Month: June 2017

by William Skink

It appears another post is necessary because willful ignorance does not rest. Where to start?

A year ago Greg Strandberg was trying to depict the homeless situation in Missoula as unique to the state of Montana, specifically blaming the new homeless shelter for “drawing them in”:

I feel the main problem is our homeless shelter’s policies which draw them in. We built it, and they come. Strangely, many other Montana cities with homeless shelters – such as in Helena, the numbers of which I put up last night – are not having these problems.

Why is it just Missoula?

I think GS may have taken my advice to Google “Billings transient problem” because now, a year later, he’s broadened the problem to being a Montana one:

Homelessness is a big problem in Montana.

From 2009 to 2011, for instance, the homeless population in America decreased by 1%…but in Montana it increased by 48%.

I would really like to know where these numbers are coming from because there is no link to a source to substantiate this claim. Is this Greg Strandberg just making shit up? Until I see the source, I’m going to assume yes.

When it comes to homelessness I know first hand that getting solid numbers is very difficult because homelessness is not an easy phenomenon to quantify, especially considering there are different definitions of what it means to be homeless.

That said, I feel pretty comfortable making the following assertion: homelessness is still a big problem in America and progress in the right direction is slow.

Next door, in the State of Washington, things are also not going so well. This article is from earlier this year:

OLYMPIA – An effort to get homeless people off the streets and into shelters seems headed for revisions after critics said it would criminalize homelessness in Washington and put extra burdens on police.

Sen. Mark Miloscia, R-Federal Way, called homelessness “a statewide emergency.” He’s introduced a bill with several key changes to the state laws, including new restrictions on encampments and declaring homeless heroin users who refuse treatment “gravely disabled.” Parents who fail to report a runaway youth in 48 hours could also be charged with a misdemeanor.

“Things are getting worse, no matter what we’ve done,” he said, adding the state has spent about $1 billion on the problem.

There is a lot more I’d like to say, but I really am trying to get other things accomplished, so I’ll conclude with this simple observation: Greg Strandberg’s opinions are not original, and not informed.

by William Skink

When I said posting would be light at RD I didn’t give a reason why, but that didn’t stop the self-appointed ratings analyst of the MT blogosphere, Greg Strandberg, from assuming it’s because there’s nothing to write about:

I can’t think of anything to blog about.

I’m not alone.

“Posting at RD will be light for the next month or two,” another MT blogger is saying today.

Again, I think it’s because there’s not much going on.

Nope, there are at least a half-dozen posts I want to write, but, unlike Greg Strandberg, I have a full time job and not enough time to do everything I want to do.

Speaking of jobs, despite one blogger’s claim they aren’t out there for him, there is apparently a workforce shortage in Missoula. I assume Greg Strandberg knows this since he reads and comments on nearly everything Missoula Current puts out. Maybe those kind of jobs are just beneath the talents of Greg Strandberg.

One talent Greg Strandberg has is getting other people to write about him, which this post is evidence of. So that’s annoying because I know no matter what this post says about Greg Strandberg, its existence is what Greg Strandberg wants.

Another thing Greg Strandberg wants is to be a politician. He’s certainly got the part-time work ethic and full-time self-promotion thing going, so eventually he’ll probably win something. Add to that his shameless attention-getting tactics with fat-bashing the Mayor, and one wonders if the sky is the limit for this aspiring council person.

Since Greg Strandberg wants a political job so bad, I offered my assistance with this glowing endorsement, but since then I have had to entertain the possibility that maybe, just maybe, Greg Strandberg is a populist fraud looking for any foothold into drawing benefits and achieving a platform where people actually have to take him seriously.

My ability to take Greg Strandberg’s strain of populism seriously was greatly diminished last summer when he wrote an ignorant letter to the editor crediting the building of the new Poverello Center with the perennial transient problem downtown.  I tried correcting his ignorance with a post titled Self-Promoter and Wannabe Politician Greg Strandberg Doesn’t Know Squat About Homelessness, but despite my best efforts I wasn’t able to change this very wrong assessment:

We created that problem by building the newfangled homeless shelter, prominently placed on Broadway. My how it draws in the young transients that choose a rag-tag existence of handouts as opposed to hard work!

I reread the comment thread of that post the other day because I was thinking of writing something about the Reserve Street camps and the fact they are flourishing this year worse than I’ve seen since I helped coordinate the volunteer cleanups three years ago. When I read Greg Strandberg’s responses to my attempts to set him straight, what I saw was a complete inability of this politician wannabe to give any ground, despite someone with actual direct experience countering his ignorant and easily disprovable assertions.

