Month: May 2019

by William Skink

I can’t get away from NPR in the morning, thanks to my better half, which is usually annoying and sometimes triggering, but this week Marketplace has had a series of interesting pieces on the aging brain’s susceptibility to being scammed.

The science is increasingly indicating that an otherwise healthy older adult who displays no other signs of cognitive impairment may still be experiencing a subtle deterioration of the ability to discern trustworthiness.

Which leads me to my modest proposal.

In addition to the minimum age requirement for the US Presidency, there should be a maximum age limit on the US Presidency. I think 70 is being generous.

If what the scientific studies seem to be pointing to is true, how can we justify placing the power of the Presidency into the hands of individuals with this kind of possible impairment?

by William Skink

Perennial Democrat organizer/cheerleader/true-believer, Nathan Kosted, is really lip-sticking the old pig in this gushing post about the annual gaggle of Democrats feasting at the Truman Dinner. But I’m glad I powered through my initial gag-reflex to read this little tid-bit about who Democrats thought it wise to feature as their keynote speaker:

Jim Messina was the keynote speaker and through a slew of gosh darnits and self-deprecating stories about his time in D.C. he shared some notes for 2020.

I agreed with Jim Messina on one main point he made:

“Polling sucks. Don’t Believe the Polls.”

Messina’s quote comes from experience, but it’s not the kind of experience Democrats would want to hear. Why? Because in 2015 Messina used his skill set to help Conservatives in Britain and he actually played a role in creating the conditions for Brexit to happen.

I wrote about this last year when Jim Messina was offering to volunteer his data prowess to help the University of Montana because he’s pals with Seth Bodnar’s wife. Here is one of the excerpts I selected for that post about Messina’s time in the UK:

Despite telling Politico in 2013 that he would only work for causes he believed in, Messina hopped the pond and signed on to advise U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron’s 2015 reelection campaign. The American media was left a bit confused by this sudden change of allegiance, having swallowed whole the Democratic line that Obama didn’t really mean his center-right policies. The Conservatives ended up gaining seats and winning a working majority after governing in coalition with the Liberal Democrats for five years. However, the circumstances of the election made it a pyrrhic victory for Cameron. Many of the seats the Conservatives won were taken from Liberal Democrats, who had supported Cameron’s agenda anyway. To appease the far-right U.K. Independence Party, Cameron promised a referendum on EU membership if he was reelected. The campaign to Vote Leave turned out to be far more popular than expected, forcing Cameron to actively campaign against a referendum he initially proposed. Messina was central to this campaign as well, and he assured the Conservatives that his famous data-heavy modeling foresaw Britain remaining in the EU. The result of the vote, however, was the exact opposite, with 52 percent voting to leave the EU, and Cameron resigned as Prime Minister the next day.

I guess the “data-heavy modeling” was just as sucky as the polling.

If it was just helping to enable Brexit, that would be bad enough for Messina. But it gets worse. Here’s the other relevant excerpt Montana Democrats need to be reminded about:

The same process repeated the next year in Italy, when Democratic Prime Minister Matteo Renzi proposed a national referendum to reform Italy’s parliamentary structure. Renzi hired Messina to oversee the “yes” campaign, which lost by a staggering 20 percent. Renzi also resigned the next day. Messina’s next project was to co-chair Priorities USA Action, the main Hillary Clinton SuperPAC. Five days before last year’s presidential election, Messina published an op-ed in the New York Times confidently downplaying fears of a “Brexit-style shock,” which turned out to be exactly what happened. Clinton’s campaign was “leveraging the power of data to find every last vote they can,” he wrote, unaware that the Clinton campaign’s faith in the power of data would turn out to be one of their greatest weaknesses. Trump, who ran the most amateurish major party campaign in living memory, beat Clinton’s team of world-renowned experts.

Picking this electoral loser to be a key note speaker is a weird choice for Montana Democrats. Do they have zero institutional memory? Do they want to lose? Are they that nostalgic for the Obama era that they are willing to overlook everything Messina has done since?

Another notable presence at the Truman Dinner was Max Baucus. Max represents a time when a Montana Democrat had serious institutional power as chair of the finance committee and he knew how to use that power to keep those pesky Progressives in check.

Again, I am left to wonder if Montana Democrats have any sense of the past. How clueless does one have to be to write stuff like this?

Former Senator and Ambassador Max Baucus told long tales of his accomplishments and jokes and stated for the record that when talking to Democrats:

“I appreciate criticism.”

I enjoyed having a good conversation with Senator and Ambassador Baucus. I thanked him for his work in the Senate and his work to bring healthcare to Montanans with the Affordable Care Act. It has directly impacted my family in many ways and thanked him several times for getting it over the finish line.

Sure, Max appreciates criticism. What part of Kosted’s brain is kept from properly functioning in order for him to pass along this crap without the appropriate context, like how Baucus SUPPRESSED CRITICISM of the ACA by shutting out supporters of Universal Health Care?

