Month: June 2023

by Travis Mateer

I suppressed my initial reaction to this article by Missoula propagandist, Martin “Gomer” Kidston, because it was pointed out to me that this TERRIBLE incident featuring a MEAN email sent to a shitty police chief (who was brought to Missoula by Mayor Engen from California) happened in a committee meeting all the way back in 2021. From the link (emphasis mine):

When former Missoula Chief of Police Jaeson White was testifying before the City Council Committee on Health and Safety in 2021, his phone alerted him to an incoming email.

It wasn’t until that June 15 meeting was over did White realize who the message was from, and its subject line was rather disturbing.

“You are a toxic police chief who doesn’t care about our safety or improvement as a society,” the email read. The subject line added, “Can’t wait to see you fired.”

To emphasize how truly DISTURBING this must have been for Police Chief Jaeson White, here’s an image of what I imagine White looked like when he realized what was going on:

After clutching his figurative pearls, Jaeson White must have had a REAL hard time continuing with his duties after this withering attack from Councilman Carlino, since he quit his job earlier this year. Here’s more from the article:

The incident prompted White to file a formal complaint with the city, alleging that Carlino’s email was unprofessional and unethical, and was sent “in an effort to intimidate, threaten, harass and retaliate.”

It also prompted City Council to convene a panel to investigate White’s complaint. In doing so, the panel found that Carlino had violated Rule 5 of City Council Rules covering “conduct of City Council members.” It also found an administrative violation that prohibits the use of a city email to send harassing messages.

“The evidence substantiates that your behavior likely violates City of Missoula policies…,” the panel stated in its findings. “We offered you an opportunity for due process and you have chosen to respond in writing. You were invited to attend an in-person meeting and chose not to attend.”

It appears that Carlino’s momentary lack of professional discretion two years ago has led, thanks to Gomer, to this political gift for Missoula’s political establishment, an establishment led by a woman who violated MY first amendment rights in 2018.

I brought attention to my UNPROFESSIONAL treatment two years later, when Heather Harp was getting the boot from her leadership position on the finance committee. Here’s the comment I made:

My name is Travis Mateer and I’ve lived in Missoula for 20 years. I am here today as a private citizen to speak in support of Heather Harp and her effort to bring more transparency and public input regarding the use of public money through Tax Increment Financing.

I would hope all Council members see the benefit of bringing more transparency to the process of using public money to incentivize development in Missoula. Unfortunately my experience tells me otherwise.

In November of 2018 I wrote and submitted a poem to the Missoulian. The content referenced the sidewalk controversy that emerged after some Missoula property owners got letters from the City about how much they were going to owe for their share of replacing sidewalks. If you read it, the poem was quite critical of Missoula’s political leadership involved in that poorly thought out, economically distressing decision those homeowners faced.

The response I received from Gwen Jones to that poem was quite startling. She used her position as a board member at the non-profit where I currently work to take me away from my paid work duties so she could tell me “her side of the story”.

I won’t get into the details of what transpired out of respect for my current employer except to say I received a written apology from Gwen Jones and the board was informed how my 1st amendment right to free speech was very nearly violated.

Everyone has bad days now and then, but what I am starting to see with this particular public official is a pattern of disregard for the public, a public I might add who has every right to know about the processes and people directing public money, and a right to examine who ultimately benefits when millions and millions of public dollars are set to be directed to just one developer’s big drift.

Thank you for your time in considering my comment and my concern.

This hit piece targeting Carlino is part of a larger effort to control the budget conversation, which is about to heat up soon. Here’s another “article” from Gomer detailing how new rules are being crafted in order to muzzle criticism by limiting late amendments to the budget process.

From the link (emphasis mine):

With the budgeting season set to kick off, members of the Missoula City Council this week set the rules that will guide the process and time it with the state’s release of its latest tax valuations.

In doing so, the majority of council members sought to ensure individual amendments are in early this year to avoid any grandstanding at 3 a.m. in an effort to curry public favor, as was the case last year.

“This has come about to give some process, sideboards and predictability to our budgeting process,” said council member Stacie Anderson. “Every budget is important, but we’ll be discussing some tough issues and will have to make some tough budgeting decisions this year.”

Last year’s budgeting process proved to be a frustrating endeavor for both the public and members of council. Council member Daniel Carlino attempted to make several last-minute amendments on the final day of consideration, pushing the meeting to nearly 3 a.m.

