Zoom Chron Blog

by Travis Mateer

A fresh letter to the editor in the Missoulian is making me wonder if ANYONE actually supports the Crisis Mill Levy.

Here’s Peg Shea and Marianne Moon teaming up to ask our coercive local leadership to hit the pause button on this levy (emphasis mine)

The components of the proposed Missoula County Crisis Levy have not been fully explained to voters. As it currently exists, the proposed Levy will fund 11 programs: two, that are losing current “COVID” funds (Safe Outdoor Space and Mobile Support Team); seven that are currently funded by a combination of federal grants, state and local funds (including the existing Mental Health Levy and the Community Assistance Fund), and third-party reimbursement funding (e.g. Medicaid etc.); as well as two new programs. All are critical so fiscal partners such as the State of Montana, private foundations, United Way and hospitals will continue to be needed to provide all necessary funding. It appears it is easier for the county to levy taxes than it is to work with partners, write and manage grants, and braid private and public funds for continuation and enhancement of services. Before citizens can vote responsibly we need to understand what current funds the levy will replace, what funding will remain and be shown a budget for the 11 services. Now is not the time to increase taxes without more clarity, and discussion, and a concrete plan and budget.

At the Missoula Current a viewpoint from Valerie Hedquist makes Kumbaya claims I’m definitely skeptical about, like this one (emphasis mine):

Missoula’s Crisis Intervention Levy will continue to provide these services. A coalition of law enforcement officers, medical care professionals, and members of community religious denominations has already united to support Missoula’s current care intervention strategies. (https://www.savinglivesandmoney.org/)

Ok, so there’s a COALITION OF LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS. Where are they? That fancy website in the quote should have evidence of this coalition, right?

I found a page where the endorsers are named, but where is our Sheriff, T.J. McDermott? Or our NEW Sheriff, Jeremiah Petersen? I don’t even see Missoula’s Chief of Police, Jaeson White. Why not?

On the endorsers page there is some content that highlights how this money will, in part, help alleviate the stress in jail. Since our jail is run by the Sheriff’s Office, you would think the LEAST they could do is endorse the levy. Here’s the quote with my emphasis:

These programs have successfully changed, and saved, lives. At the same time, they have
helped keep our community safe and reduced stress on our busy ERs and jails. Unless we invest in the health and safety of our community, these support teams and other services will stop operating in Missoula and we will lose the progress we have made in recent years.

Yes, the lack of support from the Sheriff’s Office for the mill levy is rather conspicuous, but it’s not a mystery why. Obviously they are VERY BUSY litigating Missoula County into a multi-million dollar budget crisis that is being scantly reported on, considering the ramifications. From the link:

Missoula County could owe millions to the Missoula County Sheriff and detention officers as the local government enters litigation in a lawsuit stemming from pay discrepancies.

Reep, Bell & Jasper P.C., the law firm that represents the sheriff and detention officers in the suit, estimates the county owes $2 million to $3 million in unpaid wages, plus potential wage penalties that could total an additional $2.2 million to $3.3 million. Should the county lose the suit in litigation, wage laws also require a losing employer to pay the employees’ attorneys’ fees and costs.

The suit, filed in Missoula County District Court on Oct. 14, alleges the county owes back wages for three years’ worth of work to the sheriff and between 80 and 90 detention officers.

What’s going on here? Let me offer an analogy: you’re getting mauled by a bear and from the corner of your eye you see the glint of a badge in the late fall sun. Is help on the way? Sure, if help is taking a grenade, pulling the pin, then hiding behind a tree as the carnage ensues, help is absolutely on the way with the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office!

Who else is helping out this crisis levy? The new guy who owns Wordens, a nice place to get your gut-rot alcohol and cigarettes, of course!

Who else is giving their testimonial? How about a guy with a nice beard who makes sure the crazies get plenty of psych meds from BIG PHARMA!

Yes, these guys support you having $5 million taken every year in perpetuity for things that COULD be assisted by that money, but this guy, for some reason, is sitting on the side lines.

This image is taken from a 2014 candidate forum, a distant time when our outgoing Sheriff identified as a jack-ass. It’s shocking how much can change in 8 years.

