I drove by the shape on the sidewalk and had to do a double-take. Was that a bare ass exposed for all to see? I parked by my art studio and went to assess the shape I suspected (correctly) was the homeless man I interviewed last Christmas Eve, Glen Harley Stephens.
Harley was snoring, which meant he wasn’t dead. He was also contorted awkwardly on the concrete sidewalk with his shit-smeared ass pointing toward the Missoula County Courthouse.
Sunday mornings in downtown Missoula often feature visceral exhibits of alcohol abuse, like pools of vomit, scattered trash, and blood spatter. I documented the latter bodily fluid a few months ago outside the ZACC, check it out:
To contrast this clear evidence of spiritual malaise, I sought God in the physical structures he’s supposed to exist in over the weekend. What did I find?
I had assumed the search I was embarking on was for myself, but the more I immerse myself in the institutions of faith, the more I’m realizing who some of these churches are there for, and who they are NOT there for.
I’ve now attended several different church services around town and will soon write a longer piece on the revelations I am having regarding the forgiveness industrial complex and who benefits from hiding behind God’s shield.
So stay tuned, and remember: God works in mysterious ways!
The title to today’s post is taken from the PR-focused mind of this dude:
Jeff Welsch
Before getting to today’s op-ed from Jeff Welsch, let’s take a look at this dude’s feelings about free speech. I especially appreciate the work being done to ban trolls and limit speech at Lee Enterprises.
As journalists, those of us who produce content for Lee Enterprises’ five Montana newspapers are firm believers in free speech.
But free speech isn’t always without consequences or ramifications. Think yelling “fire” in a crowded theater.
So it is with our social media pages, which since their inception have included reasonable rules of engagement in an attempt to ensure civil discourse – making it clear that violators would be subject to hidden posts and outright bans.
If it isn’t clear how serious Lee Enterprises takes the behavior of trolls using naughty language, here’s some actionable steps they are taking to ensure discourse is oh so civil:
In an effort to help limit such consequences Lee Montana has compiled a (lengthy) list of inappropriate words and phrases that will either be automatically removed or hidden. This list is in place on Facebook pages associated with the Billings Gazette, The Montana Standard, Helena Independent Record, Missoulian and Ravalli Republic.
Ok, with that commitment to free speech clearly established, let’s pivot to YOUR STORY and where it’s going to be living (emphasis mine):
These days, the refrain has echoed to the groaning point of cliché: Newspapers are dying.
And sure, the assertion contains some grudging truth. Sadly for us nostalgic sorts, the traditional print newspaper seems destined for the dustbin of history alongside the likes of Blockbuster Video, Royal typewriters and fast-food joints paying less than $20 an hour.
That’s unfathomable for a newspaper junkie who still gets a surge of adrenaline watching the first fresh papers flow off a printing press conveyor belt at midnight.
Ink-stained gloom and doom aside, I write with a message of optimism: Lee Enterprises’ five Montana newspapers have made an emphatic commitment to local people-centric journalism unlike any I’ve witnessed since our industry’s headiest days began ebbing in the late 1980s.
Our mantra going forward is “Your Story Lives Here”, a tagline that serves as a reminder that local news is a pillar of a community’s cultural fabric. And that we as editors, reporters and photographers are neighbors deeply embedded in these places we call home, some for a lifetime.
I’m glad the five Montana newspapers Lee Enterprises manages has a mantra to fall back on because, as much as I’m loathed to admit it, the power of Lee’s information assets to EXCLUDE a story is still a very real thing.
The most recent example of this narrative power is the story of Rebekah Barsotti and the seeming blackout of local reporting until her body was finally identified by the Crime Lab on June 2nd. Once that happened, every local outlet in the region finally put her name on their dying platforms, including the Missoulian with this article. From the link (emphasis mine):
Rebekah Barsotti was identified as the deceased using dental records, according to a press release from the Mineral County Sheriff’s Office. They released Barsotti’s identity Thursday afternoon. Her body was found near River Bend Road east of Superior.
