Category Archives: History

WINK NEWS

The Lee County Sheriffs Office on Thursday announced they took down one of the largest drug trafficking operations in its history after a months-long investigation.

Sheriff Carmine Marceno said the operation was run by the Cossio family of 170 Avalon Lake Circle in Gateway. Investigators conducted surveillance on the Cossio residence, conducted traffic stops and served several search warrants as a result of the investigation.

Investigators on Wednesday were seen at CLB Autobody & Paint at 4170 Evans Avenue in Fort Myers, which Marceno said was connected to the operation.

Ive always felt super safe, Choe Kent said. I never would have imagined anything like that would have been happening around here.

More than $1 million in cash, 12 firearms and multiple kilograms of cocaine and fentanyl were seized, as were several high-end vehicles Marceno said were bought with proceeds of the operation.

Its just overwhelming to think that stuff like this can happen right next to you, Kent said. I mean, I literally walk, have walked around every street of this neighborhood. Ive walked right by it, so its weird to think about.

Kent says her neighborhood is extremely family friendly. She never would have guessed a family of six in her community would have long rap sheets and now accused of something like this.

The suspects have more than 70 combined prior arrests, mostly related to drugs, Marceno said.

Arrested were:

Gabriel M. Cossio, 60Gabriel M. Cossio Jr., 32Melissa Cossio, 33Jesus F. Cossio, 58Aaron Pruitt, 52Christopher Ramirez, 53

You can watch a replay below or by clicking here.

In court Thursday morning, the prosecution called the entire family a flight risk.

There sheriffs office said the investigation into this operation is still very much active.

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Busted-up drug operation one of biggest in LCSO history, Marceno says - Wink News

Scott Stringer, Elyse Buxbaum, Audrey Gelman, Terry Richardson at the after party for Girls Season 2 held at Capitale, New York City, in January 2013. (Sipa via AP Images)

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Back when Scott Stringer was first running for comptroller in 2013, consent and sexual harassment were not the reigning feminist issues in Democratic politics. Prostitution was much higher on the list: Less than a decade ago, you could still campaign for office in New York City as a champion of womens rights while dismissing the rights and sovereignty of sex workerssay, by exploiting them to embarrass your rival, ex-governor Eliot Spitzer. Stringer was eager to rile up the public about Spitzers lack of integrity, thumping his chest about how he wouldve fired the former prosecutor: He couldnt work in my office.

He could never run that race today, given the mainstreaming of sex-worker decriminalization as a labor and human rights issue for the left.

Post-#MeToo, sexual misconductparticularly in the workplaceis now the metric the mayoral hopeful finds himself up against. After a woman made a public declaration of being forcibly touched by Stringer when she was an unpaid volunteer on his public advocate campaign 20 years ago, much of his institutional and coalition support evaporated within 48 hours.

The merits of the claim aside, the role reversal of sex work and consent as disqualifying issues have seemingly turned 2021 and 2013 into mirror images of each other.

In those heady days, now-disgraced figures like Harvey Weinstein and fashion photographer Terry Richardson were assaulting women at work, calling it a day, and showing up at political fundraisers with no problem. Whereas Weinsteins predation was still mostly an intra-Hollywood open secret without much of a public record, Richardsons was well documented. Nevertheless, Stringer gladly took money from and pictures with Richardson, who was then his press secretarys boyfriend. What we knew about his exploits at the time would be completely disqualifying for any politician to be remotely associated with today. MORE FROM Alexis Grenell

As early as 2009, a writer named Ana had described her experience of being photographed by Richardson in a letter to Jezebel: I felt a dick pressing into the side of my face. Terry Richardsons semi-hard penis was plunged into the outside of my cheek, and he was jabbing it into my face. That same year, a 19-year-old model discussed her experience of being coerced into giving Richardson a violent hand job on set, during an interview with the now-renowned labor rights activist and model Sara Ziff for her documentary Picture This. A subsequent 2010 story in the New York Post quoted a model describing Richardsons MO in gross detail: [He] takes girls who are young, manipulates them to take their clothes off and takes pictures of them they will be ashamed of. They are too afraid to say no because their agency booked them on the job and are too young to stand up for themselves.

Which didnt block Richardson from attending a fundraiser for Stringers comptroller run where Lena Dunhamever eager to pitch herself as a feminist iconpreached to the glittering crowd about electing someone with a record of respecting women. Since then, still more has come to light, and Richardson has been mostly blacklisted by his industry. Stringer has remained mum, hoping that the whole mess would disappear into the recesses of our Twitter-length memories.Current Issue

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His opportunistic attacks on Spitzer as being anti-woman because he paid for sex have similarly faded to black. But as his defenders bemoan the fact that hes been unfairly maligned by a misguided feminism, its worth remembering when Stringer was willing to do the same.

I wrote about this particular nonsense at the time, pointing out that the women Spitzer slept with were well-paid and willing sex workers, and that supposedly standing up for women in their name was incredibly condescending. These were fully consenting adults, not trafficking victims, and some of them were pushing for legalization. Stringer ignored all that, buoyed by the dominant feminist narrative dismissing sex workers as incapable of agency and in need of saving. It was an unbelievably shallow and craven play that worked like a charm. The New York City branch of the National Organization of Women (NOW) invested in an anti-Spitzer PAC, and the political director of Planned Parenthood, Sasha Ahuja, panned Spitzer in favor of candidates that dont just give a nod to womens issues. For what thats worth, Ahuja is now the comanager of Andrew Yangs campaign for mayor. No one for a minute bothered to consider decriminalization of sex work as a valid issue for political discourse.

