El Jason
Well-known member
That's cool for the next few years, but what if you don't like the next President? A better alternative is just put a sticker on it.
Conservation or Big Beautiful Ballrooms?
- Thread starter Big Fin
- Start date
Bonasababy
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- May 16, 2024
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- 1,762
What a lot of people don't know about Clinton is that he resisted a lot of calls for progressive moves from within his party. The reason Dems have done far less to increase the national debt over the recent decades is because they left the Fed alone and listened to budget advisors. Republicans are still working off the trickle down theory from the Reagan years that has been proven a failure again and again. I suspect most top republicans know it won't work and has never worked but they think (with justification) that they can sell tax cuts to anyone. People who seem to understand that taking less in will wreck their household budget just can't see the same for government.
Because this is the first time in history a sitting president has insisted his mug is on a parks pass.That's cool for the next few years, but what if you don't like the next President? A better alternative is just put a sticker on it.
I doubt another pompous a$$ like him
will come along.
Hunting Wife
Well-known member
This administration has shown zero concern about spending money, reallocating money, redirecting money appropriated by Congress however they damn well please. I have a feeling more will go to gold guilding and gaudy finishes than security.
I also suspect security might cost a lot less if the people appointed to head up the security agencies and law enforcement agencies were actually qualified to do those jobs.
Fee title acquisitions (at least in my experience here) have been frowned upon my entire career. That’s not new, and honestly I agree that adding fee land without supporting the staffing and funding required to manage it just makes things worse throughout the entire system. Sucks, but that’s the reality we live with. Also, fee acquisitions usually need to be approved by county commissioners, state Wildlife Directors, and Governors and that is a tall order.
As far as using LWCF funding for easements, it’s one of several pots of money that standard easement programs are funded with. But each pot of money comes with different rules, through agreements made with various state governors.
For example, USFWS can’t use Mig Bird dollars (Duck Stamp dollars) to acquire grass easements in ND. So most of that funding goes to South Dakota, and a little to Montana (and others, but large portion is in PPR) for grass easement acquisition. Other pots of money then are used to buy grass easements in ND.
But as time goes on, more strings are getting attached to each funding source. LWCF is just the latest example of this. The Department has now directed that any easement acquisition using LWCF funding must first be approved by County Commissioners, then the Governor. We usually need no outside approval for easement acquisitions, so that really puts a damper on using that money in a state that is hostile to easement programs.
marshman
Well-known member
I didn't want a damn pass with his mug shot on it either, what a way to ruin a day in our parks.
Thank goodness I am a senior, the lifetime pass has a ram on it.
We just released a video on this topic. Fresh Tracks Weekly is our weekly news update and deeper dive. In this case, the topic is Big Beautiful Ballrooms.
Always fun to read the comments when the topic is about actions of the political class, not matter which side is offended.
Always fun to read the comments when the topic is about actions of the political class, not matter which side is offended.
jryoung
Well-known member
Some of the comments on socials have been entertaining. I have to assume that a link to the CBO report wouldn't change any minds.
BuzzH
Well-known member
So, as long as its your guy that pisses away a cool billion, when he told the American public his vanity project wouldn't cost them a dime, then it's OK?
The point is if it's about money, there are other places that have a lot more.
If you simply want to talk about Trump, it still fails. The ballroom is not scheduled to be completed with the additional billion or not before he leaves office.
Last I heard, the billion is a proposal that hasn't passed. Maybe you heard something different.
BuzzH
Well-known member
Hunting Wife
Well-known member
I’m curious how much of that actually comes from DoD, which has never yet passed a budget audit. There are a ton of very rich donor hands in that piggy bank….
Let’s also not lose sight of the fact that the proposed ballroom budget is about 8% more than the proposed BLM budget for 2027.
Probably quite a bit.
Regardless, we should all be approximately 300x more offended by government fraud waste than this stupid ballroom shouldn’t we?
This is the challenge with whataboutism- it turns circular quickly.
BuzzH
Well-known member
I could make a case to offended by a ton of government waste, whether spending money on stupid things, tax breaks to the most well connected, failure to change a lot of groups the going rate for the use of government resources/assets, etc..
In this case, the $1 Billion addition to the Senate budget proposal comes at the same time we are being told that "fiscal responsibility" is the rationale for cutting the conservation and public land agency budgets.
If not for that all happening at the same time, the contradiction this BB Ballroom add-on creates would have been just another head shaker coming out of DC and would not have been what I called in the video, a "softball home run pitch" to illustrate the hypocrisy when it comes to DC folks prioritizing their friends/donors ahead of Americans.
Agree with your strategy/ I understand why you chose the ballroom- it’s a juicy target for good reason.
My point wasn’t that the ballroom spending isn’t foolish (it is) or the the money wouldn’t be better spent on conservation (it would be). $1B is peanuts compared to overall misuse of government money.
If we believe the data from the GAO, our government is wasting enough money EVERY YEAR to fund the BLM for 300 years. Just straight up pissing it away/having it stolen. I find that to be insane.
*just watched the video- you guys touched on the same thought a bit when you were discussing military spending.
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