Zoom Chron Blog

These three marbles, pictured above, represent a missed opportunity my corporate father, Tom, decided to pass up recently, so now I’m going to explain what exactly that opportunity was for Zoom Chron readers, starting with the Freemason who fathered James Wells, a well-meaning old man in Kansas City, Missouri.

If this is the correct man, then Belva Johnson is the marble collector whose marbles I now have in my possession, along with other items, like a decorative Masonic sword belonging to a “J. Raymond Wells”. I’m still waiting for a Masonic lodge in Missouri to get back to me regarding the sword and sword’s owner.

While my former father-in-law appears to have Masonic roots, it’s actually his wife, Joan Barkley Wells, who can boast a more relevant claim to the historical influence of America’s development, since her Daddy was a decorated war hero with a family tree going back to Daniel Boone, a famous American figure who became an archetype of the American Frontier.

Before we get to Joan’s war hero Daddy, John Lewis Barkley, here’s a summary of the inconclusive research into whether or not Daniel Boone was a Freemason:

Ray V. Denslow, specialist in early Middle Western Masonry, reported to The Builder, January, 1925, that “in his opinion” Boone had not been a Mason. He added however that “a very good friend” had in earlier days heard Boone spoken of as a Mason. Both the Grand Lodges of Kentucky and of Tennessee have searched the old membership rolls but have not found his name. When appropriating a sum toward the Boone monument at Frankfort the resolution passed by the Grand Lodge of Kentucky made no mention of Boone’s possible membership. At least one pall-bearer at Boone’s funeral wore a Masonic collar.

Joan Barkley Wells is the only child of John Lewis Barkley, a man so intent on fighting and killing Germans during WWI that he persevered with enlisting, despite a bad stuttering problem that threatened to keep him sidelined during the war. Instead of being sidelined, Barkley rose to the occasion and did MORE than his part, thanks to his exemplary woodsmen skills.

Here’s some of Barkley’s story from a 2018 NPR article:

Barkley was born in 1895 and grew up on a farm near Holden in west central Missouri. He prided himself on being a woodsman and claimed to be a descendant of Daniel Boone.

While he knew how to handle a gun, Barkley had a bad stammer that made it difficult to pass the Army’s medical examination, even after the U.S. entered the war. Once he was accepted to the military, his officers soon recognized his skills.

“He could hunt. He could trap. He was an excellent shot. So when he was sent to Camp Funston in 1917 the Army realized here was someone that could do this kind of intelligence work,” Trout said.

Barkley would do dangerous reconnaissance work in wartime France; scouting ahead of American troops, observing the enemy and reporting back, as well as serving as a sniper. He excelled in the role.

His actions on Oct. 7, 1918 made him one of the most decorated soldiers of World War I.

Like many Americans, Barkley struggled financially after the war, writing his memoir to help his widowed mother save the family farm. Originally titled “No Hard Feelings”, less than 4,000 copies were published. With his daughter’s blessing, the book was republished under the title John Lewis Barkley originally envisioned, “Scarlet Fields”.

John Lewis Barkley was a badass because he wasn’t raised with money, like his spoiled-ass grandson living lavishly in Jackson Hole and spending his family’s money so recklessly, I had to listen to his granddaughter bitch about it all the time when I was married to her.

After growing up relatively poor, however, John Barkley did end up doing pretty well for himself by doing two very important things: NOT dying in the war, and marrying a woman who had valuable land assets that he capitalized on.

Also worth noting, at least for me, is that Barkley’s brief stint as a Private Detective was definitely NOT a part of his recipe for acquiring wealth. Yeah, no shit.

Ironically, when I get to the “new money” blog post putting my own father into the corporate context he deserves, part of that story will be how my family moved to Johnson County, Kansas, in 1989, right as the rapidly expanding suburban sprawl south of the city was actively gobbling up farmland so that ugly houses that looked the same could be built.

Since I haven’t been successful in conveying to my father why securing these rare antique marbles is a good idea–in part because of their sentimental value to the “old money” side of the family, which still owes him $140,000 for covering what I was legally owed from the divorce–the opportunity to own a piece of history is NOW YOURS (on Facebook marketplace).

Coming up in part II of my Old Money vs. New Money series, I’ll be going into more detail regarding my family’s complicity in changing and gentrifying Missoula, along with the role of my parent’s church, First Presbyterian, and the timing of their flock getting into the subsidized housing game with the Hogan House.

