Southern US city tops list of dirtiest in the nation, study says
Pilar Arias – May 29, 2024
Southern US city tops list of dirtiest in the nation, study says
A recent survey named the “dirtiest” city in the U.S., and earning the top spot this year is none other than Houston, taking the crown from last year’s dirtiest, Newark, New Jersey.
Houston’s ranking in the study from LawnStarter came after a comparison of 152 U.S. cities in the categories of pollution, living conditions, infrastructure and customer satisfaction.
The study says Houston, also known as Space City, is the third most polluted of all the cities ranked, behind San Bernardino, California, and Peoria, Arizona. It cites another study that “found that the city’s petrochemical facilities severely violate EPA safety guidelines.”
LawnStarter data says Houston ranks “third worst in greenhouse gas emissions from large industrial facilities,” and the city has “the biggest cockroach problem, too.”
A spokesperson for the Houston Solid Waste Management Department — which is in charge of waste collection, disposal and recycling — did not immediately respond to a Fox News Digital request for comment.
Last year’s reigning champion, Newark, slipped to the overall rank of No. 2.
Rounding up the top 10 are San Bernardino; Detroit; Jersey City, New Jersey; Bakersfield, California; San Antonio; Fresno, California; Oklahoma City; and Yonkers, New York. New York City came in at No. 12.
The Houston skyline and I-45 commuter traffic at dusk.
So why does any of this matter? LawnStarter said the study is meant to have people look beyond garbage, pests and poor waste management, saying the negative effects from living in dirty cities can be worse than people realize, citing health problems such as lung cancer, heart disease and stroke that can stem from air pollution.
“Here’s the bottom line: Dirty cities aren’t just an eyesore — they also damage our bodies and our wallets,” LawnStarter says.
New York City, where a store is seen after a looting in 2022, did not even make the top 10 list of dirtiest cities in the U.S.
LawnStarter provides lawn care providers to customers via its website and mobile application. The company used the survey as an opportunity to attract new business.
“Clean cities tend to have lots of tidy, healthy, green lawns,” they said.
Amy Coney Barrett’s Husband Has a New Client—and It’s Disturbing
Talia Jane – May 29, 2024
According to an exclusive report fromRolling Stone, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s husband, Jesse Barrett, is now repping Fox Corporation in a $3 million defamation suit, raising questions about conflicts of interest and personal enrichment enjoyed by conservative Supreme Court justices.
As Rolling Stonepoints out, the case is notable because Fox Corporation—the parent company of Fox News—is directly paying the family of a Supreme Court justice, which neither Barrett nor her husband are required to disclose. Barrett’s husband is a managing partner at SouthBank Legal, which opened its D.C. office—led by Barrett—after his wife joined the Supreme Court. Jesse Barrett’s list of anonymized cases on the SouthBank Legal website now includes “represented a prominent media company in a lawsuit alleging defamation.” That addition joins an already lengthy list of white-collar cases on his company profile, tucked between defending a Berkshire Hathaway company in an employment discrimination suit and defending an event promoter from fraud claims.
The defamation lawsuit Jesse Barrett has taken on alleges that Fox 32—a Chicago-area local station for Fox—ran a hit piece about Lavell Redmond who in 2021 was hired by the mayor of Dolton, Illinois, to work as a building code enforcement officer. The Fox report centers Redmond’s conviction for aggravated sexual assault of a minor, for which he pleaded guilty and served 24 years in prison, as the crux of the story while claiming Redmond was hired to enter “into Dolton homes and businesses to inspect them.” Redmond disputes this claim in his suit, according to Rolling Stone, noting that his work entailed inspecting building exteriors, not entering people’s homes.
The outlet later followed up on its reporting with news that Redmond had been arrested and may face new charges for violating the conditions of the sex offender registry—an accusation Redmond alleges is the direct result of Fox’s earlier misleading reporting on his job duties.
Barrett, representing Fox, filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, according to Rolling Stone. The motion to dismiss claims the suit was filed too late and that the corporation didn’t commit defamation because the “gist” of the reporting was “indisputably true” and characterized the central outrage of Redmond’s hiring—that a sex offender was entering people’s homes, which resulted in his arrest—as “immaterial details.”
While the relationship between conservative justices and right-wingers continuously raises ethical concerns, constitutional law professor Anthony Michael Kreis noted the odds of Fox Corporation’s case being kicked up to the conservative-held Supreme Court are slim given that Barrett would have to recuse herself from the case, winnowing the number of Fox News–brained justices on the court.
“You don’t hire the spouse of a Supreme Court justice to represent you in major litigation unless (1) you think they’re competent to do so and (2) you don’t foresee going to the Supreme Court where the spouse would have to recuse and you might really want/need their vote,” Kreis wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
Regardless, it’s entirely too convenient that the husband of a conservative Supreme Court justice is representing a conservative media company, and poses curious questions as to why Barrett, who is based in D.C., was tapped to represent the media company based in New York City for a lawsuit filed by a man in Illinois.
Don’t look up. South Korean authorities warned residents along the border with North Korea that an “air raid” was underway. But it wasn’t rockets that were incoming. Rather: floating overhead were more than 150 balloons carrying trash and what’s believed to be feces.
An emergency disaster text alert was sent across cities on Tuesday night, according to South Korean newspaper Hankyoreh, ordering residents to “refrain from outdoor activities and report [objects] to military bases when identified,” along with the message in English: “Air raid preliminary warning.”
The incursion comes days after North Korea warned it would retaliate against anti-Pyongyang leaflets sent over by activists in South Korea earlier this month.
