NRA boss asked for luxury mansion as “protection” after Florida shooting

August 10, 2019August 12, 20194 Comments

It takes lots of money to make me feel safe — Jose Luis Magana/AP

❝ The chief executive of the National Rifle Association asked the nonprofit organisation buy him a luxury mansion last year after a mass shooting at a Florida high school, according to multiple people familiar with the discussions…Wayne LaPierre told associates he was worried about being targeted and needed a more secure place to live after 17 people were gunned down last year in Parkland, Florida, sources said.

❝ Mr LaPierre and his wife, Susan, rejected an upscale high rise in Dallas with numerous security features in favour of a 10,000-square-foot French country-style estate with lakefront and golf course views in Westlake, Texas, on the market for about $6m, according to emails and text messages.

Obviously, it costs a great deal to make a miserable low-life creature like Wayne LaPierre feel “safe”.

We’re spending HOW MUCH? on mansions for military brass?

July 22, 2013July 21, 2013Leave a comment

Coral Gables, Florida. — Marine Gen. John F. Kelly works in a fortress-like headquarters near the Miami airport. Starting this fall, he will live in Casa Sur, an elegant home with a pool and gardens on one of the area’s swankiest streets.

The five-bedroom residence, across the street from the famed Biltmore Golf Course, is provided rent-free to Kelly as head of U.S. Southern Command, which oversees military operations in the Caribbean Latin America.

The cost to taxpayers? $160,000 a year, plus $402,000 for renovations and security improvements now underway.

Casa Sur is one of hundreds of high-end homes, villas and mansions where senior generals and admirals are billeted, according to a Pentagon report prepared for Congress last month but not publicly released…

The perks for top military brass, a Pentagon tradition, are under increasing scrutiny in Congress at a time when budget reductions and the mandatory spending cuts known as the sequester have forced the Pentagon to cut services, close facilities, cancel training and missions, and furlough 680,000 civilian workers…

In the annual appropriations bill for military construction approved by a House committee last month, lawmakers criticized the Pentagon for the “excessive cost” of maintaining “large and aging” homes and for the “apparent unwillingness on the part of the [military] services to seek less expensive alternatives…”

Generals and admirals say they need large houses with high security — as well as cooks and gardeners — because they often host visiting dignitaries or preside at ceremonial events. Keeping pricey properties makes fiscal sense, they argue, because the Pentagon either already owns them or would waste money finding a suitable rental every time a senior officer is moved to a new command…

To save money, the military has moved to privatize base housing in recent decades. But the services have clung to some of the most desirable real estate for top officers…

Kelly, a former Marine commander in Iraq who was top military aide to former Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, has lived in a smaller house nearby since he took over Southern Command last year. He is scheduled to move into his new digs in October.

Life is tough ain’t it?

RTFA for lots of details, lots of crocodile tears.

Female prisoners + good behavior = raped in Governor’s mansion

October 13, 2009October 13, 20091 Comment

Sleeping is the really important Family Value

Prosecutors are investigating accusations that…state employees at the Oklahoma governor’s mansion raped three female prison inmates assigned to work on the mansion’s grounds.

Neither man has been charged, but the Department of Central Services fired both of them on Sept. 29 for violating departmental policies after a three-month Department of Corrections investigation.

The accusations raise questions about security at the chief executive’s residence and about the oversight of a program meant in part to reward good behavior by allowing inmates to leave prison for the day and work off site.

Department of Corrections officials believe the state workers who supervised the inmates at the governor’s mansion committed sexual battery, forcible sodomy and rape against inmates from the Hillside Community Corrections Center…The department recently turned its findings over to the office of the Oklahoma County district attorney…

Janet Roloff, a lawyer for one of the women, said her client had endured a “violent, bloody rape” that left her with emotional and physical scars. It is illegal for a supervisor and an inmate to have sex, and Ms. Roloff scoffed at the notion that any sex between her client and the state workers was consensual.

“My client was dragged down, held down by one and raped by another,” she said. “That doesn’t sound very consensual, does it?”

Ms. Roloff said her client had been afraid to report the attack until after her release, for fear of retribution. She said the woman had come forward to try to persuade prison officials to stop sending female inmates to the governor’s mansion.

Haven’t seen any intelligent comment from the governor, yet.

Brad Henry is a primo Republican “Family Values” advocate. All he’s said, so far, is that he feels safe in the governor’s mansion. The Department of Public Safety is taking good care of him.

We are reassured.