For now, I’ll conclude with what Pastor Dan Cravy said to a local reporter as his congregation celebrated breaking ground on this discriminatory, age-restricted subsidized Senior housing complex:

“Just give thanks for this worthy endeavor, this vision on behalf of goodness, and life, and wholeness, and flourishing for so many people,” Pastor Dan Cravy said.

Amen, Pastor Dan!

Norman Maclean’s brother, Paul, was beaten to death in Chicago after living a life that included high-risk activities, like investigative journalism and gambling. It’s unclear which one helped lay the groundwork for the violent death that Chicago detectives wrote off as a simple “mugging gone wrong”. As the lore goes, Paul’s Pastor Daddy accelerated his own path to meeting his maker once his son was delivered home to him in a coffin.

Maclean accompanied his brother’s casket, alone, on an overnight train trip from Chicago to Montana. After the funeral, Maclean spent several weeks of compassionate leave with his parents at their family’s cabin at Seeley Lake.

Maclean’s father was skeptical of the official explanation for his son’s murder and asked Maclean, “Do you think it was just a stick-up and foolishly he tried to fight his way out? You know what I mean — that it wasn’t connected to anything in his past?” Maclean replied that the Chicago Police Department didn’t know and that neither did he.

Chicago is where the Pritzker Clan made their wealth, which now leaks into places like Democratic politics in the guise of Linda Pritzker helping out her daughter, as Influence Watch reported years ago:

Linda had three children with a man she met while a goat farmer in Montana. 8 Her son Roland Pritzker is the Chairman of the Pritzker Innovation Fund. 3 Her daughter Rachel Pritzker is the president of the Lotus Foundation and was a founding board member of the Democracy Alliance, a left-of-center funding vehicle. 3 Linda’s daughter Rosemary Pritzker is a photographer, life coach, and co-founder of a super PAC called Local Voices, which creates Democratic political ads for campaigns in battleground states. 4 Linda Pritzker contributed $500,000 to Local Voices in 2012.

What Influence Watch failed to note, however, is that this massive “donation” came through a Missoula zip code, which I ran across while skimming a large list of political donors that included “retired” CIA man, John Talbot, and his son, Pete Talbot.

I wonder what a psychotherapist from a notorious Jewish family with well-documented ties to organized crime would say about the origins of art depicting scenes of getting fucked by a demon, or honoring incest on the big screen, like the Eddington nod to Chinatown I’ll be referencing in an upcoming analysis of Ari Aster’s 2025 cinematic release, which I re-watched after viewing the very uncomfortable movie, Beau Is Afraid, which has nice messages on the walls like “Hail Satan” and “Fuck the Pope”.

I discovered the demon sex artist when I found an old copy of a Montana Gothic issue, published 1976. It took a little digging to find some context on Pablo Weisz-Carrington, but this site offers some biographical information I explored for a deeper perspective on where his “inspiration” may have come from:

Pablo Weisz-Carrington was born in Mexico City, Mexico on November 14, 1947.

Son of the famous Hungarian photographer Emeric Weisz and the famous world-renowned British surrealist painter Leonora Carrington. His parents surrounded themselves with a group of other European artists which were also refugees from the World War II. Pablo grew up among André Breton, Remedios Varo, Jose and Kathy Horna and Benjamin Peret, many other artists natives of Mexico such as Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Juan Soriano, writers such as Octavio Paz, Juan Rulfo and Carlos Fuentes were also close to the Weisz-Carrington family, creating and ambiance that made Pablo become an artist. Pablo lived in Mexico City until he was 25 years old.

At age 14, Pablo had his first art exhibition of drawings at the Gallery of Juan de Dios Moreno. In 1969 several drawings of his were published in the literary magazine “El Rehilete”, as well as in the cultural magazine of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). At age 24 he had a major exhibit of drawings and watercolors at the Israeli-Mexican Cultural Institute.

In 1972 he had his first art exhibition in the USA, at the Latin American Theater Institute of New York, event organized by Ms. Joanne Potlitzer.

Let me translate what I suspect this bio-info points to: communal living where Pablo was probably sexually molested and passed around to multiple people, then his “art” was promoted to the kind of art markets where one finds eager buyers for this material–you know, like the ISRAELI-Mexican Cultural Institute!

