It should be no surprise to anyone who pays attention to such things that the Great Falls Tribune abandoned even the pretense of objectivity some time ago.
Once again the ‘newspaper’ has confirmed it’s rock solid commitment to the far left and the Democrat party by it’s near-slobbering promotion of a local progressive candidate for state legislature.
Here is a Tribune Facebook post from Friday 12/10:
Apparently the folks at the Trib think local readers are too stupid to see through their lame attempt to cover their blatant political bias with racial virtue signalling and smily pictures.
The Tribune’s First Nations newsletter with it’s phony little fluff piece about how a one-time state Representative who lost her seat to a Republican in 2020 ‘plans to protect herself from burnout’ is nothing more than an early campaign ad and pure political propaganda.
And it’s as transparent as it is hilarious.
And just in case anyone wants to start with ‘whataboutisms’ and pointing fingers at this blog, we’ll remind readers right now so that there’s no ambiguity:
E-City Beat is an unapologetically conservative local news, information, and opinion blog and we will continue to advocate for conservative values, candidates, and ideas.
Stray Moose Productions is a local one-stop audio-visual production, duplicating and transfer specialist.
“Why send your memories out of town when we can do it all right here in the Great Falls area?” – Stray Moose Productions
Stray Moose Productions can transfer your VHS and SVHS video tapes of movies, home movies and other content to DVD for you quickly and affordably. They are located in Black Eagle.
They also transfer 8mm and 16mm home movies to DVD, Beta to DVD, and cassette, reel-to-reel and vinyl to CD.
Stray Moose Productions also does professional video work for your special events such as weddings and memorial services.
Call 406-727-6670 or email info@straymoose.com
They are located at 3 Anaconda Hills Dr., Black Eagle, MT – next to Anaconda Hills Golf Course and across from the Black Eagle Community Center.
Former Great Falls city commissioner Tracy Houck announced her resignation from the city commission via Facebook post on her Tracy Houck for Great Falls City Commission page posted November 4, at 1:11 PM.
Houck stated that her resignation would be effective November 5, 2021, giving the public, City administration, and her fellow commissioners less than 12 hours notice.
The remaining commissioners will have to appoint a new commissioner to fill Houck’s seat by December 6, 2021.
The announcement came one day after the final results from the November 2, Great Falls municipal election were released. Houck was not on the ballot and had 2 more years to serve in her second 4 year term.
Houck used her press release to describe her new job as a small business consultant, “As my commissioner role sunsets, I will be out and about visiting with businesses and local leaders in my new role. I have accepted a position with Northrup Grumman’s Space Command GBSD program as a Small Business Liason Officer. In this role, I will be able to continue to support the community, the businesses, and the people that make me so proud of Great Falls.”
And she ended with this:
“So allow me to reintroduce myself… My Name is Tracy (Houck) Jerman. You can reach me in a variety of ways… please reach out!”
Are there wolves in sheep’s clothing in our field of candidates for the upcoming City’s mayoral and commission races?
Yes. Judging by comments from many of our readers, there are candidates who would have you believe one thing while they appear likely to do another.
You might say, “So what’s new about that, politicians do it all the time.” And you would be correct.
They try to “pull the wool over our eyes”, while their real intent is to pursue their own agenda that benefits them and their friends.
How often have you heard local candidates profess a would-be commitment to bring about economic development and ‘good paying jobs’ to our stagnant economy? The truth is that most don’t have a clue about how to accomplish that lofty goal. We have heard that tune for decades without results.
Any building project requires a good foundation and economic development requires a foundational environment where people are willing to risk financial and creative capital.
A growth conducive environment has many ingredients, but first and most importantly is the elimination of barriers and practices that detract from anything positive. Those barriers and detracting practices include cronyism, conflicts of interest, and the reluctance to allow fresh ideas.
If candidates and leaders are named in a HUD scolding, or advocate to import Syrian refugees, or if they are proponents of giving millions of dollars to their favorite nonprofit organizations to dole out to their friends, you can be sure that they will have a negative effect on the creation of a suitable environment for economic development and job creation.
A candidate’s history and associations are good indicators of their future performance.
Neither one of these candidates would answer specific questions about their positions on important topics facing the City and it seems they are running together to maintain the status quo. No solutions, just talk.
At the risk of mixing animal classes, do wolves and birds flock together? In the upcoming election, it appears they do.
