Month: July 2018

by William Skink

It appears the gap between what city/county leaders say about wanting to address affordable housing and the actions taken that undermine those stated intentions has gotten big enough that some truth is starting to leak out. At least that’s how I interpret Jean Curtiss (who is on her way out of the County Commissioner’s office) when she had this to say earlier this week:

While commissioners agreed to place the measure before voters, they warned that increases in property taxes were reaching a breaking point, and that the bond’s timing may be misplaced given deep cuts to state social programs and other community needs.

“I believe Missoula County must change how we judge whether to put things on the ballot,” said Commissioner Jean Curtiss. “We have to address critical issues, life-and-death issues, quality-of-life issues – daily things like food, shelter and mental health. The state is not taking leadership on these issues.”

It’s easier for Jean Curtiss to say this because she’s a political short-timer now. That said, I’m still glad she said it. What another Commissioner had to say, on the other hand, is to repeat a persistent complaint I’ve heard before—that we only have one funding mechanism to rely on, and that’s property taxes:

“We need to diversify our income,” said Commissioner Cola Rowley. “It’s completely unsustainable to only have a one-legged stool of property taxes to sustain all the things that our community and our county needs. It’s getting to the breaking point, where something is going to have to give.”

What is not explicitly stated here, but heavily implied, is the County’s continued desire to create another funding stream, like a local option sales tax. If enacted, this would be a regressive tax that would disproportionally negatively impact the poor. But don’t take my word for it:

Of the three main forms of state taxes—sales, property, and income—the sales tax hurts the poor most, says Gardner. State sales taxes are highly “regressive,” he says. That is, they end up taking a bigger chunk of change from people that have smaller sums of money and slower income growth.

Let’s say that a rich person and a poor person each spend $100 on taxable grocery items. This $100 expenditure—and the sales tax on that $100—both deal heavier blows on the poor person’s income because it’s smaller. The report backs up this hypothetical example: as a share of their income, the poor pay a 7 percent rate on sales and excise taxes, while middle-income families pay 4.7 percent rate, and the wealthy pay less than one percent, on average.

Creating another funding stream through a regressive sales tax is not the only option County Commissioners and City Council have in addressing fiscal concerns. There is a powerful concept that I have developed as a parent of 3 children that I would like to share with Missoula’s political leadership, and that’s the concept of saying ‘no’.

I do it all the time, saying no. And trust me, it works. You see, managing our family’s resources comes with a responsibility to prioritize food and shelter over toy cars and Lego sets. If I didn’t do that, and my kids were malnourished, I would be held accountable and The State could take my kids away.

Government doesn’t have that same accountability. The corpses of homeless people can pile up on the doorstep of City Hall and no one in a position of authority will have the power of the purse taken away from them, let alone be thrown into a jail cell for gross negligence.

If “diversifying income” means pushing for a local sales tax I hope we get a clear explanation of why our political leadership thinks increasing the tax burden on the poor is going to help them. This is coming from the same leadership who will be supporting a regressive sin tax on tobacco to keep Medicaid expansion in Montana alive.

Maybe courting business and trying to become an in-land replica of Silicon Valley makes it difficult to envision implementing a tax scheme that isn’t calibrated to negatively impact those at the bottom. Besides, what are those at the bottom going to do about it if local government gets the sales tax it craves? Threaten to stop making political donations? Open that new tech business in Bozeman instead of Missoula?

The only financial leverage the poor have is the increasing cost of jailing and hospitalizing the impoverished segments of this demographic put increasingly into crisis as the support net gets shredded.

Are those increasing costs an acceptable consequence of political decisions being made, making the situation worse?

It appears so.

Please, Missoula, prove me wrong.

by William Skink

It’s been nearly two months since the Missoula County Attorney’s Office received the case of the alleged assault by UM football players. Back on May 24th, County Attorney Jason Marks said it would only be a few weeks before the decision on whether or not to file felony charges would be made.

The investigation into a reported assault in downtown Missoula that allegedly involved members of the University of Montana Grizzlies football team has been sent to the Missoula County Attorney’s Office for a decision on whether to file felony charges.

Chief Deputy County Attorney Jason Marks said Thursday he expects to make a decision on whether to file charges in the “next couple of weeks.”

Why has there been no decision in nearly two months? How long does it take to investigate an assault? Something stinks and it’s a stink I’ve smelled before.