An investigation into the cause of death and circumstances continues, the release stated.
“This is such bittersweet news for all of us,” a family member wrote in the Find Rebekah Barsotti Facebook page on Friday morning.
The bold part of this excerpt represents a significant failure of Lee’s reporter, Zoe Buchli, and I know this because I know how Zoe Buchli TRIED to get a quote from Rebekah’s mother, Angela Mastrovito, by texting instead of calling, and was quickly shutdown.
That is why Zoe Buchli had to include a quote from an unspecified family member making a comment on Facebook. Pathetic.
The history of media control is available to anyone who desires to STOP being manipulated. Heck, even wikipedia can be helpful with tepid descriptions of the operational manipulation that occurred under monikers like Mockingbird. From the link:
Operation Mockingbird is an alleged large-scale program of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that began in the early years of the Cold War and attempted to manipulate news media for propaganda purposes. According to author Deborah Davis, Operation Mockingbird recruited leading American journalists into a propaganda network and influenced the operations of front groups. CIA support of front groups was exposed when an April 1967 Ramparts article reported that the National Student Association received funding from the CIA.[1] In 1975, Church Committee Congressional investigations revealed Agency connections with journalists and civic groups.
To wrap this post up, here’s a screenshot from a PDF I’ve brought attention to before because it makes tangible the claim that the CIA has a long history of investing in narrative control with assets like Pete Talbot’s daddy, John.
Fun times in Zoom Town!
Stay tuned here for the stories our narrative controllers don’t want you thinking about.
The institutional decay of this dying empire is a barely obscured reality ready to pounce from behind the hypnotic veneer of public relations.
And when it pounces–perhaps in the form of sprawling homeless encampments that required heavy machinery to remove over 60 TONS of trash–I can only hope your community has a Susan Hay Patrick available to string words together explaining how big non-profits, like her United Way, just can’t help because they’re already doing so much.
Since no one hits “reply all” to email threads like Susan Hay Patrick, let’s take a look at one of her recent efforts to frame her non-profit sector’s NON-effort to pitch in and haul out homeless trash (emojis and emphasis NOT mine):
Hello all. Even though I consider mass emails and Reply All to be scourges of modern existence🤣😉, I wanted to communicate United Way’s position on river/camp cleanups, and also speak up for the Poverello Center and related organizations, which I think were mischaracterized in the last mass email. Although all our organizations, of course, remain aware of and concerned about the potential environmental impacts to our community’s vital waterway if nothing is done to clean up the Reserve Street encampment, we are not responsible for cleaning up these areas, nor do we have the capacity to join the cleanups.
Susan is correct, the kind of responsibilities she represents is the taking and spending other people’s money, not actually mitigating the unforeseen consequences of the ever-expanding the HIC (Homeless Industrial Complex).
How IS that HIC going, by the way? From the link (my emphasis this time):
Missoula County Commissioners approved a contract with the WGM group to design and construct a new temporary safe outdoor shelter site off Broadway near the intersection of Mullan Road. The contract is valued at $70,725.
The original TSOS site near the Buckhouse Bridge is on privately owned land, and per the agreement with the owner, it needs to be moved.
The new location is on land owned by Missoula County.
The areas of this excerpt I’m drawing attention to contain fun inaccuracies and omissions.
First, it’s supposed to be a TRANSITIONAL Safe Outdoor Space. Second, the “privately owned land”, where the old TSOS exists, is tied to Blue Line Development, the same developer building the Trinity Complex by the jail and, wouldn’t you know it, right next to the County land where the NEW TSOS is going to be built.
Now, let’s return to Susan Hay Patrick’s damage-control-reply-all email and her parenthetical concern-trolling regarding volunteer risk (again, NOT my emphasis).
