Month: December 2021

by Travis Mateer

UPDATE BELOW

Today’s post has some information about the Barsotti case I’ll be getting into, hopefully, in today’s podcast episode of Zoom Chron. I was on the phone yesterday and will be making some calls today to better understand the status of the investigation.

One of the more confusing aspects of this case is the jurisdictional relationship between Mineral County, where the investigation originated, and Missoula County. This ABC article at the end of September offers some insight into those dynamics:

Barsotti was last seen on July 20 at approximately 2:15 p.m. at the Town Pump in Superior. She was reported missing on July 21, and an extensive search with aid from four counties and Two Bear Air began.

According to a release from the Mineral County Office of the Sheriff-Coroner, Barsotti’s vehicle and some personal items were located at MM 71 by the Clark Fork River near Alberton and crews began to search the area.

All other leads were investigated by the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office Detective Division, and have now been exhausted.

“The search for Rebekah Barsotti has been extensive; the most extensive in recent Mineral County history in terms of resources and hours,” Sheriff Mike Toth said. “I’m thankful for the support of our neighboring law enforcement agencies, especially Missoula County Sheriff’s Office. Mineral County Sheriff’s Office is compassionate to the Barsotti family and their search for their loved one. We will continue to work with the Barsotti family and the case will remain an active Missing Persons case and any credible leads will be investigated.”

Wow, FOUR counties helped with this investigation AND Two Bear Air? The Barsotti family should be UNCRITICALLY HAPPY about that, especially regarding the help they got from Montana’s Batman, the billionaire Mike Goguen.

Sure, Mike Goguen himself may be under suspicion of sex trafficking, but that shouldn’t detract from the glowing coverage he got in 2017 giving him the superhero moniker:

So far, the combined power of this stripper-fucking Batman and the four counties referenced by Sheriff Toth haven’t been able to locate Rebekah, alive OR deceased. And the official narrative is STILL that Rebekah went into the water to save her distressed German Shepherd Belgian Mallinois, then drowned.

On November 26th, the day after Thanksgiving, Rebekah’s parents and supporters addressed concerns about how this investigation has been conducted at a Mineral County Commissioners meeting. Sheriff Toth was also present at this meeting, and responded to those clearly stated concerns.

The meeting was recorded and posted on Youtube. Rebekah’s mom starts about 30 minutes in:

After watching this video, here are some of the questions you might have about this case: if this was a river accident, why are Rebekah’s parents now receiving death threats? How well does Sheriff Toth know Rebekah’s estranged husband, David Barsotti? Why did it take Missoula County so long to process potential evidence, like the Rebekah’s car? And why would Sheriff Toth refuse FREE help from an organization like Crime Stoppers?

Those are just SOME of the questions I have about this case. I have others as well, but those questions will have to wait, for now.

Thanks for reading.

UPDATE: I incorrectly referred to Rebekah’s dog, Cerberus, as a German Shepherd. It is NOT. Cerberus was an 11 month old Belgian Mallinois in good health, a fact confirmed independently by Rebekah’s mother, Angela, with the Veterinarian.

by Travis Mateer

The years of inaction mentioned in the title of this post occurred after I left my job as the Homeless Outreach Coordinator of the Poverello Center in 2016. For a more detailed history of my approach to this difficult work, check out this post from last summer.

The news that posted late last week about the clean-up plans, which are apparently set to launch this week, is incredibly confusing. I’m not sure if I can attribute this to the vacuous style of Gomer Kidston, or the information he had to deal with.

Regardless, let’s take a look at what’s being reported so I can add my assessment from years of direct experience working to address the complicated issues in this area of our valley. From the link:

With the clock ticking on the longevity of the Reserve Street homeless camp, Missoula city and county officials plan to coordinate cleanup efforts, future enforcement, and management of alternative shelter options for the unhoused.

My first reaction to this initial framing from Kidston is this: how does one place a ticking clock on longevity? My second reaction, having been involved in a coordinated clean-up that occurred just last April, is WHO does the City/County plan on bringing in to do this work?

Here’s more from the article (but don’t expect answers to my questions):

In a meeting this week, Missoula County said the fence around the newly sanctioned outdoor camp will be finished next week off Clark Fork Lane. Hard-sided shelters ordered by the county also have arrived and will be erected soon in what officials are calling a temporary safe outdoor space.

The bold part of the quote jumped out at me because, when I first read it, I thought this was referencing the fencing that was partially installed in July by MDOT. I realized later, while writing this post, that I was mistaken, but you’ll see why I was confused.

The latter part of the above quote discusses a “temporary safe outdoor space”, but NOT the one off highway 93, because that is now called the TRANSITIONAL Safe Outdoor Space, so I am assuming this is a NEW temporary safe outdoor space being discussed.

