Zoom Chron Blog

This week marks the sad anniversary of my co-worker, Leah Hartley, being found dead in an irrigation ditch at 6th and Grant, near her apartment. I wrote this post about her death, then found myself without work a few months later.

Nothing being proposed by United Way and their suicide prevention program, “Project Tomorrow”, would have helped Leah Hartley’s downward spiral into addiction because that’s not what the “tools” being offered to service industry workers by United Way are designed to address.

When you watch this clip you will hear the amazing insight that bartenders and hair stylists hear things from their customers and, if they hear WORRISOME things from their customers, then United Way wants them to have the “tools” to respond appropriately.

If United Way wants to invest their non-profit resources into transforming bartenders and hair stylists into psychologists doing unpaid mental health work for their fucked up customers, then here’s a suggestion: BETTER COCAINE!

My insights come from actually working in the service industry over the years, like Food For Thought by campus, where the hungover breakfast cook would sometimes vomit in the trash can in the middle of cooking an omelet, or those three hellish weeks at the Iron Horse, where the main chef liked to tell NOT funny jokes about dead kids in his trunk.

Expecting sex offenders and drug addicts to care about their customers as they get paid shit wages in a totally unaffordable town is one of the stupidest ideas I’ve heard in awhile, but, considering Missoula is a collectively retarded liberal college town incapable of dealing with reality, I’m not surprised.

The reality that I see in Missoula is that United Way of Missoula County uses Montana’s high suicide rate to specifically target guns, which is the preferred choice of ending it for men. That’s why United Way amplifies people like Ali at their blog for handing out gun locks, like THAT is going to stop someone who had made up their mind to die. From the link:

In a sparsely populated state where many people own firearms, the small metal contraptions, which fit around a trigger and cost less than $10 on Amazon, are one way Montanans are trying to reduce the high rate of people who kill themselves.

For the past year, Ali, 46, has been giving gun locks away to anyone who wants one, her piece of trying to solve the puzzle of suicide in Montana. “It’s in the culture,” she said one afternoon in Helena. “If you don’t know someone, you know of someone who has died.”

Murder rates and mass shootings make national headlines, defining the discussion over pervasive gun violence. But most gun deaths in America are self-inflicted. There were about 27,000 gun suicides in 2022. That was a record, and far higher than the 19,500 gun homicides documented that year.

There have been more gun suicides than gun homicides in the United States every year for the past 25 years. Yet the harm inflicted on communities by suicides rarely registers in the national debate over guns.

This article featuring a well-intentioned widow handing out gun locks deliberately focuses on guns and “red flag laws” because, we are told, it was the arrival of guns in her own home that enabled her husband to kill himself.

Suicidal impulses can last only briefly, but easy access to a gun makes the urges more difficult to survive. In Montana, 67 percent of suicides in 2022 involved a gun, according to the Times analysis. Nationally, guns were used in about 55 percent of such deaths.

But in a place where guns are embedded in the rugged, frontier ethos, there is little political will to prevent people who are at risk of harming themselves from owning a gun. A proposal to create a “red flag” law, which would prohibit a person determined to be a danger to himself or others from possessing a firearm, died in a committee of the State Legislature last year.

Several years ago, Ali’s husband’s family passed down some firearms that were considered heirlooms, and she agreed they could be stored at her house.

At the time, suicide did not cross her mind.

If I was a bartender serving Ali’s husband drinks before he presumably ate a bullet, I wonder what kind of “red flags” I would have heard? Would I have heard sad confessions, like how unfulfilling being a “mortgage loan officer” was, or the pressure he felt from his wife to maintain their social status by killing whatever dream he shoved down into a dark hole in order to make money for his young family?

John Mullen was working as a handyman at what is now the Whitefish Mountain Resort when they met.

They married in Glacier. A pair of bald eagles circled overhead as they exchanged their vows. “It’s the greatest place on earth,” she said of Glacier.

After their first child, a daughter, was born in 2006, they moved to the Helena area to be closer to John’s parents.

The vice president of a community bank took a liking to John and hired him as mortgage loan officer. He was a natural, tapping his connections across greater Helena where he had lived since he was a boy.