United Way and other nonprofits (like the Pov and Hope Rescue Mission) go “above and beyond,” operating at or above capacity every day in terms of our efforts to provide housing, services and support to our unhoused neighbors. While we work hard and effectively, with very limited resources in proportion to the problem, we simply do not have the capacity to plan, supervise, or join clean-up efforts on property we do not own. I am not certain why, given our organizations’ limited resources, some expect us to do more than we do already. (Others can speak to the risk of relying on volunteer labor to clean up hazardous waste.)
Hmmm, I wonder who “others” might be? Could it be our local law enforcement who have contributed to this environmental disaster through not enforcing laws? Or how about the Health Department, who tried to compel the Sheriff’s Department to do their jobs by fining the Department of Transportation, one of the property owners facing liability risk and infrastructure damage?
Who cares, at least WGM is making some money, along with some innovative tent company from Washington. Also, what’s this “jail access construction project”?
The new shelters are created by a Washington company named Pallet and are built to handle the elements.
“These new shelters are insulated, heated and air-conditioned. You plug them in. They cost about $8,500 apiece and are in fact actual housing,” Commissioner Josh Slotnick said.
WGM Group is currently in charge of the jail access construction project which is right next to the new TSOS site.
If there are any Veterans utilizing these $8,500 dollar tents who don’t like these accommodations, they can soon try the new home for the Poverello’s Housing Montana’s Heroes Veteran program, which got a $830,000 dollar boost to purchase the Clark Fork Inn.
There are some worrisome things afoot in Montana, but luckily elections aren’t one of ’em. Just ask anyone who is important enough to matter, and they’ll tell you how AWESOME everything is.
Now, people who COULD be Qanon insurrectionists may tell you otherwise, but as long as you see them as subhuman, it will be easy to ignore slight deviations from AWESOME that may or may not have occurred yesterday.
One example is that an omission on some ballots occurred. I’m not sure what I find more entertaining, the fact that the wife of the man impacted found the error, or how Brad Seaman responded to it. From the link:
With the primary election on Tuesday, officials with the Missoula Elections Office were informed on Monday that one precinct had an omission on its ballot.
KGVO News reached out to Missoula Country Elections Administrator Bradley Seaman for details of the mishap.
“Unfortunately we had an error,” said Seaman. “And that’s exactly what we do when we have an error. We were notified by a voter today that they opened up their ballot and their husband was not on the ballot and so they said ‘hey we’ve got an issue’.”
Before we continue documenting the everything is AWESOME primary election in Montana, let’s rewind to October, 2021, when Brad was joining forces with Bryce Bennett in a Montana Free Press article, titled Pulling back the curtain on Missoula County’s election processes.
Here’s what Seaman sounds like when he’s in a controlled environment NOT screwing up an election:
A pair of American flag balloons hovered over a plastic bin marked “ballot drop box” Saturday morning as Missoula County Elections Administrator Bradley Seaman logged into Instagram. At 11 a.m. sharp, the voice of former state Sen. Bryce Bennett echoed through the entryway of the county’s election center, welcoming Seaman to a social media event promoting early voting.
“We’ve got the background up, we’ve got the Lizzo popping, we are feeling good about Vote Early Day,” Bennett said, citing the national movement for which he now serves as project director. “People are celebrating, people are voting, and that is the most exciting thing.”
Seaman proceeded to walk viewers through his office’s operation, from the cavernous building off Russell Street, south of the Clark Fork, where a trickle of voters were dropping off ballots to the small second-floor room next door where those ballots are sorted. The two spoke at length about the importance of every ballot being counted, with Seaman saying the best way to ensure that they are is “not to wait.”
Later in the article, after doing his little song and dance for early voting on Instagram, Seaman explains his motivations:
Seaman said the extended service hours his office has implemented this fall, along with his appearance on Vote Early Day’s Instagram event, are part of an effort to ease voter access and showcase the nuts and bolts of the voting process to anyone with questions about how it works. Some voters are unable to show up in-person to update their information on weekdays, he continued, and the Legislature’s passage this spring of House Bill 176 discontinued his office’s ability to provide registration and update services on Election Day. Under the new law, those activities are halted statewide at noon the Monday before the election. Even with the new extended hours, Seaman said he’s concerned the change will create issues for some voters.
