The afternoon of Jan. 25, 2017, Moises Radcliffe interrupted a
car prowl in the parking lot of Beaver Lake Park in Sammamish. The son
of a cop, the 22-year-old grabbed a handgun from his vehicle and
confronted the thieves, shooting at them as they ran him down with their
car and dragged him to death.
Two days later, King County sheriff’s detectives investigating
Radcliffe’s homicide gunned down 17-year-old Mi’Chance Dunlap-Gittens on
a dark Des Moines street in a hastily arranged sting operation. Another
boy — Dajohntae Richard, a 16-year-old who was the actual target of the
operation — fled, to be arrested by a SWAT team later that night.
Within hours, deputies would learn they had it all wrong. Neither boy, it turned out, had anything to do with Radcliffe’s death.
How the death of one young man, the son of a Seattle police officer,
led to the death of another — a black teen killed by police — emerges
through hundreds of pages of sheriff’s documents and interviews to
reveal a troubling string of investigative missteps, discrepancies in
the stories of the deputies who fired, and assumptions by investigators
made in the face of evidence that they were on the wrong track.
Indeed, sheriff’s reports and records show that the day
Dunlap-Gittens died, detectives had been following two teenage girls
known to be involved in Radcliffe’s death. Fingerprints had linked them
to stolen items at the scene, and a surveillance photograph from a
Renton Fred Meyer taken an hour after the homicide clearly showed one of
them using a credit card taken from the homicide scene. They and
another girl would later plead guilty to crimes related to Radcliffe’s
death.
MADISON — A three-judge panel says a group of Democratic voters
challenging Republican-drawn legislative districts can depose Assembly
Speaker Robin Vos.
The voters filed a federal lawsuit in 2015 alleging the boundaries
amount to an unconstitutional gerrymander. The Democrats want to
question Vos about how Republicans drew the boundaries and how
Republicans expected the lines to affect Democrats.
Vos has argued that he can’t be deposed due to legislative privilege, which protects lawmakers from being sued.
Preparing for Trump’s speech at Foxconn’s June 2018 groundbreaking in Mount Pleasant.Photographer: Andy Manis/Getty Images
Since the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Foxconn announced a plan
in 2017 to develop a factory hub south of Milwaukee, it’s promised to
take a “Wisconsin First” approach to hiring local suppliers. While that
phrase didn’t make it into the final contract, that’s how state
officials and Foxconn have touted the deal, which involves about $4 billion in potential subsidies.
The effort is getting off to a slow start, according to a review by Bloomberg Businessweek
of Foxconn supply chain and budget documents covering much of 2018. The
internal documents, along with financial reports the manufacturer
recently filed with the state agency overseeing the partnership, contain
discrepancies with previous public statements by Foxconn executives.
They provide a look at the early challenges Foxconn has faced in trying
to deliver on its promises to the state.
And they raise questions about public-investment returns on large-scale
government incentive packages. Such incentives have become increasingly
controversial as companies from Amazon.com Inc. to General Electric Co. have sought huge state subsidies.
Leonardo da Vinci: Little is known of his personal life.
Fascinated by fossils, keen on
cutting up cadavers, inventor of machines of war, and painter of two of
the most famous artworks in the world, Leonardo da Vinci died 500 years
ago this week. Today, those keen on diverse subjects may be dismissed as
dilettantes, but the term “Renaissance Man” was coined for Leonardo
(and not simply because he lived during the Renaissance). It is one that
might well worth reviving today.
Invention may now
seem to have been easier back in the 1450s. With a pen and a sketchbook
you could have a stab at coming up with pretty much anything: flying
machines, the parachute, a helicopter, armoured cars, multi-barrelled
guns, scuba diving equipment, new types of bridges, drainage systems . .
. Leonardo had a go at them all, although it would take hundreds of
years for some, such as the helicopter, to be successfully developed. He
also perfected clocks and maps, investigated cirrhosis of the liver,
and made the first drawing of the thyroid gland.
The question for
any would-be inventor, however, is not what technologies are available,
but what needs to be done to change the world, and what might you create
to go about doing it. That part is timeless, whether the tools at your
disposal are quantum mechanics, nano particles, or pen and ink. It is
Leonardo’s questing mind, his penetrating observation, great humanity,
as well as his extraordinary abilities that shaped his genius.
Sixty-five years after
he smoked his first joint, Willie Nelson is America’s most legendary
stoner and a walking testament to the power of weed. It may have even
saved his life
Willie Nelson
is sitting on a couch at his home, a modest cabin that overlooks his
700 acres of gorgeous Texas Hill Country, when he reaches into his
sweatshirt and produces a small, square vaporizer, takes a hit and
exhales slowly. “Wanna puff?” he asks.