As Stevie Wonder said in his 1974 song, ‘You Haven’t Done Nothin’, “…we are sick and tired of hearing your song, Tellin’ how you are gonna change right from wrong, Cause if you really want to hear our views, You haven’t done nothing”.
In this election, comb the wool out of your eyes and don’t’ let the answer to, “What’s for dinner?”, be “Rack of lamb.”
Last week an E-City Beat reader made the following comment on one of our Facebook posts, referring to current Great Falls city commissison candidate Susan Wolff:
“And don’t forget Commission candidate Wolff’s part in the HUD scandal that exposed Commission fingers in the Block Grant pot.“
The comment apparently points back to a piece on E-City Beat called ‘The Who, What, And How Of The Great Falls Good Old Boys And Gals Club’ from May 2018 outlining the “…distribution of federal Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) taxpayer funds by the Great Falls Community Development Council (CDC) and the Great Falls City Commission.”
The article cites a letter written from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to the City of Great Falls about the plain conflicts of interest surrounding the local CDBG funding process.
Here is a portion of the HUD letter.
“The City’s letter dated December 20, 2017 identified 14 individuals who participated in the Commission or Council between 2012 and 2017, and who would also be identified as persons covered by Section 570.611(c). In total, $522,252.00 was awarded by the Commission and Council between 2012 and 2017 to entities from which the 14 members noted above, or those with whom they have business or immediate family ties, obtained a financial interest or benefit.”
Susan Wolff is named as one of those ’14 individuals’ because as a member of the Great Falls Community Development Council she was approving taxpayer funds for an organization on which she was a sitting board member.
“Susan Wolff – CDC Member – Board Member GFDA which received $40,000 (2017)”.
By the way, current Mayor Bob Kelly and City Commissioner Tracy Houck were also named by HUD as two of the individuals among the 14 with conflicts of interest.
That was then, this is now – and it’s important to understand how ‘then’ applies to ‘now’.
At the 10/5/21 City Commission work session the topic of how to distribute the over $19 million in ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) funds received by the City of Great Falls was discussed in depth.
One of the options discussed was the possibility of granting large chunks of the ARPA funds to local non-profits like United Way of Cascade County and allowing them to administer the funds to sub-recipients.
In fact, according to the minutes from the meeting, United Way President Gary Owen participated in the commission Zoom meeting and “…spoke in support of United Way being designated as a potential recipient of the City’s ARPA funding.”
Here’s the connection to candidate Wolff: On review of all of the candidates’ campaign fundraising records it comes up that Kim Skornogoski/Ochsner is not only Wolff’s official campaign treasurer but also donated $152.62 to the Wolff campaign.
Given that the final decisions as to how Great Falls’ ARPA funds will be distributed won’t occur until after a new city commission is seated in January 2022, it’s necessary to closely scrutinize the candidates who are seeking to fill the two open seats on the commission concerning their campaign finance connections to local non-profits lobbying for possibly millions of dollars of taxpayer money.
We don’t need any more CDBG fiascos or conflicts of interest on our city commission.
Like many Italian Americans I recognize Columbus Day as a way to take pride in my Italian heritage.
Unfortunately, once again this year there are those would like to take Montana in the direction of other states like Hawaii, Oregon and South Dakota, in the elimination of Columbus Day.
Those voices, including the usual state legislators and apparently everyone who works for the Great Falls Tribune, seem willfully ignorant of a couple of important facts.
First, Columbus never set one foot in what we now call America.
Secondly, history is replete with examples of indigenous peoples in America conquering and taking neighboring tribes as slaves, stealing their land, brutalizing and raping women, engaging in human sacrifice and torture as well as committing atrocities including acts of cannibalism.
No racial or ethnic group is pure and innocent when it comes to treating fellow human beings badly. Those who constantly single out white Europeans as monsters while ignoring the atrocities committed by other groups and individuals do so mostly for selfish political reasons.
Their hypocrisy is clear to anyone interested in the facts.
So I would ask the local Great Falls finger pointers and virtue signalers, like those at the Great Falls Tribune who make money on the Lewis and Clark advertising brand, how they feel about the fact that Clark himself held slaves and the Corps of Discovery helped open up the West to American expansion and the “exploitation” of indigenous peoples?
Where are the calls to eliminate the statues of Lewis and Clark in and around Great Falls?
Where are the demands to get rid of any mention of Lewis and Clark in our local celebrations or in the naming of local restaurants and other businesses and tourist sites?
