I’ve been channeling my inner Candace Owens as I prepare for THREE court appearances next week to address three separate, but connected, temporary orders of protection. For obvious reasons I won’t be discussing what I’m up against before the court dates because that would be inadvisable. Instead, I’m going to celebrate the failure of actress, Blake Lively, and her attempt to destroy Justin Baldoni in order to take everything she could from him, including his moment in the spotlight for the premier of his movie, which was at the center of this contrived scandal.
Speaking of failure, the ability of the LifeGuard Group, run by Missoula County Sheriff Chaplain, Lowell Hochhlater, to operate Montana’s “anti-trafficking” hotline just got taken away from them and given to some Virginia-based boss girls, Kristi and Brittany, who are making big headlines with their Safe House Project. Hilarious.
Attorney General Austin Knudsen today relaunched Montana’s existing human trafficking hotline and announced the state will be utilizing a new application and website that will allow Montanans to report suspected human trafficking online. The new reporting platform – Simply Report – will make it easier for the public to report suspected cases and improve law enforcement response times following reports.
Simply Report was developed and is run by Safe House Project, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to combatting human trafficking. In addition to calling the hotline number at 1-833-406-STOP, Montanans can now report human trafficking on simplyreport.com or by downloading the Simply Report mobile application. The application is free and can be downloaded in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.
Is the Safe House Project sus af? Of course it is. Established in 2017 just a few hours away from the CIA headquarters in Virginia, the Safe House Project has been profiled by Forbes, platformed by Fox News, and partners with United Way. Hmmm.
Here’s some context from the Forbes effort to promote this organization:
Currently, Safe House Project is working to strengthen its internal technology systems to create more effective and efficient processes for supporting survivors of trafficking. “We believe that by developing a comprehensive trafficking response network, we can help survivors navigate the complex landscape of service provision to break cycles of victimization and provide pathways for healing,” Dunn explains. This HIPAA-compliant technology platform has the potential to revolutionize the anti-trafficking field with critical data to prosecute traffickers, protect survivors, and prevent trafficking.
Brittany Dunn’s work with Safe House Project and her involvement with Forbes Nonprofit Council highlight her dedication to eradicating human trafficking and supporting survivors. Her thought leadership and strategic initiatives continue to make a profound impact, ensuring that survivors receive the care and support they need to heal and thrive.
And here is Fox News highlighting The Safe House Project’s role in a massive, multi-state anti-trafficking operation called Operation Coast to Coast:
A national nonprofit organization, the Safe House Project, is also involved in the operation to make sure victims get the help and resources they need. The CEO and founder, Kristi Wells says it served over 1,500 human trafficking victims last year, and it is on track to serve more than 3,000 victims this year.
“We help survivors as they are looking to exit their trafficking situation, and we help make sure that, in those 10 seconds of insane courage, when they look to escape, that they have the resources that they need to receive all of the care and support to rebuild a life,” Wells said.
It’s amazing what one can accomplish when coordinating with Federal authorities. No wonder financial institutions, like the Langley Federal Credit Union, are eager to give $10,000 dollar donations.
When I saw that Montana’s Attorney General made this anti-trafficking move, I quickly claimed this as a victory on X, since I had criticized the status quo joke of the former “Anti-Trafficking Hotline” two years ago, but after my brief look at The Safe House Project, that claim of victory now feels hollow.
You can’t talk about human trafficking without acknowledging the obvious overlap with drug trafficking, so to wrap up today’s post I’d like to offer two images of pigeon nests made with drug syringes. To help readers sharpen their discernment abilities, I’ll provide my professional opinion, as a former homeless service provider, on which one I think is real.
Screenshot
While it’s entirely possible both images are real, the second one was “shared” by Vancouver police in 2017, while the first, more recent image, appears more organically observed in the wild. Knowing how extremely reticent law enforcement is with sharing information (more next week), the second image doesn’t pass my smell test.
Next week I’ll be writing more on the Buckhouse bridge urban camp cleanup, including a few more images of how foul and toxic this spot had become, in addition to some incontrovertible evidence of bike theft that I found, and took with me, for educational purposes, so stay tuned as I keep writing despite new efforts to shut me down.