I thought the location for this new site was already established at Clark Fork Lane, but Gomer’s own reporting from this same article seems to contradict his earlier claim when, in paragraphs 3 and 4, Kidston writes this:

A location for the temporary safe outdoor space hasn’t been identified as of yet. But once the sanctioned camp site opens, local officials plan to close the Reserve Street camp and begin enforcement of a no-camping policy.

“The shelters have arrived and are stored,” said county CAO Chris Lounsbury. “We’re working with Hope Rescue Mission on the timing to move them (shelters) to the location. We’re also working with the sheriff’s department on using that unused piece of ground.”

So what is the Clark Fork Lane site where the fencing is going to be built? Is that NOT the new transitional safe outdoor space? Is Gomer Kidston’s reporting this confusing and shitty by design?

News articles are supposed to INFORM readers, not leave them more confused about a subject. This is why I’ve repeatedly made the claim that Gomer Kidston does political PR work, NOT objective reporting, as evidenced by Gomer’s previous role as the Montana Democratic party spokesperson, which I referenced in this post about Gomer’s vacuous style.

While I don’t find a lot of quality information in Kidston articles, I do get helpful insights into the plans of our political establishment from his pathetic coverage, like this (emphasis mine):

Engen said the city may look to contract out the cleanup work, and the county has expressed interest in possibly partnering in the effort. Ideally, Engen said, the contractor would be on call for other cleanups as well, including those related to crime scenes.

The Missoula Police Department has expressed interest as well, Engen said.

The bold part of this quote is, in my opinion, the most important part of the article because it offers a curious hint of future law enforcement involvement in the clean-up efforts of a homeless encampment, both by the County (Sheriff’s Department) and the city (Missoula PD).

It’s important to understand that what the County/City pays for, they control, so I have some BIG concerns about what this could mean. Let me give readers a reason why I’m concerned.

I still go out to the Reserve Street camps to talk to people, and a few weeks ago I was speaking with a resident of the camps who told me he had been approached aggressively several times by young men with machetes. One of the men apologized for his behavior the next day because he was drunk.

I, of course, immediately thought of Johnny Lee Perry, the homeless black man who was shot and killed by unnamed Sheriff Deputies on August 29th somewhere along the Southside road between Missoula and Alberton. Johnny was shot because he was allegedly wielding a machete, and the deputies allegedly couldn’t deescalate the situation, so they had to shoot him. Allegedly.

Our Mayor for life, Herr Engen, wants the public to think this is about not doubly traumatizing victims. I think that’s utter bullshit. From the “news” article:

“Victims can be doubly victimized by the fact that their house is now a mess, a crime scene, and a source of continuing trauma,” Engen said. “We want to find a way to establish a cleanup fund and have someone all call for those incidents. That might be a cause for the sheriff’s department as well.”

So, Engen wants to establish a “clean-up fund” in order to contract some agency to be “on call” (doesn’t Gomer have an editor?) for future clean-up/crime-scene needs. Something smells VERY FISHY to me about all this.

The conclusion of the article is kinda hilarious because it features a quote from our County Commissioner, Farmer Josh, about how public they’ve been about when enforcement of this illegal encampment would occur.

“We’ve been pretty public about an expectation of enforcement and when that would begin,” said Commissioner Josh Slotnick.

And that’s the end of the article.

This week I’ll be visiting the camp and speaking with residents about these plans. If I can get some clarity on the confusion being exacerbated by the shitty reporting of Gomer Kidston, I’ll share what I learn with with RD readers.

So stay tuned, and thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

In today’s post I’m going to connect an English aristocrat and a US intelligence agency to some well-known Missoula surnames, specifically Merriam and Talbot. This will be VERY informative, especially in light of what’s happening with the Missoulian building, where the 20th century medium of narrative control once rolled off the press.

Before getting to the historical part of this post, here’s the latest from Wags Capital regarding its local developer, WGM, wussing out on a public meeting next week:

The plans for a $100 million redevelopment along the Hip Strip remain uncertain after the group designing the buildings canceled a public meeting, saying the project should not be finalized after a controversy over one of the developer’s online messages.

Yet, developer Aaron Wagner said the project will continue to move forward, just without the local firm.

“They have not even been awarded the project yet,” Wagner told the Kaimin. “We are still moving forward, nothing is being stopped or even delayed.”

Yep, full steam ahead, and The Wags wants you dumb locals to know that it’s going to be EVEN WORSE now that you pissed off this former linebacker douchebag:

Without the local firm, Wagner said he would likely contract with another group from out of town. 

“They felt the heat and were apprehensive about the relationship with me personally,” Wagner said. “What I tell people is, ‘Look, you guys want locals, but the pressure against me is doing the opposite.’ Now we are going to have an outside group that might not understand the goals and needs of the community.”

