Month: April 2021

by Travis Mateer

I think there are some assumptions behind the arrogant blatancy of Missoula’s political establishment assembling its GDT (Gentrification Dream Team) and the main one is this: citizens don’t have the bandwidth to pay attention.

Another assumption is that if Missoula citizens DO want to pay attention by, for example, reading a hip online news journals like the Missoula Current, then those outlets will be effective gatekeepers, only printing the bare minimum of what’s needed, like the names being appointed to sit on the Affordable Housing Resident Oversight Committee.

This is where I come in, using the power of the internet (in the time it took me to have a bowel movement) to find out stuff a 5th grader with an iPad could find.

Before getting to know Will Sebern, let’s remind ourselves why COMMUNITY members like Will are being asked to provide input through this committee:

The city created its Affordable Housing Trust fund last summer. Once seated, the committee will recommend allocating funding from the trust fund toward certain housing needs and projects.

“I think this committee is really important to this community and we took it very seriously,” said council member Gwen Jones.

I agree with Jones, they ARE taking this committee very seriously, so seriously that they see it as an opportunity to slip a GDT from the bench into the coveted COMMUNITY slot:

The city’s appointments, approved on Wednesday, include Paul Herendeen from the banking and finance industry and Katie Carlson from the housing and real estate industry. The appointments also include Laura Bird – a community member with experience seeking housing assistance – and community member Will Sebern.

I don’t know how our illuminated braintrust (City Council members) technically DEFINE what it means to be a COMMUNITY member, but if Will Sebern is supposed to be an example, it means you moved from Milwaukee four years ago to take a government job with the city of Missoula…

…and now you’re working at ClassPass in the heart of downtown:

Here’s a little perspective I’d like to share with RD readers because it helps put the PEP in my STEP when I think about it, and it goes something like this: Missoula’s political establishment is assembling a GDT because they absolutely NEED a GDT to maintain control. They can’t even allow a puny little community member in a toothless committee appointment to sully the PR plan because EVERY SINGLE FACET must SPARKLE to DAZZLE the public into a stupor of learned helplessness.

And that is where I come in.

So stay tuned…

by Travis Mateer

I listened to a podcast recently that blew my mind. It’s an interview with John Ziegler, an investigative journalist who has essentially proven that the convicted serial pedophile, Jerry Sandusky, is NOT guilty of the crimes he is currently in prison for.

How can that be? Listen to the interview.

I offer this today because I don’t have time for a proper post, and I think this story has relevance for anyone interested in narrative control.

by Travis Mateer

One of the biggest gaps in services that exists in Montana is treatment programs for substance abuse. Whenever I see money floating around, like the quarter million United Way got from the Federal program Project Safe Neighborhoods, I wonder who will actually be helped (besides the United Way-connected consultants who always seem to get tapped to control the government cheese).

Money is a great mechanism of control because revenue streams are like leashes, with programs like the one I led having its financial collar on tight and strategically yanked by funders like United Way. A BIG reason I’m getting more public with my criticism now is because my former program, the Homeless Outreach Team, is being used for political purposes by the VERY compromised Executive Director of United Way.

When it comes to the controlling force of money, a politicized non-profit director is not Montana’s only problem. Another problem we have is the marketing scheme known as The Meth Project, which is peddled to low-information Montanans as a part of the solution to the problem of meth in Montana.

Thomas Siebel, the billionaire behind The Meth Project, got a big chunk of his wealth by doing what our Governor did, selling a tech company to Oracle. Sibel’s payday came in 2006 when he sold Siebel Systems to Oracle for 5.8 billion.

As I was doing a little digging I found this Intercept piece that ties Oracle’s origins to our benevolent intelligence agency, the CIA. From the link:

Oracle, a company named after the Central Intelligence Agency project codename that birthed the firm in 1977, has extensive government contracts to provide database systems for a range of expansive law enforcement and surveillance-related government agencies, including the National Security Agency; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; and the Department of Homeland Security.

