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Krambu killer, Jennie Dixon, really wanted the process to play out. In fact, according to Dixon, she encouraged Krambu to stay the course because Missoula County could have been the first county in ALL OF AMERICA to show the country how to do this data center thing the RIGHT way.

“I was surprised they decided to withdraw their application,” said county planner Jennie Dixon. “I was encouraging them to stay the course because, wouldn’t it be fantastic if Missoula could be the poster child for how to do a data center the right way? That’s our goal with this interim pause, to figure out how to be the example for the country on how to do these the right way.”

The “interim pause” being proposed allows local officials to “study” this issue. Part of this process includes sending a lame-duck County Commissioner to the National Association of Counties to assess that the data centers of 2023 are NOT the data centers of 2026. Amazing insight, Josh!

Commissioner Josh Slotnick attended a meeting with the National Association of Counties earlier this year where data centers were a point of conversation, he said.

“This was the biggest topic,” Slotnick said. “The data centers of 2023 aren’t the data centers of 2026.”

Another person who should be celebrating this data center development is the guy who did a petition. YOU REALLY CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE the NBC Montana headline shouted! All you need is a COMPUTER (the irony) and the gumption to say NOT IN MY BACKYARD!

NBC Montana caught up with Paul Barmore, who started the petition “Reject permits for the AI data center in Bonner, MT.” The petition has garnered over 48,000 signatures throughout the process.

When asked if he thought he’d be interviewed on Monday without the petition, Barmore said, “I don’t believe so, no.”

Change.org, the internet petition website that NBC Montana points out is the only reason they gave a shit about interviewing Paul Barmore, received financial backing from Reid Hoffman, according to Wikipedia:

Change.org makes revenue through a subscription membership model and people promoting petitions on the site. In 2013 the organization’s CEO stated its mission: “Our role is to empower people everywhere to create the change they want to see.”

Change.org is a for-profit, “venture-backed company that hosts activist petitions written by members of the public, gathers email addresses from signees, and encourages people to circulate the petitions heavily on social media. While for-profit, Change.org is a public benefit company with B Corp status.” It has raised US $72 million from backers, including LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman.

And Reid Hoffman, for those who don’t know, is heavily connected to Jeffrey Epstein.

Reid Hoffman has defended his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein as limited to “fundraising,” via a handful of calls, emails and in-person meetings that ended in March 2018. But documents recently released by the US Justice Department suggest a longer and more personal relationship that’s drawing scrutiny to a major Democratic Party donor.

The LinkedIn Corp. co-founder and venture capitalist first met Epstein through fundraising work with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, five years after Epstein pled guilty to procuring a minor for prostitution and served time in jail. Over the years they exchanged gifts — dumbbells for Hoffman, a metal surfer statue for Epstein — with Hoffman staying at both Epstein’s Caribbean island and his townhouse on New York’s Upper East Side.

And in May 2018, emails show Hoffman reaching out to Epstein about investing in a new fund being raised by entrepreneur Joi Ito, then the director of the MIT Media Lab. Billionaire Hoffman was putting his own money into the fund, which was unrelated to the university.

“Joi says that you’re on the fence around investing in the fund — worth scheduling a skype call for that? OK if no,” Hoffman wrote.

“Always can make time for a Reid skype :)” Epstein replied.

I hope these uncomfortable facts about Epstein and his investor pal sinking money into the same online protest infrastructure used by 48,000 idiots doesn’t dampen the celebratory mood because people really do need to feel like they have some control left in a world run by billionaire child-fuckers.

So HOORAY! You killed the data center, kids! Now go make an Instagram reel about it and maybe you’ll go viral.

If you appreciate my local reporting on this data center freak-out, like how I was the ONLY ONE to report that this former mill site no longer has a discharge permit, then consider donating to my new GoFundMe page. Any little bit helps as I defend myself against the latest round of lawfare that no paid reporter in Missoula appears motivated to report on (yet).

Thanks for reading!

Today’s post is about figuring out who you are and choosing the correct path.

Are you a CJP (Criminal Justice Professional) being investigated for your role as Missoula’s chief city prosecutor? If so, then Kirsten Pabst’s “Thriving Through Chaos” might be the perfect thing to help you navigate the scrutiny of your alleged professionalism.

Maybe you’re worried about being an NPC (Non-Player Character) who lacks autonomy in this chaotic world. For a better model on NOT being a powerless little bitch, the late Gordon White might have some insights worth considering in his book, titled “The Chaos Protocols”. Let’s begin.

