I finally watched the recording of last Thursday’s County Commissioner meeting and I have some clips to share about how sewer districts are created in Missoula County and the incredible power of the word SHALL, which Commissioner Slotnick described as a sort of legal trigger word that compels their rubber stamp to stamp any request that meets the official requirements.
In the first clip you will hear Commissioner Slotnick seemingly anticipate the public criticism about to be expressed by preemptively explaining what SHALL does to them, as Commissioners. Then the public comment is made, further triggering Commissioner Slotnick into a rare back-and-forth.
Josh Slotnick’s tone throughout this clip is defensive and highly emotional, which might not make sense at first, but when the acronyms of gentrification are uttered, it started making more sense to me.
While the sewer district for the Blackfoot Crossing is in a Targeted Economic Development District (TEDD), Slotnick’s clear frustration seemed focused on the fact that no request for Tax Increment Financing (TIF) has been made (yet), so it’s too early for the pesky public to be asking those types of pesky questions.
To help back him up, Slotnick called on the County Planner managing TEDDs, Andrew Hagemeier, to speak, but all Andrew did was admit that “we don’t have a lot of details about what his plans are for sewer and water“. If that’s true, isn’t a public meeting the opportunity for members of the public to, you know, ASK QUESTIONS?
Before the developer finally showed up virtually to make his pitch, another chronic commenter pointed out the deflection strategy of using semantics to strawman/gaslight the previous commenter, and the Commissioners listened because that’s THEIR FUCKING JOB.
Semantics are important, and not just because they are used sometimes by elected officials to appear powerless, like mind-controlled slaves beholden to conjuring gentrifiers. Sometimes semantics give you clues to who a person is, so listen to the following clip of the comment from the developer, Gregory Morse, and see if you can hear the two-word phrase that shaped my search for more context on him.
When you listen to the clip the first thing you will notice is how our triggered County Commissioner suddenly thaws when he realizes who he is talking to online, quickly reversing his declaration that the speaker only get 3 minutes. This is the DEVELOPER, Missoula public, and he’s gonna need a little more time to tell you about…
RADICAL CREATIVITY!!!
Oh no, I thought to myself, could this be morse code from a TECH BRO?!?
Truth be told, I wasn’t specifically thinking tech when I heard this man say RADICAL CREATIVITY, more venture-capitalist investor speak, but when I found more context online, the name SIEBEL definitely stood out.
If that’s not bad enough, Morse’s co-founding of “Just Ahead” helps put Montana MORE on the map than we already are for dudes who boast this kind of shit on his website:
When I saw this it clicked. Yeah, this sewer district is definitely going to come in handy for transforming Bonner to better serve the interests of the kind of assholes who say RADICAL CREATIVITY after suggesting they wake up every morning thinking about affordable housing.
Will this interest include a future data center someday soon?
Another curious and quiet move related to data centers happened last night at the City Land Commission, but so far there is no video available of this meeting, which is unusual. I’m also unclear as to whether or not the chance to make public comment was even offered, since I had trouble logging in to hear the meeting happen live.
The amended change to the Unified Development Code (UDC) that specifically addresses data centers was an admitted “band-aid”, but even with the explanation I listened to, the change still doesn’t make sense to me.
Can anyone translate this city-speak for me?
The part about “occupying less area” apparently went from 50% down to 10%, and there was some limited discussion about “unintended consequences”, but I’m unsure as to what all this actually means for the application the city received, which is what triggered this “band-aid” amendment.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a video clip for more clarity? Is this how east-coast transplants run local meetings, Danny Tenenbaum?
In all of my “data center” reporting I’ve focused on two main things, and that’s local processes and the larger game of narrative control.
To conclude this post I’m going to have to be as careful as possible because what the City Planning Commission heard last night from Eran Pehan’s office as the excuse for such a quickly needed “band-aid” amendment was the excuse that bills are brewing at the state level, which is definitely true, but it’s also true that Judge Vannatta’s interpretation of the First Amendment means I can’t directly write about the out-going Missoula legislator who just published an op-ed about those anti-data center bills ready to go for the next legislative session, and that’s too bad.
With that I think I’m done here. Donate if you can.