Please, be consistent or be quiet.
Philip Faccenda – Proud First Generation Italian American
Editors note: E-City Beat received this email and screenshots last week with permission to publish on condition of anonymity.
“I am sending this email to you as an alert that UP Administration is making students sign the “Argos Pledge”.
This document is a consent form (legally binding contract) that all patrons must sign to attend UP. This details very vaguely about complying with masking and social distancing, but hinted at the possibility of a vaccine mandate.
The lines that raised suspicion the most with me was the compliance with CDC protocols, and specifically stating “relocation to designated quarantine locations” and “contact tracing”.
Students are given until Friday, Sept. 17 to sign and comply. Note that I received this in my inbox on Sunday, Sep. 12.”
The lines that raised suspicion the most with me was the compliance with CDC protocols, and specifically stating “relocation to designated quarantine locations” and “contact tracing”.
“At this time we do not have a Together As Argos Pledge on file from you. As indicated in the August 4, 2021 communication, submission of the Pledge is requirement of any student attending the University campus this fall semester.”
Last month we sent the following email to the candidates who will be on the Great Falla municipal election ballot this November:
Greetings once again, Great Falls city commission/mayor candidates.
Due to the Cascade County Elections Office canceling a September primary election we are moving the deadline and scheduled publication dates for your candidate profiles back two weeks to August 15, 2021.
In order to help fully inform Great Falls voters about who the commission candidates are and where they stand on local issues before the upcoming November 2021 city election E-City Beat is requesting a candidate profile from each of you. We’re asking for you to provide our readers with a little personal bio and your reasons for running for city commission/mayor.
We’d like you to also include the top one or two challenges you think our city is facing and how you would address those issues.
Include your profile pic also, if you’d like.
Please keep your submission to 600 words or less and send it in MS Word format to ecitybeat@straymoose.com by August 15, 2021. We will publish your submissions without edits or editorial comment.
Thank you and good luck in the upcoming election.
Philip Faccenda ECB Editor/Publisher
Because we have not received replies from a couple of the candidates we will extend the deadline until this Friday, August 20, just in case the candidates who did not respond missed or didn’t receive our email.
We will then begin publishing the responses next week.
If you know one of the candidates you might want to give him/her a ‘heads up’ to see if they responded.
Great Falls has many issues, as any town does. However one issue that people tend to overlook is how we present ourselves. This plays an integral role in how others outside of Great Falls–and even outside of the state–see us as a city.
Our major outside presentation is our city logo, which is in dire need of an update. Forgone structures, incorrect illustrations, and a style out of time all contribute to this now outdated logo that we continue to use on the city website, city documents, and public gatherings.
It is time for change, whether you like it or not.
At a first glance, the logo has one attribute that must go. Yes, that is the smokestack. The logo is supposed to be a representation of who we are and who we strive to be, not a representation of what Great Falls used to be.
History, however, is important, and that we should not throw out. Instead of the smokestack, something should represent our past that is still here as an icon, whether it be the historic tenth street bridge, or the monumental Milwaukee Station Tower, or both.
It is time to move forward.
Speaking of moving forward, the river in our current logo speaks volumes of how we as a city really want to move backward and stay in our past. This is because the river is, yes, moving right to left, backwards, in the incorrect direction. This incorrect representation shows people that Great Falls is not even willing to try and move forward.
In an updated version of the logo, it would make more sense to show the river moving left to right, as if reading a book, showing that we know and acknowledge our past, but are no longer willing to stay in stagnant waters.
Montana is a mountainous state–obviously–and the logo should include mountains. But Great Falls is not a mountainous city. The focus here is not the mountains. The mountain front can be seen from a distance on a good day from many vantage points in the city. They often appear in between Gore and Skyline hills.
An accurate illustration of Great Falls’ geography–not Ulm’s–is an accurate way to show others what our appearance as a city is. It is a great way to convey that we understand what is accurately wrong with our city, and that we can achieve more by acknowledging our issues.
The mockup version of a new logo is shown here, just to demonstrate an idea of what I personally believe would serve our city best, here and now.
This piece was not created to slander the artwork made decades ago, as back then, it was an accurate descriptor for Great Falls: a city stuck in the past. But the identity of this city has changed.
Great Falls is starting to find a vision of itself in the future. There is a lot of work to be done, but it is time to acknowledge that we are ready to move forward, and tackle our issues head on.
And we need new imagery to help others see this new vision
