Veterans Homelessness: Mesa Mayor John Giles Uses "Double-Talk" @ U.S. Conference of Mayors 2017

Last year - as noted on the blog site - mayors of two cities, New Orleans LA and Mesa AZ - were named as Co-Chairs for the Committee To End Veterans Homelessness in 2016 taking a pledge to do so One mayor accomplished that goal and one did not - Mitch Landrieu succeeded. John Giles did not. . . maybe he was too busy with his highly partisan privately-financed by special-interest groups $500,000 bogus PR campaign to sell a tax hike that got rejected by voters.

Veterans homelessness is a very visible "issue" here in Mesa in spite of all the hype from City Hall and the Mayor's office
Homeless camp threatened by ADOT, but can stay for now

By Jim Walsh, Tribune Staff Writer Dec 23, 2016

A group of homeless veterans and non-veterans camped near a Mesa freeway won a temporary Christmas reprieve from the Arizona Department of Transportation, after ADOT initially told them they had to leave by Saturday.
“Camp Alpha,” run by Veterans on Patrol, has been operating west of Country Club Drive and north of McKellips Road for about a year, but is now at its third location after running into resistance from some businesses and government agencies.
Camp organizer Lewis Arthur said he has been on a “search and rescue mission” to find homeless veterans since the summer of 2015, after the U.S. government said they no longer existed. He readily admits that many people at the camps have substance abuse issues and psychological issues stemming from their military service, such as post-traumatic stress disorder.
Read entire report from less than four weeks ago here

If you didn't get a chance to watch the live video yesterday, this article from Cronkite News written by Joseph Guzman appeared yesterday:
Giles says veteran homelessness in Mesa nears ‘functional zero’
Mesa Mayor John Giles, speaking at a conference of mayors in Washington, D.C., said his city’s efforts to help homeless veterans have brought it close to ‘functional zero’ for the number of vets in need of shelter. (Photo above left by Joseph Guzman/Cronkite News)
The Department of Housing and Urban Development gives cities the “functional zero” designation when they meet strict criteria in relation to permanent housing placement for veterans, the length of time vets are homeless and the number of homeless in the community.
Giles added that very few communities that have participated in the program have met the criteria to be considered a function zero city.
WHAT? All of these cities achieved their goal: [ Information from HUD Portal ]
Albany, NY
Austin, TX
Bergen County, NJ
Buffalo/Western New York
Commonwealth of Virginia
Cumberland County/Fayetteville, NC
Des Moines, IA
Flagler County, FL
Hattiesburg, MS
Houston, TX
Lancaster City & County, PA
Las Cruces, NM
Las Vegas, NV
Long Island, NY
Lynn, MA
Middlesex County, NJ
Mississippi Gulfport/Gulf Coast Regional CoC
Mobile, AL
Montgomery County, MD
New Orleans, LA
Philadelphia, PA
Reading/Berks County, PA
Rochester, NY
Rockford, IL
San Antonio, TX
Saratoga Springs, NY
Schenectady, NY
State of Connecticut
Syracuse, NY
Terrebonne Parish, LA
Troy, NY
Volusia County/Daytona Beach, FL
Winston-Salem, NCGiles noted that although Mesa has made significant strides in housing homeless veterans it has yet to be designated a functional zero city.


The United States Conference of Mayors' 85th Winter Meeting is taking place now January 17-19, 2017 in Washington, DC.
http://usmayors.org/85thWinterMeeting/

Mayor's Twitter account > https://twitter.com/MayorGiles

Game On This Weekend @ Mesa Convention Center

Board this weekend?

Arizona Game Fair launches in Mesa

January 18, 2017 

Source: Nerdvana Media

The first Arizona Game Fair gets rolling this weekend at the Mesa Convention Center’s Rendezvous Center.

In addition to more than 6,000 square feet of open gaming, badged attendees will find a huge library of board and card games they can “check out,” as well as organized board game, roleplaying game, card and miniature gaming events, vendors and encounters with guests who work in the game industry.
Never hopped aboard Ticket to Ride? Dying to try Boss Monster? Looking to stock up the game cupboard? This will be the time and place for all that and much, much more.
Industry guests include
Amanda and Edward from the Heavy Cardboard podcast (who will be at a meet-and-greet event 7 p.m. Friday)

• Tunnels & Trolls creator Ken St. Andre
• Flying Buffalo’s Rick Loomis
• game designer Michael Eskue
• Tasty Minstrel’s Seth Jaffe
• Game designer Daniel Keltner
• Game designer Tory Neumann
• Game designer David Short.

The fair runs 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. Saturday and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday.
Weekend badges cost $30, individual day badges $15 and under-12 “sidekick” badgets cost $10, all available online through Friday.