I started hearing about problems with Russian immigrants years ago when I worked at the homeless shelter. The Poverello’s food pantry program, which saved food from local grocery store dumpsters, dispersed food to low-income clients, and some of that food would later be re-sold by “the Russians” out on Mullan road, just a few miles from their Slavic Pentecostal church.
Two surnames related to this immigrant community, Tsuber and Chinikailo, became quite familiar to me, and today I’m going to provide a little context about this immigrant community, since a member of this community has been recently charged with soliciting sex from a minor.
On August 12, 2026, around 1:41 pm, an online application user, later identified as 24-year-old Matthew Tsuber, requested to connect with another online application profile that was being used by a detective. The latter profile depicts a fictitious young female who quickly messaged Tsuber that she was 12 years of age or younger. Upon learning of the believed child’s age, Tsuber responded: “Yeah I’m not sure about that” in relation to the age. The detective replied, “Oh k whatev [peace sign emoji]”. Tsuber then responded: “You want to hook up?” Tsuber then asked for a photo of the believed child.
The above messages were all exchanged in less than one minute. The conversation continued, with the detective stating, “I mean I’m cool if ur cool lol”. Tsuber replied, “Ya just don’t say that I raped you [laughing emoji]”. Tsuber again asked for a photo, to which the detective replied that Tsuber could send one first. Tsuber then sent a photograph clearly depicting the face of a person law enforcement has identified as Matthew Tsuber.
In today’s post we’re going to learn some fascinating history about Russian immigrants in this part of the country, including a modern interpretation of their culture, as expressed to me by former Detective, Guy Baker, after I called 911 on a creepy looking dude standing by a young girl selling roses on Higgins in 2022.
Here’s what I wrote four years ago about my little chat with Detective Baker regarding the flower girl and local law enforcement’s pathetic response after I called 911 (when Baker finally called me back, the caller ID said FBI):
The follow up call came a few days later, and I guess it was intended to put my concerns to rest. I was told by Detective Baker that a vigorous 6-8 hour investigation revealed the man was indeed a Russian out-of-stater traveling with his “family” from western Washington. There were two boys and a woman who appeared to be the “mother”. This family’s behavior had caused another bystander to call 911 two days after I did, and this concerned citizen took pictures, something Guy Baker suggested I could have done to make his job easier.
At the end of the day those red flags that had caused our concern were chalked up to “cultural differences”, so I guess it must be a Russian thing to avoid answering direct questions about familial ties and to express fear about the goal of your fundraising efforts. Thankfully history shows us the Russian character is strong and perseveres beyond adversity.
The same year girls selling roses got my attention, this floral marketing strategy also got the attention of authorities in Eastern Idaho, but nothing came from the “research” done by the Bonneville County Sheriff’s Office into this phenomenon:
The Bonneville County Sheriff’s Office is aware of the flower sellers and has looked into the situation.
“We’ve seen them selling (roses), but we haven’t seen any evidence that they’re doing anything illegal or dangerous,” says Bonneville County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Sgt. Bryan Lovell. “We’ve done some research and rumors have been spread wildly over social media in a lot of different ways, but it’s unfounded.”
When you turn the time-dial back to 1943, before the Cold War kicked off, the movement of Russian immigrants into America was a specific concern for Major Jordan, who wrote the following in his diary about the flow of Russian immigrants from the pipeline previously servicing the war efforts (excerpt from Cold War Montana, by Ken Robison):
The quote from the Great Falls Tribune that follows describes the commander of the “Soviet side”, Col. A.M. Kotikov, as being well-known “in aviation circles”, then further describes the broader community of Russians as being: “…generally well-liked, though the officers acquired a reputation for not paying their bar tabs.“
Interesting.
The real gem I found this morning while doing research is a 1995 graduate student thesis by University of Montana student, Emily Barton, and the reason I found it is because I was searching the surname “Chinikailo”.
Here’s a screenshot of the title page, along with the first appearance of the name that would help set the tone for future assimilation, or lack thereof, of Missoula’s Russian refugee community:
The more I read, the more I thanked Emily Barton in my head for doing her graduate work on this subject, which included the resistance of this refugee community to use a local program offering jobs.
Wow.