When I sent my manuscript to TrineDay I had no idea that Kris Millegan’s dad was CIA. Kris had told me his dad was from Montana, but failed to include the detail about his dad being a data analyst for the agency. Instead, it was a recent appearance on the Danny Jones podcast that gave me this relevant data point, which I confirmed by finding this old newspaper blurb:
Screenshot
For more context on what Kris Millegan’s Dad did for the CIA, here’s a description from a PDF copy of an essay about agency exploitation of Anthropologists:
I first learned of Lloyd S. Millegan’s Indonesian research in the 1951 Viking Fund annual report listing him as receiving a predoctoral 1950 fellowship for field- work “to aid anthropological studies in Indonesia since independence, and prospects for future studies” (Viking Fund 1951: 157). His project was the only listed grant without a university affiliation, instead listing his affiliation as “Fair- fax, Virginia.” When I consulted Viking Fund records, I learned that Millegan’s cv listed years of cia employment.
During the war, Millegan worked at oss for Joseph Ralston Hayden, an ad- viser to General Douglas MacArthur (see jrh; Gehrke 1976: 204, 216). Millegan worked on several intelligence and insurgency operations, and during the final months of the war he developed recommendations for the U.S. plan “for the cultural reorganization of the Philippines” (jrh, 42–27).12
The Viking Fund sponsored Millegan’s “Survey of Anthropological Studies in Indonesia since Independence and Prospects for Future Studies,” and Millegan expressed interest in undertaking “similar surveys in Burma, Thailand, Malaya and Indonesia’” (lsm, cv 9/6/50). Millegan’s Viking Fund grant application listed his employment in the cia as a research analyst and chief of the Southeast Asia Branch, from 1946 to 1950.
For even more, here’s Lloyd Millegan in his own words describing the plan he was a part of for the CIA:
Establishing bookstores? Isn’t that kind of like what Lloyd’s son ended up doing? Weird. Regardless, I’m still hopeful TrineDay could be the publisher for MY research. Only time will tell.
One of the most influential voices for conservatives right now is Tucker Carlson, another kid who grew up with a CIA Daddy. Tucker, I believe, will be an integral part in the JD Vance Op we’ll be served up soon. For those who enjoy just sitting back and watching the show, I’m sure Tucker’s rise will be fun grist for the Groypers to gripe about. Who said End Times had to be a drag?
(Gemini refused my request to have the Groyper guppy army wearing clearly marked incel-battery packs, boo! Also, what the hell is the “Grand Fintech Accord, Gemini?)
I’m not going to linger on Tucker, Nick, and guppy Groypers because living in a CIA microcosm, like Missoula, means you get to have your very own CIA-brat act as an informal narrative wrangler ready to shit-talk any outliers who might have the temerity to step out of line, like I did.
This comment has become one of my favorite examples of what I’m up against in Missoula because it shows the degree of slander a brat of the agency gets to wield without any fear of accountability. And the “Abe” he’s chastising for reposting me? I’m willing to bet Pete is talking to Charle “Abe” Abramson, the not-so-simple real estate guy who sits on what feels like ALL the local boards with relevance to the Sean Stevenson case.
For those who haven’t read my spiel on John Talbot, just consult his obituary, it puts plenty of the pieces into place.
Here’s more context describing how this CIA man became a newspaper man:
Sue’s father Don Anderson was publisher of the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison and he persuaded John in 1959 there was great opportunity in the newspaper business and particularly in the Lee Newspaper group of which his paper was a member. Anderson is the man after whom the journalism building at the University of Montana is named because he negotiated the purchase of the Anaconda papers in Montana by Lee and lifted the “Copper Collar” from Montana journalism. John worked for Lee in Madison, Muscatine, Iowa, and Billings, MT, before being promoted to publisher in Missoula in 1970. He said to his friends that taking the Missoulian in the 1970s from the era of hot lead and Linotype machines to photocomposition and offset printing was the hardest thing he ever accomplished because of changed jobs and displaced people. John was publisher of the Missoulian until 1980 but worked with a group of Lee papers until 1986. He then left Lee in order to keep his family in Missoula. He designed a news media management course and taught the course at the University of Montana’s School of Journalism until 2002.
Knowing this, how do Missoulians feel about John’s son, Pete Talbot, getting his picture in Daddy’s newspaper masked up like a pussy and handling local voting ballots?
Well, you can’t have feelings about what you don’t know, and the art of not-knowing has been something Missoulians have been doing with their local leaders for a long time, like the longest-serving Mayor of Missoula, John Engen–a jovial alcoholic who once worked at the Missoulian, then disappeared late in his Mayoral reign to treat his alcoholism.