Recently, I spoke to Caroline Andrews, a former sex worker and contributor to the trailblazing $pread magazine, as well as a close political observer. Her 2008 story about Spitzer and the media framing of sex work is included in the magazines anthology of seminal articles, published by the Feminist Press at the City University of New York.

I had a huge problem at the time with how that was dealt with, she said, reflecting on the narrative around the prostitution scandal. You will find that Scott has been pretty consistently with the NOW folks, and therefore pretty consistently into slut-shaming. Thats what that meansit means being that brand of feminist who is not in favor of womens sexual autonomy, who are not socialists, who certainly dont care about the material reality of non-privileged, nonwhite women. I dont think hes ever shown that thats a politic hes interested in. I dont think hes a progressive hero, or a feminist.

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She went on: Ive always thought of him as a knee-jerk liberal populist that doesnt have any depth and could easily change his position to a different one tomorrow. And so he did, coming around to decriminalization just in time for the mayors race when he scooped up support from the young, lefty women in the legislature driving the discussion.

Many observers are now uncomfortable with the idea that one womans unconfirmed claim could destroy a mans prospects for mayor. But the fact is that Stringer himself has already deployed the kind of surface-level attacks that caused real-world harm in the name of women against many more.

That casual use of feminism for political gain is and was offensive.

Eight years later, its catching up with him.

Read more:

Stringers History of Bad-Faith Feminism - The Nation

Four in five female prisoners in Scotland have a history of significant head injury, with sustained domestic abuse the most likely cause, according to research that experts argue bolsters the case for routine screening of inmates.

The study led by Glasgow University, funded by the Scottish government and published in the Lancet Psychiatry also found that violent criminal behaviour was three times more likely in women with a history of significant head injury, and that these women spent three times longer in prison.

The work adds to a growing body of research on the over-representation of people with brain injuries in the prison population, in particular among women.

Domestic violence was cited by 89% of survey participants who reported repeat head injuries. Two-thirds (66%) reported repeat head injuries over many years, and 40% had an associated disability. A first head injury before the age of 15 was reported by 69% of the women.

Common effects of significant head injury include the impairment of information processing, impulsivity and egocentricity, which can increase the risk of offending. Injuries incurred before adulthood can affect how the brain matures.

For the study, researchers interviewed 109 women around a quarter of Scotlands female prison population between 2018 and 2019 and assessed them for a history of head injury as well as for disability and mental and physical health conditions.

Almost all participants in the study, 95%, reported a history of abuse, with more than half reporting sexual abuse in childhood and 46% reporting sexual abuse in adulthood. A history of alcohol or drug misuse was common, and 92% complained of mental health difficulties, with anxiety and depression the most common.

Tom McMillan, a professor of clinical neuropsychology at Glasgow University and the lead author of the study, said: It is already recognised that women in prison are vulnerable because of histories of abuse and substance misuse. However, this research shows that a history of significant head injury is also a vulnerability and needs to be included when considering mental health needs and in developing criminal justice policy.

We need routine screening to identify women with serious head injuries, and also to educate them, as they often dont realise that repeated knocks have an impact. We know that the Prison Service is considering placement and custody for women more generally, and this really needs to be included in their assessment.

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Four in five female prisoners in Scotland found to have history of head injury - The Guardian

Why? Because for all the chest-thumping toughness so many Americans brag about, apparently white students are too fragile to hear the truth, or see the pictures on prized postcards that treated lynchings as entertainment for the whole family, an indictment of more than a few rogue racists.

Black students, of course, subject to disproportionate school suspensions, stereotypical assumptions from teachers and keen scrutiny by law enforcement on their way to and from, and sometimes in, the classroom, know all too well that the problems they face stretch back 400 years and more. But the laws being passed and pushed in states across the country no surprise dont have them in mind.

For those making and debating these rules,in statessuch as Idaho, Tennessee,Oklahoma, Texas and Arkansas, creating an alternate reality, a version that resembles a Disneyfied diorama, is fine even if it is false, as long as it accommodates white feelings and gives in to white fears.

How will these laws be enforced? Government monitors? Would a fine be imposed if a teacher steps over some vague line? Well, yes,in Arizona,the penalty could be $5,000. If a curious student asks a question, will the teacher no longer be allowed to answer?

The late Rep. John Lewis, brave and persistent, who endured brutal beatings as a consequence of his civil rights activism including his part in the Freedom Rides would seem to be someone Americas students could look up to. But Im doubtful his march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965 would make it past the curriculum censors since his attackers were agents of the state, enforcing unjust laws that prevented African Americans from voting, from living a free life.

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Sorry, but 'Gone With the Wind' is not a history book - Roll Call

About one month after the French vowed to avenge their dead soldiers and retaliate against the British, they surrounded Fort Necessity and fulfilled their pledge.

