Month: April 2016

by William Skink

For dying newspapers, controversy means clicks and clicks appeal to advertisers who want to market their products. I got a chance to see this up close with how the Missoulian reported on local homeless issues, maximizing the controversy even if it meant using sources who weren’t the most mentally stable.

The Syrian refugee issue quickly became one of those controversial issues that the Missoulian will milk for all it’s worth. I can see that inclination with the misleading title of the latest article: Missoula gearing up for another round of refugees.

Another round, you ask? When was the first round? Are Syrian refugees already among us, waiting to rape our women and destroy western civilization?

When you read the article, the first round of refugees referenced is the relocation of Hmong refugees from Vietnam, which happened three and a half decades ago. The immediacy of refugees coming, implied by the title of the article, is (purposively?) misleading, possibly intended to stir up the anti-refugee contingent. When dealing with the Missoulian it’s important to remember they are a failing business model desperately trying to stay afloat by stoking controversy.

That said, there are some things in the article I would like to address.

After discussing the challenge of integrating Hmong refugees, the article gets to the current dilemma:

It won’t be on the same scale, but the IRC is back in Missoula, laying the groundwork for another wave of refugees from unknown countries.

The IRC’s Bob Johnson expects that some time before the end of the fiscal year in September, the initial families of what will eventually number 100 men, women and children in the first year will land in Missoula.

They’ll need jobs and housing, schooling, medical care, social services and understanding.

The volunteer group, Soft Landing Missoula, is already busy helping to lay the groundwork. Johnson, who’s stalling his retirement from the IRC’s Seattle office to get the Missoula office up and running, has been to town a couple of times. The position of executive director in Missoula was posted last week.

“We’ve done a lot in conjunction with the IRC to make a lot of those relationships happen,” said Mary Poole of Soft Landing Missoula. “I think it was in January when we started gathering folks together and having meetings with housing people, jobs people, Missoula County Public Schools and the (English Language Learning) programs … anyone we thought would be directly impacted with working for the refugees.”

So, after being told this just a few months ago:

IRC’s visit is only the first step in the process. Being formally approved by an agency would take more analysis and more visits. The agency will examine whether Missoula’s infrastructure can handle the refugees and if so, how many. It will look at housing availability, employment opportunities and funding sources for refugees.

It’s now full steam ahead, starting in September.

Missoula doesn’t have much affordable housing, confirmed by this recent report. There is also a critical lack of available rentals, with Missoula hovering around a 3.9% vacancy rate, much lower than the national average.

Because of this low vacancy rate it is very hard to find people housing. I know this from working at the homeless shelter for seven years. Since opening in the new location, the Poverello Center has been temporarily housing between 120-150 homeless people every night. Why can’t people get into housing in Missoula? Because the rental market is so competitive, if you have any barrier–like bad credit, an eviction or a criminal record–you’re screwed.

Bringing refugees to Missoula will make it more difficult for unhoused individuals already here to find housing. The article acknowledges this housing reality, kind of, but then goes on to talk about refugees not having cars:

The refugee resettlement coincides with a housing crunch in Missoula. But with the relatively low volume of refugees – 25 families spaced out over a year’s time – it’s not expected to reach crisis proportions.

“One of the difficulties in this process is … people are not going to have vehicles,” noted Woodrow, who’s a property manager for the Missoula Housing Authority. “Fortunately we now have no-fare transit, so trying to find housing near transit lines is helpful.”

Woodrow invited Johnson and Soft Landing to an NARPM board meeting in February and said the organization dedicated to ethical landlord practices is trying to put the resettlement advocates in touch with “reputable, above-board property management groups.”

How nice, the refugees will be kept out of “felony flats” and other trailer parks where Missoula’s poor and disabled are relegated. They will also get to avoid the motel trap, where people spend between $700-$1,000 to stay in nasty, bed-bug ridden motel rooms.

Recently I’ve been writing about the deplorable situation we have in Montana when it comes to accessing mental health services. The article acknowledges that refugees will sometimes have preexisting health conditions and trauma-based mental health problems when they arrive. Is Missoula truly prepared for this?

Missoula has another thing to serve refugees that it didn’t have in the 1980s – Partnership Health Center, which has a mission of ensuring access for the underserved and the underinsured.

