Month: December 2018

by William Skink

Christian Bale plays a compelling Dick Cheney, but will the movie Vice actually do anything to put our current political predicament into context? No, I don’t think it will.

Adam McKay did a great breakdown of the housing crisis in his film The Big Short, and his take on The Big Dick should enrage viewers who either didn’t know or conveniently forgot how Dick Cheney helped kick-off the 21st century with American-led death and destruction, but to what end? Here’s McKay being hopeful in a Rolling Stone piece:

“It’s just horror and absurdity in the Trump era,” McKay notes. “And I just feel like this timeline sort of got swept under the rug. But people need to be reminded that there’s a history, there’s an arc. I don’t know if this movie is going to change anything. But it was definitely cathartic to make it.”

I’m glad McKay got some catharsis by suddenly realizing there’s a historical arc to the arrival of Donald Trump. But I wonder if McKay has any clue as to why “this timeline sort of got swept under the rug”. Maybe after tackling The Big Short and The Big Dick Adam McKay can address The Big Con who ascended to the throne in 2008 just in time to save Wall Street and kill the anti-war movement, and along with that, any hope of holding the war criminals in Bush Junior’s regime accountable.

This movie is perfect for someone like my dad, a former a-political company man for a telecommunications corporation who now looks forward to his two minutes of hate from Rachel Maddow. The movie brought a little levity to soften the boiling anger at the indignity of having to live in a country with someone like Donald Trump as president.

What this movie can’t put into context is how we went from hundreds of thousands of people protesting the lead up to the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq to today, where the outrage over foreign policy is being directed at Trump for his decision to NOT keep US troops in Syria. To truly understand today’s backlash against Trump one must grapple with how Obama provided cover for Bush-era war criminals in order to preserve and expand executive powers for himself.

Do Americans truly want to understand how a permanent war party comprised of Republicans AND Democrats continues spreading death and destruction across at least 7 active war zones in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Niger? No, I don’t think they do, not if it means abandoning their tribal politics and specially crafted wedge issues their respective parties always promise to address but never actually deliver on.

I guess if you want catharsis and a not-so-subtle reminder of what an effective psychopath-bureaucrat can accomplish yanking the strings of a dumb puppet president with daddy issues, go see Vice. Then, after you’ve had a few laughs, you can tune in to NPR to hear some expert explain why Trump’s decision to remove troops from Syria is such a dangerous mistake.

by William Skink

On Monday night over a dozen people showed up to City Council to express their concern that our elected officials are not doing enough to address homelessness in Missoula. Today is Wednesday, and so far only KECI has reported on this. Nothing in the Missoulian or the Missoula Current. From the link:

When public comments began, the first person spoke on the issue and prompted everyone with him to stand up. Dozens of people rose to stand with him.

Elizabeth Marshall works for the housing authority. She often works with at-risk homeless people.

“One of my tenants left about a year and a half ago hoping he would sober up. It didn’t work out, he was back on the streets. Last March, on one of our last cold nights, my tenant and friend Wade died outside my office,” said Marshall.

She was one of half a dozen speakers hoping to appeal to the city council about the issue. Some of the speakers were even homeless themselves or have been homeless in the past.

“Every time I go in and out of my office for as long as I work there I will walk through where Wade spent his last moments. I want to put a personal face on this reality in our community,” said Marshall.

It took a lot of guts for Marshall to stand there and describe the harsh reality in Missoula that ultimately condemned her friend and client to death because of his substance abuse. I knew Thomas Wade as well, and discussed his passing with Elizabeth when it happened last March. That was the same month the Fire Department shut down Union Gospel Mission’s warming center efforts, and barred the Salvation Army from doing anything similar without a permit.

So what did our alcoholic Mayor who used the public disclosure of his substance abuse to launch his reelection efforts have to say to Elizabeth Marshall and the dozens of people who stood up to City Council? Here is what he said:

Mayor John Engen addressed the concerned crowd saying he looks forward to working with them to find solutions.

“We are doing some stuff. I’d like to talk to you about what we’re doing. I’d like to talk to you about what we hope to do. And certainly having your voices at the table would be enormously helpful,” said Engen.

