The video below was sent to us by a reader in response to yesterday’s article “Isn’t this interesting?”
We agree with the commenter, this should make your skin crawl, especially when the dots are connected together.
Flathead Water Compact —> Kerr Dam —> Economic Data Centers —> Transfers of state wealth and resources —> Globalist Investors
It looks like Steve and Greg have big plans for us, and Montana is about to hit the big time.
Are we literally being sold down the river, by the “best salesmen” in Montana?
Will this effort also be at further expense to the people of western Montana?
It’s just a matter of time before these guys tell us how good all of this will be for our agriculture economy. You know the one they are currently trying to destroy with the Water Compact, BIA control of the Flathead Irrigation Project, and Kerr Dam.
Who knows? Perhaps the investors for additional dams are already lined up.
Many thanks to Gunner for sharing the link. Note: the original video was made private so we found another copy of it to post.
Here is a link to an article about this “announcement” out of the Williston ND newspaper:
O’Leary, Bitzero Announce Data Center for Montana
It says in part:
The day before in North Dakota, O’Leary made similar statements standing alongside Bitzero CEO Akbar Shamji, when they announced that Bitzero is choosing North Dakota for its North American headquarters.
Bitzero will build a 200 MW data center that will manage the state’s data needs. The center will also provide heat for a greenhouse that MHA Nation is building, to facilitate year-round production. And Bitzero said it is also bringing a joint venture with a leading global enterprise that will manufacture and distribute graphene batteries. Graphene is a component of lignite.
MHA Nation is The Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, also known as the Three Affiliated Tribes, is located on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in central North Dakota.
Keep in mind that these so called “data centers” will be sucking up hydropower resources that people will need to compete against in order to have electricity for their own needs. Couple that with the energy policies of the current administration in Washington DC, we can see a future conflict just waiting to happen.
No wonder why Daines wants to make it easier for dams to get licensed.
Is it just a coincidence that these two instances are tied to tribal entities that are being funded for these energy sucking data centers, by billionaire investments on or near Federal Indian Reservations?
Western Montana Water Rights 
Innocent coincidence? FYI
“Daines was born in Los Angeles and grew up in Bozeman, Montana. Before entering politics, he held positions at Procter & Gamble and the Montana-based software service RightNow Technologies.”
“Daines spent 13 years with Procter & Gamble.[8] After seven years managing operations in the United States, he and his family moved to Hong Kong and China for six years, opening factories to expand Procter & Gamble’s Asian business.[8] During his 2014 Senate campaign, Democratic opponents alleged that Daines had outsourced U.S. jobs to China. He stated that he created hundreds of jobs in Montana when he worked for RightNow Technologies.[9]
In 1997, Daines left Procter & Gamble to join the family construction business in Bozeman. Three years later, he met Greg Gianforte, founder of RightNow Technologies, and was put in charge of running RightNow’s customer care division.[4] Daines went on to become vice president of North America Sales and vice president of the Asia-Pacific division. During his tenure, the cloud-based software company became publicly traded and Bozeman’s largest commercial employer. Daines remained with the company until March 2012, when he left to campaign for Congress full-time.[4]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Daines
If the CKST compact is finally able to be challenged in the US Supreme Court, and if the citizens of MT are successful in the outcome, how do projects like this get slowly turned off so the citizens get their water back? These projects should not be allowed to commence any part of the licensing process let alone construction until that US Supreme Court decision finds in their favor.
We need to know if Daines and/or Gianforte have invested in this project.
Our thoughts exactly.
The Irrigation Districts are still owed 11 Mw of power as their share of Kerr dam for “Net Power Revenues”. According to this video, our NPR is worth $22 MILLION PER YEAR, EVERY YEAR! No wonder they tried so hard to steal it from us. I’m sure glad we never accepted the Compact!
What’s also interesting is that the tribe tried to get paid for the low cost block of power in the Indian Claims Commission / US Court of Claims suit filed in the 1950s
They were allowed two different trials, for that claim, and both times they failed to show that it was causing harm to the tribes, so their complaint was dismissed in 1972.