After reading Kirsten Pabst describe a scenario where a cop gets morally injured after removing an illegal homeless encampment (versus removing his life, which is more the style of the Sheriff’s Office), I am now VERY WORRIED about how morally injured our Sheriff’s Office might be, collectively, after the coroner killed Sean Stevenson in a private hospital room six years ago. I’m especially worried about Bob Franke, who was apparently in that room watching Sean Stevenson die.

According to Kirsten Pabst, the poorly-managed stress of her colleagues means that a lot of her fellow lawyers are increasingly fucked up on drugs and alcohol as they become, in her words, mentally ill from doing their very difficult jobs. There was even a report in 2017, cited in Pabst’s book, warning us how fucked up lawyers were getting nearly a decade ago!

The National Task Force on Lawyer Wellbeing issued a report, The Path to Lawyer Wellbeing: Practical Recommendations for Positive Change, after conducting an extensive survey of the well-being or, not-so-wellbeing, of the legal profession in 2017. That report documented the reality that the legal profession is suffering in almost every aspect of wellbeing, with more lawyers than ever struggling with alcohol abuse, drug use, mental illness, ambivalence toward work, heightened risk of physical ailments and even suicide. A recent survey found that early-career lawyers are suffering even more. The ABA’s Women in Criminal Justice Task Force, recently concluded that current hiring, retention and promotion of women in criminal justice is a problem and noted that women–particularly women of color–were leaving the field at higher than usual rates.

One of my favorite pages in Kirsten Pabst’s book is the page that couldn’t have been included if Kirsten Pabst had a penis instead of a vagina, since it implies that fat people aren’t healthy and might need to exercise if they want to be good CJPs. There’s even an image of a fit women about to some YOGA!

Obviously, without a vagina or official role in the world of Criminal Justice Professionals, Kirsten Pabst’s book is not for me. Gordon’s book, on the other hand, references Philip K. Dick and quotes occultists, like Aleister Crowley, so perhaps THIS approach is more apt to my knowledge and skillset?

You could say I adopted a “chaos magic headspace” six years ago after I stopped flooding my brain with box wine and started actively fighting back against the local narrative controllers who helped the psychopath class drag us into the cognitive meat-grinder of weaponized deception around the same time the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office thought they could euthanize a homeless man in this liberal college town and no one would be paying enough attention to care.

Caring about deep corruption is one thing, but doing something about it is quite another. Despite what I might look like on paper, I’m encouraged by the fact it’s taken the CJPs so much bandwidth to maintain their myriad deceptions. If it takes this much to shut up just one persistent blogger with a computer and sense of purpose derived from alcohol abstention, imagine what could be accomplished if I had actual resources!

For now it’s up to individual donors, like YOU, to support my citizen journalism, which anyone can do here. Any little bit helps.

Thanks for reading!

No, Garrison Courtney was NEVER an CIA agent.

After being raised in Great Falls, and educated at the University of Montana, Garrison Courtney was A LOT of things, like a weatherman for a local news station in Missoula, and a spokesperson for the DEA, but a CIA agent?

Nope, that was just something Garrison Courtney claimed to be in order to steal money from suckers in schemes that sound A LOT like what Matt Marshall did to Montana’s billionaire transplant , Mike Goguen.

After Courtney graduated from UM in 2000, his charm offensive continued, now as a weatherman for KPAX-TV, the CBS affiliate in Missoula. The Missoula Independent named him 2000’s best forecaster, and he was the “celebrity cameo” at a local ballet performance of Cinderella.

Then it was off to the CBS station in Eugene, Oregon, where a former colleague remembers him as “more interested in being funny than doing the weather.” At KVAL, Courtney was on a one-year contract requiring that he clear any changes to his appearance with management. So it was a shock when he showed up to work one day with white-blonde hair.

“He said it was some charity thing… but anyone in TV knows if you change your appearance, they can fire you,” the former co-worker said. “[The news director] didn’t know about it until he was already on the air. When she found out, she came out and said, ‘You go home and do not come back until you look like you did before.’”

A station manager who worked with Courtney said he remembered him as “a good-natured, big lug kind of a guy.”

“When I heard about the [case], I thought, ‘That guy pulled this off?’ It just didn’t seem possible,” the station manager said. “My impression wouldn’t have been that he was diabolical or clever enough to dupe anybody out of $4 million.”

