and a two-thirds majority of senators for conviction.
Governor Kristi Noem has called repeatedly for Ravnsborg to step down and urged the House to take up impeachment if he doesn’t.
We'll continue to keep up with this story, however long it takes to unfold and reach the public.
Photo: Ravnsborg's Taurus, via Rapid City Journal. From the New York Times' transcription:"“We know that his face came through your windshield,” one investigator said. The vehicle also had an imprint from at least part of the man’s body on the hood, an investigator said, adding that “at some point he rolls off and slides into the ditch.”
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. . . Speakers also used the memorial to advocate for current issues plaguing Native Americans.
Mary Kunesh, the first Indigenous woman elected to the Minnesota Senate, led a task force that focused for 18 months on investigating cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women. The effort culminated this year with a 163-page report to the Legislature and creation of a statewide Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives Office.
Several others lamented the imprisonment of Leonard Peltier, who for 44 years has been behind bars for his alleged involvement in the 1975 killing of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Peltier says he was present for the shoot-out, which also left one Native American dead, but steadfastly denies having killed anyone.
Riders carried a staff made for Peltier and had a moment of silence to pray for the man whom human rights groups designate a political prisoner. A 77-year-old diabetic with heart problems, Peltier has grown increasingly frail in prison.
Finney and others hope the chosen theme of Reconciliation Park, “Forgive everyone everything,” resonates as the Dakota seek to rebuild their culture.
“If you hear my voice,” Finney said, “you are my relative.”
Let's hope Peltier is freed soon.
Photo: Todd Finney, a Wahpekute Dakota, said reconciliation relies on the Dakota concept Mitakuye Oyasin, which translates to "We are all related." Jordan Smith/ from the Mankato Free Press.
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For the past several weeks, we've been watching videos in a private Facebook group that chronicles the Dakota Wokiksuye Memorial Ride/Dakota 38 +2 Memorial Ride. (Video about ride here). The "soundtrack" for these are mostly prayers sung to drums. Those prayers merged early this morning with songs and voices from South Africa when we woke to news of the death of Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
That merged chorus reminded us--a somewhat lapsed member of the Episcopal Church/Anglican Communion--of Tutu's engagement in the calls for the release of Leonard Peltier.
The international Leonard Peltier Defense Committee Twitter account noted the connection:
Native writer, chief judge and member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota of the Oceti Sakowin Ruth Hopkins was direct in calling for President Biden to honor Tutu's wishes:
Archbishop Desmond Tutu has passed away. What a loss to humanity. Wopida (thank you) for being a strong Native ally.@POTUS@VP Please honor his wishes & release his dear friend, Native political prisoner Leonard Peltier. #FreePeltierpic.twitter.com/4BkSeM2HHo
— Ruth H. Hopkins (Red Road Woman) (@Ruth_HHopkins) December 26, 2021
We agree. Readers on Twitter should re-tweet Hopkins' call for Peltier's release, as well as following her on Tweeter. We also recommend contacting the White House directly.
Photo: Desmond Tutu, via the BBC.
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We're reading news stories that dispel the myths about electric vehicles, especially in cold weather, but it still may be difficult to buy a Ford F-150 Lightning without a reservation.
ALEXANDRIA, Minn. — In the next few decades, millions more Americans are likely to drive electric vehicles instead of the internal combustion engine-driven ones most get around in right now.
But with public charging infrastructure still patchy in rural Minnesota and the Dakotas and significant battery life reduction in frigid temperatures, many in the region may wonder how practical electric vehicles are during the coldest months of the year.
With the average range of vehicles soaring over the last decade and improvements to heating systems, the range issue is becoming less relevant by the year. The Environmental Protection Agency estimated the average electric vehicle topped 250 miles of range in 2020.
Newer vehicles in the $50,000 range will top 300 miles on a full charge, meaning a driver will be able to travel long distances even in the coldest of conditions.
Electric vehicle owners Tyler Bundy of Starbuck, Minnesota, and Brian Kopp of Dickinson, North Dakota, say they are often met with skepticism about their vehicles’ performance in the winter. Bundy, an IT network technician who frequently travels to South Dakota and Iowa for work in his 2021 Tesla Model 3, says cold weather should not be a concern if you have the right model.
“(It’s) not as bad as people like to think it is as long as you make sure to preheat the car beforehand — but that goes for any car," he said. "It handles well and it heats up much quicker than my gas car before."
"You could probably get 200 miles of range out of it if you baby it, but in the winter with winter tires and snow on the ground it is 120 miles on a good day," he said.
Kopp, an electric vehicle advocate who lives in western North Dakota not far from the heart of the Bakken oil patch, owns a computer business and spends his days traveling around the region visiting clients. He says cold is mostly irrelevant to his travel planning as his Tesla Model 19S travels more than 200 miles on a full charge in frigid conditions. In warmer weather, it gets around 330 miles, he said.
It was much harder to get across North Dakota in an EV a few years ago before rapid charging became more widely available in the state. Recently Tesla installed rapid charging stations every 100 miles on Interstate 94, opening North Dakota up to more travel.
Jukka Kukkonen, chief EV educator and strategist for Shift2Electric, a Minnesota-based EV consulting company, said electric vehicles have come a long way in the past decade. When Kukkonen’s family started driving electric vehicles in 2012, they had a range of only 73 miles in ideal conditions. As of 2021, an increasing number of vehicles have ranges of 200 or even 300 miles. . . .
Read the rest at any Forum newspaper.
Photo: Tyler Bundy of Starbuck plugs in his Tesla electric car at a charging station in the Target parking lot in Alexandria on Dec. 9. Lowell Anderson / Alexandria Echo Press.
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We'll be back posting on Sunday, December 26, but are taking a break to enjoy some time with Mike and his family.
Merry Christmas to all who celebrate.
See you on Sunday.
Photo: Historic buildings at Fort Sisseton Historic State Park. When it was still Fort Wadsworth, Mike's great-grandfather was one of 200-plus Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota who were scouts for the United States Army. There's a holiday lights drive through tonight and Christmas night, from 7-11 p.m. According to the event page, "There will be a food pantry drop off site for nonperishable foods and a mailbox to drop off letters to Santa, law enforcement, first responders and military personnel. "
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The state Department of Natural Resources did not fully comply with federal environmental review procedures for a planned, off-road vehicle park in Houston, Minn., according to a federal highway official.
The lapse, explained in a memo obtained by the Star Tribune, happened during the land acquisition phase of the slow-developing project and doesn't disqualify it from continued federal support. But now that the procedural gap has been investigated by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), officials are focused on the upcoming possibility of an expensive environmental review that lacks a pre-ordained funding source.
Houston City Council Member Cody Mathers said this week that the developments could galvanize local opposition to a plan long nurtured by DNR and the city as a regional playground for riders of ATVs, side-by-sides, Jeeps and dirt bikes. The DNR has said southeastern Minnesota is bereft of off-highway vehicle trails on public land and City Hall sees the would-be park as a sweetener to the local economy.