Nelson’s wife, Annie, setting down a cup of coffee on a DVD case
working as a coaster in front of him, speaks up. “Careful with that,
babe,” she says. “You have to sing tonight.”
Nelson nods and puts it away. He turns 86 this spring and has a
history of emphysema, so Annie, who’s been with Willie for 33 years,
tries to get him to look out for his lungs, especially on show days.
This can be a problem. “He’s super-generous,” she says, “and if there’s
somebody around, he’ll want to offer it and do it with them to make them
feel comfortable.”
Happy May Day, my komrades! Let's overthrow the government by lunch. Or not. Who will pay my Social Security benefits then? If we're putting in a better SS system, then I'm for the revolution. If not; then not.
It feels like such a long time since I've spoken to you. That's life, getting in the middle of everything and messing it up. I don't even remember what all I was doing, but the rationale was there each time. I even thought about skipping today, but I was afraid that you'd all cancel the spot in your hearts that you have for me.
I think that the first blog I missed, a sick Arab was involved. I hope he's better by now. I don't remember what I did on the other occasions, but they had to be IMPORTANT to supplant my blog. Like answering the president's call for help important. I'm sorry, but somethings are simply more important than others. You figure it out.
Junior has a new girlfriend and all I can say is that I pity her. Junior will have her worn out in no time. He sucks the life right out of you. Teen Dracula.
Junior's girlfriend is kind of pretty. Too bad.
Even Señor Zanza is worked up. He keeps playing his recorder to calm down,but he misses some notes. It's like he has the hiccups.
How about that Foxcon? All the people who have invested billions of dollars in Foxcon's scam are waiting for the other shoe to drop. That is, the representatives from Foxcon are all boy scouts who wouldn't know the truth if it bit them in the butt. What about the projects that are dependent upon Foxcon building and manufacturing here? If you bought the old "Y" building across from the JT, do you start renovations now or do you wait? What if the entire Foxcon project turns out to be a lie? Just think of all the people and equipment that this has attracted. What happens to them? Ex-Governor Walker put on a great show. Liars must certainly draw more liars. Foxcon is smoke and mirrors. Maybe we can get Trump to spew some lies at Foxcon. They all deserve each other.
I saw in the paper where efforts are underway to replant the local forests ravaged by the emerald ash borer. There was even a picture of Mayor Lawn Gnome holding a shovel bigger than he is. Do these kinds of staged events do anything? Do any readers feel compelled to plant some resistant trees thanks to the picture of Mayor Butterball? More likely that residents are inspired to rob a corner grocery store. That is what the Mayor and others are doing: robbing the taxpayers. All you have to do is bring a big lawsuit against the city. In a year or two, your lawsuit will be paid. Free money. You can't beat that, even with talk and pictures of Foxcon.
It's mighty foggy out there right now. Be careful if you have to travel. Better yet, go back to bed.
Thank you for reading my blog today. I love my audience and I believe that they love me. Read 50 blogs and receive a free gift: enlightenment. What a deal! _________________________ Please donate: paypal.me/jgmazelisIf you don't like PayPal, send me a note at madamezoltar@jtirregulars.com and I'll send you my street address so you can send a check or money order. Thank you.