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Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

Yesterday, while checking the Missoula County Inmate Information Portal, I noticed the man who called his DAUGHTER about Johnny Lee Perry threatening him with a machete, Jackie Maxvill, was recently arrested on serious charges, but not serious enough to keep this man in jail for longer than two weeks.

Yes, despite a bond of $75,000, Mr. Maxvill has been released to the streets where I’m sure he’ll be a model citizen who will show up to his next court date.

The arresting officer in Maxvill’s latest run-in with law enforcement is Detective Guy Baker, and I think that’s interesting.

Why do I find this interesting?

I find this interesting because Maxvill was involved in getting Johnny Lee Perry killed by the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office, and Johnny Lee Perry was involved in the death of Sean Stevenson, and my investigation into how Sean came to be euthanized in St. Patrick’s hospital by the Sheriff’s Office put me in contact with a homeless man two summers ago who knew A LOT about Sean’s death, including the identity of the nurse who was allegedly fired for not pulling the plug on Sean.

I recently looked at some notes from that summer and the homeless man I spoke with told me he had a police contact. Guess who he said that contact was? That’s right, Guy Baker.

Over the summer I spoke with Detective Baker regarding a girl selling flowers on Higgins because I suspected she was being exploited in some manner, only to find out from Baker I shouldn’t worry because it was probably just a Russian thing.

Should I take Baker’s word on that? I mean, he’s working closely with the LifeGuard Group, which is connected to the Gianforte Foundation, so I’m sure his trafficking perspective is pure and not bothered at all by politics.

That’s sarcasm, by the way.

On Friday, after being excluded from an event open to the public about the crisis levy, I visited with some homeless people to gain perspective. I even drove to the Transitional Safe Outdoor Space to see if the homeless guy who knows the Detective Guy was around, but he wasn’t.

Then I tried to do the weekend thing, only to be hit on Sunday by a United Way TWOFER. Or a THREEFER, if you count Mike Nugent twice (because of his duel role on City Council AND the board president of United Way, duh).

Here is the anecdotal story used in the op-ed to desperately influence their sinking levy ship:

Our friend’s mother, a retired professor now in her mid-90s and suffering from dementia, was standing on her front porch, half clothed and yelling for help. When an alarmed neighbor called 911, the responding officer assessed the situation and quickly called for the Mobile Support Team. The MST clinicians who showed up and defused the crisis deftly, working patiently with our friend to calm and reassure her mom. The crisis was resolved, and a plan put in place for follow-up care. Our friend and her mom found relief, compassion, and a positive resolution to what could have been a much sadder story.

This episode — one of more than 225 that occur in Missoula each month — illustrates that the hospital or jail is not the best place for everyone in obvious mental distress. Had those been the only alternatives in this situation, our friend’s mom would most likely have become further agitated and likely traumatized. A great many similar situations can be resolved “in place,” diverting costly visits to the jail or emergency room. In fact, in the past year and a half, the MST has saved nearly $1 million in emergency room visits. In most cases, the MST can keep the client in place, safe and with a plan should they go into crisis again.

That’s nice. There’s an anecdotal story I’d like to share here, but now is not the time, and the story isn’t mine to tell anyway.

Back to the guy named Jack, who this post is about; I wonder where’s he’s at, maybe that spot down the Southside road where people continue to live?

Is it legal to live in the woods like that? I don’t know, ask David Burgert.

Or maybe consider that you’re asking the wrong question. Maybe the question should be this: where is the law firm willing to bring down a GENUINE Hammer of Mandamus on Missoula County’s criminal justice poseurs?

I know a few people who WON’T be supportive of that kind of legal action, and that would be the people supporting the unopposed reelection of Missoula County Attorney, Kirsten Pabst. Here’s the screenshot:

I see a lot of people listed above who probably don’t want a repeat of national scrutiny because of shameful conduct by alleged professionals across the public and private sectors.

The crisis is the cabal of influence peddlers selling you the crisis levy. Until that problem is addressed, voting yes is a vote to dump gasoline on the dumpster fire.

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Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

The catalyst for this article comes from the Kaimin, Missoula’s University newspaper, and its Open Air piece fretting about the traveling preachers and why they keep visiting UM’s campus.