On May 28, 1754, Lt. Col. George Washington led a small group of men to Jumonville Glen, about one mile from Fort Necessity, and surrounded a French encampment. All of the French soldiers were killed or captured, including their leader, Ensign Coulon de Jumonville. One French soldier escaped to Fort Duquesne in Pittsburgh to gather reinforcements, said park ranger Tom Markwardt.

On July 3, 1754, Jumonvilles brother led a group of 600 French soldiers and 100 Native American allies to Fort Necessity. The French surrounded the British at the Fort, and forced surrender after one day of fighting. The British were permitted to march away, and the French burned the fort July 4.

Markwardt said many locals are aware of the battle, but may not be aware of its implications.

They may not be aware that the battle spread, not only here, but around the world, he said. The last shots of the Seven Years War were fired nine years later in Manila in the Philippines.

The battle at Fort Necessity is considered a prelude to the French and Indian War, a part of the Seven Years War.

Fort Necessity was not built for battle, but for supplies. Markwardt said one of the questions visitors ask him most often is Why is the fort so small?

It was built, basically, commensurate with the size of the unit that was defending it, and it was not intended to be a manned fort at all, he said. It was basically a supply depot that Washington had built for the Forks of the Ohio, where Pittsburgh sits today.

Separated by decades in time but less than a mile in space is the Mount Washington Tavern, a National Road-era tavern located adjacent to Fort Necessity.

It was a tavern during the heyday of the National Road, which was built in the early 1800s, Markwardt said.

The tavern was a stagecoach stop, which was a high-end type of tavern along the National Road contracted by stagecoach lines.

The Mount Washington Tavern contracted with the Good Intent Line in Uniontown, and the Farmington tavern was the first stop headed east from Uniontown. Stagecoach taverns were located about 12 miles apart, because horses could only travel about that distance.

Stagecoaches were the fastest way to travel in the early 19th Century, Markwardt said, because horses could be rotated at the stagecoach stops and eliminate the need for extended rest periods. Only wealthier travelers used stagecoaches.

Stagecoach taverns were typically used for meal breaks instead of overnight stops, he said. They also served other functions, such as mail drop-offs for the U.S. Postal Service and polling places.

They were places where people would meet and discuss events of the day, he said. They were busy, newsy places.

The tavern was built in 1830 by Judge Nathaniel Ewing and sold to James Sampey in 1840, who operated the tavern with his family.

The National Road was dotted with stagecoach taverns in the 1800s, with many stagecoach lines contracting with taverns along the road.

A lot of those taverns, you can still see today as you drive up and down 40, Markwardt said

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Fort Necessity steeped in history | Special Sections | heraldstandard.com - Uniontown Herald Standard

Joe Bidens new stimulus package includes provisions for a Child Allowance that economists estimate could cut child poverty in the United States by half. The allowancepaid out in monthly installments of $300 per month for each child under the age of 5, and $250 per month for older children has champions on both the Left and the Right. The policy takes its cues from an even more generous proposal drafted by Mitt Romney, known as The Family Security Act.

Despite bipartisan interest in reducing child poverty, Republican lawmakers, including Mike Lee and Marco Rubio, have dismissed Child Allowances by claiming that an essential part of being pro-family is being pro-work, and warning that the monthly allowances will discourage parents from seeking paid employment.

That fear, however, is substantially unfounded: the allowance is neither enough to live on, nor is it tied to wages, so the benefit is not depleted by earned income. But the fact that such a fear exists is telling. It is a fear that categorically separates family and work, and revolves around the assumption that the only forms of valuable labor deserving of compensation are those performed outside the home. That is, the only forms of valuable labor are those performed in spheres not traditionally associated with womenand women of color in particularas care work is in the US.

By offering monetary benefits to parents of young children, the Child Allowance has the potential to help challenge assumptions around the meaning and value of work. One of the bigger symbolic purposes of the child allowance is to say the work a parent does is validits valid as work, Samuel Hammond, director of poverty and welfare policy at the center-right Niskanen Center, told the New York Times. I do think its a market failure in capitalist economies that there isnt a parenting wage.

The socialist feminist leader Crystal Eastman came to that conclusion a century ago. At the time, Child Allowances were known as Motherhood Endowments, and were a part of Eastmans vision for womens economic and social equality. Eastman (18811928) was a labor lawyer, peace activist, socialist, and radical suffragist who, among other achievements, drafted the first workers compensation legislation in the United States (~1910); co-founded the Congressional Union for Womens Suffrage (1913), and the Womens International League for Peace and Freedom (1915); co-founded the ACLU (1920); and co-authored the original Equal Rights Amendment (1923).

She wrote in 1920:

What is the problem of womens freedom? It seems to me to be this: how to arrange the world so that women can be human beings, with a chance to exercise their infinitely varied gifts in infinitely varied ways, instead of being destined by the accident of their sex to one field of activityhousework and child-raising. And second, if and when they choose housework and child-raising, to have that occupation recognized by the world as work, requiring a definite economic reward and not merely entitling the performer to be dependent on some man.

