Zoom Chron Blog

by Travis Mateer

One of the value-factors I know I bring to readers of Zoom Chron is analysis on how the local media landscape functions to omit, downplay, or otherwise manipulate readers and viewers in order to serve unspoken agendas. Oftentimes my focus is the Missoula Current, but today I’m going to compare two Missoulian articles and a KGVO article to see the differences in reporting as the target for completion of the renamed Higgins Bridge (now Beartracks Bridge) is moved once again.

In a Missoulian article on November 17th, the title claims work is “wrapping up” on Beartracks Bridge, but when one reads the article, you can see how some strategic moves allowed for things to happen at strategic times (emphasis mine):

Winter weather descending on Missoula is forcing the conclusion of a busy summer construction season, but not before two major local infrastructure projects — the Beartracks Bridge and the Mullan BUILD roundabouts — reach temporary completion.

One lane of traffic in each direction on the Beartracks Bridge is expected to open before the Thanksgiving holiday next week, according to Matt Straub with the Montana Department of Transportation.

“We’re focusing on the right fix at the right time,” Straub said.

For MDT, that meant opening the bridge temporarily in October, then disrupting traffic northbound again to facilitate repairs.

Hmmm, what happened in October? Did a certain politician need a bridge open for a political backdrop before the November election?

While Dave Strohmaier didn’t have to experience ANY disruptions to the use of this bridge for political purposes, the general public isn’t as lucky. You have to read further down to discover this bridge won’t actually be finished until spring.

Once Beartracks opens next week, it will remain open with only a small interruption this winter.

“We will have one day of minor traffic impact in December or January,” said Straub.

Then, the bridge will stay open until the spring, when another week of traffic impacts is planned. Straub said to expect those impacts in April or May, and he emphasized his appreciation for the public’s patience throughout the rehabilitation project.

I hope the Montana Department of Transportation appreciates how the Missoulian is helping them out with damage control, since this bridge was supposed to be done MONTHS ago, and has faced all kinds of problems. You don’t get any of this context with ANOTHER Missoulian article, published on 11/22. This article’s title reads as follows: Beartracks Bridge work takes break. Here’s the entirety of the article:

Construction work on the Beartracks Bridge over the Clark Fork River will pause at noon Wednesday as crews take a Thanksgiving break.

Work will resume on Monday. 

“Even though workers will not be present, we encourage everyone to take it slow through the project area so they make it safely to festivities with family and friends,” Montana Department of Transportation Missoula administrator Bob Vosen said on Tuesday. 

The bridge carrying Higgins Avenue over the river will have two-way traffic and no weight restrictions during the break. Speed restrictions and constricted driving lanes will remain in place. Motorists are encouraged to plan for slow traffic crossing the bridge and to consider alternative routes.

When work resumes, crews will install a temporary structure under its deck to replace some plate structures. That may involve one day’s interruption of bridge traffic, Vosen said.

Do you see anything in this article about the NEW completion date being sometime in the spring? Neither do I.

To get a more accurate impression of what’s happening with this clusterfuck of a bridge, KGVO published an article on the same day as the Missoulian article, but with a much more accurate title, which reads Higgins Avenue Beartracks Bridge Won’t Be Completed Until Spring. From the link:

“Our major delays were caused by supply chain issues and weather,” he said. “Some unexpected repairs came up during the reconstruction of the bridge that caused these delays, and then those delays were fairly further exacerbated by supply chain issues and material availability.”

Straub said unexpected extra expenses were incurred during the bridge reconstruction project due to a variety of issues.

“There was some additional work that was unanticipated during the rehabilitation of the bridge, and that work drove up some of the costs,” he said. “These were costs that would have been figured in the original total had we known that they were issues.”

I appreciate KGVO getting MDT on the record about the bridge’s delays, even if the answer is less than satisfactory. At least there’s an acknowledgment of the screwups and other issues, like the now ubiquitous claim of SUPPLY CHAIN issues adding time to any construction project.

I’ll have more on bridges in the coming week, so stay tuned. And stay safe out there as you move around the valley.

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

Are the morticians and funeral home managers and embalmers all lying? Are the white, fibrous “clots” and sand-like specks in the blood just aberrations that shouldn’t be connected to a certain medical intervention that the global population was coerced into taking, or are they something else?