The bold part of the above quote is Aaron Wagner’s understanding of how “people” in Missoula expect development to happen, but since “pressure” has emerged from an angry public tired of condos and endless gentrification, The Wags is threatening to bring in some outside development group. What an asshole.

But this post isn’t about outside assholes brashly plopping condo towers along riverfront property, it’s about narrative controllers with names like Talbot and Merriam, and the entitlement they seem to be operating on when it comes to transforming Missoula into an elitist playground for wealth.

First up, the Talbot name.

Yes, this picture from the Missoulian shows Pete Talbot’s hand on a ballot box, but it’s his dad and the hidden hand of the CIA that I’m more interested in.

Before becoming the publisher of the Missoulian, Pete’s dad, John, worked for the CIA. I had no idea about this intriguing connection until I ran across this interview from 1975. Here’s the note at the beginning of the interview that details this connection:

Note: John Talbot worked for the CIA before joining Lee Enterprises in 1957 in Wisconsin at the State Journal. He later worked Muscatine, Iowa, before becoming business manager and then publisher of the Billings Gazette. He was publisher of the Missoulian and operations manager for the western division of Lee Enterprises before retiring in 1980.

Cool! Now I’m beginning to understand Pete’s love for democracy, it must come from his dad’s work with the CIA, an agency known for its loving spread of democracy around the globe.

While this connection is fascinating, I’m actually more interested in the impact of H.G. Merriam on Missoula, but before we get to him we need a quick primer on Cecil Rhodes from wikipedia:

Cecil John Rhodes PC (5 July 1853 – 26 March 1902) was a British mining magnate and politician in southern Africa who served as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony from 1890 to 1896. An ardent believer in British imperialism, Rhodes and his British South Africa Company founded the southern African territory of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe and Zambia), which the company named after him in 1895. South Africa’s Rhodes University is also named after him. He also devoted much effort to realising his vision of a Cape to Cairo Railway through British territory. Rhodes set up the provisions of the Rhodes Scholarship, which is funded by his estate.

For a little more context on what Rhodes and his fellow British elitists were up to, here’s some info on the Fabian Society:

The Fabian Society was founded on 4 January 1884 in London as an offshoot of a society founded a year earlier, called The Fellowship of the New Life, which had been a forebear of the British Ethical and humanist movements. Early Fellowship members included the visionary Victorian elite, among them poets Edward Carpenter and John Davidson, sexologist Havelock Ellis, and early socialist Edward R. Pease. They wanted to transform society by setting an example of clean simplified living for others to follow. Some members also wanted to become politically involved to aid society’s transformation; they set up a separate society, the Fabian Society. All members were free to attend both societies. The Fabian Society additionally advocated renewal of Western European Renaissance ideas and their promulgation throughout the world.

H.G. Merriam–the grandfather of Engen’s Communication Director, Ginny Merriam–was a member of the FIRST CLASS of Rhodes Scholars. I discovered this little factoid in a book published by the Missoulian in 2000.

Since Ginny Merriam, like our Mayor, worked at the Missoulian before taking control of local government, it makes sense that Ginny is the one doing the writing in this book about Grandpa. Here is the part about H.G. Merriam bringing the Rhodes brand of British elitism to Missoula:

H.G. stepped off a train at the depot at the north end of Higgins Avenue in 1919, ready to take on the chairmanship of the English department. He brought with him his wife, Doris, and two degrees from Oxford, where in 1904 he had been in the first class of American Rhodes Scholars.

He was surprised to find UM had sent no Rhodes Scholars to Oxford from 1905 to 1919, and became the secretary of the Montanan Rhodes Scholar Selection Committee. UM to this day has a strong presence among Rhodes Scholars, an effort H.G. Shepherded long past his retirement in 1954.

This local history–connecting wealthy British socialists and the CIA to surnames like Talbot and Merriam–should give readers a better understanding of the entitlement our local elites feel toward using their tax-paying citizens subjects as flesh-ATMs for their social engineering projects.

It should also provide a hilarious backdrop to the claims of total powerlessness and impotence coming from our Mayor-for-life and his elitist cronies.

Thanks for reading, serfs!

by Travis Mateer

I just ran across the post-election Missoulian op-ed, penned by publisher Jim Strauss and Executive Editor Jim Van Nostrand, and I think it’s adorable and hilarious. Here’s some highlights.

One clear indication of the will of the voters is that progressive candidates swept the slate. Mayor John Engen was reelected for a fifth term, all six city council winners were endorsed by the Missoula County Democratic Central Committee, and the three new municipal court judges are former public defenders who ran on a platform of a less-punitive approach.

Engen is a progressive? That’s adorable. We need a less punitive approach to criminal justice? That’s hilarious. Here’s more:

On homelessness, for example, we won’t let unhoused people freeze to death, we won’t create chain gangs for forced labor, and we won’t give them bus tickets to make the problem go away.