The idea of a Motherhood Endowment as a conduit to personal freedom through economic empowerment, which would allow a woman to support herself and her children, without forced dependency on a man, based on wages earned for the real and necessary work of childrearing, stood in radical opposition to the argumentsand statutesthat underpinned Mothers Pensions, state-level grants made to single mothers in the United States between 1911 and 1935.

Eligibility for the Pensions, and the amounts they offered, varied from state to state, but most states required that applicants be deserving mothers who are without the support of the normal breadwinner. Therefore, it was necessary that recipients be either widowed or abandoned, or in the case that they were married, that their husbands be incapacitated, either physically or mentally.

The goal of these pensions was to keep women in the home, and in the role of caregiver. In most states, mothers who received the grants had to agree to give up outside work, on the grounds that children became delinquent because their working mothers could not care for them. The rationale was that women and children ought to be supported, and in exchange for such support, needy mothers were expected to display their natural dependency, and prove their moral rectitude. The implication was the opposite of Eastmans assertion that childcare was a form of work, as equal and necessary as any other: that work outside the home disrupted womens natural role as dependent caregivers, and should be discouraged by state aid.

These prevailing social attitudes that women belonged in the home, that they were naturally dependent on men, and that only certain categories of morally fit women deserved the attention of the State, were part of a host of issues that Eastman believed she and her radical feminist colleagues needed to fight against in the wake of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment (womens suffrage).

Eastman maintained that the vote itself was not enough to bring political, social and economic equality to American women. Indeed, she saw the suffrage victory as too narrow, and noted that because mainstream feminists like Alice Paul had hushed up subjects like birth control and the rights of Negro women during the battle for the ballot, American women who had fought for the vote could not be congratulating ourselves that the feminist movement had begun in America. As it is all we can say is that the suffrage movement is ended.

In her landmark 1920 essay, Now We Can Begin, published in The Liberator, a Journal of Revolutionary Progress, which she founded and edited with her brother, Max Eastman, she laid out a four-fold platform for what the beginning of egalitarian American feminism might look like: a balance of work, life, and labor both inside and outside the home.

The first pillar of her platform was freedom of occupational choice and equal pay. Second was a revolution in the early training and education of both boys and girls, so that it would be considered womanly as well as manly to earn your own living, to stand on your own feet, and manly as well as womanly to know how to cook and sew and clean and take care of yourself in the ordinary exigencies of life.

This feminist education was needed because women, who had in reality been working outside the home for generations, saw their labor doubled when their male partners did not share domestic responsibilities. These bread-winning wives, she wrote, have not yet developed homemaking husbands. Instead the woman simply adds running the home to her regular outside job. Equality meant not only opening up all avenues of traditional paid employment to women, but also dignifying and sharing the burden and joy of all labor, including domestic labor and childcare.

Her vision was strikingly egalitarian, and thereby aimed not only at empowering women, but also at creating parity between men and womenand between anyone who chose to engage in care work and anyone who did not. Of Domestic Science, she wrote in 1924, why not welcome the idea of a compulsory course but insist that it be generalfor boys and girls alike? That way, those who like it, of either sex, can take it up as a trade. Her point was that all people should be equally prepared, and equally free, to make choices around what type of personal and professional lives they wished to lead.

Accordingly, the third pillar of her program was voluntary motherhood, access to birth control and information about family planning. Birth control she maintained, is just as elementary an essential in our propaganda as equal pay, because, birth control, like equal pay, was a labor issue. Birth control afforded women, some freedom of occupational choice; those who do not wish to be mothers will not have an undesired occupation thrust upon them by accident, and those who do wish to be mothers may choose in a general way how many years of their lives they will devote to the occupation of childraising.

Eastman had two children with her second husband, Walter Fuller. The family practiced Marriage Under Two Roofs, wherein Crystal lived with her children and supported them, and Walter kept a separate apartment. As a voluntary mother and a breadwinner, Crystal Eastman recognized that raising children was both an act of love and an occupation, which a woman might choose, just as she might choose any other occupation. That recognition brought Eastman to the fourth feature of her four-pronged program of equality: the Motherhood Endowment. She wrote:

It seems that the only way we can keep mothers free, at least in a capitalist society, is by the establishment of a principle that the occupation of raising children is peculiarly and directly a service to society, and that the mother upon whom the necessity and privilege of performing this service naturally falls is entitled to an adequate economic reward from the political government. It is idle to talk of real economic independence for women unless this principle is accepted.

Some women in the socialist feminist and pro-birth control movements at the time, including the activist, nurse, and educator Margaret Sanger, saw childrearing not only as a service to society, but as an unpaid service to the capitalist class, which actively blocked access to information about birth control because it relied on working-class women to produce large families so that their children could in turn staff sweatshops. A womans struggle for control of her body was, in a literal sense, a struggle over the means of production.

Eastmans claim that childrearing was a valid form of work, and that there should be definite economic rewards for ones work when it happens to be home-making, was broader than that: she saw that a motherhood endowment could help ensure equal pay, because it would remove justification for the family wage paid to men on the assumption that men were supporting their families while women were not. Further, she believed that the motherhood endowment would free women from the dependent state of performing unpaid labor, arguing, along with her National Womens Party colleague Doris Stevens, that the home-keeping, child-rearing wife shared a working-partners claim on the family income that her household labor helped make possible.

