Senator Burns continues to dig himself into a hole with Montana voters while piling up the campaign cash, this time by holding the
Burns' Winterfest at the exclusive
Yellowstone Club. Admission is $2,000 a person or $4,000 per Political Action Committee (PAC). But that's just to get into the fundraiser, not the Club.
More after the fold.
The Yellowstone Club is billed as the world's only private ski club, and occupies several thousand acres of former public land just south of the Big Sky Ski Resort in south-central Montana. But unlike the Big Sky Resort (whose lift tickets are now $70 a day), it costs a cool quarter million to get past the gate. And that's after passing the financial test of having at least $3 million dollars in liquid assets in order to be allowed to even join. Once in, you can build your own vacation home, once the plans are approved by the Club's owner. Quaint ski cabins range from a couple of million to as much as $20 million and can only be sold to other club members, with approval.
The exclusive Yellowstone Club is the brainchild of Tim Blixseth, a real estate speculator-timber magnate originally from Roseburg, Oregon, and now a big contributor to conservative candidates. How Blixseth came to own this piece of the Madison Range south of Bozeman is a story unto itself.
Back in the late 1800s, the U.S. Government granted large swaths of the public domain (recently acquired from unwilling sellers, the Native Americans) to the transcontinental railroads. These lands were to be used by the railroads to help generate funds for the construction of the great continental spanning lines, and to quickly provide natural resources such as timber to the local communities that grew up around the railroads. The pattern of granting every other section to these private corporations became known as "the checkerboard" and has impacted our public lands in big ways every since.
Fast forward to the late 20th century, where the inheritor of these private checkerboard lands is the timber giant Plum Creek Timber. Plum Creek's strategy, starting in the Reagan years of the early 1980s, was to clearcut every conceivable tree from their checkerboard holdings, resulting in the moth-eaten fabric look of our Northwestern forests which can be easily seen from outer space. Once these timber resources were liquidated, Plum Creek would sell these picked over lands to real estate speculators and second home developers. Enter Tim Blixseth, who purchases tens of thousands of acres of these Plum Creek holdings in the Gallatin Range, just south of Bozeman.
Local conservationists, and the U.S. Forest Service, are shocked and begin looking at ways to purchase these lands within the Gallatin National Forest to prevent their subdivision, and try to retain their values for wildlife. But the conservative revolution of the Reagan years has taken its toll on public land acquisitions, no matter how important. There are no public funds to head off this disaster. But Mr. Blixseth is about to make a deal that can't be refused.
Rather than just public cash on the table to sell his lands (once public domain a mere eighty years ago) to the Gallatin National Forest, Mr. Blixseth will take a small amount of cash and a big chunk of prime public real estate in the Madison Mountain Range, adjacent to the existing Big Sky Ski Resort. After nearly ten years of wrangling with Congress, by the mid 1990s, the deal is done. Shortly there after, the gates go up on the once public lands to become the Yellowstone Club.
Showing once again that laws are not for the rich, the construction activities for the Yellowstone Club push hundreds of tons of sediment directly into the pristine waters of the Gallatin River, prompting an enforcement action by the Montana Department of Environmental Quality. Three years of legal dodging by the Club results in Blixseth throwing in the towel, and paying tens of thousands of dollars in fines, the largest clean water fines in Montana history.
As documented by Land of Enchantment in his excellent series on Rep. Pombo, those that destroy our environment and public lands are big supporters of conservative politicians that do their bidding. From the Helena Independent record article:
Jason Klindt, a spokesman for the Burns campaign, could not offer details on the fundraiser or why Burns chose to have a fundraiser at the gated community.
"You can expect this campaign to continue to raise the funds necessary to compete with out of state money," Klindt said. "We have the obligation to defend the Senator's record of delivering for Montana."
Records show Blixseth has donated $5,475 to Burns or his political action committees since 2002. He also donated $10,000 to the Montana Republican Party last October, records show.
Out of state money Mr. Klindt? Tim Blixseth's primary residence is near Palm Springs California.
The Independent Record article goes on to infer that Senator Baucus does the same thing, having held a high priced fundraiser at the Big Sky Ski Resort. While the requested fundraising fees are the same ($2,000 per person, a bit too rich for this democrat), at least those attending the Baucus event didn't need to be vetted by Tim Blixseth.
Senatororial candidate Jon Testor joins in with the voice of reason:
Tester said he'd never been there or to any gated community.
"Does that apply to livestock?" he said. "I've been in lots of those."
Thanks Conrad! Go Testor!