February 23, 2022

non profit exec used scholarship funds for maid service, meals, online dating,

Scholarship Cash Used to Pay for Exec's Dating Sites: Prosecutors
Mary Wickersham is also accused of using pageant scholarship funds for maid services, meals out

The Miss Florida Scholarship Program was designed to distribute funds to young women coming up through the beauty pageant world, but prosecutors say that for Mary Wickersham, an ex-executive director for the nonprofit, it was a personal piggy bank used to buy an array of goods and services for herself. NBC News reports on the Tuesday arrest and indictment of 76-year-old Mary Wickersham—who also used the aliases Mary Sullivan and Mary Harvey, per a release from the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida—who's been hit with seven counts of wire fraud, accused of stealing from both corporate and individual donors to the scholarship program.

Prosecutors say that Wickersham, who helmed the Miss Florida Scholarship Program and had access to the nonprofit's donor and sponsor list, opened up an account with Bank of America for the fake "Miss Florida" company. Then, the indictment alleges, when money came in for the real scholarship program, Wickersham would alter the checks and funnel the cash into her secret account instead of the legit one. Prosecutors say she then used that money to take care of various "personal expenses, including utilities, shopping, home goods, [a] maid cleaning service, online dating fees, and dining out."

Among the organizations Wickersham is accused of scamming are the Children's Miracle Network, which, per NBC, raises funds for hospitals, and the conservation group Everglades Foundation. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement says in a release that an investigation began when it got word from the legitimate scholarship nonprofit of missing funds. The release notes that law enforcement agents believe Wickersham, over "several years," stole at least $100,000 in donations.

https://www.newser.com/story/317293/prosecutors-ex-scholarship-fund-exec-stole-cash-for-dating-sites.html

February 23, 2022

Louisiana deputies arrested. they shot man to death when he honked horn

Louisiana Deputies Arrested, Charged After Man's Death
Sheriff determines shooting was not justified


Two Louisiana sheriff's deputies have been fired and arrested on charges of manslaughter five days after a man was shot and killed while deputies were responding to a noise complaint. Jefferson Parish Sheriff Joseph Lopinto III says the complaint centered on a "known crack house," where deputies found Daniel Vallee sitting in a car parked outside around 2:15am, NBC News reports. The license plate of the car had been switched, authorities say, and deputies learned Vallee was wanted for questioning in cases involving thefts and an overdose.

For more than 12 minutes, Vallee allegedly refused to exit the locked car, and then he turned the engine on and deputies drew their weapons. When Vallee suddenly honked his horn, the two deputies allegedly fired their weapons multiple times, killing the unarmed man.

Lopinto says that while he believes the deputies were startled by the honking and the shooting was unintentional, "Unfortunately, the use of force in this situation was not justified." Isaac Hughes, 29, and Johnathan Louis, 35, cooperated with the investigation. Vallee's relatives spoke to the NOLA.com prior to their arrest and wondered why the deputies didn't come up with a different plan of action in the 12 minutes before Vallee was killed. "He's a struggling addict," says his aunt. "That doesn't mean he should have been shot and killed in the manner that he was."

https://www.newser.com/story/317280/louisiana-deputies-arrested-charged-after-mans-death.html

February 23, 2022

Missouri GOP rejects filing fee of candidate who once said 'Hitler was right'

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/missouri-gop-rejects-filing-fee-of-candidate-who-once-said-hitler-was-right/ar-AAUba6l


"Today the Missouri Republican Party has rejected the filing fee of Steve West, who sought to run for office as a member of the GOP," the Missouri GOP said in a statement.

"West's past statements are vile and conflict with the fundamental values of our platform," the party added. "The Missouri Republican Party believes there is no room for hate and divisiveness and the Missouri Republican Party will not associate with anyone who promotes these abhorrent ideas."
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West is known for spreading conspiracy theories as well as antisemitic, Islamophobic and homophobic statements on his radio show. In one notable instance, West said that "Hitler was right" about who was responsible for what occurred in Germany before WWII.


He has also spread anti-vaccine rhetoric, making misleading and baseless claims about the effects that immunization can have.

In both 2018 and 2020, West won the Missouri House primary election in the 15th District but lost to the Democratic candidate. In 2018, the Missouri GOP also condemned West's past comments, calling them "disgusting."

February 23, 2022

watch out women of Houston

February 22, 2022

Neo-Nazis Crash RI Book Reading With Giant Swastika Flag, banging on windows, slurs, "Commie Scum"

https://twitter.com/RedInkPVD/status/1495908759113248770


nearly two dozen neo-Nazis and fascists swarmed a nonprofit library in Rhode Island Monday night, interrupting a book reading with slurs and swastikas.

“We held a peaceful celebration of the Communist Manifesto tonight for 45 minutes, until it was interrupted by a crowd of fascists and Nazis,” the Red Ink Community Library in Providence posted on its Twitter page.

“They showed up on our sidewalk, banged on our glass windows, shouted horrible slurs, and attempted to assault our members,” the organization tweeted.

The Monday book reading was meant to commemorate the anniversary of the Communist Manifesto—also known as “Red Books Day.”

But a reader was suddenly interrupted when a mob banged on the doors and windows of the library, continuously shouting “commie scum.” The disruption—which was captured on the library’s livestream—continued for several minutes.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/so-ugly-neo-nazis-crash-book-reading-with-giant-swastika-flag/ar-AAUaLXf?