And Oracle services have been proposed to develop database services for the implementation of California’s AB 857, one of the newest state gun registry laws in the nation. The bill, signed in July 2016 by Gov. Jerry Brown, provides new regulations on homemade firearms, including a mandate that homemade guns must be registered with the state.

The technocratic solutions to societal scourges like meth abuse will be more layers of technocratic control. This is the technocratic dystopia people like Alison McDowell have been warning about.

by Travis Mateer

This week’s episode of Zoom Town, which I will post later this morning, is a continued conversation about the Reserve Street homeless camps and how this issue could impact local elections.

Since the filing period for candidates goes through June, the dynamics could change a lot between now and summer. For example, according to the Missoulian, Rebecca Dawson is challenging Jordan Hess for representation of Ward 2, and a member of law enforcement, Bob Campbell, is now challenging incumbent Stacie Anderson for Ward 5.

Here is quote from Campbell about why he’s running:

“The controlling city leadership insists on a path that is set to work against working families–an insatiable appetite to grow government, stifle small business in the midst of a pandemic, and the gentrification of an entire generation of Missoulians–hardly a Missoula that works for everyone,” Campbell said in an op-ed to the Missoulian announcing his run.

In Ward 4 Alan Ault announced he’ll be running against Jim Nugent’s son, Mike Nugent, who works for Berkshire Hathaway home services AND is Vice President of United Way’s board:

One of the races I’ll be most interested in covering is the battle for Ward 1 between J. Kevin Hunt and Jennifer Savage. Savage, a communication specialist (propagandist?), will have her hands full crafting a viable message to successfully counter Hunt’s articulate concern about what his hometown has experienced during Engen’s reign. Here is Hunt in his own words from the Missoulian:

“Those very wealthy and powerful interests are well-represented on the City Council and their influence has depressed local wages, displaced people from affordable apartments and mobile homes, threatened to dispossess older Missoulians from their homes due to skyrocketing property taxes driven by TIF projects, decimated urban farmland and open space, and too often entailed secretive dealings, little oversight and Orwellian double-speak,” Hunt said in an email. “I am running to end that influence over the Council and to foster local government that is clean, lean and green.

This election cycle is going to be unlike any Missoula has ever experienced. People are scared and financially squeezed in ways they never could have imagined a year and a half ago.

And what have our community leaders done during this difficult time? Have they adjusted their development goals during this supposed crisis, or have they continued business as usual, throwing public money at butterfly houses and Covid cash at strapped State Senators like Ellie Boldman (no longer) Smith?

I hope a reckoning is coming for the Mayor and his stable of enablers, but I’m not going to sit around twiddling my thumbs waiting for that to happen. Instead I’m going to make sure my fellow Missouians have AS MUCH INFORMATION AS POSSIBLE regarding how these political players have been operating over the past decade.

So stay tuned…

by Travis Mateer

Last Friday I helped add to the tons of trash recently pulled from the Reserve Street encampments. With the river ready to swell as warmer temperatures hit later this week, the scramble to get as much trash into bags is on.

Because I understand how important media framing can be–and because I’m not too proud to beg–I was able to get this important detail into the article:

Travis Mateer, a volunteer, said one of the residents at the camp just got done working an overnight shift and was trying to catch some much-needed sleep, so volunteers were trying to avoid as much disruption as possible.

I was appreciative this detail was shared with me by the people leaving the site, and I am appreciative it made it into the paper. If I’m going to have any continued role in finding some common ground out there, I need the help of local media to not repeat what they did in 2017 with an article that concluded like this:

When asked what they plan to do for the winter, Steve and Tina only shook their heads and Tina began to cry.

“I guess we’ll build a shack out of pallets,” Tina said. “I actually like the cold.”

“It’s hard because it really was kind of a Shangri-La,” Steve said of the camp. “You should have seen it. Now it’s all blown up.”

Realistically nothing is going to stop people from going out to this area, but that doesn’t mean some statewide entity might not try.

Especially if it means spending tax money.