Month: April 2020

by William Skink

While there hasn’t been state leadership in regards to sheltering at home for those without homes to shelter in, the CDC has created some guidelines. NBC Montana reports on how those guidelines are being interpreted in Missoula:

New CDC guidelines for shelters calls for 3 feet of space between beds, with people sleeping head-to-toe.

Engen said Missoula’s Poverello Center homeless shelter is working to limit the number of people who stay overnight in order to comply with CDC directives.
…
Engen said Missoula is exploring similar options for the future.

“We’ve had conversations about our ability to use federal buildings,” Engen said. “There are a number of options; we have space at the fairgrounds.”

Right now, Engen said city leaders are focused on providing isolation rooms for homeless people displaying COVID-19 symptoms.

“We have coordinated with our incident command team to secure almost 50 hotel rooms,” Engen said.

The hotel rooms are available to isolate people as they await results of COVID-19 testing. So far, Engen said fewer than 20 people have required that service, and he said costs will be reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Why is Missoula only “exploring” options “for the future”. We are in a fucking lockdown RIGHT NOW, businesses are being destroyed RIGHT NOW, people are losing their collective shit RIGHT NOW, so how about not waiting around until the homeless shelter becomes a hotspot of illness spreading the virus into jail, nursing homes and ambulances.

According to Mayor Engen nearly 20 homeless individuals have already exhibited symptoms and are isolated in hotel rooms. Has anyone tested positive yet? And what happens when someone does test positive?

Remember, we’ve been told the virus can spread BEFORE people show symptoms, so once a homeless person tests positive it should be assumed every single person at the shelter and the camps have been exposed, especially considering the impossibility of social distancing in an overcrowded shelter environment.

Montana Public Radio is also covering the homeless aspect of the pandemic. Here is an excerpt from that report:

Farr is incident commander for Missoula County’s COVID-19 response. Farr says the county has worked with the Poverello Center and a local health organization to institute a screening procedure for everyone who steps through the door. If someone shows symptoms and needs a test, they’re sent to a local hotel that has volunteered rooms for quarantine.

“But at some point we’re going to outgrow that capacity,” she says.

In interviews with shelters and service providers across Montana, finding isolation quarters for suspected or confirmed cases of coronavirus stood out as the largest, most persistent problem.

Chris Krager, executive director of Samaritan House in Kalispell, says he only has a couple units available for quarantine, and dealing with the spread of coronavirus in the shelter would be a nightmare scenario.

What will the consequences be for some of the most vulnerable in our community to have been ignored early on in this pandemic? Only time will tell.

by William Skink

The screws are tightening.

The state of Vermont is directing its retail stores (the ones allowed to remain open) to stop selling “non-essential” items.

What has the state of Vermont declared as non-essential? Here’s a list from the Burlington Free Press:

• Arts and crafts items.
• Beauty supplies.
• Carpet and flooring.
• Clothes.
• Consumer electronics.
• Entertainment (books, music, movies).
• Furniture.
• Home and garden.
• Jewelry.
• Paint.
• Photo services.
• Sports equipment.
• Toys.

Getting things to keep your kids entertained? Non-essential. Seeds to grow your own food? Non-essential. Work out equipment to stay in shape inside your home? Non-essential. Lotion for your skin-cracking hands from over-using sanitizer? Non-essential.

If you are already at a store that sells food and the store also sells books, DVD players and soccer balls, why not allow us to buy those items?

If you want to start turning people against the concept of a lockdown to flatten the curve, start arbitrarily defining what items are essential and which ones aren’t.

I guess us lowly citizens can’t be trusted to limit our consumerism so we need the authoritarian paternalism of the state to step-in to make sure we’re not needlessly roaming Walmart for tomato seeds and People magazine.

Here in Montana I took my dog on a walk yesterday. I was met with several signs telling me how to behave on the trail. Let’s go through this bullshit sign by sign. Here’s the first one:

I’m already confused.  People who don’t know each other already hike single file.  Is this supposed to apply to those who know each other?  If I’m out with my wife are we supposed to walk single file, or will we be allowed to walk side by side.  Ridiculous.  Here’s the next one:

If you want to linger in your natural environment to enjoy the sights, sounds and smells of nature, get off the trail, you disease-spreading idiots!