"We've learned that some steps were missed,'' Mathers said. "I guess it kind of confirms what some of the opposition has been saying.''
Critics say the proposed complex of 7.5 miles of trails and a "rock crawl'' area would invite noise pollution and environmental damage to a delicate, erodible piece of land that includes a rare section of bluff prairie, habitat for timber rattlesnakes and signs of other valuable resources.
Karla Bloem, a naturalist who previously worked at the DNR, said she blew the whistle on the Houston Trail project for what she considers wide-scale environmental neglect. She poured over government documents dating back to the project's origin in 2009, finding that the DNR bought land for the motorized trail complex without first clearing environmental review hurdles tied to the acceptance of grant money from the highway administration.
"This whole thing would have taken an entirely different route if DNR would have coordinated with federal agencies from the start,'' said Bloem, executive director of the International Owl Center in Houston.
Her campaign against Houston Trail is focused on the steeply sloped site, not against ATV riders. Besides ripping the DNR for side-stepping the federal level of environmental review tied to FHWA grant money, she has publicly shamed DNR for ignoring resource-protection concerns voiced by the agency's own field staff.
"This isn't about minor paperwork,'' Bloem said.
One of her examples is a recommendation from Lisa Joyal, DNR's endangered species environmental review coordinator. In 2011, Joyal advised her agency that any off-highway trail planning should completely avoid two areas on the site: A rare native remnant of "dry bedrock bluff prairie'' and a natural forest of red oak, white oak and sugar maples. Nevertheless, Bloem said, the trail complex was designed to tread across both areas.
Bloem is part of a grassroots group in the Houston area that started a "Save our Bluffs'' lawn sign campaign. This summer, the organizers circulated a petition signed by 400 people requesting that the City Council cancel development of Houston Trail. The signatures constituted 59% of the voting population, Bloem has said. . .
Read the rest at the Star Tribune.
For a taste of some of that local sentiment, check out a couple of letters to the editor of the Fillmore County News. There's Russell Smith's Let’s rethink the Houston OHV trail:
The OHV trail proposed for Houston’s South Park is extremely unlikely to yield any significant financial benefit for the community.
I’ve taught marketing and marketing research for 28 years, currently at Winona State University; I’ve also conducted a good deal of tourism-related research. Over the years I’ve seen my share of wrong-minded tourism development that degrades nature and disrupts communities, always with prior assurances of a financial payoff that never adequately compensates for the loss of natural habitat, the loss of a community’s quality of life and the loss of opportunity to pursue other more promising and suitable alternatives. An abundance of credible research on this topic has provided best practice do’s and don’ts for small town and rural tourism development. My recommendation for Houston’s OHV trail is ‘don’t.’ . . .
Normally, we could expect the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to oversee the interests and well-being of all parties involved in this issue, but it seems that much of this oversight is being delegated to OHV clubs and associations, groups that now bill themselves as “experts” in trail development and management. Our problem is that these groups are now targeting the bluffs of Southeast Minnesota. As it turns out, this is highly desirable real estate. Bluffs provide more exciting trails that challenge increasingly powerful machines designed to penetrate deeper into rugged terrain. In order to achieve their expansion goals, club “experts” have assured environmentalist that the local wildlife will scarcely know they’re around. City councils and rural administrators on the other hand, are more interested in the financial payoff, and the clubs are only too happy to predict impressive economic benefits in order to close the deal. Problematically, these benefits may be overstated to say the least. . . .
I have a degree in biology, have lived in Houston County my whole life, and have done environ-mental education programs on the proposed Houston OHV Trail site for 15 years.
Com-paring the Iron Range OHV Recreation Area in Gilbert and the Appleton Area Recreational Park to the proposed Houston OHV Trail is a bit like comparing apples to tomatoes. They may seem outwardly similar, but they’re very different.
The Gilbert area is built on an old iron mine and Appleton in an old gravel mine. Houston’s proposed location is a relatively undisturbed, naturally vegetated bluff with one of the rarest habitats in the state, at least two threatened species, four species of special concern and seven species of greatest conservation need. The soils are classified as highly erodible. . . .
Despite these concerns, the DNR has chosen to do no formal environmental review for the trail alignment.
There is also an old lime kiln in good condition, from around the 1880s, in close proximity to the entrance trail. It is made of dry stacked stones on a steep hillside, and very susceptible to damage from erosion or direct vandalism.
The City of Houston already has tourism, with significant plans for growth. According to the Minnesota State Trail User Count 2018 Report, 11,435 people used the Root River Trail at mile marker 35 in 2017. In 2019 (pre-COVID) the International Owl Center had 12,619 visitors to their center. In comparison, the Gilbert OHV area (which is 36 miles long compared to Houston’s 7.5 miles) had about half that many visitors based on data provided by the DNR. Tourism will grow considerably when the new Owl Center facility is built, with annual visitation estimated to be a minimum of 40,000 people/year (based on research by the University of Minnesota.)
Noise is a far bigger issue here. The closest trails to the nearest rows of houses in Gilbert and Appleton are 0.8 miles away. In Houston they are just 0.2 miles away, elevated on a bluff.
Trail construction and maintenance are critical to success. Gilbert is owned and maintained by the DNR, Appleton by Swift County, and Houston’s would be owned by the city but maintained entirely by volunteers.
The opposition to this project is not new, nor just “a few people.” There was a petition back in 2013. This year a new petition requesting the cancelation of the project was signed by 400 people, although more were opposed and uncomfortable signing. This represents a minimum of 59% of the city’s voting population, 24 business owners, 24 non-resident property owners, and 35 adjacent landowners.
According to the 2017 Minnesota Outdoor Activities Survey, 95% of respondents participated in hiking/walking outdoors in the past year, 65% biked, 54% canoed/kayaked/paddle boarded, while only 36% rode an OHV vehicle. Although OHVs are a fast-growing segment, OHV recreationists are still dwarfed in numbers by the traditional silent sports with a small environmental footprint.
The City’s ability to obtain non-OHV grants from the DNR in the future would not be impacted if the City withdrew from this project (according to DNR grant staff.) They also would not likely be required to repay half a million in grant dollars received… the DNR attorneys are reviewing what the consequences of withdrawing would be.
There are solid facts and much research that stand behind those who want to protect our bluffs in Houston. We aren’t against OHV trails – just this location.
The name Karla Bloem rang a bell for us and we remembered that she is the Executive Director of Houston's International Owl Center, a most delightful organization. We're guessing that the Center isn't getting into this fight--but we're citing her leadership as evidence that her objections come from a strong understanding of her region's natural resources.
Photo: The proposed Houston Trail project in the Driftless Area could be headed for more environmental review; photo supplied to the Star Tribune by Karla Bloem.
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South Dakota media sources are reporting that the consideration of the evidence collected by investigators will be considered next Tuesday and Wednesday by a select committee of nine South Dakota House members.
A select committee of South Dakota House members will meet next week to begin deliberating whether Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg should be impeached for striking and killing a pedestrian last year.
