by Travis Mateer
The video you are about to see is footage I recorded of the homeless camps around the Reserve Street bridge. The audio is me reading a statement of acknowledgment that was first read during the inaugural meeting of the Affordable Housing Resident Oversight Committee.
I will also note that this video came about only AFTER collaborative cleanup efforts were undermined by the Executive Director of United Way of Missoula County, Susan Hay Patrick.
by Travis Mateer
Earlier this week I wrote about a Montana Democrat, Kimberly Dudik, who pivoted from losing the AG race to running a new public policy institute called the Public Policy Institute of the Rockies. This effort isn’t just some public service to better educate the electorate on issues like child marriage. No, it’s a money making opportunity, pimping access to state lawmakers for a price:
The screenshot above shows the different options I had for joining the “special edition” of Dudik’s Tuesday Talks series, so I paid 5 bucks (and some change) so I could get the inside scoop from people like this:
I am VERY HAPPY I spent the money for this SPECIAL access to Dudik’s political colleagues because I learned some interesting things that I can now share with RD readers. Here are some of my takeaways.
Montana Cannabis providers will be protected from BIG WEED for 18 months, so they better have their shit together by January 1st, 2022, if they want to benefit from the early Montana edge they will have. I also learned that Clearwater Credit Union has a special banking program that providers must apply for because of all the work it takes doing local banking as Big Federal Brother still considers weed a dangerous drug.
Also, judge Leslie Halligan is on the board of Clearwater, which I found interesting (I’m glad some panelists have a propensity for name-dropping).
Speaking of money, legal expungement for past cannabis-related charges is going to be a great opportunity for lawyers to make money. To emphasize this opportunity, Senator Ellie Boldman promoted a fellow lawyer’s cleverly priced $420 expungement legal package. So, if you have the money, you can hire this guy to expunge your record.
The other major takeaway I got from this 5 dollar Zoom meeting is that money drives all the sausage making in Helena. What does that mean for consumers of Cannabis? Well, if you’re consuming recreational marijuana, you’ll be paying a 23% tax rate vs. medical weed, which is taxed at just 4%.
This financial incentive has put chronic pain patients in the crosshairs of lawmakers. One suggestion that came from a panelist to medical patients is KEEP YOUR CARD because it’s not entirely clear what will happen to patients who use Cannabis instead of opiates to manage chronic pain. I think one of the problems is how few doctors in Montana were actually making referrals to use Cannabis for chronic pain, leading to suspicion about the legitimacy of the referrals, but that’s speculation on my part.
Another aspect of this meeting is the political spin that emanated from the DEMOCRAT lawmakers. I note the political affiliation in ALL CAPS to highlight the political ideology and ONLY political ideology represented. This allowed the political panelists to frame what happened in Helena as greedy Republicans who just wanted the tax money vs noble Democrats fighting the good fight for the people.
To ensure future benefit of this political framing, most of the panelists claimed THE FIGHT IS NOT OVER against conservative culture warriors who hate stoners and will eventually be coming (so they say) for new products being sold in the Cannabis market, like the various forms of hippie crack (concentrates).
By using fear to minimize critical thinking, Democrats hope to keep their dwindling Montana supporters in psychological cages (oops, I mean FACILITIES) where they will assume anything bad that happens at the state level with regards to Marijuana policy will be the result of selfish, tax-cut-obsessed Republicans.
The reality, as usual, is more complicated than the simple binaries peddled by self-serving political creatures. So be weary of who you are being told your enemies are, because from my perspective there are some wolves out there who like to pretend to be social justice shepherds.
Thanks for reading!
by Travis Mateer
Back in April I wrote a post about the conflicted role of blockchain technology for those fighting against the totalitarian predator class. The conflict I was highlighting seemed to center on researcher Alison McDowell (who I interviewed in January) and Derrick Broze from the Conscious Resistance.
After writing that post, McDowell made some comments, including this one directed at me:
I never responded to this comment because I wasn’t sure what to say. I still GREATLY appreciate McDowell’s research because I think her perspective is one of the most important ones to take into consideration as we formulate ways to resist the totalitarian technocracy that is rapidly descending.
While I appreciate McDowell’s research, I DO NOT appreciate the rift that has emerged and the divisiveness it has created, with absolutist rhetoric coming from McDowell, making her sound like Bush Junior declaring YOU ARE EITHER WITH US OR AGAINST US!
Where is all this coming from?
Earlier this week I got my answer thanks to a very courageous interview Whitney Webb (another amazing researcher who did unparalleled work on Epstein) did with Ryan Cristian on Rokfin.
The connection between Whitney Webb and Alison McDowell is Raul Diego, a former contributor to Mint Press News and, according to Webb (and the plethora of evidence she produced), a deceptive manipulator and crypto thief.
I had no clue about any of this when I interviewed McDowell, but I do remember being surprised at how vociferously she reacted to me mentioning agorism because of her assertion that agorists (and now I know she was thinking of Broze here) were entangling their ideology with the support of crypto currencies and blockchain technology.
