A friend sent me a video yesterday about California’s $24 billion dollar Homeless Industrial Complex scam and it’s probably the most maddening, disgusting 7 minutes I’ve seen in quite some time because it lays everything out I’ve been saying and writing for years about Missoula’s version of this bullshit, but the guy in the video admits despite all this exposure, there’s zero accountability. None.
If you want to understand WHY Montana will never hold people accountable for ripping off the tax payer, lying to the public, and getting away with it for YEARS despite measurable, quantifiable FAILURE, let me summarize the reason with one simple picture:
For six months I was legally banned from writing about United Way of Missoula County by the bathroom judge who just got himself more local media headlines for being such a good little progressive lapdog bitch when it comes virtue-signaling activism from the bench.
The ACLU of Montana argued on behalf of the plaintiff, “M.B.”, a nonbinary resident, in the case, which Missoula District Court Judge Shane Vanetta oversaw. The plaintiff was seeking an “x” marker for the sex identifier on their license, although the only options given were male and female.
The ACLU argued that if the plaintiff had selected male or female, they would be lying about their identity and be subject to punishment under the law.
The Montana Human Rights Commission, comprised of political appointees, had previously ruled that gender based discrimination is not protected by the Montana Human Rights Act (MHRA).
The ruling concluded that the commission erred, however, as the court centered its ruling around the MHRA and the state constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, focusing on the fact that a cisgender person can obtain a license without issue, but a nonbinary person cannot. In its ruling, the court decided that the decision by the Montana Human Rights Commission must be reversed.
The ruling orders that MVD must issue M.B. a license with a nonbinary sex designation and that the Montana Department of Justice is prohibited from denying driver’s licenses to applicants who indicate their legal sex on a driver’s license application.
While this oh-so-important issue is getting such careful judicial attention from the judge who doesn’t like private security keeping him safe in his chambers while fucking a citizen journalist’s first amendment protections, the Strohmaier Express is setting up to pair trains with homeless failure JUST LIKE CALIFORNIA DID! Isn’t that amazing?
Right now you would hard-pressed to find a politician in Montana who hasn’t been tickled by Dave’s train obsession, but, despite Republicans and Democrats holding hands like pigs twirling their little tails together before the slop hits the trough, there is one train skeptic trying to blow his little whistle of warning for anyone with the bandwidth to give a shit.
BSPRA’s ally in the state Legislature, Rep. Denise Baum, D-Billings, tried and failed to secure millions in funding for the early stages of route planning during the 2025 legislative session. U.S. Sen. Tim Sheehy, R-Montana, who delivered a virtual keynote at BSPRA’s annual conference in September, is sponsoring a bill in Congress that would eliminate the need for matching investments from local and state governments for large-scale railroad projects. (Though most of the funding would come from the federal government, the early planning phases require a local investment BSPRA is currently struggling to acquire.) The bill has not progressed since Sheehy introduced it in late September.
The most vocal opponents to a new passenger rail route, including 40-year veteran of the freight rail industry and passenger-rail enthusiast Mark Meyer, peppered BSPRA’s Facebook page with enough dissent to prompt the agency to turn off comments.
“You have to tell people what the obstacles are, what’s going on. And Amtrak is in such sorry shape now, we really need to fix what we have, otherwise we’re going to lose it all,” Meyer told MTFP in a recent interview.
Mark Meyer is cute. Kinda reminds me of me all those years ago when I thought warning people about local corruption would mean a goddamn thing. Sure, MRA might be enacting a short-term PR retreat, but they still have MILLIONS of other people’s money to play with and, to keep control, they play DIRTY.
If that’s what it takes, so be it.
UPDATE:
I almost forgot to include the money shot of what Dave Strohmaier’s train resurrection dreams look like from the Montana Free Press article, so here it is:
Thanks for reading!