by Travis Mateer
Yesterday’s post about the progeny of two well-known (and well-financed) rich kids all grown up and aiming to build the MOST IMPORTANT crypto farm in the world omitted a fascinating article from August 15th, 1999, about ‘wild kid’ Rick Tabish and the antics in Las Vegas that left one dude dead.
Here is the article’s framing of Tabish’s ‘wild kid’ persona:
The straight-on mug shot appears ordinary enough. Rick Tabish, then 21, stares dully at the camera lens, a small sign dangling around his neck that notes the date of his arrest on a misdemeanor assault charge.
It’s in the second photo from Dec. 7, 1986, the one of Tabish in profile, that something is different. The smirk.
In those days Tabish was a regular at the Missoula County Jail, hauled into custody on numerous occasions for drinking too much, driving too fast and brawling too often. Most of the time, Tabish, the son of a wealthy Missoula businessman, got off lightly for his offenses — a chronic lack of consequences he knew how to exploit all too well, according to authorities.
“Basically, it was a case of a wild kid with more money than sense,” said Detective Rick Newlon of the Missoula County Sheriff’s Department. “With his last name, he knew he could push it.”
Now, 23 years after this article was written, a more mature Tabish is pictured on the front page of our local paper talking to the Governor of North Dakota about his crypto scheme.
Tabish is a great example of the fact that having money is its own form of public rehabilitation because money-hungry assets like a failing newspaper company will happily plaster your face in a beneficial manner to further that aroma of money.
Now, to contrast this media rehabilitation job, Gomer Kidston made a cute little reference to someone who isn’t wealthy like Rick Tabish; someone who used to show up to City Council chambers to read about the strategies of Communists.
Here’s the reference from a piece saying adios to outgoing Council critters, like Bryan Von Rocket Scientist and Julie WGM Merritt:
Through readings of the Soviet Art of Brainwashing, a pandemic and a shift in how the city addresses key issues, members of the Missoula City Council this week said their fond farewells and praised their outgoing colleagues for their service, even amid their differences.
The bold part is the mockery, directed by Gomer Kidston, toward a woman who once used her 3 minutes as she saw fit. Maybe the elites in Missoula think this is something worthy of making fun of, but I don’t.
It’s deeply ironic–considering Gomer is mentioned in the documentary Engen’s Missoula–that this woman who he ridicules called me a few weeks ago to congratulate me on such a well made film. Not only did she thank me, she also asked where she could send a donation, and this week I received her check and thank you note.
I was thinking about haves and have-nots as I walked briskly to get pizza in the wee hours of Friday night/Saturday morning. It’s 2:30am as I write this–after I conducted a $20 dollar business deal with a homeless man–but I’m getting ahead of myself.
I stopped on my way (in 14 degree weather made colder by the wind) to speak with Harley, who I interviewed two days before Christmas. I asked Harley why he was sleeping outside and he said, in cruder terms than I’ll write here, that the shelters are full of sex offenders. Then he boasted about the money he makes panhandling and even consented to me taking a pic.
Harley mentioned that he’ll be turning 72 at the end of next month. And he’s sleeping outside, in Montana, in a bone-chilling cold I can barely stand walking 4 blocks in.
But Harley is not the man I made the $20 dollar deal with.
No, that was the Native man getting ready to pass out for the night next to Harley. He perked up when Harley turned down my deal to hand out magic tickets (while supplies last) to anyone kind enough to give him money.
Here’s what the magic ticket looks like:
Yep, these are the cards I had printed for the Roxy showing that was NOT to be. My deal with the homeless man is $20 bucks to pass out these cards, one at a time, to the kind marks of his panhandling.
I think it’s a pretty good deal, and possibly a sign of creative marketing schemes to come.
Stay tuned, and thanks for reading!
JC
With all the outside money and gentrification moving into Missoula, it refreshing to see “Old” money get their due. There is an entire law firm (Datsopoulus,M&L) that was funded largely by keeping the Washington kids and Tabish out of jail (and serving the Lambros interests). Turns out that with money and the right connections (see Mayor/Communication Director) that all accountability/responsibility can be skirted.
The more things change the more things stay the same here in River City.
