Month: March 2016

by William Skink

I listened to most of Obama’s Cuba speech yesterday despite the revulsion I feel when confronted with such easily delivered deceit. You can read the full transcript here.

After making the declaration that “I have come here to bury the last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas” Obama went on to make statements like this:

It should be easier to open a business here in Cuba. A worker should be able to get a job directly with companies who invest here in Cuba. Two currencies shouldn’t separate the type of salaries that Cubans can earn. The Internet should be available across the island so that Cubans can connect to the wider world and to one of the greatest engines of growth in human history.

(APPLAUSE)

There’s no limitation from the United States on the ability of Cuba to take these steps. It’s up to you. I can tell you as a friend that sustainable prosperity in the 21st century depends on education, health care, and environmental protection. But it also depends on the free and open exchange of ideas. If you can’t access information online, if you cannot be exposed to different points of view, you will not reach your full potential.

OBAMA: And over time, the youth will lose hope. I know these issues are sensitive, especially coming from an American president. Before 1959, some Americans saw Cuba as something to exploit: ignored poverty, enabled corruption. And since 1959, we’ve been shadow boxers in this battle of geo-politics and personalities.
I know the history, but I refuse to be trapped by it.

When you get the internet, dear Cubans, I suggest consulting alternative news sites like Counterpunch so you can learn that Obama is a liar like most American presidents and should never be trusted. So when Obama says he’s burying the last remnants of the Cold War in the Americas, it might be important to take a look at how Obama is resurrecting the Cold War abroad. Here’s John Pilger’s latest piece about Obama’s trillion dollar investment in upgrading America’s nuclear weapons:

In 2009, President Obama stood before an adoring crowd in the centre of Prague, in the heart of Europe. He pledged himself to make “the world free from nuclear weapons”. People cheered and some cried. A torrent of platitudes flowed from the media. Obama was subsequently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

It was all fake. He was lying.

The Obama administration has built more nuclear weapons, more nuclear warheads, more nuclear delivery systems, more nuclear factories. Nuclear warhead spending alone rose higher under Obama than under any American president. The cost over thirty years is more than $1 trillion.

A mini nuclear bomb is planned. It is known as the B61 Model 12. There has never been anything like it. General James Cartwright, a former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said, “Going smaller [makes using this nuclear] weapon more thinkable.”

In the last eighteen months, the greatest build-up of military forces since World War Two — led by the United States — is taking place along Russia’s western frontier. Not since Hitler invaded the Soviet Union have foreign troops presented such a demonstrable threat to Russia.

Ukraine – once part of the Soviet Union – has become a CIA theme park. Having orchestrated a coup in Kiev, Washington effectively controls a regime that is next door and hostile to Russia: a regime rotten with Nazis, literally. Prominent parliamentary figures in Ukraine are the political descendants of the notorious OUN and UPA fascists. They openly praise Hitler and call for the persecution and expulsion of the Russian speaking minority.

This is seldom news in the West, or it is inverted to suppress the truth.

So while I still have the freedom to call the president a liar, I’m going to do so because nothing lasts forever, especially empires that try to rule the world.

by William Skink

Media is changing in Montana, and that should make the corporate executives at Iowa-based Lee Enterprises nervous.

Last Best News–a for-profit online alternative to corporate crap–took a recent look at these changes with 3 cheers for the state’s growing online news, highlighting the efforts of John Adams news venture, The Montana Free Press, and Martin Kidston’s Missoula Current.

These new news efforts are important and timely as executives at Lee Enterprises read the writing on the wall and move to protect themselves in case the company gets sold out from under them:

The board of Lee Enterprises, owner of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, has acted to protect its executives in case the company is sold.

The board approved new agreements giving nine senior executives pay, stock compensation and benefits in case they are terminated after a change of control at Lee, the company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Some senior executives have had similar change-of-control protection since 2008, according to the company’s proxy filing last year.

“In 2015, Lee reviewed the company’s change-in-control agreements and made changes to better align them with general industry practices,” Lee spokesman Charles Arms said Friday in an email. “Lee is not considering placing itself for sale nor has Lee received a buyout offer.”

