Month: February 2017

by William Skink

If I had free time and ten bucks burning a hole in my pocket, I might be interested to hear what refugee expert, Hayley Smith, has to say about the global refugee crisis.

That was my initial thought, but then I came to this paragraph:

The Qatar Foundation and the Montana World Affairs Council teamed up to invite Smith to Missoula. She’ll share the stage Thursday night with Christina Atwood, who’ll discuss the refugee vetting and resettlement process overseas and on U.S. soil.

If you consult those alternative news sources the Washington Post slandered as useful idiots of the Kremlin, there is one word that glaringly leaps from the screen: Qatar.

If that word doesn’t raise your eyebrows, you are probably a liberal do-gooder chronically misinformed by main stream media. For those people, I would direct them to the words of Hillary Clinton:

In a leaked email sent on August 17, 2014 by Hillary Clinton to her current campaign manager, John Podesta, who back then was counselor to Barack Obama, she admitted that Qatar and Saudi Arabia “are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region.”

Will this “refugee expert” explain to her audience how nations like Qatar and Saudi Arabia are funding terrorists and destabilizing the entire Middle East? Will she accurately describe the role Neoliberal “humanitarian interventions” have played in creating the refugee crisis?

I don’t know why I’m still so amazed at this kind of thing, but I am. I mean, a country like Qatar funding a talk about the refugee crisis is like a serial rapist funding a panel discussion on rape culture. And boy oh boy will Missoula turn out to hear this woman talk.

I think about Missoula’s amor for refugees frequently as I get back into the swing of trying to help people. There are so many people isolated and suffering in this community, it’s no surprise that western states like Montana continue to lead the country with depressingly high suicide rates.

For the people I talk to that won’t get help until they become poor enough to qualify for things like Medicaid, or desperate enough to try things like suicide, I am tempted to tell them if only you were a refugee from half a world away, maybe it would be hip and cool enough to get you some assistance, but since you’re just another domestic refugee of late-stage capitalism, well, tough shit.

To those who so effectively ignore the domestic need when it’s not a preferred demographic while continuing the months-long tantrum over losing a presidential election, even the New York Times is trying to tell you how your behavior is helping Trump:

Liberals may feel energized by a surge in political activism, and a unified stance against a president they see as irresponsible and even dangerous. But that momentum is provoking an equal and opposite reaction on the right. In recent interviews, conservative voters said they felt assaulted by what they said was a kind of moral Bolshevism — the belief that the liberal vision for the country was the only right one. Disagreeing meant being publicly shamed.

Protests and righteous indignation on social media and in Hollywood may seem to liberals to be about policy and persuasion. But moderate conservatives say they are having the opposite effect, chipping away at their middle ground and pushing them closer to Mr. Trump.

“The name calling from the left is crazy,” said Bryce Youngquist, 34, who works in sales for a tech start-up in Mountain View, Calif., a liberal enclave where admitting you voted for Mr. Trump is a little like saying in the 1950s that you were gay. “They are complaining that Trump calls people names, but they turned into some mean people.”

Mr. Youngquist stayed in the closet for months about his support for Mr. Trump. He did not put a bumper sticker on his car, for fear it would be keyed. The only place he felt comfortable wearing his Make America Great Again hat was on a vacation in China. Even dating became difficult. Many people on Tinder have a warning on their profile: “Trump supporters swipe left” — meaning, get lost.

He came out a few days before the election. On election night, a friend posted on Facebook, “You are a disgusting human being.”

“They were making me want to support him more with how irrational they were being,” Mr. Youngquist said.

I don’t think the supporters of relocating refugees in Missoula are capable of seeing any criticism of their efforts as valid, just like many liberals still can’t quite fathom that a vote for Trump doesn’t automatically make someone a card-carrying member of the KKK.

I don’t know why I would expect anything more reasonable to come from a political ideology that seems just fine with mass slaughter and displacement as long as it’s their smooth-talking president overseeing the atrocities.

by William Skink

I’m not sure it matters, now that Montana is financially screwed, what the Governor knew about the budget shortfall, and when.