Are you fucking kidding me, Mayor? You’re “doing some stuff”, huh? What the hell does that mean? And why would you need to “find solutions” when an entire goddamn study was commissioned and an entire goddamn plan to end homelessness was put into effect 6 fucking years ago?

Let’s just admit that part of the plan to reduce homeless numbers in Missoula is to keep the cruel and sometimes lethal gaps in place to either kill homeless people or force those without connections to this area to move along. Is that part of the plan, Mayor Engen?

And the media has been pretty pathetic as well. The Missoulian, just earlier this month, had an op-ed about homelessness, which I wrote about here. They said our community needs to have a conversation, but no one at the Missoulian reported on dozens of people standing up to confront the inaction by elected officials on Monday.

And I don’t see any critical media pushing back on the message that the amount of homeless people is declining in Missoula. It is not, but you wouldn’t know that if all you read was the stenography from the skeletal remains of local media.

The Salvation Army is moving forward now that they have secured the funding to hire for their warming center, but they should be weary of elected officials. I had one elected official throw them under the bus in a conversation I can’t write directly about yet.

In my opinion, the Salvation Army should be commended for being willing to put a band-aid on this crisis, providing some convenient ass-covering for those responsible for fixing our broken systems. Instead, the rhetoric from at least one council person was to scapegoat them for not doing more. And that was after the outcry from politically correct Missoula that the Salvation Army was not inclusive enough to be allowed to keep homeless people from dying in our liberal utopia.

I want to thank everyone who showed up, and stood up, to City Council and the Mayor on Monday night. Unless this issue becomes a PR problem for elected officials, like the sidewalk fiasco, this issue will continue getting a back seat to the development and gentrification that is the true priority for the Mayor and City Council.

UPDATE: The Missoulian did cover this, but in an article about the Salvation Army, which I had not read yet.

by William Skink

Nate Silver is skeptical about the impact of Russia on the 2016 election. Nate Silver has obviously been taken over by Russia. Russia has infiltrated everything. Black Americans were targeted by Russia and obviously would have universally pledged their support to Hillary had not Russia troll farms done their evil psychological operations on Black Americans.

When I say everything has been infiltrated by Russia, I mean everything. I just recently learned I’ve been subjecting my young daughter to Russian propaganda without even knowing it. Thankfully there are articles like this to let me know about the evil Russian soft power lurking behind the cartoon Masha and the Bear:

A Russian-made children’s cartoon show has been accused of being part of the Putin propaganda machine.

Masha and the Bear focuses on the relationship between a slight but imposing young girl and her protector, a huge bear.

In one Masha even dons a Soviet border guard’s hat as she repels invaders from the Bear’s carrot patch.

Critics said this was a metaphor for how Russia protects its borders.

The show, which has more than 4.18 million subscribers on YouTube and an accumulative 40 billion views, is produced in English in Moscow but has still drawn the ire of intellectuals in Russia’s neighbouring states.

The show has also recently ramped up its retail efforts, been added to Netflix and expanded to Spanish.

Yes, Netflix has been the delivery system nefariously luring my young daughter into the dark metaphor of a big bear and a young girl protecting the metaphorical carrot patch from western rabbits. Or something like that.

Please, Americans of all colors and ideologies, we must band together to stop the evil Russians from infiltrating our lives. Stay vigilant, citizens!

UPDATE:

I forgot to mention another thing weaponized by Putin: humor. No, seriously. From the link:

Political satire flourished on TV in the form of latex puppets during the 1990s, but it was quickly slapped down when Vladimir Putin came to power.

In today’s Russia, where the media is largely controlled by the Kremlin and its allies, there is little room for genuine political humour unless it is used to deflect the blame from the government.

Humour and ridicule were a key part of Moscow’s response when the UK said it was “highly likely” that Russia was behind the poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury.

Russian officials and media figures have since tried to turn the English phrase “highly likely” into a mocking catchphrase that implies Russia is being blamed for everything with the flimsiest of evidence.