The University of Montana is still struggling mightily to right its ship amidst years of declining enrollment. One big reasons UM is in the situation it’s in is because UM’s football program has been plagued by acts of violence, including sexual assault.

It’s very discouraging to see the County Attorney’s office drag its feet in deciding to file felony charges or not.

Has Missoula learned nothing from the recent past?

by William Skink

Democrats and their pundit-sycophants are never going to let Russia, the great scapegoat, go. It’s endless. At Montana Post, for example, Joshua Manning continues peddling bullshit propaganda in an effort to insinuate politicians like Steve Daines are traveling to Russia to do the bidding of the Kremlin:

The senators, to include Daines, said they went to Russia to assess the threat it poses to the U.S. but that appears to only be a talking point for American ears and eyes. Russian state TV noted the senators completely caved once in country and “changed their rhetoric” in Moscow. The new Republican emblem should be a jellyfish because it is as spineless as they are.

So why was the trip important? And why should we fear or chastise politicians for going to a country that plays an (outsized) role in the world? Let us rewind a bit… In 2014, the Obama administration and the European Union implemented effective, targeted economic sanctions against numerous Russian politicians and oligarchs for putting together the invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine is a key country on the continent because it has made strides to join the western Democracies of Europe and NATO and also provides a key transit point for gas into Europe. The Kremlin has long sought to control Ukraine to pressure European actions against it with higher gas prices and Russian forces even closer to NATO borders. Crimea gives Russia a first step into annexing Ukraine. This is not from some deep dark briefing paper in CIA headquarters, it is open knowledge.

During the 2014 invasion, Russian and Ukrainian paramilitary forces using Russian-supplied equipment shot down an airliner carrying nearly 300 civilians. Even though intensive investigations have shown the missile was Russian and the forces who fired it were Russian-trained, Moscow has never owned up to its actions. These Russian paramilitary forces along with Crimean separatists then took control of the restive state over the course of days. Imagine if Canada took western Montana. Russia has now demanded Crimea be recognized as a free state and has made clear it believes Crimea is part of Russia’s historical provinces. Not many have followed through recognizing Crimea, though Trump seemed to indicate he might do that.

Joshua Manning is a brazen liar when he says Russia invaded Ukraine. What actually happened is the US supported a coup in Ukraine, unleashing some very nasty strains of Neo-Nazism that has led to a civil war. The Montana Post has been inaccurately depicting events in Ukraine and Crimea for years. Don’t believe a goddamn thing they say about this arena of American foreign policy.

Joshua Manning has also contributed to MSNBC, the corporate media arm of the Democratic Party. In a recent Intercept article, Glenn Greenwald reminds readers how audaciously MSNBC contributors like Malcolm Nance lie and nothing is done about it, even when it’s an easily proven like, like claiming Jill Stein had a TV program on RT. The reality is, no, Jill Stein never had a TV program on RT:

Whatever your views might be about Stein and her third-party candidacy, there is no disputing the fact that Nance’s statement was a falsehood, a fabrication, a lie. Stein did not have a show on RT, nor did she ever host a show on RT. What Nance said was made up out of whole cloth — fabricated — in order to encourage MSNBC viewers to believe that Stein, one of the candidates running against Clinton, was a paid agent of the Kremlin and employee of RT.

Reid allowed Nance’s lie to stand. Perhaps she did not realize at the time that it was a lie. But subsequently, a campaign was launched to urge MSNBC to correct the lie it broadcast, based on the assumption that MSNBC — which is part of NBC News — was a normal news outlet that functions in accordance with basic journalistic principles and would, of course, correct a false statement once that was brought to its attention.
…
To date — almost two years later — neither NBC News nor MSNBC, nor a single journalist who works for either one of those media outlets has corrected this significant falsehood, despite obviously knowing that it was broadcast to their viewers. In other words, NBC News and MSNBC know that they told viewers something that was materially false, and yet refuse to correct it. Please, defenders of this network: Tell me what that says about its integrity, about its real function, about whether it is a real news outlet.

When a shooting happened at a newspaper in Annapolis, partisans were quick to take advantage of the tragedy to score points against Trump. Are these partisans oblivious to the fact that exploiting a tragedy to score political points just contributes to the perception of Trump supporters that the media is against him? Do they care?

