Conservation or Big Beautiful Ballrooms?

[mtmuley]

Yep, it’s why the Cowboys are still a team.

This is stupid. mtmuley

 

[longbow51]

I guess my point is that in the grand scheme of conservation issues this cut and ballroom switch is not as large as some of the other issues facing conservation currently. Half of the Western United States is slated to become wind and solar farms. As conservation issues go, we are about to lose millions of acres of habitat, public access, and public lands due to green net zero policies. With regard to conservation net zero policies and renewable energy a huge issue facing public land.

This is true for sure. We have a bunch of folks arguing about 1B for security (read the bill), and the obvious threat is right here in front of us. I have a close friend who works here (in the Great Falls office, which opened pretty recently), and subsidies aside, it's happening. Lots of wind and solar farms.

https://www.brkenergy.com/

 

[mtmiller]

This is true for sure. We have a bunch of folks arguing about 1B for security (read the bill), and the obvious threat is right here in front of us. I have a close friend who works here (in the Great Falls office, which opened pretty recently), and subsidies aside, it's happening. Lots of wind and solar farms.

Getting off topic, but how much solar do you think we will see in MT on public land?

 

[Forkyfinder]

Getting off topic, but how much solar do you think we will see in MT on public land?

Not a lot for grid scale generation until the rest of colstrip shuts off. MTs transmission capacity to transport generated power to external markets simply isnt there. Wyoming has more than 50 % more t line capacity leaving the state, for perspective.

As far as it going in for data centers - the fiber isnt all over enough for that yet, but its certainly easier/cheaper to build so those constraints dont exist in the same fashion.

Probably not a lot in the immediate future.

 

[mtmiller]

Probably not a lot in the immediate future.

Yep, RFD over the next 20 years in MT is less than the proposed solar to supplement Stratos data center in UT.

 

[longbow51]

Getting off topic, but how much solar do you think we will see in MT on public land?

According to my friend at Berkshire Hathaway, lots. That's all she can say, but they're on a massive hiring spree.

 

[mtmiller]

According to my friend at Berkshire Hathaway, lots. That's all she can say, but they're on a massive hiring spree.

On public land? Doubtful. Unless your definition of "lots" is different than mine. What does "lots" mean to you?

 

[Irrelevant]

According to my friend at Berkshire Hathaway, lots. That's all she can say, but they're on a massive hiring spree.

Well, in one of the greenest states in the union, we haven't done it yet. WE even have an entire Clean Energy Dept with the explicit purpose of cutting through red tape for green energy projects. Every proposed solar project is on private land.

 

[Irrelevant]

From ballrooms to payouts to felons. andother $1.5 B that doesn't seem necessary at all but only benefits a small sliver of loyalists at the expense of our grandkids.

New deal bars IRS from tax audits of Trump, his family and businesses

President Donald Trump has been feuding with the IRS for many years over audits into whether he and his business empire paid enough taxes.

www.usatoday.com

Bundy (both) should apply, he was clearly a victim of unjust political lawfare.
I love that people love fraud. Love Graft. Can't get enough of it. We're literally applauding. "Great Job! American first." Newsome of going to thrive

I can't get over this.

$1bil for a ballroom, ridiculous but okay, sure, golden toilets and all, but literally paying felons with American tax dollars (or more likely paid for withloans taken out against our grandkids future earnings) because they're complete loyalists to Trump, not America, is something so grossly wrong, and morally anti-American, it feels like a GD onion article.

They Stormed the Capitol. Now They Want Millions.

‘Take the money and run’ is how one January 6 rioter who wielded a tomahawk views the new Anti-Weaponization Fund. He says he only wants his ‘fair share,’ writes Tanner Nau.

www.thefp.com

Shane Jenkins, who spent four years in prison, told The Free Press that he thinks almost everyone who was convicted of charges tied to the riot at the Capitol will “take the money and run.” A jury found him guilty of smashing a window with a metal tomahawk axe and throwing a wooden desk drawer and other objects at officers inside the Capitol. “I have murder in my heart and my head,” Jenkins wrote in a text message the next day.