My gut reaction to this widower’s perspective about her dead husband is that NO ONE is a “natural” at enslaving humans into complicated debt instruments called “mortgages”, but being a mortgage loan officer is definitely a financial step up from being just a “handyman” at Glacier, so that’s what a socially affable guy with a wife and kids did until he couldn’t do it anymore.

Three years ago I wrote critically about a bill, introduced by a Bozeman Democrat named Ed, that would have empowered vindictive female partners and dysfunctional families to use the courts for gun removal.

Here’s the quote from that post explaining what the “red flag” bill would do:

House Bill 202, sponsored by Rep. Ed Stafman, D-Bozeman, is a “red flag” bill — a policy that allows for a court to order that an individual surrender their firearms if a family member, partner or law enforcement agency can make the case that the person presents a danger to themselves or others.

The bill would establish “extreme risk orders of protection” allowing a district court to prohibit a person from purchasing or possessing a firearm during the duration of the order. The language, Stafman said, is modeled after the federal Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, a gun safety and mental health services law Congress passed in 2022. The BSCA, among other provisions, includes grants to help states implement extreme risk protection order programs as long as strict due process rights are followed.

Having been on both sides of these court processes, first as a non-profit service provider working with EXTREMELY mentally ill people who the County Attorney’s Office would routinely deny intervention for, then as a supposedly dangerous mentally ill person myself, I can tell you more laws and less rights won’t make anyone safer.

Now, thanks to the Lindsey Clancy case, I have a better appreciation for why rational arguments are a waste of time when dealing with well-meaning Ali’s handing out gun-locks for United Way and the agenda-driven political operators taking advantage of those well-meaning Ali’s.

But go ahead and support Project Weaponized Sorrow if you want to, it’s still a free country with strong Constitutional protections, right?

I’ll conclude today’s post with a comment I made to the Housing, Redevelopment and Community Programs Committee, which met on Wednesday to rubber-stamp $100,000 dollars for the Missoula Economic Partnership. Here’s the referral with a time-line mistake I just caught, since I’m pretty sure City Council isn’t meeting on Labor Day:

Isn’t it funny how the people who want MORE laws to intervene in people’s lives can’t even seem to follow their own open meeting laws, or provide accurate information to the public?

Since double-standards and a two-tiered legal system appear to be the new normal in this post-law nation of psychotic victims, I’m going to keep using my 3 minutes to match the vibe, like advocating for more accurate acronyms.

If you appreciate my perseverance amidst societal collapse, please consider donating to my new GoFundMe page. Any little bit helps as I prep to get interviewed next week by a fellow researcher.

Thanks for reading!

I took this picture on the afternoon of August 27th, 2026, while floating the Bitterroot river.

What this picture shows is the backside of the Rocky Mountain Laboratory property which, for those who don’t know, is a Bio-Safety Level 4 lab (BSL-4) handling some of the world’s most dangerous pathogens.

So why is there a huge gap in the fencing?

Last year NPR reported on the dumb hicks in Hamilton to shame them for being weary of the super-smart scientists and all the money Hamilton should be appreciative of.

Rocky Mountain Labs has become an economic driver for the town, generating hundreds of millions of dollars for the local economy through spillover to other industries and retail.

Many residents are proud of the internationally recognized research unfolding at the National Institutes of Health facility. But a few locals resent what they consider the elitist scientists at the facility, which has employed about 500 people in recent years. Or they fear the contagious pathogens studied there could escape the labs’ well-protected walls.

That split widened with the COVID-19 pandemic and the divisions that emerged from mask mandates and vaccine development. In 2023, Matt Rosendale, a Republican who was then a U.S. representative from Montana, falsely tied the lab to the origins of COVID in an attempt to cut its funding.

Now, Hamilton is a prime example of how the Trump administration’s mass federal layoffs and cancellation of research grants are being felt in communities far from Washington, D.C.

The impact of budget cuts definitely reduced the amount of super-smart scientists working at Rocky Mountain Labs, but do budget cuts explain not finishing a chainlink fence to secure assets, like these trailers from the National Institutes of Health?

As of early May, 41 Rocky Mountain Labs workers had been let go or told their contracts would end this summer, and nine more had retired early, according to researchers employed by the facility.

KFF Health News spoke with 10 current or former Rocky Mountain Labs workers who requested anonymity to speak about information that has not been publicly released. The federal government has also slashed billions of dollars for research, including at least $29 million in grants to Montana recipients, ranging from university scientists to the state health department. That’s according to HHS data confirmed by KFF Health News.

