October 8, 2021

Why are young people moving to The Villages?

The world’s largest retirement community runs on young people. Are they welcome next door?

Through her high school years, Brandy Brown watched as the undulating farmlands surrounding her hometown of Coleman were eaten up by golf courses and khaki-colored homes. When she moved back after college, it seemed like all of her friends were working for the retirement community next door.

Soon, she, too, was employed in The Villages, the adult community in central Florida so large it spans three counties and has its own census designation.

The problem is, it isn’t really next door.

Brown, 38, is a nurse and her husband is a contractor in the community. They drive for roughly an hour to get to work each day, she said.

“In order to live close to your job, you would have to live in The Villages,” said Brown.

https://www.tampabay.com/life-culture/2021/10/08/why-are-young-people-moving-to-the-villages/

October 7, 2021

As a stunning new report reveals Trump's threat to democracy, Republicans shrug

As you probably learned in high school, John Adams insisted that a republic had to be “a government of laws, and not of men.” But as a new Senate report on President Donald Trump’s efforts to enlist the Department of Justice in his attempt to overturn the 2020 election shows, the law by itself was not sufficient to prevent the coup Trump wanted to carry out.

The law was an impediment, to be sure. But what we learn from the new report is this: Trump did successfully install some people within the government willing to betray their country and everything it is built on, but ultimately failed because he didn’t have enough of them and ran out of time.

It is not an encouraging conclusion to reach, particularly if you consider that Trump could well run for president again in 2024, and could even win.

The report contains new details based on interviews with former Justice Department officials who witnessed the coup attempt. It tells how Trump allies like Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano were in regular contact with Trump in the days after the election and made their own attempts to pressure department officials.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/10/07/stunning-new-report-reveals-trumps-threat-democracy-republicans-shrug/

October 7, 2021

Meet the Moultons, the worst family in Sarasota history

Introducing the Moultons, the worst family in America since Charlie Manson's.

Go ahead, find one worse than this crew: Sexual abuse of grandchildren, domestic battery by strangulation of a sister, hiding for a decade after killing a young mother, and – get this – they still found time to run two assisted living facilities in our area for residents with dementia.

No, really, you have to hand it to these guys. Even the Manson Family couldn't multitask like this. They just killed people. That was about it. The Moultons gave sponge baths in between their crimes.

How the state of Florida has allowed the Moultons to operate in Sarasota and Manatee counties is sickening. Just think if you had placed a loved one in their care, a parent who had raised you, someone now slipping away. Actually, don't think about it at all.

Once, facility residents watched as a SWAT team showed up to arrest Benjamin Moulton while he was fixing the sprinkler system. Imagine looking out the window during arts and crafts time and seeing a worker being carted off in cuffs for breaking into a woman's home and pulling a knife on her.

https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/opinion/columns/2021/10/06/moulton-caregivers-worst-family-sarasota-history-sunniland/6017760001/

October 7, 2021

Tampa Oath Keeper stays jailed after judge finds he threatened cops

Jeremy Brown, a one-time congressional candidate, attended the Jan.6 Capitol riot. Agents say they found unregistered guns, and hand grenades, in his home.

TAMPA — Jeremy Michael Brown is a former U.S. Army special forces soldier and one-time congressional candidate in Tampa. He’s also a self-identified member of the far-right Oath Keepers extremist group.

Prosecutors say he was among the rioting crowd Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol, where he was photographed in military garb, a tactical vest and carrying surgical shears and zip ties. When federal agents searched his Palm River area home last week, they said they found a short-barrel rifle, a sawed-off shotgun, more than 8,000 rounds of ammunition and two hand grenades.

In a two-hour court hearing Tuesday, a prosecutor argued that Brown was a danger to the community, and that there was a substantial risk that he would flee if released on bond while awaiting trial on federal firearms charges.

U.S. District Judge Sean P. Flynn ordered Brown detained, but called it a difficult decision. He emphasized that it was not due to Brown’s political beliefs or his ownership of weapons.

https://www.tampabay.com/news/tampa/2021/10/06/tampa-oath-keeper-stays-jailed-after-judge-finds-he-threatened-cops/

October 7, 2021

Hundreds of judges are breaking the law -- and we're doing nothing to stop it

In recent years, the United States has experienced an unprecedented number of financial conflicts of interest in its executive and legislative branches. Thanks to recent reporting by The Wall Street Journal, we now know how bad financial conflicts of interest are in the federal judiciary. According to the newspaper’s report, 131 federal judges broke the law by participating in 685 cases in which they had a financial interest, chiefly because of their holdings in individual stocks. This is a violation of the disqualification statute for United States judges prohibiting them from deciding cases in which they have a financial interest.