This “black market” mentality has persisted, I would argue, with the admittedly large families that have settled in the Missoula valley. Side hustles include trafficking guns and rampant car-theft, as I learned in an anecdotal story one day at my garage sale.
After telling the stranger about why I think you’ll always hear fat Russians speaking Russian when you go for a soak at Symes Hot Springs, the stranger (a retired reporter, I found out) told me a quick story about Karl Tyler, the automotive dealer, and his problems with a few cars every year getting stolen off one of his car lots.
When approached by religious leaders to buy the land that became the Slavic Pentecostal church on Mullan, Karl Tyler had an interesting clause he added to the contract, paraphrased like this: if one more car gets stolen from me, Karl Tyler supposedly said, the land will revert to my ownership.
According to this stranger, Karl never again had a problem with cars being stolen off his lots.
Going back to the grad-student’s research, here’s more about the lack of success Mr. Chinikailo had getting Russian refugees to get jobs:
With big families of any nationality, a wide array of characters are represented, so I’m not trying to indict everyone with a surname as being complicit in black market activity simply because cultural and structural factors may make that likelihood a greater probability.
I mean, at least one “Tsuber” learned about the law and how to politely thank the important people on their special day!
A Seeley Lake woman who purchased a firearm for a prohibited person was found guilty by a federal jury yesterday, U.S. Attorney Kurt Alme said.
Following a one-day trial, Alyssa Mikkel Tsuber, 32, was found guilty of one count of false statement during a firearm transaction. Tsuber faces a potential term of imprisonment of 10 years, a $250,000 fine, and 3 years of supervised release.
Before committing this crime, Alyssa was commenting on Facebook about a different crime and her apparent knowledge about what happened.
At least this community has a place where they can ask God for forgiveness . That’s good, right?
In summary, I think Guy Baker may have been right in 2022, and my confusion really did stem from my cultural misunderstanding. I think I understand things better now.
If you would like to help me continue mapping out the Missoula community I’ve called home for 26 years as a refugee myself from midwest suburbia, then you can donate to my new GoFundMe page. Any little bit helps.
I wasn’t planning on commenting last night at Monday’s City Council meeting approving the budget, but after Kristen Jordan’s “survival camping” bullshit, someone had bring REALITY into the conversation.
What was Kristen Jordan actually trying to accomplish last night?
From what I could tell, Jordan wanted money to study a healthier way of managing weeds in Missoula parks, and to get the estimated $150,000 dollars to accomplish this study, she proposed raiding the Urban Camping cleanup fund.
Here’s the language of her amendment, followed by a clip where the language of toxic empathy is deployed.
Jordan’s colleagues, sensing a DSA tantrum brewing, put on their kid gloves and did their gosh-darn best to see if reason could be used, like asking if Jordan had looked for any grants before trying to take money away homeless cleanup efforts. No, Jordan said, she had not.
What REALLY inspired me to comment, though, was Jordan’s final tantrum where she references “values” in a failed attempt to shame everyone else into feeling bad about ACTUALLY LISTENING to constituents when they compelled our elected leaders to get more assertive with “survival camping”.
Instead of acknowledging her colleagues were responding to the will of their constituents, who have become overwhelmed by the many dangerous aspects of enabling drug addicts at homeless encampments, Jordan frames cleaning up riverbanks and other areas used by “survival campers” as “making sure we don’t see homeless people”.
While these clips are frustrating, Jordan’s day-job with the Montana Conservation Commission makes her perspective on “survival camping” downright confounding, since this commission is worried about water quality, and urban campers aren’t known for being good stewards of the land.
What am I missing here?
The Western Montana Conservation Commission (WMCC) is a uniquely structured non-regulatory organization that works to accomplish its important mandate in a consensus-building manner, stressing education, cooperation, broad-based community involvement, partnerships with agencies and nonprofit groups, and the voluntary participation of western Montana residents. The commission represents a wide cross-section of citizens and local, state, tribal, and federal agency representatives who strive to identify Western Montana’s water quality and aquatic invasive species problems and work collectively to implement the most effective solutions.
The Western Montana Conservation Commission is administratively attached to the State of Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation (DNRC) and serves as a convening body to facilitate close cooperation and coordination between federal, state, provincial, tribal, and local resource managers to protect the condition of aquatic and natural resources across Western Montana.