February 22, 2022

Vandals damages signs, restrooms along Kancamagus Highway

February 22, 2022

vandals toss all the traffic cones into the river. i hope they are caught

https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/peopleandplaces/caught-on-camera-vandals-throw-traffic-cones-from-massachusetts-avenue-bridge-into-charles-river/vi-AAU6qDX

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/massdot-retrieves-traffic-cones-thrown-onto-frozen-charles-river/ar-AATKCqx

MassDOT retrieves traffic cones thrown onto frozen Charles River

tate workers on Friday retrieved dozens of traffic cones that vandals had thrown onto the frozen Charles River from the Massachusetts Avenue bridge, where the orange markers were placed in November as part of a pilot program to widen bicycle lanes, officials said.

The cones were set up to create a buffer between cars and cyclists, but already the state has had to replace them three times after vandals tossed roughly 100 to 150 of them onto the icy Charles, according to the Massachusetts Department of Transportation.

“They were obviously not easy to retrieve,” MassDOT Highway Administrator Jonathan Gulliver said in an interview Friday evening. “Our team has been evaluating the situation for a few weeks now, and today was a good day to get out there.”

Six engineer-divers from the department’s Underwater Operations Team who typically perform inspections on bridges and other underwater infrastructure were diverted to the Charles, where they spent about four hours removing the cones, Gulliver said.

February 22, 2022

red states are tilting the nation back toward a pre-1960s model at breakneck pace

Red states are remaking the civil liberties landscape



States where the GOP controls both the governorship and state legislature are moving in unprecedented numbers to restrict abortion, limit access to voting, ban books, retrench transgender rights and constrain teachers' ability to discuss race, gender and sexual orientation at public K-12 schools and increasingly at public colleges and universities.

Many of the same states are simultaneously rescinding restrictions on gun ownership, stiffening penalties for people engaged in unruly public protests and, in a new twist, empowering private citizens to bring lawsuits to enforce many of these initiatives, as Texas Republicans did on their recent law banning abortion after about six weeks.

Rapidly spreading from state to state, these Republican-driven initiatives reflect the GOP coalition's shifting center of gravity away from the small-government, low-tax agenda that long topped its priorities toward the roiling cultural anxieties and resentments that have become central to its messaging, especially in the Donald Trump era.

More fundamentally, these red state moves are remaking the American civil liberties landscape at breathtaking speed -- and with little national attention to their cumulative effect. Taken together, these moves amount to a stark reversal of what many legal scholars call the "rights revolution" beginning in the 1960s, in which Congress and especially the Supreme Court expanded the number of rights available to all Americans nationwide and struck down state laws that constricted those rights on issues from racial segregation to abortion and same-sex marriage. In many ways, the red states are attempting to tilt the nation back toward a pre-1960s model, when the basic civil rights and civil liberties available to Americans diverged far more depending on where they lived.


https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/red-states-are-remaking-the-civil-liberties-landscape/ar-AAU9d4i


The sweep of this challenge has left civil rights and liberties groups gasping. Dems havent found an effective response.

February 22, 2022

'This should terrify the nation': the Trump ally seeking to run Arizona's elections

‘This should terrify the nation’: the Trump ally seeking to run Arizona’s elections



Trump by contrast was heaping plaudits on an individual running for an elected post that a year ago most people had never heard of, let alone cared about. He was endorsing Mark Finchem, a Republican lawmaker from Tucson, in his bid to become Arizona’s secretary of state.

Until Trump’s endorsement, Finchem, like the relatively obscure position for which he is now standing, was scarcely known outside politically informed Arizona circles. Today he is a celebrity on the “Save America” circuit, one of a coterie of local politicians who have been thrown into the national spotlight by Trump as he lays the foundations for a possible ground attack on democracy in the 2024 presidential election.

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One of the first measures sponsored by Finchem reduced state taxes on gold coins on the basis that they were “legal tender”. He then introduced legislation that would have imposed a “code of ethics” on teachers – a “gag law” as some decried it – that would have restricted learning in class.

The nine-point code was later revealed to have been cut and pasted from a campaign calling itself “Stop K-12 Indoctrination” backed by the far-right Muslim-bashing David Horowitz Freedom Center.

“In essence he wanted a pledge of fealty from teachers that they wouldn’t discuss ‘anti-American’ subjects,” said Jake Dean, who has reported on Finchem for the Tucson Weekly.



https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/this-should-terrify-the-nation-the-trump-ally-seeking-to-run-arizona-s-elections/ar-AAU7ioM

February 22, 2022

Poll finds Youngkin underwater with Virginia voters who veer to his left on major issues such as CRT

Virginia voters disagree with Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) on several major issues and are slightly more negative than positive about his performance after a month in office, according to a poll from the Wason Center for Civic Leadership at Christopher Newport University.

Forty-one percent of voters say they approve of the job Youngkin is doing compared with 43 percent who disapprove, with 16 percent saying they don’t know how they feel, the poll found. While the numbers are heavily partisan — Republicans are almost universally positive and Democrats sharply negative — Youngkin’s overall approval “is certainly lower than those of recent governors in Wason Center polling early in their term,” center academic director Quentin Kidd said in a news release.


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The poll finds that Virginia voters are not on board with Youngkin’s crusade against critical race theory, which is an academic framework for studying systemic racism that is not on the state’s K-12 curriculum. Slightly more than a third of voters (35 percent) support a ban on teaching critical race theory in public schools, while 57 percent oppose such a ban.

Similarly, nearly two-thirds of voters (63 percent) support teaching “how racism continues to impact American society” while one-third (33 percent) oppose such teaching, according to the poll.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/poll-finds-youngkin-underwater-with-virginia-voters-who-veer-to-his-left-on-major-issues/ar-AAU8NlY