Month: May 2016

by William Skink

It was just announced that Jenny Eck will be Hillary Clinton’s state director in Montana:

State Rep. Jenny Eck, D-Helena, is the state director for presidential Hillary Clinton’s campaign in Montana.

The Clinton campaign made the announcement Monday. Eck has served two sessions in the House. She is running unopposed in House District 79 this election.

Eck has worked as interim director for Carol’s List, an organization dedicated to electing progressive women in Montana.

Looking at Eck’s about page, you can see her legislative accomplishments are geared toward protecting consumers from financial predators and Montanans from sexual predators:

Rep. Jenny Eck, a freshman Representative from Helena, approached her first session with safer communities, mental health and consumer protection as her priorities. During the 2013 session, Jenny served on the House Judiciary and Natural Resources committees.

During her first session, she successfully sponsored and passed five pieces of legislation, including a bill to protect consumers from off shore predatory lenders and another giving prosecutors the ability to better evaluate and classify sex predators.

If Eck was true to her principles, she wouldn’t be enabling a Wall Street darling who refuses to release speech transcripts detailing what she said to the financial predators Eck supposedly wants to protect Montana consumers from.

And if Eck is truly concerned about evaluating and classifying the risk posed to communities by sexual predators, then she should take a look at Bill Clinton’s sexual predator pal, Jeffrey Epstein:

Palm Beach billionaire Jeffrey Epstein is a financier and political donor. He is also a convicted sex offender who is the subject of ongoing litigation from at least a dozen of his then-underage victims.

Flight logs show Bill Clinton traveled at least 10 times on Epstein’s private jet, dubbed the “Lolita Express” by tabloids, and he is widely reported to have visited Little St. James, Epstein’s private island in the US Virgin Islands. That’s where, according to attorneys for Epstein’s victims, many of the worst crimes against minors were committed by Epstein and friends who traveled there with him.

The article the above quote is taken from goes on to show that Trump also has a connection to Epstein, which isn’t surprising. But it is awkward for Clinton supporters, and should be even more awkward for a woman like Jenny Eck, considering her legislative priorities are about protecting us from the kinds of predators she is now working for.

If Jenny Eck and her fellow Clinton enablers are successful, and Hillary Clinton becomes the presidential candidate for the Democratic Party, questions regarding how the Clintons went after alleged victims of Bill Clinton’s sexual proclivities will undoubtedly reemerge:

During and after the Lewinsky investigation that led to Bill Clinton’s impeachment for perjury and obstruction of justice, numerous women accusers were publicly or privately persecuted while several high-ranking Republican congressmen were exposed as adulterers for supporting Clinton’s impeachment–leading to the tumultuous resignation of Speaker-Designate Bob Livingston who was set to replace Newt Gingrich who resigned before his own adultery was exposed.

The intimidation campaign threatened by Hillary Clinton worked.

Will all these sordid issues regarding the Clintons get sacrificed on the Democrat alter of identity politics?

by William Skink

Yesterday news broke that Bernie Sanders will be coming to Montana on Wednesday as he continues to frustrate Hillary’s efforts to ascend to the Democrat throne. Dissent is even bubbling up at the Dem mouthpiece blog with this note from Bill LaCroix to Montana Democrats:

Rudely dismissing a whole generation of young people so desperately needed for so very long in every fight Democrats claim as theirs is inexplicably self-destructive. For one thing, once they’re dismissed as starry-eyed, unrealistic Trumpians of the Left, you can bet they’ll disappear, and you can talk until you’re blue in the face about how they should show up and vote for Hillary anyway, but you know a lot of them won’t, and for good reason. Worse, they won’t show up to vote for the other progressive politicians on the ticket needed to really change the chemistry in Congress and the state legislatures, the ones who’ll do the heavy lifting of taking on Wall Street, the war machine, college debt, grade-school funding, the heath care crisis. It won’t matter then, whether their Chosen One gets coronated or not. We’ll be in same politically-dysfunctional mess we’re in now for another four, or eight more years.

Worst of all in the opinion of a progressive who’s been active in one of our small, rural towns for many years: the saddest effect of condescendingly dismissing smart young people whose political dander is finally up is that when we take stock of our tiny local progressive “activist” lists in a few years, the average age will 70.

Bill is absolutely correct, but will Dems in this state listen? Having been on the receiving end of the condescending dismissal tactics of Montana Democrats, I’m inclined to think no, but I could be wrong.

Marginalizing the youth vote is just one of the problems Democrats are facing in this election cycle. Another problem is their preferred candidate increasingly appears to have committed multiple crimes by mishandling classified information.