This NPR reporting happened in May of 2025.

Six months later, a monkey apparently chomped a RML scientist, but the reporting of this incident took about a year to get to the public, where it was was amplified by Laura Loomer.

Huh?

Republican Sen. Tim Sheehy of Montana is asking for an inspector general’s review of a renowned federal research lab in his state after a monkey infected with Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever bit a worker there.

The employee, whose name was never made public, was treated after the November 2025 incident, did not contract the lethal tick-borne illness and soon returned to work. But a conservative animal welfare group, White Coat Waste, and MAGA influencer Laura Loomer have since urged federal intervention. They say the incident at the lab, a National Institutes of Health facility in a small town in Montana’s Bitterroot Valley, as well as their separate suspicions about one of its employees, demand investigation.

All this national attention and demands for an investigation are great and all, but what about the incomplete fencing? What the fuck is up with that? Are we looking at a Potemkin village here?

To better understand the accusations being made against the Rocky Mountain Lab I decided to scrutinize the “White Coat Waste” project, co-founded by a dude named Anthony Bellotti, a guy who likes cats and Republicans who want to stop animal testing.

Ok.

Who is this guy? And is he related to another Anthony Bellotti I found online? Hold that thought because Rob “CHINA LOVER” Chaney wrote an article about ANOTHER Rocky Mountain Lab controversy that emerged recently, and Chaney’s reporting includes highlighting the work of the White Coat Waste project. Hmmm.

From the link:

RML’s latest controversy arose this week when the U.S. Department of Justice arrested and charged two of its researchers with smuggling monkeypox virus samples into the United States and lying to investigators. That came on top of accusations by an animal welfare advocacy group called White Coat Waste Project Inc., which published an “exclusive whistleblower report” alleging that the facility, part of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was covering up accidents involving exposure to dangerous pathogens.

The specific accusations have drawn attention from congressional Republicans, including Montana Senator Tim Sheehy. But they have also illuminated a larger debate over animal research during a time of deep political polarization amid an Ebola virus outbreak that has killed hundreds in Africa and following a hantavirus infection that killed several passengers on a cruise ship in early May.

White Coat Waste is a registered nonprofit that raised $5.9 million in 2024. Besides its campaign against RML, White Coat Waste claimed credit for pushing several measures against federal lab testing on animals in the 2026 Farm Bill. It included cuts to funding for animal testing collaborations with China, Russia and other countries. WCW has listed past accomplishments of defunding the Department of Veterans Affairs labs that research dogs and ending a Food and Drug Administration monkey nicotine addiction project.

Further down we get more details on the “12 Monkeys” scenario that included two of those super-smart scientists flying on a crowded plane before getting caught and criminally charged:

“These NIH experts apparently broke our laws by smuggling viral pathogens on a packed commercial airplane from an outbreak in the Republic of Congo,” Gorgon stated in the press release.

If convicted, the two men face up to five years in prison. The release does not say if the researchers remain in custody or when they may appear in court. It does note that the two are innocent until proven guilty.

“We will remain fiercely vigilant in neutralizing biological threats — or otherwise — and continue to hold accountable those who jeopardize the safety and security of the American people,” Customs and Border Patrol Director of Field Operations Marty Raybon said in the DOJ release.

But the incident also reflects a long-standing suspicion, since the 2020 COVID pandemic, that government researchers are either carelessly or deliberately tinkering with deadly diseases for unknown and possibly evil purposes. That has been a chronic tension for RML workers, who have spent years building community trust that they are handling dangerous pathogens to help the public, not harm it.

Is the community in Hamilton right to be suspicious? Yes, I think they are, and they should ALSO be suspicious or organizations like the White Coat Waste project, especially if their Tony Bellotti is the son, or some other family relation, of this Tony Bellotti:

The locations Tony Bellotti went to in South America, and when we went to those locations, seems significant in terms of U.S. hegemonic power projection, especially when you factor in the Rockefeller Foundation.

With support from the Rockefeller Foundation, he initiated an in-depth investigation of the pests ravaging the cassava root (also called manioc or yucca). Cassava had been called an “orphan crop” because of how few in the research community paid attention to it.