I would laugh, but that would just be evidence that the Russian propaganda is working on me.

by William Skink

People have the right to express their political opinions outside of the workplace without fear of retaliation by an employer. Political speech is protected speech.

So what would you do if you were asked by your employer to sign a loyalty oath to get your paycheck? The oath would stipulate what actions you were forbidden to engage in in your private time against a specific nation. And to make it more interesting, what if that oath was not to your own country of residency, America, but to a foreign nation? In this case, Israel.

Would you sign the oath?

Bahia Amawi did not sign the oath, and now she is out of a job. In Texas. In 2018. Here is more from the Intercept piece describing what happened to Amawi:

She was prepared to sign her contract renewal until she noticed one new, and extremely significant, addition: a certification she was required to sign pledging that she “does not currently boycott Israel,” that she “will not boycott Israel during the term of the contract,” and that she shall refrain from any action “that is intended to penalize, inflict economic harm on, or limit commercial relations with Israel, or with a person or entity doing business in Israeli or in an Israel-controlled territory.”
…
That language would bar Amawi not only from refraining from buying goods from companies located within Israel, but also from any Israeli companies operating in the occupied West Bank (“an Israeli-controlled territory”). The oath given to Amawi would also likely prohibit her even from advocating such a boycott given that such speech could be seen as “intended to penalize, inflict economic harm on, or limit commercial relations with Israel.”

Israel is lucky to have such good friends in Texas willing to shred Americans first amendment protections in order to keep a growing boycott movement at bay. I guess if the racists who support apartheid are afraid of a speech pathologist in Texas, maybe the incremental genocide of the Palestinian people is not inevitable.

Closer to home, the “victory” of stopping Steve Bannon got a nice dose of cold water thrown on it from the former professor who was willing to take Bannon on. In an oped about Steve Bannon, political correctness and inclusivity, Michel Valentin says things like this:

Petitioning makes for effortlessly acquired self-righteous, feel-good brownie points, which is fine and dandy — but it is not significant. It is more a politically correct sign of weakness than a radical, politically enlightening act.

Educators’ public responsibility has a name: engagement, as J.P. Sartre, the French existentialist philosopher, argued. Professors’ knowledge, critical formation, pedagogy and ethical dimension should empower them to take on “evil” and show why, how and for what reason people err into the wrong side of the human, ethical divide — including white nationalists, who are ignorant, misinformed and oppressed by the “system,” as are many of us. Poverty, resentment and alienation bring about bigotry and misdirected violence (René Girard’s “scapegoat theory”).

Instead of signing futile petitions, professors should address “political evil” in open forums, explain its roots and even help ignorant “political victimizers” deconstruct and shift their paradigms. Why? Because corporate greed, exploitative globalization and unparalleled, pitiless, dehumanizing, universal competition are responsible for community decay and individuals’ angry dis-empowerment. They inflame paranoid, racist violence. It is one thing to preach to a small choir of students in classes held in artificial “free-speech” and “hate-free” zones. It is another “to [publicly] take arms against a sea of troubles/ And by opposing end them” or, even, to bring knowledge to prisoners.

Right on, Michel.

I have often wondered why some of these academics who have been getting a lot of headlines about racism and white supremacy don’t seem nearly as upset by systems and institutions of racism that prop up the illegal Israeli occupation. Could it be that calling out the Apartheid in Israel could have actual consequences to their careers instead of nice articles about how they struggle to stop the scourge of white supremacy and the idol they venerate, Donald Trump?

Here is some speculation from Valentin:

The petition’s goal is inclusivity. Why, then, did the petitioners never stand up in defense of the only major institutional force that combats ignorance, alienation and “evil,” i.e. the liberal arts-based, affordable, public higher education? One understands professors who denounce “white hate pamphlets” on campus by screaming “Fire!” One does not understand why these same educators, over the years, never publicly screamed “Help!” to protest the University of Montana’s destruction of the Humanities, depriving Montanans of the means to understand and appreciate otherness.

