Having spent time last session in Helena watching the sausage making, I thought I had seen the cultural. nadir of idiotic Republican behavior, but no. After wasting an entire week not being able to agree on the rules, among themselves, these stupid fucks walked right back into the cultural trap of bathroom politics (emphasis mine):
In 2023, the Legislature passed the bill banning gender-affirming medical care for minors, though a court later overturned the law — a frequent fate for the most extreme of recent Republican social issue legislation. This year, in his state of the state speech, Gov. Greg Gianforte told lawmakers he would welcome yet another similarly minded bill to his desk: House Bill 121, which proposes restricting the use of bathrooms and dormitories on the basis of sex as defined by a person’s chromosomes and their production of eggs or sperm. The bill, which has gained notoriety as the country’s first state-level bathroom ban this year, says that anyone who “encounters another individual of the opposite sex in the restroom or changing room” can sue the facility.
Lawmakers in the House gave preliminary approval to that bill this week on party lines.
If this was the extent of the early-session idiocy, I wouldn’t be this negative already, but it gets worse, and I’m talking DEATH PENALTY worse.
A perennial proposal to restore or reverse Montana’s status as a death penalty state arrived this week at the Capitol.
Montana does allow the death penalty, although a 2015 court ruling that found the specific substance in the law could not be used has precluded the state from executing someone ever since. Two people in Montana, one convicted in 1983 and the other in 1992, are currently on death row.
House Bill 205 from freshman Rep. Shannon Maness, R-Dillon, proposes to remove the problematic language in state law, that being “an ultra-fast-acting barbiturate in combination with a chemical paralytic agent,” and replacing it with, “a substance or substances … sufficient to cause death.”
In effect, the bill would put the death penalty back into action. How legislators vote on these proposals tends to be a proxy vote on capital punishment itself.
Yes, Montana DOES already have the death penalty, and it doesn’t need legislative clarity to be dispensed by ANY Sheriff Office across the great state of Montana. All a badge has to do is know how to point and shoot a gun and BAM, they become walking, talking executioners. If you need something less obvious, the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office has refined the approach to killing people, using the power of the CORONER to euthanize Sean Stevenson, an act of lethal cowardice I will never let them forget.
Meanwhile, I continue researching the cultural roots of the counter-culture, and that research is more fascinating than ever, but it’s not something I plan on just giving away for free, like some synchronistic researchers are angling for with their database projects (I’m looking at you, Mr. Knowles). While I’m more plagued than ever with this strange phenomenon, I’ve never been more certain that it’s critically important to understand, so I’m going to keep documenting the craziness as it comes at me, like that truck that hit Denver Henderson last week.
I’d like to say more, but this is one of those FREE blog posts that you don’t have to pay anything to read. You just have to endure my constant suggestion that, if you see value here, you donate to Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF). Any little amount helps.
I like understanding systems, especially as I’m being actively chewed up by one, so I’m going to continue testing a theory of mine by using myself as a guinea pig, and part of that theory entails WHY the police officer in my Marijuana DUI case appears to be have been quite lazy, at best, in his failure to collect ALL the evidence necessary to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that I was impaired on the day he pulled me over for having only one operational headlight.
That’s right, what began as a poverty infraction (I was homeless at the time, and couldn’t afford to buy a new headlight on my dishwasher salary) turned into a full song and dance, with me doing all the dancing, while my arresting officer’s rap music awaited me after I was put into handcuffs and taken to jail.
Why was I arrested? I was arrested because I refused their final demand, which was to give them my blood after I had already given them my breath and saliva in the form of a new saliva testing kit police officers are using in the field. More on that later.
If the arresting officer wanted to have a strong case, which means strong, quality evidence, then he would have gotten a warrant and taken me to the hospital to force me to give up my blood, but that’s not what happened. Instead, we bumped along to his choice of music, which, though triggering at the time, has turned into one of my favorite parts of telling this story, which I do every chance I get.
A few years ago NBC covered the new challenges arising, state by state, as Cannabis gets legalized. Here’s some relevant information ANYONE puffing “legally” in Montana should consider:
Blood THC levels typically peak quickly after smoking cannabis, reaching upward of 100 nanograms per milliliter of blood within 15 minutes of smoking it. Then, THC levels drop rapidly to less than 2 nanograms per milliliter of blood after about four hour. It takes around eight hours to reach similarly low concentrations of THC after taking an edible.