South Korean news agency Yonhap reported that South Korea’s military detected the balloons flying and falling in various locations across the country from Tuesday evening to Wednesday morning local time, going as far as South Gyeongsang, a province more than 180 miles from the demilitarized zone border between the two countries.
The balloons appeared to carry trash—like plastic bottles, batteries, shoe parts, and even feces—a South Korea Joint Chiefs of Staff official said. The military is working with police to collect the materials for analysis, local paper Chosun Ilbo reported, and has advised residents not to come into contact with the droppings and instead report them to authorities.
This photo provided by South Korea Defense Ministry, shows trash from a balloon presumably sent by North Korea, in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, May 29, 2024. South Korea Presidential Office—AP
“Tit-for-tat action will be also taken against frequent scattering of leaflets and other rubbish by [South Korea] near border areas,” North Korea’s vice minister of national defense said on Sunday. “Mounds of wastepaper and filth will soon be scattered over the border areas and the interior of [South Korea] and it will directly experience how much effort is required to remove them.”
South Korea’s military condemned the act, saying on Wednesday that the balloons “clearly violate international law and seriously threaten our people’s safety.”
It’s not the first time North Korea has flown in garbage through balloons: in 2016, it sent what were initially feared to be biochemical substances but eventually turned out to be cigarette butts and used toilet paper.
North Korean defectors and activists in South Korea have also flown balloons the other way with propaganda payloads for years, in hopes of convincing North Korean residents to stand up against Kim Jong-un’s totalitarian regime. Pyongyang has long bridled against the practice, which it has labeled “psychological warfare.”
Park Sang-hak, center, a refugee from North Korea who runs the group Fighters for a Free North Korea, and South Korean activists prepare to release balloons bearing leaflets during an anti-North Korea rally near the border village of Panmunjom in Paju, South Korea, on April 15, 2011.Lee Jin-man—AP
Earlier this month, a group of North Korean defectors sent about 20 large balloons carrying some 300,000 leaflets criticizing Kim. The balloons also reportedly carried about 2,000 USB sticks containing K-pop content, including songs from members of Korean boyband sensation BTS. (Kim has called South Korean K-pop a “vicious cancer.”)
As tensions escalate between North and South Korea, experts emphasize that this kind of exchange of balloons remains far preferable to missiles. Peter Ward, a research fellow at the Sejong Institute, told Reuters: “These kinds of grey zone tactics are more difficult to counter and hold less risk of uncontrollable military escalation, even if they’re horrid for the civilians who are ultimately targeted.”
North Korea Accused of Launching Floating Poop Balloon Attack
Dan Ladden-Hall – May 29, 2024
Yonhap via Reuters
South Korea’s military on Wednesday accused North Korea of floating balloons loaded with trash and manure across the border and immediately demanded that Pyongyang halt its “inhumane and vulgar” operation.
More than 260 balloons have already been detected in South Korea since the operation began on Tuesday night, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said. Images released by the military appear to show the balloons carrying plastic bags—one of which had the word “excrement” written on the side, according to Reuters.
A JCS official told the Seoul-based Yonhap News Agency that the balloons—all of which have fallen to the ground—carried trash, including bits of shoes, plastic bottles, and manure.
No damage or injuries have been reported so far in connection with the balloons, but the military has deployed bomb disposal units and other experts to collect them. Residents have been warned against touching the objects.
“These acts by North Korea clearly violate international law and seriously threaten our people’s safety,” the JCS said, adding a stern warning to “North Korea to immediately stop its inhumane and vulgar act.”
The balloons started arriving days after Kim Kang Il, North Korea’s vice defense minister, slammed propaganda leaflets criticizing the Pyongyang regime that North Korean defectors in the South have been attaching to balloons and sending northward for years.
The minister on Sunday accused Seoul of “despicable psychological warfare” by “scattering leaflets and various dirty things near border areas” and vowed to deliver “tit-for-tat action” in response.
“Mounds of wastepaper and filth will soon be scattered over the border areas and the interior of [South Korea] and it will directly experience how much effort is required to remove them,” he said.
Honorary degree recipient Ken Burns delivers the Undergraduate Commencement speech at Brandeis University’s 73rd Commencement Exercises on May 19, 2024.
Transcript
Brandeisian, love it.
President Liebowitz, Ron, Chair Lisa Kranc, and other members of the board of trustees, Provost Carol Fierke, fellow honorees, distinguished faculty and staff, proud and relieved parents, calm and serene grandparents, distracted but secretly pleased siblings, ladies and gentlemen, graduating students of the class of 2024, good morning.
I am deeply honored and privileged that you have asked me here to say a few words at such a momentous occasion that you might find what I have to say worthy of your attention on so important a day in all of your lives. Thank you for this honor.
Listen, I am in the business of history. It is not always a happy subject on college campuses these days, particularly when forces seem determined to eliminate or water down difficult parts of our past, particularly when the subject may seem to sum an anachronistic and irrelevant pursuit, and particularly with the ferocious urgency this moment seems to exert on us. It is my job, however, to remind people of the power our past also exerts, to help us better understand what’s going on now with compelling story, memory, and anecdote. It is my job to try to discern patterns and themes from history to enable us to interpret our dizzying and sometimes dismaying present.