The nine-member committee will have access to the evidence collected by investigators when it meets Dec. 28 and 29.
"This will be the first dive into it," said Rep. Jamie Smith, D-Sioux Falls.
Ravnsborg struck and killed Joe Boever on the night of Sept. 12, 2020 near Highmore while returning from a political dinner in Redfield. The accident was initially reported as a deer strike, but Ravnsborg discovered Boever's body the next morning.
He pleaded no-contest to two misdemeanors in August related to the accident.
House Speaker Spencer Gosch appointed the select committee, which will have access to the evidence and make a recommendation as to whether the full House should consider impeaching Ravnsborg, whose term as attorney general ends in a year. . . .
Rep. Jon Hansen, one of the nine members, said he doesn't have a feel for what the committee might recommend. To him, it matters whether Ravnsborg was driving on the shoulder of Highway 14 at high speed when he struck Boever.
A committee conducting an impeachment inquiry into Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg is meeting.
The group is looking at Ravnsborg's conduct following a fatal car crash that left Joseph Boever dead. The attorney general pleaded no contest to two misdemeanors.
The impeachment inquiry is focusing on the conduct of Ravnsborg following the fatal crash. The group will meet Tuesday and Wednesday at the Capitol in Pierre.
Democratic State Rep. Jaime Smith, of Sioux Falls, says he expects the committee will meet more in the future.
"I think we're going to be setting up what we're going to do and begin to go through the process," Smith says. "I don't believe we're going to come to any conclusions in those two days."
Smith expects portions of the meetings will be open to the public. Other aspects will be behind closed doors.
The committee will focus on a written report, which will eventually go to the House of Representatives with a recommendation of whether to impeach.
This is the first time in state history that lawmakers have opened an impeachment inquiry into a constitutional officer.
Photo: Ravnsborg's Taurus, via Rapid City Journal. From the New York Times' transcription:"“We know that his face came through your windshield,” one investigator said. The vehicle also had an imprint from at least part of the man’s body on the hood, an investigator said, adding that “at some point he rolls off and slides into the ditch.”
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After outlining South Dakota's child care crisis in a three-article special report (links at the end of this article), South Dakota News Watch now looks at the solution.
South Dakota isn't alone in its child care crisis, though the contours of that crisis vary across the United States.
Here's the YouTube of the discussion by the expert panel South Dakota News Watch assembled that's discussed in the article.
Gov. Kristi Noem wants to spend $100 million to boost child care offerings across the state, but experts say it will take more than a one-time government investment to expand access to quality daycare for working parents in South Dakota.
South Dakota is facing a child care crisis in which working parents have few options for placing their children during the workday. At the same time, child care has become increasingly expensive and is out of reach for some parents.
The lack of reliable child care is forcing some parents to leave the workforce, exacerbating a worker shortage in the state and potentially slowing economic development and job growth.
Noem’s budget proposal, which would require legislative approval, includes $100 million in one-time federal funds to encourage employers to open daycare centers for their employees and for scholarships to help students train in child care fields. Department of Social Services Secretary Laurie Gill said $60 million of the governor’s proposed funding would initially go toward “stabilization grants” to aid existing daycare providers when they apply for state registration.
Rebecca Wimmer, formerly CEO of the Boys & Girls Club of the Sioux Empire, said daycare providers are grateful for the governor’s spending proposal, but said fixing the broken child care system in the long term will require financial support as well as creative thinking and new partnerships among government, community groups, employers and daycare providers.
“Some of that one-time funding can help stabilize things in the short term, but if we’re looking long term, though, we’re going to need something that is a little more robust,” Wimmer said. “It’s not going to get fixed overnight, but that one-time funding can help prop things up while we really focus on what those long-term solutions will be.”
Wimmer, who will soon take a child development position within the Sioux Falls school system,spoke as part of an online panel discussion hosted by South Dakota News Watch on Dec. 16 in which four daycare experts from around the state examined the child care crisis and offered potential solutions.
Overall in South Dakota, there are about 73,000 children under age six, but only an estimated 34,500 child care slots, according to a recent analysis by South Dakota Kids Count, a nonprofit data research group.
The child care shortage is particularly challenging for families in South Dakota, where almost 75% of children under age six have both parents working. The reduced daycare access and increasing prices come as the state is facing a workforce shortage, both inside the child care industry and among many other employers.
The lack of access to affordable, high-quality child care could stymie future economic growth, said Rich Merkouris, pastor of King of Glory Church, who sits on two Sioux Falls organizations that seek to improve child welfare.
“If our workforce shrinks, the new businesses that are coming to South Dakota are going to have to relocate somewhere else,” Merkouris said. “If we want to provide an environment for businesses to flourish, we’re going to have to provide good, affordable, safe and education-based child care.”
Merkouris suggested that employers, most whom have resisted opening internal child care centers for employees, should try to find ways to create a child care benefit similar to health or dental insurance for workers.
“Employers at the end of the day are going to get creative in doing what they have to do to recruit talent,” he said. “They’re going to have to find some unique ways to potentially provide a child care benefit.”
Merkouris also suggested that the state may want to revise some elements of the ongoing child care assistance program in order to provide more daycare access for single parents, among others.
Merkouris said South Dakota elected officials must accept that government programs play a critical role in providing child care to low- to moderate-income families and likely will need to be expanded to end the crisis. Merkouris said that failing to provide good-quality child care can make children less prepared for kindergarten, which can slow their entire educational progress into adulthood.
“The reality is that the public is already involved in this space in South Dakota,” he said. “There is a financial outcome if government is not involved … sometimes fiscal responsibility actually is providing a program that allows that child to become a contributor in the years ahead, rather than paying for that on the back end.”
Pigeon Big Crow, who runs the child care program for the Oglala Sioux Tribe on Pine Ridge, said reservation communities are continually seeking ways to expand access to child care and improve the quality of early education for children.
Big Crow said tribal governments continue to have a great need for federal child care assistance and funding of daycare programs, but said future child care expansion would benefit from private investment on reservations as well. Right now, however, a lack of available buildings is deterring such investment, she said.
“Someone would have to have the capital to come in and construct here, because right now there’s not enough facilities in this area,” she said. “I’m sure a lot of our rural areas in our state might have the same issue.”
Big Crow said tribal communities rely heavily on in-home providers of daycare, and suggested that improved financial and logistical support could encourage more at-home providers to open.
The governor’s proposal to encourage more students to consider child care as a career choice is a long shot right now, with daycare workers underpaid compared with employees in much easier jobs in the workforce, said Rachel Talich, an in-home daycare provider in Murdo.
“If you spend a year or two in college to get paid $12 or $13 an hour, I don’t know if there’s a huge benefit to that,” Talich said. “At what point do you say, ‘I’m not going to be able to make ends meet by doing this as a job.’”
Financial support from government or industry will also be needed to encourage development of new daycare options in small towns or rural communities, Talich said. When she considered opening a child care center in Murdo, Talich said the only building available would have cost $200,000 to buy and renovate. Talich also said one-time funding may help the industry now but is unlikely to improve daycare access in the long run.
