Month: July 2021

by Travis Mateer/William Skink

This special Friday post is a DOUBLE header.

First, the breaking news: next month’s City Club Mayoral forum is now a ZOOM meeting, something predicted by, and is being reported by, Mayoral candidate Greg Strandberg.

To help educated the Missoula public, I finally busted out my amplified free-speech maker for a brief test run on the corner of Main and Higgins, letting people know our cowardly Mayor will greatly benefit from this move.

Second, I’m testing the ability to create satirical political content with a music video to accompany my song inspired by a supporter of Daniel Carlino gently explaining to me that my use of the diminutive “Danny” is not well-received by his activist supporters.

Noted.

I just wish I had better control over my artist alter-ego, William Skink.

Enjoy!

by Travis Mateer

Do you struggle to cover your cost of living, like rent?

Are you a Native American who wonders why your people are more represented in jail than they are at the Good Food Store?

Has your family member come to Montana for a fresh start, only to be assaulted and euthanized at Montana’s “best” hospital?

Well, if the answers to any of those questions is YES, then our illuminated political leadership has a PLAN and that plan has an ACRONYM and that acronym is JEDI, which stands for JUSTICE, EQUITY, DIVERSITY and INCLUSION.

Here’s the plan:

Following actions by Missoula County last week, the City of Missoula on Wednesday opened its public hearing for a resolution stating its intent to establish a just, equitable and inclusive community.

Pursuing such goals as part of a select national cohort marks the first step in setting an organizational commitment to begin the work, one that will require a budget commitment from the city to fund a new position.

The bold part might sound like a broken record to Missoula citizens at this point, but that’s probably because they are hateful racists. NON-racist Missoula citizens understand the only way to bring JEDI intentions into fruition is to commit MORE MONEY for MORE GOVERNMENT.

Acronyms are fun, and in response to the Black Lives Matter movement, Missoula made up ANOTHER acronym last year powered with public money. What did Missoula LEARN by creating this LISTENING ENGAGING ACTING REFLECTION NETORK?

To begin the work – and in response to the Black Lives Matter movement – the city last year created its LEARN strategy, which seeks to determine the level of implicit and explicit biases and inequities toward BIPOC residents in local government.

The LEARN team (Listening Engaging Acting Reflection Network) has already reviewed the city’s website and made changes and edits to more appropriately reflect the community and its goals, Gaukler said. Some departments have also had their public-facing documents reviewed and edited where necessary.

I wanted to get a better idea of the website work LEARN has done, so I went to the city website and there’s a BIG problem.

The picture being used to represent Missoula is an image of the Farmer’s Market and basically ALL I can see are white people. I scoured the image and the only person of color I could find is this little black girl:

For some reason (and probably because he’s racist), outgoing City Council person Jesse Ramos is not wildly supportive of using MORE government tax dollars to create MORE government in order to hire implicit bias hunters who can’t even do tokenism right.

From the link:

Ward Four Missoula City Councilor Jesse Ramos will not be running for reelection, as he informed KGVO News on Wednesday when asked to comment on the JEDI program update presented to the council during its Committee of the Whole meeting.

Ramos was deeply critical of the entire program.

“What essentially is that we’re going to be hiring more bureaucrats,” said Ramos. “At the end of the day, it’s a way for the government to sneakily grow itself by covering it with the guise of trying to seek this perfect utopia which they seem to always be chasing. But that’s just a ruse. They just care about making it look like they’re doing something to satisfy the voters.”

My first reaction to this clear example of right-wing hatred of minorities is to denounce Jesse Ramos as a hateful white man.

The only problem with that is Jesse Ramos doesn’t actually IDENTIFY as a white man, and he used his non-white heritage to make a political point. Awkward!

Ramos then spoke personally of his own Hispanic heritage.

“It’s really despicable,” he said. “I mean, I’m a Hispanic man. I’m one of two Hispanic people on the City Council, and this is the worst thing that I’ve seen come across my desk because it is discrimination in a package for us. It’s encouraging more and more of it. And it’s really exemplifies to me the soft bigotry of low expectations by saying that minority members in our community can’t get help without the nanny state of the government. They can’t get ahead unless the government is there to babysit them, and I think that’s just disgusting and insulting quite frankly. And I know a lot of minorities in the community agree with me on that.”

Jesse Ramos and other minorities in Missoula should just shut up and let our illuminated white leaders, like Mayor Engen, do what’s best for them.

Because anything less than total subservience to the JEDI virtue-signalers is racism.

Thanks for reading.

by Travis Mateer

The Missoula Current is finally reporting on the fires that have been happening at the homeless camps around the Reserve Street bridge, but only in the context of new efforts by the Montana Department of Transportation to build a fence:

After exploring its options and several fires, the Montana Department of Transportation on Wednesday said it will erect a fence under the Reserve Street bridge and begin moving illegal campers to an alternative site once it’s established by the city and county of Missoula.

Yes, those three bolded words are all the Current needs, apparently, in order for its readers to understand the need for a state agency to spend tax money on a fence.