To better grasp how the literati felt about our disappearing Mayor at the time, this old blog post from the freelance writer I made fun of yesterday, Dan Brooks, is perfectly toned for the preferred not-knowing of this town’s citizenry:
Remember when Mayor John Engen sent an open letter to Missoula telling us all he would run for re-election and had won his battle with alcoholism? The election part was not a surprise. We had not known he was an alcoholic, though. Nor had we known that for the past 28 days, an interim mayor had been running the city while he was at an inpatient alcohol treatment program. When he disappeared, communications Director Ginny Merriam told the Missoulian that he was away for unspecified medical reasons. Asked when he would come back, she said “we don’t know. You never know. But in this case you do know because, I repeat, 28-day inpatient alcohol treatment program. Anyway, the point is that the mayor is back and alcohol no longer interferes with the functioning of his life, as it apparently did for an unspecified time.
I mention this hoary tale from 2016 because this year, on December 20, the City of Missoula informed city councillors that it had corrected the $3 million accounting error it discovered six weeks ago and hadn’t told us about until now. They thought they had $4.2 million in their rainy-day fund, but it turns out to be only $600,000. Coincidentally, they discovered it one day before the 2017 mayoral election. Anyway, the point is that this accounting error has been corrected, so nobody needs to worry about it now.
As my dad used to say, once is a mistake and twice is a pattern. He also used to say terrible, biological things about city governments everywhere, and I’m starting to think he was right. The City of Missoula obviously has a problem: it can’t keep a secret for more than six weeks. You can read all about it in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent, in which I put forth the thought experiment known as Schrödinger’s Town, where everyone is happy because we have no idea what’s happening.
And what happened to the Missoula Independent? Lee Enterprises bought it, killed it 9 months after Dan posted this piece on John Engen, and then they salted the earth by annihilating the Indy’s online archives.
When I wrote yesterday “this is an information war”, Lee Enterprises’ corporate kill-shot of the Missoula Independent is exactly what I’m talking about, and it’s why I took the birthday opportunity three years ago to tell the Indy sellout, Matt Gibson, what I thought about his move to his stupid face.
Just because someone has a CIA Daddy, it doesn’t mean they have to remain in the shadow of the agency for their whole life. Owning the influence, like Kris Millegan has done, is one example of how to successfully evolve beyond the traitorous influence of these corrupt MFers. But what about Pete Talbot?
In 2007, one year before I was hired at the Poverello Center by someone who also might have a CIA Daddy, Pete Talbot gave a political endorsement to Jerry Ballas, a Republican, for Missoula City Council, and he issued this endorsement at 4&20 Blackbirds, the blog I started contributing to in 2010.
So, what’s the connection? The connection is this: Jerry Ballas, I learned from this Pulp article, was the architect who designed the Lee Enterprises building at Higgins and 4th Street, a project overseen by John Talbot and done to specifically rehabilitate Missoula’s downtown core with a newly minted financial tool, called Tax Increment Financing.
Talbot was the Missoulian’s publisher from 1970 to 1980 for Lee Enterprises and continued as a Lee regional vice president until 1986. Carol Van Valkenburg worked with him both at the paper and then at the University of Montana Journalism School. When Talbot died in 2021, Van Valkenburg told me how he had kept Missoula’s historic character alive.
“He was interested in the revitalization of downtown with (former Missoula Mayor) John Toole,” Van Valkenburg recalled. “When Southgate Mall came, that helped the Missoulian tremendously, but John knew that central to the identity of Missoula was the downtown. He was very active making sure it stayed a vital part, while Billings’ and Great Falls’ downtowns were disappearing and being boarded up.”
Jerry Ballas was the Missoulian building architect. He was the son of founding partner Oscar Ballas of Fox, Ballas and Barrow Architects, which also designed the Missoula City Hall, the public library building on Main Street and the University Center on the UM campus. They are all in the “federal modernist” style popular in the mid-20th century, known for a “disdain for ornamentation and fondness for massive forms [that] have sometimes been seen as an expression of efficiency and power — and at other times, as sterile and inhuman,” according to the U.S. General Services Administration. Whatever one thinks about the trend, Ballas did appreciate the river. He stripped the length of the building with windows looking north to the water and downtown.
Amazing.
One more thing to note: Before publishing today’s post I gave Kris Millegan another call and we chatted briefly about his CIA Dad and the things I was uncovering in Montana. Since the overlap between drug trafficking and the CIA has been a specific topic of interest for Millegan, I asked him about it and he said a sparsely populated state with a big, wild border with Canada, makes Montana a natural place of interest for three letter agency attention. Of course.