A 2019 study led by Dr. Jeff Brubacher, an associate professor in the department of emergency medicine at the University of British Columbia, found that THC concentrations below 5 nanograms per milliliter did not appear to increase the risk of car accidents. Levels above 5 nanograms per milliliter, however, were associated with an increased risk. In Canada, where recreational marijuana was legalized in October 2018, the cutoff for THC is 2 nanograms per milliliter.
Here in Montana, I believe it’s the 5 nanogram limit we are dealing with, so if the city wants to prosecute me for impaired driving, then getting into the specifics about WHEN I may have puffed, and how long I waited until getting behind the wheel, is going to be a part of my trial.
Unlike my last trial, I’m definitely taking the stand for THIS one, and that’s because I’m curious to see how the Montana judicial system is truly GRAPPLING with drug DUIs (emphasis mine):
Officers are not testing for drugs in many cases, unless the amount of alcohol is below the legal limit during a traffic stop.
Officials say that means drugged driving is probably under reported.
“When we talk about DUIs, the first thing people think about is drinking and driving. We have to keep in mind that impairment can come from any type of mood-altering substance,” said Missoula County Justice of the Peace Judge Holloway.
Here’s another gap when it comes to drugged driving, troopers can’t get a rapid measure in the field of how high someone is, similar to what a breathalyzer does for alcohol.
Instead, a suspect’s blood must be tested in a lab, like the state crime lab in Missoula, and when the result comes back there isn’t a statutory benchmark for more severe punishment the “higher” a driver is.
“We do have an issue here, and I think collectively as a community, if we all use accountability and educational aspects of things and really get to the root of substance abuse, we can do better as a community,” said Judge Holloway. Trooper Philip Smart offers this advice to help save lives; “Don’t do drugs. Slow down, wear your seat belt.”
How long was it after I fell asleep after my dishwashing shift? That’s one question I’ll be answering from the stand, under oath. It’s certainly going to be embarrassing to explain how, as a homeless person, I would sometimes clock out but NOT leave my place of work, but I’m willing to get into those specifics if it exposes what’s going on here.
And what IS potentially going on here?
First, this DUI case was used as leverage in a separate legal matter, which raised the legal eyebrows of my inexperienced Public Defender. I said no to THAT offer, then I said no to the next offer of pleading guilty to reckless driving. My latest offer is CARELESS driving, which is a significant downgrade, and, I’ll admit, tempting, but here’s why I’m still going to say SHOVE IT to the city prosecutors.
Part of the police officer’s laziness in failing to obtain a warrant to get my blood, I suspect, is because FEAR makes it easy for prosecutors to coerce plea deals, and cops know this. To get more paranoid in my assessment, if the legal system simply wanted more leverage to use against me in the broader lawfare attempt to shut down my citizen journalism, then this was a relatively easy way to try and achieve that.
There’s also the fact I had planned, last spring, to use my box-truck asset in order to side-gig before it became a more necessary place for me to live inside for four months. Not having a valid driver’s license for six months–which is what happens when you JUST SAY NO to vampires and their demands for blood–is another financial drag for a struggling creator scraping by after biting all those important hands that feed artists so that they can control narratives.
Pleading guilty to careless driving is allowing city prosecutors to control more of my narrative, and I’m not going to let them do that, so get ready to give me another trial, Chief Keithi, and make sure that clerk recorder is ready to spell ALL the words I’m fixin’ to speak in regards to what my arrest experience was like, and why I think the body fluid test being used in every DUI case is utter bullshit.
If you’d like to contribute any digital dollars to my local citizen journalism, Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF) still has some financial room left for you contributions. Any little bit helps.
Monday was the first full moon of the year, so I invited a friend over, and that friend borrowed a book by a famous director born in Missoula. Later that evening, I incorporated an image from this director’s work into my Lego world. Here’s a pic:
In this Lego world I have many things, including a few Lego drones, and anyone paying attention to the news knows that drones are big right now, but what 30 years ago? Like, around the time Timothy McVeigh was operational?
I mention Timothy McVeigh because I’m reading a book about him right now, titled Aberration in the Heartland of the Real, by Wendy Painter. This book is thick, and has already included some curious insights about Fort Bragg, which is timely considering the two attacks on New Year’s Day were from military men connected to Fort Bragg.
Well, what I read last night is more than just a well-timed “coincidence”. No, what I read last night is REALLY fucking with me, especially after my friend who borrowed that book by the famous director told me a few hours ago that the famous director, David Lynch, just died.