What separated her from so many other feminist thinkers of her generation, was that she saw womens desire for fulfillment on many frontsthrough love and sex, through paid work, and through familyas equally natural, and equally valid. She wrote in 1918:

Feminists are not nuns. That should be established. We want to love and to be loved, and most of us want children, one or two at least. But we want our love to be joyous and freenot clouded with ignorance and fear. And we want our children to be deliberately, eagerly called into being, when we are at our best, not crowded upon us in times of poverty and weakness.

Because she understood that many women wanted children at the same time they wanted economic freedom, she believed the feminist movement would need to reconcile those two objectives. If the feminist program goes to pieces on the arrival of the first baby, she wrote it is false and useless. The motherhood endowment, coupled with access to birth control, offered an answer here too: it could free women not only from unwanted, unpaid labor, but also free women to embrace motherhoodwhen they wanted to.

There is strong evidence that Crystal Eastman was absolutely right: consider that American women are currently having fewer children than theyd like, and that Canada, which offers a more generous child allowance than the one included in Bidens newest aid package, has a higher proportion of women in the labor force. Neither of these Child Allowance policies reaches the level of compensation that Crystal Eastman envisioned, a level that would make childrearing a fully compensated vocation for any parent who wished it.

We have not yet fully realized any of the four pillars of Eastmans equality program. More than 100 years ago, she wrote in Now We Can Begin that with a generous endowment of motherhood provided by legislation, with all laws against voluntary motherhood and education in its methods repealed, with the feminist ideal of education accepted in home and school, and with all special barriers removed in every field of human activity, there is no reason why woman should not become almost a human thing.

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The Feminist History of Child Allowances - JSTOR Daily

According to information provided and compiled by SmartMLS, Inc., as of May 3, there were 29 single-family homes on the market, from a 2,018-square-foot, three-bedroom 1760 colonial on 4.1 acres, listed for $195,900, to a 2,416-square-foot, four-bedroom 1845 colonial on 33 acres, with a pool and pool house, listed for $1.899 million. Three multifamily homes were available: a 906-square-foot two-bedroom for $368,500; a 2,434-square-foot two-bedroom for $449,900; and a 5,600-square-foot five-bedroom for $724,900. One condominium was on the market, a 546-square-foot one-bedroom, for $125,000, as was one rental, a 3,159-square foot, four-bedroom house, for $18,000 a month.

Prices are up across the board. The median sale price for a single-family home during the 12-month period ending May 3 was $392,500, up from $356,000 during the previous 12 months. The median price for a multifamily home was $313,750, up from $277,500. The median sale price for a condominium was $145,000, up from $127,500. And the median monthly rental was $1,500, up from $1,400.

Because of its variety of housing, Woodbury is more socioeconomically diverse than many of its Litchfield County neighbors. Mr. Drakeley, a lifelong resident, said the community is a mix of families who have stayed for generations and transplants from New York City, Westchester County and more built-up places nearby, like Southbury, Watertown and Waterbury. Ms. Perkinson described Woodbury as having a hometown feel, where everybody knows everybody.

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Woodbury, Conn.: Peace and Rustic Beauty, With a Sense of History - The New York Times

"Rising again, Avery carefully folded the pages in her hand, and crossed to the door. This time, when her hand closed on the brass handle, the rage was steady and cool. She'd been a lot of things in her life, some legal, some questionable"

If you don't know the name Selena Montgomery, here's a hint: It's the pen name of a bestselling author who has written eight romance novels, and now, her first thriller.

And this book, "While Justice Sleeps," bears her real name: Stacey Abrams.

"I don't remember not writing," said Abrams. "I think as soon as I learned to read and write, I was hard at it.

"I think people will be surprised. If they don't know that I've written fiction before, they will be surprised," she said.

And yet, it really shouldn't surprise anyone that this 47-year old Yale-educated tax lawyer, longtime Georgia politician and voting rights activist could dream up a complicated plot that involves gene therapy, a corrupt American President and a female Supreme Court law clerk.

"48 Hours" correspondent Erin Moriarty asked, " How do you have time for not only just writing these books but the research that's involved?"

"I'm the daughter of a research librarian," Abrams replied. "I grew up not only writing, but learning how to research, learning how to dive in and think strategically about how to learn new things."

"Your main character is always a woman of color who's smart and gutsy and cool under pressure in short, Stacey Abrams?"

"Well, I try to emulate my characters, and I try to have my characters reflect who I am," she said.

Abrams grew up in Mississippi and then Georgia. Her parents, who both became Methodist ministers later in life, encouraged their six children to have high aspirations big dreams that sometimes ran into hard reality. In 1991, Abrams as valedictorian of her high school class was invited to meet the Governor of Georgia.

"My parents and I arrived on the MARTA bus, because we didn't have a car," she recalled. "We go up the driveway of the Governor's Mansion. We get to the guard gate, and the guard stops us and tells us we don't belong there, that it's a private event. My dad says, 'No, this is my daughter, Stacey. We have an invitation.' But the guard doesn't ask for my invitation that my mom has. And I remember watching him watch the bus pull off."

"Weren't you mortified?" asked Moriarty.