While active CIA agents aren’t legally allowed to get involved in domestic politics, “former” agents, like Steven A. Cash, have become VERY involved in domestic politics through a “non-profit” called the “Steady State”.
The country is facing the gravest threat to its constitutional democracy since the Civil War. That was the assessment of the current political situation from former national security official Steven Cash ’84 in a lecture and conversation with members of the Vassar community at Rockefeller Hall on September 16.
Cash’s career included stints with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Department of Homeland Security, and the staffs of several congressional committees that oversee and assess national security issues. He is currently Executive Director of The Steady State, a non-profit advocacy organization whose members are former senior national security officials drawn from across the intelligence, diplomatic, homeland security, and defense communities.
Cash opened his talk by observing that his campus visits are usually happy occasions, such as class reunions. “This one isn’t fun,” he said, characterizing his talk as a warning and “call to action” for students and others who attended.
If you don’t understand the kind of “call to action” Steven Cash is pushing, here’s some of an X post I came across this morning while writing this post:
ScreenshotScreenshot
I hope the dots I’ve been connecting recently have been helpful for readers who want to know how we got here, who helped fuck things up, and why no one is coming to save us. After being served two more restraining orders yesterday by two people who don’t like what I’ve been writing about, it’s pretty obvious how effectively over the target I have been.
I’ve been thinking about traveling lately, but not because I have the money to travel. Instead, I’ve been thinking about WHY people travel, like Todd Frank’s recent visit to Cuba, where Nick Shirley recently did his citizen journalist LARP claiming he was almost kidnapped by “Cuban spies” or some shit. LOL.
The Cuba/Missoula connection wasn’t something even remotely on my radar at the start of the week, but after including the Cuba detail in Tuesday’s post about dark money, TIF money, and Todd Frank media quotes, I had two separate conversations that gave me two separate leads to try and understand the relationship between a land-locked mountain town and a politically contentious island nation, starting with an adventure travel company.
Lewis and Clark Trail Adventures, a Missoula company owned by Wayne and Gia Fairchild, offers an annual trip to Cuba if you have the money, and it isn’t cheap. Also, it isn’t the trip Todd Frank is on, since this annual trip happens during winter. For an idea of the cost, and what you get, here’s a screenshot:
When I called Lewis and Clark Trail Adventures a woman I assume was Gia answered the phone. She was confused about why I was calling and, frankly, so was I. Obama had thawed relations with Cuba in 2016, professional adventurers like Wayne and Gia saw opportunity, and now I was calling about it. Why?
When I saw the Time magazine article featuring Wayne Fairchild, and who wrote it, I got more curious about this adventurer and his interest in traveling to Cuba once a year. Here’s how the Time article, titled “Why the Lolo is Legend“, written by Terry McCarthy, begins:
Gray clouds move as low as smoke over the treetops at Lolo Pass. The ground is white. The day is June 10. It has been snowing for the past four days in the Bitterroot Mountains. Wayne Fairchild is getting worried about our trek over the Lolo Trail–95 miles from Lolo, Mont., to Weippe in Idaho, across some of the most rugged country in the West. Lewis and Clark were nearly defeated 200 years ago by snowstorms on the Lolo–the name apparently comes from Lawrence, a French-Canadian trapper killed by a grizzly in the area in the 1850s. Today Fairchild is nervously checking the weather reports. He has agreed to take me across the toughest, middle section of the trail–“but with this weather?”
When Lewis surmounted Lemhi Pass, 140 miles south of Missoula, on Aug. 12, he was flabbergasted by what was in front of him: “immence ranges of high mountains still to the West of us with their tops partially covered with snow.” Nobody in what was then the U.S. knew the Rocky Mountains existed, with peaks twice as high as anything in the Appalachians back East. Lewis and Clark weren’t merely off the map; they were traveling outside the American imagination.
To better understand what’s going on here you have to know the history of the Time-Life empire, established by Henry Luce, and his very close relationship with John Foster Dulles.
With Allen ensconced in Bern, John Foster started his own comeback toward the end of World War II. He had become close friends with the Time magazine publisher Henry Luce, who was busy championing the idea of an American Century. Both were pro-business, internationalist Republicans shaped by Calvinist principles—Luce, born in China, was himself the son of a Presbyterian missionary. Despite Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s initial misgivings, he ended up appointing John Foster to the American delegation to the negotiations in San Francisco in 1945, where fifty countries met, including the Soviet Union, to establish the United Nations. John Foster, who had begun to espouse a militantly anticommunist line, clashed with Andrei Vishinsky, the Soviet deputy foreign minister and former chief prosecutor at Stalin’s purge trials.