Are they “sheltered” and therefore captive of their allegiance to institutional power? Which would explain how their “protected inclusion” made them immune to the “radical exclusion” felt by others: all the personnel, adjuncts, lecturers and professors terminated since 2015, while retiring faculty were not replaced? Is the firing of English and foreign languages faculty not an action of exclusion? If yes, why then the biased silence of these “inclusiveness petitioners”? Why “courageously” ask for inclusivity on one hand, while accepting exclusion on the other?

Free speech is not a guarantee, and once liberal supporters of free speech quickly became more worried about fake news and how Trump got elected. That has created the space for the tech-giants to get into bed with government and the result has been probably one of the biggest, concerted efforts to limit and suppress speech this country has ever seen.

by William Skink

“Yes, the long memory is the most radical idea in this country. It is the loss of that long memory which deprives our people of that connective flow of thoughts and events that clarifies our vision, not of where we’re going, but where we want to go.”

-Utah Phillips

I was thinking about this quote yesterday as I read about a new 16.7 million dollar initiative to help young children, announced yesterday by the Headwaters Foundation.

What is the Headwaters Foundation? Good question. According to the Missoulian article:

Headwaters Foundation was created and funded by the sale of the nonprofit Community Medical Center hospital to a for-profit partnership. Because federal law requires the transfer of a nonprofit’s assets to another tax-exempt organization when it is dissolved, the Headwaters Foundation was created and must have a similar mission of improving health and lives in western Montana.

The foundation has an endowment of $100 million, and the Internal Revenue Service says it must distribute roughly 5 percent of its endowment every year.

The sale of Community Medical Center was a big deal when it happened 4 years ago. This is where memory comes in handy. I remember there being lots of concern and controversy over this sale because an immediate cash handout to the University of Montana was attempted, then rescinded. This article doesn’t go into the accusations of conflicts of interest that caused the original proposal to be withdrawn, instead leaving it to this simple statement:

Community Medical Center withdrew its original proposal for the money, which would have distributed $10.5 million to the University of Montana Foundation to help create a new health care complex at the Skaggs Building on campus.

When the sale was finally completed for 74 million dollars–money that is required by law to benefit the public within Community Medical Center’s geographic service area–the non-profit that spun off became one of the largest non-profit foundations in Montana history. It was called the Legacy Foundation. Then I didn’t hear about this giant pool of money until yesterday.

I never forgot that money was out there. When I was still working at the shelter I would bring up this sale and ask about getting funding for a wet shelter or some other type of facility. No one seemed to know what was happening with our millions and millions of dollars.

That 74 million dollars somehow became 100 million dollars, and the Legacy Foundation somehow became the Headwaters Foundation. How in the hell did that happen?

Amidst serious budget cuts and tax increases and Missoula’s persistent inability to address gaps in services that can become lethal when the temperature drops, 16.7 million could go a long way. Instead, it’s going to allegedly help young children. From that first link:

The new Zero to Five program office at UM will bring together three organizations: the UM Center for Children, Families and Workforce Development, Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies and the Childwise Institute. Funded programs will address one of three specific areas for children ages 0-5: resilient parenting, healthy pregnancy and school readiness.

“In the early childhood space in Montana, everyone tells us that they lacked the resources to move the needle on certain things,” Solorzano said. “This kind of investment will help them get over the hump.”

Solarzano knows kids that young aren’t going to be voters or taxpayers anytime soon, and so that population might be neglected in terms of local, state and federal funding. The Headwaters Foundation, she said, has a board of directors that understands that the impacts of its assistance might not be tangible for a long time.

So it looks like UM finally did get to reap some benefit from the sale of Community Medical Center. Even better, who can argue about helping young children? And that last sentence about the impacts not being tangible for a long time, this is how I read it: “hey, we’re not going to be able to show any results from this giant infusion of funds for awhile, so don’t expect any”. Anyone who works getting grant money knows the reporting requirements and level of accountability is usually very, very high. That doesn’t seem to be the case here.

For specifics on why the opponents of this sale of a public asset were so concerned 4 years ago, here is a detailed list of unanswered questions published in the Montanan Standard:

1. Citizens of Missoula, who have contributed millions of dollars to support the building and success of CMC, deserve input into the decision. Secrecy has surrounded the entire decision-making process of the CMC board.