“If we shove a bunch of money at something, does it serve us long term?” she said. “It fixes the problem now but what do you do in 10 years and the center can’t stay open because they don’t have the funds? That’s a discussion that also needs to be had.”
Talich also said that the paperwork involved in running a state-licensed child care operation is unwieldy and that the approval and inspection process could be streamlined.
Merkouris added that the state should take steps to encourage development of more in-home daycare providers that are often less expensive than center-based care.
“We need to make sure we’re providing regulation and functional government oversight that works for both settings,” he said.
Wimmer suggested that the K-12 public school system could also play a larger role in finding creative ways to expand after-school child care offerings for working parents. She said a major goal is to make child care accessible to families of all income levels, not just those who can afford center-based care at market rates.
Ultimately, Wimmer said, to improve access to affordable, high-quality child care, South Dakota needs input from all facets of the child care system, including parents, providers, employers and government.
“Dreaming together as a community on how we can make things better is the first step to finding a solution,” she said.
A tape of the panel discussion, part of the ongoing “South Dakota Matters” series of statewide polls and panel discussions hosted by News Watch, is available for viewing on the News Watch Facebook page.
Photo: Staff and children enrolled in the Oglala Sioux Tribe Child Care and Development Program prepare medicine bags of sage to take home in spring 2020, before the pandemic shut down in-person care centers across the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Photo: Courtesy OST Child Care & Development Program/ Via South Dakota News Watch.
Financial contributions can be made to South Dakota News Watch here.
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The White Earth Tribal Court heard arguments in a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against the state of Minnesota Monday, which centers on the tribe’s allegations that the state violated the rights of wild rice during construction of Enbridge’s Line 3 oil pipeline.
The case raises complex legal questions and has garnered international attention as part of the “rights of nature” movement. Here are answers to your questions about the lawsuit.
How did this case begin?
In August, the White Earth Nation sued the state in tribal court, arguing the Department of Natural Resource’s decision to allow Enbridge to remove nearly 5 billion gallons of water during Line 3 construction violated the rights of wild rice, which is a sacred food for the Ojibwe, and the rights of the tribe.
Soon after, the DNR sued the tribe in federal court, arguing the tribal court didn’t have jurisdiction over the case. A federal judge dismissed the DNR’s suit, and the agency appealed.
What is the court deciding?
Both the federal appeals case and the tribal court case are ongoing. The federal appeals court heard arguments in the case in mid-December and will make a decision about whether the DNR can be sued in tribal court.
Separately, the tribal court is considering the allegations in the August lawsuit that the DNR’s decision to issue the dewatering permit to Enbridge harmed wild rice in Lower Rice Lake. The tribal court judge said Monday that they would issue an order as soon as possible, but the exact date is uncertain.
What arguments are each side making?
The state isn’t taking a position on the tribe’s claims, instead arguing that the suit in tribal court should be thrown out entirely for a couple reasons: First, that the DNR and its officials have sovereign immunity and cannot be sued in tribal court; and second, that the court doesn’t have subject matter jurisdiction.
The tribe says there are exceptions to sovereign immunity that allow state officials to be sued in tribal court. Since the state officials took actions that affected the well-being of the tribe, they can be sued in tribal court, said attorney Joe Plumer, who is representing White Earth in the case.
When a judge asked Plumer to explain exactly how the tribe has been affected, Plumer said they don’t know the full scope of potential consequences yet. They’re concerned there may be aquifer breaches or spills along the route that haven’t been discovered, he said.
Plumer said the court should deny the state’s immunity argument so they can move on to fact-finding as part of the legal process and, eventually, determine appropriate remedies.
“We’ve not addressed anything other than the subject matter jurisdiction and the immunity that the state is raising. We have not had an opportunity to develop the facts,” Plumer said.
Rilyn Eischens is a data reporter with the Reformer. Rilyn was born and raised in Minnesota and has worked in newsrooms in the Twin Cities, Iowa, Texas and most recently Virginia, where she covered education for The Staunton News Leader. She's an alumna of the Dow Jones News Fund data journalism program and the Minnesota Daily.
Photo: People opposed to Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline trekked through a marsh to a site where the pipeline will cross the Mississippi River on June 7, 2021. Photo by Rilyn Eischens/Minnesota Reformer.
Copy used with permission, under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. If you appreciate the reporting at the Minnesota Reformer, donate here.
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Not too long ago, Minnesota First District Congressman Jim Hagedorn, who voted against the federal infrastructure bill, was carrying on in the op-ed pages of the Mankato Free Press about how he actually favored "real infrastructure;" see In Response: Southern Minnesota needs real infrastructure
I grew up in Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District, and I spent most of the past two decades in Washington D.C. working as a transportation planner and participating in shaping federal transportation policy. Not once did I hear infrastructure referred to as 'real' or 'true' by anyone, anywhere along the ideological spectrum.
Why? Because infrastructure has bipartisan support. Or at least it did.
The 2005 federal transportation bill (SAFETEA-LU) was authored by a Republican, and it passed in the House 412-8. The 2012 bill (MAP-21) was also authored by a Republican, and it passed 373-52. The 2015 bill (FAST-ACT) was authored by a Republican, and it passed 359-65.
Finally, we get to 2021, and the bill, which was authored by a Democrat, passed the House 228-206. The Republicans who crossed the aisle were the iconoclasts and a few moderates from where the infrastructure is the oldest and in poorest condition.
Rep. Jim Hagedorn didn’t record a vote when the bill was introduced in the House, he was a "nay" when the House amended its version to match the Senate’s bill, and he doesn’t seem to sit on any committee which has jurisdiction over transportation.
Transportation projects can take years or even decades to complete. They can outlast political careers.
Almost always a lack of funding and not the "misused and lengthy regulatory and permitting processes" is the reason projects take so long. The federal transportation bill is chronically underfunded, and the Republican alternative does nothing to address that problem.
I am pleased as anyone that our district received a $25 million grant for the Highway 14 corridor project. What’s not mentioned is that these discretionary grants are often handed out to vulnerable incumbents so they have something to write home about.
The rest of the project — and any other projects that happen in our district — will continue to be paid for by vehicle registration fees, sales tax on a new car purchases and the gas tax.
So fill ‘er up, pay for some more roads, and just ignore the rooster who crows and takes credit for the sunrise.
In light of the moral panic over Critical Race Theory, we're concerned that the American history taught in public schools is going to be reduced to the sort of white-washed blither favored by the schoolmen of the 1840s, fake founders quotes and all.
At the Alexandria MN public school board meeting on Monday night, Lori Gibson, a mother in an interracial marriage, sought to address her worries that the manufactured fear and rage over Critical Race Theory might erase the factual history of bans on interracial marriage in many American states.
Many attending the school board meeting didn't want to hear it.
Here's the video of the incident, from Parents United 206; the embedded video is coded to start at Lori Gibson and ends with the video. It's not clear whether Gibson's testimony went on any longer, as the video itself fades to black after someone in the audience says, "Time's up."