It also helps to understand the type of people who worked for Henry Luce at Time-Life, like C.D. Jackson. Here’s a page from The Cultural Cold War, by Frances Saunders:
With this context in mind, let’s consult the Wikipedia entry for Terry McCarthy to see if anything jumps out.
During his tenure at TIME (1998-2005), McCarthy served as the Los Angeles Bureau Chief and East Asia Correspondent in Shanghai. He wrote about China’s internet and car industries, the fall of Indonesian dictator Suharto and the death of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot. From LA he did in-depth stories about the Green River serial killer in Seattle, the fight over new oil drilling in Alaska and the science of sharks. Immediately after 9/11 McCarthy went to Afghanistan to cover the ousting of the Taliban from Kabul, and in 2003 he covered the US invasion of Iraq. He set up TIME’s bureaus in Kabul and Baghdad. In both 2004 and 2005, McCarthy received an Emmy award for a joint ABC-Times News Series on Iraq.
McCarthy was foreign correspondent for ABC News in the Middle East, Asia and Latin America from 2006 to 2009. He was the Principal Baghdad Correspondent during the US surge in Iraq and covered the trial and execution of Saddam Hussein. He traveled down the Yangtze River in China, focusing on the economic, political and environmental impact of the man-made waterway. He covered life in Mexico City during the swine flu epidemic of 2009, and filmed inside the eye of a category 4 hurricane off Florida in a C 130 hurricane hunter. In 2008, he won an Emmy for the series Iraq: Where Things Stand for ABC World News with Charlie Gibson.
If you didn’t think floating rivers could be political, or tied to intelligence work, this context might make you think twice about the politics of travel and the value of reporting back what you see.
What did Big Sky High School kids hope to see when their teacher, Jay Bostrom, helped set up a Cuban adventure for Missoula teens? Did they hope to see things that would “challenge perceptions“?
We at Reality Tours love sending high school aged groups to countries all over the world- it’s an incredible opportunity for young people to learn more about our global neighbors, themselves, and the issues shaping global society today. Recently, a high school group from Missoula, MT traveled to Cuba under a People-to-People license with Global Exchange as a Travel Service Provider. Below, a student and chaperone share their insights as they challenged their perceptions about the island nation and gained new ones.
To see how Cuba made an impression on one young, malleable mind, here’s one of the quotes from one of the students:
Later in the trip we had the opportunity to visit the Che Guevara Mausoleum. Che’s face was everywhere we went, plastered on buildings, clothing, books, and other souvenirs. Che valued education and his ideas were reflected by the Cuban people. All of the young people in Cuba were very aware of their history and had pride in their roots. I think that’s something that’s lacking in the United States. History, government, and current issues are not a priority in education.
That’s right, youngster, public education in America (using Robert Maxwell’s text books) isn’t designed to teach you truth, it’s designed to indoctrinate you as a peasant.
If the idea for local educators is to use the privilege of movement to spend money in a Communist country in order to weaponize kids to then righteously push collectivist propaganda at home, then these Cuban youth trips appear to VERY successful, and if you don’t think this is the case, then FUCC you!
I spent five days in June at a most unusual gathering. Unusual, because unlike the many academic conferences, the workshops, the handful of “symposia” I’ve attended, this one seemed right on the mark, existentially and politically, for our moment.
Dubbed B.Y.O.B., for “Bring Your Own Brain,” and put on by a collective of students from Big Sky High School in Missoula, Montana who go by the hashtag #freeusfromclimatechaos (FUCC, in case you don’t get the biting but playful humor at the heart of their critique), this had been nine months in the making, assisted by their Spanish teacher, Jay Bostrom and a crew of adult allies from their school and mentors from the local activist community affinity group the ZooTown Zaps.
It was, in fact, a pretty credible incarnation of a North American, youth-led experiment with Zapatismo; recall that to the thousands of queries the Zapatistas have received from activists over the past twenty-three years about what they should be doing, the consistent answer has been: “Go and do what we do, but in your own way, in your own place of origin, your own home, your own community.”
Let me interpret what I think the Zapatistas are really trying to say here: STOP your privileged poverty porn visits like we’re zoo animals you can pet for a few Pesos and go fix your own shit, which, I will add, includes understanding that, in 2026, quoting Chomsky is quoting a member of the child-fucking class.
