by Travis Mateer
I just ran across the post-election Missoulian op-ed, penned by publisher Jim Strauss and Executive Editor Jim Van Nostrand, and I think it’s adorable and hilarious. Here’s some highlights.
One clear indication of the will of the voters is that progressive candidates swept the slate. Mayor John Engen was reelected for a fifth term, all six city council winners were endorsed by the Missoula County Democratic Central Committee, and the three new municipal court judges are former public defenders who ran on a platform of a less-punitive approach.
Engen is a progressive? That’s adorable. We need a less punitive approach to criminal justice? That’s hilarious. Here’s more:
On homelessness, for example, we won’t let unhoused people freeze to death, we won’t create chain gangs for forced labor, and we won’t give them bus tickets to make the problem go away.
We have addressed homelessness with stopgap measures, but long-term solutions, as Engen points out, will not be achieved until we successfully confront the three challenges of housing, addiction and mental illness. Homelessness will only be solved by treating the underlying causes.
Cool, no more humans turned into lifeless ice cubes. Back in 2017, when Tim Lloyd died of exposure near the Union Gospel Mission, I noted how NBC Montana was THE ONLY NEWS OUTLET to take notice. Because of MY REPORTING, the Missoula Independent ended up doing a story on Tim. In summation, FUCK the Missoulian.
Regarding the pandemic, we’ve shown that we are a community that cares for the public welfare. Most of us are willing to take the tough measures to make the scourge go away. If our state’s elected leaders would get their heads out of the sand and get out of our way, we’d be in a much better place–instead of the state leading the nation in per-capita COVID-19 cases.
I don’t even know where to start with this shit. Maybe I should wish upon a star for the Missoulian to educate its readers on who gets COVID money, like that State Representative who got $50,000 for her and her hubby in small business Covid relief money. But no, the two Missoulian Jims are too busy bashing Republicans for enabling THE SCOURGE, and for somehow blocking these noble Jims from doing more for Big Pharma’s bottom line.
Now, how about housing?
And on housing, we face an existential threat. The character of our community will drastically change if working-class people can’t afford to live here. Plans are in the works to build a lot more affordable housing, but it can’t go up quickly enough. The solutions (plural) will require creative thinking, community-wide buy-in and a no-obstacles-tolerated approach.
HA! This is HILARIOUS, considering the building this bullshit is emanating from will be 125 foot condo towers after The Wags and his local enablers at WGM are done with it. But don’t worry, Missoula, WGM took the bold move of CANCELLING a meeting! And how is this cowardly move being framed by Democrats in Zoom Town?
Oh, Kimberly, I guess no one told you that the Hip Strip is already dead. Bathing Beauties is gone (to be replaced by another weed store) and Carlo’s Last Stand closed, as did the Hob Nob. But Boomers can still buy “fair trade” shit at the Peace Center, and creative re-use stuff at Upcycled for awhile longer, so maybe it’s on life support.
Since I have an allergy to narrative control by corporate fucks like these two Jims, I’m not going to repost the entire op-ed. It was hard enough reading the portions I excerpted, especially this shit about inclusivity:
INCLUSIVITY: Is Missoula a welcoming city for all? It was just the summer of 2020 when Black Lives Matters protesters gathered at the Missoula County Courthouse, some calling for the Missoula Police Department to be defunded. This last legislative session left many in Montana’s LGBTQ community feeling unwelcome. Now, the community and state are split on whether to allow Afghan refugees into our state and communities. How do we ensure that Missoula is a city where all resident feel welcome and are confident they receive equitable treatment?
I have no patience for utter shit like this. While these two Jims promote their corporate narrative control virtue-signaling, I’m still trying to understand what actually happened to Sean Stevenson at the Poverello Center on January 3rd, 2020. That was made MUCH MORE DIFFICULT when unnamed Sheriff Deputies shot and killed Sean’s alleged assailant, Johnny Lee Perry, on August 29th, 2021.