In 1970, Tony and the Centro International de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT) team discovered that by spraying a purée of virus-infected hornworms (nicknamed “hornworm sherbet”), they could drastically reduce the damage to cassava from hornworm (Erinnyis ello) larvae and similar agricultural pests. The treatment proved both inexpensive and highly effective.

Returning to our present day, the effort by Montana’s Senator, Tim Sheehy, to get accurate, relevant information was NOT helped by psycho-bitch, Laura Loomer, who made VERY concerning claims back in May about an impending Ebola release before shifting her focus to getting Milo deported.

The incident reflects a growing distrust of institutional science. In a May 17 post on X, blogger Laura Loomer claimed that “Fauci holdovers” were “about to unleash Ebola in America in an effort to undermine President Trump’s second term with another pandemic so they can steal more elections.” She continued that the “whistleblower letter” allegations about RML revealed a “cover-up about illegal virus smuggling by Trump-hating, foreign-born NIH animal researchers and a monkey bite incident that exposed a staffer to a deadly virus at an NIH lab in Montana.”

I don’t think the Loomer focus is inconsequential, nor the claim I heard recently on a livestream from the “conspiracist”, George Webb, that his followers have “boots on the ground” in Hamilton. For those unaware of Webb’s claims about the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, here’s how one local media outlet framed his accusations back in April of 2020:

Maatje Bensassi and her husband are at the center of the elaborate conspiracy, which has been promoted online by George Webb, a conspiracy theorist who has nearly 100,000 subscribers on YouTube.

Webb has falsely claimed, without any evidence, that Maatje brough the virus to China when she competed as a cyclist in the Military World Games in Wuhan, China last October. Maatje has denied that she ever tested positive for the virus.

Six months later, comments under Webb’s YouTube videos have involved several threats of violence.

The conspiracy theory has even reached China. Webb has been featured in the country’s state media, which has sought to deflect blame for the COVID-19 pandemic.

If we’re talking conspiracy theories, then allow me to conclude this post with one of my own, which goes something like this.

Let’s say the people at the top know something is coming, like a cyclical cataclysmic event, and in order to freely move to their fall-back positions, like converted missile siloes in Montana, then a false outbreak from the Rocky Mountain Labs could provide the PERFECT excuse to quarantine local populations and keep them inside and ignorant about what’s happening.

Obviously, I hope I’m wrong.

If I am NOT wrong, though, and something happens, then I suspect the public will be thrown into an information blackout that could look something like what Gary, Indiana, went through recently, which hardly anyone outside of Gary, Indiana, knew about until after the power started coming back on two weeks later.

Gary’s problems with infrastructure were clear long before the storm rolled in. Over the past decades, as deindustrialization has shrunk the city’s population and tax base, its infrastructure has crumbled too. NIPSCO has a monopoly on Gary’s electricity, and a 2025 analysis by the Citizens Action Coalition, a consumer-advocacy organization, found that NIPSCO customers were already paying the highest bills of any of Indiana’s five investor-owned electric utilities; last year, NIPSCO was approved for another rate increase to upgrade power lines and technology updates. Even though low-income Black households tend to spend more of their incomes on utilities, they are disproportionately affected by electric-grid failures and face slower restoration times after extreme weather events. (NIPSCO did not respond to questions about its infrastructure investments or its rates.)

Each day that the lights stayed off added to the disruption in people’s lives. David Rucker and his wife, Tiffany, told me that they’d had to drive about an hour every day to Chicago to charge his BiPAP ventilator, which he needs to breathe when he sleeps. The device runs only four hours when it’s battery-powered. Although Gary is only about 30 minutes away from the south side of Chicago, the journey takes twice as long, because their car’s transmission needs to be fixed. “The money we would’ve spent to fix it, we don’t have,” Tiffany said. “Now everything is depleted. The storm has taken a lot—mentally, physically, and monetarily.” Their power was restored on Monday night at 10 p.m.

Another benefit for Big Sky billionaires hiding out behind an iron information curtain is that a false outbreak would keep people AWAY from Montana, especially if information can be hermetically sealed inside a sort of geographic faraday cage.

Is that what the Miami mall incident was a test run for?

The power to control narratives is essentially the power to control minds, so, after studying this meta-topic of narrative control intensely for six years, I think I have a better grip on the capabilities of narrative manipulation than most, and what I’m seeing with the Rocky Mountain Lab is raising several red flags.

