Well, the big news is that Missoula’s own Tracy Stone-Manning will likely lead up the Bureau of Land Management in Washington, D.C.
You can learn all about this woman in the post I wrote about her exactly 5 years ago this week called Who is Montana’s Tracy Stone-Manning?
And wouldn’t you know it, she’s originally from Virginia, got her schooling in Maryland, and then came out west to tell us how to run our environmental policies, first with the nonprofits and then in the cogs of government.
She’s been out of action ever since leaving Bullock’s governor’s office a few years back, but yesterday Biden picked her to run the BLM.
As if Biden knows who the hell she is. He doesn’t seem to know anything these days. No, a more likely bet is that someone called in a favor and got Stone-Manning the nod...for whatever reasons.
I think it’s kind of the same reason puppet Biden is in charge now - so the real people in power can work quietly behind the scenes, where no one will bother them or question them or hold them accountable.
I don’t buy the surprise coming from Tester over this nomination for one second. It’s hard for me to believe he didn’t have a part in this, considering he was the one that picked Stone-Manning out of obscurity back in 2007. Or maybe this is some consolation prize to Bullock for his disastrous Senate run. Perhaps Bullock’s dark money PAC has something to do with it.
You can learn all about this woman in the post I wrote about her exactly 5 years ago this week called Who is Montana’s Tracy Stone-Manning?
And wouldn’t you know it, she’s originally from Virginia, got her schooling in Maryland, and then came out west to tell us how to run our environmental policies, first with the nonprofits and then in the cogs of government.
She’s been out of action ever since leaving Bullock’s governor’s office a few years back, but yesterday Biden picked her to run the BLM.
As if Biden knows who the hell she is. He doesn’t seem to know anything these days. No, a more likely bet is that someone called in a favor and got Stone-Manning the nod...for whatever reasons.
I think it’s kind of the same reason puppet Biden is in charge now - so the real people in power can work quietly behind the scenes, where no one will bother them or question them or hold them accountable.
I don’t buy the surprise coming from Tester over this nomination for one second. It’s hard for me to believe he didn’t have a part in this, considering he was the one that picked Stone-Manning out of obscurity back in 2007. Or maybe this is some consolation prize to Bullock for his disastrous Senate run. Perhaps Bullock’s dark money PAC has something to do with it.
It’s just awfully hard for me to believe that Biden (has he ever even been to Montana?) would pick this woman out of all the possible picks in all the various environmental offices around the country. I imagine many in the federal bureaucracy are thinking the same thing.
No, it smells awfully fishy...but we all know the corporate media will ignore the stench and simply praise the pick, assuring us it’ll easily sail through the Senate. And it probably will.
Stone-Manning will then head-up an agency with 10,000 workers overseeing 700 million acres, 250 million of which are federal. That includes substantial mineral rights, many of which might be on National Monument land. And of course there’s the myriad rivers, trails, conservation areas, and grazing lands.
Lots of people, lots of interests, and lots of rights. It’ll take a strong negotiator with a good team to make all those happy about the various issues.
Is Stone-Manning that person?
From what I know of her time in Helena, she was a fairly caustic person that rubbed people the wrong way while doing her job rather poorly. Like many from Back East, she came to Montana to tell us what to do with our lands like she had all the answers...but the only real answer she came up with was how to move Back East, this time with a cushier pay and benefits package, all of which you’re about to pay for.
$224,000 a year is the salary she can expect if she’s confirmed. I’m sure she’ll stay in the position for a year or two before going through the revolving door to one of the industry groups she was supposedly overseeing. Kind of like Zinke and Interior and the gold mining company he eventually moved along to.
They’re always moving somewhere, aren’t they? Never content to sit in one state too long, one position for any amount of time. Their institutional knowledge is never allowed to grow, so stifled is it by their ambition.
This appointment is good for Stone-Manning and likely many of the non-profit environmental groups that do so much to keep the lawyers on L Street and K Street rich and fat.
And Montana? I don’t think it’ll help us much at all.