Those who would immediately dismiss Hillary’s email scandal as a political witch hunt should take a long look at Paul Thompson’s website. Thompson isn’t some rightwing partisan out to get Hillary. In his explanation of why he compiled this information he even admits to initially dismissing the scandal himself before examining the details and realizing there’s already evidence of criminal obstruction (destroying evidence) and perjury, for starters. Here is Thompson describing why he created the website:

I’m a political liberal, and up until a few months ago, I would have gladly supported Hillary Clinton. I didn’t pay much attention to Clinton’s email scandal, and what I heard about it made me suspect that it was another Republican-led scandal that never amounted to much. However, I eventually heard enough concerning news stories about it to make me want to take a closer look. The more I learned, the more shocked and convinced I became that this was a very real and very serious scandal.

Clinton is reportedly getting close to being interviewed directly by the FBI. Yesterday, though, she told the NYT that no one has reached out yet:

Hillary Clinton said Sunday that the F.B.I. had not asked to interview her as part of its inquiry into her use of a personal email server as secretary of state. But Mrs. Clinton reiterated on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that she would make herself available to law enforcement officials as necessary.

The investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s email practices and her handling of classified intelligence has shadowed her presidential campaign, and CNN reported last week that she was likely to be interviewed soon by the F.B.I.

Mrs. Clinton said on Sunday that no meeting had been requested or scheduled. “No one has reached out to me yet,” she said, adding, “I made it clear that I’m more than ready to talk to anybody, anytime, and I’ve encouraged all of my assistants to be very forthcoming.”

What Hillary needs right now is a big distraction, like a terrorist attack…or alien disclosure? Yes, apparently the frontman for the pop music group, Blink 182, is working with government officials and politicians, like John Podesta, on allowing full disclosure regarding aliens and their technology. Is this their way of trying to get the youth vote? From the link:

DeLonge has staked his professional reputation and career in coming forward to reveal his participation in the officially backed UFO disclosure initiative. So far, he has said he can’t name the officials, even though it has emerged that John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager was interviewed for a follow-up video, which will be released as part of his UFO disclosure initiative.

Podesta has held very senior positions with the Democratic Party, including Chief of Staff for the Clinton White House. Podesta is on the record with multiple attempts made during the Obama, Bush and Clinton administrations to promote UFO disclosure.

However, Podesta is notoriously out of reach to most UFO researchers who have repeatedly tried to interview him over the years, aside from a select few who have the necessary gravitas meriting his cooperation. Now DeLonge has been added to that select list, making plausible his key claim of having received official blessing for UFO “full disclosure”.

It is therefore significant that at the same time that DeLonge has come forward with his claims, Hillary Clinton has publicly stated that she will look seriously into the UFO issue, and that in doing so she is fulfilling a pledge made to Podesta.

Clinton and Podesta’s efforts in promoting UFO disclosure go back to the first Clinton administration (1993-2001), suggesting that DeLonge’s efforts, if successful, will make Clinton and Podesta heroes in the eyes of the youth. That will certainly help her Presidential campaign, which, to date, has not inspired the youth vote.

Hear that kids? Forget that Hillary Clinton is a proven liar who may have criminally mishandled classified information and vote for her…because aliens.

by William Skink

This week Trump dispatched the last two rivals obstructing his path to the GOP nomination with a primary win in Indiana. Some Democrats are actually excited about this development. Montana representative Ellie Hill, for example, made this statement on her Facebook page:

Looks like one helluva lot of Republicans are about to vote for their first woman President. ‪#‎ImWithHer‬

Since Hillary Clinton is actually a neoconservative in a pantsuit, I’m sure there will be plenty of Republicans who will prefer a Clinton presidency over a Trump one. For all we know, Trump may even be one of them.

Last May Trump reportedly had a phone conversation with Bill Clinton weeks before he announced his candidacy:

Former President Bill Clinton and real-estate magnate Donald Trump reportedly had a phone conversation in May, only weeks before Trump launched his campaign.

According to a new report from The Washington Post, Clinton called Trump in May and “encouraged Trump’s efforts” to become more influential within the GOP, according to four “Trump allies” and one Clinton associate “familiar with the exchange.”

This phone call fueled speculation that Trump was a political Trojan horse intended to wreak havoc within the GOP, ultimately assisting Hillary’s bid to attain the White House.

In December, when Trump threatened to run as an independent, none other than Jeb Bush contributed to the speculation that Trump is a Clinton plant with this tweet:

Maybe Donald negotiated a deal with his buddy @HillaryClinton. Continuing this path will put her in the White House.

Democrats are certainly hoping Jeb Bush is correct that The Donald phenomenon will put Hillary in the White House. Trump didn’t do himself any favors recently by choosing Steven Mnuchin to head up his fundraising efforts. Why? From the link:

As Zero Hedge readers are familiar, Trump often critized his main competitor Ted Cruz for his links to the bank because of loans used to finance Cruz’s Senate campaign, and because Heidi Cruz was a one-time employee of Goldman. “I know the guys at Goldman Sachs. They have total, total control over him. Just like they have total control over Hillary Clinton,” Trump said in one debate.