If you appreciate a citizen journalist who actually GOES TO PLACES in person to bring original reporting on a topic of national importance, then please consider donating to my new GoFundMe page. Any little bit helps (special thanks to the deliverer of food who left the surprise dish that satiated my growling stomach!)

Thanks for reading!

Two years before Lindsey Clancy murdered her three children I got a lesson in feminine accountability from my ex-wife, who successfully flipped getting caught violating our parenting plan into somehow casting herself as the victim because she was worried about my reaction when I found out my daughter had already been introduced to a new boyfriend before I even knew this person existed.

Here’s the language of our parenting plan stipulating how introductions to new romantic partners SHOULD be conducted:

And here’s the text I got after my mother let it slip that my kids were being introduced to a romantic partner behind my back:

Amending the parenting plan would have taken money, which I don’t have, so when other violations have happened–like not honoring the date I should be informed about summer vacations–I just have to accept it.

Actually, it should probably be amended to something like Mother shall have priority to do WHATEVER SHE WANTS TO DO, because that’s my current reality for the foreseeable future.

My ex-wife still has a good relationship with my Father, who recently confirmed he wouldn’t allow me to see my own daughter because of how openly and honestly I’ve communicated my hatred of him. Since my father’s house is the place where I get to see my kids (who I have uncontested, 50/50 custody of), his control and recent mocking of my limitations haven’t improved how much I resent this man.

Daddy is correct, I don’t have a car or the gas money to drive to Seattle to pick up my own son from his trip to Japan. I don’t even have the ability to leave the state of Montana without permission. And because my limitations have made retirement a drag for Daddy, I was told, at one of my lowest moments, that Daddy is putting his house on the market and fleeing town.

Here’s his reasoning:

I’m putting this dirty laundry out for others to see because I know my family is not the only one being destroyed by the larger forces we won’t collectively rise up against.

Before 2020 I had come to terms with my why my father was emotionally retarded and financially controlling, but the “pandemic” changed all that. I stood up against IMMENSE PRESSURE, not just for me but FOR MY KIDS, who Daddy thought should get jabbed to keep him safe. Any consideration I had for this man was obliterated after that and it never returned.

Amidst this pressure to jab my kids my ex-wife’s resolve faltered because she wanted to keep riding around in airplanes like the privileged brat she turned out to be. Thankfully THE MAN in the house stood strong, and my kids are healthier because of it.

When I asked to simply be a part of the conversation with my own kids about Grandpa fleeing with Grandma to another city, I found out those conversations were already happening, again, behind my back, just like finding out yesterday my ex-wife is house shopping.

It must be nice to NOT have to adhere to any legally-binding documents when you know the father is a broke loser despised by anyone who matters in this stupid fucking town.

In America your rights begin as an extension of your bank account, and they expand on the cultural currency of victimhood, which brings me to my final point: Patrick Clancy’s lawyers should aggressively litigate EVERY WOMAN who implied he’s somehow responsible for the killing of his three children. Every. Single. One.

If that doesn’t happen, the American family is cooked.

I hope my own family can find the peace they are looking for, wherever they think that may be, but I learned something critical in 2020 that I won’t soon forget, and that’s how much those larger forces–the powers and principalities a supposed Christian man, like my Father, should be more discerning of–HATE HUMANITY, and what better way to destroy us than making the already difficult task of men relating to women, and vice-versa, totally impossible.

To help support the dogged persistence I’m bringing to all facets of my fucked up life, please consider donating to my new GoFundMe page. Any little bit helps.

Thanks for reading.

I’ve been waiting for the right moment to write about the proposal to create a 57th County in Western Montana and I think that moment has finally come for reasons I’ll get into after this quote explaining the most obvious reason Seeley-Swan residents are considering a form of secession: taxes.

When I saw reports that a group of residents in the Seeley-Swan area is exploring the possibility of splitting from Missoula County, I was intrigued. The concept of creating a new county seems like a relic of the past, and indeed, Montana’s 56th county, Petroleum, was created in 1925.

This discussion among rural Missoula County residents isn’t new, but it’s gained momentum recently, with a new, growing Facebook group and a feasibility study digging into the details. This week, I called Swan Valley Community Council member and Condon resident Ted Morgan (on his landline) to talk about the study and why some residents are looking to break away from Missoula County.

