Month: February 2025

What’s the cost of NOT being a sellout and choosing a political team? What’s the cost of putting REAL justice ahead of a grant-grift? As a VERY broke artist who spent the summer living in his box truck, I’d say the cost is steep.

The band formerly known as War Pony found out what I found out years ago, and that’s the fact that REAL financial consequences follow when you offend and/or threaten the bottomline of certain influencers in this town, like Nick and Robin Checota.

My method was making a documentary about the 16 million dollar grift Nick Checota and our then-Mayor, John Engen, was trying to convince our community to take without scrutiny, but the opposite happened, and the only thing that finally stopped the ensuing uprising was the Covid shutdown and a pathetic felony charge directed at Brandon Bryant, which he was acquitted of.

Nick Checota and his political enablers only managed to get through those dark times–which squeezed EVERYONE financially–with copious amounts of Federal money. While politically connected state politicians, like Ellie Boldman, double-dipped in limited local relief funds to the tune of $50,000, other grifters used academia and the hilarious BLACK LIVES MATTER con-job to make money.

I’ve written previously about Tobin I LOVE THE BLACKS Shearer–like this post, and this one, and this one–but this race-baiting “academic” deserves MORE attention because I just read an article about him getting MORE grant money, this time it’s through the Mellon Foundation, which is particularly galling.

Why?

Because, when you do history like I do history, the patterns become VERY significant, like how Andrew Mellon got his start in the same city where the black man euthanized by the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office was born: Pittsburgh.

Andrew began working at his father’s Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, bank, T. Mellon & Sons, in the early 1870s, eventually becoming the leading figure in the institution. He later renamed T. Mellon & Sons as Mellon National Bank and established another financial institution, the Union Trust Company in Pittsburgh in 1889. By the end of 1913, Mellon National Bank held more money in deposits than any other bank in Pittsburgh, and the second-largest bank in the region was controlled by Union Trust. In the course of his business career, Mellon owned or helped finance large companies including Alcoa, the New York Shipbuilding Corporation, Old Overholt whiskey, Standard Steel Car Company, Westinghouse Electric Corporation, Koppers, the Pittsburgh Coal Company, the Carborundum Company, Union Steel Company, the McClintic-Marshall Construction Company, Gulf Oil, and numerous others. He was also an influential donor to the Republican Party during the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era.

With this context in mind, here’s how a little loose change from a DEEP pocket like Mellon dribbles down to a grifter like Tobin:

For more of a laugh, this is how the article frames the funding (emphasis mine):

The University of Montana recently received a $500,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation to support a new Democracy Studies Program. 

Led by history professors Claire Arcenas, Kyle Volk, and Jeff Wiltse, the grant seeks to foster democratic values and revitalize the humanities while also supporting faculty research over the next three years.

Giving money to someone like Tobin in order to “revitalize the humanities” is like trying to help heroin addicts with methadone–it DOES NOT FUCKING WORK.

While money continues to flow to people like Tobin so that he can exploit marginalize populations for a paycheck, I’m getting ready to sign a consignment contract in order to sell some shit. Here’s the shit that will be hitting the auction block soon:

The main reason I must continue to liquidate segments of my art collection is because I didn’t choose the sellout path when I had the opportunity after making my documentary, which was to join TEAM CONSERVATIVE by taking a job with Americans For Prosperity.

If I had decided to take Koch money, like one of the subjects of my documentary did, then I wouldn’t have the ability to speculate on a brewing political takeover of Montana by “Constitutional” Sheriffs, among other topics I continue to investigate.

While I continue plugging away with post after FREE post, it’s long been clear my efforts are not financially sustainable, though that doesn’t stop me from promoting Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF). Eventually, when there’s no more art to sell and other things of value to pawn away, I’ll have to decide how to do more than scrape by as the grifters enjoy the fruits of their grift.

That is, until Trump and DOGE take it all away from them!

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

For years rumors in Missoula have persisted that some kind of homeless advertising exists, something more then the usual word-of-mouth dynamic that naturally exists among an economically marginalized population looking to subsist on the limited resources made available to them by our psychopathic overlords.

I’m not proving the existence today of ACTUAL ADVERTISING putting Missoula on the map for the homeless circuit in order to demonize the client doing the advertising, but to document, for educational purposes, how this advertising came to be, and who it actually benefits. That said, let’s begin with where Armand currently resides, which is jail.

Since Missoula County chose to STOP publishing mugshots last November, I haven’t been checking the jail roster like I grew accustomed to doing when I worked at the Poverello Center, but something compelled me a few days ago to scroll through the names when I stopped on C’s and tried remembering what Armand looked like.

When I tried looking up more information what I found surprised me. Here it is, the advertising our cheerful Armand gave about the BEST place he ever “urban camped” in America:

Hopefully the text isn’t too difficult to read because Armand not only advertises Missoula’s Kim Williams trail as a PRIMO urban camping spot, he ALSO admits to once using BOOBY TRAPS for his campsite.

Hmmm, have I reported on the possible use of booby traps in Missoula and the hilarious attempt by Parks and Rec to rebrand them as “needle traps“?

