Month: June 2022

by Travis Mateer

I have to say the former spokesperson of the Montana Democratic Party, Gomer Kidston, is ON POINT with his eager framing of the looming tax increases property owners are being told to expect next year. In fact, I’ll dare to say this is his BEST propaganda piece ever!

What makes a Gomer prop-piece so effective for this cabal of New Party culture warriors is the immediate framing one can expect, often in the very title itself, like this: Tax increases likely: City of Missoula fighting inflation, state’s ‘broken’ tax system.

The gist is already there–and for those who don’t click on the link, this might be helpful–but the fun for a propaganda enthusiast like myself comes from the actual content. Here’s how this stellar example of Gomer’s work begins:

Under the weight of inflation and Montana’s antiquated tax system, the City of Missoula on Wednesday made clear the financial difficulties ahead as it embarks on crafting this year’s budget.

In this opening paragraph the new phenomenon of inflation preempts the old standard of scapegoating the state of Montana’s tax system before Gomer generously depicts our local cabal as acting decisively, and with clarity, while doing something skilled that can be described as “crafting”. What a lovely way to begin. Let’s continue.

A tax increase on property owners is certain, and the city has no plans to hire new staff, buy new equipment or expand any programs. It will use a portion of its remaining ARPA funds to cover basic expenses, and it could be forced to make program cuts down the road.

Yes, these clear and decisive stewards of your tax dollars need you to know they have NO PLANS to hire pals and buy toys and expand whatever new Parks and Rec shit Donna Gaukler is dreaming up. And this paragraph concludes with a nice threat of CUTS DOWN THE ROAD. Nice.

Let’s continue with our Mayor, and remember, it would be pretty darn awful to direct ANY criticism toward a man going through treatment for pancreatic cancer.

“This year hasn’t been an easy budgeting year,” said Mayor John Engen. “Inflation is a continuing challenge for the city of Missoula, as it is for our private and public sector partners. Labor and the things we purchase to provide services to our residents cost more than they did last year. It’s as simple as that.”

Yes, our dying Mayor would like you to THINK it’s very simple. He would ALSO probably like you to NOT think about the shadow government called the Missoula Redevelopment Agency and its $35 million dollar budget. That loot is for special things, and you have to be a special person (or business) to get it.

After hitting the combination of inflation, and the old fallback of blaming the state legislature, Gomer quotes our Mayor about the coming tax increases (emphasis mine):

“Because we have a state that has rejected the idea of a tourist tax, I have to rely on property taxes and fees to cover costs,” he said. “A tax increase is likely to be more than we’ve seen in my tenure as mayor. I know the increase is unwelcome news, but it will make us comparable to what other cities around the state are doing, particularly because they’re rowing in the same type of boat.”

The utter bullshit in this quote is the implication that a tourist tax would solve our budgetary woes. Nope, it would not, but that won’t stop our manipulative Mayor claiming the meanies at the state legislature are tying his hands, forcing him to raise property taxes.

This budget scapegoating process has been a consistent refrain for years now. If you don’t believe me, check out this piece I wrote in August of 2019 where our County Commissioner, Farmer Josh, had this to say:

“The cost of providing services through local government increases faster than our ability to pay for those costs,” said Commissioner Josh Slotnick. “It behooves us to come up with new ways to generate revenue beyond property taxes. Property tax as a tool is basically maxed out.”

So, what have our illuminated braintrust done in the subsequent years to address these problems? If they HAD actually done something to address this budgetary dumpster fire, we wouldn’t be facing a “structural imbalance” that will allegedly take YEARS to address.

Members of the City Council earlier this month were notified that the city’s budget was facing a structural imbalance. It could take several years to bring it back in line given the force of outside factors, city CAO Dale Bickell said.

“During the pandemic, our budgets held the line or even reduced mill levies slightly at a time when we had a lot of operational needs. What we created was a situation where our ongoing expenses exceeded our ongoing revenues,” said Bickell. “We’ll have to make some difficult choices in the coming years in the budget as we come up against our mill levy caps.”

I don’t know about you, but reading the empty words from these gutless punks–who never take any accountability themselves for our budget problems–takes me to a place beyond anger, especially when one considers how easy this was to predict. Despite people like me warning about this direction we’ve been on for years, here we are looking to our “elected” leaders for solutions.