“We just see a lot of tax dollars going to county initiatives closer to urban areas,” he said Wednesday. “We see our tax dollars going up every year, and there’s not a marked effect on rural people.”

Ted Morgan and his fellow Missoula County residents studying the feasibility of this move don’t like seeing their tax dollars going up, but they DO seem to appreciate the increasing tax base from second homes. In fact, according to Ted, it’s the luxury development that’s making the feasibility of secession seem, well, more feasible:

Morgan said the area has seen an increase in taxable values since 2020 and includes “massive” second homes and resorts. That increase makes the new county a more realistic proposition, he said.

“Our tax base, while small, is definitely enough to run its own government,” Morgan said.

According to the feasibility study, the 6,435 parcels located in the proposed new county have an assessed taxable value of $31.13 million. That’s higher than Mineral and Powell counties, the report said.

Operating a “lean governance model,” the new county could reduce the county-level property tax burden for residents while maintaining full service levels, according to the report. The proposal calls for a county government with 18 to 20 employees working in administration, public works, law enforcement and other positions. Morgan said the county would not build its own jail, but would contract with another county to use its facility.

One of the taxing schemes that I suspect is inspiring our northern neighbors in Seeley to consider leaving Missoula County to create a whole new County is the use of Tax Increment Financing through Targeted Economic Development Districts.

But don’t tell that to Cascade County.

Starting with the taxing jurisdiction of Great Falls, where Janicki Industries is making a massive investment, I discovered how the use of a bond will potentially extend the life of the taxing district just like in Missoula, where the Missoula Redevelopment Agency used the pedestrian bridge over Reserve Street to extend the life of THAT taxing district.

And I discovered this move because of how annoyed this X post made me:

A truth-seeking, pot-stirring, caller of bullshit should probably be less indignant when dealing with the public’s frustration over doling out financially short-sighted subsidies and repeating the stupid policies of Missoula by making sure those special taxing districts never die.

To see how this conversation is shaping up in a different western Montana location other than Missoula, here’s two screenshots from minutes taken from a May 19th, 2026 meeting in Great Falls (GFDA stands for Great Falls Development Authority):

While this conversation is happening, a different part of Cascade County is so unimpressed with Sheriff Slaughter’s Cascade County Sheriff’s Office services that they are considering starting a police force of their own. Hmmm.

The Town of Cascade is considering creating its own municipal police department, with residents and town leaders discussing the proposal during a public meeting Thursday night.

A proposed ordinance would establish the Cascade Police Department, outline its leadership and set requirements for officers. Under the proposal, the department would be led by a chief of police, with additional officers hired as authorized and funded through the town’s municipal budget.

Supporters of the proposal said they liked the idea of having local law enforcement and giving the town greater control over hiring, department operations and its budget.

Opponents, however, raised concerns about whether the town has accounted for all of the costs associated with operating an independent police department.

Why would a little township like Cascade want “greater control” over their lawmen? Sadly, we can’t expect local media to give us the full story about incompetent and/or corrupt law enforcement, so instead we have to rely on content creators like those involved with the “Peaceful Sea Network” to highlight how dangerously unaware of Constitutional protections the Cascade County Sheriff’s Office appears to be.

Here’s the first episode of the new season of “The Cascade Effect” showing what you can expect once you’re targeted by these types of “law enforcers”.

If you don’t see the connection between tax subsidies, first responder budgets, and the overall quality of life issues that arise when your local cops and Sheriff deputies don’t understand the basic protections of the CONSTITUTION, let’s return to Missoula, where the Downtown Business Partnership ensures they have a more consistent police presence downtown by literally funding cop salaries:

While the Missoula Downtown Partnership has reduced paying for this protection racket for downtown businesses–businesses that are ALREADY paying taxes for cops–the fact that “dedicated policing” requires additional expenditures should be getting more context from local media, and that context should include the economic suck of Urban Renewal Districts. Too bad STATE tax changes are getting all of the attention right now for being a total dumpster fire of confusion regarding the legislative changes ostensibly trying to shift some of the fiscal weight of the property tax burden to owners of second homes.

How’s that going?