If anything with our municipal processes needs fixing, it’s the absurd process that led our placeholder Mayor to be literally SELECTED IN A DARK ALLEY at 2am, but that’s not getting any attention right now because our pathetic Mayor needs all the propping up he can get as he declares a politically advantageous emergency for our community over the issue of “urban camping”.

There are issues where my beliefs and Carlino’s do not align at all–like when it comes to the supposed severity of the “climate change” problem and what we, as a society, should do about it–but regardless of ideological disagreements, the way Carlino has been treated by his peers and local media narrative controllers is NOT the kind treatment lovers of representative government should be in support of.

I stopped by one of the Missoula Current’s local media partners (KPAX) to see if I could talk to anyone about Martin’s malicious “reporting”. I was told I needed to schedule an appointment, so I started that process, then filmed this brief clip:

https://vimeo.com/838458342?share=copy

If you appreciate my local effort at challenging the narrative controllers hold on power, Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF) is waiting for your support, or you can make a donation at my about page.

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

That smile on my face after the three day odyssey of meth shack trash removal would have been A LOT BIGGER had I known the actual number of pounds I removed with some tenacious volunteers, which you can read all about in my Assess/Address Report #7.

Well, I finally got the number from Republic, and it’s BIG. But let’s take a look first at some insanely stupid numbers from the trash war that’s currently being fought between Republic Services and upstart challenger to their monopoly, Grizzly Disposal. From the link (emphasis mine):

Every week, trucks laden with thousands of tons of Missoula’s trash make the perilous two-hour trek over a steep, winding mountain pass to dump all that garbage in the Helena landfill.

The reason why a town so far away takes all that refuse from the Garden City is the result of a long-simmering battle over garbage hauling that’s finally boiling over.

The new competitor in the market, Grizzly Disposal and Recycling, is accusing the long-standing garbage company, Republic Services, of “predatory pricing” and other efforts to regain the monopoly it held for decades in Missoula.

Was this trash hauling to Helena happening back in April? Because, if it was, and a truck crashed, then all my hard work to save the river from meth-generated garbage would have simply meant a rugged mountain pass got hit with the nastiness instead.

Here are some more idiotic numbers resulting from this feud (emphasis mine):

Republic Services owns and operates the Missoula landfill, and it has barred Grizzly Disposal from using the site.

That means Grizzly Disposal’s truck drivers take about 13,000 tons of trash from Missoula residential and industrial customers every month and haul 90% of it to the Helena landfill, with the rest going to Deer Lodge.

So almost every day, including in nasty winter conditions, drivers must brave the twisty, often-icy MacDonald Pass. It’s an effort that takes some 13,000 gallons of fuel — at a cost of about $65,000 for fuel and maintenance — every month.

Managers at Grizzly also say that Republic, which had been in the recent past charging around $120 every three months to residential customers for garbage service, is now calling Grizzly customers and offering that same service for about $65.

Grizzly charges its customers about $95 every three months for garbage service and managers at the company believe that Republic is trying to edge them out of the market by denying them access to the landfill and pursuing customers at a price they can’t compete with due to the long garbage haul.

While this madness continues, I went looking online for evidence that the Clark Fork Coalition is more than a political pretender when it comes to improving the health of the Clark Fork River, but what I found was a blog post about litter. In fucking Oman. Because litter is a GLOBAL ISSUE, don’tchya know!

I tried calling the Executive Director of the Clark Fork Coalition a few times, even left a voicemail, but I never heard a call back. I was going to talk to her about what I’m seeing with urban camping, which is probably why I never got a call back.

I’m glad I didn’t get a call back because Republic Services had yet to let me know the TONS of trash my motley crew removed. That’s right, TONS! Are you ready for the number?

The first load weighed 2.02 TONS, and the second load was .82 TONS, for a grand total of 2.84 TONS of meth shack trash removed from the banks of the Clark Fork River BEFORE the spring run-off did this:

https://vimeo.com/837802177?share=copy

And here’s a BEFORE image for context:

The river, from what I can tell, is ABOVE that upturned wooden table in the May 3rd footage. Can you imagine all this shit going in the river?

I created Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF) to raise a modest $5,000 dollars because THIS effort alone took over $1,200 dollars from my slim account, and Republic Services has been impossible to work with regarding their charitable application.