Fun Fact: while not officially recognized in the DSM-5, Trump Derangement Syndrome can be detrimental to cognitive health, but even with those barriers in mind, California was able to determine that pooping by the water ain’t good for it.
From the link:
President Donald Trump, a self-described germophobe, has made no secret of his disgust with California’s growing homeless problem, which he has called a “disgrace” and “inappropriate” and equated to “living in hell.”
“We should all work together to clean up these hazardous waste and homeless sites before the whole city rots away,” Trump tweeted about San Francisco on Oct. 26. “Very bad and dangerous conditions, also severely impacting the Pacific Ocean and water supply.”
San Francisco officials were quick to dispute Trump’s claims. But some of California’s most prized rivers, beaches and streams are indeed contaminated with levels of fecal bacteria that exceed state limits, threatening kayakers, swimmers — and the state’s reputation as a bastion of environmental protection.
…
Fecal contamination of waterways is a widespread problem and becoming more urgent in states with large homeless populations. In Seattle, homeless people living in RVs are accused of dumping raw sewage straight into storm drains, which flows directly to local waterways. In Oregon, workers cleaning up homeless camps along the Willamette River in Eugene routinely find feces and needles.
If the state of California can admit pooping by rivers and streams is bad, why can’t Kristen Jordan? Is being a leftist THAT cognitively destructive?
Maybe we should just be done with municipal laws and the people who enforce them if enforcement means “criminalizing” the small percentage of people in this valley of 80,000 souls who leave bullet casings next to their used needles.
While we’re at it, let’s stop enforcing Federal statutes related to immigration, then, if we REALLY want to annihilate the social contract and open pandora’s box for true anarchy, let’s reconsider laws against murder, especially for postpartum women who kill their own children, because that’s apparently where we’re at as a society (the kid-killer mom has raised over $700,000 dollars, by the way).
On the immigration front, doing something performative with her municipal power appealed to Kristen Jordan a few months ago when the anti-ICE “movement” was hot, as reported by the Montana “Free” Press:
The resolution Jordan drafted affirms the council’s support of the Missoula Police Department’s policy to “the extent permitted by law, avoid committing city resources to federal immigration actions for which it has no authority,” and states the city and police department will not enter into a partnership with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as a 287(g) agreement.
Jordan said the biggest concern among other council members was that approving the resolution would endanger Missoula’s immigrant and refugee communities, though she said she found academic research showing benefits from such action.
“Most peer-reviewed research shows it makes communities safer when municipalities assert their stance on things,” Jordan said. “The average citizen knows what to expect from police, how they can participate or not and understand how police will handle crowds.”
This quote is particularly funny to me, since “peer-reviewed research” is mentioned in relation to municipalities making hollow declarations that “assert their stance on things”. What the fuck does that even mean?
Before I get to the type of data analysis Kristen Jordan is referring to in regards to refugees and immigrants, I’d like to remind readers that I’ve been interested in obtaining LOCAL OVERDOSE DEATH DATA for many years now, which I referenced recently on X:
Instead of doing what the conservative Discovery Institute is doing for their partisan agenda of using reality against reality-averse liberals, Kristen Jordan probably read something like this and got all tingly:
Do sanctuary policies hamper deportations of noncitizens who threaten public safety? Do sanctuary policies increase crime? These empirical questions are at the heart of a public debate. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) claims that “in jurisdictions where we are not allowed to assume custody of aliens from jails, …sanctuary cities release these criminals back to the street, [increasing] the occurrence of preventable crimes” (1). The government has often formally relied on this empirical assertion, arguing that sanctuary policies “make all of us less safe because they intentionally undermine our laws and protect illegal aliens who have committed crimes” (2). Immigrants’ rights advocates, by contrast, maintain that sanctuary policies build trust between immigrant communities and the police (3, 4).