Here’s another question worth considering: why would someone want to declare a pandemic amnesty if there was nothing to declare amnesty over?

This is the same kind of logic the mother of Rebekah Barsotti ponders to stay sane in this upside down clown world: why would a hitman be hired to kill me if my daughter’s death was just a “river accident”?

If you don’t see the connection between these two questions, that’s probably because you haven’t been studying the behavior of sociopaths and psychopaths like I have, or trying to figure out how trauma and substance abuse, combined with a spiritual malaise, opens the door for some truly evil shit.

The Thanksgiving day table I will spend as little time at as possible will be mostly comprised of people who will be thankful once I leave. And that’s fine, because I stood my ground when it mattered, and the only THANK YOU that matters is the one I got from one of my kids for what I refused to do to him.

Before you criticize anything in this post, I dare you to watch the new documentary, DIED SUDDENLY. And before you dismiss this new piece of media as an UNFOUNDED CONSPIRACY THEORY, think about this: either the documentary is fake, which means there was a conspiracy to make and distribute it in the first place, or there’s something actually wrong with the medical intervention we got the full-court-press to inject into our bodies.

If there is one and ONLY ONE question that requires a serious response, it’s the question of all-cause mortality sky-rocketing. What could be going on here?

Several US life insurance companies have recently revealed an overwhelming unexplained increase (40%) in “all-cause deaths” amongst 18 to 49-year-olds.

Three physician “whistle-blowers” have just released real data from the DoD, drawn from the clinical diagnosis codes. The increases found are from 2021, compared to the five year average from 2016 to 2020.

Myocardial infarction: 269% increase
> Miscarriages: 300% increase
> Bell’s palsy: 291% increase
> Congenital malformations: 156% increase
> Female infertility: 471% increase
> Pulmonary embolisms: 467% increase
> Neurologic abnormalities: 300% increase
> Cancers: 300% increase

Anecdotally, I can report no serious sickness since resisting THE SCIENCE, while sickness among the true science believers seems to be all around me. Anecdotal, yes, but it makes me feel pretty good about my decision.

My goal today is to abstain from telling patriarchal and matriarchal figures around the table that their cowardice and willful ignorance is an ongoing threat to the future of my children because this is a marathon and it’s far from over.

Have I risked a lot to bring these words to you, dear readers? I have, and it’s cost me, but I don’t regret the choices I’ve made. Because I know what’s at stake.

If you appreciate my first amendment right to have and express opinions about bodily autonomy that runs counter to Fauci-orthodoxy, and to say NO to coerced medical injections promoted by a guy who couldn’t even keep his software free of bugs and viruses, then please consider making a donation at my about page.

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

Earlier this year, before the massive series of cleanups that removed over 67 TONS of trash from the Reserve Street homeless encampments, the legal wrangling over how to remove the people worked its way through court. The result? An eviction process ensued (emphasis mine):

The Missoula County Attorney’s office on Thursday issued formal notice to county leaders of a lawsuit filed last week by the Montana Department of Transportation related to illegal camping under the Reserve Street bridge.

Deputy County Attorney Brian West said the lawsuit names Missoula County as a defendant in the case, along with “John Does one through 100.”

The lawsuit includes five counts including forcible detainer, trespass, a claim for public and private nuisance, a request for injunction and a declaratory action.

“By and large, what MDT is trying to secure is a court order where they can have the sheriff’s office assist them in clearing out the property under the Reserve Street bridge,” West said. “This is more or less the same thing as an eviction lawsuit through the forcible detainer and common-law trespass claims.”

Why is this important? It’s important because a formal eviction process, according to a conversation I had with MDOT’s Steve Felix back in September, necessitated the storage of “personal items”, like everything you see in this picture:

Is it feasible for the Montana Department of Transportation to store tons of trash removed from an illegal homeless encampment? Probably not, but they’re forced to do it anyway.

Since the Authorized Camping Site for “tenants” of Reserve Street closed last week, I decided to visit the area to see what remains, and it looks like LOTS of personal belongings remain. But for how long?