Instead it’s been generous donors helping me out one donation at a time, and I deeply appreciate that support. Here’s a helpful list of all 7 reports so you can see what my TIF was trying to do back in late March and April:

AA#1-Travis’ Impact Fund First Report (March 29th, 2023)

AA#2-From North Russell To Camper Fire (March 31st, 2023)

AA#3-From Kim Williams Trail To North Hellgate (April 6th, 2023)

AA#4-From West Broadway Island To Silver Park (April 10th, 2023)

AA#5-Houseless Contact Conversations Plus Bonner And East Broadway (April 12th, 2023)

AA#6-Yoke’s To Southside Road And More (April 14th, 2023)

AA#7-The Meth Den Clean-Up That Synchronistically Culminated In A Press Conference On Homeless Camps (April 27th, 2023)

Later on April 27th (since the 34 minute video took forever to upload) I posted a visceral documentation of removing that tonnage, along with footage from other clean-ups. Here it is:

https://vimeo.com/821448479?share=copy

Today I’ll be providing the Committee of the Whole my long-delayed final numbers on this clean-up, along with an appeal for ANY of the Council members to join the 18 AMAZING financial contributors to my TIF.

Now is a GREAT time to give me money, since the brakes on my piece of shit van are costing me $1,700 dollars to fix, and I don’t have a rainbow coalition to back me. If my TIF isn’t appealing, maybe the donation button at my about page is a better fit. Or, just give a shit enough to keep reading and listening, that helps as well.

Thank you!

by Travis Mateer

After punishing Brandon Huber for NOT accepting LGBT literature in free lunches, the Missoula Organization of Realtors (MOR) decided to raise money for PRIDE the following June. This year MOR is doing the same thing, successfully raising $30,000 dollars for housing. But, I assume, just for those who identify as LGBT. From the second link (emphasis mine):

Pride Month offers an opportunity for local organizations and businesses to show support for the LGBTQ+ Community Center, and the Missoula Organization of Realtors (MOR) is one of the biggest fundraisers for Pride Weekend.

MOR raised $30,000 for The Western Montana Community Center. This is MOR’s second year supporting Pride Weekend by calling on their community partners to donate.

…

The donation is a part of MOR’s Homes for All initiative, which, in partnership with Homeward, works to break down the various barriers people may encounter when looking for housing.

“This initiative, supporting homes for all, supporting Pride and The Community Center here is all about showing that when you’re working with a realtor from the Missoula Organization of Realtors, you don’t have to have that fear of discrimination,” Karen Berg-Digangi, Chair of the Diversity Equity and Inclusion Committee, says. “Every human should deserve the opportunity to get access to housing without worrying that who they are, whether the color of their skin, their gender identity, their sexual orientation–that that’s not an additional barrier.”

Yes, you are reading this correctly, the organization that punished Pastor Huber for acting on his religious beliefs is telling people they shouldn’t have to fear discrimination in housing. No, just fear RETALIATION at your WORKPLACE if you don’t bow to every demand of this “movement”.

Since I have been dealing with some of my own housing challenges, I stopped by MOR yesterday to inquire about their fundraising success. Specifically I asked the man (and, moments later, the woman who exited her office) if having sex with men would improve my chances of getting into subsidized housing. I explained that currently my preference would be women, but that housing is so important I’d consider switching teams. Apparently only the CEO can answer these types of questions, and that person wasn’t available. Darn.

While this divide and conquer tool is great for social controllers, I don’t think Missoula will go to war with itself if we’re ONLY dividing people along gender/sexual-orientation lines. Another great point of tension that could be exploited for the controllers is the County/City divide, and this could be accomplished by claiming that CITY voters really wanted that failed Crisis Mill Levy, but those mean, hateful country bumpkins in Missoula COUNTY voted no.

This blame game is already happening on social media. Here’s Nick Shontz, a failed Ward 6 City Council candidate, doing the heavy lifting to bash County voters for the failed mill levy:

Maybe Nick Shontz should consider the REAL outrage of having your property tax obligation sky rocket while, at the same time, being told you’re NOT doing enough to financially support the drug addicts who shit in parks and spray graffiti on every inch of this town. No “manufacturing” of outrage is needed when the harsh reality of the drug crisis makes a walk in the park a risky endeavor, even during daylight hours.

On a Missoula Reddit thread asking Are you afraid to shop at Secret Seconds you can see how people are processing their frustration over serious health and safety issues from this drug epidemic. Here’s a comment from “kh406” I found worth sharing. Further down in the comment thread, this same commenter speculates that “Express-Occasion9050” is MY burner account, but it is not.