In the new agreements, CEO Mary Junck would receive compensation worth $5.6 million in a change of control. Chief Operating Officer Kevin Mowbray would receive $1.5 million, and other executives lesser amounts.

Only in corporate America are people at the top so handsomely rewarded for failure.

by William Skink

I finally added Logicosity to the blogroll because of insightful posts like this one regarding the campaign cash quirk that requires Democrats and Republicans to have a primary challenger in order to use the campaign cash, otherwise the candidate would have to return the money. Now that the Bullock campaign has a challenger, over half a million dollars can be used:

What does Bullock receive?

An escape from an impossible predicament.

His campaign may now keep and spend over $660,000 in campaign funds that it would have had to have refunded had it not faced an opponent in the primary.

This wink-wink, elbow-in-the-ribs charade is an inside joke in Helena. How can anyone involved keep a straight face?

Oh, yes, officially, Bullock will say he takes any opponent seriously and quote a variation of that old line, “If you’re not running scared, you’re not running hard.” But, rest assured, he’s laughing all the way to the bank.

In 2008, Don Pogreba and Jason Neiffer, two Helena-area high school teachers, stepped forward to assist the Schweitzer-Bohlinger ticket when it sought re-election. Ironically, they weren’t needed as shills. At the last moment, another, more legitimate ticket, Bill Fischer and Steve White, both from the Flathead, for the D nomination

In 2012, Heather Margolis and Steve Nelsen, who both reside in Helena, similarly, almost magically, appeared out of nowhere at the last moment to bail out Bullock and Walsh.

Neither “ticket” did a thing to detract from the incumbent ticket.

It’s a good thing for Democrats that a Lee Newspaper didn’t run this story because it would just reinforce what many already know to be true: politics is a deceitful game with more money sloshing around than they will ever see.

When newspapers do run political stories that damage a candidate, Montana Democrats have the media scold Don Pogreba to go on the attack, like he did earlier this week when Bullock got dinged for using the state plane to piggyback campaign stops on official stops. The story was bullshit, Pogreba assured his readers. A few days after that, Justin Robbins continued the damage control at MT Cowgirl, saying this:

Apparently, Lee Newspapers had some column inches to fill. Why else regurgitate one party’s talking points about an issue which was not only revealed to be partisan hackery; but previously de-bunked partisan hackery, which was sheepishly undone?

Is this story just debunked partisan hackery? When I took a look at media corruption in this post JC added some perspective in the comments:

My dad flew the state plane for 5 different governors. He always said that if there was a campaign event that the state would expect to be reimbursed by the campaign for the cost of what a commercial transit would have been.

He also said that he judged a governor’s character by whether or not he cheated at cards while flying. I’d bet Bullock cheats at cards, and everybody around him lets him get away with it. If I were Bullock, I’d pay the state back for the price of a commercial transit, and say “mea culpa.”

It turns out this comment was prescient. In today’s Missoulian, this story is buried in the local section:

Gov. Steve Bullock will reimburse the state for travel using the state-owned plane that coincided with campaign events, going back to the start of his term.

Bullock will pay $2,671.84, according to a news release sent Friday afternoon.

The governor’s legal counsel has advised the governor can use state-owned aircraft to fly to a location and attend a campaign event as long as he is also attending official state events on the same day. Attendance at campaign events or other nonofficial events must be ancillary to the official business. When the governor attends ancillary campaign events, the state must be reimbursed for any increased cost associated with the aircraft as a result of the attendance.

So, it looks like there was some meat to this supposed bullshit partisan hackery story that got the local attack dogs all riled up. Bullock was smart to just pay up and move on. What’s a couple thousand dollars to a campaign that gets to keep over a half million because it found some warm bodies to pretend to be primary opponents?

Despite linking to Intelligent Discontent, you won’t see any pingbacks over there leading readers to this post because, once again, Don Pogreba has banned me and will remove any link that pops up to this blog. Don is not, however, banned from here because I don’t mind defending my posts (Don, if you read this, you don’t have to post under other names like “friend” if you want to come over here and make the kind of attacks that expose how little substance there is to your partisan hackery).

