Month: September 2020

by William Skink

When I read this article about Missoula County “reluctantly” considering zoning changes for more storage units being built in East Missoula, I was immediately curious what the reluctance was all about.

It turns out land-use planners, despite their title, can be very ignorant about why land is being used for certain things. In this case, storage units. From the link:

“I don’t love storage units. I don’t know that anybody does,” said Paul Forsting, a land-use planner with Territorial Landworks. “But for whatever reason, they’re needed. We seem to have a demand for storage units.”

Paul the land-use planner has a job, and that job is planning how land will be used. Why is Paul so befuddled by storage units? Let me help Paul out.

The “for whatever reason” reason behind the need for storage units is pretty simple, and can be summed up by this equation: shitty economy + unaffordable housing = storage units.

When I worked at the shelter I knew lots of clients who maintained storage units. It shouldn’t be much of a surprise that people who lose their housing might not want to also lose all their worldly possessions. So they rent a storage unit.

If Paul gave it some thought, I bet he could figure this out. It’s just that all his time is probably taken up with MIXED-USE this and MIXED-USE that. I imagine a lot of planning must go into mixing up uses for land, so Paul is probably a busy guy.

And he has no love for storage units.

by William Skink

It’s discouraging to watch so many people being led around by duplicitous corporate media, obsessively focusing ALL their psychic energy on the latest distraction. This week’s edition is TRUMP’s TAXES!!! OH MY GOD DID YOU HEAR HE ONLY SPENT…

To highlight how this works, I’m going to pick on former State representative Mike Jopek, who represented the 4th District from 2004-2011 and might stop responding to my tweets after this post:

Since Mike asked, I happily provided this link about how Deutsche Bank is laundering cartel money and helped to fund ISIS, but in the stunted mind of someone suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, Mike was only able to muster this sad response:

What Mike Jopek is referring to when he says “tax cheat-in-chief” is the ten thousand word New York Times piece about the holy grail of the resistance, TRUMP’s TAXES!!!

Unfortunately, what Mike Jopek and so many other Democrat supporters are missing as they go apoplectic over this NYT piece is the utter corruption of the two criminal syndicates operating under the guise of “Democrats” and “Republicans” and how this corrupt system is propped up by media whores like the Grey Lady, the “paper of record” that is conveniently ignoring how Julian Assange is rotting in prison because Wikileaks has done more to expose this bipartisan corruption than any of our legacy media outlets would dare.

To show you what I am talking about, let’s take a look at what Wikileaks exposed regarding how deeply Obama was in the pockets of the banksters from the very beginning. From the link:

The most important revelation in the WikiLeaks dump of John Podesta’s emails has nothing to do with Hillary Clinton. The messages go all the way back to 2008, when Podesta served as co-chair of President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team. And a month before the election, the key staffing for that future administration was almost entirely in place, revealing that some of the most crucial decisions an administration can make occur well before a vote has been cast.

Michael Froman, who is now U.S. trade representative but at the time was an executive at Citigroup, wrote an email to Podesta on October 6, 2008, with the subject “Lists.” Froman used a Citigroup email address. He attached three documents: a list of women for top administration jobs, a list of non-white candidates, and a sample outline of 31 cabinet-level positions and who would fill them. “The lists will continue to grow,” Froman wrote to Podesta, “but these are the names to date that seem to be coming up as recommended by various sources for senior level jobs.”

The cabinet list ended up being almost entirely on the money. It correctly identified Eric Holder for the Justice Department, Janet Napolitano for Homeland Security, Robert Gates for Defense, Rahm Emanuel for chief of staff, Peter Orszag for the Office of Management and Budget, Arne Duncan for Education, Eric Shinseki for Veterans Affairs, Kathleen Sebelius for Health and Human Services, Melody Barnes for the Domestic Policy Council, and more. For the Treasury, three possibilities were on the list: Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, and Timothy Geithner.

Since partisans appear to be in hermetically sealed bubbles these days, I don’t expect this information will have any impact. Even when more evidence emerges that Russiagate was a criminal operation carried out by officials at the highest levels of the Obama administration, I don’t expect partisan Democrats to be able to contextualize the seriousness of what these elements within the FBI, CIA and the DOJ did, and how dangerous it will be if they aren’t held accountable.