In September of 2017, Baucus claims to have come around on universal health care, but as
this Chicago Tribune piece correctly points out, when Baucus and the Democrats had super majority power, he knew what he had to do, and that was shutting out criticism. From the link:

Eight years ago, as a once-in-a-generation Democratic Senate supermajority debated health care reform, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., kept their focus narrow. As the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Baucus was focused on passing a reform bill that moderate Republicans could support. At one point, he had single-payer health care supporters removed from a hearing; Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., an advocate for Canada-style universal coverage, set up a meeting to tide them over. But he did not expect much from Baucus.

“[Is he open] to single-payer?” Sanders asked rhetorically. “Not in a million years.”

Democrats are going to keep losing if they keep doing the same shit and expecting different results. It’s beyond frustrating to watch. In Montana this will mean losing the veto protection of the Governor’s office. Nationally, we’re looking at the reelection of Donald Trump.

Maybe it’s easier to just keep losing and searching for scapegoats, that way the party will never have to acknowledge how their own actions and failed strategies have gotten us to this turning point in American history.

by William Skink

If information came out that indicated the intelligence agency of an allied nation had foreknowledge of a terrorist attack and not only didn’t alert US authorities, but were caught documenting it, wouldn’t you think that would be a big deal?

Well, earlier this month that is exactly what happened, but the nation in question is Israel, so nothing will come of it. Still, it’s worth reading about the “Dancing Israelis” and what the FBI discovered about their moving company. Here’s a snippet from a Mint Press News piece, titled Newly Released FBI Docs Shed Light on Apparent Mossad Foreknowledge of 9/11 Attacks:

Shortly after 8:46 a.m. on the day of the attacks, just minutes after the first plane struck the World Trade Center, five men — later revealed to be Israeli nationals — had positioned themselves in the parking lot of the Doric Apartment Complex in Union City, New Jersey, where they were seen taking pictures and filming the attacks while also celebrating the destruction of the towers and “high fiving” each other. At least one eyewitness interviewed by the FBI had seen the Israelis’ van in the parking lot as early as 8:00 a.m. that day, more than 40 minutes prior to the attack. The story received coverage in U.S. mainstream media at the time but has since been largely forgotten.

The men — Sivan Kurzberg, Paul Kurzberg, Oded Ellner, Yaron Shimuel and Omar Marmari — were subsequently apprehended by law enforcement and claimed to be Israeli tourists on a “working holiday” in the United States where they were employed by a moving company, Urban Moving Systems. Upon his arrest, Sivan Kurzberg told the arresting officer, “We are Israeli; we are not your problem. Your problems are our problems, The Palestinians are the problem.”

For years, the official story has been that these individuals, while they had engaged in “immature” behavior by celebrating and being “visibly happy” in their documenting of the attacks, had no prior knowledge of the attack. However, newly released FBI copies of the photos taken by the five Israelis strongly suggest that these individuals had prior knowledge of the attacks on the World Trade Center. The copies of the photos were obtained via a FOIA request made by a private citizen.

Read the rest of the article if you want to better understand a terrorist attack that has led to multiple wars, millions of people killed and the proliferation of extremist ideology across the globe.

Or don’t and preserve your ignorance, it probably won’t matter one way or the other.

by William Skink

Those not blinded by American Exceptionalism have long understood the antipathy many US leaders have had toward any international law restrictiong America’s ability to act, even unilaterally, when our alleged interests are being threatened.

While the US doesn’t hesitate to thumb its nose at international bodies, like the UN, what happend at the Venezuelan embassy last week sends one of the most disturbing signals yet that a strain of fascist lawlessness is metastasizing in this country.

And one of the most troubling aspects of what’s happening is how few citizens even know what’s going on, thanks to a compliant corporate media that is worse than the “state media” of more overt authoritarian regimes across the world because our media isn’t seen by the educated classes as being what it is.

Since any opposition to the coup in Venezuela has been effectively disappeared from mainstrean media, I have to go to places like Activist Post to read about Venezuela’s response to US lawlessness:

Venezuelan Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Ron on Thursday urged the Trump administration not to hand over the country’s embassy in Washington, D.C. to leaders of an attempted coup after U.S. law enforcement forcibly removed peace activists who have lived there for since last month as guests of President Nicolás Maduro’s government.

“We denounce these arrests, as the people inside were there with our permission, and we consider it a violation of the Vienna Conventions,” Ron said in statement.

Four members of the Embassy Protection Collective were arrested Thursday—David Paul of CodePink, Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese of Popular Resistance, and Adrienne Pine, a professor who wrote an op-ed for Common Dreams about why she participated in the effort to protect the embassy.

“We do not authorize any of the coup leaders to enter our embassy in Washington D.C.,” Ron said. “We call on the U.S. government to respect the Vienna Conventions and sign a Protecting Power Agreement with us that would ensure the integrity of both our embassy in Washington, D.C. and the U.S. Embassy in Caracas.”

While the McResistance frets about the real origin story of Russiagate coming out, the worst aspects of the Trump regime is going unchecked.