In 2017, Brianna Canning, like the rest of us, had no clue that Noam Chomsky was connected to a psychopath who would rape her in a second, then let his pals, like the daughter of that text book guy, Robert, cover it all up. But it’s not 2017, and now we need to know how close and casual that relationship was.
With all this talk about Cuba, including what might happen to Americans at any moment with their money, what’s up with Alberta? We’re almost there.
Screenshot
Just like the attention drawn south by blowing up “Narco boats”, I’ve been thinking about America’s northern border, and Trump’s declaration of Fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction“, since December, when the Executive Order was declared. With known Fentanyl super labs getting busted in Vancouver, I’m pretty sure there’s a long-run I-15 ratline between Montana and Alberta, with the added benefit of having an Air Force Base in the neighborhood, knowing what’s now known thanks to Seth Harp and his book, The Fort Bragg Cartel.
It should also be noted (before I finish this virtual travelogue) that Alberta is in the midst of a political resurgence of a historic urge toward independence. For an overly-simplified explanation from Wikipedia, this is worth considering:
In the lead up to the 2025 federal election, politicians and activists in Alberta voiced that a win for the Liberal Party, which by then had been in power for almost 10 years, would considerably increase support for Alberta independence. The rise in support for the Liberal Party was in part a response to the call by United States President Donald Trump for all of Canada to be annexed into the United States. While still opposed by the majority of Canadians, support for annexation is greater in Alberta, as some residents see greater cultural and economic connections with the United States than they do with Eastern Canada.
The final data-point is just a picture of a map of Montana, but there are place-names I now find interesting, like Dutton, Dunkirk, and Santa Rita, the Patroness of Impossible Causes.
And thus ends our educational trip, boys and girls! Thanks for allowing me to be your cynical guide, and don’t forget to tip.
I see a bright future for Todd Frank and his outdoor business, the Trail Head. What started in 2019 with a six-figure, interest-free infusion of public money from the Missoula Redevelopment Agency could bloom into anything this money-quote maker can dream of, and I’m sure he’s dreaming BIG while visiting Cuba, a funny detail I got from speaking with one of his employees yesterday.
To better understand how Todd Frank acquired public TIF money, and what his building actually looks like, here’s a screenshot from the Missoula Redevelopment Agency’s own records (PDF):
And here’s the image I used to prompt Gemini with:
Since relocating and expanding his business with the help of public money, Todd Frank has gotten a bit worried from time to time. First, there was Putin attacking Ukraine and the disruption to his ski sales.
Next came the dirty little secret of the “pro-deal” third-party discount threat to his bottomline:
“Fifteen years ago, pro-dealing was a marketing tool. A handful of store employees got pro deals, and that was it. Now anyone can get a pro deal and it’s become a full-on sales channel,” says Immersion Research president John Weld. “It’s one of the key reasons why the retailer-manufacturer relationship is falling apart.”
The typical pro-deal discount ranges from about 30 to 60 percent, which pencils out to a sales price that is comparable—and in many cases higher—than wholesale. As the number of people with access to pro deals has continued to grow, retailers and some manufacturers say the programs have become a way for brands to sell direct-to-consumer at a discount, without violating MAP [minimum advertised price] policies.
The reason I’m writing this post, though, is possibly the most galling reason yet for Todd Frank to get quoted, and that’s because, for some weird reason, The Nation quoted our humble little Missoula business owner about “dark money” in Montana politics.
Huh?
What is the “Montana Transparent Election Initiative“? It appears to be just another Helena-based, Democrat astro-turfed effort at shoveling bullshit to get political dollars, and it’s being amplified by a reporter connected to the Montana Free Press, the media platform in Montana most obsessed with defining what “dark money” is, and who should be shamed for getting it.
When you see that McLaughlin is based in Butte, and you see that the “Montana Transparent Election Initiative” will soon have its most recent Democrat champion, Pete Buttigieg, visiting Butte later this month, it all starts making more sense.
Transparent Election Initiative announced this week that former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg has endorsed the “Montana Plan” which seeks to keep corporate money out of politics through a ballot measure.
Buttigieg will come to Butte for a town hall on May 17, the release from the Transparent Election Initiative said. The event will start at 1 p.m. and the location will be announced later, the release said.
Initiative I-194 needs 30,000 signatures by June 19 to be on the November ballot. It started as a state Constitutional initiative, but now is a statutory initiative, which would change Montana state law – not the Constitution.