At the show, prices are $40 for the weekend, $20 individual day and also $10 for sidekicks.

For more information, see the Arizona Game Fair website, and be sure to read our interview with event mastermind Andrew Long — a longtime friend of mine and Nerdvana’s whom we’re proud to support.

Independent Journalist Jeremy Scahill Blows The Cover Off Shadow Trump Advisor Eric Prince

Story January 18, 2017
Blackwater Founder Erik Prince, the Brother of Betsy DeVos, Is Secretly Advising Trump

WATCH THE FULL SHOW >>

Source: Democracy Now 18 Jan 2017

 

The Intercept’s Jeremy Scahill has revealed Betsy DeVos’s brother, Erik Prince, the founder of the mercenary firm Blackwater, has been quietly advising Trump’s transition team, including helping vet Cabinet picks. On election night, Prince’s wife, Stacy DeLuke, even posted pictures from inside Trump’s campaign headquarters. Democracy Now speaks to Scahill about his latest piece, "Notorious Mercenary Erik Prince Is Advising Trump from the Shadows."
GUEST: Jeremy Scahill

co-founder of The Intercept and author of the new article "Notorious Mercenary Erik Prince Is Advising Trump from the Shadows."

He is host of the new weekly podcast Intercepted, which premieres January 25.

Jeremy Scahill on Twitter >>   https://twitter.com/jeremyscahill

Blackwater Founder Forms Secret Army for Arab State - The New York ...

The New York Times190 × 285Search by image

Sheik Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan of Abu Dhabi hired Erik Prince to build a fighting force.

 

 

 

 

 

 

TRANSCRIPT This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you about Betsy DeVos’s brother, Erik Prince, who you’ve been talking about, the founder of Blackwater. In July, he spoke to Steve Bannon, who at the time was the head of Breitbart News, the white supremacist, white nationalist news site; Steve Bannon, who’s now Trump’s senior adviser. Prince said Trump should recreate a version of the Phoenix Program, the CIA assassination ring that operated during the Vietnam War, to fight ISIS.

ERIK PRINCE: It was a vicious, but very effective, kill/capture program in Vietnam that destroyed the Viet Cong as a military force. That’s what needs to be done to the funders of Islamic terror. And that would be even the—the wealthy radical Islamist billionaires funding it from the Middle East and any of the other illicit activities they’re in.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Erik Prince. The significance of what he’s saying here, Jeremy?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, you know, remember, Erik Prince views himself as the rightful heir to the legacy of "Wild Bill" Donovan, who was the head of the agency that was the precursor to the CIA. And, you know, immediately after 9/11, Erik Prince became very, very close to a number of people within the CIA and also Dick Cheney and Dick Cheney’s office. And they jointly came up with this idea that Erik Prince could run a kind of off-the-books hit squad that could roam the world conducting assassinations for the United States, and there would be no effective paper trail and no ability for Congress to engage in any oversight. Now, Leon Panetta, who was Obama’s CIA director early on in Obama’s term, said, "Oh, we shut down that program, and no one was ever killed." I don’t believe that for one moment. That was—that was part of the legacy of the Phoenix Program, that was a murderous death squad operation in Vietnam, that also included enhanced interrogation. What Erik Prince being around Trump indicates to me is that—
AMY GOODMAN: And talk about what you found out about election night and what his role is. We just have 50 seconds.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Right, well, Robert Mercer, the billionaire hedge funder, his daughter Rebekah ran one of the most important super PACs to Trump, Make America Number 1 super PAC. And Trump—and Erik Prince and his mother, Elsa, were two of the largest contributors to one of the most significant super PACs that supported Donald Trump. Erik Prince is very close to Robert Mercer. Prince was also at the "Heroes and Villains" party that Mercer threw in Long Island after the election. And, in fact, there’s a picture that Peter Thiel, the right-wing billionaire who destroyed Gawker—a picture of Peter Thiel, Donald Trump and Erik Prince, that Peter Thiel says is not safe for the internet. But it’s clear that Erik Prince, through Betsy DeVos, through Robert Mercer and through his very right-wing paramilitary crowd, has the ear of President-elect Donald Trump. And our understanding, from a very well-placed source, is that Prince has even been advising Trump on his selections for the staffing of the Defense Department and the State Department.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have a post-show discussion and post it online at democracynow.org. That’s Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of The Intercept.