2) The $67 million paid for CMC, the $40 million guaranteed for recruiting 40 new physicians (impact on current physicians unspecified), plus a profit, will be recovered by the for-profit RegionalCare Hospital Partners by limiting medical care for the citizens of western Montana.

Did due diligence by the CMC board compare the impact on physicians, staff and patients when converting from a non-profit to a for-profit facility?

3. The Fort Missoula property that was sold to CMC was given to Missoula County by the federal government under the Surplus Property Act of 1944, Public Law 479, Sec. 13, which states in part: ” Surplus… property suitable for use in the protection of public health… may be sold or leased to the States and their political subdivisions… and to hospitals… not operated for profit. Surplus property shall be disposed of so as to afford public and governmental institutions … non-profit or tax-supported hospitals and similar institutions… to fulfill, in the public interest, their legitimate needs.” These conditions have not been rescinded, and we believe they still apply to the property. The Missoulian acknowledged restrictive covenants to be “schools, churches, hospitals,” all non-profit entities.

4. The original Missoula Community Hospital Articles of Incorporation of 1976 state, in part: “Art.3B: to be organized exclusively… as a non-profit corporation… no part of its profits or net earnings or dividends will inure to the benefit of any member, director, trustee, officer or any other person or corporation… ; Art 8. Dissolution … Upon dissolution of this corporation, all of the corporation’s assets remaining after the payment of all its liabilities shall be transferred to the County….” Missoula County funded construction of the hospital with low-interest municipal bonds. This Missoula County interest in the hospital, as intended by the founders, has been ignored. Minutes of the early board meetings should be reviewed.

5. There is no evidence that the CMC board of trustees seriously considered other options available to assure long-term viability. A sale should be the last resort, not the first option, especially in view of the sound financial condition of the hospital.

6. In March 2014, to expedite the pending sale of CMC, the board of trustees voted to amend the original 1976 Articles of Incorporation to allow proceeds go to other charitable organizations, including the University of Montana, cutting Missoula County out of $67 million. This created a potential conflict of interest for the board members who are UM employees or have a close affiliation. How did they vote? Should they have voted at all?

7. The vote of the CMC board of trustees was reportedly 7 to 6 in favor of the sale, indicating that the chair inappropriately broke a tie vote–hardly a consensus. Plus, board members with UM ties again had a significant potential conflict of interest and should have abstained from voting. Did they, and how would this action have affected the vote?

8. The CMC administration and board have misled the public by describing this transaction as a “partnership,” when in fact it is a liquidation of CMC assets. All new benefits will be determined by a for-profit seven-person board. CMC will have only one vote!

It is not clear to me if any of these questions were addressed before the sale was finalized.

I went to the Headwaters Foundation website to see how they describe themselves and their mission. The language is so saccharin and vacuous it makes me want to puke:

Headwaters Foundation was born from community. A community invested in western Montana. With more than $100 million in assets, our mission is to work side-by-side Western Montanans to improve the health of our communities. Our vision is a western Montana where all people, especially the most vulnerable among us, are healthy and thriving.

To fulfill our mission, we believe in and commit to these guiding principles.
We are humble, mindful and accountable to the people of western Montana. We are respectful of our relationships. Before we act, we listen with empathy and learn with openness. We are locally-driven and community-centered.

We engage in our work with the highest integrity. We build fair processes and procedures, have allegiance to facts and ethical decision-making, and invest in effective, evidence-based outcomes. We are honest, consistent and responsible and operate with transparency. We develop clear and explainable processes. We set clear expectations to ensure we meet our fiduciary responsibilities and avoid conflicts of interest. We foster justice in our work. We support leaders and activities that work to create a more equitable society. We foster inclusion and diversity within our staff, on our board and in the distribution of our resources.

Isn’t this nice? And yet, nowhere do I see anything that explains this foundation got this largesse from the controversial sale of a public asset. But they listen with empathy! They are mindful and humble! And they set clear expectations to ensure fiduciary responsibilities are met and conflicts of interests avoided!

Sure you do, Headwaters Foundation. Sure you do.