But what if downplaying the 16 fires that have occurred in this area JUST SINCE JUNE causes MC readers to see this as MDOT overkill? Is that a possibility?

The article continues manipulating its readers with its description of the alternatives to the illegal encampments where all these fires have been occurring. Here’s the confusing reporting:

The decision comes as local government and their partners look to expand the shelter options for homeless individuals, including a sanctioned outdoor camp behind the Super Walmart, transitional housing and a safe outdoor camp at another location in the city.

I have read this paragraphs several times and STILL find it confusing. The way these three options are being described, it sounds like all three are being developed for use, but I do not think that is accurate.

My understanding–after doing MUCH MORE reporting on this than the Missoula Current, and actually speaking with Adriane Beck of the Office of Emergency Management–is that ONLY ONE of these three options selected by the Incident Command Team will be developed for use.

And, once that happens, the campers at Reserve will be relocated.

Later in the article, the work of the Incident Command Team is referenced, and it doesn’t clear up my confusion. Maybe I haven’t had enough coffee yet this morning. Here’s how Kidston explains the work that was done, and the results:

Earlier this month, the city and county of Missoula agreed to explore the recommendations of a task force assigned with finding shelter options for the area’s homeless residents, especially as capacity limits remain in place due to coronavirus concerns.

One of those options include a sanctioned site that could serve as a legal, minimally supported campground. It would effectively replace the illegal campsite under the Reserve Street bridge.

Adrian Beck, the director of emergency management in Missoula County and head of the incident management team assigned to the shelter task, said city property on Clark Fork Lane behind the Super Walmart on North Reserve is the preferred site.

“If we’re trying to address illegal camping in the urban wild, we need to be intentional about whether it’s easy to find,” Beck said recently. “This other location, wherever it is, needs to be easy to find, and it needs to be accessible to emergency services.”

The part I bolded about a preferred site already being identified is VERY problematic for the simple fact the public has had NO OPPORTUNITY yet to provide input on the other options.

I told Adriane Beck the lack of public input is going to make any option a tough sell, and this reporting by the Missoula Current just made it worse.

I would love to hear our four mayoral candidates talk about this issue in person at the City Club forum on August 9th, but I doubt we’ll get that chance. One of those candidates, Greg Strandberg, predicted the suspension of this event in a comment on Tuesday, and later that day the city council forum that was scheduled to occur at the County Courthouse was postponed.

If the mayoral candidates DO get a chance to discuss this issue in an open forum, I hope the abysmal job of local media outlets like the Missoula Current is pointed out, because without an informed public, we get shit like 16 years of intoxicated handshakes and fat jokes.

Time for a change?

by Travis Mateer

I may be a vehement critic of our Mayor, working hard to unseat him from his 16 year reign, but I draw the line at showing up where he lives at 5:30am on a Saturday morning, and said so last August after BLM protestors did just that.

I’ve been thinking about not crossing those kind of personal lines after recording yesterday’s Zoom Town episode and hearing from Tim Adams about a tweet identifying the hotel Tucker Carlson was staying at in Montana.

Here’s the tweet:

While doxing has been a part of cancel culture for years now, the DELTA stage of this pandemic, accompanied by an insane propaganda fear campaign, is further deranging people to the point that caring, liberal-minded people are saying shit like this:

Yes, this person would like hospitals to deny care, thus killing, the arseholes who are refusing to get vaxxed if they show up needing medical treatment.

When “Lgpguin” (aka Kathleen, according to her Twitter bio) needed protection from our local government in Missoula a few years ago because the city’s sidewalk project was going to cost her tens of thousands of dollars, this hateful person suggesting people who think the unvaxxed should be killed by hospitals rallied support on social media for HER OWN PROTECTION. From the link:

At least one of the Slant Street homeowners who led the charge via social media was pleased with the steps taken Friday afternoon.

“Thank you to Twitter & FB friends, and the S. O. , & Mayor Engen and my parents (who taught me to be a big mouth & stand up for myself.),” homeowner Kathleen Kimble wrong on Facebook. “EGREGIOUS SIDEWALK BILLS ARE ON HOLD FOR NOW, IMMEDIATE PROJECT CANCELED. City will work on better kinder formula for paying for sidewalks/ curbs.”

Kimble, however, urged local residents to stay involved in the process, lest they again be saddled with sky-high sidewalk assessments.

Billy and Kathleen are good examples of how far gone people are getting in this insane pressure cooker we find ourselves in. Doxxing and death by denial of care are A-OK to these social media zealots.

I’ve got some poems I’m working on for these people, like this one:

your science can't take data
your democracy can't take courts
your rights can't take free speech
and your media honest reports

your equality has no balance
your empathy has no heart
your passion has no ethos
and a race to the bottom ain't hard

by Travis Mateer

Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Zoom Town. Here are some links to accentuate what we discussed:

Red Pill Festival Missoulian coverage

Bari Weiss article

Missoula Current article on firework

No Speed Limit: The Highs And Lows Of Meth

Biles/Osaka Olympics article

Also, later this week, I’ll be posting a video that goes along with the song I wrote and recorded last week.

Thanks for listening!