Mitch Perry - page 517

Hillsborough County Commissioner Kevin Beckner’s request for a federal probe into allegations that a Tampa homeless shelter has been exploiting workers was met with a furious denunciation today by the shelter’s CEO, Tom Atchison, at the Board of County Commissioners meeting this morning. “We need to stop this nonsense,” he said, referring to the series of stories originally reported on this week by the Tampa Bay Times‘ Will Hobson. They allege that Atchison has been exploiting residents staying in his…

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At this time of year, there’s always a bit of interest in speculation over who our last standing American newsmagazine, Time, will choose as its Person of the Year. A year ago the newsweekly tabbed Argentina-born Pope Francis with that honor. Coming in second was government whistleblower Edward Snowden. In Laura Poitras’ electrifying new documentary Citizenfour (now playing exclusively at AMC Veterans 24 in Tampa), we go back in time to June of 2013 to rediscover why Snowden was almost as big as the pope…

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There was a protest regarding the lack of an indictment in the Michael Brown/Ferguson case on the USF campus in Tampa yesterday, and organizers are planning a similar demonstration this Friday night at Curtis Hixon Park. Reverberations regarding the rioting that occurred in Ferguson last week after officer Darren Wilson was not indicted continue every day out in the streets, as well as in the more comfortable confines of cable news and in opinion columns. That includes a furious backlash in…

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This Thursday night the Pinellas County Democratic Executive Committee will choose on whether or not they want to retain their current chair Mark Hanisee, or go in a different direction and support his challenger, vice-chair Susan McGrath. Hanisee was initially elected in 2010, and won re-election in 2012. And there is a possibility of another candidate getting in the contest as well. Although 2014 was a brutal year for Democrats, Pinellas County Dems had one small but important victory that…

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A task force assembled by Florida Democratic Party chair Allison Tant in the wake of the midterm election debacle for Democrats had their first meeting on Tuesday, and the thoughts of the two co-chairs were illuminating. “We know we have to take a critical look at ourselves internally,” acknowledged former Orlando police chief and Co-Chair Val Demings in a conference call with reporters immediately after the group convened for the first time. “And then really come out going into 2016…

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A new report says that two-year and four-year degrees are “little more than modern myths” considering how few students actually finish their degrees in that amount of time. The study from Complete College America says that in American higher education, it’s become the accepted standard to measure graduation rates at four-year colleges on a six-year time frame, and evaluations of two-year community colleges are now based on three-year graduation rates. Is that terribly horrible? What about the quality of the education…

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A group of constitutional experts will offer testimony Tuesday to the House Judiciary Committee and Chairman Bob Goodlatte on President Obama’s recent executive order regarding immigration. U.S. Rep. Goodlatte has said the witnesses would include “several legal scholars on the unconstitutionality of the executive actions.” But in a conference call organized by the liberal Center for American Progress, two constitutional scholars not invited to the hearings say that Obama’s orders do pass constitutional muster. Noting a section that a section…

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