For nearly 50 years now, I have diligently practiced and rigorously tried to maintain a conscious neutrality in my work, avoiding advocacy if I could, trying to speak to all of my fellow citizens. Over those many decades I’ve come to understand a significant fact, that we are not condemned to repeat, as the saying goes, what we don’t remember. That is a beautiful, even poetic phrase, but not true. Nor are there cycles of history as the academic community periodically promotes. The Old Testament, Ecclesiastes to be specific, got it right, I think. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun. What those lines suggest is that human nature never changes or almost never changes. We continually superimpose that complex and contradictory human nature over the seemingly random chaos of events, all of our inherent strengths and weaknesses, our greed and generosity, our puritanism and our prurience, our virtue, and our venality parade before our eyes, generation after generation after generation. This often gives us the impression that history repeats itself. It does not. “No event has ever happened twice, it just rhymes,” Mark Twain is supposed to have said. I have spent all of my professional life on the lookout for those rhymes, drawn inexorably to that power of history. I am interested in listening to the many varied voices of a true, honest, complicated past that is unafraid of controversy and tragedy, but equally drawn to those stories and moments that suggest an abiding faith in the human spirit, and particularly the unique role this remarkable and sometimes also dysfunctional republic seems to play in the positive progress of mankind.
During the course of my work, I have become acquainted with hundreds if not thousands of those voices. They have inspired, haunted, and followed me over the years. Some of them may be helpful to you as you try to imagine and make sense of the trajectory of your lives today.
Listen, listen. In January of 1838, shortly before his 29th birthday, a tall, thin lawyer prone to bouts of debilitating depression addressed the young men’s lyceum in Springfield, Illinois. “At what point shall we expect the approach of danger?” He asked his audience, “Shall we expect some trans-Atlantic military giant to step the earth and crush us at a blow?” Then he answered his own question. “Never. All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we must live through all time or die by suicide.” It is a stunning, remarkable statement, one that has animated my own understanding of the American experience since I first read it more than 40 years ago. That young man was of course Abraham Lincoln, and he would go on to preside over the closest this country has ever come to near national suicide, our civil war, and yet embedded in his extraordinary, disturbing, and prescient words is also a fundamental optimism that implicitly acknowledges the geographical forcefield two mighty oceans east and west and two relatively benign neighbors north and south have provided for us since the British burned the White House in the War of 1812 and inspired Francis Scott Key.
Lincoln’s words that day suggest what is so great and so good about the people who happen to inhabit this lucky and exquisite country of ours. That’s the world you now inherit: our work ethic and our restlessness, our innovation and our improvisation, our communities and our institutions of higher learning, our suspicion of power. The fact that we seem resolutely dedicated to parsing the meaning between individual and collective freedom; What I want versus what we need. That we are all so dedicated to understanding what Thomas Jefferson really meant when he wrote that mysterious phrase, “The pursuit of happiness”. Hint, it happens right here in the lifelong learning and perpetual improvement this university is committed to.
But the isolation of those two oceans has also helped to incubate habits and patterns less beneficial to us: our devotion to money and guns and conspiracies, our certainty about everything, our stubborn insistence on our own exceptionalism blinding us to that which needs repair, especially with regard to race and ethnicity. Our preoccupation with always making the other wrong at an individual as well as a global level. I am reminded of what the journalist I.F. Stone once said to a young acolyte who was profoundly disappointed in his mentor’s admiration for Thomas Jefferson. “It’s because history is tragedy,” Stone admonished him, “Not melodrama.” It’s the perfect response. In melodrama all villains are perfectly villainous and all heroes are perfectly virtuous, but life is not like that. You know that in your guts and nor is our history like that. The novelist, Richard Powers recently wrote that, “The best arguments in the world,” — and ladies and gentlemen, that’s all we do is argue — “the best arguments in the world,” he said, “Won’t change a single person’s point of view. The only thing that can do that is a good story.” I’ve been struggling for most of my life to do that, to try to tell good, complex, sometimes contradictory stories, appreciating nuance and subtlety and undertow, sharing the confusion and consternation of unreconciled opposites.
But it’s clear as individuals and as a nation we are dialectically preoccupied. Everything is either right or wrong, red state or blue state, young or old, gay or straight, rich or poor, Palestinian or Israeli, my way or the highway. Everywhere we are trapped by these old, tired, binary reactions, assumptions, and certainties. For filmmakers and faculty, students and citizens, that preoccupation is imprisoning. Still, we know and we hear and we express only arguments, and by so doing, we forget the inconvenient complexities of history and of human nature. That, for example, three great religions, their believers, all children of Abraham, each professing at the heart of their teaching, a respect for all human life, each with a central connection to and legitimate claim to the same holy ground, violate their own dictates of conduct and make this perpetually contested land a shameful graveyard. God does not distinguish between the dead. “Could you?”
[Audience applauding]
“Could you?” A very wise person I know with years of experience with the Middle East recently challenged me, “Could you hold the idea that there could be two wrongs and two rights?”
Listen, listen. In a filmed interview I conducted with the writer James Baldwin, more than 40 years ago, he said, “No one was ever born who agreed to be a slave, who accepted it. That is, slavery is a condition imposed from without. Of course, the moment I say that,” Baldwin continued, “I realize that multitudes and multitudes of people for various reasons of their own enslave themselves every hour of every day to this or that doctrine, this or that delusion of safety, this or that lie. Anti-Semites, for example,” he went on, “are slaves to a delusion. People who hate Negroes are slaves. People who love money are slaves. We are living in a universe really of willing slaves, which makes the concept of liberty and the concept of freedom so dangerous,” he finished. Baldwin is making a profoundly psychological and even spiritual statement, not just a political or racial or social one. He knew, just as Lincoln knew, that the enemy is often us. We continue to shackle ourselves with chains we mistakenly think is freedom.