He had no qualms, however, in hiring one of the most prominent Goldman alums to raise money for him.

In addition to Goldman, Mnuchin also worked at Soros Fund Management, whose founder, George Soros, has funded many left-leaning causes. Where it gets even more bizarre is that Mnuchin has donated frequently to Democrats, including to Clinton and Barack Obama.

This is a tone-deaf move by Trump if he really is serious about winning the election. But maybe he isn’t serious about winning the election. I think that is a distinct possibility.

Meanwhile, what started as a Counterpunch article by Democrat activist Margot Kidder, has gotten some legs from Politico. Not surprisingly, when Hillary said she was raising money that would benefit other candidates with her Victory Fund, she was lying. It turns out that only 1% of the 60 million raised has gone to the state Democrats who whored themselves out to anti-democratic efforts of Hillary and the DNC:

In the days before Hillary Clinton launched an unprecedented big-money fundraising vehicle with state parties last summer, she vowed “to rebuild our party from the ground up,” proclaiming “when our state parties are strong, we win. That’s what will happen.”

But less than 1 percent of the $61 million raised by that effort has stayed in the state parties’ coffers, according to a POLITICO analysis of the latest Federal Election Commission filings.

The venture, the Hillary Victory Fund, is a so-called joint fundraising committee comprised of Clinton’s presidential campaign, the Democratic National Committee and 32 state party committees. The setup allows Clinton to solicit checks of $350,000 or more from her super-rich supporters at extravagant fundraisers including a dinner at George Clooney’s house and a concert at Radio City Music Hall featuring Katy Perry and Elton John.

The victory fund has transferred $3.8 million to the state parties, but almost all of that cash ($3.3 million, or 88 percent) was quickly transferred to the DNC, usually within a day or two, by the Clinton staffer who controls the committee, POLITICO’s analysis of the FEC records found.

Montana Democrats, along with Democrats from 31 other states, turned themselves into money launderers for Hillary Clinton without the down-ticket fundraising help Clinton claimed would result (because she is a serial liar). So when Montana Democrats decry Big Money in politics, or when they bash voter suppression efforts by the Republicans, remember, they are blazing hypocrites with no credibility that they will ever act on their disingenuous rhetoric.

And for you Democrats thinking about not voting, or going for a 3rd party instead, the great boogeyman, Donald Trump, will be used by establishment Democrats to scare you back to their herd of jackasses.

Which may have been the idea all along.

by William Skink

I wrote this post about the return of the debtor’s prison two years ago after reading a Nation article about how a town turned poverty into a prison sentence. Since then, the ACLU went after the city of Colorado Springs and recently won, forcing Colorado Springs to pay out settlement money for jailing people too poor to afford paying their fines. From the link:

People who fail to pay their fines in Colorado Springs will no longer be sent to prison.

The city council has eliminated debtor prison sentences, making a temporary ban permanent.

According to the Colorado Springs Gazette, the city agreed to stop imposing jail sentences for unpaid fines and to repeal panhandling ordinances that were used to authorize that practice after the American Civil Liberties Union intervened.

Colorado ACLU director Mark Silverstein says a fund needs to be set up to compensate people who were wrongly jailed.

The ACLU says a survey found that hundreds of poor people had been jailed since January 2014 because they couldn’t pay their fines.

In Missoula, it is not accurate to state that our aggressive solicitation (panhandling) and pedestrian interference (sitting on a sidewalk with a bunch of gear) ordinances come with no jail time. Though the ordinances don’t explicitly allow jail time to be imposed for violating the ordinances, when the fines aren’t paid, warrants are issued for “failure to appear”.

Late last month, the 100 page jail diversion plan was finally completed and delivered to city officials to begin reviewing. It will be interesting to see what comes out of this plan. From the link:

McDermott says the jail is simply the wrong place for many inmates who struggle with addiction and mental illness, and can make a dangerous work environment for jail staff.

“And these people truly should not be in our jail,” McDermott said. “Our jail is not a facility that can provide the proper care and treatment for addicts or detox, as well as mental health episodes that need to be hospitalized.”

Presented ideas included adjusting the way warrants are issued and re-evaluating over 11,000 active warrants that are in effect now. They also highlighted the use of alternatives to incarceration like community service, house arrest and sobriety monitoring.

After the presentation, the floor was opened to public comment. Municipal Court Judge Kathleen Jenks voiced her support for most of the proposal, but also shared concerns.