If you are not aware of these stories, that’s because the Missoulian is a vehicle for advertising, not critical information about what’s actually happening in our community.
I know this to be a fact because of first-hand experience reporting on the things the Missoulian is refusing to cover.
Most of the citizens I talk to in this town understand the Missoulian is shit and getting more obviously shitty with every passing day. Op-eds like this by the two Jims help me make my case.
Thanks for reading!
JC
Pretending to be progressive and inclusive in the last best place…
The real objective here is out of sight, out of mind.
https://missoulacurrent.com/montana-today/2021/12/reserve-street-camp-3/
I’ll be writing about that next week.
You’re singing my song. We need to not let oppressors get away with calling themselves progressives.
Isn’t it called dystopia when you live in a world where the government controls the narrative and doesn’t let you have any bad feelings
Not just fuck no but doubly Tripily fuck fuck fuck no
This coming from the designated enemy of the State here in our city
The key to the fact that Johnny got reelected is how he dispenses the gift of tax money that he takes from the poor and gives to the rich
Reverse Robin Hood
And without any fucking doubt the mayor and his cronies control The narrative of what the public sees of his government that’s not real government I like to see government with all my scars marks and tattoos
You know it’s the old painting lipstick on a pig still a pig
And what you got here is a fat grouping oligarch of pigs gather around the slop trough while Johnny controls what goes in and who gets to eat
This town is too far fucking gone to ever get it back
50 years of dinosaur gym and his slowly turning the office do not accountability zero oversight removal of the judicial and law enforcement committee on the city council
Convincing everyone in the town that will listen to only the Good never seeking the bad that they don’t tell you
turning Missoula and its citizens or victims for mayor predator
Turning government of Missoula citizens intointo a criminal empire
Just ask someone at the state level how the grid of accountability works cuz it exists everywhere but in Missoula so no one tells the police department they can or can’t do this no one tells the sheriff’s department they can or can’t do this the leaders of those departments make those decisions and they decide which gets hidden from the public
There’s a standing policy put in place by dinosaur gym the 50-year City attorney that an officers write to privacy outweighs the public’s right to know
Is anybody know how fucking dumb down and packaged up to shove up your rectal cavity that is
We’re their employer but we’re not allowed to know if they’re criminals perverts child molesters or Killers which obviously they are shooting a man in the back shooting a man who killed another man silences all the stories that go against what they did
I have it on good authority that that shooting over on Sherwood there was people outside next door neighbors who never heard anyone’s nail dropped and I’ve put it down anything all they heard was volley of bullets and gunshot wound gunshots
yeah the two gyms are a piece of work the one that was there right before them yeah right after they slandered libel then defamed my face on the front of five League newspapers there was a shooting at one of the newspapers she used to be the editor for back East boy did she pee in her depends
I think that’s when the city and The Missoulian and everyone who is shitting and taking a crap on me got very nervous
Because that’s exactly what I accused them of doing
Then let’s talk about the criminal family that ran internal affairs they all have a common denominator the name odlin
Internal affairs officer was a descendant of a law enforcement family
When I told him that I wanted to complain about police he brought a complaint form out from the police desk around into the foyer stood 2 inches from my nose and started screaming at me that if I was found to be lying on here he would see to it that I was going to do 6 months in jail for perjury
Then if you roll the clock back to when I was arrested for beating a police officers guess what he stalled it out I was arrested at 9:00 in the morning and I would have went in front of Karen orsick
He forced them to leave me till the next day’s court appearance so his father would be the man setting my bail and determining whether I’d be released
You don’t think that night that near 400 lb tub of crap
Call his dad and put the fix in to fuck me up the ass
Yeah and when I called him out for never getting a response to the complaint that I filed with the fuck does he do ignore me
then let’s jump ahead to April of last year when the psycho bitch over on Burlington threat to kill me and my daughter
After the cops couldn’t get her to kill me or come out of her house they left didn’t protect me or my family not one fucking bit
Soon as I got to the motel that we paid for I get a call from a detective McCarthy who starts insisting that The narrative of the incident went like this not what I’m saying which was the truth
