Zoom Chron Blog

While idly scrolling Insta this morning I came across an unfamiliar name who is ALL OVER the Epstein Files. Who is Jeff Koons, I wondered, and why are people spending millions of dollars on his shitty art?

When I added “Montana” to the mix I discovered Jeff Koons and his “muse”, Lady Gaga, came to Montana over a decade ago for a little shindig at the Yellowstone Club.

If you read the comments to the right you will read that, according to “tatanga.co”, Montana…”has a way of pulling the right people in.“

“There’s nothing like it,” she says.

Five years before Gaga and Koons flew to Montana to talk about art, Koons was in Missoula talking about art. I wonder if laundering money for human traffickers who fuck children was a part of the polite conversation that evening?

What Koons talked about at the Yellowstone Club never made it out to the public, as this society piece coyly notes:

The Daily Mail reports that Jeff Koons and his muse Lady Gaga (or was it the other way around?) went on a little vacation last Friday. Not too shocking to hear, except they didn’t head to the Hamptons, Aspen, or some Mediterranean island, but rather to Montana. While the tabloid was largely concerned with a certain nipple-bearing selfie Gaga posted to her Instagram account while en route, we’re far more curious as to what the art stars were doing so far afield.

It seems the destination was Big Sky, where Koons was giving a talk at the Yellowstone Club, a luxury residential community. Gaga also brought along her pup, Asia, who posed for a picture with the pair.

Unfortunately, this mysterious “group chat” that Koons participated in doesn’t appear to have been documented anywhere other than Gaga’s Instagram feed, so we’ll just have to take her word for it. And while Montana isn’t exactly known for its bustling contemporary art scene, The Yellowstone Club is an exclusive resort and residential domain that charges an estimated $250,000 just to join (plus the cost of a $5–35 million mountainside home, as well as annual dues), so we imagine the duo felt right at home.

Yeah, I bet they did.

Before I get to the Epstein File excerpts I’ve curated for this post (art people love the word “curate”), let’s see what the current exhibits at the Missoula Art Museum look like to get a feel for where the art hosts of Jeff Koons in 2009 are at in 2026:

If I had to choose one word to describe what I’m looking at that word would be death because I see buffalo skulls, a pyramid-shaped skull, and an ugly hammer shaped blob that makes me think of the guy who brutally murdered a woman with a hammer two years ago, then drove her corpse to a gas station where he was arrested, something that rarely seems to happen to members of the Epstein network.

The Koons references in the Epstein files range from casual dinner plans to more formal invitations to the privileged spaces where rich Russians and Saudi royals co-mingle. I’ll start with the more formal description of Koons’ work, then show the more friendly side of these “art lovers”:

To answer the question posed by the title of this post, Montana is a safe space for demons because they appear confident nothing bad will happen to them here. Since the only figure local media seemed interested in writing about was the dinosaur guy, Jack Horner–and since the best writing on the Big Sky connections to Epstein is coming from a blogger with an ankle monitor (me), it makes sense that Montana is a very popular destination location for the rotten wealth destroying this country from within.

Speaking of wealth (or the lack thereof), the money crumbs I’ve been soliciting from readers through my GoFundMe page is apparently giving one reader this result:

If you are seeing this “Bad Gateway” result, feel free to email me at willskink at yahoo dot com, or let me know in the comments. I wouldn’t be surprised if this meager effort at raising funds was also somehow being targeted.

Thanks for reading!

The most entitled generation in all known history, the Baby Boomer generation, aren’t going out like previous generations. Instead they’re bucking trends, like NOT downsizing their homes, according to this Wall Street Journal article:

Well-off boomers are increasingly upsizing their homes as they age, either buying bigger ones or financing additions to their existing properties. They are building guesthouses for family members and gourmet kitchens for entertaining, alongside such features as high-end grab bars and first-floor primary bedrooms for aging in place.

In the process, they are rewriting the rules of retirement and aging, when people are expected to move into smaller homes to save money.

Owning a home–often referred to as “The American Dream”–is more out-of-reach for non-Boomers than it’s ever been, but despite percentages plummeting for those in their 30’s, the overall home-ownership-rate has risen. Why?