Before I get to what I read last night I’ll note one more thing, and that’s the fact that Brandon Bryant, a Missoula native and well-known whistleblower of the US Drone Program, was a significant part of my documentary about Tax Increment Financing.
Now, let me put all the pieces together so you can appreciate how fucking insane this is.
In the span of just two pages in the book about Timothy McVeigh, Brandon Bryant is referenced, Lego drones are referenced, and a quote from a Twin Peaks character, Major Briggs, is quoted.
Um, yeah.
When the cyber truck blew up on New Years Day, and weird shit about drones started getting seeded by shady alt-media characters, some in the media focused on the word “gravitic” as being more reminiscent of Science Fiction than real-world capacity. Well, wouldn’t you know, that word in relations to drones came up just a few days later in the Painter tome.
Add the blatant “Project Blue Book” association that David Lynch and Mark Frost infused into Twin Peaks, and it just keeps looking weirder and weirder.
Major Briggs? Fort Bragg? Drones and UFOs? All this, and Trump hasn’t even been inaugurated yet.
Damn. Stay buckled in, folks. 2025 is just getting started.
Ryan Funke, the Sheriff of Mineral County, officially took charge of the Sheriff’s Office in January 2023 after facing off with a gay woman from Florida for the job. To show the citizens of Mineral County that a new Sheriff was now running the show, Ryan Funke took a hard stand against mildew and successfully de-funked his office. Amazing!
Here’s a quote from Funke about cleaning up and organizing his moldy office:
“Appearance is important and when people come into the office, they see chaos. We’re making the area more appealing to visitors and our employees. That may seem like a little thing, but the hallways will seem wider with the file cabinets and tables gone. A much cleaner appearance.”
It’s interesting to read this quote about appearances because, from my perspective, Ryan Funke’s tenure as Sheriff has ushered in a new era of violence and confusion in the County that monitors the interstate gateway into western Montanas. Considering how Funke’s tenure began in the midst of the Writ of Mandamus legal entanglement unleashed by a member of the notorious Jasper family, the chaos of the last two years is not unexpected.
Before Funke was even sworn in, an inmate at the Mineral County jail, Shane Pelletier, allegedly committed suicide in November of 2022. Then an armed robber on the run from Eastern Washington was shot dead in the street of St. Regis in March. Next, Joey Thompson went missing in Missoula in April and his lifeless body was found by a private landowner in Mineral County—a private landowner who STILL, to this day, has never been identified. In August of 2023, Kraig Walter Benson entered the Four Aces Bar and murdered two people, an act of violence he was just found guilty of and sentenced to 140 years in prison for.
Continuing this trend of violence, a black man named Willie shot at some people in October of last year, but has so far has eluded authorities. More recently, a stabbing incident gave Sheriff Funke an opportunity to write a totally unprofessional first-person account of his direct actions in subduing the stabbing suspect. Here’s the heroic-sounding actions of Sheriff Funke, as told by Sheriff Funke:
I think this context is important to consider when considering the current hunt for Shad Hotchkiss after both he AND his dog allegedly assaulted two Mineral County Sheriff Deputies. I was tipped off about this incident and told to check out the Crimestoppers posting, specifically this comment, which I screenshot before the anonymous Facebook administrator removed it AND my response.
After making this comment, the anonymous narrative controller operating the Crimestoppers Facebook page private messaged me. Here’s the exchange:
Well, anonymous Crimestopper Administrator, applaud this: I think there is a statewide effort emanating from multiple Sheriff Offices to exploit their control of “appearances” in order to take over the state of Montana, politically. I think Austin Knudsen knows this, and is doing his best to placate “Constitutional Sheriffs” like Jesse Slaughter in Cascade County, the Sheriff at the center of the controversy examined by the Cascade Effect podcast.
Citing a Democratic Party leadership that he considers “out of touch” with its constituency, Cascade County Sheriff Jesse Slaughter announced Tuesday that he is switching party affiliation and will be running for re-election in 2022 as a Republican.
Slaughter was elected as a Democrat to leadership within the Cascade County Sheriff’s Office in 2020. He made the announcement of his change in party affiliation on Tuesday via Facebook post.
“The party leadership is failing the party,” Slaughter said of Cascade County Democrats. “The Democrats in Cascade County; the people that work every day … they don’t think this radically. They don’t think that we need to confiscate guns from people. They believe in the Constitution and they know it’s there to protect them and help them. They don’t believe it should be in any way taken away from anybody.”