During the campaign, Bullock framed himself as the responsible fiscal steward of the state of Montana, who had kept the state’s finance’s healthy and in the black. That, coupled with Gianforte’s misfortune of being born in New Jersey (and the stream access issue) ensured Bullock retained his office.

Now, with the election receding in the rear-view mirror, the grim reality of Montana’s fiscal situation is sinking in. Montana Republicans took a break from their vigorous and cruel slashing to point the finger at Bullock, claiming he knew about the looming budget shortfall, but did nothing to address it:

There are two primary measures for fiscal soundness. The first is structural balance, meaning that projected revenues must be higher than projected expenditures. Something every household and small business is familiar with. The second is ending fund balance, which should reflect the amount of money needed to meet the obligations of the state. It was clear to us by mid-2016 that the ending fund balance would be gone by the time the Legislature came to town January 2017.

Republicans warned the governor via a letter dated Sept. 4, 2016, that our state budget was heading into dangerous territory, and that he had time to take action to correct the budget and reduce spending. The warnings were ignored and the Republican-led Legislature is working to weather the current crisis and focused on a plan to get back in balance and ensure fiscal soundness in the long-term.

Of course Bullock didn’t do anything. The campaign was in full swing, so obviously Bullock wasn’t going to suddenly change his messaging about Montana’s rosy financial situation because duplicitous Republicans sent a letter.

Bullock’s assessment of Montana’s finance’s, and Republican posturing, is nothing but shameless political theatrics. While the people who are supposed to be representing us play their political games in Helena, there is real suffering happening already and substantial fear about the coming cuts.

This past week saw public defenders in Helena describing their impossible job of providing constitutionally required representation to clients who can’t afford to hire a lawyer. It was sobering testimony that should be raising serious alarms:

“My stress is through the roof.”

This is Alisha Backus, she’s a public defender in Kalispell. She’s been on the job for about a year and a half. During that time a statewide budget crunch has pushed the Public Defender Commission to outline cuts to offset an anticipated $3.5 million shortfall — that’s about 5 percent of the Office of the Public Defender biennium budget.

Some of those cost savings come in the form of hiring freezes, moving around discretionary funds, or proposed legislation that will free up attorneys’ time to work on other cases.

The Commission’s plan also limits the use of outside contractors to help with public defenders workloads.

“Part of this mitigation means that I take all cases; I take misdemeanors, I take felonies, I take every type of felony, I take involuntary commitments, adoption, dependency neglect cases, and also guardianship and juvenile cases,” Backus says. “In fact, I am assigned right now lead council to a deliberate homicide case, with a year and a half experience.”

In just the last two years, public defenders have seen child neglect and abuse cases double. A big factor is the alarming rise in meth use across the state. But there is virtually no chance CPS or the public defenders office will get the funding they need.

The crisis will only get worse. Here’s more from the article:

Hooks says public defenders have no control over the number cases they have to work on. Montana law requires that if someone can’t afford an attorney, the state will provide one.

And right now, caseloads are growing. Hooks says courts are especially seeing an increase in the number of criminal and child abuse and neglect cases. He says abuse and neglect cases have increased 50 percent the last two years:

That growth has some public defenders worried that they won’t be able to ethically continue doing their job.

“It’s a concern to everybody in OPD, because if the volume of work is too excessive, we fear that we are providing less than the level of ethical representation that is required.”

Hooks says, in some cases, if a court determines that public defenders didn’t do a good enough job, it could mean the whole trial has to be done over again.

While our state leaders have launched interim-committee studies, the harsh reality is these programs and departments need more money to do their job, and they are not going to get it.

Fucking over poor people in our criminal injustice system is just the tip of the iceberg. Senior citizens are also on the chopping block, according to this article:

Services for senior citizens and those who need long-term care were slashed as part of budget cuts made to the Department of Public Health and Human Services by a legislative budget committee Friday.

“It is a significant cut to nursing homes,” said Sen. Mary Caferro, D-Helena, who voted against the cut. “Nursing homes are an entitlement and they are a strong business in local communities. I think we are going to have a lot of problems with all of these different cuts in all of these different areas.”

Without program-level final numbers from the Legislature’s fiscal division, it was unclear Friday exactly how much the Health and Human Services Joint Appropriations Subcommittee trimmed the program’s budget, but advocates for senior citizens and those who work to care for them called the cuts severe.