…
This report’s second finding—that sanctuary policies do not increase crime—builds on previous estimates of the effects of immigrant-friendly policies on crime rates. Martinez et al. (ref. 16, p. 9) conclude in a review that “relatively little empirical research examines the impact that local limited cooperation policies have on crime.” Wong (17) shows, in cross-section, that crime rates are lower in sanctuary jurisdictions. Amuedo-Dorantes and Arenas-Arroyo (18) find that sanctuary policies make petitions for legal status under the Violence Against Women Act more likely. O’Brien et al. (10) use a matching strategy to compare crime rates in cities with and without sanctuary policies and find little difference between them. Gingeleskie (19) defines sanctuary policies broadly and finds that such policies instituted between 1995 and 2014 in 32 cities caused about a 7% decline in property crime and had no effect on violent crime. Martinez-Schuldt and Martinez (20) find that the adoption of immigrant-friendly policies across cities between 1990 and 2010 reduced robberies (but not murders).
What’s the problem here? I’ll tell you, because I consider this my local turf, and this is the problem: if investigators and prosecutors are unreliable because politics trumps public safety, then the data being referenced can’t be trusted.
Since I was admittedly triggered when I finally got through to make my public comment, I didn’t reference the “hot shot” overdose deaths of urban campers I suspect are murders in Missoula, or the many “accidental drownings” of mostly women that I suspect are ALSO murders, or the corpse of the possible urban camper found on the Kim Williams trail last November and never officially identified by the Sheriff’s Office, but comment I did because very few members of the public were present last night as the budget bullshit got batted around before the majority pulled out their rubber stamps to pass the budget.
Emotions really can cloud rational thought, like my inaccurate assessment on the phone a few months ago with someone at the Health Department about the Buckhouse bridge encampment cleanup, privately funded by “Shoptown LLC“.
What I was wrong about was the natural reduction of water in the area, which was keeping the last trash landfill water-logged, so that this…
…could be transformed into this:
Of course, like the rest of Missoula, it only looks good if you make sure to NOT look too closely.
What’s the harm of a few batteries, some plastic, and what looks like Fentanyl-scorched tinfoil when the offenders who left behind this material are vulnerable victims of circumstance helplessly stealing bikes while abusing dangerous drugs and getting arrested, then released, to do it all again somewhere else in our “beautiful” community?
With this particular urban camp cleanup being forced onto the bottomline of a private developer, the public doesn’t get to see the price tag of what Jason Rice, representing IMEG, paid Missoula Works (who represent the Christian homeless grift), but we do get to see things like the 2024 990 form of the Missoula Economic Partnership, which lists Jason Rice as one of the players–a connection I thought I had hallucinated after going through so much of Missoula’s incestuous developer community over the weekend for yesterday’s post on the forces shaping Missoula’s future.
If you appreciate the work I’ve done over the years bringing the nitty-gritty reality of “survival” camping to your screen, then please consider donating to my new GoFundMe page because I operate on a shoestring and a prayer.
On Friday I listened to a presentation on the Midtown Commons lawsuit that got me thinking about subsidized development, the documentary I made about subsidized development, and the original focus of local angst that emerged in 2019 with how Tax Increment Financing was being proposed to prime the construction of a massive convention center in downtown Missoula.
The two big takeaways that sent me down this latest development rabbit hole is the integral role of the Mayor’s Land Use Task Force in moving forward city-subsidized development projects, and the legal difficulty in getting information from the Missoula Economic Partnership (MEP), a public/private entity hired by the city to make deals.
Before the Mayor established her Land Use Task Force, the rise of MEP was put into context by development cheerleader, Martin Kidston, in this article from 2024:
Over the last five years, the Missoula Economic Partnership has emerged as one of the city’s strongest economic development arms in its work to expand Missoula’s tax base, grow and retain businesses, and help the city achieve its redevelopment goals.
…
Currently, MEP is working on a number of city-owned properties beyond Scott Street and the old library block. It’s working to market the old Sleepy Inn site off West Broadway, and it helped negotiate a buy-sell agreement on behalf of the city for several Midtown parcels near Southgate Mall.
It’s also monitoring other potential opportunities, including the expansion of the Montana Technology Center on East Broadway, and future redevelopment of the Johnson Street site, which the City Council wants to see redeveloped within three years, as was the intent when the city purchased the property.
When the use of public tax money for private development is being influenced by a public/private partnership, like MEP, it’s important to convince the public that there’s a public benefit, like increased economic activity from, say, a convention center. Another way to convince the public that using their tax money for private development is a good thing is to suggest that serious societal problems, like community issues surrounding addiction and mental health, can be addressed through “mixed use” subsidized development.