A recent post on X by MacroEdge, an economic data organization, was at once jarring and unsurprising. From 1960 to 2025, the number of 30-year-olds who owned a home and were married has dropped from 52% to 12%. But the overall home ownership rate has risen, going from 62% in 1960 to 65% now, while home sales are up, due largely to Boomers buying multiple homes. This discrepancy is not an accident, but the outcome of a protectionist system that Boomers themselves have built.

The Boomer generation has for decades been lead architects of land-use policies that restrict home supply. This creates an artificial shortage that renders housing as a good investment – albeit one that only Boomers can afford. This fuels the rather jarring generational difference in home purchasing statistics.

Further down we get some more numbers highlighting how the engine of Boomer wealth is driving home sales:

According to a recent National Association of Realtors report, Baby Boomers made 42% of all home purchases despite comprising only 20% of the population. Millennials represented 29% and Gen Xers 24% of all purchasers. Overall, there’s a 44-point gap between homeownership between Boomers and Millennials, which is all the more notable given that those younger groups are in their prime home-buying years, while Boomers would, theoretically, be downscaling or moving into retirement complexes.

Much of this is due to Boomers buying multiple investment properties, avoiding high interest rates via all-cash purchases. These cash purchases, according to the Realtors Association, account for nearly half of all Boomer purchases.

My own father reflects this trend, I found out recently, when he bought my brother a house in Lawrence, Kansas. Not only was this probably a smart financial investment, it’s also a smart social investment for a 70 year old man in cognitive decline because it ensures that at least one kid might be around to switch out the dirty adult diapers when the time comes.

Here’s a good question for Boomer’s to think about: how much Boomer wealth will go to paying strangers (who will likely be on amphetamines) to do the diaper changing and other “in-home care” duties in those big, empty houses?

As someone who worked at Missoula Aging Services for 3 years, I can say that A LOT of the 93 trillion in Boomer wealth will make it to the black market via those diaper-changing tweakers going back and forth between suburbia and the pawn shop.

Baby boomers hold roughly $93 trillion in assets, but only $36 trillion could reach Gen X and millennial heirs over the next 20 years, according to new data.

The estimate, released last week by Visa Business and Economic Insights, is far below Cerulli Associates’ widely cited projection that as much as $124 trillion could change hands through 2048.

The gulf between the headline figures offers a sobering picture of the Great Wealth Transfer and exposes a basic problem with the way inheritance is often discussed: Assets held today are not the same as wealth available to heirs tomorrow.

A lot of assumptions about money might need to be reconsidered as the old world the Boomer’s knew gives rise to a new, more hostile one. To help, let’s consider two examples from my own “truly sad” life (mom’s words).

After providing descriptions of my behavior to the director of Winds of Change, my father was rebuffed at getting information about my mental health condition. Seeing a clear example of my perennial claim that this man uses money to control the people around him, I expressed these things called “feelings” about this paternal conduct, and his response was to claim that since he’s paying, he has a right to talk about me to my mental health provider.

Another example of diminishing returns for my father recently emerged when the Volkswagon dealership sold him a lemon, then refused to acknowledge the influence of his money when he threatened to take his business elsewhere. I can’t imagine how traumatic that must have been for him.

In the above article, the blackhole called “long term care” is projected to gobble up TRILLIONS of that Boomer wealth before the “heirs” see a dime.

Visa estimates boomers will draw down about $16 trillion over the next 20 years to cover housing, food, healthcare, prescription drugs, and other living expenses.

Those burdens will be especially acute for families with the fewest assets.

“Their position is different from previous generations because the retirement itself costs more, and more of that wealth gets eaten up before it ever reaches an heir,” Mills says.

Long-term care can accelerate that drawdown.

“Long-term care, healthcare, housing costs, and taxes on retirement account withdrawals can reduce an estate faster than families expect,” explains Zachary Sahar, CPA and managing director at Capital Tax.

Yep, this is 100% correct, and I saw more than my share of awful conversations happen at Missoula Aging Services every day, over and over again, because nothing destroys a family more effectively than family members jockeying for position over a quickly evaporating inheritance pay-out.