Curious about the kind of woman who might enjoy art like this, I scratched the surface of “Ms Joanne Pottlitzer” to see how she fits into this troubling promotion of culture and I didn’t have to look far to be like, um, yeah, NO!

Before I get to the Kabbalistic death goddess I suspect many of our culture-creators have an affinity for, let’s see how NOT to respond on social media when saying very uncomfortable things about one of Hollywood’s favorite taboos. The following “Twitter” exchange, and subsequent controversy, comes from Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Wikipedia page:

The female painter who provided “motherly” support to her young son, Pablo, is interested in pigs, Robert Graves’ work, and Kabbalah, according to this article about “Leonora Carrington and the Secret of the Sacred Feminine“:

Carrington had described reading The White Goddess, Robert Graves’s study of poetry and myth, as ‘the greatest revelation of my life.’ She acquired it in 1948, the year it was published, and it was arguably one of the most important books she ever read (along with the teachings of the Kabbalah). Indeed, one can speak of a before and after in her work. In its pages, Graves argues that the ancient cult of this goddess is inextricably linked to ‘pure poetry,’ and declares matriarchy as the earliest form of social order.

One day, with Pig-Rush still on her mind, my mother picked up her copy of The White Goddess. A little less than halfway through the book, she happened upon a passage about the War of the Bulls, apparently the central episode in the Cuchulain saga. Graves begins by noting that ‘in ancient times swine-herds had an altogether different standing from that conveyed in the parable of the Prodigal Son: to be a swine-herd was originally to be a priest in the service of the Death-goddess whose sacred beast was a pig.’

Somehow I’m failing to see the “sacred feminine” in this depressing oil painting showing herds of ghostly demon-swine overcoming three Hasidic-looking men trapped in a fecal-hued hellscape, but that’s just me.

For Ari Aster (who I think dropped some Montana Easter Eggs into Eddington for schizos like me to find), his version of an all-seeing Jesus is actually a Jewish mother epically gaslighting her son as he travels from an urban Sodom and Gomorrah (that could be Philadelphia or San Francisco) on a loser’s journey into the obliterating clutches of his BIG MOTHER.

Does it look like Jesus’ face is coming out of a vagina? My goodness, Ari, what did Mommy do to you?

Thankfully I don’t require a director like Ari Aster to put me into the experience of being a loser because I’ve been a loser, on paper, since leaving the Masonic bloodline I married into, which I’ll be writing about later this week when I show how my ex-wife’s “old money” family matches up with the “new money” comfort of my corporate Daddy–a faithless Christian man who attends the “River Runs Through It” church and who recently tried pressuring me into declaring bankruptcy after I asked him to consider buying my father-in-law’s very rare and prized marbles, which have much more than just monetary value.

Yesterday, after sending an email to a Masonic lodge in Missouri for some information on my father-in-law’s father and the decorative Masonic sword I have in my possession, I was surprised to hear, later in the day, that alleged Masonic assassins were going on trial, in France.

Twenty-two people have gone on trial in France on charges of murder and other serious crimes centred on a masonic lodge accused of running hit squads.

Thirteen defendants – including former intelligence agents, soldiers and businessmen – face possible life sentences. Prosecutors allege the group carried out murder, attempted murder, aggravated assault and criminal conspiracy on behalf of a mafia network inside the Athanor lodge in the Paris suburb of Puteaux.

At least four Freemasons from the lodge’s roughly 20 members are among those in the dock. Other defendants include four officers from France’s DGSE foreign intelligence service, three police officers, six executives, a security guard, a doctor and an engineer. Most of the accused, whose ages range from 30 to 73, have no previous criminal record.

Fascinating. And prescient, considering what I’ll be writing about this Easter week with Freemasons, un-free Christians, and the things that money can’t buy, like integrity and salvation.

If anyone would like to help support the best citizen journalist in western Montana, my GoFundMe page still has some room left for donations. And stay tuned, because this week you’ll find out how tithing money and political money seem to flow to the same kind of things.

Thanks for reading!

When I heard that Lauren Caldwell, someone I already considered shady, was running multiple “Republican” political campaigns, I was confused. Lauren Caldwell is a Democrat and her Daddy, Burt Caldwell, is also a Democrat who retired from a local developer (WGM Group) that ALWAYS seems to win government bids for development projects. I wonder why?