"Oh, absolutely. And if my mother had not had my arm in a death grip, I would have been back on that bus. I think two things happened that day. One, they were not going to let me be denied this honor that I'd achieved. But two, I think they wanted me to see my responsibility is to not let someone else tell me who I am and where I belong."

She has never forgotten that lesson.

In 2006, Abrams won a seat as a Democrat in the Georgia Assembly, and became the first female minority leader of her party. In 2018, she hoped to go back to the Governor's Mansion by running for Governor. Her opponent was Brian Kemp, at the time, the Georgia Secretary of State who ran the election. He won the Governor's race by less than two percentage points.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, during his time as Secretary of State, Kemp purged 1.5 million voters from election rolls. Kemp says he was eliminating ineligible voters to protect the integrity of the election. Abrams claims, by doing that, Kemp stole the election.

In her speech after Election Night, Abrams said, "I acknowledge that former Secretary of State Brian Kemp will be certified as the victor in the 2018 Gubernatorial election. But to watch an elected official who claims to represent the people in this state badly pin his hopes for election on the suppression of the people's democratic right to vote has been truly appalling."

Moriarty asked, "You know that some people say, 'Then what is the difference between Stacey Abrams not conceding an election in 2018, and President Trump not conceding an election two years later?"

"Words matter," Abrams replied. "What I have fought for, and what I have said consistently, what even they will admit those who are unhappy with me is that I never once filed a challenge to make myself Governor of Georgia. I have always ever fought to make certain that every vote got counted and every person got included."

"Were you angry after the election?"

"Oh yes. I did the stages of grief. I spent a lot of time in anger. That was my favorite stage! I came back several times, built a small condo!"

And then, you might say, Abrams got even. She started Fair Fight, a voter registration group that is widely credited with helping President Joe Biden win the state of Georgia in the 2020 election, and in a runoff election held on January 5, put two new Democrats in the U.S. Senate. It was no coincidence, said Abrams, that one day later, protestors stormed the U.S. Capitol, some carrying the Confederate flag.

"That flag has always been a declaration of domestic terrorism against communities they thought were not worthy of being able to call themselves citizens," Abrams said. "And so, yes, there is absolutely a through line from what we accomplished in Georgia to what happened on January 6th."

The wins were also the impetus for new election laws pushed by Republicans in state legislatureswhich Abrams says are really designed to deny poor and older voters of color a voice in elections.

Abrams told Moriarty, "You earlier said people take voting for granted. When you've never had to think about the hardship of voting, then yes, these conversations on voter suppression seem absurd to you.

When you have never spent more than seven minutes in line, it is nearly impossible to imagine that there are poor Black people who stand in line for eight hours, miss an entire day's wages, risk losing their jobs simply to cast a ballot in an election that may or may not have any benefit in their lives."

Ensuring that right to vote may someday help Abrams achieve her greatest dream: running for President.

"DO I hold it as an ambition? Absolutely," she said. "And even more importantly, when someone asks me if that's my ambition, I have a responsibility to say yes, for every young woman, every person of color, every young person of color, who sees me and decides what they're capable of based on what I think I am capable of. Again, it's about you cannot have those things you refuse to dream of."

With Georgia, Florida and most recently Texas passing laws that limit voting, Abrams is expanding Fair Fight's efforts around the country. She has a virtual book tour planned for her new novel, and of course more books to write. Which leaves little time for anything else...

Moriarty asked, "How do you have any time for a personal life?"

"Well, let's be clear. So, Fair Fight, there's also the Southern Economic Advancement Project, there's Fair Count, there's writing..."

"Alright, you're making my point for me!"

"Here's my point: I would love to give priority to my personal life," Abrams said. "The last year has made that a little less possible. I was dating someone before the pandemic hit. It ended before the pandemic did."

"Because you were so busy? Because you didn't have enough time?"

"That was the complaint."

"And also, you are a very public person."

"He also found that a bit distracting, yes. That said, hopefully there is another guy out there for whom those are not disqualifiers."

"Is that one of your goals?"

"Yes," Abrams replied. "It's nice to like somebody and to have somebody like you. I wrote a lot of books about it!"

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Story produced by Ed Forgotson and Robin Sanders. Editor: David Bhagat.

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Stacey Abrams on writing herself into the story and history - CBS News

Tortilla Flat, though an integral part of Arizonas development, has a long history of human suffering from floods to fires leading it to being inhabited and abandoned by many. The small towns beginnings date back to the Apache Tribe who first inhabited the area. It was then discovered by Jesuit missionaries exploring the Superstition Mountains known for their hidden gold in the Lost Dutchman Mine. Tortilla Flat legend says that the same Jesuit priest who led the St. Xavier Mission was one of the richest missionaries in the New World and knew of the now legendary treasure stash even before miner Jacob Waltz, who is said to have found the mine.

READ ALSO: 15 must-see places for an Arizona road trip

The better-known history of Tortilla Flat begins when settlers began to visit Tortilla Flat when cattleman would drive cattle from the Tonto Basin to the Phoenix stockyards. Around the same time, it became a Freight and supply depot for those building the Roosevelt Dam thanks to its convenient location, access to water and flat space. After the Roosevelt Dam was built providing the water that allowed Phoenix to become the agricultural hub it is now settlers continued to stay at Tortilla Flat for almost 10 years, transitioning it from a freight stop to a town after the dam was completed.