Here are the comments:

No, outrage toward our former Mayor is NOT a sentiment unique to me, but I understand why this account could be interpreted as mine. The reality is I’m too busy writing under my REAL name to have the time to bash a Mayor who engaged in the most effective weight loss program available by dying in office, something that COULD have been avoided if the Missoula cabal wasn’t so obsessed with maintaining their control of this town, squeezing every last second of “leadership” they could from Engen before his final act.

This year represents the BIGGEST threat to the cabal’s grip on power since John Engen ascended to his Mayoral role in 2006 with the help of “former” CIA agent and Missoulian publisher, John Talbot. That means the rainbow tool will need to do some SERIOUS work in order to mobilize brainwashed college students this November to vote against their housing interests by supporting whatever new bond is being developed to saddle the taxpayers with a heavier financial burden so woke organizations, like MOR, can pick winners and losers for housing, which ultimately means VOTING.

See how this works? Now, how about a strategy to COUNTER this bullshit?

The only countermeasure I see as being potentially effective is raising awareness that a divide and conquer strategy is being deployed under the guise of inclusivity and tolerance. Could that work? Not if we’re only relying on complicit local media outlets, it won’t. And that’s where I come in!

No one else locally is in the position I’m in to track this cabal’s duplicitous maneuverings and report on it and that’s because I used to be one of them (PDF)! The link goes to the minutes of a Mayor’s Downtown Advisory Commission meeting that happened 9 years ago, in June. It includes some interesting concern articulated by Judge Jenks about homelessness, chronic offenders and jail capacity. From the link:

That last bullet point was a fascinating failure, since it resulted in a soft attempt to get “vendors” of alcohol to do some voluntary things to slightly lessen the harm alcohol does to our community.

Why did it fail? It failed because even the BID president at the time, Tim Worden, stubbornly refused to consider this kind of harm reduction plan because it might HARM his bottomline. Yes, it was more important for Tim Worden to protect 8am Steel Reserve sales for street drunks than it was for him to help protect the community from the chronic alcohol abuse and behavior of these street people, not all of whom were homeless.

Further down in the minutes you can see my name alongside the influencer I wrote about last week. Look at me doing my duty for the cabal by lending my voice to a failed spare change diversion program (the emphasis of me is mine):

Looking back on this time period, I’m almost nostalgic for these simpler days when the smile on my custom-made Lego face was more genuine and NOT a strategy to conceal how much rage is seething just beneath the surface.

Staying mired in the past does nothing productive to influence the future, so I’ll wrap this post up with the usual appeal to support Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF), or to make a donation at my about page in order to support my LOCAL, independent journalism.

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

How long could I handle the Juneteenth festivities at Fort Missoula today? That was one of the questions I sought to answer on this 19th day of June. The other question I posed to the Missoula Organization of Realtors, but you’re gonna have to wait until tomorrow to find out if having gay sex improves one’s chances of getting into subsidized housing.

The answer to the first question turned out to be less than 10 minutes. Why? Because first this race-shaming twat attempted a polite hello, then I saw our placeholder Mayor. Maybe it was the vigorous biking and lack of food, but seeing these two white men had me suddenly feeling nauseous.

I had two conversations at this POLITICAL event for our placeholder Mayor. One was with a young woman who looked like a reporter, but was actually doing some marketing work for the University of Montana. The other was with Martin Charlo and some white dude who I’m sure is important.

Here’s an image of Martin Charlo I screen-shot for this post about Dave Strohmaier’s train obsession:

I asked Martin Charlo and the white guy if they had ever heard the name Sean Stevenson or Johnny Lee Perry. They had not, so I gave them a quick education about those two dead black men, in addition to mentioning the mysterious deaths of Joey Thompson and Rebekah Barsotti.

That was all I could handle, so I left the event to give Sean’s sister an update on the maddening antics of Missoula’s politically opportunistic virtue signalers, then I biked to the Big Dipper, where our Mayor announced his candidacy to get elected FOR REAL, for some ice cream.

This delicious espresso ice cream milkshake was just what I needed to give me the fortitude for my gay sex inquiry at MOR, but not before I educated the ice-cream slingers about dead black men in Missoula on this PROUD Juneteenth day celebrating FREEDOM!

My day of productive inquiries was done by 2pm, so I had time to put toward working on my own personal housing challenges AND the fun fact TWO cars decided to stop working for me now! It’s a good thing I’m such an adept user of multi-modal transportation!

If you would like to help keep me from joining the urban camping hordes, please consider supporting Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF), or making a donation at my about page. Any little bit helps.