Meanwhile, in Missoula, the money Todd Frank will NEVER criticize–Tax Increment Financing–is having the predictable effect on the general fund, leading to the same, predictable people panhandling the public for MORE money.
While an out-going non-profit influencer holds her panhandling sign for a school levy, a new critical voice is emerging to sound the alarm about what using TIF money from newly formed Missoula County TEDDs (Targeted Economic Development District) could mean (spoiler: litigation!)
A top official for DeSmet School west of Missoula told the Board of County Commissioners last week the school district plans to take legal action if the county continues its plans related to Tax Increment Financing in the Wye area.
The comment came during a public hearing where the commissioners voted to expand the life of a Targeted Economic Development District, or TEDD, near the Wye through a long-term loan to finance a new water system to allow for more housing development in the area as Missoula grows.
Matthew Driessen, the superintendent of DeSmet Public School, told the commissioners the expansion of the TEDD would fund new infrastructure at the expense of pulling tax revenue away from his school district.
Is Matthew Driessen for real? Does he know what he’s up against and how they will come after him in any way they can? And, has he seen the documentary, Engen’s Missoula? (Have YOU?)
For those who HAVE been a part of the TIF conversation, a school superintendent is quite an ally to have, especially one who seems to have real lawyers and the means to pay them at his disposal:
“You are going to freeze the revenues that the school district, the fire department and transportation are going to get, based on the funding that you do with this bond, for the next 25 years,” Driessen said. “That is going to have a detrimental effect on these jurisdictions.”
He said he was giving “notice” that there would be legal action from the school district, and asked the commissioners to table the plans and have an in-depth conversation with the school and other stakeholders about TEDDs.
“The school board has approved that we will go to legal action to make sure our district is taxed the same way as other school districts within the county in reference to TIF funds,” Driessen told the county commissioners.
Hell yeah, Matt! Go get ’em!
If sanity doesn’t return to local budgets, schools could be harmed, but isn’t harming schools kind of what liberal users of public money enjoy doing?
I was reminded of 2020 recently (and the kind of pressure I felt to jab my kids from my own family) when I read this hollow lament from Dan Brooks on X. For those who don’t know this free-lance writer based in Missoula, just wait.
Screenshot
If you think this is tone-deaf, it’s important to understand that it’s coming from this guy:
Screenshot
The insistence, among the Republican leadership in the spring of 2020, that Covid-19 was a glorified version of the flu guaranteed that responses to the pandemic would shake out along political and, therefore, cultural lines. In places such as Alabama, not getting the vaccine has more to do with socio-economic identity than with scientific literacy. This is a fatal flaw in the reasoning of unvaccinated people, who are absolutely wrong in a way that endangers not only themselves but also others.
But given the haughty reaction of many liberals, can you blame them? Even as the cost of their obstinacy has become grimly clear, the cost of admitting they were wrong has risen; to get the vaccine now would be to kowtow to a class that holds them in contempt.
The notion that a vocal minority of our fellow citizens threaten to undo us with their ignorance has become something of a master narrative in anglophone democracies over the past five years. Trump did it for a lot of American Democrats in 2016, and Brexit – which, unlike Trump, won popular support at the polls but, like Trump, was overwhelmingly opposed by the urban and higher-educated – had a similar effect in the UK. The current Republican mania for making voting more difficult seems to be a product of Trump’s loss in November. Last week, a Pew Research Center poll found that 42% of respondents agreed with the statement: “Voting is a privilege that comes with responsibilities and can be limited.” This attitude is fundamentally incompatible with democracy.
In summary, this is an information war, so try to understand what’s NOT being said by conventional media outlets (and their preferred parrots), why it’s not being said, then act accordingly (donate some money to me!)
I can easily foresee a near-future where encampments like the exaggerated scene above exist, festering in toxic sludge as “campers” administer chemical lobotomies to themselves. If what’s being depicted in this scene is not desirable, then maybe it’s worth determining WHY the marginally less disgusting encampment near the Buckhouse bridge has been allowed to exist since last October.
I know contact with campers at this site first began in October because a nice woman at the Missoula County Health Department read me out the notes over the phone after finding the complaint filed under “solid waste”. Two private landowners–Buckhouse Shoptown LLC and the University of Montana–were identified and notified, then, at some point, law enforcement made contact.
What happened next?
Nothing. Fall became winter, winter became spring, and now, seasonal snowmelt will be swelling the rivers soon. While legal responsibility to clean up this mess and foot the bill lands on the landowners, the legal question of WHO was essentially trespassing, and WHY they weren’t evicted sooner, remains.
