by Travis Mateer
Sigh.
It just gets crazier and crazier, so Tim and I discuss it. I read a poem. Social bonds are blowing up. Boomers are nostalgic over peace signs as another body is added to the count of…what exactly? A mental health crisis involving a machete?
I dunno. It’s only Tuesday. It’s only September. And it’s a marathon, not a sprint.
by Travis Mateer
UPDATE BELOW
I am done allowing city council candidate J. Kevin Hunt free range to comment on my blog for a number of reasons, the main one being his refusal to answer my simple, direct question: do I have the right to say NO to a vaccine?
Does Hunt’s refusal to answer this question mean he supports medical apartheid?
I don’t know. I tried calling Hunt weeks ago, but he stopped taking my calls, and since he won’t be commenting here anymore, he won’t be able to lecture me on why the Australians are doing a fantastic job.
What, you didn’t know medical apartheid already arrived in Australia? It has, and here is the premier of Victoria explaining what the future economy will look like:
“There is going to be a vaccinated economy, and you get to participate in that if you are vaccinated,” Andrews stated. “We’re going to move to a situation where, to protect the health system, we are going to lock out people who are not vaccinated and can be.”
He added: “If you’re making the choice not to get vaccinated, then you’re making the wrong choice.”
How cute, they’re still calling this a “choice” in the totalitarian penal colony of the crown. I wonder if this gives J. Kevin Hunt’s budding authoritarianism a mandate hard-on?
It’s really unfortunate I’m writing this post at all, especially considering all the money Hunt has invested in himself for this campaign.
Last month mayoral candidate Greg Strandberg took a look at Ward 1 candidate financial reports and had this to say about Hunt’s campaign:
Hunt received $8,500 over the past month, spent about $5,400 and now has $3,400 in the bank. Most of his spending was for a mass-mailer of about 6,000 campaign brochures. That cost him about $5,000.
In the days since that report came out, he’s filed two additional reports, listing about $2,500 more to send out around 6,000 postcards.
$8,400 of Hunt’s campaign money comes from donations to himself, which are listed as loans. Hunt has been running since March, but since that time, just one individual has donated to his campaign.
With all this money being spent by the candidate, it’s too bad there’s no one to counsel J. Kevin Hunt on how NOT to turn a supporter into a detractor, because that is precisely what he’s done to me.
And the sociopathic elite love it.
We don’t have to allow the bifurcation of our society to happen over this pandemic, but in order to stop what’s coming, people like J. Kevin Hunt have to face their fears and see the propaganda (and who benefits) for what it is.
I was plenty afraid during the first few months of this madness, but I faced those fears and came out the other side healthier and stronger than ever in my resolve to expose the corruption in this town.
J. Kevin Hunt has taken some bold actions in the recent past toward this goal of exposing local corruption, but this attempt to drag his old-normal progressivism into the new-normal of a liberal culture war has turned this former supporter against his political ambitions.
So, with all that said, if you live in Ward 1 and you haven’t turned in your primary ballot yet, my suggestion would be to darken the bubble for Jane VonFossen. Instead of wasting time by commenting on a blog to shame someone for medical decisions they are making for their family, Jane is trying to understand how the city of Missoula spends our money:
I’ve spent a great deal of time recently trying to get a clear picture of how that money is being used. It’s been a challenge. It shouldn’t be that hard, but it is. The City of Missoula isn’t very transparent in how our money is being spent. When I’m elected, special high-cost programs and projects that benefit a few with connections to City Hall and select areas of the city, will be identified and called out. Today’s City government culture fosters secrecy and hidden spending.
Right on, Jane VonFossen. If I lived in Ward 1, this is who I would be voting for.
Thanks for reading.
UPDATE
Below is a response candidate Hunt sent me via email. I’m just going to copy and paste it, as I have more serious things to be attending to at present.
List of your lies about me in your latest blog post:
(1) that I refuse to answer your question re whether you had a right to refuse vaccination. This is really bizarre given that your readers had to have seen my answer.
(2) that I shamed you for the medical decisions you make for your family. Never happened.(3) that since March, only one individual has donated to my campaign.
(4) that I lecture you about the Australians. Never happened. I’ve never referred to them at all.
(5) that I stopped taking your calls.
(6) that I am a totalitarian (this one is hysterical).
(7) that I support mandatory vaccination of everyone. I expressly stated that I do NOT, in the response to your question that you now claim I never provided! That was seen by many people. Of which I retained a copy.
I find it difficult to believe that you would engage in deliberate lying. That leaves me with the only alternative explanation — corroborated by the claim that I never answered your question — which is that you’re now afflicted with a thought disorder. In addition to the gross confabulations, your logical thought processes have gone out the window.