Another voice, Mercy Otis Warren, a philosopher and historian during our revolution put it this way, “The study of the human character at once opens a beautiful and a deformed picture of the soul. We there find a noble principle implanted in the nature of people, but when the checks of conscience are thrown aside, humanity is obscured.” I have had the privilege for nearly half a century of making films about the US, but I have also made films about us. That is to say the two letter, lowercase, plural pronoun. All of the intimacy of “us” and also “we” and “our” and all of the majesty, complexity, contradiction, and even controversy of the US. And if I have learned anything over those years, it’s that there’s only us. There is no them. And whenever someone suggests to you, whomever it may be in your life that there’s a them, run away. Othering is the simplistic binary way to make and identify enemies, but it is also the surest way to your own self imprisonment, which brings me to a moment I’ve dreaded and forces me to suspend my longstanding attempt at neutrality.
There is no real choice this November. There is only the perpetuation, however flawed and feeble you might perceive it, of our fragile 249-year-old experiment or the entropy that will engulf and destroy us if we take the other route. When, as Mercy Otis Warren would say, “The checks of conscience are thrown aside and a deformed picture of the soul is revealed.” The presumptive Republican nominee is the opioid of all opioids, an easy cure for what some believe is the solution to our myriad pains and problems. When in fact with him, you end up re-enslaved with an even bigger problem, a worse affliction and addiction, “a bigger delusion”, James Baldwin would say, the author and finisher of our national existence, our national suicide as Mr. Lincoln prophesies. Do not be seduced by easy equalization. There is nothing equal about this equation. We are at an existential crossroads in our political and civic lives. This is a choice that could not be clearer.
[Audience applauding]
Listen, listen. 33 years ago, the world lost a towering literary figure. The novelist and storyteller, not arguer, Isaac Bashevis Singer. For decades he wrote about God and myth and punishment, fate and sexuality, family and history. He wrote in Yiddish a marvelously expressive language, sad and happy all at the same time. Sometimes maddeningly all knowing, yet resigned to God’s seemingly capricious will. It is also a language without a country, a dying language in a world more interested in the extermination or isolation of its long suffering speakers. Singer, writing in the pages of the Jewish Daily Forward help to keep Yiddish alive. Now our own wonderfully mongrel American language is punctuated with dozens of Yiddish words and phrases, parables and wise sayings, and so many of those words are perfect onomatopoeias of disgust and despair, hubris and humor. If you’ve ever met a schmuck, you know what I’m talking about. [audience laughs] Toward the end of his long and prolific life, Singer expressed wonder at why so many of his books written in this obscure and some said useless language would be so widely translated, something like 56 countries all around the world. “Why,” he would wonder with his characteristic playfulness, “Why would the Japanese care about his simple stories of life in the shtetls of Eastern Europe 1,000 years ago?” “Unless,” Singer paused, twinkle in his eye, “Unless the story spoke of the kinship of the soul.” I think what Singer was talking about was that indefinable something that connects all of us together, that which we all share as part of organic life on this planet, the kinship of the soul. I love that.
Okay, let me speak directly to the graduating class. Watch out, here comes the advice. Listen. Be curious, not cool. Insecurity makes liars of us all. Remember, none of us get out of here alive. The inevitable vicissitudes of life, no matter how well gated our communities, will visit us all. Grief is a part of life, and if you explore its painful precincts, it will make you stronger. Do good things, help others. Leadership is humility and generosity squared. Remember the opposite of faith is not doubt. Doubt is central to faith. The opposite of faith is certainty. The kinship of the soul begins with your own at times withering self-examination. Try to change that unchangeable human nature of Ecclesiastes, but start with you. “Nothing so needs reforming,” Mark Twain once chided us, “As other people’s habits.” [audience laughs]
Don’t confuse success with excellence. Do not descend too deeply into specialism. Educate all of your parts, you will be healthier. Do not get stuck in one place. “Travel is fatal to prejudice,” Twain also said. Be in nature, which is always perfect and where nothing is binary. Its sheer majesty may remind you of your own atomic insignificance, as one observer put it, but in the inscrutable and paradoxical ways of wild places, you will feel larger, inspirited, just as the egotist in our midst is diminished by his or her self regard.
At some point, make babies, one of the greatest things that will happen to you, I mean it, one of the greatest things that will happen to you is that you will have to worry, I mean really worry, about someone other than yourself. It is liberating and exhilarating, I promise. Ask your parents.
[Audience laughs]
Choose honor over hypocrisy, virtue over vulgarity, discipline over dissipation, character over cleverness, sacrifice over self-indulgence. Do not lose your enthusiasm, in its Greek etymology the word enthusiasm means simply, “god in us”. Serve your country. Insist that we fight the right wars. Denounce oppression everywhere.
[Audience applauding]
Convince your government, as Lincoln understood that the real threat always and still comes from within this favored land. Insist that we support science and the arts, especially the arts.
[Audience cheering]
They have nothing to do with the actual defense of our country; They just make our country worth defending.
[Audience applauding]
Remember what Louis Brandeis said, “The most important political office is that of the private citizen.” Vote. You indelibly… [audience applauding] Please, vote. You indelibly underscore your citizenship, and most important, our kinship with each other when you do. Good luck and godspeed.
Putin Hints at Bombing Other ‘Densely Populated’ Nations
Allison Quinn – May 28, 2024
Getty Images
Russia’s Vladimir Putin lashed out Tuesday at European countries that are considering giving permission to Ukraine to use their weapons for strikes on Russian territory.
Speaking in Tashkent during a two-day visit to Uzbekistan, Putin warned of “serious consequences” if Western weapons are allowed in attacks on Russian soil.
“In Europe, especially in small countries, they should realize what they are playing with. They should remember that they are countries with small, densely populated territories… This is a factor they should keep in mind before talking about striking Russia,” he said.