As proposed, the developers would give the county 157 acres located nearby on Highway 93 in exchange for Larchmont Golf Course. The course sits off Reserve Street in an existing commercial corridor near city services, public transportation, public parks and a medical center.
The proposed new golf course sits in an undeveloped field that can’t be built upon given its location to the floodplain. But it could serve as a recreational attraction, according to WGM Group, which represents the developers.
“We wouldn’t be opening this discussion without having a replacement location to bring to the table for Larchmont,” said Jeff Smith, principal engineer with WGM Group. “This idea at its core is a concept to allow working Missoulians to remain in Missoula and not be displaced by the ever-increasing cost of renting or owning a home in Missoula.”
The “core concept” expressed by Jeff Smith, the principal engineer with WGM Group and board member of the Missoula Economic Partnership, is to NOT displace Missoula residents by building a massive housing complex, one that included a “medical center” as part of the public pitch, which ultimately failed.
When you look at other board members at the Missoula Economic Partnership, it should be no surprise that both St. Pats and Community Medical Center are represented:
This impressive grouping of people is why MRA’s leader, Ellen Buchanan, called MEP a “powerful alliance” that is “just getting better” in the article quoted above. Maybe it’s because they find the kind of outside talent aligned with the “values” of playing jurisdictional shell games with public tax money.
As you can see from the highlighted portion of Christina Henderson’s brief bio, she came to her position as Executive Director of the Montana High-Tech Business Alliance ALREADY FLUENT in the language of legal theft that municipalities use by creating special taxing districts.
But don’t take my word for it!
It’s true, Missoula is NOT unique in its use of this municipal subsidy tool, so that makes what other people do in other states, like Michigan, relevant to the culture of BIG BUSINESS panhandling we have a BIG PROBLEM WITH here, in Missoula.
But before I move on to Wisconsin, where Daddy Joe made his millions, let’s look at some of the tech players involving their business brands in the Montana High Tech Business Alliance:
(I’ll come back to Two Bear Capital and Cognizant later in the post)
The Board Chair of the Montana High Tech Business Alliance ALSO serves as the Vice President of Global Communications for Oracle, the company that got CIA money early on before buying up other tech companies, like Right Now Technologies from future Governor of Montana, Greg Gianforte.
My pivot from this global communicator to Nick Checota’s Daddy, Joe Checota, might seem clunky at first, but the influence of Daddy Joe and his son might be more applicable to this network of developers seeking financial handouts than you might think.
When I see the states listed above–California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey and Virginia–I’m pretty impressed with what it must take to operate in those locations, if you know what I mean.
While doing the research for this post I am 99% certain I saw Seth Bodnar’s name at MEP’s website listed as a board member, but when I went back to double-check, Bodnar’s name no longer appeared, though his role at MEP can still be confirmed in past 990 documents.
Weird.
What else is clicking into place with my unified theory of subsidized development besides the obvious use of public tax money and subsequent rationalization that the public will benefit?
Well, in the list of names above, I noticed Bill Calhoun’s name, the St. Pats director who left his position now held by Krissy Petersen, wife of Missoula’s Sheriff, Jeremiah.
If there is such a thing as a medical/judicial/subsidized-housing complex, then this power couple could represent an interesting alignment with how TECHNOLOGY is increasingly being deployed against those targeted by the criminal justice system, kind of like the technology I’m wearing on my ankle RIGHT NOW, under the auspices of “jail diversion”.
Who runs the jail? The Sheriff’s Office. And who sometimes runs for Justice of the Peace? A former member of that Sheriff’s Office, one who just happens to be from the same town (Butte) that Krissy Petersen is from, and one of many locations in Montana where data centers are being proposed.
What’s the connection?
If you get on the bench, as a judge, then you get to be a part of directing the system that operationalizes Big Data, like GPS info, which CRAZY people (like me?) could require to keep the crazies in line. If an addiction or mental health diagnosis can be applied, even better.
Before this post gets too long, I just realized I haven’t even introduced readers to the Mayor’s Land Use Task Force yet, so here they are:
Some of the players developing Western Montana aren’t immediately identifiable on a list like this, but with a little curiosity plus the cojones to map out these players, a name like “Wishcamper” might appear–the developer who helped buy and transition a literal mountain for Missoula County because he’s such a nice guy (and very wealthy).