For this repugnant piece of shit continues telling me nobody told her to put the weapon down and come out of the house that was never said
It talked to any of the fuck that stood on their lawn for 10 hours and watch this go on it was repeated close to 200 times to which every time she repeated my husband’s friends with all the judges
All this was on camera please camera body camera all on camera then it comes to the paper since there was not an arrest they don’t publish your name they only say a woman on Burlington Street well I’m here to fucking tell you her name is Elizabeth Marie lascance and she’s the worst kind of predator a human trafficker that preys on people looking to bring themselves up the same population that everyone else shits on she turns into a product to make herself rich
And then you got Guy baker the pervert who loves to deal with sex crimes sex trafficking
Yeah you got to wonder
Want you a fucking thing about human trafficking of the homeless but he’s an award-winning FBI agent double dipping taking a check from the feds while he works for the city
Just like Mark Brady former Chief of Police now and head of what is it loss prevention basically fuck they don’t ever approve insurance claims against their self insurance anyways so what the fuck is the point of him having that job
You know I call these fucks out when I was doing community service and I had to foot the bill for workers comp okay well workers comp on a company that has its own self-insurance when every time they sent someone to do community service they’re making the burden of paying their insurance or their benefit package less on the people who are employed by the city and more on the poor destitute downtrend who don’t have houses so they create an income stream from people who have no homes
The greatest fucking thing the city could do is liquidate all the houses that the housing authority owns make the people that are living in them homeowners go to this stockman’s bank and get mortgages for every one of those $468 homes that you rent out to people make them property tax paying citizens that own a house three four or five different problems solved right there
Plus Stockton’s banking bunch of the loan for $600 million $700 million something like that if you liquidated every one of those properties
Problem is these fucking idiots that run our city in our county can’t think beyond their oligarch circle or the fattening of their own fucking wallets
And because they control the press and the narrative that the public sees and you have a lot of God loving god-fearing people that all want to believe the police are good and can do no wrong perfect Storm of corruption
I was written up in the Wall Street journal cuz I whistle blue on someone who was putting erroneous information in the background checks happen to be Jake rosling the police officer please Sergeant Commander his brother the punk ass vindictively and eventually came after me to slap a charge on me knowing exactly what that does to people’s lives because he spent 6 years at the pre-release living with criminals criminals who became his friends and then his tools to use against me and my family like he did David paddock the man who raped his own daughter that’s quite a friend there Mr rosling
And what does the police tell me or what officers write to privacy always the public’s right to know even when they fucking murder people
Wow we don’t have government here we have a hierarchy
These people at the top are promoting socialism because they are already sitting on a big fat fucking pile of money if they were sitting on that big fat fucking pile of money you know damn well the last thing they be saying is oh we need to give everyone socialistic values and socialistic behavior cuz then that’s better for the top tier well I got news for the top tier just because they made a place for themselves doesn’t make them top tier
That fucking Jamie erbacher let’s talk to her and see if her ex-husband Patrick erbacher is an abusive domestic abuser because he sure is fuck treated my lady like he’s a domestic abuser
Really they put in the mental health team maybe they should stop and have a mental health team go back and look at how the cops and their supervisors abuse their power to treat people inappropriately that would end half of the fucking mental health issues in this town
Jim Nugent can hardly even function anymore so explain to me how he makes a good choice for the city attorney’s office when there’s criminal behavior coming out of that office by his coworkers the eight lawyers that weren’t good enough to sue Carlisle to get a water company so what are they lacking that just do paperwork filing you know what are they why did they get a degree if they’re going to be denigrated to just petty ass crimes and then they don’t even hold the constitution in their Court of any value
It’s just like grade School playgrounds the groups of people who think they’re better than everybody else got some power in this town and now they think they can fucking Tuesday free will boy that mayor’s got some balls if he was not doing anything wrong why would he have to spend almost a hundred grand to create an escape hole out of his office into the city attorney’s office why would he need an escape hole what is he doing that so wrong that he has to fearful people