To understand what might be going on let’s recall how the last legislative session featured a clique of “Republican” schemers dubbed the “Nasty Nine” who worked all session to undermine their own political party’s electoral success, which angered many conservatives.

While plenty of Montana conservatives came to despise these legislators, they ultimately delivered key parts of Governor Greg Gianforte’s agenda, but that still doesn’t explain why someone like Lauren Caldwell would be tapped to run conservative campaigns, especially when you know that Caldwell used her own kids as political props when she bought them to a “Drag Story Hour” in Helena for a dubious media platform to highlight.

Before I get to Caldwell’s new Republican clients, here’s a screenshot from the Daily Montanan “news” article:

With Caldwell’s liberal dedication to social engineering established, here’s an excerpt now from the Missoula GOP post, followed by a screenshot, that shows what this political chameleon is trying to do:

Public campaign finance filings show that Fireweed Campaigns, a Helena-based political consulting firm, is actively managing multiple Republican legislative campaigns in the 2026 election cycle.

The firm is led by Lauren Caldwell, who previously served as interim director of the Montana Democratic Party and currently works as Political Director for the Montana Federation of Public Employees, a major public-sector union aligned with Democrat political efforts.

It’s not just pushing nasty Republicans onto frustrated conservatives that Fireweed Campaigns is involved in. When I kept reading I discovered that Fireweed is also being paid over a hundred thousand dollars to keep the courts non-partisan, a covert partisan effort I wrote about last month.

Then I read this about Anne Avis and her connection to this nasty Republican scam, along with her role at another “news” outlet, the Montana Free Press:

Public records also show overlap between this network and Montana’s largest nonprofit news outlet, Montana Free Press.

Campaign finance filings indicate that Anne Avis—who contributed to multiple candidates connected to the Fireweed network—is also listed as Board Vice Chair of Montana Free Press.

Montana Free Press has received funding from national donors who have also contributed to political committees and PACs tied to the broader network described above.

It’s not unusual to find political confusion closely tied to media confusion, like Anne Avis getting confused about what the word “independent journalism” means. Or maybe it’s ME that has a problem with not seeing “independence” in Anne Avis’ journalistic project, Coda Media, an organization that gets money from the Open Society Foundation and the National Endowment for Democracy while featuring a dude by the name of Alex Jakana from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on its board. Gross.

For more on political/media confusion, an article from the Montana Free Press earlier this month tried making sense of what’s happening in Cascade County, where Libertarians have filed as Republicans and some Republicans might be cosplaying as Democrats. Has identity politics become an identity crisis in Cascade County?

Republican and Democratic political leaders in Cascade County allege that two candidates running as Democrats are not really Democrats, but Republicans trying to “game” the upcoming election for the Montana Legislature.

The two candidates, James Whitaker and Mark Winters, publicly identified themselves as Republicans in the past but, in interviews with Montana Free Press, denied allegations this week that they are trying to bamboozle Democratic voters.

Eric Hinebauch, chair of the Cascade County Republican Central Committee and a member of the Cascade County Commission, isn’t buying those claims. He believes the pair filed in Democratic primaries to deter Democratic voters from crossing over to vote in Republican primaries. He told Montana Free Press that he doesn’t believe either candidate is really a Democrat.

“This is a game,” Hinebauch said.

Cascade County can be forgiven for its political confusion since, in 2021, this County had a Sheriff make a big show of publicly divorcing himself from the Democratic Party because, apparently, they wouldn’t break the nominating rules to accommodate his question during the nominating process. This is the kind of Sheriff I suspect would wilt if confronted with a vigorous LEMON POUND CAKE terror campaign.

Another example Slaughter cited was Democratic leader Mary Sheehy-Moe allegedly declining to accept Slaughter’s question regarding police department funding during a Democratic candidates’ forum in 2020.

Taylor was not immediately available to respond; however, Sheehy-Moe said she is surprised to learn she had offended Slaughter.

“The event was not a forum, but a nomination convention,” Moe said. “While all Democrats are welcome to attend and to view the proceedings, the rules allow only precinct people to question the candidates. Jesse didn’t qualify, so as parliamentarian, I had to rule him out of order. Regardless of our office, we all have to follow the rules.”