His comments came as more and more European leaders expressed support for Ukraine taking the war to Russian territory at a meeting of defense ministers on Tuesday.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said it is “perfectly possible” for Ukraine to strike targets inside Russia and there is “no contradiction” with the laws of war. “You have to balance the risk of escalation and the need for Ukrainians to defend,” he said, according to Agence France-Presse. Dutch Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren said the Netherlands would not stop Ukraine from attacking targets on Russian territory, and that she hoped “other countries that have different positions will change that.”
Hanno Pevkur, the defense minister of Estonia, said, “It cannot be normal that Russia is attacking from very deep into Ukrainian territory and the Ukrainians are fighting with one hand behind their back.”
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg called on NATO officials to reconsider prohibiting Ukraine from using Western-supplied weapons to strike “legitimate targets” outside the country earlier this week. The Biden administration has repeatedly cautioned against Ukraine using American-made weapons to strike inside Russia, though officials are now reportedly debating whether to change that policy.
In this far-flung Arizona neighborhood, residents dream of the arrival of a gas station or grocery store
Alexandra Hardle, Arizona Republic – May 28, 2024
Terrell Hannah and his family enjoy living in Tartesso, a master-planned community in northwest Buckeye. But when he needs to fill up his car or get a gallon of milk, he does wish that it came with basic city amenities.
Like a gas station or a grocery store. The nearest gas station is 15 minutes away; the nearest Walmart, 15 minutes away; the nearest Costco, 20 minutes away.
Hannah and his wife also have two young children and drive them about 25 minutes to school near downtown Buckeye. On top of that, Hannah has a 35- to 45-minute commute to Luke Air Force, where he works.
Hannah, who moved into the community in 2022, said he likes the residential feel.
“One of the attractive features of that neighborhood is that it’s away from all of the heavy industry that is really coming up at every corner in Phoenix,” Hannah said.
Realtor Martin Partida has been a Tartesso resident since 2020. He and his family moved from Phoenix because they wanted to live somewhere quieter, and Tartesso fit the bill. Partida said he also needs to drive about 15 minutes to get to the nearest grocery store or gas station.
A big frustration among Tartesso residents has been the pace of development. The community now has about 10,000 residents and 3,400 houses but so few amenities, they say.
Many residents feel Tartesso has been left out as other areas of the city develop more quickly.
“When we compare what we have to other communities that have been developed like Verrado, it just seems unbalanced. We’re not sure why it’s taking so long to get things moving out here,” Partida said.
Partida said he also hopes for a high school to be built. Currently, Tartesso’s schools only go to the fifth grade. It also would be nice to have a recreational center in Tartesso, Partida said.
Residents also hope for coffee shops, jobs
Cameron James has lived in Tartesso since 2009. At this point, James said he and other residents are used to commuting for work and stopping at places like Costco on the way home.
“You get used to it after about a year. I mean, we feel spoiled now because we have food trucks,” James said.
James said he understands why the community needs more rooftops before commercial development follows.
Paige Stein, who works in the hospitality industry in Goodyear, has lived in Tartesso for about four years after moving from from Festival Foothills neighborhood, also in Buckeye. Stein said she and her family always have preferred to live in places that are more isolated.
Stein said the most important thing to her is that more jobs come to Tartesso for the people who live there, particularly young people still at home with their parents who don’t have the option to move. Stein currently commutes about 30 minutes to her job in Goodyear.
“I don’t see that as something that someone just getting out of school should have to do,” Stein said.
After a gas station, she would like Tartesso to get a coffee shop.
“Something where the students that get out of school can go hang out, so they don’t have to go straight home or hang out in the heat,” Stein said.
Stein said she currently spends a lot of her free time in Tempe to go to new shops and favorite places.
Residents hope for less industrial development
Chris Barr, principal of Buckeye Tartesso LLC, said he hears the complaints. A controversial new rezoning of land to industrial from residential is part of a potential solution, he said. The change axed some 6,000 planned homes.
While some residents are skeptical and hope the plan shifts away from industrial zoning, adding jobs is necessary for creating both rooftops and the commercial and retail development Tartesso residents are asking for, Barr said.
Accelerating economic growth will in turn accelerate the growth of community amenities, including grocery stores and gas stations, he said.
Tartesso, along the southwestern part of the Sun Valley Parkway, is projected to have about 100,000 residents at build-out.
Hundreds of thousands of residents eventually will live along Sun Valley Parkway, Barr said. It once was known as the “Road to Nowhere,” with not much around it. But communities are slowly growing, including Festival Ranch along the northern part of the parkway.
A vast majority of Buckeye’s residents commute east for work. Barr hopes to change that by adding more employment opportunities along the parkway.
The Tartesso community development borders the desert in Buckeye. It’s one of the last noticeable developments on the way out of the Phoenix area.
Obtaining the necessary certificates for industrial development is easier than getting approval for residential from a water standpoint. But Barr said that’s not the reason the land was rezoned.
“We just wanted to create some employment opportunities and really good-paying jobs for people in that region that don’t want to hop on the freeway and potentially have to leave the city of Buckeye to drive to and from their job every day,” Barr said.
Tartesso LLC bought the development in 2016. When Barr came in, the community was still recovering from the Great Recession, which had greatly slowed down growth, Barr said. Right now, Barr said the focus is on housing, which will later bring in retail amenities.
While some land is zoned for commercial use and was purchased years ago, Barr said many projects were halted by the recession.
“They had a lot of rooftop projections that took a long time to materialize because the market got effectively shut down for a couple of years,” Barr said.
Ultimately, it is up to the purchasers of the land to decide what to do with it and when. Additional amenities like a recreation center also would come with additional HOA fees, and not everyone would be happy to pay those.