There will be more to come as this political season heats up, so stay tuned…

by William Skink

Mental health is a serious issue that impact tens of millions of Americans (I had the wrong link and can’t find the original article, so I took the link out):

Nearly 20 percent of Americans — 44.5 million adults — experienced some sort of mental illness over the last year, according to a new report from the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Agency (SAMHSA).

The report details state by state the percent of the population who has suffered a mental illness.

“Mental illnesses are treatable and people can recover to live full, productive lives. Unfortunately in the past year only 37.9 percent of adults with mental health problems received any type of care,” SAMHSA Administrator Pamela S. Hyde said in a statement. “The chasm between need and care is costly both in terms of personal health because of missed opportunities to prevent disability and health care expenditures related to illness such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and obesity.”

The tragedy of missed opportunity was horrifically evident this week in Bozeman where an episode of untreated postpartum depression appears to have contributed to an unimaginable act of violence. Jessica Hunter allegedly shot and killed her husband, her 6 month old baby and herself with a gun she legally carried as a part of her job with Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

After a tragedy like this it’s natural to wonder what more could have been done to help Jessica. Friends and family are especially haunted with the what-ifs. The stigma of seeking help is often discussed, among other factors that make it difficult to get the necessary help.

For those who haven’t had to deal with hospitals and mental health providers, it might be difficult to understand why someone wouldn’t seek help, or if they did seek help, why that help wasn’t adequate. Thankfully we have new media outlets like Last Best News providing a first-hand account of one woman’s experience trying to get a prescription of Zoloft filled.

Please go and read the whole piece. Tahini Nelson, the woman who shares her terrible experience, should be commended for having the courage to not only advocate for herself, but to then use her story to help others understand how a simple need to get a prescription filled can turn into a traumatizing 6 hour ordeal in an emergency room that resulted in a bill of over a thousand dollars and a patient who ended up leaving the emergency room that day WITHOUT the medication she needed to treat her depression.

We have an ongoing mental health crisis in this state with a lack of access to treatment and significant gaps for other critical services.

It’s so bad in Montana that a recent piece from The Guardian about the alarming 20% uptick in suicides for white men ages 45-54 since 1999 singled out Montana specifically for its disturbing suicide rate:

Lowney lives in Butte, Montana, where local officials see the Princeton study’s findings reflected in their community but struggle to explain them. The state has the highest rate of suicide in the US at nearly twice the national average and rising – up 7.3% in 2014. Those most likely to kill themselves are 45 to 65 years old.

“What’s been lacking in our town is an explanation for why this demographic in particular has been dying by suicide,” said Karen Sullivan, health director for Butte and the surrounding county, Silver Bow. “We want to take a look at what we’ve got going on in Butte. Is it economic in nature? Is it middle-aged white people discontented with where they landed in life? Is it isolation? A lack of a social network? Is it drug and alcohol issues? What do we have going on?”

Other officials see a number of interconnected forces at work and the rising rate of middle-aged deaths as indicative of crisis wider than those who kill themselves.

Growing economic inequality and increasing financial struggles are intertwined with other issues such as health and addiction. Some people living on low incomes hesitate to go to the doctor even if they have medical insurance because of the cost of out-of-pocket expenses. Chronic conditions can go untreated and become debilitating.

Pain is a driver of alcohol abuse and addiction to opioid painkillers, which in turn is feeding a growing heroin epidemic in the US. Stress and mental health issues are sometimes driven by constant worries about money and fear for the future as growing numbers of Americans look into a financial abyss at retirement.

This is not the story an incumbent Governor wants his constituents to be talking about during an elections season, but low employment and money in the bank does not a healthy state make.

I haven’t written anything yet about the terrible decision by the Montana Supreme Court to uphold atrocious legislation aimed at destroying medical marijuana providers, while simultaneously punishing sick people in Montana, but the fact state officials are callously recommending only 49 days to transition to the 3 patient regulation is absolutely disgusting:

Last month, the court upheld provisions of the 2011 law that limits marijuana providers to selling the drug to no more than three patients each. Medical marijuana advocates who sued to block the law asked the Supreme Court last week to reconsider the three-patient limit and delay implementation of the restrictions until after the 2017 legislative session, which is more than a year from now.