“You can’t force any of this on the judges,” Jenks said. “You can’t tell a judge how they’re going to sentence. You can’t tell a judge what warrants they can put out. You can’t tell a judge how to set the bonds. There’s a system in place for that.”

For most people, when they get caught engaging in some minor infraction that warrants a ticket and a fine, they pay the fine because the normal consequences of not paying–like damaging reports impacting your credit score–is enough to inspire compliance. But for manny of the “repeat offenders”, coercing compliance is much more difficult.

So what happens when fines aren’t a deterrent? What happens when even jail isn’t the consequence it was intended to be? What can you take from poor people who have nothing left to take?

Colorado Springs is being forced to pay up by the ACLU for running its debtor’s prison. I can see the same thing happening here if our city/county leaders can’t figure out how to better deal with the underlying causes of the recidivism that has led to the jail overcrowding crisis being experienced across Montana.

by William Skink

A few posts back Steve W. linked to this Guardian piece about a shelter that gives wine to alcoholics, something the piece acknowledges in the subheading sounds crazy. I read it nodding my head. Here’s a snip:

Dorothy Young, the Oaks’ activities coordinator – a stocky, always-smiling middle-aged woman who is part cheerleader, part event planner, part warden, part bartender – stood behind the counter at a tap that dispenses cold white wine. She poured a measured amount of wine into each cup: maximum seven ounces at 7.30am for the first pour of the day, and five ounces each hour after that. Last call is 9.30pm.

The pour is calculated for each resident to be just enough to stave off the shakes and sweats of detox, which for alcohol is particularly unpleasant – seizures from alcohol deprivation can be fatal. The pour is strictly regulated: Young cuts off anyone who comes in intoxicated. They won’t be given another drink until they sober up.

At the Pov’s old location in downtown Missoula, I used to work 4 ten-hour shifts that started at 5am. I remember one day when I arrived, the EMTs had just finished up assessing a Native client who is probably Missoula’s most “frequent flier” of emergency services. The client had refused transport to the ER, so the ambulance left him shaking very badly in the alley, propped up against a tree near the shelter’s alleyway entrance.

I approached him and asked him what he was going to do, since I knew he had to wait until 8am to buy alcohol. He could barely speak he was shaking so badly. Another client sitting on the side porch was listening to our conversation. He spoke up to get my attention. He said he didn’t want to get in trouble, but he did have a beer in his backpack. I understood what he was offering.

This is the terrible grey area our staff had to navigate as we tried to mitigate the addition we were in the midst of while trying to maintain as much order as possible with our plethora of rules. Technically the client that admitted to possessing alcohol should have lost services for 24 hours, but that wasn’t what happened. Instead I told the shaking client that I was going to go inside and when I was inside someone was going to give him a beer. I told the shaking client that if he went off property to consume the beer, he could then come back and get some sleep in our day room. That is what happened.

But that was at our old location, when we were experimenting with being flexible regarding zero tolerance. For a few years we even established a weather policy that allowed us to sleep people under the influence of alcohol at our old location, but after trying that out it was clear we were putting other clients sobriety at risk, not to mention increasing the danger to clients and staff by trying to be a partial “wet” shelter during the cold Montana winter months.

The new Pov is absolutely zero tolerance now, as it should be. But the consequence of not having some type of shelter and/or housing for people actively using alcohol/drugs means the burden on the ER and jail is that much greater. Those crises are ongoing.

So housing first, as a form of harm reduction, is one approach to begin to address the most core needs of chronically homeless individuals with the added benefit of saving communities that implement this approach lots of money. Missoula is behind other communities already putting infrastructure in place.

Another method I’ve seen be effective is peer support. After reading this Indy piece a few years ago, I’ve continued to hear amazing things about Tahj Kjelland. He works with youth and connects with them through spoken word, teaching “emotional intelligence”.

The Pov has also benefited from utilizing peer volunteers as a part of its outreach efforts. I remember one day in particular being challenged by a Native client I had been having negative run-ins with. We were near the courthouse lawn and the young man made the observation that I didn’t know shit about his life. I was always quick to acknowledge the limits of my experiences (being a privileged white man lacking the experiences of adversity) but on that day the volunteer with me decided to speak up at that moment, asking the Native client where he did time. After the young man answered, the volunteer told him about the places he did time. I could see the surprise, and then the respect, emerge as this client realized that this volunteer did actually have similar experiences, and yet here he was on the other end of those experiences, sober, out of prison, and on the streets trying to help others.

However our community moves forward (or doesn’t) with these issues, the biggest takeaway for me was the critical importance of relationships in the work I did. Despite ignorant proclamations like this, people don’t get better in isolation. Whether it’s peer support, or a mentor, or an advocate, or a counselor, or a fellow alcoholic in AA, without some level of social support I don’t see people getting better.