The race baiter referenced in the title of this post is Tobin Shearer, a professor on campus who I am VERY familiar with after writing this post back in 2017 about the killing of Missoula’s Festival of the Dead. Shearer is quoted in the article about the traveling preacher. From the first link (emphasis mine):

Tobin Shearer works for the university of Montana in the history department. He’s the director of African American Studies and graduate studies, but before he started working for the University, he got his degree in religious studies and history. 

He knows a lot about religion, but he also knows a lot about campus dynamics. According to him, the preachers aren’t a new phenomenon. 

“I’ve been here 15 years, I would say, on average, at least every other year, there’s someone at some point in the course of the year doing that same thing… the evangelical sort of belligerence has been recurrent over time,” Shearer said. 

The preachers are usually evangelists. They come in a million different flavors of religion, but the goal is basically to convert people to their beliefs. If you’re super secular like me, you may be thinking, if they wanted people to join their church, maybe they should be nicer about how they recruit people. How does screaming insults into a crowd of twenty-somethings make them hungry for Jesus? 

Why am I pointing out the claim Shearer is making about himself being SUPER SECULAR? Because it confuses me, that’s why. And it confuses me because Tobin Shearer goes to a Presbyterian church here in Missoula, the same one a doctor recently sentenced for sexually predating on some of his female patients attends.

If you doubt my claim regarding Shearer’s associations with this local church, here is some evidence from a service held on May 22, 2022, referencing Shearer’s influence on the content of said church:

While I don’t think claiming to be SUPER SECULAR necessarily precludes one from attending a church, I do find it curious that someone who is posturing for the University newspaper as just interested in religion on a secular level is, in actuality, quite involved in a local church.

Maybe Tobin Shearer is squeamish about that sexual predator I mentioned above who goes to the same church he does, but I’m not sure why this should be a problem, since Jaime Armstrong is probably SUPER repentant, and FPC is a SUPER progressive church. So he sexually assaulted some patients? Isn’t that what God’s forgiveness is for?

Yes, there’s Armstrong, and there are some of his supporters. Can I get an amen?

Jaime Armstrong, for those who don’t know, has an interesting familial pedigree. While this obituary has some good info on Armstrong Senior, I’m going to just skip along to the Wikipedia entry about the Supreme Court case Papa Armstrong was a central figure in:

Mazurek v. Armstrong, 520 U.S. 968 (1997), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court upheld a Montana law permitting only licensed physicians to perform abortions.[1] The Court summarily reversed a ruling of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that had held that the law was likely intended to inhibit abortion access. In a per curiam opinion, a majority of the Court found that there was no evidence that the Montana legislature acted with an invalid intent. The Court also reiterated its earlier holding in Planned Parenthood v. Casey that the states have broad flexibility to regulate abortion so long as their regulations do not create an undue burden on a woman’s right to choose. Three dissenting justices, in an opinion by Justice John Paul Stevens, wrote that they would have declined to hear the case because proceedings were still pending in the lower courts. The law itself was later struck down by the Montana Supreme Court on state-constitutional grounds, but the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision has nonetheless had a significant impact on modern American abortion jurisprudence.

I don’t see anything to be ashamed about here, do you?

Going back to the original Kaimin article, the spin on dissing the EVANGELICALS who bother students includes another person who bugs the shit out of me, and that’s Travis McAdams with the Montana Human Rights Network.

McAdams’ role is to come in and make sure Christians are associated with WHITE SUPREMACY. Here’s McAdams doing his thing for the gullible students:

Although it may seem like indiscriminate chaos, there’s a method to the sign-waving madness. Travis McAdams works for the Montana Human Rights network. He usually researches how to combat white supremacy. The preachers aren’tin the exact same camp as white supremacists, but the two groups share some recruitment tactics. 

“They wanna create a somewhat hostile environment and try to get people passing by to engage with them and generally engage with them in negative ways. And they want that for a couple of reasons. One, it allows them to portray themselves as these victims, even though it’s based on a situation that they’ve created…. But it allows them to pretend that they’re the victims, they’re the ones under attack. And in doing. If they record it, which most of these groups will do, they record it, they post it on social media, they use it to recruit members. They use it to raise money, and so it’s not about discussion. It’s not about an open exchange of ideas…. It’s about trying to create a hostile environment to generate reactions that they can then capture on video and use for their purposes on social media,” McAdam said.  