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for tomorrow’s very colorful post about rainbows.

by Travis Mateer

I wasn’t planning on walking a good length of the river where Joey Thompson’s body was supposedly found by a private property owner between the Tarkio boat launch site and the Forrest Grove boat launch, but since my attempt to make public comment at the MINERAL County Commissioner meeting wasn’t successful (they start at 10am now, not 11), I wanted to salvage SOMETHING from my trip to Superior, Montana.

The area I’ve been wanting to check out is difficult to access, so I parked near this interstate bridge that spans the Clark Fork river and started walking upstream. What I found creeped me out.

Footage of my exploration can be found further down. But first, here are the other posts I’ve written so far that reference this case:

Some Curious Things NOT Happening In The Joey Thompson Missing Person Case (May 5th, 2023)

Are There Symbols And Tactics Being Shared By An Online Sub-Culture Of Killers? (May 9th, 2023)

Why Are These Montana LifeGuards, Fighting Human Trafficking, So Quiet? (May 11th, 2023)

Who Knows What Happened To Joey Thompson? (May 15th, 2023)

We Adults Are Failing The Friends Of Joey Thompson (May 20th, 2023)

Why Are Two Sheriff Offices Now Failing To Call Me Back Or Acknowledge Any Investigation In The Death Of Joey Thompson? (May 28th, 2023)

We’re Keeping The Coroner And Crime Lab Busy In Zoom Town! (June 2nd, 2023)

This image shows some structures on the north side of I-90 where the cattle raised on this land are tended to. Since my upbringing was of the suburban-brat variety, I’m not sure what it takes to raise cattle, or to test sick animals for diseases, like chronic wasting.

Would a rancher, for example, cut a hole in the head of a young calf to test its brain for Chronic Wasting Disease? Or would a hunter do the same for a deer? And, after getting a brain sample, would they just leave the head behind?

I’m asking these specific questions because I found the skull of an animal with a hole clearly cut into it, a hole that appears sawed by human hands. Here’s a picture:

See the hole? You can’t miss it, and it looks like whoever made it knew what they were doing. I’m trying really hard not to jump to ANIMAL SACRIFICE because I think there are probably more plausible explanations.

In an attempt to find a less nefarious reason for the hole in the skull, I did a brief search and found a little context from a Wisconsin government website on how hunters can take samples from their kills in order to test for Chronic Wasting Disease. It does, indeed, have something to do with the head. From the link (emphasis mine):

While I investigate cases of people who have died in Western Montana under mysterious circumstances (notice the lack of racial/social qualifiers), our local media and criminal justice pretenders, like Jesse Laslovich, are making themselves appear important and competent by discussing HATE CRIMES.

From the link (emphasis mine):

Anti-LGBTQ+ laws swept the nation during the last round of state legislative sessions, but hate against LGBTQ+ individuals in Montana is documented locally, too.

“We haven’t just had national and international incidents grounded in hate,” Montana U.S. Attorney Jesse Laslovich said at the panel, hosted at the University of Montana’s Alexander Blewett III Law School. “We’ve experienced them right here, in Montana, as there’s been an increase in hateful rhetoric against historically marginalized groups, such as our LGBTQ+ community members.

“With the recently concluded Montana legislative session, new laws have targeted transgender youth and the drag communities.”

Missoula Rep. Zooey Zephyr, one of Montana’s first transgender lawmakers, was censured in the recent legislative session, and homophobic neo-Nazis showed up to Missoula’s Trans Day of Visibility in March.

I have to be VERY careful with my frustration here because there are personal implications with what I know about an investigation at the state level on the back-burner with personal ties to our U.S. Attorney. That’s why I won’t detail ALL the calls I made last Thursday, I’ll just mention that Travis Spinder (Montana Crime Lab) and Kyler Nerison (Montana AG Office) both received voicemails from me about what is NOT happening in the Joey Thompson case.

Before wrapping this post up with my video report from the banks of the Clark Fork River, I’ll include one more quote from the HATE CRIME article, because it includes the detective I spoke to recently about what I think this graffiti means:

Here’s the quote (emphasis mine):

Missoula Police Detective Ethan Smith serves at the department’s LGBTQ+ Community Liaison.

Smith said he monitors social media posts and decides what to focus resources on.

“My biggest concern, of course, is if there’s going to be something dynamic, it’s going to happen at an event like this,” Smith said of Missoula’s Pride events. “So we do investigate that stuff.”

It looks like I talked to the right detective. At least I hope I did. Now, here’s the video:

https://vimeo.com/837161381?share=copy

If you would like to support my work, Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF) is one way, and the donation button at my about page is another.

Thanks for reading!