Actually, Mary, you are VERY WRONG about the rules and who has to follow them, and no one knows this better than the jokes we call Sheriffs in Montana. That’s why I use simple strategies, like humor and Dr. Seuss cards, to educate my local community about long vowels, Brady cops, and retarded lawmen who engage in serious coverups, like Ryan Funke, Mineral County’s Sheriff embarrassment.

If you would like to help out a broke citizen journalist exposing how local power uses money to control narratives, donate here. Later this week I’ll be sharing some individual political donations I’ve curated from publicly available information to continue showing readers why local influencers, including my own father, would prefer to exploit my financial desperation and shut me up for good.

Thanks for reading!

Four years ago I wrote a blog post that I’m now reexamining because, back in 2022, I was connecting a local church in Missoula to Charlie Kirk and the Phoenix-based “Dream Center” where a conference that year included Keith Craft, a former body builder who cashed in on the grift of motivationally speaking to gullible Christian audiences.

The grift is impressive. According to All American Speakers dot com, Craft charges between $20,000-$30,000 an event. And guess who he boasts being in proximity to? Politicians like Bill Clinton and celebrities like Bill Cosby. Is this the mighty power of Christian forgiveness we are seeing, or something else?

Before we get to the rabbit hole connecting Charlie Kirk’s assassination to some Turning Point people weirdly showing up in Montana last October, let’s briefly explore who started the Phoenix Dream Center, and why:

The Dream Center Network was founded by Tommy Barnett in 1994 with the first Dream Center in Los Angeles.

We had one single mission – to Find A Need And Fill It, To Find A Hurt And Heal It.

Since 1994, the Dream Center Network has been finding needs and filling them all over the world with over 300 Dream Centers healing hurts in communities around the globe.

In 2002 we began to Dream Big for the people of Phoenix and we started to build the Phoenix Dream Center.

We started with community-based outreach dedicated to ending childhood hunger among at-risk youth and homeless families. We started with just a few bags of groceries each week, and today deliver over 14,000 meals each week to help end childhood hunger.

When I actually tried to visit one of these 300 “Dream Centers” in Pasco, Washington, the storefront was not easily identifiable or even all that welcoming.

I was reacquainting myself with this material after watching a YouTube video by Baron Coleman, one of the researchers feeding the Candace Owens crusade to expose what she claims is the military-style operation behind the plot to assassinate Charlie Kirk.

Though I haven’t been closely following all the Candace Owens research, since I frankly find her style hard to watch, I was familiar with the claim that a witness saw Erika Kirk and Brian Harpole (Charlie’s head of security) before the assassination at some secretive, high-level meeting on the grounds of Fort Huachuca in Arizona, but it wasn’t until a supposed flight from Fort Huachuca to Kalispell, Montana, was referenced last week on the Candace Owens Show that I decided to pay closer attention.

That’s why I’m wondering, like Baron Coleman is wondering, why Brian Harpole and two other figures with TPUSA–Rick Cutler and Butch Hibbs–all appeared to be at, or around, a tiny lake 30 miles away from Bozeman, Montana, during the first week of October, 2025.

Butch Hibbs is the brother of Jack Hibbs, and Jack Hibbs is a very well known Southern California pastor with tv shows, podcasts, and a radio reach “from West Africa to the Southern Pacific”. Praise Jesus!

Jack Hibbs also appeared with Matthew Barnett, God’s main man for the LA Dream Center, at the same Christian conference in 2024. Isn’t that interesting?

The local church that helped put these types of conferences on my radar four years ago is the River of Life, the East Missoula church where former Undersheriff for Missoula County, Jason Johnson, worships God on Sundays.

And what does Jason Johnson do Monday-Friday? Well, he works for the Attorney General of Montana, Austin Knudsen, making sure all those dead bodies I have a problem with never become a problem for the important people running this state.

For more context on Jason Johnson’s legacy, ZoomChron readers might be interested to know that Jason helped former Sheriff, T.J. McDermott, go legal scorched-earth against Sheriff Ibsen, the Missoula County Sheriff who this duo claimed acted in a retaliatory nature after McDermott declared his intention to run for Sheriff. This legal tantrum ended up costing Missoula County taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars:

In February 2014, county commissioners approved $60,000 settlements for both McDermott and now Undersheriff Jason Johnson. They alleged Ibsen discriminated against them when McDermott announced plans to run for sheriff.

“My job as sheriff is not just to provide leadership and a new direction, but also lay out the expectations of how we are going to treat each other,” McDermott said.

