lframerica.com Blog

What is it with our Government officials? It’s no wonder they don’t want to close the borders, would short the supply and demand.

WJLA 

March 14, 2008 - Columbia, S.C.

A former South Carolina treasurer and millionaire developer convicted in a cocaine case won a reduced sentence of 10 months in prison on Friday in part for his insight about the drug scene in Charleston. Thomas Ravenel, who admitted he has used the drug since he was 18, has a chance to have his sentence trimmed even more. The judge, skeptical of prosecutors’ assertions that Ravenel had significantly helped authorities, agreed to give attorneys five months to present more evidence before the former political star goes to prison.

Defense attorneys had argued that the first-time offender should receive no prison time, while prosecutors agreed to a reduced sentence.

Ravenel, 45, had faced as many as 20 years in prison and up to a $1 million fine for a federal charge of conspiracy to possess cocaine with the intent to distribute.

He was ordered to pay a $221,000 fine and an additional $28,000 to the state as reimbursement for the special legislative session to elect his successor.

Ravenel apologized to his family and the state during Friday’s hearing at federal court in Columbia.

He told the judge he’s “using this crisis as an opportunity to turn my life around. I brought embarrassment being a public official to this state. I’m going to spend the rest of my life making amends.”

The Republican, who resigned about a month after he was indicted in June, has admitted purchasing cocaine from several different people and said he used the drug as often as once a week. After his indictment, he spent a month each in rehabilitation facilities in Arizona and New Mexico.

Prosecutors have not disputed that Ravenel bought the drug to share with friends and never sold it himself.

Ravenel’s long history with drugs was revealed when U.S. District Judge Joseph F. Anderson Jr. read a report from the federal investigation.

He said Ravenel had admitted he first tried cocaine in 1981. By the time he started at the state’s military college The Citadel, he also has tried LSD and later experimented with Ecstasy. But the cocaine use continued, escalating in the run-up to Ravenel’s election as state treasurer in November 2006, the judge read.

Family members and business colleagues testified on Ravenel’s behalf, urging the judge not to give him any prison time.

“Our office desperately needs his presence,” Renee Ravenel Brockinton, his sister and business partner, told the judge. “There are a large number of employees dependent on him.”

Arthur Ravenel, his father and a former state senator and congressman, said before the hearing his son seemed to be doing fine, spending Thursday in Myrtle Beach looking at development sites.

Co-defendant Michael Miller was sentenced to 10 months in prison on Friday. Miller, 26, of Charleston, had pleaded guilty to two federal drug charges and admitted selling drugs to Ravenel and another man.

Miller faced up to 40 years in prison but received a reduced sentence for cooperating with authorities. His attorney said he would be credited for already serving about three months in jail.

Some of the information Ravenel provided led to the indictment of a man still on the run from federal authorities, prosecutors have said. In September, a bench warrant was issued for Pasquale Pellicoro, a Charleston-area wine expert, after he failed to show up for a court appearance on a conspiracy charge.

The Italian citizen had not been asked to surrender his passport, so he could have left the country, prosecutors have said.

Written By MEG KINNARD

March 10, 2008

In what seems a logical option. South Carolina is considering a house bill that would require anyone registering to vote to show a passport, birth certificate or other naturalization documents.

This bill would protect elections by ensuring illegal immigrants or other noncitizens are unable to cast ballots. This is a good thing, yet there are some who feel it is a hassle for people who might vote for democrats.  A pointless argument really as people will vote for whomever they wish to vote for, but having someone vote who isn’t a citizen and who is in this country illegally makes no logical sense and is a breach to the country security.

This bill would apply only to those who are registering to vote and not to voters already on the rolls, and would not affect anyone after they already have registered.   What is failed to be realized by those opposing and some considering this bill is that it already is a law in this country that you must be a U.S. citizen to vote at all.

The first state to pass a similar law was Arizona in 2004.

In much the same way that a bad marriage is not healthy if one partner is in it for what they can get out of it, and the other is co-dependent on that partner. Illegal immigration is unhealthy for the co-dependent country involved.

Almost daily we hear how our crashing economy is causing an exodus of illegals returning to their homelands when the work, money, and handouts runs out. Many of these are represented in the media as hardship stories built to display the “poor undocumented worker”, “poor businesses”, and in some cases “poor community” who are being affected by the loss. While no one can dispute the effect this loss has on those elements, they are in essence, no different then those who are co-dependent marriage partners who suddenly find themselves struggling to learn to survive.

What needs to be understood, and understood firmly, is that illegal immigrants are not here “for better or for worse”. They will not hang around when this country struggles. They will not hang around if the country falls. Their loyalty is not to this country at all and they will return home to the place their loyalty lies, or move on to another country that has what they desire. In this case money, work, and someone to take care of them.