We have an ethical crisis across all three branches of government because those holding high office have been unwilling to divest from assets that conflict with their official duties.

I was among those in 2016 who raised alarm over the refusal of candidate Donald Trump, then President-elect Trump, to divest from the Trump Organization’s vast holdings in hotels, condominiums, resorts and golf courses the world over. Former Ambassador Norman Eisen, Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe and I prepared a detailed analysis of the inevitable collision between Trump’s financial interests and the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, which prohibits a federal official from receiving any profit or benefit from a foreign government.

Trump refused to divest, and we sued him on his first full day in office on behalf of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and other plaintiffs. Our standing to sue was later upheld by the 2nd Circuit Court Of Appeals, but the litigation lasted so long that Trump held onto these financial interests and the foreign government emoluments that came with them for all four years of his presidency, and our suit became moot upon his leaving office.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/hundreds-of-judges-are-breaking-the-law-and-we-re-doing-nothing-to-stop-it/ar-AAPcEEI

October 6, 2021

Republicans Blast Facebook for Endangering Democracy: "That's Our Job"

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Senate Republicans have blasted Facebook for endangering democracy, with Senator Mitch McConnell defiantly declaring, “That’s our job.”

Several of McConnell’s Senate colleagues, including Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, concurred that, by destabilizing democratic institutions, Facebook was encroaching on Republican turf.

“On January 6th, I was on the ground, giving insurrectionists a hearty fist pump,” Hawley said. “When it comes to attacking democracy, I don’t need Facebook’s quote-unquote ‘help.’ ”

“When it was time to delegitimize the election results, where was Facebook?” Cruz said. “The hard, grinding work of shredding democratic norms fell to dedicated foot soldiers, like yours truly.”

But the harshest critique of Facebook came from McConnell, who called Facebook’s efforts to undermine democracy “amateurish at best.”

“Facebook acted like it was such a big deal when their network shut down earlier this week,” the Senate Majority Leader said. “Well, we Republicans have been working tirelessly to shut down the entire U.S. government. Sorry, Facebook, but I’m not impressed.”

https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/republicans-blast-facebook-for-endangering-democracy-thats-our-job

October 6, 2021

Trump Claims He Fell Off Forbes's Richest List Because They Failed to Count Rubles

PALM BEACH, Florida (The Borowitz Report)—Lambasting Forbes for dropping him from its list of the four hundred richest Americans, Donald J. Trump claimed that the magazine did not take into account what he called “secret rubles.”

“Let’s say someone has been receiving payments of billions of rubles for four years, and they’re buried in a vault under the Kremlin,” Trump said. “Those losers at Forbes wouldn’t begin to know how to count those kinds of rubles.”

Claiming that he has been “treated very unfairly” by the magazine, he said, “This should never be allowed to happen in our country.”

He scoffed at the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s status as first on Forbes’s list. “If you count rubles, Trump is a triple Bezos,” he said.

https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/trump-claims-he-fell-off-forbess-richest-list-because-they-failed-to-count-rubles

October 4, 2021

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October 1, 2021

Nurse Carefully Weighs Whether She Better Off Getting Vaccine Or Losing Job And Dying

UTICA, NY—Blasting state officials for putting her into such an “impossible position,” local nurse Sophia Wood confirmed Wednesday that she was carefully weighing whether she was better off getting the vaccine or losing her job and dying.

“On the plus side, if get vaccinated, I could get to continue to live my life healthy and happy with no drawbacks, but is that really worth giving up the right to die while out of work?” said the healthcare worker, who had spent the past weeks agonizing over a long list of pros and cons of getting vaccinated that she had written up for each side of the issue.

“On one hand, I have way more items listed under the pros column, like ‘keep job,’ ‘protect others,’ and ‘protect myself,’ but on the other, I have ‘freedom’ written in big red letters, circled, and underlined multiple times. I’m pretty torn between the two. Who would issue such a cruel ultimatum?”

At press time, Wood assured herself that regardless of the choice she ultimately made, she would wind up back in the hospital.

https://www.theonion.com/nurse-carefully-weighs-whether-she-better-off-getting-v-1847768107