This is an area I am learning more about every day with my new job, and I can tell you Montana’s aging population is already in a simmering crisis, especially here in Missoula. Every new bond and increase in housing costs puts more pressure on people with fixed incomes.

And don’t get me started on Medicaid.

The poor, the elderly, the abused. These are the victims of our broken political system.

Once upon a time these segments of our society had a political party that fought for them, but no longer. Obama saved Wall Street and spent the rest of his time in office yapping about a recovery that most Americans never experienced. And Governor Bullock made himself out to be the responsible fiscal champion of the state of Montana, but that turns out to be nothing more than hot air.

Democrats in Montana should be doing everything they can to represent the vulnerable in their state, but there’s a special election coming, so a lot of that needed energy will be diverted to try and win an election Democrats lost handily last November.

Already the Democratic identity squabbling is taking attention away from the cruel slashes that will hurt their constituents. Will it be the woman with the nose ring or the outsider musician? Does it matter?

Electing a woman is still a very big priority for those who feel their Queen was cheated from ascending to her throne. There is still a significant lack of introspection from Democrats about the consequences of prioritizing identity politics over nominating the best candidate most capable of winning.

To conclude this post, here’s a reminder from James Conner about the consequences of identity politics as it relates to the health of Americans facing the dismantling of Obamacare:

If he signs it, will Trump ultimately be the one to blame for gutting health care and condemning tens of thousands to ill health or death? No. Hillary Clinton, and the let’s-make-history-by-electing-a-female-President Democrats who subordinated the national interest to selfish and stupid identity politics, ran a blundering campaign, and thus lost a winnable election, will be the people with the most blood on their hands.

Well said, James.

by William Skink

I don’t want to take this seriously. Should I take it seriously? I don’t want to take it seriously. Hillary 2020 is a reality:

Forget about Democrats asking Bernie voters for forgiveness, or looking in the mirror to see why Trump won. They’ve learned nothing after cheating Bernie Sanders, the only populist candidate within the Democratic Party, in an election where voters yearned for a populist candidate. Furthermore, most Hillary voters would absolutely love Clinton to run again, especially since Russia stole the election and Comey’s letter helped Putin. Yes, Harry Reid accused the FBI’s James Comey of helping Vladimir Putin undermine democracy.

Many Democrats truly want a third Clinton campaign.

Now, I don’t like diagnosing people because I don’t have the credentials to make assessments on someone’s mental health status, but anyone who thinks a two-time loser should launch a third destined-to-fail campaign is certifiably insane.

Maybe you think that smug sociopath, Hillary Clinton, just keeps getting cheated out of her rightful place in the White House. Maybe you think her mocking Flynn with a pizzagate retweet is really clever. Maybe you have a glorious vision of Hillary taking it to Vlad and destroying Russia to establish the neolibercon wet dream of full spectrum dominance.

Whatever those Hillary supporters are thinking, hopefully reality never intrudes, because if it does the cognitive dissonance could make heads explode.

The more I watch this dangerous fiasco, the more I think America deserves Trump and we deserve to never again be taken seriously on the global stage. The delusional national rhetoric of being the shining city on the hill is dead. Long live the delusion!

by William Skink

Intelligent Discontent–a Montana blog that focuses on state issues–proves again it should remain focused on state issues.

In a guest post titled Making Russia Great Again guest author Wade Sikorski regurgitates slanted, inaccurate portrayals of geopolitical maneuvers intended to exaggerate Russian behavior while minimizing American involvement:

After the Ukrainian people had overthrown a very corrupt government that Putin controlled, Putin invaded the Ukraine to take back his influence. Alarmed at Putin’s expansionism, the Obama administration imposed severe sanctions on Russia for interfering in the Ukraine, stopping a half trillion dollar deal Exxon was negotiating with Russia, which was perhaps the largest in human history, to develop Russia’s oilfields above the Arctic circle.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian economy collapsed with it, never fully recovering, and the only thing it had going for it was money from oil and gas. Russia’s economy is so dependent on oil now, John McCain has described it as a filling station masquerading as a country. So Putin needed the Exxon deal to make Russia great again, and he might do anything to get it, including buying a U.S. president.