Americans might not be paying attention, but the rest of the world most definitely is.

by William Skink

Yesterday the housing recommendations were finally unveiled. I haven’t had the time to start looking at it yet, but I’ve been reading the reporting to get a sense of the PR effort involved to unroll things that are not going to be well received. That’s why the word “sacrifice” is used. So how can the Mayor help brand the bitter pills?

What better brand than Missoula itself? In the quote below Engen strongly emphasizes how uniquely Missoula this effort has been. From the link:

The effort won’t come without sacrifices and tough choices by city residents and representatives, along with some significant changes to current policy. Mayor John Engen said it’s “an extraordinarily heavy lift,” but Missoula’s affordable housing crisis isn’t going to resolve itself and people deserve to have a place they can call home.

“All hard work leads to more hard work. Now it will require ongoing community conversations,” Engen said. “There’s questions about its adoption, philosophy, values and resources. None of that will happen in a vacuum, either.

“What I can tell you is this is a Missoula effort and we engaged in a Missoula way and these will be Missoula solutions. It’s a dramatic step forward in finding solutions that the lion’s share of our community agrees we should tackle head on.”

A Missoula effort, a Missoula way, and Missoula solutions. Got that Missoula?

Well, is it?

One of the recommendations is to promote infill by loosening regulations on ADUs (Additional Dwelling Unit). The recommendations stopped short of suggesting changing single-family zoning to multi-family zoning. Why? Because the ask of having “those people” (socio-economically less advantaged renters who live in apartment complexes) in the affluent enclaves of Missoula would probably trigger a privileged revolt.

West of Missoula, in California, there are very similar conversations happening. Despite the Mayor’s branding effort of being uniquely Missoula, California is also heading in a similar direction, except some are advocating for eliminating single-family zoning. Here’s an excerpt from an LA Times piece titled California could bring radical change to single-family-home neighborhoods:

Across the state, communities big and small, wealthy and poor, north and south, coastal and inland have large sections zoned for single-family homes. The wealthy Bay Area town of Atherton sets aside at least 95% of its land for single-family housing, according to the UC Berkeley survey. Between half and three-quarters of the developable land in Sacramento and Stockton is also reserved for single-family homes, the survey said.

Recently, policymakers in California and across the country have scrutinized single-family zoning as housing affordability problems have become more acute.

Three years ago, state legislators passed two bills aimed at making it easier to build small accessory homes in backyards. Since then, applications to build secondary units have increased by the hundreds in Los Angeles, San Francisco and other larger coastal communities.

So, not only does Missoula get California transplants fleeing in-land, which is contributing to high demand and driving up housing prices, but we are also getting policy recommendations. Great.

Another recommendation is a bond or levy to create a housing trust fund. This is another very difficult ask, but a strategically brilliant one as it gives Missoulians an opportunity to say no. And if we say no, well, I guess we are just selfish and not willing to “sacrifice” enough for affordable housing.

For more on this one, here is the Missoula Current’s reporting. The BOLD is all me:

The policy encourages the city to establish a housing trust fund, and it offers a number of potential sources of revenue. They include the city’s general fund, a mill levy, a bond, and seeking out private equity.

Eran Pehan, director of the Office of Housing and Community Development, said the fund would operate as a revolving loan with a competitive application process. Such a fund “is essential to provide the consistency and predictability” that enable long-rang planning and multi-year housing projects to move forward.

But the city doesn’t have a large amount of discretionary revenue to allocate toward a trust fund. Rather, it points to a perpetual mill levy and a voter-approved bond as the “optimal approach.”

I call bullshit. The city absolutely does have a large amount of discretionary revenue it could allocate toward a trust fund, and that money is parked in the Missoula Redevelopment Agency’s piggy bank.

How much money is in that piggy bank? I haven’t dug deeply into the answer to that question, but a credible source told me 35 million dollars. And how much of that money–PUBLIC MONEY I should add–is the city planning on investing in the convention center at the Fox Theater site? More than half, I’ve heard.

I find it troubling that the sources of revenue listed in the article includes the general fund, but conspicuously omits MRA. The way MRA functions– siphoning public money from the general fund to prime the pumps of gentrification–has greatly contributed to the affordability crisis in Missoula. Apparently the Mayor’s slush fund for development isn’t being asked to make sacrifices like Missoula’s taxpayers are being asked.

There will be some role for MRA to play in all this. Here’s more from the MC piece:

City department heads, including those leading Parks and Recreation and Development Services, pledged their support for the policy recommendations. So too did the Missoula Redevelopment Agency, which will play a role in achieving some of the goals around affordable housing.

Properties ripe for development within the city’s urban renewal districts include areas around Southgate Mall, the current public library site, and parcels off both California and Scott streets, among others.

“We have a lot opportunity,” said Ellen Buchanan, director of MRA. “We need to figure out where we want to prioritize and where we spend our resources, but all of those are in urban renewal districts, and a lot of them are in opportunity zones.”

As all this gets rolled out, there are two very important questions to keep in mind:

1. Who is being asked to make sacrifices?

2. Who will benefit from the opportunities?