Now that this area is forbidden territory to the public, does it need to be “secured”? The trailer where the private security firm, Rogers International, once stationed their staff is still there, and it sounded like someone was inside, but I didn’t enter this forbidden land to find out. The messaging on the fence is quite clear:

My walkabout below and around the Reserve Street bridge was uneventful, unlike the last time I was in this area, and I didn’t see any evidence of people reestablishing illegal encampments. Yet.

If I can remember to follow up after Thanksgiving, I’ll see if I can find out how long this stuff will be stored, and if it takes private security to keep it safe.

If you appreciate this content, please consider making a donation at my about page.

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

I’m glad to see the Missoula Redevelopment Agency wasted NO TIME gearing up for Missoula’s next boondoggle with the following RFP (request for proposal) put out on November 9th, just ONE DAY after voters said NO to a fairground bond and a crisis levy. Here’s the next round of madness targeting your pocket book for destruction (emphasis mine):

An effort to transform Brooks Street in Missoula into a multi-modal transportation corridor reached a milestone this month when the Missoula Redevelopment Agency began seeking a firm to bring the project to initial design.

The request for proposals (RFP) was issued on Nov. 9 and will close later this month. MRA and its partner, the Missoula Urban Transportation District, hope to select a qualified consultant to carry the work forward by the end of January.

How else might our undeterred gentrifiers signal their ZERO FUCK attitude toward the beleaguered public? How about send out this RFP without any formal ok from the federal agency one would need a formal ok from (emphasis mine):

“We don’t yet have a signed agreement with the Federal Transit Authority, but they told us to go ahead and issue our RFP so we can be in a position to have an identified consultant while we’re getting that agreement in place,” said Annette Marchesseault, who is heading the project for MRA.

The ambitious plan would create a transportation corridor suited for all modes of travel, including a center-running transit lane with 15-minute service.

The emphasis on the word AMBITIOUS is probably unnecessary, since anyone reading that quote understands government ambition is directly correlated to taxpayer ability to pay, but is anyone actually paying attention to our current financial situation? Because the image below makes me think these people have literally lost their minds.

Perhaps I need to stop being so critical all the time and just embrace the hope that progress leads inevitably to better things, like MORE AWESOME multi-modal transit systems!

The comment about this boondoggle coming from Ellen Buchanan should chill your bones worse the sub-zero lows we’ve had recently. From Gomer’s puff-piece (emphasis mine):

“It’s the most ambitious transportation project ever undertaken in the state of Montana, is fair to say. Except when they built the railroad,” said MRA Director Ellen Buchanan.

That’s quite a shot at the taxpayer going into the week of the turkey. I hope those alleged conservatives are paying attention as Montana’s legislative session approaches.

If you’d like to donate to my unofficial SEND TRAVIS TO HELENA fund, you can find the donate button at my about page.

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

The lure in the KGVO headline is that NEW DATA is going to “reveal” something about homelessness in Montana, but when it comes to drilling down on the four main causes of homelessness, well, it kinda feels like something is missing.

Before we get to the four reasons, we must endure some commentary on the season. The only problem is the reporter makes struggling sound like a chic phenomenon. From the link (emphasis mine):

Winter is here and with it, we are experiencing sub-zero temperatures along with several inches of snow.

Winter can be harsh in Montana, and even harsher for those that don’t have sufficient housing or shelter. “Pop Up” neighborhoods have become popular over the last few years in places like Bozeman and Missoula, as people struggle to deal with the high cost of housing by living in RVs, campers, and personal vehicles.

Ok, so what are the reasons for homelessness according to the World Population Review? Here they are:

• Affordable Housing
• Unemployment
• Poverty
• Low Wages

While I don’t doubt these four things contribute to people living in “pop up” neighborhoods, the glaring omission of anything ADDICTION related makes this “reveal” nothing more than a headline-grabbing joke.

What’s NOT a joke is allowing people to live in meth-fueled outdoor hoarding pits, like what was going on around the Reserve Street bridge area before clean-up efforts this spring got serious about NOT allowing an environmental crisis to continue threatening the river and surrounding riparian habitat.

Last week the Authorized Camping Site near the Walmart on Mullan street officially closed. Will the illegal “pop up” encampments get reestablished in the same area? And what will the response from the NEW Sheriff be? This week I plan on taking a little stroll around the area to see what I can see.

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Thanks for reading!