Thursday, September 28, 2017

Lynn Tilton Reacts to Winning SEC Fraud Trial


Published on Sep 28, 2017
Views: 66
Sep.28 -- Lynn Tilton, Patriarch Partners founder, discusses winning a U.S. SEC trial she'd spent months fighting to avoid. She speaks with Bloomberg's David Gura on "Bloomberg Markets."

THE FEDERALIST SOCIETY > Income Inequality: Is It Fair or Unfair?

What would you expect from this group or the speakers enlisted on the panel?
*See disclaimer below

Streamed live 16 hours ago
Views: 659
The Yale Federalist Society presents a conversation and Q&A on income inequality. Is it fair or unfair?

Featuring:

Dr. Yaron Brook
Executive Chairman, Ayn Rand Institute
Author, "Equal Is Unfair"

Prof. Daniel Markovits
Guido Calabresi Professor of Law, Yale Law School
Author, "Snowball Inequality"

Wednesday, September 27 at 6:30 p.m.
Yale Law School's Levinson Auditorium

Watch live on YouTube or Facebook.

*As always, the Federalist Society takes no position on particular legal or public policy issues; all expressions of opinion are those of the speaker.

Tuesday, September 26, 2017

Jivin' with Giles or Is He Jivin' Undisclosed on Facebook?

Time and time again your MesaZona blogger hears all kinds of stories about Mayor John Giles that don't exactly jibe or jive with his squeaky-clean public image and unsubstantiated innuendos of mis-deeds while in public office.
Perhaps he's  "drunk" on pushing his own public image after lots of publicity for trips out-of-town, but this self-produced self-serving promotion of himself back-fired big time.
Fortunately, this post on Facebook that doesn't appear to be available now, appeared mysteriously in an email inbox with this Subject Line:
Subject: Giles using his office to promote friends business
Fellow Republicans,
We should be outraged that once again. . . the mayor, is using tax payer dollars to promote friendly business relationships. Here we see Mayor Giles using a helicopter (not sure of the source) and in his city office on city time, using city resources to promote a friends business. His friend Duaine Burden, who owns Jalapeño Bucks on Val Vista also just happens to be a registered sex offender.
Jalapeño bucks promotion with Mayor in helicopter and in city office:
 
It's not clear how he managed to commandeer a helicopter or who owns it, but there is an official way to report Ethics complaints >
As to the other allegations in the unsolicited email, there does appear to be solid proof that the friend mentioned is a registered sex offender. [the registration document and the offender's address along the details of the offense in the public criminal record].
One would think that they could take this to the ethics board right?
The sender of the email must have done some research to find out that back in 1998 Giles voted on an Ethics Committee Task Force recommendation, at the direction of the City Council, to forgo an independant ethics committee and make the Mesa City Council the sole judge of its own ethics.


 
Public corporate registration records for Jalapeño Bucks were also in the information with Manager/Member Information given as The Burden Family Revocable Trust, last updated on 2/27/2014.

 
 

"Taking-A-Knee" ??? = A SIGN OF RESPECT

gen·u·flect
verb:
 

So Much Fun Unless Uber + Google Don't See New Contenders


Published on Sep 24, 2017
Views: 36,692
Uber is locked in a legal battle with Google over stolen trade secrets and the cutthroat race for the self-driving car that both companies have set their sights on. It’s a corporate war that could decide the future of the auto industry. And in the middle of it, is just one man: Anthony Levandowski.

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Planning & Zoning Meeting Wed 20 Sept 2017

Chairman and one board member are absent.
PLEASE NOTICE how mindful this group is to make sure that all blue comments are submitted right at the start.
Published on Sep 20, 2017
Views: 18 [uploaded less than half-an-hour ago]
Duration: about an hour

Item 4b pulled off Consent Agenda

More Endless War In Afghanistan Again? Who Are The Taliban?