And on that day, I recall that I went to the place where I always do
my best thinking, over by the Uptowner tavern/charm school on the
wistful corner of Center & Humboldt, where self-medication sure
beats the cost of the prescription variety, what the fock. So come
along, again, if you feel like it, and like last time, you buy the first
round. Let’s get going. Julius: So I’m driving my 8-year-old granddaughter
to school and I beep the horn by mistake. She looks at me and I say, “I
did that by accident, sweetheart.” She says, “I know that, Grandpa.” I
ask her how she could know and she says, “Because you didn't say
‘focking asshole!’ afterwards.” Little Jimmy Iodine: You’s guy hear Wally Brzscziewiczynsky passed away? Herbie: Who? Little Jimmy Iodine: Wally Brzscziewiczynsky. Herbie: You got to be jerking my beefaroni. I thought “Brzscziewiczynsky” had two “e’s” in it, what the fock. Little Jimmy: You must be thinking of Teddy Brzescziewiczynsky. He’s still with us. Ernie: So what happened to Wally? I heard he never drank a day in his life. Julius: And that was his problem right there. I read
a study somewheres that said when you pound a couple of ounces of booze
every day, you can avoid keeling over from the Big One. Emil: I’ve been saying that for years. The more you drink the longer you live. I spit on the tomb of the teetotalling knobshine. Herbie: I never listen to those bullshit
testimonials from geriatric geezers who say the reason they’re so old is
’cause they never touched a drop, and then before you know it, they go
just like that at 95 or something. The knobs. If they knew
their way around a bottle like they do a load of crap, they’d live to a
hundred and focking twenty-five, the focksticks. Ray: Speaking of focksticks… Little Jimmy: Hey, Artie! Over here. Art: Hey gents, what do you know, what do you hear. Little Jimmy: I heard Wally Brzscziewiczynsky passed away. Art: No kidding. And here I thought “Brzscziewiczynsky” had three “y’s” in it. What the fock happened? Little Jimmy: Here’s what I know. I called Wally’s
widow to express my sympathies and find out what happened. Artie, Wally
was really getting up there in age, plus he never drank a day in his
life. Art: For crying out loud, that’s his problem right
there. Good guy, though. I remember once he says he went to the DMV for
his driver’s license and had to take an eye exam. The optician holds up a
card with the letters “C Z W S Y N E S T A C Z” and asks Wally if he
could read the card. Wally says, “Sure I can read it. I know the guy.” Little Jimmy: So anyways, the widow says Wally had a heart attack last Sunday morning whilst they were having the hootchie-cootchie. Ray: Laying the Polish pipe at his age—god bless
him, but that’s just asking for trouble when you’re that old, I don’t
care who you are. Little Jimmy: That’s what I said, but she said that
wasn’t a problem ’cause they stopped going at it like a couple of
barnyard animals years ago. You know they lived over by St. Stanislaus
there, and they figured out the best time to enjoy the pleasures in the
connubial bed of the man and wife would be when the church bells would
start to ring. She said it was the perfect rhythm, slow and even.
Nothing too strenuous. Art: I can see that. Makes sense—in on the Ding and out with the Dong, ain’a? Little Jimmy: That’s right. Then she kind of choked
up a little and said, “What with the nice weather, we had the windows
open and I swear to god, Jimmy, he’d still be alive if that focking ice
cream truck hadn’t come along.”
(Hey, I know you got to go, but thanks for letting us bend your ear again, ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.)
MOUNT PLEASANT — Mount Pleasant
Police are investigating Jim Svoboda, the former co-chairman of Kraut
Music Fest and former director of Caledonia-Mount Pleasant Memorial
Park, according to Caledonia Village Administrator Tom Christensen.
“I am aware of an ongoing criminal investigation,” Christensen said.
Christensen
declined to comment further but did confirm that Kraut Music Fest is
canceled for this year. He referred any further questions related to the
investigation to the Mount Pleasant Police Department.
“We
can’t legally discuss an ongoing criminal investigation; however, once
the investigation is concluded we will release further information,” an
email from Matthew Soens, interim police chief of the Mount Pleasant
Police Department, stated.
During a special
meeting of the Joint Park Commission on March 21, commissioners put
Svoboda on unpaid leave and converted his pay to “an hourly rate when
needed and designated by the Joint Park Commission President or
Caledonia Village Administrator or designee,” according to meeting
minutes. The commission then voted to terminate Svoboda’s employment
effective March 25. He resigned as Memorial Park’s director on March 22.
When
asked about Svoboda leaving the village and involvement with Kraut
Fest, Maureen Murphy, Mount Pleasant village administrator, stated: “The
village cannot legally discuss ongoing criminal investigations.”
Village
President Dave DeGroot said Svoboda did resign from the village and
added Svoboda was a big part of the organization of Kraut Fest.
Controversial Trinity College Professor Johnny Eric Williams wrote
that “whiteness is terrorism” in a recent social media post.
Underscoring the extremism present on many college campuses, Williams
claimed his comments are “not controversial in the academy.”
According to a report from Newsweek, Trinity College Professor Johnny Eric Williams is making waves again. Breitbart News reported
in June 2017 that Williams had argued that first responders should have
let Representative Steve Scalise die after he was shot during a
practice for the congressional baseball game. Williams also shared a
blog post by an anonymous author that asked black people to withhold
life-saving help from white people in need.
“If you see them drowning. If you see them in a burning building. If
they are bleeding out in an emergency room. If the ground is crumbling
beneath them. If they are in a park and they turn their weapons on each
other: do nothing,” the post read.