Lori Gibson, whose children attend school in Alexandria, tried to speak to school board members about critical race theory, or CRT, but was repeatedly interrupted by others in the audience.
She contacted the Echo Press Tuesday morning with her concerns, stating that “when a mother comes to a meeting with simple prepared remarks to express concerns about the erasure of history uncomfortable for white people to hear, but is heckled and harassed to the point of needing to excuse herself and request a police escort to her vehicle, it’s a problem.”
Gibson said she was further harassed and actually threatened on her way out.
“Are we no longer able to speak if we don’t agree and how do we feel about sharing those thoughts with people willing to threaten and intimidate. How long before someone gets hurt?” she said in her email.
She shared her prepared comments with school board members Tuesday morning, as well as with the Echo Press. Below is the full prepared statement she had planned on reading to the school board, but was unable to.
“My thanks to the school board for keeping kids in school, even in the midst of rising COVID numbers. I have significant, genuine concerns about our new school board member. As Ms. Eigen ran for this seat, she referenced ‘CRT’ incessantly and consistently. When engaged in dialog about this topic, she was unable to provide examples of how this played out in our district, just claimed that ‘it’s taught, it’s just not called CRT,’ and was unable to provide an example of her definition of ‘CRT’ generally.
“She insists her greatest concern is children of color viewing themselves as ‘victims.’ This is condescending and insulting to families like mine, given her lack of experience or education on the topic. Her words are nearly verbatim the published words of the Heritage Foundation, Center of the American Experiment and other far-right political groups bent on making the banning of their manufactured definition of ‘CRT’ relevant to public school curriculum discussions. Ms. Eigen posted on social media about ‘training’ she received from the Center of the American Experiment.
“Perhaps she doesn’t understand even recent examples of racism in our country. A relationship between people who looked like my husband and I would not have been allowed in more than 20 states when I was a child. On June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Loving versus Virginia against the state, making clear the 14th amendment was violated by the law. Seventeen states had to rescind their laws against interracial marriage. We celebrate it as Loving Day.
“Would it surprise her that in November of 2000, Alabama’s State Constitution still held a ban against interracial marriage, and its state Legislature clung to it as a symbolic statement of the state's views on interracial marriage? As recently as 1998, Alabama State House leaders successfully killed attempts to remove it. Voters finally had the opportunity to remove the language in November 2000, but the outcome was close, with 59% of voters supported removal of the language and 41% favored keeping it.
“I’m very proud to say Minnesota is one of only nine states that has never had a ban of any kind on interracial marriage. This is one of the reasons I am concerned with curriculum denying discussion of these issues. It’s important to discuss the ways systemic racism shapes the laws in our country, how far we’ve come, and to consider what would happen if we pretended it didn’t exist in any of our legal systems, and how important having federal law is with regard to the constitutional rights afforded everyone in our country.
“I request that appropriate representation for children and families of color are immediately placed on any curriculum-related committees if they aren’t already there, and that no board members committed to the cause of race-denying political groups be assigned to these committees. People of color deserve equitable consideration in the telling of their history, heritage, current experiences and hopes for the future.”
Gibson began by focusing on statements made by Maureen Eigen during a recent special election. Gibson had opposed Eigen's candidacy; the Echo Press published a letter to the editor from Gibson, Eigen's choices create concerns about her candidacy for Alexandria School Board, which focused on Eigen's October 25 "Health Freedom" event featuring " Dr. Bob Zajac, a pediatrician whose medical license is currently conditioned by the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice." Zajac objects to a variety of vaccines.
We are concerned about the stalking horse of CRT as it resides in the heads of those who don't want the history of ability of couples to marry taught in schools in any state. The United State Supreme Court found in 1967 in Loving v. Virginia that anti-miscegenation laws violate the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. That's a great lesson about the Constitution.
Some of those who didn't want to hear Gibson object to mention of "Alabama" and note it's 2021. With the final objection, we have to wonder how for the person who shouted it, any mention of the past could be brought up in a classroom.
Photo: "In 1958, shortly after their wedding, Mildred and Richard Loving were arrested in their Virginia home by local police for the crime of being married. Richard was white. Mildred was black and Native American. ...Virginia's Racial Integrity Act of 1924, like laws in fifteen other states at the time, prohibited interracial marriages among white and black people. Richard and Mildred were convicted for violating this law and were banished from Virginia. After several years of exile in Washington, DC, they decided to challenge their convictions with the help of two young attorneys with the ACLU...." Via Episode 3: Loving v. Virginia.of Heightened Scrutiny a podcast about the Supreme Court's landmark civil rights cases.
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An environmental group is calling out a new arm of the North Dakota government for allegedly mismanaging its conflicts of interest when it convened last week to recommend more than $160 million in state funds for fossil fuel-sector grants and loans.
The Dakota Resource Council, a conservationist group, raised concerns about the handling of conflicts of interest on the Clean Sustainable Energy Authority in a letter sent to the state Ethics Commission and Gov. Doug Burgum on Monday, Dec. 20, in which the organization asked for more stringent rules regulating such conflicts in the future.
The Clean Sustainable Energy Authority, which was established by lawmakers earlier this year, consists of members nominated by energy industry groups to oversee a new fund of $45 million in grants and $250 million in loans. Lawmakers created the board with the aim of kick-starting “game changing” lower-emissions energy projects in the state’s fossil fuel and agriculture sectors, which are facing mounting investor pressures to mitigate their contributions to climate change.
Among the top recipients of the Clean Sustainable Energy Authority’s inaugural funding round was a project to build a $2.8 billion natural gas-to-liquids plant in Williams County, a $1.8 billion effort to retrofit a coal gasification facility into a hub for the production of hydrogen fuel, and an early engineering study into the plans to retrofit the state's largest coal-fired power plant, Coal Creek Station, for carbon capture.
Multiple appointees to the Clean Sustainable Energy Authority disclosed conflicts of interest at the start of last week’s meeting. Voting members of the board have worked in a variety of energy sector jobs, including in oil, coal, ethanol and utility co-op roles, and in each case the authority decided to allow members to vote on the projects for which they were conflicted.
Those decisions raised concerns for the Dakota Resource Council, which argued in its letter Monday that members should not have been allowed to cast votes on whether or not to fund projects that would have direct or indirect financial benefits for them or their employer.
Among the most serious conflicts, the Dakota Resource Council said, was one disclosed by Kathleen Neset, the president of an oilfield consultancy that she disclosed contracts with the company Wellspring Hydro, which the Clean Sustainable Energy Authority recommended for $1 million in grant funding. The conservationist group also highlighted the conflicts of Al Christianson, who told authority members that he sits on the board of Midwest AgEnergy, which received a $3 million grant, and works for Great River Energy, which is in the process of selling Coal Creek Station.
“It is long overdue for North Dakota to adopt strong conflict of interest rules that prevent appointed or elected officials from using their office to enrich themselves, their employer, or business interests,” wrote Scott Skokos, executive director of the Dakota Resource Council. The events that transpired at the Clean Sustainable Energy Authority meeting earlier this month “spotlight the need for rules to be developed as soon as possible,” he said.
