Yesterday the Governor’s office looked less like a pristine symbol of our State government and more like a rave, as Governor Schweitzer agreed to meet with a group of uncivil representatives of an out-of-state radical environmentalist group, Earth First, and a Missoula based national environmental group, Northern Rockies Rising Tide. The half hour question and answer session mostly resulted in Schweitzer being slammed for his supposed support of the Keystone XL pipeline which would run from Alberta, Canada through Montana and down to Texas. The irony of this whole situation is that as Schweitzer was being slammed by these radical environmentalists for his support of the pipeline, he has actually taken weak stances on this issue as well as other issues of great importance to Montana’s energy industries. The raucuous half an hour that our Governor gave to these hippies quickly turned from dialogue to vandalism as the hippies began shouting, jumping, and dancing on tax payer funded furniture and tables in the Governor’s office.
The video is over 22 minutes long, so in order to save the readers time, these are the highlights:
-7:30: Schweitzer points out that the vehicles that the hippies drove to Helena in used oil, and the food that they ate today was delivered via vehicles that use oil.
-9:00: One of the hippies says that oil companies are “undercutting union jobs”
-10:45: Schweitzer asks the hippies if any of them have been to the devastation sites that they are ranting about (none have)
-13:00: One of the hippies says that the oil industry is “inherently” bad, when asked by Schweitzer how much oil is acceptable.
-14:45: One of the hippies poses the question “how much money is coming to Montana from tourism vs. oil?” She obviously is from out of state to even pose such a ridiculous question.
-15:30: One of the hippies admits that he is not from Montana, but rather the east coast and says “we don’t have coal, we don’t have oil” Well all those taxis and buses have to get their fuel somewhere, don’t they?
-20:50: The hippies begin vandalizing tax payer funded furniture and tables.
Here is some background information on Earth First and the Northern Rockies Rising Tides:
Earth First is an international radical environmentalist group that has no specific interests or connections to Montana. They also use a creative offshoot of the symbol of communism as their logo:
The Northern Rockies Rising Tides is a radical environmentalist group based out of Missoula. Their goal is to destroy the oil industry and prevent new businesses from coming to Montana.
Why did our Governor give a half an hour of the State’s time to these radical (and many out-of-state) environmentalists? Why did he allow them to vandalize State property? And why was he so weak in his support of the industries that ARE Montana’s economy? The only conclusion that I can come to is that these left-wing radicals don’t support Montana’s schools, universities, social services, or infrastructure (all of which are paid for by Montana’s energy industry), and Schweitzer has been less than supportive of Montana as he continues to be weak and make new industries skeptical of locating in Montana. This is why there is so much industry in North Dakota and Wyoming, and is also why many Montanans are working and paying taxes in those states.
The Flint Report summed up the whole scene pretty well on their site:
“after watching the first minute and a half, it looks like Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D-MT) was forced to assume the role of Kindergarten Cop. (Instead of “boys have a…and girls have a…”- I’m assuming he had to say “okay- the vehicles you drove over here in use oil…and we’d rather that came from Canada than Saudi Arabia.”)”