“The demand is, we need affordable housing in the Valley. And we’ve got a big problem staring us down if we don’t come to some solutions that allow for building on Sun Valley Parkway, which is going to be a great place for affordable housing,” Barr said.
In a statement to The Arizona Republic, a Buckeye spokesperson said the city’s development teams were actively collaborating with brokers, developers and service providers to attract growth in Buckeye, including in Tartesso and Festival Ranch.
“While commercial development is currently thriving in the eastern parts of Buckeye, our growth trajectory is set to extend westward along Sun Valley Parkway. This will foster expansion and development in those areas,” the city statement said. “This growth trajectory is already attracting new investment, including a recent commitment from QT (QuikTrip) to develop a new location south of Tartesso.”
What’s still to come at Tartesso?
The QuikTrip announcement means Tartesso residents’ wishes for a gas station soon will come true, although a timeline for the opening was not set.
The gas station will be located about a mile from the community’s main entrance. The nearest gas station is currently a Love’s Travel Shop located nearly 10 miles away from Tartesso on Miller Road.
As for what’s next aside from industrial development, Barr said Tartesso currently has applications for certificates of assured water supply pending with the Department of Water Resources for about 5,700 homes.
Those certificates are necessary for the next phase of construction to begin.
Barr said Tartesso has begun discussions with major builders for those homes. Once the development figures out its water certificates, Barr said the launch would be relatively quick.
And those homes, combined with new jobs to the area, should make way for the amenities that Tartesso residents have been asking for, such as grocery stores, more gas stations, movie theaters and hospitals, most of which look to have a certain number of rooftops within a certain radius.
“I don’t think we’re quite there,” Barr said. “But I believe activity breeds more activity.”
Miami-Dade man recorded rape of a Palm Beach schoolgirl. He had her sell the videos
David J. Neal – May 29, 2024
ERIC PAUL ZAMORA/THE FRESNO BEE/Fresno Bee Staff Photo
Using social media, an Opa-locka man coerced Palm Beach and Broward 15-year-olds into letting him commit statutory rape, got one of the two girls to let him record it on video and sell the videos for him.
The above violations were chronicled in 26-year-old Malik Atkinson’s guilty plea to two counts of online solicitation of a minor to commit a sexual act, crimes for which Atkinson was sentenced to 30 years in Miami federal court Friday. After Atkinson’s release, which will be at least 25 years and six months in the future, he’ll be subject to a lifetime of supervised release.
Federal public defender Scott Berry, anticipating the prosecution would ask for life under the statutes involved, argued for mercy based on Atkinson being “a 26-year-old child in a man’s body,” who lived with his father, had no previous criminal record and “was acting out sexually through pornography, multiple sexual partners, underage sexual partners, and videotaping his sexual exploits.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Schiller rejected Berry’s argument for a 10-year sentence and the testimony of forensic psychologist Dr. Sheila Rapa as to Atkinson’s possibilities in treatment. “Despite Dr. Rapa’s analysis and [Atkinson’s] youth, the minimum sentence of 10 years is wholly insensitive to the crimes purported in this case: [Atkinson] sexually assaulted two girls, produced child pornography of them, and solicited countless others,” Schiller said.
Atkinson actually thought the first girl he lured into his van was 13, not 15. They electronically talked across several social media platforms, but virtually met on Twitter in 2022.
What follows comes from Atkinson’s guilty plea, which includes what the Palm Beach Gardens girl — referred to as “Minor Victim 1” or “MV1” — told investigators.
MV1 called him “Bearie” after they met on X back when it was still Twitter. She never knew him as “Malik Atkinson.” On the Discord app, Atkinson/”Bearie” was “unknown_ value#5871.”
Atkinson’s guilty plea includes a Discord conversation from May 4, 2022, during which MV1 tells him she’s 13 and in high school, and Atkinson tries to figure out how they can meet. Her band practice was an impediment as well as her family’s sleeping habits (“Can you sneak out at nights or do they stay up for too long?” “They stay up too long…”).
On May 9, MV1 told Atkinson they can meet at “a small church in the middle of the town that people get picked up a lot so it won’t be super sus plus it doesn’t really matter. It’s like a 5 min walk” from her house.
Atkinson told her, “Now ironically Ima be in a suspicious van lol…”
He also asked, “Wanna try making this a weekly thing? And food wise what do you want. Cus I am nice. I’m not just gonna rape you and make you a — dumpster without like feeding you. That’s horrible lol.”
They met in Atkinson’s 1997 white Chevrolet van with a small red and white logo the next day for the first of four or five times. Before they met, Atkinson agreed to pay MV1 $40. She didn’t collect, then told him not to worry about it.
“Atkinson admitted he recorded the sexual encounters with his cellphone, which he sent to Minor Victim 1,” the guilty plea said. “Atkinson said he and Minor Victim 1 exchanged payments to one another for sexually explicit images and videos that Minor Victim 1 sold of herself. Atkinson gave Minor Victim I access to his CashApp account, including his usermame and password. He said that Minor Victim 1 sold sexually explicit images and videos of herself and directed purchasers of said images and videos to send CashApp payments to Atkinson’s CashApp account.”
What a justice’s upside-down flag means for the Supreme Court
Mike Bebernes – Senior Editor – May 22, 2024
Photo illustration: Alex Cochran for Yahoo News; photos: Getty Images (Photo illustration: Alex Cochran for Yahoo News; photos: Getty Images)
What’s happening
Arecent report that an upside-down flag — a popular symbol of the “Stop the Steal” movement to reject the 2020 presidential results — flew outside the home of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito in the days following the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol has created yet another scandal for a court that was already mired in controversy.