In all, the Dakota Resource Council noted conflicts of interest disclosed by five of the authority's eight voting members, all of whom were allowed to vote. . . .
State regulators approved $28 million in grants and $135 million in loans Monday for six energy projects, while a watchdog group raised concerns about conflicts of interest on the clean energy board that recommended which applicants to fund.
The North Dakota Industrial Commission approved funding assistance for projects ranging from hydrogen production to lithium extraction as recommended by the Clean Sustainable Energy Authority last week.
At the energy authority's meeting last Tuesday, numerous members disclosed conflicts of interest based on their or their employers' relationships with some of the applicants.
The conflicts ranged from business consulting relationships to employers investing in applicants' projects, as well as a member sitting on an applicant's board of directors. Each time a member disclosed a conflict at the meeting, the other members decided to allow them to vote anyway.
The Dakota Resource Council took issue with the process in a letter the group sent Monday to the North Dakota Ethics Commission. Dakota Resource Council Executive Director Scott Skokos wrote that energy authority members with a conflict of interest who participate "can use their vote or technical recommendation to influence a decision that would allow money to flow to them directly, or to their company or institution directly."
The energy authority was established by the Legislature earlier this year and is tasked with vetting projects vying for funding assistance approved by lawmakers, including $45 million in grants and $250 million in loans via a line of credit from the Bank of North Dakota.
Skokos said the Ethics Commission should require the Clean Sustainable Energy Authority to follow ethical standards similar to banks by prohibiting members from voting or advising on projects in which they have a stake.
"In our view the ethics commission should adopt rules that prohibit any appointed or elected official from voting on a matter that will either directly or indirectly financially benefit them or their employer," he said. "The rules should also include penalties for individuals who fail to disclose a conflict or fail to recuse themselves" even after disclosing a conflict.
Of the eight voting members on the energy authority, the letter named five as having conflicts of interest: Kathy Neset, Al Christenson, Joel Brown, Jim Arthaud and Chris Friez. It also named technical adviser Charles Gorecki, CEO of the University of North Dakota's Energy & Environmental Research Center. Clean Sustainable Energy Authority Director Al Anderson said Gorecki's stand-in, Tom Erickson, sat out a vote earlier this month when a conflict arose because the research center was an applicant on a project involving carbon capture at Coal Creek Station. . . .
There's that. We wonder what this lackadaisical approach to conflicts of interest would do to the LCCMR in Minnesota?
Photo: The Coal Creek Station, North Dakota's largest coal-fired power plant. Contributed / Great River Energy. Via Dickinson Press.
If you appreciate Bluestem Prairie, you can mail contributions (payable to Sally Jo Sorensen, 600 Maple Street, Summit SD 57266) or use the paypal button in the upper right hand corner of this post. Those wishing to make a small ongoing monthly contribution should click on the paypal subscription button.
We're not happy to read this news from South Dakota's Game, Fish and Parks:
PIERRE, S.D. – Chronic wasting disease (CWD) was recently confirmed in a new area in central South Dakota. Confirmation of the disease was obtained from a hunter-harvested adult female white-tailed deer in Buffalo County.
South Dakota has now confirmed CWD in 19 counties, and this is the second detection of CWD in free-ranging deer or elk east of the Missouri River in South Dakota.
The GFP Commission recently modified carcass transportation and disposal regulations for the entire state that are effective beginning with the 2021 hunting seasons. The goal of the new CWD regulations is to help reduce the artificial spread of CWD into new areas of South Dakota.
CWD is a fatal brain disease of deer, elk, and moose caused by an abnormal protein called a prion. Most harvested individuals with CWD will appear healthy and display no clinical signs. Animals in the later stages of infection with CWD may show progressive loss of weight and body condition, behavioral changes, excessive salivation, loss of muscle control and eventual death. CWD is always fatal for the afflicted animal. CWD poses serious problems for wildlife managers, and the implications of long-term management for free-ranging deer and elk is unknown.
We're picking up our partner's venison from the meat processor in Milbank this week and can only wonder how soon CWD reaches the Lake Traverse Reservation.
Map: Buffalo County, South Dakota, via Wikipedia. In Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository.
If you appreciate Bluestem Prairie, you can mail contributions (payable to Sally Jo Sorensen, 600 Maple Street, Summit SD 57266) or use the paypal button in the upper right hand corner of this post. Those wishing to make a small ongoing monthly contribution should click on the paypal subscription button.
Though Hanson sat alone at the defense table, she had support and encouragement during breaks from her husband, Vern, and consultant Keith Haskell, who said he was associated with an organization called the National Action Task Force in Washington, D.C.
While the group is indeed headquartered in Washington DC as Furst reported (whether a physical or virtual office is immaterial), its origins go back to a couple of other organizations connected--The Lighthouse Law Club and the Panama Christian Foundation LLC--to its leader/founder.
That would be Mark Emery Boswell, who goes by Mark Emery these days. Boswell--we'll call him Emery to humor him--has a long history working with conservative right groups going back to the era of Timothy McVeigh. the tale of Emery/Boswell/Freeman is a winding one, so keep with us. We'll be focusing on Emery/Boswell's career in this post.
The militia promoting days of Mark Emery Boswell
The National Action Task Force's founder, Mark Emery, was known as Mark Emery Boswell when he was active in Colorado.
Remember the US “patriot” militia movement from which Oklahoma City federal building bomber Timothy McVeigh came? That confluence of racist, neo-fascist, survivalist, tax resistance, weapons obsessed, “Christian identity” and apocalyptic strains was shoved farther out into the margins of the political wilderness when McVeigh lived out one of their favorite fantasies and then the Bush administration carried out some of their other ones.
But for the most part, the people involved didn’t just go away. Some of them are grabbing headlines today in the guise of anti-immigrant militias.
However, for some people the patriot movement was good business. Take one Mark Boswell, for example. A law school dropout, he formed the “American Law Club” and hosted Denver meetings at which followers of the right-wing militia movement were instructed that they could become rich by filing “non-commercial judicial liens” against their least-favorite prosecutors, judges, elected officials or companies. In addition to a series of pricey “law seminars,” Boswell would sell his “Civil Rights Task Force” jackets, deliberately made to look like the FBI and ATF apparel, and genuine-looking fake law enforcement badges. Boswell urged his customers to buy the things, wear them to court when their favorite tax resister or weapons law violator was in the defendant’s dock, and warn judges and prosecutors that they were being watched.
These are the shirts NATF are wearing in court and at actions. The fundraising page notes:
NATF is for all freedom lovers in America and worldwide! Support here is support for your unalienable rights and enforcement of the organic natural law which is protected by the constitution for the united States of America. Become an 'investigator' surveilling local activities for the purposes of enforcing your rights.