And how can they be held accountable when the other side is just as corrupt? William Barr is a known fixer going back to the Iran/Contra days, and his daddy, Donald Barr, used his position at the elite Dalton school to get Jeffrey Epstein a job.

The benefits of understanding how far this corruption reaches is that I don’t waste as much energy following the two minutes of hate routine dictated to me by corporate media, and I’m insulated from the false solution that voting for one cartel over the other–known as picking the lesser evil–will do a damn thing to stop these sociopaths from exploiting our fear to snatch more power for themselves.

by William Skink

Just the headline pisses me off: UM study says Montana parents struggle to find reliable childcare. Yeah, no shit. Why is a study needed to tell us this? What’s next, a study that shows people who jump in rivers get wet?

Reading the article is even more maddening, and raises a question in my mind, specifically what the hell is the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis doing funding this study? From the link:

MISSOULA, Mont. — A study by the University of Montana funded by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis found that unreliable childcare in Montana has an economic impact on the millions of Montana parents, employers and taxpayers.

Missing work, turning down job offers and changing from full-time to part-time work are three problems Montana parents say they faced this past year due to unreliable childcare.

I thought the job of central banks was printing fiat currency to buy toxic assets to cover insolvent banks in order to shift the consequences of systemic corruption from Wall Street to Main Street. Little did I know they also throw money at failing universities like UM to produce gems of economic insight, like this:

The study found that households making $30,000 or less each year lost more than 10% of their income in wages due to unreliable childcare.

If parents have to leave work to take care of their child, that parent loses wages and businesses have absent employees. Sonora said the economic impact affects parents, the state and taxpayers.

“If my income goes down then I’m paying less into state and federal government in terms of tax revenue,” said Sonora. “So other taxpayers have to fill in that space.”

Ah, the sacred taxpayer. I think I’m starting to understand where this is going. And my understanding was helped by also reading how the Missoulian covered this story. Here is an excerpt from that article:

Kelly Rosenleaf, the executive director of Childcare Resources Inc. in Missoula, lamented the fact that the Republican-controlled state Legislature and Democrat Gov. Steve Bullock were not able to find a way to permanently fund pre-kindergarten education in the past session. Montana is one of only a handful of states without publicly-funded “pre-K” education programs.

So, to summarize, the central bank gave the university money to study the economic impacts of unreliable childcare because our Republican legislature didn’t pass our Democratic Governor’s top goal of funding pre-k last session, which ultimately leads to a situation where other taxpayers have to fill the space.

This study SHOULD help make the case that funding pre-k for Montanans makes sense from a fiscally conservative standpoint. Once upon a time I thought making fiscally conservative arguments would make a difference for critical programs, like, for example, Medicaid. But I was wrong.

Conservatives in Montana don’t actually believe in fiscal conservative principles, which was crystal clear during the 2019 session when these assholes talked about drug testing Medicaid recipients. When Scott Sales says he wants to make Medicaid “more affordable for the taxpayer” he us utterly full of shit. From the link (my emphasis):

Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock, a vocal advocate of the program, is asking the Legislature to extend Medicaid expansion in its current form, including the state’s approximate $60 million-a-year share of the cost. The federal government covers the remainder.

But leaders of the Republican-controlled Legislature say if they agree to extend the program, it will come with some changes.

“That program needs to be more affordable for the taxpayers,” says Senate President Scott Sales (R-Bozeman) who voted against the initial approval of Medicaid expansion in 2015. “I believe it needs to have a lot more sideboards put on.”

Some of those “sideboards,” or additional requirements for those getting coverage from the program, could be an asset test, work requirements or a drug test, Sales told MTN News.

The hard-on conservatives have for spending tax money on drug testing is one of the more stupid and fiscally irresponsible things they seem to constantly support. Who cares if spending over $200,000 only caught about 300 nefarious drug users? From the link:

Thirteen states spent more than $200,000 screening federal-aid applicants for drugs last year. Only 338 people tested positive, according to data gathered by ThinkProgress.

In total, the states required more than 260,000 people to submit to drug screening or testing as a condition of receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), which provides cash assistance to low-income people. In some states, not one person tested positive.

