Well that's another few billion in useless deficit spending to reopen Alcatraz

That's Trump. During his first campaign, he said that he brings business skills to the Presidency, and he can ask top people to work with him.

He gave Gates as an example. Problem. is that he never discussed it with Gates. When he heard about it, Gates relayed an incident with Trump. Gates's teenage daughter, was participating in an equestrian event that Trump was attending.

To impress the teenage, Trump left, and had a helicopter bring him back, and tried to introduce himself to her.

FYI: Gates is not out of the tech business. He's no longer running a software company, but his foundation is working with bleeding edge technology on philanthropy programs, and he also heads another company, that's developing the next generation, small scale, distributed hybrid nuke architecture. They broke ground on a plant in Wyoming on a plant that used to be a coal-fired power plant, with big fanfare from the Governor of Wyoming.

He's now on Trump shit list.

Alcatraz opened on August 11, 1934 and closed on March 21, 1963; let's call it 30 years of operation. It closed because the salty sea air was rusting the steel rebars inside the concrete, causing cracking and spalling of the concrete after the first 30 years.

Now that Alcatraz has been empty for another 60 years, the structural issues have only gotten worse. Repairs and rebuilding won't be cheap.

Then there's the issue of getting food, water, electricity, and other services out to the island; that used to be done with on site generators and a steady stream of barges. Sounds FAR more expensive than building another ultra-max prison.

No one believes the cost benefit is good! This is totally absurd. Congress gave DHS do much money, they don't know what to do with it. Will we survive the next 3.5 years??

Even the water needs to be brought in.