by Travis Mateer
My personal mission to understand how local narrative control can downplay and disappear the role of the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office in euthanizing and executing two black men in a liberal town like Missoula is getting a helping hand from Elon and DOGE. Thanks to the continued exposure of how money flows from USAID to media organizations, like Politico and the New York Times, it’s becoming more clear to me how a story like George Floyd can become a NATIONAL headline, while Sean’s story gets relegated to being told by a blogger like me.
How this works is pretty simple. Politico, for example, sold 37 special subscriptions to the FDA that cost TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS each, which came to nearly half a million dollars. Impressive.
Here’s another screenshot from their Zerohedge piece showing additional money flowing to the BBC and NYT.
How does this play out in our little BIG SKY sandbox? Let’s take an issue that I have reported on VERY effectively, and that’s the terrible local addiction Missoula has to TAX INCREMENT FINANCING. When you click MY link you will see that I took my tax battle all the way to Helena last session, which putt the fear of municipal insolvency directly into the heart of Missoula’s REAL Mayor, Ellen Buchanan.
But, when you click THIS POLITICO LINK, what you get is pro-Democrat Ryan Busse bullshit about taxes that begins with this deceptive framing of the tax dilemma (emphasis mine):
Across the Mountain West, an influx of coastal out-of-staters are causing property taxes to skyrocket, sparking a backlash that could scramble politics across the region.
…
In Montana — where the part-time legislature won’t meet again until 2025 — upstart Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ryan Busse is putting calls to cut the property tax rate at the center of his campaign, while far-right Republicans push for reform from the other side of the political spectrum.
“I travel around the state and Republicans all across the state, Democrats, all of them, tell me the same thing,” Busse said. “Property taxes don’t discriminate. They go into every kind of mailbox, red mailboxes and blue mailboxes, and people cannot believe that this governor raised taxes like this.”
What you are reading is pro-Democrat propaganda, and it gets worse when, further down, the article admits Gianforte did NOT actually “raise taxes” (emphasis mine):
While Republican Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte didn’t raise the tax rate, per se, Busse says that the governor’s refusal to lower it after he knew tax bills for homeowners would go up amounted to accepting an increase.
And while Gianforte has heralded some tax relief programs passed by the legislature, his critics say he hasn’t dealt with the underlying problem. He launched a property tax task force in January, but political leaders in the state resisted calls from the state’s far-right Freedom Caucus to open a special legislative session this year to pass long-term reforms to the way the state does property taxes. After the proposed special property tax session failed, the Freedom Caucus asked voters to “remember these votes” during 2024 primary elections.
“You would think a Republican like Gianforte and the legislature would jump at the opportunity to cut taxes like this, but they haven’t,” said Montana State University Billings political science professor Paul James Pope.
Yes, this is crap, but it’s the kind of crap Democrats uncritically put into their retarded brains, especially when they see a PROFESSOR at a UNIVERSITY is being quoted.
Why should anyone listen to a professor like Paul James Pope? That’s a good question, and it’s a question a Montana Democrat will NEVER ask themselves, just like they didn’t ponder the actual senility of their candidate until it became too obvious for their Democrat-promoting media to hide.
When Biden bowed out, local media tapped Paul James Pope to hold the hands of Democrats and whisper nice sounding bedtime stories into their stupid little brains. Here’s how he started the hand-holding (emphasis mine):
President Joe Biden announced his exit from the presidential race earlier Sunday and has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the new democratic nominee. MSU Billings political science professor Paul Pope said much is still up in the air regarding the nomination but Montana will be impacted by the change.
With 15 years as a political scientist under his belt, Pope described President Biden’s announcement as unprecedented.
“We’ve never seen this before. This is a game changer. It shakes everything up,” said Pope. “Biden, unfortunately, even though he has a long history serving this country since the 1970s, yeah, he reached a point where his performance and his abilities were obviously problematic.”
No, Paul, THE MEDIA reached a point where they couldn’t hide reality anymore from the American people, and the narrative of Biden being competent utterly collapsed.
Here’s more propaganda from Professor Poop. I mean, Pope (emphasis mine):
Pope said Trump’s base of voters has remained relatively stagnant, even despite the recent assassination attempt on his life.
“I doubt there was any impact. In fact, Trump didn’t even get a good bump in the polls,” said Pope. “Anybody that the Democrats put up that’s even a little bit more exciting than Biden, more energy, that’s going to hurt Trump. Every bit of that is going to be taking away from Trump’s ability to win this race.”
No where in the Politico article about taxes was the mechanism of Tax Increment Financing (TIF) mentioned, which is pretty weird when you consider how integral TIF money is to gentrifying Missoula with its skimmed-off tax incentive handed over to private developers and, you know, sometimes banks.
When TIF is mentioned, like The Pulp recently did, it’s usually to give the Queen of TIF, Ellen Buchanan, space to defend it from attacks, like MORE legislation this session targeting this bullshit slush fund for developers.
Here’s the setup from The Pulp:
TIF districts allow local governments and/or redevelopment authorities to earmark potential property tax increases from improvements to blighted sites for future development of public infrastructure in the area. To put it simply, they serve as incentives for private owners to collaborate on intensive redevelopment projects with the city, which can use the tool to guide growth.
But tax-increment financing has also piqued the interest of legislators in Helena, where property tax reform is a constant topic of conversation as the state enters another year in the throes of a housing crisis. Republicans in particular have taken aim at municipal policy and spending that might increase tax rates.
That’s the genesis of Senate Bill 2, carried by Sen. Greg Hertz, R-Polson, at the behest of a legislative interim committee that drew up the basics of the proposal before session began.
And here’s the fear-based Pro-TIF lift Ellen and Company get every time this issues comes up in local media (emphasis mine):
“If this bill passes, the TIF provision will no longer be a tool that local governments are able to use,” Jennifer Olson, the government affairs director for the Montana League of Cities and Towns, told lawmakers.
Olson acknowledged the change would reduce property taxes for individuals. But she said the savings on property taxes would be miniscule in comparison to the potential boost to the city budget provided at the end of a TIF district’s life under current law.
At city council this week, Missoula Redevelopment Agency director Ellen Buchanan raised similar concerns.
“I think it’s safe to say that SB 2 would literally be the death knell for tax-increment financing use in the state of Montana,” Buchanan said. “And it’s the only economic development tool we really have.”
If TIF funded double-ended dildos for Jennifer and Ellen to go fuck themselves with, I might warm up to the use of this tool, but, as it stands, I think it would be GREAT to fully gut this method of gentrification once and for all.
When it comes to TIF, I don’t think Ellen and Company have anything to worry about. Republicans in Montana are much more concerned with genitals than taxes, so I doubt reform of TIF will go anywhere, but maybe I’m wrong. Regardless, I’ll keep my eye on this issue as the session drags along, so stay tuned to this NON-COMPROMISED source of information I provide WITHOUT any funding from the Feds.
If you appreciate my efforts to wage information war against these craven fuckers who cry like little babies when their money flow gets interrupted, consider donating to Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF). Though hobbled by lawfare, I’m not out of figurative ammo YET.
Thanks for reading!