The Wishcamper name came up when I started looking through development projects featured on the “Housing Partners United” website, where I found Fire Tower Apartments, in Helena.
To bring us closer to the development finish line, who’s ready for some BASEBALL?
I’m bringing up baseball because, while researching this post, I realized that one of the only other types of development projects that scales like a convention center, a medical facility, or a heavily subsidized affordable housing complex next to a jail is…a baseball stadium! And that’s why the name “Ellis” got my attention.
Instead of guessing wrong on what possible relationship exists between Matt Ellis and Courtney Ellis–the latter being a member of Mayor Davis’ Land Use Task Force now, and the former being involved in pushing for the baseball stadium–I’ll reference the notes of an MRA meeting intended to bailout investors in the baseball stadium fiasco that caused local investors to freak out when their main money man, Hal Chase Fraser, unexpectedly died while holding the figurative money bags.
Here is who attended that 2011 MRA meeting, along with a few juicy excerpts that emphasizes how long the public piggy bank has been getting tapped by these money-addicts while they wonder if the public can be bought off with cheap ticket sales for baseball games, like former Missoula Mayor, Daniel Kemmis, explicitly suggests:
For more context on this part of Missoula being developed for people with deep pockets, it looks like Brad McCall, who is a part of the Land Use Task Force, is getting his piece of the pie.
Good for you, Brad!
Screenshot
One thing I bet the public would NOT push back on is a “solution” to the rampant drug addiction destroying multiple major cities, including adding to numerous issues in Missoula, so to really finish us off, here’s a screenshot of a money-shot about the company developing a protective anti-Fentanyl shot, with a little help from Two Bear Capital:
In my vision of the future trajectory for large-scale development in Western Montana, including data centers like Krambu, who’s ideal client would be “focused on biomedical studies“…
“Wood said his ideal client for the data center would be companies focused on biomedical studies, but he might not be able to find someone like that…”
…it’s going to be the public/private nexus of subsidized development surrounding technology, biomedical services, and the overlap of addiction and criminal justice reform, that will help shape this region’s future growth.
Creating healthier communities is entirely possible WITHOUT using tax subsidies to pad the profit-margins of developers, but getting there would require a radical departure from the political tribalism and paycheck protectionism that ensures regular people stay docile in their passive voting strategies. How’s that been working for y’all?
Anyone focusing on the CANDIDATES in Montana’s Senate race are, in my opinion, focusing on the wrong thing. Even focusing on just the money won’t work, because this is what following the money actually looks like:
Instead of seeing this chart and feeling demoralized, perhaps us regular people should look at this chart and see it as the boiled-down expression of DESPERATION and FEAR from the Epstein class that I believe it is.
But, again, don’t take my word for it.
If you appreciate a local, non-partisan focus so threatening to local elites they’re ankle-tracking my every movement, then please consider donating to my new GoFundMe page. Any little bit helps.
Thanks for reading!
CORRECTION: It’s Hal Fraser, not Hal Chase, but I left the original mistake because the same would be nice when paid local media mis-report on ME.
Did you know the diminishment of ONE person’s rights is a diminishment of EVERYONE’s rights? That’s what a Montana lawmaker said to local media earlier this year after traveling to Minnesota for a day of solidarity.
Morigeau tells MTN that federal enforcement has created fear in communities and in our country. He says what’s happening in Minnesota represents a broader threat to constitutional rights that could impact all Americans, including Montanans.
“We can’t remain idle because the diminishment of one person’s rights is a diminishment of all of our rights. And I think if we remain idle and stand on the sidelines, people are gonna continue to chip away at those rights, and eventually, what happens when you chip away at rights over time, you have none,” Morigeau said. “And so I do think um our basic dignity is at stake and standing in solidarity says you’re not gonna take these rights from us that are guaranteed to us under our Constitution.”
What were Montana lawmakers warning the nation about? ICE ops? Somali fraud? How about a potentially corrupt female prosecutor arrested for allegedly pimping out other women for sex work?
