Month: January 2020

by William Skink

Condos and event centers and hotels, oh my. The news of development–and the designed impotence of the public to do anything about it–continues splashing across the printed page and buzzing in pixel land.

Lord Checota shared details about his Big D(rift) with a giddy media, and one media outlet, the Missoulian, made sure to explicitly state all the things Tax Increment Funding WON’T be funding.

He (Checota) noted that the privately owned portions of the project, including the hotel/condo tower and its parking spots, are not getting any Tax Increment Financing from the city and will be 100% privately financed. The city has an agreement in place to use $16.5 million in TIF funds to purchase the civic events center from Checota once it’s built. The money is paid back by property taxes on the project. The city is also purchasing most of the 360-space parking garage.

developer, Checota, is paying for the huge public plaza, all the utility improvements on Front Street and is receiving no public money for the privately owned portions of the project.

This is a great example of local corporate media doing the PR work for a private developer because the result will benefit both of their bottom lines.

What are local artists to do? Shall we bow to Lord Checota and his benevolent reign, since he declares his palisades will be such a great place for artists?

As a poet who has lived here for 20 years, having been trained in the creative arts by the flagship University that saw the biggest decline in student attendance over the last decade of all flagship Universities across the country, I feel it is my duty to continue documenting Missoula’s gentrifying transformation in verse:

THE PLAN

Missoula has a master plan
to pack people into sardine cans
then eliminate streets and cars and trash
and the poor, who don’t aesthetically match

density, the mantra of rampant growth
is how developers get the most
from dwindling land on which to make
piles of money on real estate

all other considerations now are mute
but your public comments are really cute
like the public has any say
after the dust settles on election day

by William Skink

Did you hear Bernie Sanders is a sexist? It’s true. He told Elizabeth Warren a woman can’t be president because she could start a war during “that time of the month”.

Don’t believe that video clip supposedly from 1988 showing Bernie explicitly stating a woman could be president. That video is a high-tech deep fake produced by communist China.

Did you hear Bernie Sanders is a Communist? It’s true. His robust Medicare for all plan is a trojan horse to slip a financial neutron bomb past US authorities in order to destroy America.

Don’t believe that CNN is some evil, biased corporation trying to take Bernie out. CNN is like a Patriot missile trying save America from an impending Bernie apocalypse. Thank you CNN.

Did you hear Bernie Sanders is a cyborg? It’s true. On his honeymoon in Russia Bernie was killed and replaced with a realistic cyborg facsimile and now he’s been activated by his remote handlers.

Don’t believe claims that Sanders is a Jewish human being with blood flowing through his veins. Obviously the absurdly consistent political positions he has maintained over the decades, and the fact his appearance hasn’t changed since 1988, should be enough evidence that Sanders is a dangerous cyborg designed by Russian and Chinese communists to bring America to its knees.

The only way America can be saved is to vote for Joe Biden. Only Joe Biden can save us.

Don’t believe the haters who say Joe Biden is a corrupt, senile pederast who likes to reminisce about children patting down his blonde leg hair. You only think that because Russia can beam foreign thoughts into your brain.

Please, resist Russia and China and their weaponized Bernie Sanders cyborg by throwing your support to Joe. Only Joe knows what America needs right now, dear citizens.

Only Joe can save us!

by William Skink

Missoula’s elected leaders understand that the rapid gentrification we have experienced in recent years means there will be increased scrutiny regarding any use of public money to grease the wheels of development.

If supporters of gentrification like Gwen Jones can get you to think of their policy preferences as being politically “progressive” while at the same time viewing anyone who opposes how they use the TIF tool as being mean, selfish conservatives, then they have already won.

A recent comment from the former director of the Missoula Redevelopment Agency, Geoff Badenoch, does a great job of de-politicizing the concern over how public money is being directed through Tax Increment Financing. Badenoch was the MRA director from 1985-2003 and the comment he made was in response to a piece by the Missoula Current, titled Despite Conservative Opposition, Missoula City Council Approves Funding for Health Clinic at Food Bank.

Before getting to Badenoch’s comment, I should point out that the Missoula Current article negatively frames the conservative position in the headline by insinuating that the conservatives on Council don’t approve of funding health clinics and food banks when what they are opposed to is using TIF for this need. This is a good example of how local media plays a role in politicizing this issue and therefore obfuscating the scope of the criticism, which goes far beyond just conservatives in Missoula.

Now, here is Geoff Badenoch’s insightful comment:

“Let me say first off, I am all for helping public health clinics and food banks with public funds. Second, on most issues, I would not agree with Jesse Ramos. [But] on this issue of TIF funds, I think there is less daylight between our views. One does not have to be “conservative” or “liberal” to examine the purposes for which the Montana State Legislature empowered local governments to use TIF as a tool for redevelopment. It is essentially a tool meant to correct physical deficiencies that create social problems. Assemble and/or Clear land. Expand or relocate utilities. Plan. Build curbs, gutters, sidewalks and streets. Build parks. Missoula has used it to build other government or public facilities. I am concerned about this particular use because it has been the case all over the country that municipalities cannot resist the temptation to use TIF in ever more expansive ways and state legislatures have almost always responded by removing that tool from local governments. Anyone can go to mt.gov and look up the urban renewal statutes in the Montana Codes Annotated. Simply look in Title 7-15, Parts 42 and 43. Read it yourself and see if this issue as not as clear cut as it appears. I think we need to be terribly circumspective about these expansive uses of TIF. This particular use might even be worth referring to the State Attorney General for an opinion as to its legality. TIF is too important a tool to be used without serious and deep consideration, regardless of the good outcome
that may come for the clients of the Partnership Health Center, a brilliant institution that itself does wonderful work.”