A Better Mt. Pleasant
Yesterday at 11:56 AM ·
"What Wisconsin needs now is a course correction. Foxconn is not going
to be manufacturing what it said it was going to be manufacturing when
this deal was struck; it acknowledged as such even before the
groundbreaking last June. It is not living up to its end of the
bargain in countless ways. That’s unacceptable for the recipient of
the largest taxpayer giveaway in the history of the Wisconsin."
Kenosha and Racine County - along with Mount Pleasant - keep pushing
full steam spending money and taking property like nothing is any
different. When residents bring up these issues in public information
meetings (which no one from #Foxconn has ever attended) Village
Trustees sit in the audience calling their neighbors "ignorant."
#youknowwhoyouare
https://shepherdexpress.com/news/features/why-gov-tony-evers-is-right-to-renegotiate-the-foxconn-deal/?fbclid=IwAR2HeyK7UYcbE_0Nm-xuRD6m1hVZ9QW_4-GAKMd9YV2O85YSswIB1EHftz0#.XMXIzrHoZ7Z.facebook
For
decades, Denise and Tom Murray rose before 5 a.m. and shuffled through
mud and snow to milk cows on the farm that has been in their family
since 1939. This month, after years of falling milk prices and mounting
debt, the Murrays sold their last milk cow, taking pictures while
holding back tears as the final one was loaded onto a truck and taken
away.
“It’s
awful hard to see them go out the last time,” said Ms. Murray, 53.
“It’s scary because you don’t know what your next paycheck is going to
be.”
Over
the past two years, nearly 1,200 of the state’s dairy farms have
stopped milking cows and so far this year, another 212 have disappeared,
with many shifting production to beef or vegetables. The total number
of herds in Wisconsin is now below 8,000 — about half as many as 15 years ago. In 2018, 49 Wisconsin farms filed for bankruptcy — the highest of any state in the country, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.
A Better Mt. Pleasant
April 24 at 11:46 AM ·
So ... this story is bullshit. Not that the money wasn't spent,
because clearly Foxconn spent money throughout the state. But, what
this story misses is the deeper investigation into how that money is
moving the company toward fulfilling its contractual obligations and
the promises our elected officials continue to make to us.
This story is also bullshit because it only focuses on what Foxconn is
spending and not the local investment. It mentions the recent news
about Gov. Evers questioning the agreement, but it neglects the latest
about Foxconn initiating changes. Again ... HOW DOES FOXCONN SPENDING
MOVE THE PROJECT TOWARD ANYTHING THAT RESEMBLES THE VISION WE WERE
PROMISED?!
Let's face it ... Foxconn succeeding helps us all, but the company's
history of denying reports about changing plans only to confirm them,
the quick turnaround after a call with POTUS, the lack of transparency
about what exactly is going on in the ONE building that's been
constructed ... well, to say we're uneasy is an understatement.
RCE can obtain all the primary documents it wants about financial
filings, etc. We prefer the boots-on-the-ground reporting we've seen
from national organizations, heck, INTERNATIONAL organizations who are
unafraid to look in the windows and knock on the doors.
https://www.facebook.com/abettermtpleasant/
Regardless of who is in charge, as the mixed-race population of South Africa have discovered.
"It is all about the blacks. The 'Rainbow Nation' is a big lie!"
complained Dalene Raiters, a South African mother from the "Coloured"
community.
"We are not black enough," added her sister who has also been unemployed
for years. "We are not part of this country. We were marginalised
during the apartheid and even now," lamented Dalene, getting into her
stride about the discrimination of which she insists she is a victim.
"Our people live like mushrooms. Four generations under the same roof,"
said Elizabeth Raiters, seated in the living room of the family home in
the majority "Coloured" township of Eldorado Park, an outlying suburb of
Johannesburg.
In total, nine people -- soon to be 10 with a baby due -- live in the property, which has a small bedroom and a hut in the yard.
Elizabeth applied for social housing to ease the squeeze -- but that was
17 years ago, and failed. She is convinced it is because of the colour
of her skin.
Apartheid legally divided South Africans into groups of whites, blacks,
Indians and "Coloured," a term meaning people deemed to be of mixed
race.
The remnants of system were swept away a quarter-century ago, and today
the notion of race remains as discredited as is segregation. Yet the
term "Coloured" is still widely used today -- and complaints of
exclusion are common.
This description of the fate of mixed-race people in post-apartheid
South Africa should be informative for all the "what about meeeeee"
readers who want to know how things are likely to go for their various
mixed-race friends and family members in a post-USA scenario.
When identity and law conflict, identity reliably wins in the end.