Back in March, before I started writing explicitly about the dysfunction of my own family dynamics, I was trying to claw myself out of the financial hole I dug for myself, but the advice I got from the man who bought his other son a house was pretty simple: declare bankruptcy.

“This is a zero-sum game,” he told me, referring to the fact he was no longer working, which meant that any dollar I got from him would be a dollar he couldn’t use for himself. He said this explicitly so that I understood exactly where he was coming from.

If Gen X can just step back from their feels, maybe we can see there’s an opportunity lurking in the Boomer’s brains going collectively soft, and that’s the unfiltered honesty you might get, and can document, so that the relevant agencies can be made aware of things that could harm minors, like parental alienation.

To wrap this post up, here’s a little screenshot from Montana Code Annotated about the kind of rights I have NOT relinquished in anyway whatsoever to a manipulative family member who really does use money to control the people around him.

Thanks for reading.

After putting a lot of time and resources into prosecuting Jason Ellsworth the guilty verdict has been thrown out. Why? Because accidents happen.

The guilty verdict in the official misconduct case against former Senate President Jason Ellsworth has been thrown out following revelations that jurors were exposed to sealed exhibits concerning communications with a potential key witness.

Lewis and Clark County District Judge Christopher Abbott said in a Wednesday court hearing that he learned Wednesday morning that jurors deliberating in the misdemeanor trial were inadvertently given exhibits by court staff regarding the scheduling of potential key witness Bryce Eggleston.

…

“The state does believe that there should be a new trial,” said Dan Guzynski, an assistant Montana attorney general, speaking at a mistrial hearing Wednesday. “I also want to make a brief comment that everybody makes mistakes, and this whole process, and what we’re all involved in, is subject to the human condition.”

Does the “human condition” that Montanans are subjected to, via actions taken with their tax dollars, mean we have to pay for how retarded people can be? I guess so.

For Jason Ellsworth the tossing out of his guilty verdict is an unexpected gift because his evasion of the bidding process when awarding a lucrative contract to his buddy was pretty obvious. I also find it interesting that the work that would have been done by his buddy was tracking legislative bills “curtailing the powers of Montana courts“:

Eggleston is Ellsworth’s longtime friend and former employee, who in 2024 pitched the senator on tracking the state’s progress implementing 27 legislative bills created by lawmakers with the purpose of curtailing the powers of Montana courts. Ellsworth signed two contracts totaling $170,000 for the proposed services on Dec. 26, 2024.

The work was to be performed by Agile Analytics, a then newly formed company for which Eggleston was the registered agent. Prosecutors allege that Ellsworth circumvented competitive bidding requirements and signed the contracts without a required review by state procurement agents.

Eggleston informed the Legislature in early 2025 that Agile was no longer interested in the work after Ellsworth’s handling of the agreements drew public attention.

While this effort blew up in Ellsworth’s face, holding this retarded state legislator accountable will now have to start over at square one. How embarrassing.

Speaking of embarrassing legislators who are so cognitively deficient they can’t even press the right button on a critical vote, who remembers what Tom Jacobson did 13 years ago with Medicaid expansion in Montana?

Yep, retarded Tom was so retarded that even the Washington Post had to marvel at his cataclysmic mistake:

Some states have declined to expand Medicaid because they oppose Obamacare. Others worry about the financial burden of expanding the entitlement. But there appears to be only one state where the Medicaid expansion failed due to a Democratic legislator accidentally voting against it.

Congratulations, Montana.

“We’re tremendously sorry about what happened,” Minority Leader Chuck Hunter, a Democrat, said of the mistaken vote. “Montanans are the losers in this outcome.”

The reporter continues with how unbelievable this idiocy appeared to be:

When I first read about this in a local Montana paper, it sounded unbelievable. How did a legislator get the vote wrong? And, if the vote was a mistake, was there some mechanism to change it? This was, after all, a vote deciding whether 70,000 Montanans would gain health coverage — and whether the state would massively expand an entitlement program.

So I started making some phone calls to Montana. Turns out everybody knew about this mistaken vote — and that the story was even more complex than I had thought.