While Tobin Shearer joins secular forces with Travis McAdams to imply street preachers should be lumped in with white supremacists because they share similar tactics, the tactics of individual predators can transform ANY church into a target-rich environment for their prowling.

Has that happened with the church Shearer attends? Does his church simply lack discernment or, worse, is the leadership too focused on the external threats of a culture war that they are willfully ignoring the very real threat of supporting a sexual predator who had a judge say THIS about him:

Armstrong’s defense and the Lewis and Clark County Attorney’s Office proposed a lighter, deferred sentence of three years of supervision and then the charges would be wiped from his record, but District Judge Christopher Abbott told Armstrong from the bench, “it’s important this conviction follow you.“

Instead, Abbott handed down a sentence of 10 years to the Department of Corrections with all incarceration suspended. Officials determined Armstrong has a low risk to re-offend, and he will not be eligible for conditional discharge from supervision for at least five years.

As part of the plea agreement, Armstrong voluntarily terminated his Montana medical license and may not seek or renew a medical license in any state during the time of supervision.

Abbott also barred Armstrong from seeking any job in health care with direct access to patients while on supervision. He is to have no contact with his two victims.

“I’m not going to send you to prison. I think that would likely cause you to withdraw your plea,” Abbot said. “I also need to be respectful of the victims, if it’s not their desire to go forward with a trial.”

Abbott said he was concerned that bringing the case to a trial would cause “great distress” to the victims “for possibly a lesser outcome than agreed to today.”

The problem with this kind of internal, in-your-own-backyard kind of threat is talking about it doesn’t get your “non-profit” more donations or your academic career another book deal.

Maybe that sounds unnecessarily cynical, but if this public posturing continues, while more immediate threats are ignored, then the supposed cultural good being sought by the Shearers’ and McAdams’ of the world will fall on deaf ears.

You know, kind of like what happens with these angry preachers you two white dudes are complaining about.

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by Travis Mateer

The people who keep telling you, the tax-paying public, that we better get this crisis mill levy passed OR ELSE got a reprieve from having to deal with me today thanks to a staff member at the ZACC telling me I wasn’t allowed to attend.

Why wasn’t I allowed to attend? I was told verbally by this staff member that she was
“alone”, which I took to mean the only paid staff on-hand, and because of this, she explained, she simply couldn’t handle “an incident”.

Which begs the question, why would she expect “an incident”?

One of the biggest supporters of this mill levy has turned into one of the fiercest trench-fighters on its behalf. Let’s see if you can guess who I’m talking about by me using a quote from this NBC Montana piece:

The panel went in-depth on why they believe the crisis services levy would benefit Missoula in the long run and what would happen if it isn’t approved.

“We’re going to have some tough decisions to make. We’re going to lose some great services, so I can’t say that there’s a backup plan, but some of these programs will go away,” said Susan Hay Patrick, CEO of United Way.

It’s kind of ironic I’m using an NBC Montana article, considering it was an NBC Montana reporter who confirmed what I suspected about this person’s capacity for nasty, asymmetrical attacks–like telling this reporter untrue and, dare I say, defamatory things about me.

Another BIG problem with what happened today is the fact it wasn’t just me who got denied access to an event billed as “open to the public”. I was going to have, on the phone, the sister of Sean Stevenson listening to the panel of specialists, but obviously that didn’t happen.

If you haven’t heard me reference Sean’s name before you’re probably new to this blog, so let me briefly say that Sean’s death was a major catalyst for the work I’m doing now, and the questions his family have about what REALLY happened to him persist.

As for me, while I have my suspicions about what is happening, and why, it might not be until a process of discovery begins that I’ll be able to more concretely point to the efforts to keep me and what I know from making those in positions of power and influence uncomfortable.

To make a contribution to what might become my legal fund, the donation button is at my about page.

Be safe out there, and thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

You know bridges are kicking ass in Missoula when a tunnel is being rehabbed on the fly. Zoom Town, baby!

Below is a song about bridges. Please enjoy it! For it is Friday, and the post for Sunday has already been written. Amen!

But seriously, thank you for the donations and other forms of non-monetary support. It is greatly appreciated! (donation button is at my about page)