Do you REALLY want THEIR reset, Missoula? (emphasis mine)

“I’m not asking for new staff, new programs, or new equipment unless it’s unsafe or more expensive to keep in service. We will continue to fund existing programs and invest in people. But this year, we’re resetting and holding the line,” he said

Engen added that that “reset” may have to play out over two budget cycles, and until the Montana Department of Revenue releases this year’s taxable values, the exact numbers won’t be known until August.

Mayor Engen, Dale Bickell, and ALL the little enablers in our mountain fiefdom better understand that these pathetic deflections and rationalizations won’t keep the public passively compliant forever. At some point, somethings got to give. What will it be? And when?

If there are answers to those questions, I’ll do my best to find them. Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

Yesterday I was rollerblading downtown when the heat and my rusty blading skills compelled me to take a break, so that’s what I did, near The Oxford, where Harley was sitting in the shade with his Native friend, who I’ll just refer to as “D”.

After shooting the shit for a bit, and noticing the Native woman speaking with police in their parked vehicle, I got a story from “D” that I found to be VERY intriguing because it undermines the entire premise of utilizing private security at places like the Missoula County Courthouse, which is this: deescalate issues before REAL cops, who come with a bigger price tag, have to get involved.

The story “D” told me involves a man by the name of Webb who is NOT homeless. Does he hang out with people who may be homeless? Yes. Are those people often congregating near the Courthouse? Yes. Should private security have made the decision to engage Webb as he produced his Cannabis amongst his peers? That’s the question I hoped my call to Phoenix Protective Corporation could answer.

Regardless of the reason the Phoenix security guy chose to engage Webb, the outcome was that it didn’t go well, requiring those REAL cops I mentioned to get involved, and what they did, according to “D”, was put this security guy in his place by telling him Webb WAS NOT homeless, and that his actions WERE NOT illegal.

Since this incident, the security guy hasn’t been seen doing the job of keeping the street rabble in line, according to “D”. Go figure.

I joked around with “D” that the cops behind us were doing a fantastic job of deescalating the drunk Native woman. They actually agreed, and said they tried cutting her off earlier, but the woman could clearly take both of them.

Once the cops left a man came up on a bicycle, talked the woman up, then walked off with her, probably to engage in a business transaction more honest than Tax Increment Financing.

When “D” made his ask, I expected it to be a request for discretionary funding, but instead it was for a burrito, to which I said sure and happily scooted off on my blades and to obtain lunch. Then, when I got back to my studio, I did some online corresponding, like sending off this email:

After sending this email I got a call back from Phoenix, and it was a surprisingly pleasant conversation, probably because I didn’t expect anything specific from a risk assessment guy. So what DID I get from this call? A confirmation that my general assessment of the role of private security is correct. So that’s nice.

What’s NOT nice is private security acting in a manner that creates MORE work for law enforcement. Or maybe you’re comfortable with public money paying private security to do the important work of following Howard around town until he freaks out.

https://player.vimeo.com/video/682509106?h=848014c417&badge=0&autopause=0&player_id=0&app_id=58479

The above video clip is Howard discussing Rogers International, specifically. RI is the bottom of the barrel, in my not so humble opinion. Then there’s Phoenix, who we are discussing today. And another security firm on my radar is Black Knight, Montana’s premier private security and investigation company.

While it’s easy to get stirred up, in a very manly way, by trucks, guns and mountains, the Black Knight dude I spoke with a few weeks ago told me the quality of hires has been going downhill for awhile. I’m not sure how much marketing can fix institutional decay, which is literally everywhere.

Fun times in Zoom Town! Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

When it comes to politics, I try to maintain equal disdain for BOTH parties and the games they play with our money and our lives.

Recently Montana’s Attorney General, Austin Knudsen, talked some shit regarding Missoula’s approach to homelessness. If only we elected different people, he said, then we wouldn’t have the problem in this town that we do.

Well, Missoula County Commissioner, Josh Slotnick, wasn’t having it, and recently hit back with the brilliant counter-argument of BUT BILLINGS!

Slotnick referenced a recent Talk Back interview with Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen who answered a listener’s question on how to alleviate the homeless situation in Missoula. He said ‘Missoula has to vote better’.

“Absolutely,” said Slotnick. “So reading into that, I’m just going to call it what it is; we’re talking Democrats and Republicans, right? We only have these two parties, so according to the Attorney General if only we had Republican leadership we wouldn’t have a homeless problem, so the truth for showing how wrong that is to visit Billings.”