The complexity about how legislative sausage is made doesn’t change the fact that, at the critical moment, Tom Jacobson fucked up so significantly, tens of thousands of regular Montanans were impacted. Impressive.

Nothing I’ve seen from local government since this vote has given me confidence that cognition deficiencies aren’t a continued threat. From police investigations to cleaning up homeless camps, when local government gets involved, everything just seems to get dumber and more expensive.

If you’d like to help me offset the cost of identifying cognition deficiencies in local government, which includes loss of paid work from the lawfare blowback, then please consider donating to my new GoFundMe page. The recent $20 dollar donation I received, for example, is MUCH appreciated.

Thanks for reading!

Who is Penny Ronning and why do I think her work fighting human trafficking ensures Montana will remain a mecca for human traffickers?

Great question, let’s take a look at Penny’s supposed “credentials“:

Penny Ronning is a nationally recognized anti trafficking advocate and policy strategist known for turning survivor informed insight into laws that dismantle exploitation networks and strengthen public safety. The daughter of a trafficking survivor, Penny brings personal perspective and more than three decades of leadership advancing protections for victims and accountability for offenders.

She is co-founder and president of the Yellowstone Human Trafficking Task Force, Montana’s largest anti trafficking coalition. Through her policy work, Penny has helped pass 13 state laws and 5 federal bills strengthening anti trafficking and exploitation statutes and expanding investigative capacity.

While serving on the Billings City Council, Penny authored and led passage of a landmark ordinance targeting illicit massage businesses operating as fronts for trafficking. At the time, Billings had more illicit massage businesses per capita than New York City. Within one year, the ordinance shut down all known illicit massage businesses in Billings and remains a powerful tool for closing new operations as they emerge. The ordinance has been cited as a model for how local governments disrupt organized exploitation.

Penny is a national speaker, former congressional nominee, and recipient of the FBI Director’s Community Leadership Award. Her leadership has also been recognized with two invitations to the White House.

If Penny Ronning wasn’t a Democrat partisan engaging in narrative control around the Epstein Files, I might be inclined to take her work more seriously, but that’s what I see coming from this Democrat in her recent Facebook post comparing Seth Bodnar to Donald Trump while ignoring the Clinton/Epstein legacy, highlighted by the fact Bill Clinton was just recently spotted in Big Sky country.

Why does Montana seem like a safe space for high-profile abusers? Is it because we have “advocates” like Penny Ronning entering the political fray with shit like this?

Before we get to the non-English speaking teenager who stabbed a minor in the parking lot of Planet Fitness on Monday, let’s see what the liberal white ladies predominantly commenting on Penny’s FB post think about her brave advocacy:

Was it the “white, male patriarchy” who decided Missoula was a great place to relocate refugees to from around the world? Or was it virtue-signaling liberal white women, like Mary Poole?

While this white woman who only hires women (discriminate much?) smiles the smile of toxic empathy, it appears one of Soft Landing’s little experiments in schismogenesis learned how to wield a knife before acquiring the ability to speak English:

A Missoula judge set bail at $50,000 for an 18-year-old accused of stabbing a 16-year-old in the back of the head outside the Planet Fitness on Reserve Street on Monday.

Hussein Al-Ali was arrested Monday evening and charged with felony aggravated assault involving the use of a weapon.

Missoula County Justice Court Judge Landee Holloway informed Al-Ali through an interpreter in court Tuesday of the allegations made in the charging documents, including that Al-Ali stabbed the victim with a knife and continued active pursuit of the victim after the victim attempted to flee Al-Ali on two occasions during the altercation.

Al-Ali denied having a knife, after which Holloway informed Al-Ali that initial appearances are not the appropriate time to dispute details of charging documents.

While Hussein Al-Ali doesn’t speak English or understand the judicial system, he DID manage to somehow get a car and a driver’s license so that he could chase his stabbing victim with another potentially lethal weapon:

One witness allegedly described the punching as a downward motion, stating that she believed the victim was being punched until she saw blood and heard him saying he had been stabbed.

Witnesses also reported seeing the victim throw a water bottle at Al-Ali to get away from him, at which point Al-Ali allegedly returned to his vehicle to continue his pursuit of the victim.