A former Assistant Anoka County Attorney was arrested and charged Friday with more than two dozen crimes connected to an alleged commercial sex trafficking operation that spanned several years.
Andrea Leigh Sampson, 35, is charged with 13 counts of promoting prostitution and 13 counts of receiving profits from prostitution after the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) and the Human Trafficking Task Force uncovered an alleged sex trafficking operation within Minneapolis, Bloomington, Eden Prairie, St. Louis Park and other surrounding areas.
According to the charging documents, the operation alleges that numerous individuals, including Sampson, obtained apartments for “commercial sex transactions.” Law enforcement later learned that some of Sampson’s properties were allegedly used for some of those transactions, and where photographs of the victims were taken for commercial sex ad postings.
In a statement, Anoka County Attorney Brad Johnson confirmed that Sampson had been the Assistant Anoka County Attorney and was working in the office’s Family Law and Civil Divisions, but said she was immediately placed on administrative leave when his office was made aware of the investigation in February 2026. Her last day of employment was March 9, 2026, the statement reads.
If Montana lawmakers want to help protect Constitutional rights in their own state, maybe they should pay attention to Missoula’s troubled prosecutor, Keithi Worthington, and the investigation into Keithi, which hasn’t been made public, or even shared with the Municipal judges, necessitating the need to litigate instead:
Three sitting Missoula Municipal Court judges are suing the City of Missoula, Mayor Andrea Davis and City Attorney Keithi Worthington, saying the city is wrongly withholding a full investigative report tied to the judges’ complaints about Worthington’s conduct.
The lawsuit, filed June 29 in Missoula County District Court, was brought by Judges Jennifer Streano, Jacob Coolidge and Eli Parker, along with Court Administrator Kari Dady. Davis and Worthington are named as defendants only in their official capacities.
In official minutes I found online from last year, the female head of Missoula’s two-headed civil/criminal prosecuting team opened her law-school-educated mouth to express her alleged concern for Constitutional rights, but not in the way you might expect:
Instead of wanting to PROTECT these Constitutional rights, like my first amendment right to use offensive language to refer to a deceptive prosecutor as, say, a lying cunt, what Keithi Worthington is suggesting in her comments to City Council is that VICTIMS RIGHTS should supersede Constitutional rights.
Is that what Cohen v. California intended to protect half a century ago?
Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15 (1971), is a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court holding that the First Amendment prevented the conviction of Paul Robert Cohen for the crime of disturbing the peace by wearing a jacket displaying “Fuck the Draft” in the public corridors of a California courthouse.
The Court ruled that displaying a mere four-letter word was not sufficient justification for allowing states to restrict free speech and that free speech can be restricted only under severe circumstances beyond offensiveness. The ruling set a precedent used in future cases concerning the power of states to regulate free speech in order to maintain public civility.
To better understand how victims rights can legally wiggle ahead of those antiquated rights about “free speech”, here’s a screenshot from the Montana Department of Justice explaining all the ways victims will be supported, even if they are abusing the system by making false reports after being awarded a civil restraining order in a process where the accused does NOT get a lawyer, while the alleged victim gets help from the Crime Victim’s Advocate office.
In assessing if one is a victim of lawfare, like I believe I have been for 3 years, one statute in Montana Code Annotated that doesn’t get enough attention is the one about filing false reports to law enforcement.
Through discovery in a previous case against me I have learned that there have indeed been official reports made to law enforcement about me that were later proven to be inaccurate, therefore NOT prosecuted by city or county attorneys, but the person MAKING those false reports has been allowed to continue this unchecked behavior, despite a clear statute in the law.
If you want to see how that statute functions in the real world, the Missoula County Attorney’s office showed they ARE actually aware of this law by recently charging someone with making a false report, resulting in three men being held at gunpoint at Southgate Mall, according to the charging documents:
While the city of Missoula gets sued left and right amidst a heated budget season, I’m going to keep demonstrating why the local power structure is so invested in shutting me up by putting the finishing touches on my unified theory of subsidized development shaping the future growth of Western Montana, coming tomorrow.
If you’d like to help the brokest, most genuine independent voice in this liberal mountain college town, please consider donating to my new GoFundMe page. The recent $40 dollar donation puts my grand total at $500 dollars from 10 donations, and every dollar is greatly appreciated!