“I’m real interested on the cultural front what we’ll all learn,” Leahy said. “Depending on the areas and the circumstances that the refugees are coming from, there might be mental health assistance needed. Some refugees, of course, will have experienced some very traumatic events.”

I read this and just shake my head. Partnership Health Center is inundated with the needs that are already critical in our community. Expecting their staff to deal with language barriers and cultural differences on top of what they are already dealing with shows a serious level of ignorance on behalf of the do-gooders.

Here is how the article concludes:

Poole is confident that with the experienced IRC at the tiller and volunteers from Soft Landing eager to dig in, Missoula will be ready for its next round of refugees.

“I think for us, (success) is making sure Missoula itself feels supported, so that it can do its very best to support the refugees in turn,” she said.

She acknowledged the fears, misgivings and opposition the resettlement issue continues to spawn, and agreed that some points are legitimate.

“I don’t think we’re naively thinking this is all going to be Wonderland,” Poole said. “But Missoula does have the capacity to be an amazing home for a lot of people – and it has the potential not to be.”

Do social workers and ER staff and first responders feel supported in Missoula with the issues they already see every day with addiction and mental health? Not from the conversations I’ve had. Is Mary Poole and the rest of the world-saving refugee cheerleaders naively approaching this issue? In my opinion, hell yes.

I don’t expect the harsh reality I witnessed during seven years of shelter work to intrude on the efforts of Soft Landing. As a controversy this issue will get plenty of clicks, which is good for the Missoulian, and as a political wedge issue during an elections season, it will excite the Democratic base in Missoula, giving them another opportunity feel morally superior to the scared-ignorant white people who exist outside the liberal bubble in Missoula.

by William Skink

In yesterday’s post about Montana Democrats playing corrupting money games for the DNC (and possibly compromising Montana’s super delegates), JC cited some interesting information about the Pritzker family wealth:

Interesting that Kidder didn’t catch the Pritzker connection. J.B. Pritzker is part of the Pritzker family, whose money originated in the Hyatt fortune, and whose entire family worth is collectively around 30 billion dollars.

J.B. (who was Clinton’s 2008 national co-chair) is the brother of Penny Pritzker, who is none other than Obama’s current Commerce Secretary, and was his 2012 campaign co-chair (nice political patronage payback).

Less well-known is they are both cousin to Linda Pritzker, who is probably the wealthiest woman living in Montana — living on the Flathead Rez not far from where I live. Being a Tibetan Buddhist, she has contributed heavily to the rise of buddhism on the rez and elsewhere, and maintains ties with the Dali Lama.

If ever there was another family of oligarchs that needed probing, the Pritzkers would be it.

With renewed interest in how the financial elite hide their wealth from the taxman, thanks to an enormous leak of over 11 million documents known as the Panama Papers, now seems like a good time to peel away a few layers to see what we can see.

First, let’s start with today’s Missoulian fluff piece about Linda Pritzker, titled Buddhist teacher expands Tibetan tradition in Montana (note the title isn’t Out of State Billionaire Resolves Guilt Through Meditation). Here is how the article describes Pritzker’s wealth:

The Buddha Garden north of Arlee hosts public events such as the annual International Peace Festival and a weeklong prayer festival. The foundation office in the former Milwaukee Road train station by the Higgins Avenue Bridge handles its more administrative and small-scale teaching duties.

The Namchak Foundation also owns a 8,900-acre property near Hot Springs which someday will become a retreat center for long-term Buddhist study. The facilities represent the resources Tsomo brought to Buddhism from growing up as Linda Pritzker.

In her own website biography, Tsomo acknowledges her “two inheritances.” The financial one stems from her being one of 11 cousins and heirs to the Pritzker family inheritance, which included the Hyatt Hotel empire, TransUnion credit rating service and other businesses. According to a 2011 Chicago Tribune profile of the family finances, “Each cousin is now worth more than $1 billion and has the freedom to launch businesses and adopt causes as they wish.”

The Tribune story noted that several of the Pritzker clan remained in the business world. Others moved into movie and theater production, building a military library and in Linda’s case “found(ing) a Buddhist enclave in Montana.”