With this context in mind, I’m going to make a prediction. Next year, during our legislative session, I expect Democrats will once again try to fund pre-k in Montana, and Republicans will once again be the assholes who ignore the beneficial economic impacts. As always, those who are struggling will continue to struggle, and those who are vulnerable will pay the price.

by William Skink

What is Montana going to look like after the GREAT PANDEMIC MIGRATION of 2020? This huge state of about a million people has suddenly become one of the hottest destination locations for those with the resources to flee, and the consequences are sure to be a worsening of preexisting trends already impacting non-wealthy Montanans.

In Gallatin County they’re calling it a “crisis point” in relation to housing. That valley has a vacancy rate that hovers around 0% and the median cost of a home just keeps going up and up. From the link:

The cost of a home in the Gallatin Valley is more expensive than ever.

Between July 2020 and August 2020, the median price of a single-family home in Gallatin County increased more dramatically than any other time in recent history, jumping from $487,000 to $575,450, according to the Big Sky Country Multiple Listing Service’s market watch report.

That means problems for middle and low-income people trying to buy houses.

Yeah, no shit that means problems for “middle and low-income people”. But since this is Montana, aren’t these mostly white people? Why aren’t they reaping the benefits of white supremacy?

That’s a rhetorical question, by the way.

Since consciousness of the class war could lead to a unifying rallying cry across racial divides, it’s a good thing for the ruling ownership class that we don’t think in those terms. That will make it easier to use the gig economy to evict people. From the link:

“SINCE COVID-19 MANY AMERICANS FELL BEHIND IN ALL ASPECTS,” reads the website copy. The button below this statement is not for a GoFundMe, or a petition for calling for rent relief. Instead, it is the following call to action, from a company called Civvl: “Be hired as eviction crew.” 

During a time of great economic and general hardship, Civvl aims to be, essentially, Uber, but for evicting people. Seizing on a pandemic-driven nosedive in employment and huge uptick in number-of-people-who-can’t-pay-their-rent, Civvl aims to make it easy for landlords to hire process servers and eviction agents as gig workers.

Helena Duncan, a Chicago-based paralegal who also participates in housing activism, saw a Craigslist post from Civvl while searching for jobs. The ad alarmed her. 

“It’s fucked up that there will be struggling working-class people who will be drawn to gigs like furniture-hauling or process-serving for a company like Civvl, evicting fellow working-class people from their homes so they themselves can make rent,” she told Motherboard. 

Doesn’t Civvl sound like another great tech disrupter for the investment class? Even better, this gig exploiter can help clear limited land in Missoula and Bozeman for wealthy transplants who can afford to drop a half million in cash for a house. Everyone who matters wins, and if you’re confused about who matters, just take a look at your bank account. If it doesn’t feature passive income revenue streams, you don’t matter.

I do have some bad news for our recently relocated affluent neighbors acclimating to their new surroundings: the professional class you rely on in areas like healthcare might not be available for you on demand.

I’ll share a personal anecdote. I’m a typical 40 year old male who has resisted regular check-ups with a medical provider. I don’t have a “primary care provider”, so I called one in late spring of this year to set up an appointment. After I found one accepting new patients, I scheduled my initial appointment.

I called in May. My appointment is in November.

But don’t let that dissuade you, wealth migrants. We are still selling paradise at bargain prices. And if you can afford to buy a house with cash, I’m sure the ER bill won’t bankrupt you like it has millions of Americans, regardless of the color of their skin.

by William Skink

Yesterday I was downtown with my daughter at Dragon’s Hollow, the outdoor play area volunteers recently rehabbed. The only other people around were three women and two young girls, probably about 3 and 5 years old. They were all wearing masks.

My daughter and I were not wearing masks. We were, after all, outside, and the play area was virtually empty. I made sure to keep a good distance, and they didn’t seem upset by my bare-ass face. I did overhear them lamenting how no one seems to care where they are from about wearing masks.

My two boys, who are doing in-school learning two days a week, were all set to go five. But no. Now they are saying maybe mid October. CASES ARE SURGING after all.

I don’t know how other parents with less resources are doing it. If you don’t have kids you have no fucking clue what it’s like.

I heard the phrase long night of the soul the other day. I also recently finished watching His Dark Materials.

So much of it is in our face now. James Corbett, in a recent interview, speculated that the time for trying to educate others is over. I don’t agree, but I’m also not going to waste energy on pointless arguments.

A friend of mine has been imploring me to listen to Tool’s latest, Fear Inoculum. Yesterday Descending hit me and it was wonderful. It was followed up by the song below. Enjoy.