Actress Leslie Jones says she wants to fight Dr. Ben Carson over recent comments in which he referred to American slaves as immigrants.
“I want to fight Ben Carson!!” Jones wrote to her 600,000 Twitter followers. “Cash me outside muthaf*cka! How bout dat!!#Slaveswerenotimmigrants F*CKFACE!!”
...and included for your interest
VideoBen Carson refers to slaves as 'immigrants' Click on news link above
You probably won't find thisstory in a press release from the City of Mesa Newsroom MesaNow.org [your MesaZona blogger always wondered why a city-owned facility called itself 'a non-profit' with the designation dot.org but that's beside-the-point] in this morning's first post. An article by Michael P. Buffer / Published: March 10, 2017 from an out-of-state Pennsylvania-source brought this local news home here to The New Urban Downtown Mesa.
Grand Opening Celebration with Scott Smith, City Manager Chris Brady
Is it a question of online learning beating-out old-school real estate requirements for a satellite branch-campus location or something more? Apparently the 'E' in ex-mayor Scott Smith's 2012 H.E.A.T strategy for economic development downtown has been overtaken by the 'T'. Advances in technology have reduced or eliminated the need or demand and costs for actual physical space to conduct education. 4 out of the 5 universities recruited by H.E.A.T. have chosen to leave downtown in spite of generous offers by the city to fill empty or under-used city-owned properties - it just didn't work, except for Illinois-based BenU that was struggling to enroll students until the four-year goal of about 500 was declared achieved in 2016.
The Mesa Center for Higher Education where Wilkes University has operations-space until May, recently filled some available as-needed physical space by re-locatinganother city econ divstrategy called Launch Point into the former 82,000-Sq. Ft. Police Complex at the SEC of 2nd Street/Morris Wilkes University will end face-to-face classes at its Arizona site after this semester ends in May, but the same curriculum offered at the site will continue through online classes, university spokeswoman Vicki Mayk said.
Currently, 77 students are enrolled at Wilkes in Mesa, Ariz., including 34 undergraduate students taking both face-to-face and online classes, Mayk said. Wilkes first came to Mesa in 2012 as part of a city initiative to increase college opportunities and spur economic growth. The university does not have any other sites outside of Wilkes-Barre, Mayk said. The change in Mesa will help the university reduce costs “because our need for classroom space is eliminated with the transition to online delivery, and the university is also moving recruitment and marketing from Mesa and having those functions handled here in Wilkes-Barre,” Mayk said. The university will retain one full-time tenured faculty member in Mesa, and the other full-time faculty member there is retiring, Mayk said. That retirement was planned and is not tied to the change, she said. “Many of the classes in Mesa were taught by adjunct faculty members, and they will continue teaching the online classes,” she added. “Three recruiter positions in Mesa are being eliminated with moving the recruitment function to Wilkes-Barre.”
One of your MesaZona blogger'smost reliable and trusted news sources, Wired.com came out with this 'bomb' today:
Andy Greenberg.Andy Greenberg Security 03.08.17. 09:59 am
HOW THE CIA'S HACKING HOARD MAKES EVERYONE LESS SECURE WikiLeaks, already in headline news for a long time, dumped its 8,000+ document zero-day stash one day ago then, strongly suggests that the CIA—along with other intelligence agencies—has long allowed Americans to remain vulnerable to those same attacks. Now that those hacking secrets are public, potentially along with enough details to replicate them, the danger of the feds leaving major security flaws unfixed only escalates. . .
Balancing the needs of a critical intelligence agency with the digital security of the rest of the world isn’t easy. But the US intelligence community’s hacking techniques leaking—not once, but at least twice now after hackers known as the Shadow Brokers breached an NSA server and published reams of NSA code last August—means that the balance needs to be reconsidered, says New American Foundation’s Bankston. “All of of these vulnerabilities were in iPhones and Android phones that hundreds of millions of people used if not billions,” he says. “That has serious cybersecurity implications.” Do we the people get this or approved it? SPOONS GONE WILD
“The deal we make in a democracy is that we understand we need military and intelligence services. But we want want oversight in the executive branch and across the three branches of government,” . . “If the CIA says ‘we’re suppose to do this, but we’re just not going to,’ or ‘we’re going to do it just enough that the White House thinks we are,’ that starts to eat away at the fundamental oversight for which we have elected officials.” Hit the underlined link to the article featured and get some more b#+^ shit
While it might be too early to figure out who's warming-up in the Bullpen of Mesa politics - or who's gonna get into the field and step-up to home plate to knock one out of the plans for a ballpark/stadium here in Mesa [or score a goal on hockey-ice] - the multi-talented hard-hitter Marc Garcia, head honcho for Mesa's tourism office VisitMesa.com , dropped a few bombs yesterday in an appropriate venue during a meeting of the Economic Development Advisory Board. He struck-out last year to get approval, but hey! Give it a go!