What Wade isn’t telling the intelligent media consumers of Intelligent Discontent is that the coup in Ukraine was orchestrated by foreign actors, which was exposed in the infamous Victoria Nuland phone conversation.

Wade is doing that Nazi propaganda trick where enough repetitions of bullshit eventually makes that bullshit stick. Corporate media does it all the time.

I know, we’re only supposed to be talking about the Nazi Trump regime, not Nazi-supporting liberals like Obama and Hillary Clinton, but when I say Obama and Hillary supported Nazis, I’m not being hyperbolic. The coup in Ukraine literally unleashed Nazis ensuring Ukraine will remain in a state of bloody, chaotic civil war.

American foreign policy:  if we can’t have it, we’ll break it.

Another glaring omission is Wade’s reference to the collapse of the Soviet Union without acknowledging how the western world watched and cheered its collapse. For something that doesn’t stink of Wade’s jingoistic treatment of the demise of the Soviet Union, I suggest consulting Stephen Cohen. Here is an example of a more inclusive reading of that time period:

For most western commentators the Soviet breakup was an unambiguously positive turning point in Russian and world history. As it quickly became the defining moment in a new American triumphalist narrative, the hope that Mikhail Gorbachev’s pro-Soviet democratic and market reforms of 1985-91 would succeed was forgotten. Soviet history was now presented as “Russia’s seven decades as a rigid and ruthless police state”. American academics reacted similarly, most reverting to pre-Gorbachev axioms that the system had always been unreformable and doomed. The opposing view that there had been other possibilities in Soviet history, “roads not taken”, was dismissed as a “dubious”, if not disloyal, notion. Gorbachev’s reforms, despite having so remarkably dismantled the Communist party dictatorship, had been “a chimera”, and the Soviet Union therefore died from a “lack of alternatives”.

Most specialists no longer asked, even in the light of the human tragedies that followed in the 1990s, if a reforming Soviet Union might have been the best hope for the post-communist future of Russia. Nor have mainstream commentators asked if its survival would have been better for world affairs. On the contrary, they concluded that everything Soviet had to be discarded by “the razing of the entire edifice of political and economic relations”. Such certitudes are now, of course, the only politically correct ones in US (and most European) policy, media and academic circles.

Cohen goes on to do something I rarely see supposedly inclusive liberals do: consider how the actual human beings we call Russians who live in Russia feel about the collapse. I guess if you’re not a part of Pussy Riot, you’re perspective doesn’t matter.

Thankfully, Cohen doesn’t adhere to western propaganda themes like Wade emulating corporate media does:

A large majority of Russians, on the other hand, as they have regularly made clear in opinion surveys, regret the end of the Soviet Union, not because they pine for “communism” but because they lost a secure way of life. They do not share the nearly unanimous western view that the Soviet Union’s “collapse” was “inevitable” because of inherent fatal defects. They believe instead, and for good reason, that three “subjective” factors broke it up: the way Gorbachev carried out his political and economic reforms; a power struggle in which Yeltsin overthrew the Soviet state in order to get rid of its president, Gorbachev; and property-seizing Soviet bureaucratic elites, the nomenklatura, who were more interested in “privatising” the state’s enormous wealth in 1991 than in defending it. Most Russians, including even the imprisoned oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, therefore still see December 1991 as a “tragedy”.

This blindspot is telling. The same inability to consider why many Russians see the collapse of the Soviet Union as a tragedy is at work in the inability of liberals to understand why 8 years of Obama’s PR recovery campaign resulted in Trump.

It really is the economy, stupid.

If the resistance thinks every vote for Trump was a racist, sexist validation of white supremacy and misogyny, it will fail.

And if liberals keep up the demonization campaign against Russia, believing and promoting the propaganda put out by the professional liars in America’s intelligence community, what will be the result?

I’m afraid of the answer to that question.

by William Skink

Well-paid artists continue making their political statements during award ceremonies because now they have so much to resist.

This didn’t happen under Obama because Obama was a significantly more skilled deceiver when it came to extending America’s bloody imperialism across the globe.

Here is the 30th installment of my Chapel video series. Welcome to the gelded resistance!