Hey Plutocrats - If you are trying to piss us off, its working.
Thursday, the Missoula airport announced that Paws Up, a nearby luxury resort, would get its own private lobby to discretely accommodate wealthy clients traveling to our state.
The plush lounge should do the trick if avoiding unsavory contact with real Montanans is the goal. We get it; we can’t buy what Paws Up is selling, which includes…ahem…camping in luxury tents for $7818 per night.1 No, that's not a typo - a week of tent camping for $54,726 in a state with an annual median personal income of $36,243.
All the designer-booted air travelers don’t want the Montana plebs touching their $800 hats or pouring their beers. Don’t worry; we weren’t going to bother you anyway because the fragile wealth flaunting ain’t what this place is all about. We’ll stick to our public land family camps, 20-year-old tents, and travel trailers passed down from our parents. If you listen real hard on a quiet night, you might hear us laughing and singing around the campfire a couple miles off.
It’s not that Montanans don’t want nice things or respect success, but lately, this in-your-face plutocrating has crossed a formerly observed line of decency, and we’ve had enough. It feels like the whole nation has had enough.
Montana has always lived with wealth disparity, but it’s gotten out of hand lately. Until recently, it was uncommon to see people here pulling economic rank on each other. We consider it downright distasteful. That’s why If you went into one of our bars, no one gave a damn how big your bank account was, or if you even had one. We shared a common existence; most Montanans struggled at one point in their lives, and we all suspected we might struggle again. So we reserved judgment and took care of each other. It was a beautiful thing.
It’s a place where a guy like Bruce Springsteen sat quietly at the Northern in Whitefish after a wedding and then ended up on the stage with the house band. Yes - that really happened.2 It's a place where the coolest people at any watering hole were the working folks that made the towns go. It’s a place where celebrities didn’t tout wealth or fool themselves into thinking they were superior. It’s where John Mayer is, a guy who lives down the road from Pine Creek Lodge.
Until very recently, this was a place where most ranchers allowed people to hunt and fish. Thankfully, there are still quite a few of them left, and they are just as distressed by this new breed of money-flashing debauchery as I am. When I spoke of these truths on the campaign last year, it was not uncommon for a prominent rancher to be in the crowd and cheer these sentiments, then approach me afterward to explain, “We have always allowed folks to hunt and fish, that’s just what you do here.”
But this new crowd of plutocrats is shredding all of these wonderful Montana traditions. People like the TX billionaire Wilks brothers and Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch are now among the largest landowners in Montana. No mingling with the locals. They fly in on their private jets, buy our land, shut down access, and commercialize our wildlife. Elk are a profit center to them, and the public is a nuisance. To keep it all going, they contribute untold media time and millions of dollars to politicians like Greg Gianforte, Ryan Zinke, and Steve Daines, who are hell bent on gutting federal agencies and selling our public land.3
If you’re river rats like our family, you’ve probably seen the fancy luxury outfitter boats, ignoring the norms of good neighbor river protocol we count on to make a shared resource work. I guess they think $8k a day buys them that right. Or maybe you are a hunter like I am, and you’ve noticed all the big-money guides and nonresident hunters crowding into places they’ve never been. It’s got people here on edge, with good reason.
Part of this is on us. We’ve elected people who set horrific examples. Zinke did his best to demolish our national monuments, got booted from Trump’s cabinet because of corruption, and then became a plutocrat by cashing in as an “energy consultant.” He is now worth tens of millions. Our Governor, who has his own private jet, bought land east of Bozeman and quickly became incensed at the working folks fishing and floating on the river just like they had always done. So, Gianforte did what any plutocrat would do: he sued to block that legal river access. Thankfully, we beat him, but his actions sent a strong message.
Just like the folks who will use that private lobby, none of our federal representatives want to be seen with us either; each refuses to hold a public town hall. Probably smart on their part; they’d have to answer for why they are all cheering Elon Musk, the world’s most powerful Plutocrat, as he chain-saws the things that working Montanans need to live: public schools, affordable healthcare, social security, and a federal workforce to manage our public lands.
People are already rising up, and the White House is nervous. Protests are happening everywhere. Bernie and AOC are drawing tens of thousands of people to their events. This week, Republicans went into freak-out mode over a special congressional election in Florida where the Democrat leads by 2% in a Trump +30 district.4 Last week, the Canadian Liberal party called a snap election because the explosion of vehement anti-Trump sentiment has resurrected them from the dead. Yesterday, President Trump pulled the UN nomination for Elise Stafanik because he feared Democrats would win her house seat in a district she won by 24%.
So, hey, plutocrats, I am here to offer a polite warning before this gets out of hand for ya. Maybe knock off the access-blocking and the selling of public land. Definitely knock off the gutting of social security, the tariffing, and the insane DOGEing of federal agencies.
Zinke and Daines, you are both up in 2026, so you might want to snap to it because people are pissed and who knows what might set us off here? It might be that private lobby in the Missoula airport, or your refusal to hold a town hall, or strangling social security, or more talk of selling public lands, or more tax cuts for you and your rich friends, or maybe it will be all of it.
As Harvey Kitel said in Reservoir dogs, “I'm here to help - if my help's not appreciated then lotsa luck, gentlemen.”
https://www.pawsup.com/#/
https://flatheadbeacon.com/2019/11/13/a-century-at-the-northern/
https://www.propublica.org/article/tim-dunn-farris-wilks-texas-christian-nationalism-dominionism-elections-voting
https://www.actionnewsjax.com/news/local/race-floridas-6th-congressional-district-is-tightening-nation-is-watching/J2F5NMDJHZCE7J7BYT22AQP4ZU/
You've got a very good read on the pulse of Montana. I hope you'll run in '26! Your "Get Your Montana Back" poster is still up in my window -- it's more timely than ever! Thank you for staying in this and leading!
We need really good tough outspoken Dems to run for those seat in 26! There are rallies in most of the cities on April 5th we’re doing another one in Billings. City Hall hasn’t seen this much action in quite a long time! Ryan I still have my LFG sticker on my water bottle I carry around. We even have one on the speaker that we use for the protests and rallies! I was really wanting you to win, but it’s hard when you’re up against billionaires buying elections. You made us proud! I met you and Raph at a get together in Billings. No bullshit guys, that’s who we wanted in office. I’m also happy to hear you still using your voice, we’re going to need that moving forward! All the best and we’re in this together Montana strong! Let’s get our country back!