Brad Seaman’s worries, back in October of 2021, sounds like they had something to do with the FUNDING to continue providing registration and update services on Election Day.
I bet Brad Seaman never thought, come primary time this year, that a potential political upset (by Dr. Al against Ryan Zinke) would be stuck in limbo because the ballots in Lincoln County were CUT TOO SHORT FOR THE MACHINES!
Seriously, that’s what happened, so officials sent out a metaphorical “bat signal” for human hands to get the job done.
The whole ballot snafu began when the ballots arrived a week late from the Couer D’Alene Printing Press, without a test deck. After retrieving the test deck, Buff cuts the test deck to the required 14” to run in the machine.
But when the absentee ballots arrived, they were a ¼” too short and would not run through the machines. After many tests and possible solutions, Buff and members from the Montana Secretary of State’s office decided that the best course of action would be to hand count all of the ballots.
Despite the complications, election officials say it comes down to the community.
“I kind of send out the Bat Signal at the last minute and, ‘hey, who wants to count?’ and you know, I mean, most of our, you know, election judges are elderly, but, you know, they have some serious stamina and staying power,” Buff said. “And, you know, some of them have more energy than me, I think.”
The alternative is to listen to the guy who does a live Instagram feed to combat the boogeyman of “misinformation”.
Brad “integrity” Seaman
Seaman said the tour, which is one of a series his office is offering focused on different aspects of the election process, was in part designed to “combat misinformation.” Earlier this year, a group of local citizens led by Rep. Brad Tschida, R-Missoula, raised allegations of voting irregularities in Missoula County’s 2020 election. Seaman said he hopes to counter those assertions by giving the public a chance to “see the accuracy of the process” firsthand.
“We’ve been battling a claim that there are affirmation envelopes missing,” he said. “And so this is a great opportunity for people to see the process and see how we track through and how we come up with our numbers that are certified and reported out to the Secretary of State and then certified again at that level.”
Yes, State Reps, like Brad Tschida, have leveled very mean things at officials like Brad Seaman, like how they might be a touch “incompetent”, but I can’t see how a little omission and wrong-sized ballots substantiates THAT wild accusation.
Following a recent effort by the Missoula County Republican Party to settle claims of voting irregularities in the county’s 2020 election, Rep. Brad Tschida, R-Missoula, leveled a fresh allegation this week, suggesting that the Missoula County Election Office was “incompetent” or that unnamed actors had engaged in deliberate wrongdoing.
In a statement delivered Monday by Missoula attorney Quentin Rhoades, Tschida claimed that last week’s count of 2020 ballot affirmation envelopes, spearheaded by the county GOP, included two additional boxes of records that were absent during a citizen count he organized in January 2021. Tschida said the box discrepancy “could mean the election office is merely incompetent and lost track of the two boxes,” in which case he requested the office release records about the chain of custody of those boxes.
It’s really too bad the Brad with a weird looking last name refuses to recognize the inherent AWESOMENESS permeating the voting processes overseen by Seaman Brad. I feel like if these two Brads could get past their differences, maybe the world could begin healing.
A recent meth arrest caught my attention because I immediately knew it was NOT retaliation. I mean, why would it be? Just because Zoe Tate took the stand in a coroner’s inquest examining the shooting death of Johnny Lee Perry, which was definitely NOT a state-sanctioned execution, doesn’t mean her meth arrest a little over a month later is connected in any way.
According to this report from KGVO, Tate was pulling out of the Hellgate Trading post without headlights on when a Missoula County Sheriff Corporal saw this and pulled her over. One of my first questions, upon seeing exactly WHERE this arrest took place (6265 Mullan Road), is whether or not the location of this arrest is within CITY limits, or COUNTY.