American citizens and many legal immigrants have a deep loyalty to the United States. No matter how hard it gets in the nation, they will hold on, they will struggle through, and they will work to improve the situation of the home they love unconditionally. “For better or for worse” is not even a thought for them, it’s a way of life.

Just as one would not support a loved on, or friend in an unhealthy relationship. America needs to not support this unhealthy relationship that’s been created by illegal immigrants and their advocates. Americans need to support and advocate for healthy relationships with Citizens and legal immigrants who had a deep unseated love for this country. Who will stick with her through thick and thin, no matter how thin it gets. It is that, and that alone that makes for a healthy relationship and a healthy nation.
As for the “woe is me” tales, well just like the co-dependent partner learns to live again. These co-dependent individuals, businesses, and communities will also learn to live again. In many cases they will learn to be stronger, stabler, and healthier then before when they were in the unhealthy relationship. In some cases they might not ever break the bonds of co-dependency but above all they will learn what the signs of co-dependency are and be able to advocate against it, while helping awake other co-dependents to be able to survive the “life without” too.

Hispanic exodus is under way
Workers leave Lee as jobs disappear
The News Press
March 9, 2008

In this case, cold, hard statistics don’t tell the story.

“I am not aware of anyone who would track that locally,” said Glen Solier, business development specialist for the Lee County Department of Economic Development.

“Those people are off the grid. Undocumented,” said Susanna Patterson, economic analyst for the Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation.

But the oh-so-human snapshots of everyday living are revealing.

Like a weekend soccer league down from 32 teams to 25 because more than 100 players have had to leave.

Or a church that has cut two Sunday services to one because about 200 former members have returned to their homeland.

Or the western-wear clothier who gave up one of his three shopping center units and said business is off by 40 percent because customers are gone.

Put these and other pictures together and the collage tells the story of Hispanics who are leaving Southwest Florida to find work or to return to the support of their families back home.

“There is a loss in the number of Hispanics in our communities,” said Robert Selle, director of the Amigos Center, which aids Hispanics with immigration issues and offers other services in Lee County. “The underlying reason is economic; the same reason they came here in the first place.”

Population drain

The loss comes from a good portion of Lee County’s population. The U.S. Census Bureau listed the county’s Hispanic population at more than 90,000 - about 16 percent of Lee’s 571,000 population - in 2006.

What the statistics further show is that work is gone. Unemployment in the Fort Myers-Cape Coral region has risen this past year, from 2.7 percent to 6.3 percent.

Many of the lost jobs are in construction, which has been put on hold as the sluggish market struggles with a glut of unsold houses.

Because many Hispanic construction workers are believed to be illegal immigrants, because construction and agricultural workers are a mobile population anyway, because many are single with families back in their native lands, and because their leaving was often spur-of-the-moment, no governmental or social service agency is keeping accurate records of this exodus.

Lee County School District reported a loss of Hispanics in all grades totaling 388 pupils through January of this school year - this after growing by almost 3,000 Hispanic students a year earlier.

But the white student population dropped as well. The big difference was while dropout rates tend to increase as the year goes on in the upper grades, the Hispanic population was the only one also to lose ground in the kindergarten through fifth-grade range. It fell by 87 pupils - an indication their families moved from the district, according to Michael Smith, director of planning, growth and school capacity.

“Many workers in the construction industry and related industry are leaving the area and following the money,” said Barbara Hartman, spokeswoman for the state’s Career and Service Center in Fort Myers. “It seems to be an increasing number of people who are temporarily relocating. I wish we did track that.”

Hartman said she knows people are leaving because they tell counselors when they come in seeking work, saying they need the higher construction industry wages, which begin at $10 to $11 an hour for the most unskilled, to maintain their standard of living……..

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Teacher/Student Sexual relations seem to be on the rise.  Numerous cases already have come out this year of other teachers around the U.S. engaging in sexual acts with students. One can only wonder if this is the new way the school educational system is going, and more so, why there is not more care and screening being done to learn who or what is teaching children. Many schools are no longer allowing parents into classrooms, but perhaps it is time America rethinks that policy and opens the doors to parents once again.  Someone has to get order back in U.S. schools.
azfamily (FULL STORY)

LAURENS, S.C. (AP) — A former middle school teacher was sent to prison for six years Tuesday for having sexual encounters with five teenage boys. Authorities said Allenna Ward, 24, met 14- and 15-year-old boys at the school where she taught as well as at a motel, a park and behind a restaurant.

“I apologize from the depths of my heart,” Ward said in court.

Police began investigating last year after school officials found a note believed to have been written by Ward to one of the boys. Some of the victims were students at Bell Street Middle School in Clinton, where Ward taught. She was fired about a year ago.