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TexasTowelie's JournalSeashore Discount Drugs fined $1 million, ordered to stop selling opioids
WILMINGTON – A local pharmacy, as well as its former owner and lead pharmacist, have been ordered to pay $1.05 million in civil penalties and to stop selling opioids and other controlled substances after a federal investigation found it was improperly filling prescriptions.
Seashore Discount Drugs, its former owner John D. Waggett and pharmacist-in-charge Bill W. King II were given the order by a federal court of the Eastern District of North Carolina following a complaint that alleged the pharmacy and the two men "repeatedly filled prescriptions for opioids and other controlled substances in violation of the Controlled Substances Act," according to a release from the Department of Justice.
Seashore Discount Drugs has two area locations on Carolina Beach Road and Wrightsville Avenue in Winter Park. According to current Seashore owner Nirav Patel, Waggett and King have left the company.
The judgment claimed that Seashore Drugs had created a reputation in the local pharmacy community "as a place that filled prescriptions other pharmacies wouldn't," the release said. King also filled prescriptions for customers that his own pharmacists had previously refused to fill.
Read more: https://www.starnewsonline.com/story/news/local/2020/12/17/wilmington-area-pharmacy-ordered-stop-selling-opioids-fined-1-mil/3938361001/
(Wilmington Star News)
Northam to spend $100 million to reduce teacher retirement liabilities
Gov. Ralph Northam is proposing a new way to help local school divisions in Virginia by using $100 million in state cash to reduce retirement and health care liabilities for teachers.
In the revised budget he will present to General Assembly money committees on Wednesday, Northam will propose to pay off a $61.3 million debt that the state incurred 10 years ago when it deferred contributions to the teacher pension plan to help balance the state budget after the Great Recession.
The governor also will use $38.7 million in one-time money to pay down unfunded liabilities for teacher and state employee retirement health credits and other post-employment benefits.
The proposed actions will save the state an estimated $24.5 million in payments from its general fund and about $37 million for local governments, which pay two-thirds of the cost of pension and other retiree benefits for teachers.
Read more: https://heraldcourier.com/news/state-and-regional/govt-and-politics/northam-to-spend-100-million-to-reduce-teacher-retirement-liabilities/article_24c35e37-06da-5ec1-89d8-2cb3ccea7955.html
(Bristol Herald Courier)
Federal officials say monarch butterflies qualify for protection under the Endangered Species Act,
Federal officials say monarch butterflies qualify for protection under the Endangered Species Act, but they won’t get it this yearMonarch butterflies are still many flights away from federal protection.
The popular black and orange butterflies were determined to be warranted for listing under the Endangered Species Act, but they’ll have to wait behind others with higher priority, according to a Tuesday decision from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Illinois’ state insect could be listed in the future. The wildlife service intends to propose listing the monarch as an endangered or threatened species in 2024, if the insect is still found to need protection. In the meantime, the monarch’s status will be reviewed each year and an emergency listing is also possible.
“It is never good news when we find that listing an animal or a plant is warranted,” said Charlie Wooley, the service’s regional director for the Great Lakes in a Tuesday news conference. “It means there are tough challenges ahead. But a little bit of a silver lining with monarchs is that all of the efforts to conserve the species across North America have made and continue to make a big difference.”
Read more: https://www.dailypress.com/news/environment/ct-monarch-butterflies-endangered-listing-20201216-25d4fdmgkbhs7aai3gyvm6emxm-story.html
(Newport News Daily Press)
Northam proposes $50 million to advance goal of bringing passenger rail to New River Valley
Gov. Ralph Northam unveiled his proposed changes to the state’s two-year budget, which include funding for the distribution of COVID-19 vaccinations and other pandemic assistance and $50 million to advance a goal to extend Amtrak passenger rail service to the New River Valley.
New River Valley government and community leaders have been eager to restore passenger rail to the region to boost economic development and provide long-distance transportation for students enrolled at Virginia Tech and Radford University.
“I’m really excited about this, and I know people in the New River Valley are, too,” said Sen. John Edwards, D-Roanoke, a longtime advocate of bringing a passenger train to the New River Valley. “This is the shot in the arm we needed to get passenger rail to that area.”