Late last week, the New York Times reported that neighbors had spotted the inverted flag at Alito’s Virginia home in mid-January 2020, just a few days before President Biden was inaugurated. Then on Wednesday, the newspaper published a followup story revealing that a flag featuring a different symbol popular among “Big Lie” proponents had flown outside Alito’s beach house in New Jersey.
The upside-down flag has historically been used as a distress signal by the U.S. military, but in recent decades it has been wielded by a variety of protest movements on both the left and the right. After Biden won the 2020 election, it was adopted by supporters of former President Donald Trump who subscribed to Trump’s lies that the race had been stolen, culminating in a Trump rally where his followers attacked the Capitol building to try to prevent Congress from certifying Biden’s victory.
Alito told the Times that he had “no involvement whatsoever” in flying the inverted flag at his home. It was raised, he said, by his wife in response to yard signs featuring “objectionable and personally insulting language” outside their neighbor’s home.
Legal experts told the Times and other news outlets that the flag was a clear violation of judicial ethics rules, which bar judges from making political statements that might undermine the public’s faith in their ability to be impartial in divisive cases. Unlike other federal courts, though, the Supreme Court enforces its own rules, meaning any response to the flag could only come from the justices themselves.
The judicial code also calls for judges to recuse themselves from cases in which their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” But like the ethics rules, recusal decisions are left up to individual judges. Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, for example, chose not to take part in recent cases challenging Harvard’s admissions procedures because of her involvement at the school both as a student and a member of its board. Though Alito has recused himself as much as any of his colleagues in recent years, he has thus far declined to step aside from cases involving the 2020 election.
Alito isn’t the only conservative justice on the court to face ethical questions related to the “Big Lie.” His colleague Clarence Thomas also faced calls to recuse himself from cases related to the election and Jan. 6, which he ignored, because of his wife’s involvement in efforts to overturn the results.
Thomas has also been at the center of controversy over his friendship with a wealthy conservative political operative, who reportedly brought Thomas along on dozens of lavish vacations over the past several decades. Alito has faced similar questions about his relationship with a different conservative billionaire who later had cases before the Supreme Court. Both justices have asserted that there is nothing improper about their actions. However, the incidents helped prompt the court to adopt a new voluntary ethics code.
Why there’s debate
Democrats have characterized the flag report as yet more evidence that at least two of the Supreme Court’s conservative justices can’t be trusted to fairly rule on anything related to Jan. 6. Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, insisted that both Alito and Thomas recuse themselves from any cases on the issue — including the question of whether Trump has presidential immunity from prosecution, which is currently being considered by the court. Durbin also reiterated his call, echoed by other members of his party, for Congress to pass legally-binding ethics rules for justices.
Some left-leaning legal analysts have gone even further, arguing that Alito’s willingness to have such an inflammatory symbol outside his home is a sign of how the Supreme Court’s conservative majority feels no obligation to display even the appearance of political impartiality.
Judicial experts also worry about how this situation might further erode the public’s faith in the country’s highest court, which has hit record lows in recent years amid a wave of recent scandals and deeply controversial rulings — most notably the decision that overturned abortion rights established by Roe v. Wade.
Some Republicans have said they wish Alito had given more consideration to how the flag might be perceived. But they have roundly rejected suggestions that it indicates he’s incapable of doing his job fairly, arguing that it’s absurd to make the assumption that his wife’s response to a neighborhood spat in any way reflects on his ability to make sound decisions on the court. In the eyes of many conservatives, this controversy — along with broader criticism of conservative justices — is part of a Democratic campaign to pressure the justices into issuing less-conservative rulings or delegitimize the decisions that don’t fit their liberal worldview.
What’s next
Some Senate Democrats have called for an investigation into the flag incident, but Durbin is opposed to the idea, meaning it likely won’t happen.
The court is expected to release decisions in two major Jan. 6 cases — one concerning charges brought against hundreds of people who stormed the Capitol, the other on Trump’s immunity claims — within the next few weeks.
Perspectives
Anyone who is OK with the Big Lie can’t be impartial on Jan. 6 cases
“Who can possibly think he will decide this case in a neutral manner? Of course, Justice Alito’s political leanings were already well-known. But the flag flying incident indicates he has strong views about the facts underlying this case. His decision seems pre-ordained.” — Leslie Levin, University of Connecticut law professor, to Salon
There’s zero reason to question Alito’s ability to rule fairly
“The left wants to tarnish Justice Alito’s reputation, as well as cause him to recuse himself from participating in any case involving Mr. Trump. No such recusal is necessary on ethical or any other grounds. The political views of spouses don’t dictate, or in our experience even influence, how a Justice will rule.” — Editorial, Wall Street Journal
Alito knows that there are no consequences, no matter how openly partisan he is
“The arrogance is bottomless. Why did the Supreme Court justice do this, or allow ‘Mrs. Alito’—on whom he pinned the blame—to do it? He knew it was petty. And he surely knew that, by conventional ethical standards, it was wrong. But he didn’t care because he knew that he stands beyond punishment for such acts.” — Michael Tomasky, New Republic
Liberals have lost the court, so they’ll take any chance to try to tear it down
“There are two transparent purposes of these: to intimidate the justices into trimming their sails for fear of more criticism, and (when that fails) to delegitimize their decisions and lay the groundwork for radical changes to destroy the Court in its longstanding form.” — Dan McLaughlin, National Review
The integrity of the next election is in serious danger with Alito on the court
“After this November’s general election, there are almost certainly going to be further legal challenges to the election results, just as there were in 2020. Alito will be on the court to hear Trump’s arguments in those cases, too. The flag, then, is just the latest reminder of a disturbing reality: that as the Republican party further radicalizes against democracy, the Supreme Court – the body which is tasked with checking these unconstitutional impulses – has become their ally.” — Moira Donegan, Guardian
The court’s critics are trying to turn a nonstory into a national scandal
“If you look hard enough, you can find disturbing symbols anywhere you look, but you must sometimes suspend logic and reason in order to do so. This does not seem like a situation where a sitting Supreme Court justice is supporting overthrowing election results; it looks like a situation where the New York Times is straining to make that the narrative.” — Liz Wolfe, Reason
Alito and Thomas shouldn’t be on the court at all
“There are currently strong grounds to impeach not just Samuel Alito but his fellow benchwarmer Clarence Thomas. Both judges have given evidence of disqualifying corruption as well as of their harboring insurrectionist sentiment.” — Jeet Heer, The Nation
Alito’s wife has every right to express any opinion she wants
“Mrs. Alito has both the constitutional right to express whatever political opinions she pleases, whether I like them or not, as well as a moral right to express them independently of her husband and his position on the court.” — Bret Stephens, New York Times
If I’d pictured Donald Trump’s first criminal trial a few years ago, I’d have imagined the biggest, splashiest story in the world. Instead, as we lurch toward a verdict that could brand the presumptive Republican nominee a felon and possibly even send him to prison, a strange sense of anticlimax hangs over the whole affair.