Trying to do shit about it this time is pointless fucking nine times out of 10 I get people telling me man they got it in for you you should get out of here you should leave that’s the only way your life’s ever going to be normal well then yeah the next person who gets fucked like me gets a real normal life too and every person after that and only in levels up the fucking motherfuckers that are doing this to everybody
And they blanket protect people when they fucking assault or criminalize actions against people they don’t like me being a perfect fucking example and then they know that they control the fucking accountability of everything they do wrong so they’ll never be held to account just look at Ed weatherby what he did over there at the Old Mill site he capitalized on that spent 30 million in Chinese money to build his wealth Tiff money took money from other people and made himself filthy Rich yay for him right oh fuck you he controlled everyone else who could get eb-5 funding he put a denial in the only other eb5 money in Montana he approved was a mind that went tits up and now they owe but not him he turned the fucking $200,000 bank loan in a 30 million in Chinese money and built that square and now he doesn’t want anybody else competing with his Rich wealthy ass or his wife who’s the realtor of record is double dipping on that not only the owner but the realtor of records so now they get the commission what kind of horse cocky bullshit is this oh it’s great if you’re in that little circle of people but if you’re somebody who’s trying to make their fucking family have a life and a legacy here who’s lived in this area for five generations before this was even a state and you think you have the right to tell that person to go away fuck you you want to fucking war keep this shit up
Pull up police officers corrupt public officials corrupt corrupt corrupt and then you control the press and nobody’s able to hear about it except then you paint me and other people pointed out as psychopaths are nut bags well really we know what’s going on here we see clearly what’s going on here and if you continue on this path there will be responsibility and accountability for all the fucking of the citizens you’re doing
The fucking psycho bitch you threatened to kill me drove over to Albertsons parking lot found us in the parking lot blocked our vehicle in from leaving and then call the cops and said we assaulted her me by spitting in her vehicle well she’s in a vehicle if I approached your vehicle why was she there was she trying to kill me
Well I called 9112 and told him she was blocking Us in guess what they told her to move cuz that’s kidnapping
And so after three attempts to get a restraining order she got one and then was able to claim that I spit in her vehicle and on her when I was never even anywhere close to her vehicle
But the officer who took all the information of something that happened out of his sight which they can’t write a ticket for wrote a ticket for assault then I do what I do every time I get a ticket I look up the Montana code annotated
spitting on a human a person other than law enforcement is not a crime doesn’t constitute a salt that’s all that the physical contact by fist or hands or laying hands or sitting with a weapon
What does psycho cunt gets to act like she’s Queen Elizabeth so then they didn’t charge her she leveled up and kept coming after me and coming after me and coming after me and figured out how bad the cops wanted to fuck me and she played that spot oh so well
Everybody in government fucks me they don’t like me one bit
What did I do that’s so astonishingly sad I told the truth about some bullshit I was going through with the city I told bullshit called bullshit on the county and they don’t like that because they like to go on abusing what they do
Change is not coming we’re slipping into the Merc I don’t even know what the fuck you’d call it but I sure as hell wouldn’t call it a swamp a cesspool of government turds
Funny they paint me with hatred and disgusting vile defamation used as a weapon against me and my family
But God when I tell the truth about their Miss corruption I’m suddenly the piece of shit how does that work
The post you’re commenting on is 834 words. Your comment is 2,624 words. If you want someone to read your opinions…I’d suggest keeping ’em shorter.
Not everyone has the mental acuity to write succinctly. This is a learned skill. You would rather belittle someone than support them? So very Christian.
It’s time to stop forcing battlelines into Democratic/Republican, liberal/conservative dichotomies, and to call it what is is: an oligarchic power structure of parasitic politicians and unscrupulous big capitalists vs. just about everyone else.
I hear your fingers tapping, but your actions, or lack thereof, speak MUCH louder than words. It’s time for a lot of seeming adults to grow the fuck up.