When you listen to the Cascade Effect podcast, like I have, you might be tempted to use the first amendment in order to suggest Slaughter take his statement about Constitutional protections and go fuck himself with it.
Why?
Because, one of Slaughter’s Sheriff Deputies shot and killed a Veteran and got away with it because the state of Montana truly is THAT corrupt, thanks to a combination of factors, like the increasingly infamous Coroner’s Inquest process, and the lingering excuse of Covid to rationalize why the murderous Sheriff Deputy didn’t need to show Michael Hanson the physical warrant before opening fire on him.
There are rumors that Jesse Slaughter wants to be Governor, kind of like McDermott wanted to be the Mayor of Missoula before I did my part to stop that from happening.
Let me emphasize, one more time, the rationale Slaughter used, under oath, to justify the abandoning of physical warrants in order to violate a man’s private property rights: Covid. This needs to be emphasized because I don’t think many people want to accept the dire consequences of what the psychopath class accomplished five years ago when they exploited fear to further entrench their grip on the prospect of real freedom, which I think America has actually come the furthest in achieving.
If Shad is gunned down by Mineral County Sheriff Deputies, or the Montana Highway Patrol, it will be with the foreknowledge that they will have near-total narrative control during the ensuing fallout, and they will have legal cover from a state that will never hold a badge accountable for anything as long as no meaningful consequences exist.
If you appreciate the insights I offer here at my little blog, please consider donating to Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF). After last week’s verdict, the costs I’m incurring for exposing the deep corruption here are continuing to mount.
There was no contract involved when I tentatively platformed a woman who I met after making and showing my documentary about Tax Increment Financing, titled Engen’s Missoula. My former podcast co-host, Tim, hadn’t worked out, so I was eager to find someone to share the hosting duties with, and this person had a legal background and alleged passion for victim advocacy, which seemed like a good fit at the time.
Since this person attended the same church as my family, along with a small women’s group that included my own mother, I wasn’t as on-guard as I should have been. With my own personal life descending into utter turmoil as my marriage fell apart, I found myself alone for the first time in 25 years, but not for long. Thanks to the Rebekah Barsotti case, and this person’s supposed unique knowledge of what supposedly happened to her, I trauma-bonded hard and fell into a fatalistic existence that I soon felt completely trapped by. My close friends and supporters agreed.
I invested more than just money when I left the non-profit sector in Missoula after a decade of leaving my mark, primarily as the Homeless Outreach Coordinator of the Poverello Center from 2010-2016. I had a great reputation among service providers, I gave informative power point presentations to college-level nursing students, and even law enforcement had warmed to my presence on the streets, since I helped them identify killers like Kevin Lino.
Doing this impossible social work with “chronically homeless” street people fucked me up good, so after watching the local uprising against Nick Checota’s planned use of millions of dollars in public TIF money to build a Convention Center, I decided to follow my dream of doing something more in-line with the degree I got from the University of Montana in literature and creative writing, so I rented a studio at the ZACC and got to work biting the hand that now feeds, or starves, local musical talent, musical talent like Cara Schulz.
Cara Schulz is the incredibly talented musician fronting Florabelle, a band that was put together after the Cancel Culture Cult deemed WAR PONY cultural appropriation. A recent article from The Pulp—a local news platform with some journalists who should be very familiar with what it means to be cancelled themselves—highlights what a creative person experiences as their creative lifeblood is taken away from them:
She says she feels like a pariah and doesn’t feel safe in public in Missoula.
…
The hardest part of this ordeal, Schulz says, is that in the days since the ZACC announcement, other venues canceled Florabelle bookings, including a Wilma gig opening for the Bozeman-based jamgrass band Kitchen Dwellers on Jan. 18 that would have been a big opportunity.
“You’ve taken my shows away, and you can’t do anything worse to me than take my shows away,” she says.
In classic NO ACCOUNTABILITY style, the sad Native who got this cancel campaign started is now disavowing the cancel train as it chugs along, doing it’s thing.
Schulz believes that Running Crane sought to have her removed from these concerts, which Running Crane flatly denies.
“I did not ask for Cara to be removed from any other bill,” Running Crane says. “I sought to protect the community center that I love, and I did that.”