With Missoula enjoying the benefits of this intentional multiculturalism, let’s return to Penny Ronning’s political post about human trafficking, Donald Trump and Seth Bodnar:

This comparison is pathetic. These 18 women had their moment in court, they got money for the alleged discrimination they experienced, but now they want MORE? Why? Because Seth Bodnar “just said no” to running as a toxic, self-destructive, virtue-signaling Democrat who must defend chemically castrating children and transplanting refugees to rape and stab people in their host communities to gain acceptance?

Here’s another question: how does any of this illuminate the EPSTEIN NETWORK and the power of non-partisan wealth indulging in unimaginable depravities across the globe?

For Penny Ronning there’s a “dangerous turn” coming that she describes after acknowledging Bodnar’s achievements “deserve consideration”, but the danger has nothing to do with the implosion of the Democratic party in Montana, which was the catalyst for creating the political environment where an independent run by a candidate like Seth Bodnar became possible in the first place.

No, instead she claims the danger is “idolatry” because I guess it has to be something religious-sounding, like alleged hero worship, that could be so dangerously standing in the way of 18 women being able to continue playing their victims cards to destroy the candidacy of Seth Bodnar.

This pathetic political post isn’t just a disservice to victims of human trafficking, of which BOYS are also victims, it’s also a text-book example of using the straw man fallacy to win an argument, which, in this case, is the argument posed by Bodnar supporters that he’s the stronger candidate.

If Penny Ronning would like to be more effective at her supposed job of combatting human trafficking in Montana, here’s a suggestion: click and read ALL the links in this post, then donate money to ME because, unlike Nick Shirley, I’m an actual citizen journalist taking actual risks by looking at local power without partisan blinders on and reporting back what I see.

Thanks for reading!

Today’s trifecta of embarrassment for badges spans three counties, beginning with a wrong-way driver on I-90 that MISSOULA authorities had to deal with because no one was available from Mineral County.

On July 9, 2026, shortly before 3:30 AM, Mineral County 911 received multiple calls regarding a wrong-way driver traveling on Interstate 90. The calls indicated that the suspect vehicle was traveling eastbound in the westbound lanes of I-90. The Mineral County Sheriff’s Office did not have any deputies available, so the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office provided aid. The driver, later identified as 60-year-old Dirk Hinkle, was ultimately stopped within the boundary of Missoula County after his vehicle was pinned by deputies.

How often does the Mineral County Sheriff’s Office “not have any deputies available” for interstate highway emergencies? July is Montana’s primetime month for summer travel , when traffic on highways around the state get busier and more dangerous, so it’s kind of worrying that no one from Mineral County could respond to 60 year-old Dirk Hinkle, who had to be “pinned” by Missoula County deputies to stop him.

Moving on to Sanders County, a young woman with an accent became the center of a Facebook controversy after the Sanders County Sheriff’s Office attempted to educate their community about this woman’s presence, including making note of her accent. I guess this caused people to flip out.

On July 6, the Sanders County Sheriff’s Office in western Montana put up a rather odd post on Facebook. 

It was a picture of a deputy standing with a smiling woman outside the sheriff’s office.

“Good afternoon, Sanders County residents,” the post read. “We have met and spoken with Sinija Loze. She works with Families for Education. She is a college student from Latvia doing her summer job selling educational products by Southwestern Advantage. We have verified her information, she does have a accent but is a very nice lady. Her vehicle is a Grey jeep. No need to be alarmed if you see her.”

The post got hundreds of reactions on Facebook, and many commenters were either confused or angry.

The cute young girl the Sanders County Sheriff’s Office was, I’m sure, eager to help out, actually provided the “script” for what to post about her, including the bit about her accent, and Sanders County obliged. Unfortunately, here’s how some people in Sanders County responded:

“I’m genuinely confused about the purpose of this post?” one of the top comments read. “Are people in Montana ‘alarmed’ by someone with an ‘accent’? Literally everybody has an accent.”

Someone else wondered if it was the “accent” part or the “selling educational products” that had everyone “on edge.”

