Shame.
If you wanted to know why I haven’t been writing lately, that’s why.
I feel ashamed.
I feel ashamed of this country.
I’m ashamed of what we’re doing, how people are acting, and that we’re destroying our children’s future.
That said, I know you’re interested in different viewpoints, so I’ll give you a few stories today as well as some commentary.
Thanks for reading.
A very interesting tweet came out today around noon. Take a look:
Very interesting.
Here are the staffers on the Williams campaign, via the latest COPP report:
- Brian Lenzmeier: $3,505 every two weeks.
- Rikki Henderson: $2,324 every two weeks.
- Anna Newman: $1,969 every two weeks.
- Michael Toppen: $1,553 every two weeks.
- Harry Child: $1,203 every two weeks.
- Brenna Davis: $979 for the period.
- Dayna Swanson: $4,500 for the period.
Over ten grand every other week to staffers that are working on a campaign that pretty much everyone knows is going to lose.
Is one of these people responsible for this noontime tweet? That’s what they claim.
It’s also interesting that there’s a “pro-WW PAC” and that Gianforte is supposedly funding it.
What is this PAC...and where do we see its finance reports?
Hopefully this ‘former-staffer’ will give us a bit more insight.
A D.C. firm is paying Montanans in several cities $19 an hour to “work on an important campaign.”
This is probably the legalize marijuana initiative, which has about a month to collect tens of thousands of signatures to appear on the ballot.
We collected nearly 10,000 signatures in 2016, and I personally got over 500 signatures. That was a citizen-driven initiative and we worked on that for months. With this D.C. firm backing the current effort, I suspect they'll get lots of signatures...but time is not on their side.
We know the marijuana legalization folks have to go this physical signature gathering route as the state sued to stop their online petition idea. It’s interesting that the state chose to so abruptly end a possible revenue source. Of course, right now the state is getting $1.25 billion from the feds with no strings attached to shore up the economy that the governor destroyed.
Montana’s total tax revenue in 2016 was $2.3 billion, to give you some perspective.
Bullock will divvy that money out, and I suspect - just as we saw with the small business Paycheck Protection Program fiasco - that there will be lots of fraud, corruption, mismanagement, and just downright stupidity.
Amazingly, Bullock actually leads Daines in the most recent Senate poll by 7 points.
The poll asked 738 Montanans.
Personally, I figure this is the ‘honeymoon phase’ of Bullock’s candidacy. As summer begins and small business after small business closes its doors for good all across the state, Montanans will lose their taste for Bullock, fast.
I saw Ellie Hill putting up yard signs yesterday afternoon.
The clear winner of the yard sign war in Missoula this year is Dan Larson, who’s running for PSC #4.
While Monica Tranel - a former Republican who worked in Conrad Burns’ office in D.C. - has raised the most money, Larson has her on the signs.
I don’t think I’ve seen a single Tranel yard sign in the city of Missoula.
Haven’t seen a Jon Bennion sign, either. I went to his campaign website about a month ago and sent in a form comment saying, come to my house and put up a sign when we get close to voting.
Well, no sign yet. And no wonder - he hasn’t printed any!
I went to COPP and checked, and mostly Bennion is spending money on videos. I suspect he’s going the Facebook route for the primary.
I know you don’t want to hear it. I know you don’t want to believe it.
But we’re heading for a monumental economic depression that’ll last for the better part of a decade.
Here are 18 reasons why.
By the end of this month, we’ll have a lot more reasons. I fully expect that a lot more major name-brand corporations will file for bankruptcy in the coming weeks.
Americans are in no way ready for this.
Tonight at 8 PM I decided to go out and shout to the world, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.”
I will do this each night as the yelling continues.
The world decided to shut down largely because one man came up with flawed models showing outrageous levels of death.
The other night he was forced to resign from his UK government position after it was revealed he broke his own quarantine advice to sleep with his married lover.
This guy said 250,000 would die in the UK. So far, 29,000 have.
Meanwhile, millions of lives in that country of 66 million have now been ruined.
Texas is going to shit.
Last night a swat team with a tank was called out to a bar because 20 people were gathered there.
Also, a salon owner was fined $7,000 and sent to jail for refusing to shut down, saying she needed to feed her kids.
A Go-Fund Me campaign has raised over $315,000 for her.
Americans are beginning to stand up.
The Texas attorney general said the judge’s decision to put this salon owner in jail was too much.
I think most Texans will agree. Their governor does. The judge, Eric Moye, is up for reelection this fall.
He doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning now.
All of the people currently in office will be voted out in the coming years. This will happen when the extent of the economic catastrophe becomes clear.
I suspect many will simply choose not to run again, knowing they can’t win.
We don’t realize it yet, but the discourse in this country is going to change in a big way. The issues we think are important today? We won’t even be discussing those in a year, perhaps less.
Putting food on the table is going to become the prime concern for the majority of Americans, and it’s going to be hard to do because we’ll have no jobs.
Our leaders?
They’re not leaders, and that’ll become abundantly clear in the coming months. They didn’t have any ideas before this crisis, and they don’t have any now.
Our fat, drunk and stupid Missoula mayor is going to become increasingly desperate as his trough of taxpayer money dries up. When he burns through the MRA stockpiles, then what? Simple - he won’t run again. If he does, he’ll be defeated.
People don’t know what’s coming.
It’s complete and utter economic devastation...which we brought upon ourselves.
Well...not ‘we’.
It was the politicians.
Here in Missoula it was the county commissioners and the unelected people in the health department. Statewide, it was Bullock.
These are the people that will be blamed. We don’t see it coming yet, but wait a few months.
Wait until the utter collapse of small businesses happens, which it will.
We didn’t shoot ourselves in the foot - the people we elected did.
And then the corporate media created a sensation of fear nationwide, which ensures that when small businesses do open, they won’t make enough to stay open.
We see this fear each day with people wearing masks.
What a joke.
Just look at Sweden, a country that never shut down. They’ve had fewer than 3,000 deaths from this virus.
Meanwhile, New York shut down everything and says they’ll stay shut down until September. That state has had 19,000 deaths.
In America we have 205 deaths per 1 million people and in Sweden it’s 280 per 1 million.
Not much of a difference, is it?
Boy, were we fucking stupid.
We lost our minds, and let fear take hold. Lives are ruined. Suicides appear to be up 800%.
We took people's jobs; we took people's identities. For a country where many define themselves by what they do, where they work...this is a real blow.
Buckle-up, folks - we’re in for one helluva ride, a ride brought to us by the scaredy-cat politicians that are still being paid with the money they take out of your paycheck...if you're still getting one.