The stagecoach burned, but because of its beautiful scenery, Tortilla Flat became a tourist destination and revenue center. Unfortunately, many of the original buildings were washed away in the flood of 1942 but todays country store, which was built during the 1930s, remained. The town then moved to the other side of the road and continued on, with the old Gold Dust Motel and the second iteration of the town restaurant. However, many people left Tortilla Flat at this time due to the difficulty of having to rebuild the town.

While many full-time residents left, the town had several owners during this time who maintained Tortilla Flat as a popular tourist destination, eventually converting it into a Western-themed destination in the 1970s. A short time later, in 1987, tragedy struck again when a fire burned down the restaurant and motel. The restaurant was rebuilt, but the motel never was. Instead, there is now the mercantile near where it once stood. While much of the original Tortilla Flat has had to be rebuilt due to natural disasters, parts of the original 19th century beginnings like the original water tower and trough remain. These relics serve as a reminder of the water accessibility that first put the town on the map with Western settlers and made Tortilla Flat an integral part in making Phoenix the thriving metropolis it is today, thanks to the water provided by the Roosevelt Dam.

Today, the town is under new ownership led by Katie Ellering. Since her and her partners ownership of the town in September 2019, they have experienced much of the same chaos and calamity that has plagued Tortilla Flat since the start two major wildfires, a flood, and a pandemic. However, the new owners are committed to helping Tortilla Flat withstand its next 100 years with careful restoration and infrastructure upgrades. Visitors can visit for camping, boating and hiking in the Tonto National Forest and stop by Tortilla Flats mercantile, Superstition Saloon & Restaurant, country store and museum which highlights all the history of the town.

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From floods to fires the history of Tortilla Flat - AZ Big Media

If youre reading this after the midterm elections, its either because Democrats were right that they could buck the historical trends and keep their House majorityor its because they were spectacularly wrong.

The man in charge of defending House Democrats is confident it will be the former, thanks to strong economic growth and a competent COVID response. And whats more, he thinks Republicans are betting everything on a historical trend that isnt going to play out.

I got it, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told The Daily Beast this week during a phone interview. Theres a precedent that says you lose a couple of seats. But what is clear to me is that the Republicans think theres nothing about their brand they need to change in swing districts, and I just think theyre wrong about that.

But the precedent is much worse than a couple of seats. On average, the presidents party has lost 30 House seats in modern midterm elections. The trend is even worse during the presidents first midterm election. In 2018, Republicans lost 41 seats under President Donald Trump. In 2010, Democrats lost 63 seats in what President Barack Obama termed a shellacking.

Democrats might also be starting the 2022 cycle from a place of subtraction. While redistricting might not cost Democrats as many seats as they once feared, they still probably begin the midterms by losing two to five seats, depending on how aggressively some statesparticularly Texas and New Yorkchoose to gerrymander.

Additionally, some of the Democrats strongest House incumbents in vulnerable seatsConor Lamb (PA), Tim Ryan (OH), Charlie Crist (FL), Cheri Bustos (IL), and Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ)are either retiring or running for a higher office, potentially opening the door for a Republican to claim their seat.

But Democrats think a booming economy, a popular president, and a competent government response to coronavirus could blunt all of those potential losses, perhaps even cause Democrats to gain seats. And Maloney sees Republicans making some major tactical mistakes.

Doubling down on Trump without Trump, which is an even more toxic and malignant form of conspiracy theories and white supremacy, is just a dumb strategy in swing districts, Maloney said. But I think theyre so confident in the precedent that they forgot to bring a plan and they forgot to bring any policies that might justify winning back the majority.

In contrast, Maloney and other Democratic strategists say Democrats have a winning message on the economy, which they believe will be humming come the midterm elections. (Maloney theorized that itd be growing at 7 percent.) And Democratic strategists noted that Republicans may have made a misstep on the $1.9 trillion COVID relief package, allowing it to pass without a single GOP vote.

While we focus on delivering, they are going to focus on dividing, Maloney said. And thats why you see them trying to exploit issues that support mass racial justice for short-term political gain, or issues as silly as childrens books or Mr. Potato Head, because they are a party without ideas in search of pockets of frustration to exploit.

Its the combination of Trump and the Trump era, the insurrection, and the opposition to the rescue plan that has left them underwater by nearly 20 points.

Jesse Lee, Democratic strategist

Maloney added that the GOPs game plan seemed to be to vote no on everything Democrats put forward on the economy, on infrastructure, and on the coronavirus pandemic, sprinkle in a host of culture war items that seem to be motivating Republicans more than ever, literally root for the president to fail, and then somehow win.

For the record, the National Republican Congressional Committee sees it going very differently. They think Democrats are putting forth an agenda that Americans will enthusiastically reject. And they suggested that Democrats werent taking the historical trends nearly seriously enough, noting that Republicans still lost seats with a relatively strong economy in 2018.

If the clowns at the DCCC don't see how much trouble they are in, they are just as delusional now as they were last cycle, NRCC communications director Michael McAdams said in a statement to The Daily Beast. Sean Patrick Maloney's tenure as DCCC Chairman has been an unmitigated disaster and House Democrats have embraced a toxic socialist agenda that wants to raise taxes, defund the police and open our borders.