Four months after Trump’s pardon, Jenkins toured the White House. “From the big house to the White House,” he said in a video posted on X. Jenkins told me that he does not want to receive more than his “fair share” from the Anti-Weaponization Fund but would be satisfied with $1 million to $3 million.

I can't do jack about this because I didn't vote for this. I would hope that someone who did vote for this might speak up, might think that this crosses a line in the sand even for its own team. But I doubt it.

 

[Justabirdwatcher]

This just in...

https://www.axios.com/2026/06/01/trump-weaponization-fund-drop

 

[SAJ-99]

This just in...

https://www.axios.com/2026/06/01/trump-weaponization-fund-drop

Some of the cult members were mad they didn't qualify?

also just in...nepo-housing baby put in charge of national intelligence. So much incompetence...

https://www.axios.com/2026/06/02/trump-new-dni-bill-pulte-housing-attack-dog

 

[noharleyyet]

Some of the cult members were mad they didn't qualify?

also just in...nepo-housing baby put in charge of national intelligence. So much incompetence...

https://www.axios.com/2026/06/02/trump-new-dni-bill-pulte-housing-attack-dog

I hear the last admin's border czar is still available.

 

[SAJ-99]

I hear the last admin's border czar is still available.

Overqualified and would never pass the Sycophant test.

 

[Irrelevant]

Overqualified and would never pass the Sycophant test.

might understand how to build an actual prosecution case that isn't thrown out in court. But let's be real, no one cares about justice, just the optics of justice.

 

[Irrelevant]

We could have quadrupled the funding to the LWCF for almost 100 years... but instead we're going to give it to Iran? 300 billion.... Jeezus

https://www.axios.com/2026/06/17/read-full-us-iran-deal-memorandum-understanding

Which would our grandkids (the ones who actually have to pay) have preferred? How much more access could we have purchased?

 

[El Jason]

There’s also the 2.5 billion to buy out offshore wind leases….

 

[Bonasababy]

This goes back a ways. Many might remember when Justus Township was in the news.

A co-worker at the refinery was a nephew of one of the principals in the showdown. Anyway, while the turmoil after the 2000 election recount in Florida was going on, he brought a sample to the lab. It was not too often that he and I spoke, since we both knew each other's politics. I asked him what he thought about the election uncertainty.

He replied it did not matter. Both of them were Communists, in his opinion.

It depends a lot on your individual viewpoint, where you see others, on the political spectrum. He was far enough from Bush and Gore, to see them exactly the same... Communists.

So, from where I stand there is still a difference between the parties. Neither is perfect. Presently, imo, one is off the rails. We need to have competing parties, to resolve the inevitable differences our society will always have. Both sides need the other, to keep them from their worst impulses.

I just turned 75, and in all of my memory, we have not been this phucked up.

Yep. Someday my grandkids will ask how this happened. Be happy to tell them. First I will ask if they were assigned to read Orwells 1984.

Polls appear to show more people declare themselves independents than pubs or dems than in any point in modern history. And those ranks have increased more out of former pubs than the other way around.

We do not get allowed the choices the majority prefers and haven't for a long time.

Left to figure out who is worst and vote against them.

I'm of the opinion in my state only a resounding defeat can change the republican party back to prominence and value here. The worst among them run their party now. Even that is a question, they seem incapable of looking in the mirror--but I'm planning on helping push that defeat then start worrying about the ramifications later. Which here I think I can tolerate, but we will see.

 

[Bonasababy]

Well, in one of the greenest states in the union, we haven't done it yet. WE even have an entire Clean Energy Dept with the explicit purpose of cutting through red tape for green energy projects. Every proposed solar project is on private land.

There can be issues with habitat there too. There are lots of potential better fits in many places though. The challenge with every source of energy is authority to say no where it does harm.