I only just heard about this guy a few days ago thanks to the Instagram algorithm showing me a reel, but when I dug into the story a little more this morning, the name Bill Foley popped up. Yes, the same Bill Foley who just used his daughter’s college experience to bash Seth Bodnar for not keeping her safe from a serial public masturbator.

What a small world!

The documentary shows me laughing at some of Garrison’s cons. I don’t think he was a third-degree black belt, but I’m sure he knew enough about martial arts to get by.

I also don’t think he taught a self-defense class at UM simply to meet women. Those women probably learned some valuable lessons from Garrison. But I bet he charmed a few of them into dates.

It was also funny that he was voted the best weatherman in Missoula, even though he had zero meteorologic training.

While this story gives people like Bill Foley a chance to yuck it up for tv, it’s actually quite troubling to read how con artists, like Garrison Courtney and Matt Marshall, wormed their way into the confidence of allegedly discerning government officials and private sector corporate business men.

Maybe it was Courtney’s actual membership with the Freemasons that helped him sell his con:

For K.B., the first inkling that something was amiss came in the fall of 2012 as he was putting together a business plan for a cybersecurity startup focusing on national security issues. K.B., who was still on the payroll at his defense contractor job, asked Courtney to review the documents for his new venture.

After a month or so, Courtney texted with good news. He said he wanted to introduce K.B. to Curtin Winsor Jr., a former U.S. ambassador to Costa Rica, whom Courtney claimed to know from the Freemasons, where he had been active for years. (The Daily Beast has seen the texts and emails between Courtney and K.B.)

…

Despite the progress, K.B. had a nagging feeling about the situation. Instead of offering a $1 million equity investment, the ambassador wanted to give K.B. a $10 million loan at a 1 percent interest rate, which didn’t make sense for someone looking for a tax shelter.

Plus, K.B. and the ambassador had not yet met in person. Winsor explained that he believed in Courtney, and since Freemason rules forbade him to give money directly to other members, he figured he would do the “next best thing” and invest in one of his friends.

I’m not sure what it is about Big Sky country that seems to make this state a target-rich environment for grifters and conmen, but I’ve written about a handful of them over the years, like Jason Stevens who ran Glacier Hope Homes, Surajit Khanna’s weird presence in the Bitterroot, and Aaron Wagner’s alpha-con BEFORE he was arrested by the FBI. I guess I’ll add Garrison Courtney’s name to this distinguished list.

While local media has helped many of these conmen establish their false credibility by giving uncritical attention to them in the beginning, as they’re selling the public their bullshit, my track record is one of EXPOSING this kind of bullshit, not perpetrating it, so if you’re inclined to support a citizen journalist with proven results, consider donating to my new GoFundMe page.

And, as always, thanks for reading!

Who is Mary Stranahan, what is the High Stakes Foundation, and how did I connect this Big Sky philanthropist to the Epstein network? Great questions! Let’s begin with Mary.

Let’s start with spark plugs. To put it simply, spark plugs are the small bolts of lightning that start your car. They work by creating an arc of electricity across a gap that ignites the mixture of fuel and air. This small explosion powers your pistons and makes the entire vehicle move. All of the ingredients: the gap, the mixture of fuels, the larger machine, all need the tiny spark plug to go– Now think of all the people, products, and industries that move everyday because of that small spark.

Perhaps it is appropriate that Mary Stranahan was born into the family that created and owned the largest spark plug company in the world. She herself finds the small gaps, with the right mixture of people and place, and adds the spark that makes an entire system move forward.

Mary’s grandpa, Frank Stranahan, helped build the Champion spark plug company with his brother, Robert, and now this successful company is a part of Apollo’s portfolio, and it’s through Apollo that Epstein’s influence enters the picture via Leon Black. Here’s a portion of the letter Apollo sent its investors after its connection to the Epstein network emerged:

To Our Partners,

In light of the variety of media and social traffic we feel compelled to again reach out. Despite the flurry of coverage and certain constituents pushing their own agendas, the facts remain the same. In 2020 Apollo initiated an independent, transparent, and thorough investigation in regard to any relationships with Jeffrey Epstein. The publicly released report can be found here.

The facts matter. From an Apollo perspective, there’s nothing new in these documents. Neither Marc Rowan nor anyone else at Apollo (excluding Leon Black) had either a business or personal relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

Mr. Black, who left the firm in 2021, previously retained and compensated Mr. Epstein for personal tax advice. In select instances, Mr. Rowan and other Apollo employees provided information to Epstein in connection with his tax work for Mr. Black. While Mr. Epstein sought to do work with the Apollo co-founders other than Mr. Black, it was declined at every turn.