Slotnick recalled a recent meeting he attended in Billings and his experience with that city’s homeless population.

“There are more homeless people out on the streets downtown Billings at nine o’clock on a Tuesday night than where there were non-homeless people, and Billings doesn’t provide anything in terms of services compared to what we do,” he said. “So there’s the proof. You can have Republican leadership that provides nothing and you still get homeless people. The difference is we have homeless people living in a place where they throw their garbage in the garbage can and go to the bathroom in the bathroom.”

I added the emphasis to the part that makes me want to tell Josh Slotnick to go fuck himself because TONS and TONS of garbage was literally removed from the Reserve Street despite this asshole’s failed leadership.

Does this mean that Slotnick’s claim that we have homeless people living in a place where they throw their garbage in the garbage can and go to the bathroom in the bathroom is total bullshit? Yes. Yes it does.

While these two men of inaction use their sad little words to slap each other from their bubbles of safety, the REAL work of cleaning up the Reserve Street encampments only happened because Kevin Davis and gutsy volunteers shamed our elected leaders into doing something.

So, if you’re wondering why I’m using more profanity than usual, it’s because the gall of a political eunuch like Farmer Josh is off the fucking charts. I mean, the whole point of Farmer Josh going on KGVO in the first place was to provide an update on the work at Reserve Street. Here’s the update:

“Right now to my to my knowledge, there’s no one living underneath the Reserve Street Bridge, which is a great victory,” said Commissioner Slotnick. “There’s been a bit of legal activity and I want to give you an update on that. So at the end of last week, the judge extended the temporary restraining order and basically made it into a preliminary injunction, which means that if anyone is camping down there, there is a court order and sheriff’s deputies can remove them.”

Yes, with that court order in place, NOW Sheriff deputies can remove them. I just hope those deputies involved in that terrifying incident of a homeless black man swinging a machete (necessitating his removal with a gunshot to the back while he ran away) can get back on the job to protect and serve our community in the selfless manner we have come to expect from them.

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

I am not celebrating, nor am I protesting, the next iteration of national outrage priming the hate pumps for summer. Instead I’m offering the side that feels like it lost something an analogy to help quiet their loud theatrics because it’s really obnoxious, especially considering how claims of bodily autonomy against unwanted medical interventions were treated not that long ago.

I think we can all agree that we want the things we put into our bodies to be as safe as possible, be it fetus vacuum or vaccine, but that simple sentiment has been seemingly eclipsed by two warped modes of absolutist thinking regarding pregnancy and experimental drugs pushed by drug companies.

Bodily autonomy, like free speech, isn’t a light switch that can be turned on and off by the well-intentioned. At least it shouldn’t be. But that is what has happened, and the cognitive dissonance this produces harms us all.

Another thing I think we can all agree on is that politicians are disgusting creatures who will exploit anything for a vote.

On the abortion-sky-is-falling issue, Monica Tranel is out front getting some good media from it.

Tranel said, “Take action. Your vote is the most important thing you can do right now and this November offers a very, very stark choice.” She continued, “This isn’t about abortion because if it was about abortion we would be reducing unwanted pregnancies, and we are doing nothing to do that and doing nothing to support families. This isn’t about abortion. It’s about controlling women. And that’s wrong.”

Monica Tranel is half right, this isn’t about abortion, but what she gets wrong is WHO is being controlled by this SCOTUS decision, and that’s THE WHOLE COUNTRY through the simple tactic of divide and conquer.

While the latest rally was happening yesterday to protest the loss of the supposed right to have an abortion, Harley and his thankfully obscured ass-crack were getting the Fire/EMT response across the street from Missoula County Courthouse.

The disgusting politician responding to THIS deplorable situation is Montana’s current Attorney General, Austin Knudsen, who had this to say recently (emphasis mine):

One caller asked the Attorney General what he can do to help alleviate what he termed the homeless epidemic in Missoula, to which Knudsen said ‘that’s a Missoula problem’.

“A big part of the problem you folks have got here in Missoula, and with all due respect, you folks need to vote better,” he said. “I mean, you’ve got leadership in this town that has turned Missoula into a haven, or a kind of a Mecca for the homeless. You’ve provided a level of services and a level of tolerance for certain types of behavior, and there’s not a lot of punishment going on over here for crimes and misdemeanors. At the end of the day, that comes down to your local elected leadership, whether it’s your city council and clear up to your prosecutors.”