When a pundit lies so brazenly, and the most basic of journalistic standards are completely ignored, the damage done to the media’s credibility (for those paying attention) is immense. For those not thinking critically about the “news” sources they are consuming, it’s pretty obvious because they regurgitate things like RUSSIA INVADED UKRAINE and RUSSIA HACKED OUR ELECTIONS.

Another bullshit narrative that is currently unraveling is the narrative that the Assad regime was responsible for a chemical attack in Douma. Despite the OPCW report which clearly states there was no evidence of a chemical attack, western media have been able to manipulate the OPCW report to actually report the exact opposite. The best analysis I’ve come across is this post from Moon of Alabama.

This is perhaps the most dangerous propaganda of all because it resulted in air strikes launched against Syria by the US, France and UK. How many Americans are aware that these lies are leading us to the precipices of a global military conflagration? Not enough to matter, apparently. And since some media have given up on even issuing corrections, too many Americans will continue believing the lies they are being told indefinitely.

From local blogs to MSDNC, lies and propaganda are being shamelessly peddled in a larger information war against Trump. Corporate media has lost nearly all credibility and they won’t be getting it back any time soon as new lies are piled on top of old ones.

If Trump gets reelected in 2020, the corporate media’s Russiagate propaganda campaign will be a big reason why. Even heading into the midterms there are signs that support and enthusiasm among conservatives could buck the usual midterm slump for the party of the sitting president.

Despite all this, I don’t see the information warriors stopping their dangerous attempts to misrepresent the reactions of Russia in order to damage Trump. They’re going to keep at it because frankly they don’t have any other tools in their tool box.

Sad.

by William Skink

Because I’m a sucker for dystopian narratives I’ve been watching Colony on Netflix. The show envisions a post-arrival earth where the alien “hosts” have imposed a transitional authority to manage the remaining humans, who are segregated into blocs. There is, of course, a resistance to this occupation, but it’s fractured. One group that emerges in season 2 is unwilling to work with any other group as they impose lethal vigilante justice to anyone who collaborates with the transitional authority.

Today it struck me that there are some disconcerting parallels in this fictional narrative to what we are seeing happening. As domestic tensions escalate it seems anyone who collaborates with Trump/Hitler is now fair game, be it Sarah Sanders or some teenager at a fast food joint wearing a MAGA hat.

One of the recent noble stands by the resistance to deny a collaborator services happened in New York to a guy who advocates disillusioned Democrats to walk away from their party. The question Brandon Straka was asked before being denied the ability to purchase a microphone was this: “Are you planning to use this equipment for alt-right purposes?”

Divide and conquer is a strategy that is used over and over again because it works. As divisiveness escalates, any chance to step back and ask who does this divisiveness ultimately serve disappears.

by William Skink

In this week’s Indy the PR rhetoric Missoula’s political leadership uses to discuss progress in housing the homeless meets reality. For me, the reality begins with the picture the Indy uses for the article because I know two of the three homeless men in the picture are dead. One of them, Tim, died of exposure before he could get housed. Tim’s death was 100% preventable. If he had been a better applicant for housing, maybe Missoula’s housing market wouldn’t have consigned Tim to die on the streets, but that’s what happened.

Waiting lists for subsidized housing aren’t measured in months, but years. After waiting that long for a housing voucher, imagine coming up on the list and thinking you finally, FINALLY, have a shot at getting into an apartment, only to find out that, no, landlords and property management companies still won’t give you the time of day. It would be like winning the lottery, then finding out no business will accept your money.

Earlier this spring there was an attempt to get 40 people/families with vouchers into housing. These folks had the vouchers in hand, which is a guarantee of rent, but no one willing to rent to them. I had wondered how that effort worked out. Thanks to this Indy article I now know it was a failure:

A spring campaign by the Missoula Housing Authority, which administers the Shelter Plus Care voucher program, and other partners fell far short of a goal to house 40 voucher recipients in 40 days, MHA recently announced. Only 12 were able to secure leases during the campaign period, contributing to a total of 29 households that secured leases during the year ending in April.

As a result, the Housing Authority was unable to spend about $22,000 of an $850,000 annual grant, with the remainder reverting to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, MHA admissions and occupancy manager Jim McGrath says.

Individuals and families approved for the program are among the most vulnerable of the hundreds of homeless people who reside in Missoula. A year ago, members of the coalition behind the city’s 10-year Plan to End Homelessness introduced a new referral system, called coordinated entry, that puts clients on one citywide list and prioritizes services by need. One homeless man who got a voucher through the new system died of hypothermia last winter before he could find an apartment, the Indy reported at the time.