The money Mary Stranahan uses to influence things–like Montana media and non-profits, including the Missoula Interfaith Collaborative–got activated after Mary came out of the closet as a rich person and fully embraced her wealth. Before this moment of clarity, Mary was doing doctor stuff for poor Montana Indians on their Big Sky reservations. Very noble.

The community was about a 50/50 split of Native Americans and white people so she was keenly aware of the racism, both overt and subtle. She was a white doctor on Native land so she learned everything she could, including taking Native History classes at the Salish Kootenai College. She loved delivering babies, tolerated surgeries, and especially adored the way entire Native families would show up whenever someone was in the hospital. By living on the Reservation, she saw the enormous impact job creation had on decreasing domestic violence and substance abuse and improving lives, families, and entire communities. Mary became passionate about economic development. Both combating racism and supporting economic development became cornerstones of her ongoing work after retiring from healthcare.

Up until this point, Mary had been individually philanthropic with LGBTQ and environmental organizations, as well as through a family foundation started by her parents, The Needmor Fund, but also somewhat closeted as a wealth holder. In 2006 she attended a Play BIG conference in Canada. Play BIG was started by Carol Newell who had shifted from being an anonymous investor to a leader in impact investing. Play BIG supports individual wealth holders who want to activate their whole portfolio (investing, lending, and giving) to be in greater alignment with the values of environmental regeneration and social equity. After the push from Play BIG, in 2007 Mary went public as a resource and hired Dawn McGee as her CEO to help her focus and transform her wealth into impact in Western Montana. When asked what is the smartest thing she has ever done, the answer comes quickly, “Hire Dawn.”

After Mary “hired Dawn” the money started flowing to all kinds of organizations, like the Montana Free Press, The Pulp, the Missoula Interfaith Collaborative, and SO MUCH MORE!

If you don’t see this list of funding recipients and understand how money is used to control narratives, keeping local populations uninformed about how power REALLY functions, then let me return to a spot in Missoula that is now a HAZMAT situation just a few dozen feet from the Bitterroot river.

Missoula Works, a subsidiary of the Missoula Interfaith Collaborative, got paid to clean up this land near Buckhouse bridge, which is owned by IMEG and is being developed into more storage units, but, for some reason, this particular spot of heaped trash was left to CONTINUE POLLUTING (as I write this) the land AND water. After talking with someone from DNRC yesterday, I’m starting to realize this isn’t getting cleaned up because this plot of land is literally NO MAN’S LAND.

While my chat with DNRC didn’t illuminate the technical owners of this parcel, it did present the possibility that digging into deed information at the County might help point the figurative finger because deed info might show if any changes to the property line were made in the process of the previous owner selling the property to IMEG.

A few years ago I connected the previous owner, Spencer Properties LLC, to Blue Line Development, which built the Trinity Apartment complex by the jail and perpetrates the affordable housing subsidy scam at a regional level. I’ve literally had people in Colorado reach out to me because of my local reporting on Blue Line Development, and they reached out to ME because this kind of reporting simply doesn’t occur with the media recipients of Mary’s spark plug money, and now you know why.

One final example of how Mary is playing DEMOCRAT politics with her spark plug money, and that example goes by the name Pam Bucy, a former Lewis and Clark County Prosecutor and failed candidate for Montana’s Attorney General Office. Here’s a little more bio information from Ballotpedia:

Upon graduating from law school, Bucy was hired as a criminal prosecutor with the Lewis & Clark County Attorney’s office.[5] She went on to work as Executive Assistant Attorney General under former attorney general Mike McGrath, who would go on to serve as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Montana. Her time as chief deputy attorney general provided Bucy with the opportunity to represent the state in front of the Supreme Court and establish her specialty as a prosecutor of sex-related crime; In addition to handling her combination civil and criminal caseload, she led the office to create and develop its system for registering sex and violent offenders.

Developing a system to register sex offenders, you say? And what’s Pam up to these days?

That’s right, she’s a board member for the “Prickly Pear Land Trust“, which got a nice $30,000 from the High Stakes Foundation. No wonder Pam can afford to crack a smile like that!

If you appreciate knowing shit about the corruption lurking beneath the pretty surface of this liberal mountain college town, please consider donating to my new GoFundMe page because no foundation will ever touch the kind of work I’ve dedicated myself to doing after being an insider of the Homeless Industrial Complex for nearly a decade. Any little bit helps.

Thanks for reading!