While Knudsen talks shit on Missoula’s supposedly unique homeless problem, the Montana Free Press is reporting on a homeless camp controversy brewing in GREAT FALLS.

In recent months, amid increasing reports of crime in the area and a lawsuit filed by the city against the church, the encampment has become a source of controversy. It’s also indicative of a larger homelessness problem exacerbated by a scarcity of affordable housing and a lack of drug-prevention services.

How did Austin Knudsen miss this? I guess he was too busy pretending to stop human trafficking:

“I’ve seen the tragedy the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people has inflicted on Montana’s tribal communities, both as attorney general and a former prosecutor in Roosevelt County. At the Montana Department of Justice, we’ve taken important steps over the last year to address it, including working to eliminate human trafficking, a problem disproportionally affecting Native American women and girls. Our commitment to reducing the number of missing and murdered Indigenous people and bringing perpetrators to justice in Montana will not waiver.”

I think Austin Knudsen is doing a great job modeling how powerful pretending can be. If the abortion lovers take a few cues from him, I think everything will be just fine.

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

UPDATE: this post has been edited by the author.

I was reminded recently in a conversation with Mineral County Deputy Attorney, Wally Congdon, that people who I don’t know sometimes know me. That’s basically what Wally said to me: “You don’t know that I know you, but I do.”

How does Wally know me? He was, once upon a time, a board member of the Poverello Center, a homeless shelter in Missoula where I worked from 2008-2016. Great, I said, then you are familiar with the work I used to do, and then I proceeded to tell Wally my latest concern, which is this:

Who is using my blog to impersonate people in the comment threads?

I was alerted a few days ago that a comment made by someone named “Tamera”–a person who exists in real life–made the comment herself, but I learned that was not accurate, so I removed it. Later I had to edit this post when I got more information about the potential impacts of this impersonation.

This underhanded move made me recall a similar example of impersonation, which occurred back in February when new commenter, “DB”, trolled a post I wrote about the Rebekah Barsotti “river accident” case. Could this be the same person, or group of people, attempting to muddy the waters before things like autopsies are released and new Sheriffs are elected?

Since I love sharing information with anyone who might have influence in a case like this, I texted Monte Turner my hot tip about this impersonation thing. I’ve been a little surprised that Monte has continued communicating with me, since this post about the hilarious candidacy of Bill Burt utilized texts from our brief exchanges over the past few months, so I wasn’t all that surprised to find out Sheriff wannabe, Ryan Funke, has been telling Monte about my Gonzo journalism.

Here’s Monte’s response to my tip and my subsequent response, which seemed to alleviate his concerns. That is until he hears about THIS post.

Isn’t it nice to see how damn considerate Sheriff Toth was? He only wanted EXPERIENCED searchers involved, like Deputy Funke, who couldn’t even find Rebekah’s gun in her abandoned car.

But Deputy Funke DID come all the way to Missoula to interview a witness who claims David Barsotti told her he was there that day, on the banks of the river, and SAW HIS WIFE DROWN! When I told Wally Congdon about this witness, he said he had never heard about that at all. I suggested he chat with his colleague, Debra Jackson, if he wanted to be better informed.

My serious lack of faith in ALL the investigators on this case (even the PIs) comes partly from the direct information I have been able to gather myself. One example is a recorded phone call I had months ago with one of David’s caretakers, Brandy Walker. I haven’t released that conversation until today, but now I feel the timing is right, especially considering the geographical proximity of Brandy Walker’s residence to the trailer park where the email came from.

After listening to that conversation and marveling at all this amateur sleuthing and platforming of people getting their 15 minutes in (since no real investigation appears to be happening) I’d like to share a bizarre TikTok clip from “Sarge” and his TikTok account. Because why not?

https://player.vimeo.com/video/724086588?h=d0e1051ff1&badge=0&autopause=0&player_id=0&app_id=58479

If you want to see more amazing TikTok videos of dogs, and a weird one of a hand, have at it. There is also an entire online community looking at all this shit, not to mention a Dateline producer poking around.

I will leave it there for now, but coming soon: finding David Barsotti a Church! I’m thinking that vein will be so rich, an entire series may be required, so stay tuned!

And, as always, thanks for reading!