So they awarded to themselves at least 1/2 of net power revenues in the compact instead.
We know how to read balance sheets too Mr. O’Leary.
It’s time to resurrect the 2019 Flathead Irrigation and Power audit request that Steve Daines buried and to push it hard!
Click to access 2019-08-02-final-fip-gao-audit-letter-request-2.pdf
Good idea to resurrect. That should be public info especially now with the Flathead Lake water level crisis. Since it may affect most of the western MT water users as does the current water mitigation, would it be possible for all their signatures to be included?
We did a little digging, as you probably know, these investment schemes are pretty well shielded behind corporate secrecy, shell corporations and such.
This makes it difficult, actually impossible, to know if our political class is setting federal policy through mind boggling legislation and then personally enriching themselves or their family members through investments in the companies their policies have helped create.
Green Energy for example. Daines didn’t need to vote for the devastating Biden energy bill intended to be a knock out punch to energy as we know it. But it doesn’t stop him and other politicians from exploiting the bad legislation with their support of “green energy” pet projects for those who are on the federal money laundering A list.
We are not saying he or Gianforte have invested in this project or these entities, but it is definitely a question that is worth asking.
It is almost as though what we are seeing is a privatized version of the Millennium Challenge Corporation, foreign aid scam established after 9/11 in the GWB administration.
Congress has been trying for a good long while to expand their foreign aid Millennium Challenge overreach by adding what we believe to be a domestic counterpart, called the Native American Millennium Challenge. To the best of our knowledge that federal legislation has not yet passed.
But this Data Center project raises our alertness to the fact that perhaps a domestic “aid” program would be a little more difficult to establish.
After all, such a government program would require some transparency, at least with respect to federal financing of such projects. Such transparency may not be desirable to the political class and investors who will financially benefit from such programs domestically.
Because such projects will be placed amongst and in the sight of the people that our political class “pretends to represent”, a different financial backing tact might be in order.
Is it possible a similar objective is being accomplished by private company investments being made instead and funded through a federal back door? Private investments can easily be shielded behind corporations that are not required to share “investor and partnerships” information. We may also never know which or how many foreign countries and entities are investing in our state and our communities, or what “agreements” they’ve made with tribes, Montana’s governor, and / or with the United States government.
In this instance at least, the exploitation seems to be via tribal governments, using the same old jobs creation, green energy, economic benefit talking points.
Click to access whos-behind-it.pdf
All of this is just meant to be food for thought for anyone interested in this issue.
This may be the wave of the future, and could very well become a tidal wave of investments that people don’t want in their community, but will have no say in.
Especially when your governor and congressional delegation are on board with such projects before you even know about them.
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Posting this comment from Daveygirl:
Just watched Montana Economic Summit 2022 hosted by Steve Daines on YouTube. I was very surprised at what I learned. Guest speaker was Kevin O’Leary, investor and member of the TV show Shark Tank panel. O’Leary announced that he will build a “Data Center” in Polson. Another speaker was Akbar (?) who is investing big $$$$ in the data center. Also a employee of the CSKT tribal council.
Data Servers have huge power needs – for sending & receiving data but primarily for cooling-the IT equipment generates a lot of heat which must be cooled to prevent overheating. Cooling can be done by air (AC) or water.
But the need for power is huge. O’Leary thanked Daines & Gianforte for getting this deal done so quickly. Gianforte said he was focused on creating good jobs so Montana kids stay here & another equal priority was to preserve our way of life.
Guess farm, ranch, irrigation & small biz lifestyle doesn’t meet his definition of a Montana lifestyle. Data Centers use infrastructure but very few employees- guards & IT managers but not many other employees.
Site selection for Data Centers depends mostly on availability of power and internet servers – Spectrum etc. O’Leary said he was so pleased to be able to use hydro power as successful companies have to be “green – environmentally friendly”.
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