Running Crane says she doesn’t want to see a local act permanently “canceled,” but hopes Schulz and her band put in meaningful work to understand the extent of Indigenous peoples’ mistreatment and marginalization in this country, and how cultural appropriation only continues that legacy.
“Anybody that’s put in that position of being asked to reassess how they compartmentalize and justify harmful behavior has two choices: One being to revert back to life before this conflict — which is comfortable, the path of least resistance — and the other is to go on an extremely uncomfortable journey of growing and learning,” Running Crane says.
Before continuing, let me suggest to Dylan Running Crane that NO ONE can say what another person’s life is truly like, behind the scenes, especially the lives of artists who choose to make their personal pain more visible by creating art out of it. And please fucking spare me that LOVE THE ZACC bullshit. I know of a Native dude who had his flute concert there cancelled this summer, and NOT by cultural purists, but by THE ZACC ITSELF. Why? Because they weren’t going to make enough money off ticket sales, that’s why.
Ok, back to my publicly visible lived experience of being targeted by a weaponized protection order.
Before my politically-connected ex-girlfriend followed through on her threat to destroy me in every way she possibly could, she made a long list of demands, and one of those demands was that I remove podcast episodes that she had participated in, including my in-depth coverage of the Lee Nelson murder trial, a homeless man I knew personally from my years working at the homeless shelter.
Needless to say, I refused.
Almost universally, artists tend to develop their crafts and talents early in life, and usually as coping mechanisms to deal with childhood bullshit, which can run the gamut from overt abuse to more covert parental deficiencies. Me, I’m a writer, and I’ve been writing publicly since 2010, 6 years before leaving my job at the shelter. I wrote about this community, sometimes unsparingly, and I continued to do so despite clear hints from ladder climbers, like Eran Pehan, that my writing was impacting my career path.
Both the Wilma and the ZACC are controlled by the Checotas, which means Cara Schulz is learning the hard lesson I started learning when my documentary got suppressed by their financial/social flexing: when you fuck with money you better be prepared to pay a VERY HIGH price.
Cara might come away from this with a critical understanding about WHY this is happening to her, and to help with that, I’m going to provide MY opinion about why I think this is happening to her, and it’s pretty simple: she has the REAL spark of a real artist, the spark others want and therefore seek to control when they realize they don’t have it.
I say this having seen only one performance, the recent performance at Free Cycles, but that was all I needed to see to know. What I saw that night was a talented artist compel a room full of screen-distracted, IPA swilling youngsters to ALL SHUT UP at the same time, sit down on the floor, and listen to a song. That is more than just a spark, it’s a quality of talent that some in power see as a threat, which is why so much money is spent to produce so much garbage musical output.
Ellen Buchanan, the shadow Mayor of Missoula, understands the critical need to control artists, thus narratives, which is why her signature event is the River City Roots Festival. When you can’t control artists, then it’s important to control the methods of silencing them. One method is to own the venues where artists perform. Checotas, check. But what about pesky PUBLIC artists, like the loose collective who performed nearly EVERY Friday night at the XXXX’s?
In THAT case, lawfare by law enforcement ensued, but thanks to the effort of Councilman, Daniel Carlino, our local constabulary couldn’t exploit the obscure law they had gotten an authoritarian hard-on over. Darn!
In my case, my podcast died a long time ago, but slowly I’ve had to be taught all the new geographic locations barred to me and my NEED to identify what’s going on in the community my kids are growing up in, a need one of those city officials (Eran Pehan) rightfully identified as “a calling” before I chose to retire my Homeless Outreach Coordinator title to lesser quality people who had that one important skill I lacked: the proper submissive response to the invisible leash of petty local power.
Now that I’ve gained new “lived experiences” about the challenges of vehicular living, and all the fun criminal acts you get to enjoy, like theft and vandalism, I’m onto the many phases of legal lawfare that scored my adversaries a big win last week. I suspect Cara and I both need to better understand that it’s not just our reputations and ability to monetize our talents they want to stomp, it’s the spark, and they want to snuff it out as completely as they can if they fear you have one of those pesky sparks that REALLY doesn’t like to be told how to sparkle by less talented people.
To wrap this up, below is a link to the song that started playing as I was writing this post. Is synchronicity more the result of a pattern-seeking information sickness than an objective phenomenon of metaphysical insight? Maybe somewhere in the hundreds and hundreds of pages I wrote last year there’s an answer to that heady question, but for now, just marvel at what “shuffle” on my iPod selected for me.