As noted by JC, Penny Pritzker became Secretary of Commerce under the Obama regime. But where does the Pritzker family money come from? A Daily Kos post from a few years ago starts the digging:

The origins of the Pritzker family fortune was her grandfather’s mob connections when he was a tax attorney for a lot of people in “The Outfit,” the Chicago mob, beginning under Al Capone, and continuing through the 1980s. This connection to organized crime was reportedly what financed the creation of Hyatt Hotels by Penny’s father. There was no crime involved, but the financial backing came from organized crime, plain and simple. The details are in Gus Russo’s 2006 tome Supermob: How Sidney Korshak and His Criminal Associates Became America’s Hidden Power Brokers. Russo’s book is crucial reading for anyone trying to understand why America’s ruling elites are, well, so bad.

So getting financial backing from organized crime is bad enough, but what the Pritzker clan continued to do to make money is parasitic and destructive. Here is another article, this one from Counterpunch, titled The Privilege of the Pritzkers. This piece is also from three years ago when Penny was picked by Obama to be his Commerce Secretary. Here is how the piece opens up:

President Barrack Obama has nominated his long time friend and top fundraiser, Chicago-based Multibillionaire, Penny Pritzker, to be the next Secretary of Commerce. According to the Chicago Tribune, “Pritzker’s nomination could prove controversial. She is on the board of Hyatt Hotels Corp., which was founded by her family and has had rocky relations with labor unions, and… She could also face scrutiny over the collapse of Superior Bank, which was co-owned by her family. The bank, based in Hinsdale, Ill., was involved in subprime mortgage lending, and its failure in 2001 stirred charges of fraud and mismanagement.”

Penny Pritzker, says Chicago-Based independent banking investigator Tim Andersen, played fast and loose with the American Dream. Anderson, who has been investigating for many years Pritzker’s pioneering sub-prime operations, says Superior Bank in Chicago, specifically targeted poor and working class people of color across the country. He asserts that her extreme wealth and privilege has not only made her virtually untouchable by law enforcement, but now her appointment to Sec of Commerce, will allow her to cleanse her sub-prime banking record by becoming the Secretary of Commerce.

That is a pretty despicable way to make a buck, and the fact that this kind of behavior is what blew up the economy seven years ago, well, I am starting to see why Linda Pritzker needs to meditate. But it gets worse. Here’s more about where the Pritzker’s got their wealth:

One publication listed eight casinos, another listed 13, with each license worth a half a million dollars. There is another $5-7 billion in casinos. When you own 13 casinos for 5-7 billion, you are a player in the casino business. That’s just the hotels and casinos. There are many other companies they own such as the second largest chewing tobacco company, which they sold for 3.5 billion dollars. They actually owned the second and third largest chewing tobacco company, but have since off-loaded those for billions of dollars. Many of their assets are not what society considers clean assets, but hey don’t care. As far as money goes, they want it. When it comes to casinos or chewing tobacco companies, they don’t care. Their wealth is almost incalculable, because according to Forbes magazine, they are the only family in America to have off shore tax-free trusts because they were grandfathered in. Their off shore trust can ship money back to their family tax-free. It was grandfathered in because their grandfather got it through Congress – he was smart to see the future and got it done. Congress closed the loophole and grandfathered him in. Forbesmagazine wrote about the Pritzker’s off shore trust, they emphasized that there are over 1000 separate trusts. Many families have two or three different savings accounts to keep track of what money belongs to who, but when you have over 1000 different trusts to handle the family estate it’s very hard to comprehend how much wealth there is and how many businesses they control. A few years ago, Penny sold TransUnion, the largest credit reporting agency in America, but there’s a question about whether she sold it to herself by selling it to various hedge funds which her family has a large interest in. Until she sold it, you could say that Penny Pritzker had more files on every citizen in America than the CIA and FBI combined, because everybody has a credit score and credit report. Penny Pritzker had the credit scores and report on every single citizen in America.

Organized crime, poor labor relations, racist subprime lending practices, casinos and tobacco–no wonder some eyebrows were raised when Obama tapped Penny to head up the Commerce Department.

But Democrats need to win elections, and to win elections you need money, and who has the money? A study last year shows that Americans don’t really understand how unequal wealth inequality in America has become, but when the bottom 80% of Americans owns just 7% of the wealth, it’s bad (I’m not sure that figure takes into account the offshore accounts the wealthy use to avoid paying taxes).

What the wealthy and connected have done to this country is disgusting, equaled only by the craven servitude of politicians who need their financial largesse to win elections.