Since the County notes didn’t specific who was living at the encampment, I biked out to the bridge again (before my bike was stolen Friday night) to see what else I could find. What I found was pretty interesting.
Before the felony burglary charge in Cascade County, Justin Julian was hanging out with a shitty mom who got arrested for driving around a youth gang to steal shit. Justin Julian was just 18 year old at the time.
A 37-year-old Great Falls woman is accused of driving her son and his friends around the city as the teens stole items from cars.
Police learned about the case Saturday morning when the woman’s husband called authorities to report he found a pile of stuff in his back yard that he suspected had been stolen. Court records say over $3,000 in items were stolen, including a set of golf clubs and power tools.
Lisa Dilley is charged with accountability to theft and accountability to criminal trespass to a vehicle, along with endangering the welfare of children.
Two 18-year-olds, Justin Julian and Julie Surratt, also face the accountability charges. Five juveniles were arrested in the case, including Dilley’s 16-year-old son.
This interaction with law enforcement occurred in 2009 and involved several minors. Knowing this background helps put pictures like this into perspective:
When I learned that law enforcement has known about this illegal encampment since last fall, and when I learned the name of one of the campers, Justin Julian, combined with what I wrote last week regarding drug dealing being allegedly done BY law enforcement, the arrest of Justin Julian outside the Poverello Center in March of this year for alleged meth possession is something I find VERY interesting, especially the part about “previous professional contacts”:
On March 17, 2026, a Missoula Police Department Officer was driving behind the Poverello Center and observed 35-year-old Justin Julian, whom the officer was familiar with through previous professional contacts. The officer was further aware that Julian had an active felony arrest warrant.
The officer approached Julian and asked him to identify himself. Julian was placed under arrest and then stated he wanted his bicycle, backpack, and coat to remain in the care of his friend. The officer informed Julian that they would address his property after the arrest process.
Julian was then escorted to the officer’s patrol car. The officer asked Julian if he had anything on his person, such as weapons, needles, or drugs. Julian stated that he had two empty syringes in the right front pocket of his jeans and denied possessing any drugs.
I also find it interesting, though probably just coincidental, that my bike got stolen the same day Justin Julian got out of jail. Since Missoula County no longer allows mugshots to be posted along with criminal charges, I’ll include an image from Facebook instead.
To bolster my assertion that Justin Julian is one of Missoula’s many transient bike thieves who enjoys slamming meth and trashing the river under the noses of the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office, here are some more images from his urban campsite:
Last Friday I got to see some encouraging before/after pictures of the Reserve Street homeless encampments from the major 2022 cleanup. I took screenshots during the presentation but, without permission from the photographer, I won’t be sharing them. I will share one of the many images I found at the blog, Big Sky Words, and suggest clicking this link for an insightful look at the Reserve Street camps in 2018, when high water caught many campers off guard.
I’ll also share the word of caution I gave the Facebook group rightfully proud of their 2022 achievement at Reserve Street, and that word of caution was, and is, this: think twice before going gung-ho on making educational material, like a book, describing what it took to remove 80 tons of trash from this long-problematic spot along the Clark Fork river because part of that story includes the political opposition that existed at the time, and that opposition hasn’t just disappeared because a non-profit leader is retiring.
One interesting quote I caught from the Big Sky Words post came from that retiring non-profit leader’s favorite Sheriff, T.J. McDermott. I especially like his use of the word “hide”:
Bloggers like Greg Strandberg, who ran Big Sky Words for little-to-no compensation like I’ve been doing for over a decade, have done the kind of work that local narrative controllers DO NOT WANT us to do, and that’s because it preserves evidence of their failure, especially as it relates to controversial topics, like homelessness. This 2018 post is a great example because it preserves a Sheriff McDermott quote I can no longer find by clicking the KPAX link.
One of the posts I’ll be writing this week will be about a pattern of hiding information I’ve seen emerge from local and state authorities recently, particularly as it relates to Confidential Criminal Justice Information (CCJI). In light of this pattern, I’m wondering if scaling back the publishing of mugshots might not be a part of something more ominous forming on the horizon, something like pairing victimhood with the idea of online digital harassment in order to push for mandatory digital IDs.
If you appreciate what you read for free at Zoom Chron, please consider donating to my GoFundMe. With legal attacks mounting, and my tendency to bite the paternal hand feeding me (resulting in new threats of punishment where it hurts me most) now would be a GREAT time to give a REAL citizen journalist some digital dollars.