In a recent Yahoo News/YouGov poll, only 16 percent of respondents said they were following the trial very closely, with an additional 32 percent following it “somewhat” closely. “Those numbers rank as some of the lowest for any recent news event,” wrote Yahoo News’s Andrew Romano. When people were asked how the trial made them feel, the most common response was “bored.” TV ratings tell a similar story. “Network coverage of Donald Trump’s hush money trial has failed to produce blockbuster viewership,” Deadline reported at the end of April. Cable news networks, Deadline said, saw a decline in ratings among those 25 to 54 since the same time last year. At the courthouse last week, I met news junkies who’d lined up at 3 a.m. to get a seat at the trial and maybe score selfies with their favorite MSNBC personalities, but it felt more like wandering into a subcultural fandom than the red-hot center of the zeitgeist. A block or so away, you wouldn’t know anything out of the ordinary was happening.
Perhaps the trial would have captured more of the public’s attention had it been televised, but lack of visuals alone doesn’t explain America’s collective shrug. The special counsel Robert Mueller’s report didn’t have images, either, but when it was published, famous actors like Robert DeNiro, Rosie Perez and Laurence Fishburne starred in a video breaking it down. I’m aware of no similar effort to dramatize this trial’s testimony, and I almost never hear ordinary people talking about it. “Saturday Night Live” tried, last weekend, to satirize the scene at the courthouse with a cold open mocking Trump’s hallway press appearances, but it ended with an acknowledgment of public exhaustion: “Just remember, if you’re tired of hearing about all of my trials, all you’ve got to do is vote for me, and it will all go away.”
It wasn’t a particularly funny line, but it gets at something true that helps explain why this historic trial doesn’t seem like that big a deal. When Trump was president, his opponents lionized lawyers and prosecutors — often in ways that feel retrospectively mortifying — because liberals had faith that the law could restrain him. That faith, however, has become increasingly impossible to sustain.
Mueller punted on the question of whether Trump obstructed justice in trying to impede the Russia probe. The jury in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case found that he committed sexual abuse, but it had little discernible effect on his political prospects. A deeply partisan Supreme Court, still mulling its decision on his near-imperial claims of presidential immunity, has made it highly unlikely that he will face trial before the election for his attempted coup. A deeply partisan judge appointed by Trump has indefinitely postponed his trial for stealing classified documents. With the Georgia election interference case against Trump tied up in an appeal over whether District Attorney Fani Willis should be disqualified over an affair with a member of her team, few expect that trial to start before 2025 — or 2029, if Trump wins the election. And should he become president again, there’s little question that he’ll quash the federal cases against him once and for all.
In theory, the delays in Trump’s other criminal cases should raise the stakes in the New York trial, since it’s the only chance that he will face justice for his colossal corruption before November. But in reality, his record of impunity has created a kind of fatalism in his opponents, as well as outsize confidence among his supporters. In a recent New York Times/Siena poll, 53 percent of voters in swing states said it was somewhat or very unlikely that Trump would be found guilty. That included 66 percent of Republicans but also 42 percent of Democrats.
These voters may be overstating Trump’s chances of an acquittal; many legal experts think the prosecution has an edge. A hopeful possibility, then, is that a guilty verdict will come as a shock to many Americans who have checked out of the news cycle, perhaps giving them pause about putting a criminal in the White House. I wouldn’t count on it, though. In several polls, small but significant shares of Trump supporters said they wouldn’t vote for him if he was a felon, but if recent history is any guide, a vast majority of his supporters will easily rationalize away a conviction. Trump’s minions are already working hard to discredit the proceedings, with House Speaker Mike Johnson calling the trial “corrupt” and a “sham.” It’s worth remembering that the recent embarrassing uproar in a House Oversight Committee meeting, where the Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene insulted a Democratic colleague’s eyelashes, began with Greene’s insinuations about the daughter of the judge in the New York case.
Of course, no matter what Republicans say, Trump can still face prison time if he loses this case. But if he does, he will inevitably appeal, meaning there’s little chance that he’ll be incarcerated before Election Day. It’s not surprising, then, that most people are tuning out the twists and turns of the trial. Whether Trump truly gets his comeuppance is up to the voters, not the jury.
Graduate Ceremony