…lay out the expectations of how we are going to treat each other? Oh yeah? Does that include removing a homeless man from life support in a private hospital room BEFORE notifying his family?

While Missoula has a different Sheriff now, with an almost invisible “D” next to his name to signify which corrupt political party he identifies with, the supposed man of God acting as Chaplain remains the same, and is, in fact, seeking to expand his mandated mission to end human sex trafficking for women, as described here, on a University of Montana web-page lending unwarranted credibility to Lowell’s crusade:

A month after Charlie Kirk was assassinated, an event was held in Bozeman to remember this charismatic young Christian leader, providing an opportunity for Montana’s Governor and Ohio’s Governor to rally their Christian base:

In what felt at times like a solemn church service and others a rock concert celebrating conservatism, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte and Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy took the stage Tuesday night at Turning Point USA’s event on Montana State’s campus in Bozeman.

The organization’s founder, Charlie Kirk, was killed last month during a Turning Point event in Utah. Both Gianforte and Ramaswamy shared stories and lessons they took from the late right-wing influencer. Both men also used the event as a call to action for conservatives, giving those in attendance ideas on ways to uphold their version of Kirk’s legacy. Ramaswamy also took questions from the crowd for about an hour.

This political rally with a Montana politician who identifies as a Christian reminded me of another curious character from 2022 I was looking at in relation to Lowell Hochhalter and the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office, and that’s the bizarre political candidacy of Michael Burks.

For a good primer on this supposed “Christian”, my post, titled “A Christian Piñata By The Name Of Michael Burks And His Connection To The Missoula County Sheriff’s Office” is a good place to start, since it shows the documentary focusing on Burks’ philanthropic “flying”, as documented by a former Missoula County Sheriff Deputy.

The post also includes some direct texts I got from Michael Burks where he expounded on his rationale for shutting down two Montana Fuel Fitness locations in Butte and Helena, which he announced in a bizarre rant that I documented, in full, here.

The text I received from Michael Burks went beyond making claims of financial malfeasance to making claims of drug dealing. Isn’t that interesting?

Naturally, I asked Michael Burks if he had reported this illegal drug activity to law enforcement. This was his reply to me:

So, with all this context in mind, it shouldn’t be surprising that I’m now wondering how Montana factors in to the Charlie Kirk assassination; an assassination which ideologically cleared the path for a totally insane war America has already politically lost.

And I’m not the only one.

Thanks for reading!

When I stopped watching Helena’s special City Commission meeting last night at 9:40pm, 59 people had provided public comment FOR the anti-ICE resolution, thumbing Helena’s proverbial nose at the state of Montana, and 11 people had spoken in favor of rescinding it. Ultimately the Commission voted 4-1 to rescind the resolution after a lawyer I’m quite familiar with, Natasha Jones, gave a sobering account of the possible consequences Helena could suffer were they to not back down.

Who is Natasha Jones, why did the city of Helena hire her to consult on this matter, and why were there so many self-described lawyers last night publicly pushing Helena officials to continue provoking a legal showdown with the AG, Austin Knudsen? I think trying to answer these questions will give readers a much clearer idea of what last night’s vote was actually about, and it’s NOT genuine concern for immigrants.

First, it’s pretty obvious why Helena hired Natasha P. Jones to consult on this matter. As a partner at Boone Karlberg and the vice-chair of the Missoula Redevelopment Agency (where I presented on Sigil Kult this Tuesday), Jones played a critical role in costing Missoula taxpayers $140.4 MILLION dollars so our alcoholic Mayor at the time, John Engen, could buy our city a water company.

Missoula’s eminent domain legal battle to acquire its water company, we were told at the time, would take less than $55 million, with around $400,000 estimated to be spent on legal costs. By 2017, when the deal was finalized, this is what actually happened:

Engen said the courts will continue moving forward on the few remaining issues – Missoula has already won approval to condemn and purchase the water system. In the meantime, the city will purchase and begin operating the utility.

The $140.4 million will purchase the water system, pay the city’s and the water company’s legal fees, finance an initial list of system improvements and provide a cash reserve for unforeseen expenses.

Mountain Water’s purchase price accounts for $88.6 million of the costs.