I have to admit, part of me is disappointed in myself for writing this post because it feeds Greg Strandberg. But another part of me, the part that won out, feels compelled to use Greg Strandberg as anecdotal evidence of the direction this type of hollow populism is taking us.

Greg Strandberg, imho, is nothing more than a shameless opportunist trying to scheme his way into a government job with benefits. Ignorantly bashing a homeless shelter and calling the Mayor fat and stupid are just the means to the end goal of getting elected.

If knocking on doors for one of his opponents will help keep Greg Strandberg from obtaining that coveted government paycheck, I may have to carve out some time in my busy schedule to keep this type of person from succeeding.

by William Skink

Posting at RD will be light for the next month or two. That said, there will still be opportunities to point out how duplicitous Democrats are.

Health care is getting lots of attention right now because Republicans are positioned to do some serious harm to this country’s most vulnerable people. This effort is, of course, disgusting and it’s made even more disgusting by the cowardliness of these Republicans to face the people they are going to screw over.

The problem with only focusing on what Republicans are doing is that their legislative effort is only half the story. The other half of the story I’ll frame as a question: will Democrats do everything in their power to advocate for a single payer approach to health care?

In California the answer is a very discouraging no:

Nothing better illustrates the political bankruptcy of the Democratic Party—for all progressive intents and purposes—than California State Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon’s announcement on Friday afternoon that he was going to put a “hold” on the single-payer health care bill (SB 562) for the state, effectively killing its passage for at least the year.

The Democratic Party finds itself in a bind in California. They hold the governorship and a supermajority in both houses of the legislature, so they can pass any bill they want. SB 562 had passed the Senate 23-14.

There was enormous enthusiasm among California progressive activists, who, with organizations like Campaign for a Healthy California (CHC,) and the National Nurses United (NNU,) and the California Nurses Association (CNA) were working tirelessly, and hopeful of success. After all, Bernie’s people were taking over the California party from the bottom since the election. I recall a night of drinking last year with an old friend who has been spearheading that effort, as he rebuffed my skepticism, and insisted that this time there would be a really progressive takeover of the California party, and single-payer would prove it. After all, once enough progressive pressure was been put on the legislators, the bill would be going to super-progressive Democratic Governor, Jerry Brown, who had made advocacy of single-payer a centerpiece of his run for President in 1992, saying: “We treat health care not as a commodity to be played with for profit but rather the right of every American citizen when they’re born.” Bernie foretold.

Unfortunately, today that Governor is, according to Paul Song, co-chair of the CHC, “doing everything he can to make sure this never gets on his desk.” And it won’t. Unfortunately, all the Democrats like Rendon, who “claims to be a personal supporter of single-payer,” will make sure that their most progressive governor is not put in the embarrassing position of having to reject what he’s been ostensibly arguing for for twenty-five years, of demonstrating so blatantly what a fraud his, and his party’s, progressive pretensions are.

Thus unfolds the typical Democratic strategy: Make all kinds of progressive noises and cast all kinds of progressive votes, while carefully managing the process so that the legislation the putatively progressives putatively support never gets enacted. Usually, they blame Republican obstructionism, and there certainly is enough of that, and where there is, it provides a convenient way for Democrat legislator to “support” legislation they know will be blocked and wouldn’t really enact themselves if they could.

Progressives take note, Republicans aren’t the only ones you are going to have to fight if you want to get progressive policies moving forward.

by William Skink

Another special election, another Democrat loss. Apparently no amount of money can get Democrats across the finish line.

In Montana the party that lost the special election is really sticking it to Gianforte by, wait for it, sending him an orange jump suit on his first day of work.

This stupid stunt is one of the first media splashes under the new spokesman for Montana Democrats, New Yorker Roy Loewenstein. It’s important to note Roy is from New York because he’s now speaking for the party that made New Jersey a campaign issue. Here your new spokesman, Montana Democrats:

“As a convicted criminal, he will be hidden by his Leadership and not given any position of influence in Washington,” Roy Loewenstein, the spokesman for the Montana Democratic Party, said in a statement about the newest member of the House.

“So, we got Mr. Gianforte a welcome gift to help his new colleagues identify him.”

The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) slammed the prank in a statement, saying the Montana Democrats’ move is “sad and petty behavior.”