If someone needs to pass you, stop and wait.  Don’t do like I did and walk off trail over fallen logs because an older woman apparently didn’t see these signs and was not adhering to our new hiking rules.

Ok.

This is to avoid the terrifying scenario of a dog off leash that approaches another person and then the dog owner might have to get too close to that other person and maybe the dog owner isn’t wearing a makeshift mask and sneezes and then you’re dead.  So follow the rules.

And if you don’t, well, the paternalistic state will have to intervene because you stupid people couldn’t follow a few simple rules. It’s for your safety, don’t you know.

Remember, everything happening in our state right now in regards to how we are supposed to act in light of a global pandemic does not apply to homeless people. They can do whatever they want because Governor Bullock prefers to pretend like they don’t exist.

So, if I’m out hiking on a trail with my dog, or at Walmart buying a Lego set for myself (Legos are a crucial part of my self-care regimen), and I’m questioned about my actions, I’m just going to say I’m homeless and therefore exempt.

If pressed I will further explain that I used to have a home in a country called America, but it doesn’t appear I live in that country anymore. Instead I live in Amerika, an imperialist plutocracy that officially stopped pretending to be a democracy around September 11, 2001.

If you don’t understand that you also live here with me in Amerika, I bet a few more weeks of pandemic lockdown with set you straight.

by William Skink

I’m excited to report another Montana blogger has used the term “gentrification” in a blog post. After writing about gentrification here at RD for years, I am happy to see this phenomenon get more attention, even if it is the Montana Post.

To tantalize readers even more, I can report that not only was the term gentrification used, it was also paired with another word: disaster.

Disaster gentrification. Say it a few times to get a feel for it.

So, what second home celebrity inspired the Montana Post to suddenly become aware of gentrification? Kelly Clarkson, that’s who. The post, titled Be a Good Neighbor: Go Away or Give Back, has this to say:

Sickening.

That’s how I reacted when I ran across an Oprah Magazine piece about the country crooner, influencer and TV host Kelly Clarkson showing off her—of course—rustic cabin in Montana while everyone is battening down the hatches to stave off the coronavirus pandemic.

“It’s a nice getaway for our family,” the subheadline amazingly read.

What? Unbelievable.

No, it’s actually quite believable and even predicable that people with resources will retreat to their rustic bungalows to ride out the pandemic in style and comfort in Montana.

Luckily Missoula is not the Hamptons, so the more obnoxious plague vacationers won’t be polluting our community with their entitlement like they do on the east coast.

I do wonder how the bookings at Paws Up ranch are doing. The celebs better get their glamping on before the pandemic restricts air travel.

Yeehaw!

by William Skink

It might sound like a good idea to be getting people out of jails and other institutions, like Montana’s psychiatric hospital in Warm Springs, but if they don’t have a home to go to, then where are they supposed to go? The Poverello Center?

A developmentally disabled man who was recently discharged from Warm Springs to the homeless shelter in Missoula was allegedly raped in a bathroom at the shelter on Friday by another resident.

Here is allegedly what happened:

According to Missoula County Justice Court documents, Jace Toribio Bullcoming, 35, was charged with felony sexual intercourse without consent, Montana’s rape statute, after police began investigating a possible assault.

Bullcoming was staying at the Poverello Center when staff called police to remove him after he apparently licked another resident of the shelter, according to charging documents. He refused to leave until officers physically removed him.

After staff told police Bullcoming had possibly licked another resident’s face, police spoke with the alleged victim as part of a possible assault investigation. According to court records, police believed the victim was developmentally disabled, and later confirmed with his mental health case worker that he was disabled, and had recently been released from Montana State Hospital at Warm Springs.

That man told police that Bullcoming had led him into a bathroom at the homeless shelter where Bullcoming performed sexual acts on him. He told police he felt he didn’t have a choice and that Bullcoming was pressuring him, according to the documents.

The Poverello Center has been allowing people who consume drugs and alcohol to stay at their facility. Was this alleged rapist under the influence of anything when he apparently raped a mentally disabled man in the bathroom?