The plan has been chugging along for some time, but speaking to the House and Senate’s budget-writing committees on Wednesday, the Northam administration said the $50 million would go toward right-of-way and easement acquisitions and anything that would help reduce bottlenecks to make way for a passenger train in the New River Valley.
Read more: https://roanoke.com/news/northam-proposes-50-million-to-advance-goal-of-bringing-passenger-rail-to-new-river-valley/article_e0568878-3f50-11eb-9f61-2b7fa5052ff3.html
All Democrats running for governor in Virginia say they support ending the death penalty
All four Democrats running for governor in Virginia say they support abolishing the death penalty, including one candidate, former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who allowed several executions to proceed during his term.
While in office, McAuliffe said he personally opposed capital punishment, but felt obligated to uphold state law. The three executions that took place in McAuliffe’s term included William Morva, who was put to death in July 2017 for a double-murder despite pleas for clemency from advocates who said Morva suffered from mental illness.
Since a national moratorium on the death penalty ended in 1976, Virginia has executed 113 people, second only to Texas, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
The Democratic takeover of the Virginia General Assembly in 2019 raised death penalty opponents’ hopes it would soon be ended, but repeal bills failed to pass in the 2020 legislative session. If repeal legislation doesn’t pass in 2021, it could fall to the next governor to decide whether the death penalty should or shouldn’t continue.
Read more: https://www.virginiamercury.com/2020/12/15/all-democrats-running-for-governor-in-virginia-say-they-support-ending-the-death-penalty/
'Devastating' new report finds major problems with special education in Virginia
Shortcomings in both the quality and oversight of special education in Virginia put the commonwealth at odds with federal law and make it difficult — if not impossible — to determine how well students with disabilities are supported by their local school systems.
Those findings by the state’s Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, presented at a meeting Monday, buttress long-held concerns from parents and special education advocates across Virginia. The lengthy report also mirrors many of the failures outlined in a June letter from the U.S. Department of Education, which found serious deficiencies in how the Virginia Department of Education monitored and responded to special education complaints.
Shortly after the agency issued its report, VDOE announced it was implementing a new model for monitoring and investigating special education compliance.
State Superintendent James Lane said the department “is looking forward to working alongside schools, teachers and families” to implement the new approach.
Read more: https://www.virginiamercury.com/2020/12/15/devastating-new-report-finds-major-problems-with-special-education-in-virginia/
Northam's sunny budget rewrite roils Republicans with his proposed Court of Appeals expansion
In his optimistic midcourse revisions to Virginia’s two-year, $135 billion spending blueprint, Gov. Ralph Northam proposed hundreds of millions in new spending for vaccine deployment and pandemic response, including half a billion dollars for public schools upended by COVID-19.
It includes millions more to help hold off an oncoming wave of evictions resulting from job losses from the virus, bonuses for state employees and state-supported local personnel and to push broadband internet farther into underserved rural areas.
But he drew the wrath of Republicans for $5.1 million he proposes for adding four new judges to the 11-judge Virginia Court of Appeals to expand Virginians’ right to appeal trial court decisions. The cost of boosting the understaffed court brimming with Republican appointees represents four one-thousandths of 1 percent of the overall two-year budget.
Northam made his rosy recommendations Wednesday in a videoconference to members of the General Assembly’s budget-writing committees based on estimates showing Virginia faring better than most states and projecting revenue growth over the course of 2021. The proposals he submitted as COVID numbers continued to spike in Virginia and nationally are based on revised economic forecasts for $1.2 billion more revenue than in August’s forecast, just before the General Assembly convened a special session to revise a budget that had been ravaged by the pandemic just a few months after its passage last March.
Read more: https://www.virginiamercury.com/2020/12/17/northams-sunny-budget-rewrite-roils-republicans-with-his-proposed-court-of-appeals-expansion/
Crime and No Punishment: Abbott and TX GOP have allowed Ken Paxton's Corruption to Fester for Years
ntil recently it was only Texans who suffered through the constant drip of scandalous headlines made by Attorney General Ken Paxton. Paxton’s failed frivolous lawsuit against American democracy has drawn the attention of the nation to his more recent illicit behavior: Under investigation by the FBI for bribery, abuse of his office and other crimes – all the while under felony indictment for securities fraud.