The sad and petty Democrats in this state are going to squeeze anything they can from Gianforte’s misdemeanor assault. At Cowgirl (the once hotspot blog trying to stay relevant) this post shows how partisanship can blind one to the reality of how the criminal justice system functions. The problem begins with the title of the post: Why did the Bozeman prosecutor roll over for Gianforte? and continues with this:

A crucial question was tweeted by the MTPR news director yesterday:: Had Ben Jacobs been the body slammer and the candidate the body slam-ee, would Jacobs have avoided jail time altogether? The answer is almost certainly No.

And yet at Gianforte’s court hearing on Monday, Marty Lambert, the Republican Bozeman prosecutor who must run for election every four years, sought no jail time for Gianforte and put up little resistance to Gianforte’s defense team’s maneuvers. Lambert never even requested that Gianforte perform community service or anger counseling, as the Judge ultimately ordered. Lambert sought only a deferred sentence and a $385 fine. A traffic ticket, in essence.

The question leading into this event was whether power and wealth get Gianforte less punishment than an ordinary citizen would receive, and the answer is now certainly YES. First, Gianforte was not arrested initially for having body slammed Ben Jacobs. He was instead written a citation and allowed to walk, despite several credible witnesses telling cops that Gianforte violently attacked him unprovoked. Lambert praised this police decision.

Anyone familiar with how overloaded municipal courts function can see how ignorant this perspective is. Using myself as an example, when I was assaulted by a mentally unstable person on meth, my assailant was not arrested and taken to jail. After a few hours in court, he was released on his own recognizance.

Montana Democrats should probably avoid this line of attack on Gianforte. Why? They don’t want to hear it, but I’ll say it: Hillary Clinton. As distasteful as the Hillary cultists found the lock her up chants during the campaign, the reality is that Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information and subsequent destruction of evidence would have landed a less-politically-connected individual in jail.

Unfortunately I don’t expect Democrats to adapt and change their losing ways any time soon. They just keep doing the same thing expecting different results. The definition of insanity.

by William Skink

Alternative Radio featured Thomas Frank this evening speaking about the America that elected Trump. I appreciate Frank because he understands, historically, how Democrats willfully transformed their party into the hot mess it is today. One of the central rationalizations driving the decision to abandon the working class for the professional class was the need to keep pace, dollar for dollar, with the deep pockets of Republican backers. How else could Democrats be expected to compete, they argued.

Thanks to Trump, that rationalization is now gone. Hillary’s war chest was immense, but despite the money propping up the Clinton brand, the branding failed.

Another part of Frank’s talk that resonated with me was his zeroing in on the most consequential missed opportunity of the first Obama term; a disastrous decision that doomed Democrats and set this country on the path to another global war: the bailout of Wall Street.

The real enemies threatening the livelihoods of Americans walked in to that infamous meeting with the incoming Obama administration ashen faced, said Frank, and left smiling. The moment to address the rot that metastasized after the Clinton administration successfully killed Glass-Steagall passed and now we’re just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It’s true I’ve spent the majority of my blogging time over the years railing against Democrats. But before Trump I didn’t know how truly contemptible these party loyalists would become.

The Russia hysteria enrages me beyond words. These smug, tantrum-throwing losers once offended by conspiracy theories about birth certificates to delegitimize a president now believe any anonymous-sourced swill coming from their beloved papers of record. These are the same people who breathlessly warned us about Trump supporters not accepting the results of an election that was sure to enthrone their ceiling-shattering candidate.

While the Russia hysteria continues unabated, despite a persistent lack of tangible evidence, acts of war are escalating. In just the last 24 hours America’s illegal presence in Syria, fighting a war not declared by Congress, kicked up a notch after a U.S. fighter jet shot down a Syrian warplane, then there’s Iran’s missile strike targeting ISIS in Syria.

(I used the NYT and Slate for sources so Democrats know this is really happening and not just fake news planted by Trump to distract from his treasonous collusion with Putin)

Syria is a cauldron of conflict that could easily spark a wider war, and there is absolutely no substantive political force in America positioned to give voice against the madness of escalation.  That fact could not have been more clear with the recent 97-2 vote for more sanctions against Russia.

Neither of those two dissenting votes came from a Democrat.

Going all-in on Russiagate is easily, imho, the second worst decision perpetrated on the American people by the Democratic political machine. Because there is more at stake than delegitimizing a president and stoking right-wing racism, I find this tactic deployed against Trump worse than what the birthers tried to do against Obama.

What will Trump have to do to prove he isn’t a stooge of the Kremlin? Start WWIII?