Keep your eyes on the prize, or what might be a big surprise. Another taxpayer-funded stadium here in Mesa? Some new legislative trickery to make that happen? Or a youth-and-amateur sports complex with indoor and outdoor playing fields? Angel investors on-the-sidelines? Add a good size meetings-and-convention center with an adjacent 400+-room high-quality hotel in an accessible location to highways and airports easy-to-get-to. What have we got to lose if all that somehow gets pulled together? Officials - and others - might get a call and get coached to step up with their game for a major sports stadium complex in northeast Mesa incorporating all these elements.
It’s remarkably hard to imagine what it might be like inside our minds. But doing so helps us to see that the real task of thinking should involve throwing a spotlight on our elusive vague thoughts. If you like our films, take a look at our shop (we ship worldwide): https://goo.gl/6zLbz4 Join our mailing list: http://bit.ly/2e0TQNJ Or visit us in person at our London HQ https://goo.gl/uJ55TE
Too cute for words Falcon Hill Elementary and the Grace Property
Published on Mar 8, 2017
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Vice Mayor David Luna and Councilmember Ryan Winkle visit Falcon Hill Elementary School in District 5 to hear what ideas the 3rd graders have to improve the vacant land at Alma School and Southern in District 3.
Gary Nelson, roving reporter before and now contributing writer for The East Valley Tribune when the City of Mesa hit the Sunday night prime-time news, caught red-handed and shamed for alleged eminent domain abuse as an urban redevelopment scheme.Legendary journalist Mike Wallace and his crew interviewed Mesa brake shop owner Randy Bailey. The city had acted to condemn and seize the property under its right of eminent domain and has offered to compensate Bailey and help relocate the shop, but the business owner fought the effort in court.
According to a contemporary article in the same newspaper by J. Craig Anderson on May 23, 2003, the cameras rolled and City Council members were advised by City Attorney Debbie Spinner earlier in the week not to make any remarks or comments to Mike Wallace. Could this imposed media black-out happen today?
That was then. The upshot was the Bailey case stirred a bill in the Legislature that was signed by Gov. Janet Napolitano designed to make it more difficult for cities to take eminent domain action. Blogger's Note: In a disadvantaged area with little opposition from owners of homes, The City of Mesa had little difficulty condemning and seizing by eminent domain a 25-acre swath of property right in the heart of downtown Mesa.
Site 17 that got bulldozed and cleared of homes, creating on 'open-scar' to this day in spite of efforts by Mesa's Director of Downtown Transformation Jeff McVay in so-called 'community outreach' and 'community engagement' meetings and surveys where very few members of the public [except for an organized angry activist group of neighbors from West Mesa] participated. [to the right: the 'vision'] See > earlier posts on this site 'community engagement' Now there are other 'legislative tricks' in the would-be urban transformer's tool-boxes but that's another story for another post.
Let's go back-to-future in the 1970's at a corner of real estate on Country Club Drive and Main Street that's the focus both then and now. First, fast-forward to whatmighthappen in the future along the light rail corridor is the architect's rendering to the left. Nelson's report starts off like this: "Almost 15 years ago, Mesa landed a starring role on national prime-time TV. But it was the kind of publicity no city wants." Now, lessons learned, the City of Mesa wants to create the narrative and the kind of media-spin publicity it wants for downtown development, fearing nothing that could mess up what city planners and special-interest groups are now trying to push through the AZ Legislature. Here are some snippet's from Gary Nelson's report yesterday SPOTLIGHT
Rail may erase one of Mesa’s deepest scars
MarUpdated
Mike Wallace, the legendary – and feared – correspondent for CBS’ “60 Minutes,” had come to town to look into a nasty spat about the future of a prime corner in downtown Mesa. . . Mesa thought the corner needed some spiffing up. So, it bought and demolished several businesses and homes there in hopes of assembling a parcel for use by an already-existing downtown hardware store. . . Bailey’s property, however, was not for sale. And when he balked at Mesa’s offer, the city resorted to eminent domain, asserting that redevelopment – even for the benefit of another private business – was a legitimate “public use” under Arizona law. . . Eight days after the story ran, the Arizona Court of Appeals overturned a county judge’s ruling that had favored Mesa in the case. Bailey’s shop still stands, the corner’s lone surviving structure. Now, the coming of light rail may have given Mesa a mulligan when it comes to redevelop.
A Mulligan?
Jeff McVay
The city – with Bailey’s backing – issued a request for proposals to redevelop the site in late 2015. The lone response came from Chicanos Por La Causa, a 48-year-old, Phoenix-based nonprofit with a strong interest in housing and community development.
Plans call for a five-story, mixed-use complex with nearly 17,000 square feet of commercial and retail space on the ground floor. The 200 apartments will charge market-based rents.
Bailey, who in recent years served on a citizens’ committee that advised Mesa on downtown development, said he has been in talks with the developer.
Jeff McVay, Mesa’s manager of downtown transformation, remains excited about the proposal.
“I think hindsight on that one is going to be awesome,” McVay said. Awesome. Huh?... justlike his plans for Mesa City Center and that Pie-In-The-Sky half-backed exciting scheme to radically transform and devour downtown Mesa with an ASU satellite campus that was a major screw-up public relations fiasco.