 

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

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Up Next

Donald Trump's Top Foreign Adviser, Joseph Schmitz, is a Former Blackwater Executive

https://www.democracynow.org/2016/3/25/donald_trumps_top_foreign_adviser_joseph

 

World Economic Forum >> Global News Coverage and the Latest from Davos

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Downtown Mesa - Then, Now, and in the Future

...2 years ago / Future Past
Where Millennial and Boomers want to be ....has light rail delivered the hyped promises?
At one time Main Street was a parking lot
Published on Dec 11, 2014
Views:  1,507

Video produced by - http://www.nedco-mesa.org/ http://finditinmesa.com/
http://www.downtownmesa.com/

This video was prepared as part of a presentation that NEDCO(Neighborhood Economic Development Corporation) made for the Downtown Mesa Visioning Committee in December 2014.

Transcript

The history of downtown mesa starts with the founding of Mesa. The original square mile footprint is what we now call downtown. By the early 1880’s, nearly 300 people had settled in Mesa.

The first major population boom came in 1906 with the construction of the Roosevelt dam. With a high demand for supplies, the business district began to grow, as Mesa was the nearest population center to the construction site.

By the 20’s and 30’s, the business district was bustling, with a majority of the population still living in the square mile. You could find mercantile stores, lumber and building material, you could find banks, groceries, and saloons. It was even common to find apartments above businesses on Main street. Main street was one lane in each direction with angled parking along the sidewalks and in the middle of the road.




Mesa’s population doubled in the 40’s and again in the 50s. The city’s footprint expanded in those years but most of the population was still in the square mile, and Main street was the center of business.

In the 60’s and early 70s, downtown mesa was the place to be. Downtown Mesa was your typical mid-city thriving downtown. Sears was here. JC Penny was here, Pomeroys, LaSueurs. This is where people came. Not only from Mesa, but from Chandler, Gilbert, and Apache Junction.

But like most cities in the US, Downtown Mesa went through a transition. In Mesa, that transition started in 1978, that transition was called fiesta mall, then it was the superstition freeway. Downtown changed.
And for more than 3 decades, the city and the community struggled with what downtown should be. A lot of planning went into the 80’s and 90’s to try to bring people back to downtown. But places like downtowns can’t be forced.

By 1980, Mesa’s population was 161,000, by 1990 it was more than 300,000. Mesa’s footprint had grown to more than 122 square miles. Downtown seemed all but forgotten. Businesses and population sifted out of downtown and into the suburbs.

In the 2000’s, the pendulum has swung back. Downtowns are where Millennials and Boomers want to be. Where they want to live, work, learn and play.
Downtown Mesa has been prepared for this. Through the 70’s, 80’ s and 90’s the streets were widened, in the late 90’s they were narrowed and then narrowed again in 2014. Sidewalks have been widened and streetscapes installed; the downtown core has been made more walkable.
The community has been brought together to help create planning documents for a more urban downtown experience. Codes have been changed to allow for more urban style development. All in preparation for the city’s largest single investment and construction project. Light Rail!

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Comet Honda/Sun Coronal Mass Ejections & Eruptions

Impacts our Planet Earth on Tue 17 Jan 2017 late in the day. It's an "electric universe"

Published on Jan 16, 2017

Views: 40,644

Update on Comet Honda and Current Solar Activity.
Links @ http://www.BPEarthWatch.Com
http://www.SpaceWeather.Com

John Giles: Co-Chair of Ending Veteran Homelessness Task Force Speaks Tomorrow

Mesa Mayor John Giles will be speaking tomorrow on a panel discussion Jan 17th - did he accomplish his pledge to end veterans homelessness by the end of last year?
Hunger and Homelessness Task Force and Ending Veteran Homelessness Task Force Meeting 2:45 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Videos from last year can viewed here on YouTube
Housing Our Heroes - see farther in this post below

 

About the 85th Winter Meeting

The United States Conference of Mayors' 85th Winter Meeting will take place January 17-19, 2017 in Washington, DC. It is presided over by USCM President Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett and hosted by District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser.

 

Information and the 34-page agenda can be accessed using this link:

http://usmayors.org/85thWinterMeeting/

 

 

News Headlines

January 16: U.S. Mayors Issue a "Call to Action" to Protect Key Bipartisan Provisions of the Affordable Healthcare Act During Presidential Inaugural Week

January 16: U.S. Mayors Hold Press Conference to Discuss Bipartisan Immigration Efforts

January 13: U.S. Mayors Talk Immigration During Presidential Inaugural Week

January 13: Ford Motor Company Executive Chairman Bill Ford to Address Mayors, Wednesday, January 18th

January 10: More Than 300 Mayors Slated to Attend The United States Conference of Mayors 85th Winter Meeting During Presidential Inaugural Week

Live Video

Every plenary session of the 85th Winter Meeting will be streamed live on Facebook and right here on usmayors.org.

Opening Plenary Session (January 17 at 1:00 p.m.)

If readers are interested more information can be found on the city's official website mesaaz.gov 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The plan looks like this