The mainstream media is definitely pay to spray (propaganda), and many of the news orgs in Missoula gladly take the money and print anything the $$$ tells them to say. Operation Mockingbird (from the 1960’s) didn’t go away, it just went private with Allen & Co, coordinating media deals to consolidate and coordinate the media industry, implanting CIA propagandists at media organizations like the Missoulian (see George Talbot). Thanks to Allen and Co, Disney is now the monolith it is, and cancel culture social media will censor, ban and delete history from anyone who challenges the narrative. They do most of this coordination at their yearly Sun Valley Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho the week after 4th of July.
As I’ve learned how propaganda is controlled in the U.S. (and most of the ‘West’), I began a campaign on Reddit, too educate people on the weapons grade psychological warfare operations being employed against them to control the narrative (/r/SunValley2021). After 5 weeks of cross posting, building subscribers and posting useful information for potential protestors, a coordinated group of military trained psyop professionals attacked by all the usual methods: discrediting, appealing to emotions, making up stuff about me, etc. This attack was was enough ‘proof’ to let a Reddit admin suspend my 15 year account.
All the while the psyop group attacking me doxxed me, by posting personal information about me to Reddit. I had a few people I didn’t know randomly show up at my house that very first day, who would sit in there car for hours across the street before coming to knock on my door, and when I didn’t answer leave without a message or anything. Not sure if they were trying to intimidate me or what. I got some video of these folks and even followed one home and got video of them, just in case the harassement escalated to violence. The people who doxxed me never got there accounts suspended as per Reddit policy either.
After 15 years on Reddit, my account was suspended and all my 15 years of comments, posts and threads got removed because I created a subreddit to promote a peaceful protest. I wasn’t surprised by this action, in fact I had hoped for it. I hoped the the streisand effect would kick in, and people would see the censorship for what it was: scared rich people worried the pitchfork wielding stinking poor might stand up. Unfortunately, I was just one dude against an entire propaganda industry. For the record, I never got a single message from any Reddit Admin (employee) before or after this about this situation, they just suspended my account and then closed several of my subs.
As a 15 year member of Reddit, I used to regularly converse with Reddit Admin’s and was a moderator of dozens of small subs (/r/Montana, /r/Missoula, /r/Intelligence, etc). I had connected with many of them on LinkedIn, and was surprised that not a single one of them even reached out. It was like I suddenly had the black plague or something. With Reddit’s IPO coming up, and a likely visit to Sun Valley, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman (Spez) likely decided to cancel me before his chance to become a Billionaire got derailed by.
Meanwhile, the people conduction the influence attack on me strung together several of my comments (some spanning years), in an attempt to paint me as a domestic terrorist. They then encouraged other people to submit this to the FBI and police. After a few weeks, a FBI Special Agent did in fact contact me. In the first 5 minutes of the interview, she apologized saying I clearly wasn’t a threat. However, I used to opportunity to learn more about the FBI, and I turned it into an interview of her.
She claimed that since the Jan 6th ‘Insurrection’ (really Trump’s Night of the Long Knives), all she and many of her fellow FBI agents does is track down people who may have said something threatening on social media, and got snitched on by ‘anonymous sources’. As a terrorism expert who had been deployed to Afghanistan she was stunned at how the FBI was being politically used to harass and attack people who did nothing other than express there 1st Amendment rights. At the time of our interview, she said not a single one of those investigations turned up a single domestic terrorist. Which of course sounded a lot like a repeat of McCarthyism. At the end of our nearly 2 hour interview she thanked me, and said ‘Good Luck with your Protest!’
In any case, after my account got suspended and my protest sub got deleted, coordinating the protest became very hard. I didn’t and still don’t use any other social media (other than LinkedIn professionally), so I printed off fliers and talked to people in person. Ultimately in this digital world without an online presence I was unable to attract more protestors. I was the sole protestor (that I know of) at the 2021 Sun Valley Conference. The local police in Ketchum aka Sun Valley never even talked to me, nor did the media interview me. After a few days of nothing, I ended up hiking Mt Borah, Idaho’s tallest mountain and going home. It was a tough defeat, but it is just one small battle in a class war that the Billionaires are still winning.
I’m hopeful that people will eventually wake up to what is going on in Sun Valley, and a Freedom Convoy will start the long haul there this summer to cancel them. For my part, I’m doing what I can to raise awareness and keep the fire burning, even if it’s only my wee candle.