I don’t expect you to correct the lies you wrote about me, but I demand it just the same. I can’t influence public opinion as to whether you’re a crackpot, but I have plenty that paints you as a prevaricator. Correct the false statements.
jkh
by Travis Mateer
I didn’t mean to connect the resurrection of Missoula’s iconic PEACE sign with the killing of Johnny Lee Perry. It just sort of happened as I reminded myself why the name Jim Parker sounded familiar.
The context for this story is the reassembly of the PEACE sign behind the Jeannette Rankin PEACE center. It was, by all accounts, a PEACEful event:
Twenty years ago, an infamous and iconic symbol sitting on the North Hills outside of Missoula was removed.
On Friday, the reassembled Missoula Peace Sign made its debut back to town at First Friday. Behind the Jeannette Rankin Peace Center, a crowd gathered to see the image in its glory and celebrate its return. Storytelling and music ushered in the peaceful event. The event ended with a ribbon cutting of the sign.
Later in the article, we get to Jim Parker’s peaceful role in returning this symbol to its former glory:
Jim Parker, Jeannette Rankin Peace Center member, told the audience the story of the peace symbol, and spoke with MTN News.
“For many people who grew up in Missoula in those days, they’d always come home and they knew they were home and they’d look up into the hills and see the peace sign,” Parker said.
Now, it’s a 24 foot high permanent art installation for all to see.
Yes, Jim Parker should be proud of how much peace he’s spreading around, especially on a not-so-peaceful first Friday that saw a man arrested for strangling his wife to death, and the release of the victim’s name shot by Sheriff Deputies over a week ago.
The connection Jim Parker has with the Sheriff’s Department is through his marketing company, Westridge Creative. I found this little connection because of political complaints Sheriff McDermott faced in 2018 over claims from his opponent. From the link:
In his complaint, Wafstet also alleges that McDermott failed to list expenditures or debt for campaign signs. He also believes that a $3,360 expenditure to Westridge Creative for “project management” failed to include the specific services performed by the agency.
I love squishy terms that can mean anything you want, like “project management” or “public safety”. It makes me think of the open-ended way Westridge Creative pitches its opportunities:
I see absolutely no problem with a member of the PEACE center having a professional relationship with a Sheriff’s Department that must put down a machete-wielding homeless man from time to time.
Peace doesn’t just happen all by itself, after all. Sometimes it even requires lethal force to keep it safe.
by Travis Mateer
Last week I spoke with a homeless man on the County courthouse lawn. He said some people were run out of the Reserve encampments and they have nowhere to go. He said he was directed to the Transitional Safe Outdoor Space, which he can’t access, and the Sleepy Inn isn’t an option either.
I investigated the claims of widespread dislocation of campers from the Reserve street area, but that does NOT seem to be happening. Something else that is NOT happening, which was reported on earlier this week, is ANY homeless people using the city-purchased Sleepy Inn.
Why?
Because our illuminated city leadership can’t do shit without Federal money, apparently, which is why the Sleepy Inn has been closed since THE END OF JUNE. I’m yelling because it wasn’t until September 1st that this was reported, so two whole months before the public is told this:
Missoula’s Sleepy Inn has been sitting empty since June 30 after Gov. Greg Gianforte rescinded the state emergency declaration for COVID-19, causing the county to lose FEMA money for noncongregate shelters.
That’s posing challenges for Missoula’s homeless shelters.
“Right now, there is nowhere for people to quarantine and isolate,” said Jill Bonny, executive director at the Poverello Center. “We are able to put them in touch with the health department’s social worker, but we don’t have an option for them to stay. Unfortunately, we are hearing daily about people quarantined in tents and on the street.”
While it was in operation, the Poverello Center would move a positive COVID-19 case to the Sleepy Inn. Without FEMA dollars, there’s no money to operate the inn.
Cool. Our illuminated braintrust bought a motel with TIF money because of the pandemic, and it’s been sitting empty for two months because, without FEMA cash, our leaders are apparently fucking helpless.
Also, if readers can recall all the way back to April 2020, when these rocket scientists paid A BUNCH of money for this nasty motel, there was concern about how quickly we paid $1.1 million dollars for a property worth MUCH LESS.
The three City Council members who don’t take shots of Engen’s Kool-Aid tried penning a letter, but to no avail. Here’s a portion of their plea:
We need to see commercial estimates by commercial appraisers. This hotel was listed six years ago for $675,000 dollars. At the time the owner was so desperate to get rid of it that they were offering owner financing on it. This price is close to half of what the city is now paying for it after 6 years of wear and tear in the middle of an economic depression. It is also worth noting that the taxable value of the hotel is roughly 400k less than the value the MRA plans to spend. It is our strong recommendation that the City gets at least two commercial appraisals. We do not know if a commercial appraisal has been completed on the property and we do not know if the tax dollars (that we supposedly preside over) are being spent wisely or appropriately.
Because these council members were ignored by the illuminated braintrust, we now get to read this about our empty congregate shelter in September of 2021:
After June 30, the county handed the keys back to the city. In the process, they found out there’s also a plumbing issue at the Sleepy Inn, but it hasn’t been investigated or fixed. It won’t be until the city decides what to do with the property.
