Month: August 2020

by William Skink

Fridays hold a special place in the news media world, according to this old NPR piece discussing the “Friday news dump”:

Often, the White House sets the release of bad news and unflattering documents to late Friday afternoon. The Pentagon and other agencies also use the practice, a legacy of earlier administrations.

This well-known strategy for downplaying unflattering news appears to have been put into practice last Friday by Missoula’s Sultan of Sound, Nick Checota.

With summer ending and the madness of school starting last week, Friday was the ideal time to announce the official scrapping of the 100 million dollar BIG D(rift) project that would have erected the crown jewel of Missoula gentrification, an event center, along with another hotel, another parking garage and high-end condos.

While Friday is usually a slow day around this little blog, someone put this post about Nick Checota’s family ties on Facebook and traffic exploded. Now more people are aware of daddy Checota and his failed attempt at becoming a Democratic Senator.

The financing for this project must have really cratered, considering Jon Tester tried helping Checota with the ENCORE act and Steve Bullock tried to help with the Live Entertainment relief fund. At that latter link (a government website) a picture of the Wilma is front and center:

So, what happens next. From the Missoulian:

It’s unclear what’s next for the Riverfront Triangle property, which is city-owned and has been designated its own Urban Renewal District. In that district, developers are eligible to utilize Tax Increment Financing, which means the new property taxes from development projects are available to go back into the district for things that benefit the public. City leaders have been working for decades on securing partners for a development that would go above and beyond what would happen if the city was simply to sell the land or lease to the first willing developer.

“And while this great project is off the table, we’ll continue to seek partners of the caliber of the Checotas to ensure that this one-of-a-kind piece of public land is used at its best and that whatever’s next does Missoula proud,” Engen concluded.

The scale of this project was once much smaller and more community focused, but Mayor Engen wanted it to match his BIG APPETITE. Now it’s all blowing up and what we will have instead is that lovely parking lot for the foreseeable future, which is fine by me.

I consider this one of the few silver linings of the Coronavirus pandemic. Missoula has been spared a gentrified monstrosity and Missoula taxpayers just saved 16.5 million dollars in public TIF money that would have purchased a parking garage.

Sorry, Lord Checota, but it looks like there are limits to what a politically connected Sound Sultan can expect when it comes to 100 million dollar development projects.

by William Skink

As society descends into violent chaos, our billionaire class is putting advanced technology into the brains of pigs.

The title of the article says it all: Elon Musk demonstrates Neuralink’s tech live using pigs with surgically implanted brain-monitoring devices. From the link:

Musk actually referred to the Neuralink devices as a “Fitbit in your skull with tiny wires” at multiple points during the presentation, which actually seems like a pretty dystopian proposition, depending on your perspective. Capabilities he teased eventually include the ability to summon your Tesla with a thought, and video game control interfaces — including complete control of Starcraft. Musk also said in the future he expected people with Link to be able to “save and replay memories,” adding the caveat that “this is obviously sounding increasingly like a Black Mirror episode, but well, I guess they’re pretty good at predicting.” He even went so far as to say that “you could potentially download [memories] into a robot body.”

This transhumanist dystopian future that Elon Musk is busily making a reality is not for you and me. We are just numbers in the equations of these intelligent psychopath eugenicists who want to see a few less billion of us on their planet.

While I wouldn’t normally link to the EVERYTHING IS FAKE blog, there is a writer there by the name of Stephers who I think is worth checking out, especially her latest post about biohacking.

Or, instead of trying to figure out what the real threat to humanity is, just proceed to your preferred confirmation bias media platform for the spin that will keep you focused on all the wrong things.

by William Skink

While Friday is a day for news dumping, and Monday is a day for officially getting to that dumped news, today is Saturday, and Saturdays are days here at RD I have dedicated to art and poetry.

So, with that in mind, here is the beginning of a poem I was inspired to start writing this morning after news dump Friday. Enjoy!

THE UNBUILT TEMPLE (a work in progress)

your temple, my Lord, cannot be built
the vaults are depleted
and the workers will wilt
once they discover their gold painted coins
hold no more value
then why should they join
our elite order of cultural priests
who horde real gold
and enjoy secret feasts?

by William Skink

Missoula is getting ready to launch a mobile crisis unit pilot program and I can already tell you where this program will have problems.

When I appeared on Talk Back Missoula earlier this week I discussed my time as the Homeless Outreach Coordinator for the Poverello Center. One of the insights I shared was how law enforcement has, in the past, asked service providers who they are supposed to call at 2am when there is a crisis.

This mobile crisis unit will not solve that problem because right off the bat they won’t be responding to crisis calls 24/7:

According to Jordan, existing data shows there not being a need for a 24/7 service, but as they “tailor it to the community’s needs” based on what the local data reveals, that could change when they make the permanent budget request to the city and county in the spring.

