Cattle producers with losses stemming from last weekend’s blizzard, (Up to 60,000 cattle were killed) as a result of the blizzard. may be frustrated by the lack of federal assistance due to government shutdown, but help is on the way.
Three South Dakota organizations have combined efforts to establish the Rancher Relief Fund with the Black Hills Area Community Foundations to provide support and assistance to ranchers affected by the blizzard.
You can donate to the Rancher Relief Fund online.
Or you can mail checks to:
Black Hills Community Area Foundation
% SD Rancher Relief Fund
PO Box 231
Rapid City, 57709
Make your checks out to “Rancher Relief Fund.”
The fund will be administered by the South Dakota Stockgrowers Association, South Dakota Cattlemen’s Association and South Dakota Sheep Growers Association.
Producers who lost animals need to properly document the losses as it will help process potential claims. Third-party verification of losses is recommended. To get answers to questions about livestock identification, you can contact the South Dakota Brand Board at 605-773-3324.
Damages from the blizzard have led Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., to call on Congress to pass a new farm bill, providing financial assistance to livestock producers affect by the weather. According to the Rapid City Journal, Thune says both the Senate and House versions of the new farm bill include a livestock disaster program that would cover between 65 percent and 75 percent of ranchers’ losses.
The Livestock Indemnity Program, set up to limit the losses cattle producers incur from natural disasters, expired with the 2008 farm bill on Oct.1 and ranchers are left with unanswered questions while the furlough continues.
“A lot of the government agencies that we would normally be turning to for those answers are furloughed,” Jodie Anderson, executive director of the South Dakota Cattlemen’s Association, told the Billings Gazette. “So there’s this sort of timing issue that’s enhancing the frustration out there in cattle country.”
—Brett Wessler, Staff Writer Drovers Cattle Network

(AP) — Prosecutors say they will seek the death penalty against a Cole County inmate accused of killing another inmate.

Assistant Attorney General Kevin Zoellner said Wednesday 24-year-old Terry J. Volner will face a possible death penalty if he is convicted of killing 67-year-old Jose Benitez in July while they were cellmates at the Jefferson City Correctional Center.

No details of the attack were released in grand jury’s indictment this week, or in previous reports about the case.

Benitez was serving a 25-year sentence for a first-degree statutory sodomy from Jasper County.

Volner, originally from Hartville, was serving a life sentence without parole for the 2011 murder of 4-year-old Dusty Guenther. Volner slit the boy’s throat and dumped his body in a sewage lagoon.

(AP) — Police are taking another look at the 1994 death of an Independence woman who was killed at her home.

Independence police spokesman Tom Gentry said Wednesday that investigators have reopened the case of Diana M. Ault, who was shot to death at the age of 26 in January 1994.

Police say Ault’s infant daughter and toddler son were crying beside her body when she was found.

Police and Ault’s family have arranged for a website, and a Facebook account has been set up to gather information on the case.

The website can be found at www.justicefordianaault.com . The Facebook page is www.facebook.com/DianaMarieAult.

A Harrisonville couple is charged with child endangerment after their seven children were found in a filthy motel room.

Cass County officials say Brian David Gregerson and Tammie Gregerson were charged Tuesday after police were told the children had been left alone in the motel room for hours at a time.

The  family was evicted from their home and the parents said they were moving their belongings to a new home in Kansas City.

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The visitors’ center at Table Rock Lake will be closed until the federal government shutdown is over.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Wednesday it would close the Dewey Short Visitor Center until the partial shutdown is resolved. This is a change from an earlier decision that kept the center open.

Other Army Corps-owned facilities around the lake were already closed.

The Kansas City, Kan., Board of Education has named the city’s police chief to lead the new police department for the city’s public schools.

The school district said in a release Wednesday the board has selected Rick L. Armstrong as the first chief of the newly-formed police department for the Kansas City, Kan., Public Schools. Armstrong will take over the schools post in February after retiring from the city’s police department.

The board voted last spring to go from campus security to forming its own police department and using sworn law enforcement officers, much like other large districts in the area, including Blue Valley, Shawnee Mission and Wichita.

Armstrong has served as chief of police for Kansas City, Kan., since 2010.

By Roy Blunt, Republican U.S. senator from Missouri.

Once again, the Obama administration is waging war on affordable energy for families and small businesses in states like Missouri.

The Environmental Protection Agency recently announced New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) requiring future coal-fired power plants to curb or capture at least 40 percent of their carbon emissions and force the use of expensive equipment that is not technologically proven – leading to higher energy costs for families and job creators in Missouri and nationwide.

The “war on coal” is really just a war on consumers. Nearly 40 million American families earning less than $30,000 a year already spend almost 20 percent of their budgets on energy costs. By putting in rules that would basically ban the construction of new coal plants, the EPA is punishing our nation’s most vulnerable families who suffer the most from bad energy policy and higher utility bills.

Why the Obama administration wants to effectively ban new coal plants makes even less sense when coal is cleaner than ever. Before 2012, sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide emissions were at 77 percent per megawatt hour (MWh) and 82 percent per MWh respectively. By 2015, they will be down to 25 percent and 11 percent per MWh.

These reductions are in part due to innovations like supercritical technology. Because plants using supercritical technology operate at higher temperatures and pressures, they achieve higher efficiencies than conventional units and achieve significant emissions reductions. Since 2000, 12 coal plants across the country have installed this technology. One of these plants is Kansas City Power & Light’s Iatan 2 plant, and another is in Illinois across the river and just south of St. Louis, the Prairie State coal plant.

When EPA issued a proposed NSPS in March of last year, it said if someone wants to build a coal plant, that operator must install carbon capture technology – which, by EPA’s own admission, would “add 80 percent to the cost of electricity.”

An 80 percent increase to the cost of a coal plant would be prohibitively expensive, especially at a time when the country needs high-efficiency coal plants to replace those closing due to other costly EPA rules.

The proposal was so controversial that it received more than 2 million comments. U.S. Sen. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., and I even introduced an amendment requiring the EPA to set an NSPS rule using emission rates categorized by fuel type and based on technology that is commercially available.

The Obama administration obviously failed to listen to the concerns of the American people and instead decided to move forward with this controversial rule. That’s why I recently co-sponsored a resolution of disapproval filed by U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., under the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to stop the EPA from imposing this rule. The CRA provides a procedure for expedited consideration in the Senate.

As we try to jumpstart our economy, struggling businesses and households more than ever need to continue to have diverse and affordable electricity supply.

Higher energy costs result in less disposable income in families’ pockets. That means less money to spend on groceries, doctors’ visits and education. Low-cost energy is critical to human health and welfare.

I’ve fought hard against these burdensome and costly regulations, and I’ll continue to push for affordable energy for Missouri’s families and small businesses.

In March 2013, I introduced an amendment to the FY14 Budget to prevent a carbon tax. I’ve also repeatedly questioned the administration on assigning unreliable estimates for a “cost” associated with carbon emissions. This is really just a de facto carbon tax buried in the cost-benefit calculations of energy related rulemakings. These costs were created by a group of unelected bureaucrats and will only result in increased energy costs to households and businesses, hampering the country’s economic growth.

The American people want the administration to stop picking winners and losers through regulatory policies that penalize the low-cost energy sources like coal, which they depend on.

There’s no reason we should threaten the substantial amount of electricity in Missouri and across the country that comes from this affordable and abundant resource. I’ll continue to push back on the Obama administration’s burdensome regulations and promote smart policies that encourage more American energy and more American jobs.