Missoula likes to consider itself a caring community willing to hit the streets in support of refugees and asylum seekers being separated from their children, yet despite that caring spirit there are people literally dying in the streets of Missoula because landlords and property managers won’t take a housing voucher as payment for rent.

If Missoula’s community of righteous do-gooders can’t get 40 people into housing—that’s 40 people who waited for years to get a voucher and now have the financial means of sustaining their housing—then how realistic is it to think some new “coordinated entry” system is going to have any discernable impact on the hundreds and hundreds of people waiting to get help with housing?

From what I have heard, there are now over 800 people on the new coordinated entry list hoping to get help with housing. As they wait, instead of addressing the affordable housing crisis, Mayor Engen and a majority of City Council continue doing things that will make housing even more unaffordable, like supporting another bond for more open space.

So, what is Missoula going to do about this? I know, how about doing another survey that recommends things like creating a local option sales tax and/or organizational restructuring to create the optics that something is being done:

Missoula County needs to tackle its relatively high crime rates, high cost of living and a dearth of office space and industrial property if it wants to significantly boost its attractiveness to new and growing businesses, according to a recent report commissioned by the Missoula Economic Partnership.

This past spring, the MEP and other partners hired a private consulting company called Garner Economics to develop a Competitive Realities Report and Targeted Industry Strategy for Missoula in order to identify ways to strengthen the organization’s economic development service delivery efforts.

The report made several recommendations, including implementing a local option sales tax, reducing duplicative efforts by consolidating economic development agencies and business assistance organizations, changing the target industry strategy to focus more in the experiential economy, and striving to increase workforce development.

How exactly is a sales tax supposed to address the cost of living other than to increase it? And will the City really look at “consolidating” economic development agencies, or growing them? Later in the article we get this:

One of Garner’s key recommendations is that tourism development efforts and various other economic development organizations need to cooperate, coordinate and communicate more.

To achieve that goal, the study’s authors encouraged consolidating and reorganizing the MEP as a holding company, led by a president/CEO. That person would have authority over the Convention and Visitors Bureau as well as the Tourism Business Improvement District.

Also, a newly created City of Missoula Director of Redevelopment, Housing and Community Development would have authority over the Missoula Redevelopment Agency and that agency’s current underling, the Office of Housing and Community Development.

The Office of Housing and Community Development has not yet produced the city’s official housing policy since Engen created it in 2015. Earlier this year, after a housing report came out, Missoula City Council was told that there will be 3 phases, and that phase 1 is still being worked on. Here are the phases:

Phase I: Come up with guiding principles and macro-level recommendations for housing affordability.

Phase II: Get specific technical recommendations and implement an administration and monitoring plan.

Phase III: Vet recommendations and send policy to city council to be adopted.

Maybe it’s time for a little honesty: Missoula is not an inclusive place for people of limited financial means. PR speak from the Mayor’s Office won’t change that. Studies and surveys won’t change that. Hiring well-meaning people won’t change that. Why? Because Missoula refuses to change, and our political leadership has not been held accountable for its financial mismanagement.

No one was held accountable for the cost over-runs with the art park, those costs were just put onto the taxpayer. And no one was held accountable for apparently forgetting to include the cost of maintenance in the 39 million dollar parks bond. And then there’s MRA, throwing around our public money like candy to any developer who wants it. MRA helped the Lambros clan improve their Southgate Mall property so they could flip it for 58 million bucks. MRA even helped out that little coffee company, Starbucks, back in 2014 because I’m sure it would have been difficult for Starbucks to come up with $66,000 dollars.

What will eventually change the cost of housing in Missoula to make it more affordable is not something anyone wants, but it’s something I believe is inevitable: another financial crisis. This will happen because we never actually dealt with the economic wreckage wrought by the bursting of the housing bubble 10 years ago. Instead, the Federal Reserve turned on the interest-free liquidity spigots to help banks and corporations avoid the consequence of their Ponzi-scheme business models.

And the result? Richer rich people, poorer poor people and more financial bubbles.

This is the economic back-drop to housing trends that are not sustainable, in places like Missoula and other west coast economic exclusion zones Missoula appears dead-set on emulating.

And so it goes.