Not having 24/7 response capacity is the first glaring problem. The second problem is also well-known: where to take them?

Almost a decade ago, when the 10 year plan to end homelessness was being developed, one of the biggest needs identified was an alternative to the ER/jail for people in a mental health crisis. That infrastructure has not materialized in the nearly ten years since the plan was finalized, and that could be a big problem:

Jordan said there would be immediate benefits to the mobile crisis team, including a reduced need for incarceration. It costs Missoula taxpayers $115 per defendant per night in jail. By intervening, the crisis team could save $3 to $7 spent elsewhere and offer better crisis care in immediate situations.

However, the mobile crisis team could face problems with the lack of available residential centers addressing mental health in Missoula. Missoula has the largest number of admissions to the Montana State Hospital by almost three times, council member Bryan von Lossberg noted.

“We need a Dakota House (a Missoula-based crisis residential center) times 50. If the crisis can’t be resolved, we don’t want to take them to jail and we don’t want to take them to the hospital. They just need to go to some place for observation. We are going to fall short in that space,” Jordan said.

To exemplify how this will be a problem, allow me to share an anecdotal story.

When I was the Homeless Outreach Coordinator I was called to a motel room by a motel manager. The homeless veteran who had been renting a room was very, very intoxicated and being kicked out for his behavior. As I talked to him about his options he said he would prefer to kill himself. This is called “suicidal ideation”.

Since I had a vehicle and a good relationship with this individual I was able to talk him into a ride to the ER (saving the cost of an ambulance ride). After checking him in, he was assessed by a nurse where he again expressed suicidal ideation. This triggered the need of the hospital to keep him until he could be assessed by a mental health professional.

This is where alcohol comes into play.

I spent about an hour trying to keep this man from causing problems in the ER. He kept trying to get off the gurney and would start yelling and making a scene. After an hour of this I found the nurse and asked her how long before he could be assessed by a mental health professional.

I remember distinctly how the nurse gave me this cynical look, then she explained to me that he couldn’t be assessed until his BAC (blood alcohol content) was below the legal limit of .08. This man’s BAC was around .42. The nurse estimated that it would probably be about 24 hours before he could be assessed.

That’s 24 hours being held in the most expensive form of medical treatment just so he can sober up for a mental health assessment.

Because we haven’t closed this giant gap in services the mobile crisis unit will be significantly hampered. But don’t worry, Missoula, they will be COLLECTING DATA!

“We’re going to be collecting data to hopefully find how many times we weren’t able to take someone to a Dakota House because it was full or for some other reason.”

Isn’t it nice how the systemic failure of our elected leaders and the problems they keep circling like dirty water going down a drain can somehow always be tempered by well-intentioned efforts at data collection?

I know, we could do a public listening session of stakeholders, then fund a study with TIF money (is Spider busy?) then, after the study is compiled into recommendations, a plan can be formed (is that Florida consulting firm busy?). After a few years, when the plan proves to be ineffective, just start the process all over again.

This is how Missoula operates and I see no reason for the people in charge to change. When confronted with their failure, like I said on the radio, they just circle the wagon to protect their little rackets from exposure.

by William Skink

The only thing more fucked up about the escalating violence in this country is how corporate media is covering what’s unfolding.

Which incidents of violence should be highlighted and which ones should be downplayed? If you don’t think these questions are being asked you are naive.

Before getting to the violence in Wisconsin I think it’s important to spend a little time discussing what happened to Adam Haner, the unarmed white man in Portland who was kicked unconscious while sitting helplessly on the ground after being pulled from his truck.

In our fucked up media landscape, conservative-leaning outlets will emphasize this incident of violence for its viewers, while downplaying the militia element being activated by the increasing social unrest. Any white person watching this video of Haner swarmed by the mob and then beat unconscious will consider buying a gun (if they don’t already own one) and carrying a gun if they do.

While conservative media downplays white civilians showing up to protests with long guns, other media, like CNN, are doing their best to convince their viewers that these “protests” are “mostly peaceful”. Here is how Fox news reported on CNN’s report on Wisconsin:

CNN national correspondent Omar Jimenez was reporting live in the early hours on Tuesday morning on the unrest that had taken place in Kenosha, Wis., following the police-involved shooting of Jacob Blake.

Jimenez was standing in front of a raging fire and the chyron at the bottom of the screen read, “FIERY BUT MOSTLY PEACEFUL PROTESTS AFTER POLICE SHOOTING.”

It should be obvious to any objective observer that both conservative and liberal media outlets are trying to exploit this escalating violence to further their political agendas. In this sick game of exploiting violence for political objectives, who is going to benefit?

Ultimately I think Trump and the police state love the BLM movement. The violence and chaos that has been unleashed will make Trump’s law and order message resonate loudly far beyond his base.