Many comments were either xenophobic or assailing the sheriff’s office for implying that people with accents were to be feared unless told otherwise.

Moving on to Missoula, this KGVO article got my attention for a number of reasons, like the fact a “known drug house” exists in Missoula.

On July 12, 2026, at approximately 8:21 p.m., a Missoula Police Department Officer was on routine patrol when he observed a red Kia Sorento come to a stop directly in front of his vehicle at a known drug house. The officer determined that the registered owner of the vehicle, 42-year-old Melissa Brooks, had a suspended driver’s license.

Brooks exited her vehicle, at which time the officer activated his emergency lights. Brooks then walked to the front of the officer’s patrol vehicle. While communicating with Brooks, dispatch advised the officer that Brooks was on probation. The officer then contacted and advised Adult Probation and Patrol of the circumstances. Probation requested that a search of Brooks, her purse, and her vehicle be conducted.

Upon completing the search, the officer discovered drug paraphernalia, including multiple new hypodermic syringes, pre-cut folded pieces of tin foil, latex tourniquets, alcohol prep pads, pipes consistent with smoking controlled substances, butane fuel, single-use saline containers, and a multitude of small clear plastic baggies consistent with selling and buying small quantities of narcotics.

Do the cops know Melissa Brooks? Yes, they most certainly do, because Melissa Brooks once worked at Open Aid Alliance and was a panelist, along with a cop and another person back on drugs, April Seat, during an official city update of the 10 Year Plan To End Homelessness (emphasis mine):

When this article about Melissa Brooks being arrested near a “known drug house” first hit Facebook, people seemed confused about how a “known drug house” could exist. If the cops “know” about it, doesn’t logic lead one to assume they would be able to do something about it?

For being in possession of dangerous drugs (with intent to sell?), Melissa Brooks spent just one more day in jail than I did when I was arrested on June 19th in the parking lot of the Great Burn Brewery on a warrant alleging I was in technical violation of a restraining order on June 15th.

Before this 2026 arrest, Melissa Brooks was arrested in 2024 and had drugs stashed in her lady parts, including Fentanyl, the infamous drug killing thousands and thousands of addicts across the country.

Brooks was placed under arrest and taken to the Missoula County Detention Center. While the officer was filling out paperwork, court documents indicate he was informed by the jail that they had located drugs hidden in Brooks’ vaginal area and under her bra. The officer observed two clear baggies. One contained 12 fentanyl pills and the other contained a crystal-like substance that appeared to be methamphetamine but tested inconclusive.

The officer applied for and was granted a search warrant for Brooks’ car. Officers found a loaded hypodermic needle of meth, butane torches, a glass pipe, tooter straws, two pieces of burnt tinfoil, butane fluid, two containers filled with liquid methadone, and a black digital scale.

If I had to speculate about Melissa Brooks I’d say there’s a good chance she’s dealing drugs, and she could be one of the protected dealers doing it for the cops, like I suspect John Skinner had been doing, as an informant, for many years, which I wrote about in this post.

Since I know it’s hard to believe this kind of corruption could be happening in a nice liberal mountain town, like Missoula, here’s a 20 second clip from the latest episode of Sugar, a noir tv show about a PI who finds missing persons:

Here’s the dialogue written out for you non-viewers of video:

Tom Flyberg: “Fucking embarrassment, you know most Sheriffs are cool, good guys, good police, but there’s always been this group of ‘em, banger’s with badges.

John Sugar: “Starts in the jails, huh? Alameda Sheriff’s Department runs it?”

Tom Flyberg: “Uh-huh, it’s where they make the connections.”

Yep, this tracks, which reminds me…didn’t Missoula’s Sheriff, Jeremiah Petersen, run the jail before running unopposed to become TOP LAW DOG of Missoula County?

Yes he did.

If you appreciate this kind of context, which I guarantee you won’t find anywhere else, please consider donating to my new GoFundMe page. Any little bit helps as I try to get through another week of active lawfare preventing me from doing what I would normally do, like attend Brandon Bryant’s trial today for an alleged scenario involving a restraining order that sounds suspiciously like the lawfare targeting me.

And no, I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

Thanks for reading!