Set aside for the time being everything you've seen or heard about "The Taliban". Here's some recent online sources you might want to read, look and listen to and learn after 16 years of endless war and billion$$$$$$$$$$$$ - and now more - of U.S. Taxpayer money thrown at a military-to-military solution . . . When everyone says "There is NO MILITARY SOLUTION" ??
Afghanistan Again?
The American Military’s Repetition-Compulsion Complex by Ann Jones*
Here we go again! Years after most Americans forgot about the longest war this country ever fought, American soldiers are again being deployed to Afghanistan. For almost 16 years now, at the command of three presidents and a sadly forgettable succession of generals, they have gone round and round like so many motorists trapped on a rotary with no exit. This time their numbers are officially secret, . . The conflict, we’re told, is at present a “stalemate.” > We need more American troops to break it, in part by “training” the Afghan National Army so its soldiers can best their Taliban countrymen plus miscellaneous “terrorist” groups.  In that way, the U.S. military ― after only a few more years of “the foreseeable future” in the field ― can claim victory.
But is any of this necessary? Or smart? Or even true? . . A prominent Afghan diplomat doesn’t think so.
She reminded the author of this article that the Taliban are not some invading army - That would be us.
They are Afghan citizens, distinguished from their countrymen chiefly by their extreme religious conservatism, misogyny, and punitive approach to governance.
Think of them as the Afghan equivalent of our own evangelical right-wing Republicans.
You find some in almost every town. And the more you rile them up, the meaner they get and the more followers they gain.  But in times of peace ― which Afghanistan has not known for 40 years ― many Taliban most likely would return to being farmers, shopkeepers, villagers, like their fathers before them, perhaps imposing local law and order but unlikely to seek control of Kabul and risk bringing the Americans down on them again.
Few Afghans were Taliban sympathizers when the U.S. overthrew the Taliban regime in 2001. Now there are a great many more and they control significant parts of the country, threatening various provincial capitals. SEE VIDEO UPLOAD farther in post

They claim to be willing to negotiate with the Afghan government ― but only after all American forces have left the country.

For the Trump administration, that’s not an option.
(Think what a negotiated peace would mean for our private arms manufacturers for whom America’s endless wars across the Greater Middle East are a bonanza of guaranteed sales.) . . .

Instead, the president has put “his” generals in the Oval Office to do what generals do. Those in charge now ― James Mattis, H.R. McMaster, and John Kelly ― are all veterans of the Afghan or Iraq wars and consequently subject to what Freud labeled the “repetition compulsion”: “the blind impulse to repeat earlier experiences and situations,” often in the expectation that things will turn out differently. You’d think these particular generals, having been through it all before, would remember that very little or nothing ventured in Afghanistan (or Iraq) by “the greatest military the world has ever known” has worked out as advertised. . . .
- Ann Jones, Contributor Author, ‘They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return From America’s Wars — The Untold Story’
Link > http://www.huffingtonpost.com

* Ann Jones, ContributorAuthor, ‘They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return From America’s Wars — The Untold Story’
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Published on Sep 25, 2017
President Trump recently announced he would send more troops to Afghanistan. The war in Afghanistan is the longest conflict in US history, and it has been primarily against the Taliban and now ISIS.
Both insurgencies have made ground against the Afghan army and are now in full control or have support in many sectors of the war-torn country.
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Stratfor pans Trump’s new Afghanistan War plan
Summary: Stratfor reports on Trump’s new strategy for the Afghanistan War, showing its low odds of success. It’s a follow-up to my post Why Trump’s plan for Afghanistan will fail. How many US troops will die or be crippled trying to make this doomed plan work
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More excerpts from Ann Jones' article:
The accretion of witless insults, like those dogs, or the pork ribs in the MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) that the U.S. military hands out to Afghan soldiers, or endless fatal U.S. airstrikes (mistakes!) on villages, hospitalswedding parties, and Afghan National Security Forces have all added up over the years, making Americans unwelcome and their Afghan friends targets.
You undoubtedly noticed some of the headlines at the time, but the Afghanistan story has proven so long, complicated, and repetitive that, at this point, it’s hard to recall the details or, for that matter, the cast of characters, or even why in the world we’re still there doing the same things again and again and again
American victory certainly hasn’t materialized, but the greatest military the world has ever known (as it’s regularly referred to here) cannot admit defeat.
The American effort is now to be exclusively military.  There will be no limits on troop numbers or time spent there, nor any disclosure of plans to the enemy or the American public.  There is to be no more talk of democracy or women’s rights or human rights or peace negotiations.
>
Lessons Learned (and Unlearned)
We can’t allow Afghanistan to become a safe haven for terrorists, Trump insisted, echoing (however unintentionally) Barack Obama and George W. Bush before him. 
He seems unaware that the terrorists who acted on 9/11 had found safe haven in San Diego and Oakland, California, Phoenix and Mesa, Arizona, Fort Lee and Wayne, New Jersey, Hollywood and Daytona Beach, Florida, and Newton, Massachusetts, among other American towns and cities. 
On 9/11, those 19 terrorists possessed 63 valid U.S. driver’s licenses issued by many different states. It was in the United States that all 19 of those terrorists found safety.  It was here, not in Afghanistan, that the prospective pilots for those hijacked planes learned to fly.