Was Natasha P. Jones and her law firm, Boone Karlberg, happy with this outcome? Apparently not, since they KEPT FIGHTING by making a losing legal argument that the big corporation they fought were big meanies who didn’t play fair, or some shit like that.

I’m clearly not a lawyer, but I’m pretty sure this last attempt, dismissed by a panel of arbiters, was a big, educational slap in the face for one of Missoula’s most influential lawyers:

In separate litigation, however, the city sued Carlyle Infrastructure Partners of The Carlyle Group alleging the equity firm dealt with the city “in bad faith” when it failed to make good on a promise to sell to the city. In December, an arbitration panel of three unanimously ruled in favor of Carlyle and dismissed all eight of the city’s claims.

The arbiters found Engen exhausted the avenues at his disposal to buy the utility, but he never had a promise from Carlyle to sell, as the city argued. In the decision, the arbiters said Carlyle considered the city’s offers, but they weren’t nearly high enough.

“It was likely that the city could not afford to finance the acquisition of Mountain Water at anything approaching market value,” the panel wrote. “As a result of the City’s decision to pursue condemnation and its successful conclusion, it avoided those challenges.”

This context, I think, is important, because Natasha Jones clearly had lots of lawyers in the audience who later demanded, at the microphones, that the City of Helena ignore her dire warning about what could happen were Helena to proceed with its resolution. By my count, 9 of the 59 pro-ANTI-ICE resolution supporters indicated they were lawyers, so, presumably, their opinions mattered more, otherwise why identify as such?

If you listened to the rhetoric for nearly four hours, like I did (only taking brief breaks to record Instagram clips with Pirate Booty), then you heard the word “bully” used over and over, referring to the Attorney General. You also heard the term “sanctuary city” referred to as a “red herring”. Why?

It took a few, more overt statements from public commenters for me to finally realize what was going on. The lawyers in Helena seemed to be anticipating–and trying to preemptively block– Austin Knudsen’s Gubernatorial aspirations, and they were using immigrants and the agitation of ICE/protest violence in Minneapolis to rile up support for their larger, Montana-focused political agenda.

This political agenda, I believe, is mirrored in the covertly partisan “Montanans for non-partisan courts”, which I decoded for readers last month. I even caught the fact one of commenters last night worked for the ACLU, an entity directly involved in supposedly keeping the courts “non-partisan”.

Natasha Jones was most certainly NOT being partisan last night because her role, when representing clients, is to WIN, above all else, and the lawyers who know how to win get the most important thing in all the whole wide world, which any man on his death bed knows is money, right?

One final note about lessons on legal losing that Missoula can provide Helena residents, and that’s a very clear picture of what happened when our virtue-signaling CITY thought they could municipally restrict private gun transactions within city limits, something I wrote would have consequences at the time (2016). What happened is Missoula lost that stupid fight three years later when Montana’s Supreme Court struck it down:

The Montana Supreme Court Tuesday struck down a city’s attempt to perform background checks on people purchasing or transferring guns within its city limits.

The City of Missoula, Montana, enacted an ordinance in 2016 requiring people purchasing or receiving a firearm to pass a national background check.

Three months after the ordinance was enacted, Montana Attorney General Tim Fox issued an opinion that said cities with self-governmental powers, such as Missoula, are prohibited by Montana law from enforcing a regulation or ordinance requiring background checks on firearm sales or transfers.

The city then sought declaratory judgment from a state district court on Fox’s directive. The lower court ruled that the gun ordinance was authorized under state law, which authorizes cities to “prevent and suppress … the possession of firearms by convicted felons, adjudicated mental incompetents, illegal aliens, and minors.”

Fox appealed that ruling to the Montana Supreme Court.

For lawyers and well-meaning useful idiots in Helena, the fight is far from over. That said, don’t let the low turnout on the other side of my tally-count fool you. One woman, for example, submitted a list of 127 names, along with addresses, in support of rescinding the resolution, with the woman at the mic telling a story about an elder Native woman emphatically signing because of what she claimed was happening on the reservations with undocumented traffickers of drugs and humans.

Considering what I wrote about Jim Acosta, Missoula Democrats, and the curious attention of Jeffrey Epstein by his “accountant” to the showdown between Acosta and Stephen Miller in 2017 around immigration, you can bet I’ll continue watching for issue in Helena to reignite as Knudsen’s political aspirations become more obvious, if they aren’t already.

Thanks for reading! And donate here if you can.