“The biggest change for most people are going to be whether they got their property enrolled as their homestead principal residence or a long-term rental or they didn’t,” Kaatz said. “If they did, they obviously get the benefit of those tiered tax rates.”

In cities like Missoula, the changes mean properties classified as second homes or short-term rentals will see property taxes more than double, while the owner-occupied home will see a slight reduction, the Missoulian reported.

About 42,000 residential properties in the state secured the long-term rental status, according to DOR data, but Kaatz said census data estimated there are approximately 55,000 long-term rentals in the state.

That means about 20% of the state’s long-term rentals could see a higher tax rate. Often, those higher costs get passed on to the renter of the home.

“We could effectively tell the taxpayer their taxes would be doubling in amount from 2025 to 2026,” State Sen. Greg Hertz, R-Polson, said at the meeting.

Hertz and other state legislators sued the state over the new law, arguing its creation in the 2025 was unconstitutional. No decision has been made in the case.

The pot-stirring shit-talker tried assuring me on X that no one in Great Falls wants to become Missoula, and I’m sure Rick Tryon believes what he says. But was he ever in attendance at the 2023 Legislature to see Great Falls TIF addicts coming to rescue Ellen Buchanan from the remnants of the Missoula Tax Insurrection?

Whether one is looking at city policies, county policies, or the crafting of state law, Montana appears to be a complete and total shit show incapable of following the simplest of open meeting laws, or even respecting the critical legal protections enshrined by the Constitution, which is how this country was built in the first place.

And to highlight the shit show of local media, last evening I tried giving a drunk reporter a tip, but learned instead you don’t interrupt Missoulian staffers talking about “post-journalism” when they’re at a boozy work meeting with their new editor, Cory Walsh, so I went to compose something trollish on X and got a surprise visit with an informant, which I recorded.

Maybe now I have something more concrete about the death of Sean Stevenson and the coverup by law enforcement to stop me from finding out why he had to die in a private hospital room at St. Pats on January 5th, 2020.

Stay tuned…

When I first heard about the “Stop Nick Shirley Act” my initial reaction was to ignore it. Then a data point emerged that connected what is happening in Missoula to the California legislation trying to do this:

Starting next year, Californians who provide legal aid, counseling or other types of assistance to immigrants will be eligible for a privacy program that keeps their addresses confidential and out of public records.

Gov. Gavin Newsom approved this latest expansion of California’s Safe at Home program amid concern among Democratic legislators of a rise in reported harassment and threats against immigrants and immigration advocates.

Ok, so the “Stop Nick Shirley Act” is about creating a new “privacy program” to shield anyone who helps immigrants in California from scrutiny. Would this program also ensure privacy for immigrant helpers who live in California but help immigrants in other places, like Missoula?

Here’s the data point that suddenly had me thinking differently about this stupid California legislative move:

Yes, the funding of Soft Landing in Missoula by Harry and Meghan’s Archewell Foundation is something I would definitely be interested in researching more. If I had the money (like Nick Shirley obviously does) I would even consider taking a trip to California to try and talk to someone about it. But that might become illegal if the “Stop Nick Shirley Act” is passed.

One of the claims about Archewell that critics say lacks merit is the claim that Harry and Meghan were using Archewell to get USAID money. Here’s an article pushing back on that claim:

Picture this: you’re scrolling X, and a post screams that Prince Harry swiped $13 million from American taxpayers via USAID. It’s juicy, it’s outrageous, and it’s got just enough edge to make you pause. But here’s the kicker — it’s not true. Or at least, not in the way the outrage merchants want you to think. Over the past year, this claim has popped up like a bad penny, fueled by a mix of royal resentment and misinformation. So, let’s cut through the noise and figure out what’s really going on.

The story starts with Harry and Meghan’s Archewell Foundation, their post-royal venture to do good in the world. Archewell’s been busy — teaming up with groups like World Central Kitchen to feed disaster-struck communities and pushing mental health initiatives. Noble stuff, right? But somewhere along the line, critics started whispering that Archewell was a front for funneling taxpayer cash into the Sussexes’ pockets. The number $13 million got slapped on, tied to USAID, the U.S. agency that funds global aid projects. Suddenly, it’s a full-blown scandal — at least in certain corners of the internet.