This distinction is important. For example, when I tried holding State Rep. Danny Tenenbaum accountable for secretly recording inside Crosspoint Church, I was told the case would be sent to the city, which confused me, since my understanding of where city limits ended placed Crosspoint Church clearly in the County. Where Zoe Tate got arrested is closer to city limits than Crosspoint Church.
Regardless of jurisdiction, here is the result of Tate’s actions:
On June 5, 2022, at around 11:44 p.m., a Missoula County Sheriff’s Office Corporal observed a Subaru pulling out of the Old Hellgate Trading Post gas pumps without any headlights on. The corporal activated his emergency lights and the vehicle pulled over. He made contact with the driver, 26-year-old Zoe Tate, and informed her why he had stopped her.
Zoe appeared nervous, fidgety, and questioned her headlights working but admitted that it was very dim. There was one other passenger in the car. Both individuals came back to be on felony probation for drugs and suspended licenses. The corporal read to Zoe the consent to search card and she signed the card agreeing to allow him to search her car.
The vehicle Zoe was driving was not registered to her and had fictitious plates on the car. She said she had purchased it months ago and needed to get it registered. The corporal found a baggy of suspected methamphetamine next to her stereo display that was clearly visible from where Zoe was sitting in the driver’s seat.
The reporting of this incident is pretty standard, so far. But then Nick Chrestenson’s reporting takes some interesting language from “court documents”:
The corporal called Zoe back over to her car and advised her of her Miranda rights. Court documents indicate Zoe became panic stricken and became emotional and a bit dramatic asking if she was going to jail. The corporal asked Zoe about the suspected meth. Zoe denied it at first but with a few more questions admitted that she had just bought it tonight for a friend. Zoe said she paid $250.00 for the product. When asked about providing it for a friend, Zoe then changed her story and said she bought it for personal use. Zoe was placed under arrest.
Hmmmmmm, let me see if I can put Zoe Tate’s EMOTIONAL reaction into more context than KGVO’s Nick Chrestenson is capable of.
On August 29th, 2021, Zoe Tate was living in a camper off the Southside road when Johnny Lee Perry got the law called on him by a sketchy dude named Jack Maxvill. After about a half hour, law enforcement got tired of watching Johnny swing around his machete (or was it Jack’s?), so they closed in, popped him a few times with “non-lethal” rounds, then finished the job by shooting him in the back as he ran away.
Sometimes I wonder what might happen in this community if the help that is claimed for people with addiction issues actually existed. Even crazier, what if CONSEQUENCES existed?
Johnny Lee Perry, for those who haven’t followed my coverage over the last two and half years, was the alleged assailant in the death of Sean Stevenson. You can learn more about that case by listening to my interview with Sean’s sisters, Jejchelle and Angela.
For allegedly beating and strangulating Sean Stevenson to the point of unconsciousness (sending him to the hospital where he was later removed from life support WITHOUT his family being notified first), Johnny spent less time in jail than Zoe Tate already has, and he most definitely didn’t have a high bond.
Before booking Tate into County lockup, her meth was weighed on TWO scales, hers and the Sheriff’s. I’m glad the Missoula County Sheriff’s Department has scales handy for weighing meth (emphasis mine):
During a search incident to arrest the corporal took all of the items out of Zoe’s pockets. There was a black digital scale in her back pocket and a small purse in her hoody with about ten unused small baggies commonly used for packaging methamphetamine into gram or half gram quantities.
The corporal later weighed the methamphetamine on both a scale from the Sheriff’s office, and the scale from Zoe’s pocket. It was a total package weight of 11.4 grams. The product did test presumptive positive for methamphetamine.
So, in summary, the arrest of Zoe Tate definitely has nothing to do with her testimony on the stand in the shooting death of Johnny Lee Perry, and the Missoula County Sheriff Corporal who IS NOT NAMED should be commended for getting a whopping 11.4 grams of meth off the streets.
I know I feel safer with this dangerous criminal behind bars! Good job Missoula County Sheriff’s Office!