I don’t know how much meditation it takes to absolve one’s conscience of wealth made from the exploitation of the less fortunate. Somehow I don’t think the billionaire Buddhist’s book will touch on that facet of her new religion.

by William Skink

Wow, Montana Democrats, just when I thought I couldn’t be more repulsed by your rank hypocrisy and corruption, actress and activist Margot Kidder lays out how you have whored yourselves to Hillary before a single primary vote has been cast in Montana.

The story of how Hillary Clinton bought the loyalty of 33 state Democratic parties isn’t surprising, but it is very demoralizing for anyone in Montana who supports Bernie Sanders, or democracy for that matter. What’s even more discouraging is how little it took for Montana Democrats to whore themselves out to Hillary. We’re not talking some classy, high-end escort whoring here, we are talking the meth head in the motel room giving out twenty dollar blowjobs. Think that sounds obscene? Well, read the damn article and then tell me the analogy doesn’t fit. Here’s the basics of the scheme:

In August 2015, at the Democratic Party convention in Minneapolis, 33 democratic state parties made deals with the Hillary Clinton campaign and a joint fundraising entity called The Hillary Victory Fund. The deal allowed many of her core billionaire and inner circle individual donors to run the maximum amounts of money allowed through those state parties to the Hillary Victory Fund in New York and the DNC in Washington.

The idea was to increase how much one could personally donate to Hillary by taking advantage of the Supreme Court ruling 2014, McCutcheon v FEC, that knocked down a cap on aggregate limits as to how much a donor could give to a federal campaign in a year. It thus eliminated the ceiling on amounts spent by a single donor to a presidential candidate.

In other words, a single donor, by giving 10,000 dollars a year to each signatory state could legally give an extra $330,000 a year for two years to the Hillary Victory Fund. For each donor, this raised their individual legal cap on the Presidential campaign to $660,000 if given in both 2015 and 2016. And to one million, three hundred and 20 thousand dollars if an equal amount were also donated in their spouse’s name.

From these large amounts of money being transferred from state coffers to the Hillary Victory Fund in Washington, the Clinton campaign got the first $2,700, the DNC was to get the next $33,400, and the remainder was to be split among the 33 signatory states. With this scheme, the Hillary Victory Fund raised over $26 million for the Clinton Campaign by the end of 2015.

It’s not enough apparently for our Democratic leadership to be leading fundraising efforts for out-of-state politicians–Bullock with the Democratic Governors Association and Tester with the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Not satisfied with that degree of hypocrisy (when it comes to railing against dark money) Montana Democrats decided to upped the ante and sold us out. It’s disgusting. Here’s more from Kidder:

The leadership of a very broke Montana Democratic Party decided in August of 2015 that this was a seductive deal they were willing to make. And by the end of that year scores of 10,000 donations came in from out of state.

Montana’s list of out of state donors to the state campaign reads like a Who’s Who of the Democratic financial elites. The names vary little from the list of high donors to the other 32 states that signed on to the Hillary Victory Fund.

What do billionaires like Esprit Founder Susie Buell of California, and Sri Lankan lobbyist Imaad Zuberi of California, and media mogul Fred Eychaner of Chicago, and Donald Sussman hedgefund manager from New York and Chicago real estate mogul J.B Pritzker, and gay activist Jon Stryker of NY, and NRA and Viacom lobbyist Jeffrey Forbes and entertainment mogul Haim Saban all have in common?

They all appear to be brilliant business people who have all given millions to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and to her various PACS. And they all gave the Montana State Democratic Party $10,000 each in 2015. It is doubtful that many of them have any interest in Montana politics, or that they have even bothered to visit.

And, as Kidder points out, this money doesn’t even stay in the state but is instead funneled back to the DNC:

The Montana State Democratic party received $43,500 dollars from the Hillary Victory Fund on November 2, 2015. Yet on that same day it transferred $43,500 back to the Democratic National Committee in Washington. And on December 1, 2015 it received another $20,600 from the Hillary Victory fund. And on the same day the Montana State Democratic Party sent that exact same amount, $20,600, back to the DNC in Washington as well, an entity that has not bothered to disguise its preference for a Hillary Clinton candidacy over that of a Bernie Sanders one.

By November 2015, 22 of the state parties linked to the Hillary Victory Fund have received $938,500 from the fund and sent the same amount back to the DNC. There is no limit to amounts of money transferred between state and national parties and PACS or Funds.

(Obama had a similar fund in 2008, but not until he had already won enough delegates to be sure he would be the nominee.)