Maloneys limited tenure has been, to this point, mixed.

Democrats just had their best off-year fundraising for the first quarter ever. The DCCC raised $15.6 million in March alone, and Democratic frontlinersthe most vulnerable membershave already raised more than $20 million, ending the first quarter with more than $48 million cash on hand.

And the 54-year-old Maloney said recruiting candidates had been going well, due in part to the frustration some Democrats felt watching the Capitol be sacked by insurrectionists.

But theres also been missed opportunities.

Their decision not to play in a Texas special election seat last month appeared short-sighted after the top vote-getting Democrat missed second place by 355 votesresulting in a Republican v. Republican runoff election later this year.

Democrats have fallen on their face at every turn this cycle.

Michael McAdams, NRCC communications director

A Democratic strategist who asked to remain anonymous to be more candid about that outcome noted to The Daily Beast that if Democrats knew it would only have taken a little bit of money or help on the ground to turn out the vote, they would of course made a small investmentif only to make sure Republicans had to spend in the runoff itself. And this strategist also said there could be a chilling effect for candidate recruitment, as the DCCC looks to entice the best possible candidates to upend their lives and run for Congress.

The NRCC was also more than happy to point to the Texas special election as a failure for Maloneyas well as the legal challenges Democrats funded to the tune of $1.4 million trying to litigate a seat in Iowa that was decided by six votes.

Democrats have fallen on their face at every turn this cycle, McAdams, the NRCC spokesman, said.

Maloney, however, vigorously defended the DCCCs decision not to spend in the Texas special election.

The point is not to come in second or third; the point is to win, Maloney said. So if I thought there was an argument to winning that seat, we wouldve invested in it. Simple as that.

For one, he said, the DCCC wasnt prepared to pick a favorite among the Democratic candidates running. But for another, unlike the Republicans, Democrats decided not to spend on a seat that is already tilting in the GOPs favorand would likely only get redder as Texas goes through its partisan redistricting process.

That may disappoint people or cause certain second-guessing, Maloney said. But I think that one of the big takeaways from the last cycle was that the battlefield was too big and that we need to be more focused.

Democratic strategist Jesse Lee told The Daily Beast that focusing on the Texas special electionwhile a favorite activity among Beltway reporters and strategistswould really have little impact on the 2022 election. And if Democrats had spent there and gotten a Democrat into the runoff, then everyone wouldve been lamenting that they chose one candidate over another.

Just as Maloney did, Lee mentioned that the midterms where the party in charge gained seats seemed to come in reaction to major criseslike 9/11 and the Great Depression.

And Lee noted that there was a clear narrative developing, on the economy and on COVID, where Republicans were positioning themselves as part of the problem and against the solution.

Its the combination of Trump and the Trump era, the insurrection, and the opposition to the rescue plan that has left them underwater by nearly 20 points, Lee said of the GOP approval rating. In elections that are more and more nationalized, especially in the House, a lot of voters will be making a choice between two parties as much as theyre making a choice between two candidates.

Other Democratic strategists noted that theyve had success tying Republicans to the most extreme factions of the party, such as QAnon, insurrectionists, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). And they didnt see much risk in overplaying their hand by, say, trying to tie those elements of the party to more moderate and vulnerable members like Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA).

As one Democratic strategist noted, even the most moderate Republicans wont speak out against whatever controversy Taylor Greene is kicking up day-to-day.

And then, of course, there is the latest GOP controversy surrounding No. 3 House Republican Liz Cheney. Strategists said this would further cement the Republican brand and make it easier to show in those suburban, affluent, and educated districts that Democrats turned blue in 2018 that this isnt your fathers GOP.

House Republicans are entrenched in their own infighting, choosing to shamelessly oust Liz Cheney for telling the truth about the results of the presidential election while ushering in political opportunist Elise Stefanik, who peddles dangerous conspiracies about the results of the election for her own political gain, Maloney said.

DCCC spokesperson Helen Kalla further went after Stefanik and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) for showing what Republicans really stand for.

Elise Stefaniks evolution from refusing to even say Trumps name to becoming one of his staunchest defenders shows that pushing the Big Lie is a prerequisite for membership in todays GOP, Kalla said. McCarthy and House Republicans are making their message clearlie to the American people or get out of the way for someone who will.

Still, Republicans point to their strong reputation on the economy. And they believe that the potent culture issues, combined with the strong historical trends, will propel Republicans to the majority. Not a single GOP incumbent, after all, lost their House seat in 2020, despite Democrats winning the White House and believing theyd pick up an additional dozen districts.

And yet Maloney has an answer for that, too. He said the smaller battlefield to defend, combined with the historical trend already being bucked in 2020 with Democratic losses, could lead to pickups for his party. But he acknowledges that the game plan does ride on a strong economy.

If the economy succeeds and people feel it, then just think about it, Maloney said. Their argument depends on either deceiving people about the president and the Democrats success, or trying to talk it down in a way, and I just think thats a mistake.

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History Says House Dems Are Doomed in 2022. The Top Campaign Dem Thinks Otherwise - The Daily Beast