'Pharma bro' Martin Shkreli seeks revenge against rival drug companies with scathing new website
January 25, 2017, 6:30 AM ET
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The North Carolina Republican party is facing backlash for calling a prominent local faith leader a “poverty pimp,” The Raleigh News & Observer reports.
The North Carolina GOP on Thursday made the insulting remark against Rev. William Barber II ahead of the religious leader’s scheduled visit to Durham with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for a “Rally to Raise the Wage” in support of hiking the federal minimum wage to $17 per hour.
“Socialist Bernie Sanders is teaming up with poverty pimp William Barber to hold a rally with NC Democrats in Durham today,” the North Carolina GOP tweeted Thursday.
“While @NCDemParty embraces Sanders’ push to make us more like his beloved USSR, Republicans work to protect the good old timeless values of the USA.”
Robert Reives, the state’s Democratic House Minority Leader, slammed the state’s GOP, saying “there are only a few terms they could have picked that would have been more demeaning.”
“It’s incredibly diminishing of his work. It’s amazing they could reduce all his work to one of the most diminishing terms that could be used for Black men in this country’s history.”
Reives likened the remark to a recent cringeworthy comment by another North Carolina Republican lawmaker that made national headlines.
Rep. Jeff McNeely during a floor debate earlier this month suggested that his Democratic colleague Abe Jones, who is a Black Harvard graduate, wouldn’t have been admitted to the prestigious school if he wasn’t a minority, video posted on Twitter by freelance journalist Bryan Anderson shows.
IN OTHER NEWS: West Virginia governor's lawyers say his coal businesses are unable to pay millions in bills
“I understand that you went to public school and that you went to Harvard and Harvard Law, and the question I have is would you have been able to maybe achieve this if you were not an athlete or a minority, or any of these things,” McNeely said.
Said Reives: “I would say this is even worse than Jeff McNeely’s comments.”
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West Virginia governor's lawyers say his coal businesses are unable to pay millions in bills
June 01, 2023
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, long described as the only billionaire in his state and the owner of a huge network of coal businesses, is facing multiple lawsuits over his companies' unpaid bills and fines — but his lawyers say his business empire is out of money and unable to pay the millions of dollars being sought, reported POLITICO on Thursday.
"A flurry of court filings in cases against Justice and his family indicates that his sprawling enterprises are short on cash, with his own lawyers calling them 'disorganized,'" reported Scott Waldman. "The court documents show that Justice is facing a series of extraordinary actions for a sitting governor — including the potential garnishment of part of his $150,000 state salary to repay loans for coal equipment, the Charleston Gazette-Mail reported earlier this year. Another plaintiff has asked U.S. marshals to seize millions of dollars from his accounts."
"The latest legal challenge came Wednesday when the Justice Department sued Justice’s business enterprise and his son, James C. Justice III, over $7.6 million in unpaid penalties and fees for federal mine and safety violations as well as mine land reclamation costs," said the report. "'Our environmental laws serve to protect communities against adverse effects of industrial activities including surface coal mining operations,' Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim said in a statement. 'Through this suit, the Justice Department seeks to deliver accountability for defendants’ repeated violations of the law and to recover the penalties they owe as a result of those violations.'"
According to an earlier report, the federal suit alleges that Justice's companies have blown off paying fines on over 100 mining regulations, creating "health and safety risks" and risk of "environmental harm."
Justice, a longtime Republican and Trump ally who briefly switched to the Democratic Party when he initially ran for governor, is mounting a Senate campaign to unseat Joe Manchin, a conservative Democrat who has often been a deciding vote on national issues. He has framed the litigation as a political hit against him, with his campaign manager saying, "the Biden Justice Department has decided to play politics."
IN OTHER NEWS: Gun shop owner closes store after mass shootings of kids: 'I don’t know who it’s going to affect'
But Justice's main primary challenger, Republican Congressman Alex Mooney, has signaled he intends to go after his opponent's financial problems: “My RINO opponent @JimJusticeWV will bankrupt America just like his businesses and the workers he wouldn’t pay," he tweeted a week before the new lawsuit.
"In April, lawyers for his family businesses indicated in court documents that his empire is short on cash. The case was brought by Fivemile Energy Co., which is suing the Justice businesses on behalf of New London Tobacco Market over a mining contract dispute. The case stretches back years and is still moving through the courts," according to the report. "As a defense in that case, Justice’s company lawyers referred to his family businesses as a 'somewhat disorganized organization whose resources are stretched to the limit with respect to both finances and personnel.'"
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Gun shop owner closes store after mass shootings of kids: 'I don’t know who it’s going to affect'
June 01, 2023
A Georgia gun shop owner has reportedly decided that he can't in good conscience continue to run the store with the knowledge that the weapons he sells could one day be used to target children, NBC News reports.
Jon Waldman said business at his Georgia Ballistics shop in the Atlanta suburb of Duluth has been steady since he opened it in March 2021, but the mass shooting epidemic compelled him to close shop.
Waldman said the March 27 shooting at a Nashville Christian school and the May 3 shooting at an Atlanta hospital were the last straws for him. The 43-year-old has already shuttered his store and expects to have all the weapons cleared out by June 15.
"There’s no guilt about it, I sell to law-abiding citizens," Waldman told NBC News on Thursday.
Waldman said he isn’t opposed to gun ownership but acknowledged the uncertainty about what happens with the firearms and ammunition that he sells has given him pause.
“I’m not against the Second Amendment. But just with my conscience, I can’t sell it because I don’t know who it’s going to affect and hurt," Waldman said.
"That’s what eats at me. If it can happen, it’s only a matter of time until it does happen.”
A customer’s request to purchase 4,000 rounds six weeks ago helped validate his decision to shutter his store.
"If you had ordered 200 to 1,000 rounds that's fine. Anyone who shoots regularly, you're going through a thousand rounds in a month," he said.
"But when you order 4,000 rounds, the kind of stuff that goes through engine blocks, refrigerators and vests that police officers wear, I just can't sell that."
Waldman said he isn’t advocating for more restrictions but said he’d like to see a greater emphasis on training and responsible ownership.
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“For the last couple of months, you just see kids, over and over again, getting shot," Waldman said.
"It's kids being randomly shot, and I'm tired of it. I have a kid, my girlfriend has two kids. I’m a family man. I’m all about people being armed but at the same time they leave their stuff in their cars. They don’t see their firearms (to be as important) as their phones.”
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