We have addressed homelessness with stopgap measures, but long-term solutions, as Engen points out, will not be achieved until we successfully confront the three challenges of housing, addiction and mental illness. Homelessness will only be solved by treating the underlying causes.

Cool, no more humans turned into lifeless ice cubes. Back in 2017, when Tim Lloyd died of exposure near the Union Gospel Mission, I noted how NBC Montana was THE ONLY NEWS OUTLET to take notice. Because of MY REPORTING, the Missoula Independent ended up doing a story on Tim. In summation, FUCK the Missoulian.

Regarding the pandemic, we’ve shown that we are a community that cares for the public welfare. Most of us are willing to take the tough measures to make the scourge go away. If our state’s elected leaders would get their heads out of the sand and get out of our way, we’d be in a much better place–instead of the state leading the nation in per-capita COVID-19 cases.

I don’t even know where to start with this shit. Maybe I should wish upon a star for the Missoulian to educate its readers on who gets COVID money, like that State Representative who got $50,000 for her and her hubby in small business Covid relief money. But no, the two Missoulian Jims are too busy bashing Republicans for enabling THE SCOURGE, and for somehow blocking these noble Jims from doing more for Big Pharma’s bottom line.

Now, how about housing?

And on housing, we face an existential threat. The character of our community will drastically change if working-class people can’t afford to live here. Plans are in the works to build a lot more affordable housing, but it can’t go up quickly enough. The solutions (plural) will require creative thinking, community-wide buy-in and a no-obstacles-tolerated approach.

HA! This is HILARIOUS, considering the building this bullshit is emanating from will be 125 foot condo towers after The Wags and his local enablers at WGM are done with it. But don’t worry, Missoula, WGM took the bold move of CANCELLING a meeting! And how is this cowardly move being framed by Democrats in Zoom Town?

Oh, Kimberly, I guess no one told you that the Hip Strip is already dead. Bathing Beauties is gone (to be replaced by another weed store) and Carlo’s Last Stand closed, as did the Hob Nob. But Boomers can still buy “fair trade” shit at the Peace Center, and creative re-use stuff at Upcycled for awhile longer, so maybe it’s on life support.

Since I have an allergy to narrative control by corporate fucks like these two Jims, I’m not going to repost the entire op-ed. It was hard enough reading the portions I excerpted, especially this shit about inclusivity:

INCLUSIVITY: Is Missoula a welcoming city for all? It was just the summer of 2020 when Black Lives Matters protesters gathered at the Missoula County Courthouse, some calling for the Missoula Police Department to be defunded. This last legislative session left many in Montana’s LGBTQ community feeling unwelcome. Now, the community and state are split on whether to allow Afghan refugees into our state and communities. How do we ensure that Missoula is a city where all resident feel welcome and are confident they receive equitable treatment?

I have no patience for utter shit like this. While these two Jims promote their corporate narrative control virtue-signaling, I’m still trying to understand what actually happened to Sean Stevenson at the Poverello Center on January 3rd, 2020. That was made MUCH MORE DIFFICULT when unnamed Sheriff Deputies shot and killed Sean’s alleged assailant, Johnny Lee Perry, on August 29th, 2021.

If you are not aware of these stories, that’s because the Missoulian is a vehicle for advertising, not critical information about what’s actually happening in our community.

I know this to be a fact because of first-hand experience reporting on the things the Missoulian is refusing to cover.

Most of the citizens I talk to in this town understand the Missoulian is shit and getting more obviously shitty with every passing day. Op-eds like this by the two Jims help me make my case.

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

Last Sunday I joined Adam, Chud X and Dean Reiner for a wide-ranging conversation on weirdness in the Pacific Northwest. I’ll post the Youtube version below.

But before that, I’ve taken some of the subject matter and condensed it into verses, which is what I do.

my Omidong grows big and strong
with fascist foreplay forming bonds
between the bats patrolling night
and dirty rats kept out of sight

signal sending is an art
Amazonitronic hearts 
activated with stalking slang
inside the mind they go BANG, BANG!

oh no, shape-shift, shoot the hoots
flee to Sandpoint in heavy boots 
to leave behind the Coeur d'Alene--
its broken Odoms and sunken lakes

or Flathead wearing sonar hats
then Lynch the film with plastic wrap
just like Laura from the deep
but don't confuse, that isn't sleep

make her write the journal?  sick
erasing heads with Philly bricks 
a man, a hat, and broken time
they revel in their face-shove signs

my face and flesh suit isn't me
and that is GOOD divinity 
but they despise the holy sound
so work to turn it upside down

do not let them use your spark
with open eyes and burning hearts
they can't forever defer their fate
using dark to storm the gates