Here’s the reality check: USAID doesn’t write checks to Archewell. It funds organizations tackling poverty, health crises, and disasters worldwide — think NGOs in Haiti or Ethiopia, not Montecito mansions. No credible outlet, from Reuters to The Washington Post, has found evidence of $13 million flowing to Harry or Meghan. The claim seems to have sprouted from a misreading of Archewell’s partnerships with charities that might, in some cases, receive USAID grants. But that’s like saying your local food bank is “fleecing” taxpayers because it gets government support. It’s a leap.

Parsing out the money trail for a Royal couple who recently fled the states with their figurative (or maybe reptilian) tails between their legs doesn’t interest me. Instead I’m wondering…why Missoula? Is there some kind of social connection to our humble little mountain town?

Perhaps the social connections of Shuana Nep, who tops the list on the 990 forms, could be of interest.

Besides Archewell, Nep is also involved in a handful of other high-profile ventures, including one with Taylor Swift’s arch nemesis Scooter Braun. She is the vice-president of philanthropy at Braun’s SB Projects, described as the “diversified entertainment and media company behind pop culture icons such as Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, Demi Lovato, J Balvin and Ashley Graham”.

Her LinkedIn bio notes that she “works closely with each client to develop social impact initiatives tailored to reflect the passions, causes and communities most important to them”.

This wasn’t enough to satisfy my hunch, so I went back to the 990s, clicking the most recent filing for the Archewell Foundation. The first thing that got my attention was a financial recipient located in the Kansas City suburbs where I went to high school. The second thing I found was an Epstein-connected woman working for an organization just few lines down.

Hopelab Foundation? What’s that, I wondered.

It didn’t take me long to find out.

For those unfamiliar with the highlighted surname, think PayPal mafia, and as you’re thinking PayPal mafia you can add that seemingly important Paws Up Founders Fund gathering which happened last June, north of Missoula.

When I put the name “Pam Omidyar” in the Epstein DOJ search engine, the following email most certainly got my attention, as it should anyone living in a billionaire’s vast Big Sky playground.

Seeing Elon Musk’s name and knowing he was at the Paws Up Founders Fund event last June, and seeing Nick Pritzker’s name and knowing he has that Buddhist family member living in the same region of Montana as Paws Up Ranch, is enough connective tissue for me to understand why Soft Landing would get a chance to suckle some charity from Harry and Meghan as they attempted, and failed, to get a foothold in this blown charity racket.

Maybe now Harry and Meghan they can pivot to working with former English immigrants returning home from abroad after they’re no longer welcome to grift inside MAGA-ville.

Returning to the poorly labeled “Stop Nick Shirley Act”, there absolutely IS, in my opinion, something worrisome about selectively qualifying a group of people for enhanced privacy. Also, the word “program” leads me to believe public resources are going to be used in some way in order to do said qualifying, which in California is never a good idea if you’re a regular tax payer.

The Epstein class, however, are NOT regular tax payers, so to conclude today’s post I’d like to link to a well-researched article by Johnny Vedmore, a truly independent researcher who has done some of the best work on John Brockman’s “Edge Foundation”. Here’s an excerpt:

The Edge Foundation was not simply a forum for elite scientists to discuss what interested them most; a clear agenda was at play. The Masterclasses and Seminars tackled three main subjects: how to alter or affect human cells and genes; how to predict the future social order; and how to change people’s decision-making and behaviour. If you were to question any of the Large Language Models about Edge’s major events, they’ll currently tell you that everything was innocent and professional. They are also very quick to belittle and dismiss the uncomfortable fact that much of Edge’s activities were funded by Jeffrey Epstein.

For those still stuck in the two-party political con, where Elon Musk saved Twitter and Trump is still fighting the deep state by playing 5-D chess, Vedmore’s connection of Musk to Edge, and therefore to Jeffrey Epstein, has ensured his relative obscurity and increased personal risk because that’s what happens when you seek the actual truth about who runs the world and what they’re planning for the useless eaters threatening their Transhumanist future by merely existing.

If you appreciate this unique and surprising connection of stupid California legislation reaching all the way into the complicit parts of Big Sky country with the Epstein class, please consider donating to my new GoFundMe page. Any little bit helps.

And for more on my Epstein/Big Sky coverage, this post has been updated with ALL the relevant links to my Epstein research. Dig in!

And, as always, thanks for reading.