The state Department of Justice opposes the request to reconsider the limit and a lengthy transition period, Assistant Attorney General Stuart Segrest wrote in response to the advocates’ request. Only 49 days passed from when the state Legislature passed the bill in May 2011 and it was to go into effect that July, officials said.

“If the court is inclined to delay things at all, it should follow the same 49-day period that was in the law,” attorney general spokesman John Barnes said.

Destroying patients access to medical marijuana, combined with the new CDC guidelines for prescribing opioids (read James Conner’s critical look at this issuehere) certainly won’t help Montana’s suicide rate.

Where is the Governor on this issue? Where are Montana Democrats? Maybe the guy Democrats finally found to oppose Tim Fox–Larry Jent–can make this an issue, that is of course assuming Jent isn’t just some cutout candidate who filed 5 hours before the deadline in order to pretend that Democrats are going to actually run against the MEA-MFT backed Fox.

Yeah, I’m not holding my breath.

Sometimes I imagine the possibilities of having leaders with vision, people who can see the potential of what full legalization of cannabis could do for this state. Unfortunately it appears our political leaders don’t support creating new small businesses, reducing jail overcrowding, saving taxpayer money and creating new streams of tax revenue that directly divert’s money away from the criminal black market.

We need resources to increase access to mental health treatment in this state. What we are doing right now in Montana isn’t working. I hope we hear some specifics in the upcoming months about how the candidates who want to lead this state plan on dealing with this crisis.

by William Skink

The violence in Chicago last weekend marked a dangerous turning point in this year’s political charade. The right now has an effective counter-meme to the Trump inciting violence meme the left has been using, and that is Soros-funded MoveOn thugs trying to shutdown political free speech (I can’t stand Info Wars, but I think looking at the sources spreading this meme is instructive):

“Mr. Trump and the Republican leaders who support him and his hate-filled rhetoric should be on notice after tonight’s events,” the George Soros funded MoveOn web page states. “To all of those who took to the streets of Chicago, we say thank you for standing up and saying enough is enough. To Donald Trump, and the GOP, we say, welcome to the general election.”

MoveOn has consistently functioned as a lobby group for the policies of the Obama administration, including the disaster of Obamacare and the continuation of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the escalation of the war on terror that has turned America into a police and surveillance state. In 2007 it backed a bill trotted out by then Democrat Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to continue financing the occupation of Iraq.

Some Democrats can see the danger here. I commend Pete Talbot for writing a post about when to protest. Here’s a snip:

Concerning the Trump event, I got into a heated exchange with a woman about its efficacy. She thought it was great that so many people turned out to disrupt the event, and that Trump had to cancel. I argued that the protesters fueled the Trump supporters’ continued xenophobic and violent ways, and while Trump’s message is repulsive, there is that First Amendment consideration. My take was that the Chicago protest did more to help the Trump campaign than it did to hurt it – and that violence begets more violence. I also like to think that progressives will take the higher road when it comes to confrontation.

I couldn’t agree more.

While Pete would like to think that progressives will take the higher road when it comes to confrontation, he has no further to look than his site’s host to see that that is not the case with all progressives.

When I wrote this post about making a mockery of those anti-refugee protestors, the Chicago violence had obviously not happened yet. Looking back at that post now, this comment made by Don Pogreba takes on a darker tone:

There are times for righteous, passionate protest and there are times when people simply deserve our disdain. Try to find a way Monday to sneak over and offer some well-deserved mockery of people who believe still that hate and xenophobia are messages that resonate outside of their compounds.

Anyone on either side of the political spectrum needs to be really careful about calling for direct confrontations. If someone read Don’s call to action and went to mock the anti-refugee protestors, and violence broke out, would Don take any responsibility, or would he act like Donald Trump and absolve himself?

After Chicago, Donald Trump threw more fuel on the fire with this tweet:

Bernie Sanders is lying when he says his disruptors aren’t told to go to my events. Be careful Bernie, or my supporters will go to yours!

That this situation will escalate seems almost guaranteed. Unlike Pete, I don’t think progressives will take the higher road.