The Democratic spokespeople for the17 states that refused to go along with the Clinton campaign’s plan, even though many of them were as broke as the Montana State Democratic Party was (Nebraska springs to mind), were clear that it seemed less than democratic to be choosing sides in a primary that hadn’t happened yet. That the very purpose of a primary was to let the people choose which candidate they wanted to represent them and to not let the party establishment load the dice in their own favour. They made it obvious that they were choosing democracy over kick-backs.

Now it’s starting to make more sense why we don’t hear much Bernie support from the Democrat mouthpiece blogs in the state. The party apparatus in Montana has decided to give Democracy the middle finger and opted instead to become political whores for Hillary.

So, the next time you hear a Montana Democrat talking about dark money being bad and the need to overturn Citizens United, please realize they are either ignorant of their party’s corruption or deceitful, lying, anti-democratic shills for one of the more disgusting political creatures of our time, Hillary Clinton.

I’ll give Kidder the last word on what this means:

Our state party leadership signed a deal with a woman who out here, on our turf, possibly wouldn’t last a week. They signed away our unobstructed right to choose which Democratic candidate we supported for President. Given that we have 15 pledged delegates and seven superdelegates, we have lost our absolute right to have superdelegate endorsements proportional to the wishes of the primary voters

For what? Sixty four thousand and one hundred dollars? Which we had to give back? That’s a pretty poor excuse for selling out our right to our own choice.

by William Skink

There is a sea change coming to how health care is delivered in America and not many people even know it’s happening. What will slowly start getting phased in during the next few years is a transition from fee-for-services to value-based reimbursement. That might not sound significant, but I assure RD readers, it is. Here is a better explanation:

The switch to value-based reimbursement has turned the traditional model of healthcare reimbursement on its head, causing providers to change the way they bill for care. Instead of providers being paid by the number of visits and tests they order (fee-for-service), their payments are now based on the value of care they deliver (value-based care).

A lot of this change is long overdue and quite exciting because it’s driving improvements to the delivery of care by mandating better care at a lower cost. But for those providers and health systems that can’t achieve the required scores, the financial penalties and lower reimbursements will create a significant financial burden.

I first learned of this transition a few months ago when my former boss, the ED of the Pov, came back from a meeting in Helena where some heavy hitters from the finance sector were discussing this shift. When she reported on this to city officials, everyone in the room was dumbfounded. Not only had they not heard of this, there is essentially nothing happening in Missoula to proactively plan for this sea change. Billings, on the other hand, has already established a full-time paid position to work on this.

Why is this such a big deal? I’ll try to explain.

Let’s say someone shows up to the ER with respiratory problems and a contributing factor to this health condition is mold in the apartment. Normally this person would be treated and sent home, but if the home environment is contributing to the health condition, there is a good chance the person will show up in the ER again.

With value-based care–or pay for value as it’s sometimes called–the financial penalties for someone returning to get medical care within 30 days of first being seen will increase significantly. Financial penalties will be the coercive mechanism to get hospitals to look at the big picture when it comes to a persons health condition. And insurers–both federal and private sector–will start actually paying for non-clinical things, like mold mitigation.

Are you starting to see how big this is?

Now, let’s take a look at the chronic homeless population, or “frequent fliers” as they are known in the first responder community. As the name implies, their use of medical care is frequent and mostly ineffective because too often the addiction and co-occurring mental health issues are too severe, and the ER is not the appropriate environment to be administering the kind of care these folks need. But, with pay for value, if they keep showing up in the ER, the hospital will be significantly penalized. So if being homeless is exacerbating their health condition, will insurers pay rent or security deposits to get them housed? That is an open question.

Missoula is not prepared for this shift, just like Missoula is not prepared for the ever growing aging population. But the transition will happen whether Missoula is prepared or not.

Billings is better prepared and from what I’ve heard a private insurer has already started making non-clinical payouts to improve individual health conditions to keep people from over utilizing medical care that hospitals were happy to bill for regardless of how effective that care was.

Maybe someday Missoula will get its shit together.

by William Skink

In a comment from the last post about Hillary and the media Pete Talbot must have thought it was already April Fools day because obviously this comment isn’t meant to be taken literally:

I’ve reversed my stand on guns. Everyone should pack heat all the time, everywhere. And drink more alcohol. It’s time to thin the herd.