If I were in another town in Montana, looking at what Missoula is doing, the last thing I would want to do is duplicate anything our braintrust is doing.
But that’s not the reaction in Helena. Nope, the dim bulbs running our capitol town are dealing with their own homeless problems and the BIG IDEA is to do an outdoor tent space like Missoula’s TSOS.
The only difference is the acronym:
Good Samaritan Ministries has proposed one idea on how to address the issue: the Helena Outdoor Temporary Safe Shelter, or HOTSS.
Based on the Temporary Safe Outdoor Space program in Missoula, it would include tents and sanitary facilities and be staffed around the clock to serve people who are homeless.
Theresa Ortega, executive director of Good Samaritan, said the most important thing would be to connect people using the shelter with social services.
“You can have a place, but if you don’t have the services to help people to get to the next place, we’re still going to be in the same place that we are,” she said.
With so much help to provide people dealing with the homeless/housing crisis, I’m sure it’s all hands on deck to solve this dire situation.
Or maybe there are other, more pressing priorities, like trying to figure out how many dangerous, costly unvaccinated humans are roaming around the County.
Cue the illuminated COUNTY braintrust and their AMAZING calculating efforts! From the link:
While Missoula County leads Montana in vaccination rates at around 63% of the eligible population, nearly 40% remain unvaccinated, and local officials are trying to do the math to determine the future costs they’ll possibly incur as unvaccinated individuals get sick.
The Delta variant of Covid-19 is more virulent than its predecessor, which swept across the state last fall, killing more than 1,000 adults and hospitalizing countless more. With the new strain afoot, the number of cases are rising sharply, returning to figures not seen since last winter.
“We were chatting this morning about whether there’s a way to make some kind of an estimate on how many people are unvaccinated, and given a reasonable presumption that they’re all going to get Covid” said Missoula County Commissioner Josh Slotnick. “And how many people are vaccinated, and if 1% of them get Covid, and what percent will get hospitalized, and what a typical number of contacts are.”
Yes, the braintrust that struggles to accurately count homeless people in January is just casually engaging in morning chats about counting the unvaccinated because they’re reasonably presuming we’re all going to get this dangerous variant and cost the County precious money (which they don’t have).
At the risk of sounding uncivil, fuck these motherfuckers.
One factor inspiring my civility toward the braintrust is the effort last May to discover what they’re discussing behind the curtain of public/private partnerships. Remember that? Here’s a refresher if you don’t:
A Miller Creek resident and mom, Mackenzie Smith, who lives near Missoula’s outdoor homeless shelter, is still hoping to get more information about its operations.
NBC Montana told you last week when she filed a freedom of information request and only got part of what she asked for.
She received roughly 955 different emails or documents, but none included information about the budget and communication with landowners like she asked.
Smith was told to get that information it would cost nearly $800 for time and labor.
I guess transparency is a costly thing to produce in our liberal utopia, like the transcripts of the trial against Brandon Bryant, the whistleblowing drone operator our Missoula County Attorney’s Office tried making an example of with felony charges carrying the chilling threat of 10 years in prison.
If you want to know what happened in that courtroom in July, it will cost (I am told) around $2,500 dollars for the transcripts.
So, in conclusion, the next time you hear our illuminated braintrust use terms like “transparency” or “public safety”, try not to laugh in their faces. You probably won’t get an opportunity to do this anymore, since they hide behind Zoom screens, public/private partnerships and homeless people, but if you do, use restraint, otherwise you might be charged with the serious crime of making our elected leaders uncomfortable.
Which is a felony.
by Travis Mateer
UPDATE BELOW
This news has finally broken within the last hour, though I started hearing rumors yesterday that Johnny Lee Perry was the supposed machete-wielding shooting victim of the Missoula County Sheriff’s Department.
Now it’s official:
Ravalli County Sheriff and Coroner Steve Holton issued a press release on Friday afternoon identifying the victim of a fatal Missoula County Sheriff’s Office shooting that occurred on August 29.
The victim was identified as Johnny Lee Perry II of Missoula. The Ravalli County Coroner’s Office is conducting the Coroner investigation, which is common practice when another agency’s personnel are involved in a custodial death. The Montana Division of Criminal Investigation is conducting an independent investigation as well.
While I process this late-Friday news story, you can read about my interaction with the victim here.
UPDATE:
NBC Montana has some pretty important information about what is NOT being reported so far regarding this incident, which happened a week ago tomorrow (today is 9-4-21). From the link (emphasis mine):
This week, investigators say he threatened law enforcement officers with a machete, refused to put it down and didn’t back off after what deputies called several “non-lethal” attempts to calm him.
Perry died at the hospital.
We’ve requested twice to know the name of the deputies involved in the shooting. We’ll let you know if officials tell us.
Hopefully more information will come out as questions swirl, especially among the homeless people I talked to.