Note that that "all funds raised will be paid directly to PCF World Mission LLC for NATC." PCF stands for "Panama Christian Foundation," one of Emery/Boswell's gigs. We'll have more on that in a bit. For now, it's worth noting that the "Panama Christian Foundation" logo and conduit was used for crowdfunding for the Lighthouse Law Club:
PCF World Mission LLC publishes free digital books, webinars and other educational gifts as our way of saying thanks for your contributions which support the fundraising activities for Panama Christian Foundation (PCF).
Proceeds are used to assist and support PCF in its activities. PCF is making a difference in the lives of desperately poor and disadvantaged kids in the interior of Panama and now is providing desperately needed food and medicine to people who are literally dying for these supplies in Venezuela. Once your voluntary donation is made it is distributed to those in need and is non-refundable. We thank you so much for your contribution to humanity via PCF.
And be sure to visit our YouTube Channel: PCF Panama
Join our Team and help make a difference! Select your donation option above to determine how you'd like to help and we WILL make this world a better place!
Boswell’s legal expertise only went so far. In 1995 he was one of the stars — along with other militia types and a couple of far-right Colorado Republican legislators — at a Canon City, Colorado “common law grand jury.” (This was not a judicial entity but rather a political gathering convened to discuss such theories as how the Internal Revenue Service doesn’t really have any legal basis for its existence.) When the assembly broke for lunch, police arrested Boswell on a fugitive warrant stemming from charges that he used fake ID when stopped for a traffic violation and that he used a bogus money order to buy a Mercedes. Colorado State Senator Charles Duke (R-Monument) lauded Boswell as a political prisoner.
The patriot movement paraphernalia and seminar business was greatly assisted by Boswell’s weekly talk show on KHNC radio, a Denver station that was rebroadcast in other US locales and by shortwave all around the world.
But then on April 19, 1995 one Timothy McVeigh, a messed up former soldier with a reputation for killing surrendering Iraqi soldiers during the first Gulf War but who left the US Army after washing out in his attempt to join the Delta Force, lived out a neo-Nazi fantasy woven in a novel that was popular in right-wing militia circles and blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City.
Ten days after the deadly blast Boswell went on the air with the tale of how a former CIA guy and another “witness” had heard and obtained affidavits from — the latter conveniently not produced — two unspecified Justice Department officials that a shadowy “Committee of 10” involving the Clinton White House, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms and the Secret Service (the latter both part of the Treasury Department rather than the Justice Department) were actually the ones who did the deed.
The general outlines and most salient details of the truth about the Oklahoma City bombing did, however, come to public attention. It was a big disaster for Mark Boswell’s radio career and patriot paraphernalia business. So what’s a more patriotic than thou American huckster to do after an embarrassment like that?
First, Mark Boswell assumed the name “Rex Freeman.” Then, as he described it on Roger Gallo’s Escape Artist website, he
…left the USA probably for many of the same reasons most do; the erosion of rights, the lawlessness of the courts, the intrusions of privacy, the omnipresence of big brother and the general mental decay of society. What once made America great, is now gone, or at best is quickly disappearing and I’d had enough. It was time to go.
My wife and I packed our things, put our little dog under the seat of the plane and headed south. Not being too sure of where we’d end up, our original idea was Panama. However, we made a stop over along the way in Costa Rica five years ago, and have never gone any further.
We are not wealthy retirees. I’m 46 and she’s, well, she still won’t say, but we had a very limited nestegg and the clock was ticking for us to find something to do to support ourselves. Neither of us spoke any Spanish (still don’t very well) and we’ve been living on tourist visas for 5 years. Not a very stable situation.
I have always been enamored by the idea of living the ‘PT’ lifestyle (Permanent Tourist – Previous Taxpayer – Perpetual Traveler) and now was my chance. It was very clear under this philosophy, that in order to sustain this without a substantial trust fund, that you must have a ‘portable business’ which allows you to operate from anywhere in the world.
I threw up a website and started offering financial privacy consulting services helping other ‘escapees’ protect their financial affairs….
Freeman (Boswell) wove a web of offshore Internet businesses, which, unfortunately for Panama, did get farther than Costa Rica. . . .
Emery’s debut novel describes one man’s resistance toward the American government.
Unlikely revolutionary Rex Freeman grows up just like any other God-fearing, freedom-loving American: playing football, driving fast, and cheerfully challenging the status quo. Emory’s vision of this innocent America is evident in his description of Rex’s hometown, La Crescent, Minnesota: “This was a place where people worked hard to earn an honest living. They lived in decent homes, people raised their families, went to church….This is where life has its rewards. You put in a good work week and spent the weekend in the splendour in ‘God’s Country.’ Their lives were simple, of modest means and glorious.” After an unsatisfying career in corporate America, Freeman falls in with the Liberty Foundation, where he meets people victimized by the IRS. With his new friends, Freeman founds the American Law Club to keep citizens informed on ways to protect themselves against encroaching federal power. Digging ever deeper into America’s treasury of conspiracy theories, Freeman finds new ways to resist the government and spread his messages of liberty, poking at the sleeping federal giant and eventually incurring its wrath. Amid a cast of fringe revolutionaries of various stripes, Rex finds himself on the wrong side of the law and in danger of losing that which he holds dearest of all: his freedom. Emery claims several times that the novel is “based on actual experiences and events,” and the book certainly reads more like a memoir than a work of fiction, often with a tinge of self-mythologizing: “As Rex began to get a reputation in his local area he had the great pleasure of meeting another very prominent gladiator battling I.R.S. oppression.” The prose is riddled with tense shifts, unexpected British spellings, and a gross overuse of scare quotes employed with little sense of uniformity. As a narrative, the story oscillates between flat characterization and an aggressively simplistic worldview on one hand, and dry accounts of legal disputes and the tax system on the other. While Emery offers a few valid criticisms of America’s federal system, they are crowded in among so many instances of religiosity and paranoia as to render them nearly moot.
Unpersuasive political fiction.
Our sympathies to LaCrescent for being dragged into this.
Some people really don't know when it's time to give up, and Mark Boswell, a/k/a "Rex Freeman" is one of them. A gift that keeps on giving.
FRAUD AND GAMBLING CHEATERY
Boswell was first exposed as an online gambling cheat and financial con man by Eric Jackson of the Panama News. You can read the devastating story here. His career as a lunatic militia man in the US. His bizarre radio show. His financial swindles, most of them promoted on - where else - the Escape Artist website. Again, read all about it on The Panama News.
But it got better! Naturally, after being exposed as a fraud, he was immediately promoted to become a financial columnist on Don Winner's Panama Guide scam pimping website.
DEFEATED IN COURT - AGAIN
Then, Boswell filed criminal defamation charges against Eric Jackson. Boswell of course lost - he didn't show up for the hearing and the fact that a Costa Rican warrant for his arrest was published that same day in La Estrella de Panama didn't help much either. Wrote Jackson:
Boswell alias Freeman was not present for the case. He sent a ringer gringo couple to sit in the courtroom, and as no introductions were made it may have appeared to the judge that he was there. He was represented by two lawyers, attorney Alejandro Moncada Luna making the arguments on his behalf.