Of course Big Swede jumped on this comment to point out that “they” are already being “thinned” in Chicago. In response Pete had this to say:

They’re being “thinned” everywhere in the good ol’ USA, Swede.
Re: my most recent comment — must be the week I’m spending in the Magic City that brought out my less-than-sensitive side.

I find this comment to be fascinating. What started off as sarcasm turned into an interesting false dichotomy where Missoula is sensitive and Billings is not. Not only is Billings not sensitive, but Pete ascribes his insensitive comment about gun violence to time spent in the Magic City.

Talbot’s comment is indicative of a Missoula elitism that does us no favors every two years in Helena. This Missoula elitism also doesn’t do the socio-economically challenged members of our community any good either.

For the last five years housing affordability has moved farther and farther beyond what a median income can afford according to the most recent housing data:

Missoula has a serious housing affordability problem and it’s a seller’s market right now, according to the Missoula Organization of Realtors’ 2016 Housing Report released Thursday.

The Housing Affordability Index, which measures how hard it is for a person or family earning median income to purchase a median-priced home, declined across the board in 2015, as it has since 2010.

That’s mainly because the median sales price of homes in Missoula reached an all-time high of $238,700 in 2015 – a jump of 6.1 percent over 2014 – according to Brint Wahlberg of Windermere Real Estate, who chaired MOR’s housing report group. Five years ago, the median sales price was barely more than $200,000.

“Due to the rise in median price, affordability has taken a hit,” he said. “Potential buyers are losing out on opportunities for houses and there is not enough supply to meet demand.”

Median family incomes in Missoula range from $43,560 for a single person to $62,220 for four people, but it would take an income of more than $80,000 to afford a median-priced home with a 4 percent down payment, according to the report.

When you pass bond after bond because property owners are seen as nothing but piggy banks to be raided for amenities, housing becomes more and more unaffordable. And yet there is still so much demand, housing is being built all over the valley.

Growth in the valley and gentrification downtown continues, despite a lack of critical infrastructure. Apparently Missoula County is so strapped for funds to maintain transportation infrastructure that a gas tax is being considered:

Members of the Missoula Metropolitan Planning Organization have met with the city’s Public Works Committee to discuss the possibility of implementing a gas tax in Missoula County.

The MPO says a possible two-cent per gallon gas tax could generate between $600,000 and $1.1 million in new revenue if it’s approved, but the road to garnering that approval is a long one.

While sensitive Missoula makes it more and more unaffordable for people who don’t make 80,000 bucks a year to own a piece of the American Dream, efforts to transform downtown continue.

Seven years ago, when I started working at Missoula’s downtown homeless shelter, the dirtier aspects of downtown were already being upscaled, as reported by the Missoulian in this article:

When ballet point shoes first trek across a floor once sticky with alcohol, the transformation of the La Flesch Building will be complete.

In early May, in the former Jay’s Downstairs bar, the Downtown Dance Collective will open its doors to reveal more than 2,600 square feet of dance and performance space. And they’ll also reveal further evidence that downtown Missoula is becoming more upscale, more refined in its tastes.

“Downtown’s going to be changing a lot in the next 20 years, like all Rocky Mountain towns,” said Linda McCarthy, executive director of the Missoula Downtown Association. “People are discovering how important good quality of life is.”

Quality of life for who? Transplanted east coasters and fleeing Californians?

Today a piece of this downtown gentrification will be open to the public. The building I used to work at that housed over a hundred people in deplorable conditions will now be known as the Royal Apartments and will house much fewer people:

The downtown building that used to house the Poverello Center has gone from run-down to partly rented – as the Royal Apartments.

From 5 to 8 p.m. Friday, owners Nancy and David Tyrell are inviting the public to tour the $1 million renovation project that gutted the dilapidated interior of 535 Ryman St. and replaced it with 14 units including studio apartments and one- and two-bedroom rentals.

“If nothing else, it will convince you that it is possible to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear!” the Tyrells said in an invitation.

Since 2008, when the economy blew up, growth in Missoula has returned with a vengeance. But the economic recovery for most Americans hasn’t materialized. For Pete Talbot and other Missoula elitists, I suggest reading an insightful conversation between Chris Hedges and my favorite economist, Michael Hudson, titled The Lies of Neoliberal Economists. Or just keep talking shit on Billings as Missoula becomes completely unaffordable for the peasants.