After watching Whitney Webb painfully rip open her personal life to show, through private messages, how she explored a romantic relationship with Diego, I have a much better understanding of the individual who has seemingly ensnared McDowell in his troubling fixation on Whitney Webb, and his murky motivations for sewing division among the alternative news community.
According to Webb (and the evidence she produces to back up her claims), when the possibility of a romantic relationship with Diego fizzled, he turned on her and exploited his access to her crypto earnings and stole $10,000. The evidence is pretty damn conclusive.
Whitney Webb walked us through a deeply embarrassing and emotionally stressful time in her life in excruciating detail in order to help a fellow researcher (and mom) see the manipulator that has dug his claws into her psyche.
I hope it works.
by Travis Mateer
The post I was working on this morning isn’t happening (can’t upload a video right now), so instead I’ll just mention a survey of Missoula residents regarding quality of life issues.
Here’s how this survey is informing County purse-string pullers like Dale Bickell, who now thinks Missoula residents are excited to pay more taxes for affordable housing projects (emphasis mine):
Support for tax increases to fund improvements to services varied.
“We’ve heard a lot about property tax reform and we’ve been advocating for it a lot,” said Dale Bickell. “But it’s also how willing are you to support the services we provide for us to be able to continue to maintain or increase our level of service.”
The survey found varying support for tax increases across all categories, though fire services, mental health and housing affordability scored highest with moderate support. Tax increases to support planning for growth, traffic management, permitting and municipal court scored the lowest.
“Clearly housing affordability is a top issue of our residents. They’re actually willing to help support housing affordability by paying for it,” said city CAO Dale Bickell. “If we can come up with programs to support that, I think our residents would tend to support that.”
Not surprisingly, there is a correlation between thinking shit is cool in Missoula and how much money you have, as denoted by the neighborhood you live in:
The survey touched on other factors as well, including quality of life. The number of respondents who described it as “excellent” fell by 2% and those who said it was “good” fell by 3%. The number of respondents who said it was “fair,” “below average” and “poor” all increased slightly.
But views on quality of life varied by ward, with Ward 3 (University District) scoring the highest at 81% and Ward 6 (Reserve Street area) scoring the lowest at 70%.
Yes, if you’re living near the University, life is peachy, but if you’re closer to economic sacrifice zones like the area around the homeless camps around the Reserve Street bridge, not so much.
It’s funny our illuminated braintrust require surveys to tell them stuff like this. Less funny is the assumption that to fix problems, our government just needs more of our tax money.
Tomorrow I’ll have a proper post. Maybe even a video.
So stay tuned…
by Travis Mateer
For today’s post I’m going to highlight three recent stories about government spending. The first one is about a Missoula County MASTER PLAN for trails that will cost taxpayers a little of a hundred grand. The company that was awarded this contract is from Colorado:
More than a year after ending in-person public meetings due to the pandemic, Missoula County on Tuesday resumed a hybrid format, maintaining a virtual session while gathering publicly in the courthouse conference room.
In doing so, commissioners approved a $104,000 contract with Design Workshop, Inc., to draft a county-wide master plan for trails and rural connectivity.
County planner Juniper Davis said the final plan will give the county a long-range guide to build “priority pathways” outside the city limits while also exploring future funding opportunities.
For our second story, the difficulty in finding labor combined with rising costs for materials is now delaying the Mullan area BUILD project:
The ongoing labor shortage and the limited availability of materials have resulted in “significant” cost inflation, local officials said.
The increase in costs exceeded available funding, prompting to the change in schedule. The project was set to begin this year but has been pushed back to next spring.
“We truly made every possible effort to advance this project forward in 2021,” said Missoula County Public Works Director Shane Stack. “Unfortunately, with elements as unpredictable as the pandemic, our funding scenario wasn’t what we thought it would be at this point. We aren’t able to move forward on the original timeline.”
ON Monday, Stack said the project’s partners had amassed around $19.3 million for the project. However, with the project now 100% designed, the costs ring in at around $22.8 million.
And, for our last story, Peter Lambros is a smart business man. After using the threat of blight as a form of extortion, he got government cheese for his mall property, then flipped the mall property, and now he must be smiling big as the entity that bought the property is now filing for bankruptcy:
The corporate owner of Southgate Mall in Missoula filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Sunday, saying the lingering impacts from the pandemic forced its hand.
Washington Prime Group (WPG), which stands as one of the nation’s largest mall owners, said the voluntary move will enable the company to restructure its business model moving forward.
In its announcement, the company said it had secured the necessary financing to continue day-to-day operations to “ensure that all business operations continue” without interruption.
While there is lots of noise in Missoula these days regarding the signaling of virtues and the critical theory of race, the reality at the end of the day is that it’s almost always ALL ABOUT THE MONEY!
Thanks for reading.