Yes. Yes I have.

At this point you might be curious about where, digitally, you can find out more about how this homeless advertising for Missoula came to be. Let me suggest starting with board members of Denver Voice because that’s where you can meet amazing people, like Charity Von Guiness.

Why kind of work does VON GUINESS VENTURES do? I’m not sure. You can go to the about page, like I did, and you can read and RE-READ all the words, like I did, but even then you might still be confused. Like I am. But go ahead and try.

Charity should be mindful that, with such incredibly garbled language, it’s entirely possible Democrats might recruit her to run for president.

Maybe I should be more CHARITABLE to Charity, since I also consider myself capable of adapting to rapid changes that would derail most, and that my calling is to INVESTIGATE, INTERROGATE, and IMAGINE our way to blah blah blah…you get the idea.

One of my meta-investigations that continues to impress me is the ability to CONTROL NARRATIVES like ignoring the disturbing power Sheriff Offices have in Montana, especially when it comes to enacting life-ending decisions WITHOUT input from the family member being targeted for elimination.

If you think I’m being harsh, how else do you explain the Missoula County Sheriff Office, acting as coroner, choosing to remove someone from life support like they did to Sean Stevenson? And they did this as Sean’s family desperately tried to simply confirm where their loved one was located, which they weren’t able to do in time, since it appears the unstated motto of the Sheriff’s Office is to DENY what’s happening, then DEFEND their decision to DEPOSE of someone who may have recovered to continue being a father, son, and brother.

Another example of a Sheriff/Coroner displaying incredible narrative control powers is the Rebekah Barsotti case, where, like Joey Thompson, the determination by Sheriff Funke’s crew in Mineral County was ACCIDENT. With Rebekah, when I was covering the case, I was in direct communication with Rebekah’s mother, Angela Mastrovito, so I know that her private medical examiner had a MOLDY CORPSE to examine, since our crime lab professionals apparently don’t know how to properly operate a refrigerated morgue.

A recent case emphasizes that my source isn’t crazy to make the claim that a body can be negligently NOT refrigerated while in official custody of local authorities, and this case came to my attention because local media CAN ACTUALLY REPORT on stuff like this if the conditions are right.

And what are the “right” conditions?

If Rebekah was a muff-muncher, for example, the conditions may have been more conducive to our media giving a shit about reporting on massive malfeasance at our state crime lab , but, alas, Rebekah, as far as my source have indicated, was a standard white woman with a male-partner-selection problem, in that she selected a piece of shit as a partner.

Here’s what happens when the rotting corpse is a gay:

Doug is the husband of Caleb Boelman, a 32-year-old Butte man who passed away in August 2024.

In early January, an attorney sent a letter to county commissioners concerning the mishandling of Boelman’s remains.

Now, the Boelman family has filed a civil suit against the county. Doug Ingraham is not a party in the lawsuit.

Was there litigation in the Barsotti case? Yes. Was there extreme allegations in this case that attracted True Crime interest? Yes. Was there effective local coverage of this case? No, and I’m not purposefully disparaging myself, just indicating the absence of professional decorum and organizational resources greatly hampers my ability to be effective.

Going back to the story, the dismissal of the coroner features some key points I’d like to highlight. Here’s one of them:

As first reported by the Montana Standard, Missoula attorney Lincoln Palmer sent Butte-Silver Bow a letter threatening a lawsuit if they don’t settle over allegations that the body of 32-year-old Caleb Boelman was left unrefrigerated over a weekend in August. Also, that the coroner provided false information about drugs being in his system, and that the true cause of death will never be known.

When a coroner fucks up like this, the evidence that could have been accurately documented is lost forever. And the consequence for the coroner? (emphasis mine):

Because Ingraham is an elected official, she could not be forced into taking leave and instead was told to voluntarily go on administrative leave to allow for a “fair and impartial investigation,” according to Gallagher.

“While I see the appointment of an acting coroner tonight as a positive step for the families who will endure the loss of a loved one, it fails to remotely resolve the utter and repeated wrongs inflicted on Caleb, his memory, his estate, and me by the coroner’s assertions,” said Doug Ingraham, the widower of Caleb Boelman.

Yep, the people with the kind of power I’m outlining in this post are ELECTED, therefore insulated, it would appear, from a quick dismissal when under suspicion for serious malfeasance.

If you’re a “Constitutional” Sheriff in Montana aiming for larger political clout than the little fiefdom clout already bestowed on the County Badges who also wear the coroner’s hat, this amount of narrative control is very conducive to enacting a power play for, say, the Governor’s mansion.

Returning back to what started this post, the narrative exploiters at “Denver Voice” will definitely get some of this context when they call me back. I made sure to be mindful of my decorum deficiency as I clearly enunciated my phone number in the voicemail message I left last week, so we’ll see what happens.

Will they help Armand out and cover his $50,000 dollar bond? Stay tuned, if more info on this emerges, I’ll make sure to provide an update.

If you appreciate my citizen journalism, please consider donating to Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF). Next week I’ll be showing off some art that will be hitting the auction block soon cause I gotta do what I gotta do.

Thanks for reading!