Moncada accused this writer of calling Boswell alias Freeman a "terrorist" in the article forming the basis of the case, which is not true, and then launched into a long argument about how, since the United States recently renewed his client's passport, he's obviously not a terrorist. He used this reporter's invocation (on lawyer's advice) against testifying at the indagatoria as "proof" that the article in question was libelous, and said that there was no evidence anywhere to back the claims in the story. (...)
Moncada accused this reporter of having something to do with Boswell alias Freeman having legal troubles in Costa Rica --- not mentioning that those troubles include a warrant for his client's arrest and not explaining how it is that this reporter could or did manipulate the Costa Rican government to obtain the same.
Yes, indeed, dear reader: Boswell's lawyer was none other than Alejandro Moncada Luna, currently incarcerated with Noriega in Gamboa for mega-corruption. Hahahaha!
BOSWELL STARTS A CHRISTIAN SECT WITH VIRUSES IN IT?
After his legal debacle, Boswell stayed quiet for a while. But then we received an email, signed by him, which he has sent to a list of undisclosed recipients. It starts like this:
Right to the point...Our community has a virus and it needs to be stopped.
It has come to my attention that there are one or more among us who apparently see fit to disparage one's character and feed the rumor mill with gossip at the expense of others. When people do this it has the effect of 'assasination'. When one's character is assasinated, is it any different than assasinating the body? Perhaps this is why the bible equates 'busybodies' with murderers...
* "Let none of you suffer as a murderer, or a thief, or an evildoer, or as a busybody." 1 Peter 4:15*
The fact that it's my character that some seek to assasinate is irrelevant. I'm not concerned about the opinions of people who don't have a relationship with me. I have only one relationship which is important to me and its not with anybody on this earth. But it makes for a good case study for us to reflect upon and since this is going on, it needs to be reflected upon for the good of the community. Thus, you are receiving this email because I find it likely that you have 'at least' been on the recieiving end of this activity and heard some of the gossip. If people hear of such gossip, when they don't challenge it and put a stop to it, they are just a guilty as the perpetrator. So it's important to us all. (...)
Has Boswell gone reli-nutters? Yes. The "community" he refers to is something called the Panama Christian Foundation. They have a website - which curiously doesn't mention Boswell anywhere at all - here. They do things with kids and soccer, a superficial glance learned us. Who would want to send his kids to a convicted fraudster, a wanted man in Costa Rica and an online gambling cheat who now builds a following with some bullshit Christian foundation? No, we neither. . . .
One such email is of course just a petty attempt to save his crap foundation from going under because people find out the truth about him. But Mark Emery Boswell goes further to establish himself as an entirely credible person in the parallel universe where people like him live: He wrote a book! It's called One Freeman's War, and self-published on Amazon under only half his name. Here's part of the description:
This story is an adventure of discovery. It involves an evolutionary metamorphosis of knowledge and the power it can bring. You will find political intrigue and a high stakes power chess game as one individual confronts the entire political and financial power structure of the USA. Through relentless study and inquisition, the character, Rex Freeman and others put the legal and financial system in America under the microscope with knowledge, history, and some amazing insights.
He also has a website for the book full of batshit crazy conspiracy gibberish. . . .
Both Jackson and Ornstein get pretty salty about Emery/Boswell. Boswell sued Jackson for criminal defamation and lost.
Emery and the National Action Task Force
We're not sure where Emery/Boswell is--physically--these days; it's fairly immaterial to the narrative. The background in this most recent video on the Lighthouse Law Club's YouTube channel, Exit Babylon, looks like a fuzzy Minneapolis, but who knows:
Here's another link to Emery and the NATF. Emery notes around the 40 second mark of this interview video that he created the National Action Task Force out of the Lighthouse Law Club:
ALBERT LEA, Minn., April 22, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In this small southern Minnesota town, bistro owner 56-year-old Melissa Hanson continues to defy Minnesota Governor Tim Walz's November emergency powers Executive Order, which prohibited restaurants and bars from offering food and beverages indoors. In open defiance of what she says is clearly an illegal order, the state of Minnesota has unloaded a barrage of legal attacks against Hanson in an apparent attempt to make an example of her. The only problem is that, in the face of nine criminal charges, threatened suspension of business licenses, imposition of heavy fines and more, Hanson claims that the only criminals involved in this case are the state actors who have denied her due process every step of the way and she is setting the record in the court to prove it. When the court set a bail hearing in a criminal case brought forth by Albert Lea City Attorney Kelly Martinez, the court never issued a summons to appear and thus Hanson failed to appear which triggered a warrant being issued for her arrest. Hanson has offered to turn herself in conditional upon the Sheriff proving that the warrant is lawful and that the court has jurisdiction which has been challenged. Sheriff Freitag has not responded and Hanson remains at large. "I do not intend to submit myself to arrest on account of a fraudulent warrant," Hanson wrote the court last month. For the first time since the arrest warrant was issued, Melissa Hanson speaks out in this interview with National Action Task Force National Director Mark Emery LINK HERE.
Hanson is now going on the offensive to expose what she calls the corruption of the court and is suing the judge, Governor Walz, the city of Albert Lea, the city prosecutor Kelly Martinez, and others involved for their complicity in what she alleges as corrupt criminal activity and abuse of power, which are outlined in some detail in this interview.
Hanson says the matter is one of Constitutional rights and that she is fighting, not only for herself but for others across the nation. Hanson is seeking a sum total of monetary damages totaling nearly $200 million.
The interview is a heckova show, but we're not tech savvy enough to embed it, so click on the link for an unforgettable legal discussion by two people who aren't lawyers.
If we understand case records at available at MCRO, Melissa Lynn Hanson filed four lawsuits. All four were dismissed with prejudice. The National Action Task Force does not seem to have been a party in any of the filings.
There's another opportunity for NATF sympathizers. One can join the NATF Co-op, described here:
The NATF Co-op is a private, members based co-operative venture to provide funding for the restoration of America and Americans. This is an independent activity of the National Action Task Force.
Members of the co-op provide funding in the way of contributions to support the NATF
Those members then share a pro-rata benefit from any excess revenues generated by NATF which are over and above the general operating budget. These revenue sources include; merchandise sales, court ordered damage awards on cases that we share in, proceeds from the growth of the sinking fund and/or other funding results which exceed the budgetary requirements of operations.
That's a bit complicated for poor country bloggers such as ourselves. Like Emery, we don't have a law degree. Since we don't have the chutzpah to rattle on about a state constitution, we'd probably find someone rattling about a courthouse in Sisseton or western Minnesota should we need legal help.
Screenshot: Mark Emery Boswell, from this interview with Melissa "Lisa" Hanson.
If you appreciate Bluestem Prairie, you can mail contributions (payable to Sally Jo Sorensen, 600 Maple Street, Summit SD 57266) or use the paypal button in the upper right hand corner of this post. Those wishing to make a small ongoing monthly contribution should click on the paypal subscription button.
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