Earlier this year Sean Stevenson was killed at the shelter, allegedly by another resident who claimed self-defense. That individual, Johnny Lee Perry, has had no charges filed against him by the County Attorney’s office since the case was turned over by police detectives, and at this point it doesn’t look like any charges will ever be filed in this inexplicable case.

I’m not sure how many more acts of violence have to happen before those with the power to make changes acknowledge the Poverello Center can’t keep doing what they’re doing with their current resources amidst a global pandemic.

Governor Bullock needs to use his authority as chief executive of the state of Montana to mobilize resources to alleviate what has been allowed to fester at Montana’s largest emergency shelter for far too long.

by William Skink

One of the biggest lies being peddled to the public by Trump and Co. is that none of our institutions, health experts, or corporate luminaries anticipated the potential of a pandemic happening.

Before getting too far down this rabbit hole let’s start with Dr. Anthony Fauci and what he said at Georgetown University in 2017. This comes from Newsweek:

Delivering a keynote speech at the Georgetown University Medical Center event, Dr. Fauci said: “If there’s one message that I want to leave with you today… is that there is no question that there will be a challenge to the coming administration in the arena of infectious diseases.

“Both chronic infectious diseases in the sense of already ongoing disease, and we have certainly a large burden of that, but also there will be a surprise outbreak.

Fauci is very confident in his prediction. He doesn’t say there could be a surprise outbreak, he states boldly there WILL BE a surprise outbreak. And he was right.

We don’t have to go back three years to see how one corporate luminary was involving his billions in pandemic planning. In fact just months before the pandemic emerged something called Event 201 happened, and someone by the name of Bill Gates was involved.

Here is a description of the event from center for health security dot org:

The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hosted Event 201, a high-level pandemic exercise on October 18, 2019, in New York, NY. The exercise illustrated areas where public/private partnerships will be necessary during the response to a severe pandemic in order to diminish large-scale economic and societal consequences.

Event 201 really did happen, and the institutions and people cited really were involved. It’s not a conspiracy theory to say that Bill Gates is positioning himself to influence the world’s response to this pandemic.

Gates recently did an interview and said some very interesting things. The most interesting thing was scrubbed from the interview, but captured and reported on at the Off-Guardian. How are we going to get out of lockdown and back to work? Here is what Bill Gates thinks:

Eventually what we’ll have to have is certificates of who’s a recovered person, who’s a vaccinated person […] Because you don’t want people moving around the world where you’ll have some countries that won’t have it under control, sadly. You don’t want to completely block off the ability for people to go there and come back and move around. So eventually there will be this digital immunity proof that will help facilitate the global reopening up.”

There is a note after this direct quote indicating post-interview manipulation:

[Sometime on the afternoon of March 31 the last sentence of this quote was edited out of the official TED video of the interview. Fortunately, recordings of the complete interview are archived elsewhere.]

If you want to hear Gates describe his plan for getting us out of lockdown, click here.

Event 201 is not the only simulation that has been undertaken to game a response to a global pandemic. I’ve linked to this piece before, but I’ll link again because Whitney Webb’s research is a must read, so please check out All Roads Lead to Dark Winter.

If you don’t want to read alternative media, there is also some interesting reporting from the Nation about how the military knew of this threat years ago. From the link:

Despite President Trump’s repeated assertions that the Covid-19 epidemic was “unforeseen” and “came out of nowhere,” the Pentagon was well aware of not just the threat of a novel influenza, but even anticipated the consequent scarcity of ventilators, face masks, and hospital beds, according to a 2017 Pentagon plan obtained by The Nation.

“The most likely and significant threat is a novel respiratory disease, particularly a novel influenza disease,” the military plan states. Covid-19 is a respiratory disease caused by the novel (meaning new to humans) coronavirus. The document specifically references coronavirus on several occasions, in one instance saying, “Coronavirus infections [are] common around the world.”

The idea that our federal government with Trump at the helm is a bumbling, dysfunctional mess provides convenient cover for the fact that extensive planning for a pandemic HAS been conducted.

So why has the response been so terrible? Maybe because the problem needs to get bad enough to ensure we accept their solutions.