Good News, My Screw Up Could Be Your Learning Opportunity

by Travis Mateer

While today’s earlier post wasn’t an intentional fabrication, I got the core fact the entire post hinges on embarrassingly wrong, so I had to update it admitting I was wrong.

You see, sometimes it’s possible to jump to false conclusions. When this happens, and it’s pointed out to you, you have a choice: admit you’re wrong, or double down on the false conclusion.

Incorrectly implying a possible conflict of interest due to an assumed relationship that doesn’t exist is one thing. Incorrectly calling what happened in Washington DC on 1/6/21 an attempted coup or insurrection warranting MORE state power, ANOTHER impeachment and the RESIGNATION of Montana’s Senator? That is an entirely different thing.

I’m bringing up my error in dot-connecting, along with the developing reaction to 1/6/21 (which Chuck Schumer compared to Pearl Harbor), because tomorrow’s episode of Zoom Town deals with both.

On the dot-connecting front my guest, Tim, helps me connect the Poverello’s change in policy from a sobriety model to a behavior-based model, and what that policy change meant for first responders. Tim has worked at 911 dispatch, both in Bozeman and in Missoula, so his perspective is very valuable.

Since the release of the Stevensons’ interview last Tuesday, I have also had two, off-the-record conversations with Missoula first responders that have helped me understand the dynamics involved. I hope more people will come forward to share their perspectives on what is happening.

Since Tim identifies as a conservative, which is on the other end of the political divide currently in control of our local municipality, the current political insanity felt like it HAD to be a part of the conversation, especially as Montana political hacks like Don Pogreba try to ride the wave of outrage to oust Republican Senator Steve Daines from office.

From the link:

Daines has not learned anything from the horrific events of Wednesday when American democracy was under siege from rioters who were hunting the Vice President of the United States to execute him, when seditionists set up a gallows outside the Capitol building, and when self-styled patriots attacked it with what appears to have been some level of military planning.

Despite those attacks, and even though the impetus for them was the lie spread by Donald Trump and his Congressional enablers that the election had been stolen, Daines is still spreading the fiction that there were problems with the elections in Georgia and Arizona, consequences be damned.

Who has time or the bandwidth to deal with local matters of corruption and injustice when there’s seditionists to find and punish, and more surveillance legislation to pass, and alternative tech platforms to shutdown, and book deals to cancel, and…and where does this all end?

I don’t think it ends with a correction at the top of blog post, that’s for damn sure.

I would LIKE to be wrong about that.

It’s A Small World, Missoula County Communications Edition

by Travis Mateer

UPDATE: Well, this is embarrassing. I got the relationship between Justin Franz and Alison Franz wrong, which is the whole point of the post. I apologize for the incorrect, sloppy work and will leave this here as a reminder to double check details before hitting the publish button.

While Montana is a BIG state, geographically speaking, we are tiny when it comes to the population department. Even with Missoula’s gentrification/development trends on steroids (thanks to an inland migration of people fleeing west coast cities) we are still a small community.

Let me give you an example of what I am talking about.

Before starting my own podcast, which features an interview that brings up disturbing questions regarding the death of Sean Stevenson, I was interviewed for the Project 7 Podcast about David Burgert, the still at-large (and presumed dead, by some) fugitive on the FBI’s most wanted list.

One of the creators of this podcast, Justin Franz, is a former Flathead Beacon reporter and current freelance writer for the Montana Free Press. Here is his journalistic pedigree from the MFP website:

Justin Franz is a freelance writer, photographer and editor based in Whitefish. Originally from Maine, he is a graduate of the University of Montana’s School of Journalism and worked for the Flathead Beacon for nine years. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, Seattle Times and New York Times.

If you follow Franz on Twitter you will discover he LOVES trains. Why would this be a significant detail to mention? Well, because another guy who loves trains, and is aggressively pushing Missoula County to get behind passenger rail, is Missoula County Commissioner, Dave Strohmaier.

And who does Dave Strohmaier rely on for communications coordination? That would be Alison Franz, Missoula County’s Communication Coordinator, a believer in government transparency, and wife of train enthusiast, Justin Franz.

I ALSO think trains are interesting, like the history of Chinese labor exploitation and political corruption that came west with the rails. The Germans also loved trains, and many good Germans worked hard to make sure those trains were effective in transporting…stuff. What kind of stuff? Good Germans knew not to ask too many questions.

Corruption and trains are so closely intertwined that season 2 of True Detective built its entire storyline around a shady, billion dollar California high-speed rail project. In that show, which is totally just dramatized fiction and nothing like the real world, cops are just as disposable as the woman who work the sex parties.

In the real world, if homeless people were being used as disposable humans for larger political aims, I’m sure a believer in government transparency and her “free press” freelancer husband would want to help a reluctant citizen journalist get to the truth of what happened and what is happening in their community.

Right?