The emphasis is mine because I think it’s very important to understand this point Badenoch is making, especially when proponents of the misuse of TIF and their media enablers seem intent on depicting this as a liberal/conservative issue.

by William Skink

Thanks to an alert reader we now know that Johnny Lee Perry, the 29 year old man involved in an altercation at the Poverello Center that left Sean Stevenson dead, has a warrant out for his arrest in either another county in Montana, or another state (more likely another county).

We know this because Perry was booked on an extra-jurisdictional warrant yesterday at 10:44pm, processed, then released on January 14th at 11:36am.

To be fair, this warrant could be for anything. For example, if I hadn’t paid the bullshit traffic ticket I got the other day for obstructing a turn lane (thanks to our inadequate transportation infrastructure) I would have a warrant and could be taken to jail if stopped again by law enforcement.

That said, I continue to be amazed this guy is not being charged with at least aggravated assault for KILLING another person in a fight while presumably under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs.

Let’s do a quick recap: Perry has no permanent address in Missoula, he wasn’t cooperative on the night of the altercation with police when asked to blow for intoxication, and now he’s in and out of jail again because he’s wanted for doing something unlawful somewhere else.

So, after this second arrest, in which Perry had to be stupid and/or impaired enough to come into contact with law enforcement again, will he maybe face a high bond to keep him in County detention while the County Attorney’s office figures out if they want to charge him with?

Nope, Perry gets a warm place to stay for the night and is out the next day in time for lunch. What the hell is going on here?

The County Attorney’s office is not obligated to wait for an autopsy report in order to file charges against Johnny Lee Perry. They must need more information because they are lacking in some other area to make a case.

In a crowded homeless shelter I would think there would be enough people with direct knowledge about what happened. I would also think, if there are witnesses, that they might be scared to be seen as “snitching” if they talk to the authorities, the same authorities who released the guy directly involved in less than 24 hours after his initial arrest!

Thank you, Allie B, for bringing my attention to Perry’s latest contact with the criminal injustice system.

If anyone else would like to contact me directly with information, my email is willskink at yahoo dot com.

Stay tuned…

by William Skink

While Democrats continue their self-defeating identity politics schtick, with Elizabeth Warren’s campaign hoping to smear Bernie out of contention with the claim he told Warren a woman can’t win the presidency, Whitney Webb has an article up at Mint Press about a shadowy tech firm with ties to Israeli intelligence running doomsday election simulations. From the link:

Much of the rhetoric since the last presidential election in 2016 has focused on the issue of foreign meddling by U.S. rival states like Russia, while China has emerged as the new “meddler” of choice in American corporate media as the 2020 election approaches. Though time has revealed that many of the post-2016 election meddling claims were not as significant as initially claimed, the constant media discussion of foreign threats to U.S. democracy and electoral processes – whether real or imagined – has undeniably created a climate of fear.

Those fears have since been preyed upon by neoconservative groups and the U.S. military-industrial complex, both of which are hardly known for their love of demcratic processes, to offer a series of ready-made solutions to these threats that actually undermine key pillars of American democracy, including independent reporting and voting machine software.

However, many of the very same media outlets and groups that frequently fretted about Russia, China or another rival state meddling in U.S. democracy have largely ignored the role of other nation states, such as Israel, in efforts to sway the last U.S. election in 2016 and meddle in numerous elections in Africa, Latin America and Asia in the years since.

If people in this country are truly concerned about protecting American democracy from foreign meddling, then there should be serious questions raised about this tech company and why they are running doomsday election scenarios. Here’s more from the article:

Cybereason has — with little fanfare — been promoting extreme election day scenarios since before the 2016 election. Cybereason’s first mention of these tactics appears in a September 2016 blog post written by the company’s CEO and former Israeli government contractor Lior Div — a former leader of offensive cyberattacks for the IDF’s elite Unit 8200 and a former development group leader at the controversial Israeli-American corporation Amdocs.

Div wrote that hackers may target U.S. elections by “breaking into the computers that operate traffic lighting systems and interfering with the ones around polling stations to create massive traffic jams, “hacking polling companies,” and “targeting live election coverage on cable or network television stations.” A follow-up post by Div from October 2016 added further meddling tactics such as “cut power to polling stations” and “mess with a voter’s mind.”div

Two years later, Cybereason held its first election meddling simulation, touting many of these same tactics, in Boston. The simulation focused on local and state responses to such attacks and saw Boston-based Cybereason invite Massachusetts state and local officials as well as Boston police officers and a former police commissioner to participate. “Twitter accounts spreading fake news,” “turning off a city’s closed-circuit cameras,” “hacking self-driving cars and navigation apps,” and “targeting a city’s 911 call center with a DDoS attack” were all used in the simulation, which saw Cybereason’s “ethical hackers” attempt to disrupt election day. Media coverage of the simulation at the time framed it as a necessary preparation for countering “Russian” threats to U.S. democracy. Like the more recent simulations, the mock election was canceled and voter confidence in the electoral process was devastated.

I recommend reading the whole article, especially if you claim to care about the integrity of US elections.