Now that the rest of the country is catching up to Paxton’s proclivity for wrongdoing, we should all be reminded that his transgressions began long before he went pardon hunting.
Paxton uses public office as a platform for business start-ups
Before he became Texas’ chief law enforcement officer, Paxton was an attorney with modest income and no real business interests. After he was elected state representative in 2003, Paxton’s newfound political network led to a drastic increase in his entrepreneurial endeavors. Records show he started nearly thirty businesses in the nine years after taking office.
• In 2006, one of Paxton’s companies, Watchguard Video, won a contract worth at least $10 million to supply the Department of Public Safety with digital video cameras for patrol cars. Competing companies complained they failed to win the contract because the bidding process was set up to ensure that Watchguard would win.
• In 2004, one of Paxton’s real estate ventures, Eldorado-Collin, purchased 35 acres of undeveloped land in McKinney, Texas for $700,000 and sold less than half the property for more than $1 million eighteen months later. The land was used to become the Collin Central Appraisal District and required zoning changes before it was approved for government use. A Grand Jury investigated whether Paxton improperly played a role in the deal, and reportedly took no action only because the statute of limitations on the offense had run.
• Sometimes Paxton’s speculation went the wrong way showing that Paxton’s instinct for larceny is better than his business acumen. In 2008, he and three other Texas State House members filed a lawsuit claiming they had been scammed out of $2.5 million dollars by an investor who claimed to have been part of an expedition that discovered Noah’s Ark.
Read more: https://lonestarproject.net/2020/12/15/crime-and-no-punishment/
$1.7M for George Strait, six-figure bonuses: Lawsuit reveals Gov. Greg Abbott's inaugural spending
AUSTIN — To celebrate Gov. Greg Abbott’s re-election last year, his inaugural committee paid a whopping $1.7 million to hire country crooner George Strait and his band. A coterie of top political aides and staff got more than $1 million, some of it paid out in six-figure bonuses. And a handful of lucky charities received $800,000 in unspent money.
Left out of that tally: the $116,000 taxpayers spent to keep all those inaugural expenditures secret.
Abbott and the 2019 Texas Inaugural Committee spent months fighting the disclosure of documents detailing how they spent a record-setting $5.3 million that event organizers raised mostly from corporations and wealthy donors.
But The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit news organization, sued the committee under the Texas Public Information Act and earlier this year successfully obtained the bank statements and spending ledger in an out-of-court settlement.
Read more: https://www.lmtonline.com/news/investigations/article/1-7M-for-George-Strait-six-figure-bonuses-15809635.php
(Laredo Morning Times)
Florida's 'Grim Reaper' lawyer sued Ron DeSantis over COVID-19; now the state wants him sanctioned
Pointing to what they called “baseless” legal arguments, lawyers for Gov. Ron DeSantis have urged an appeals court to sanction a Northwest Florida attorney who filed a lawsuit to try to force DeSantis to close beaches to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
DeSantis’ lawyers filed an 11-page document Friday at the 1st District Court of Appeal contending that Santa Rosa Beach attorney Daniel Uhlfelder filed a frivolous appeal after a circuit judge ruled against him in the beach-closure case.
The Tallahassee-based appeals court last month rejected the appeal and raised the possibility of sanctioning Uhlfelder and attorneys who represented him. It subsequently said DeSantis’ lawyers could file arguments on the issue.
“The many hours spent by this court and the attorneys of the Executive Office of the Governor on this appeal could have been spent on innumerable other pressing matters related to the health, welfare, and safety of Floridians,” DeSantis’ lawyers wrote in the document Friday. “Appellant (Uhlfelder) knew or should have known that filing this appeal was frivolous. Appellant and his counsel should be sanctioned accordingly.”
Read more: https://www.orlandoweekly.com/Blogs/archives/2020/12/15/floridas-grim-reaper-lawyer-sued-ron-desantis-over-covid-19-now-the-state-wants-him-sanctioned
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Gender: MaleHometown: South Texas. most of my life I lived in Austin and Dallas
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Current location: Bryan, Texas
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