#estate development Florida

[generalcontractorsflorida]

Amazing Real Estate Development Projects of Florida

Real Estate Development projects by WGPITTS in Florida depicts the combination of perfect design, architecture, management and successful completion. Here are the top level and unique real estate development projects they have accomplished in Florida. 

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this essay from The Atlantic:

Ian has brought some new attention to the story I wrote for Politico Magazine after my visit to Cape Coral in 2017, “The Boomtown That Shouldn’t Exist.” The subtitle warned: “One big storm could wipe it off the map.” The gist was that Cape Coral was an unsustainable paradise, and that it also represented the future of the Florida dream in an age of rising seas and extreme weather, “the least natural, worst-planned, craziest-growing piece of an unnatural, badly planned, crazy-growing state.” I wrote that it was fair to ask “what the hell 20 million Americans are doing in a flood-prone, storm-battered peninsula that was once the nation’s last unpopulated frontier,” because the bill for decades of Florida lies, greed, and myopia would eventually come due.

Now it has, with Ian expected to displace Irma as Florida’s costliest storm. I’m sad for the victims. I’m angry at the state’s venal and shortsighted politicians. But I’m also worried about the future, because I suspect Brian Tattersall was right. Once the debris gets cleared, people will keep flocking to Cape Coral, and to Florida. And Mother Nature will still bat last.

The tragedy of Ian ought to help more Floridians understand the consequences of environmental destruction, perfunctory planning, and climate denial. I’ve been banging my spoon on my high chair about humanity’s dysfunctional relationship with nature in Florida ever since I wrote a book about it in 2006; I even wrote a premature requiem for the state before Irma. But the left-leaning social-media warriors who have used my work to chide Floridians for living in harm’s way, aside from being obnoxious and heartless, have missed half my point.

In its natural state, most of Florida was such a soggy mush of low-lying marshes that mapmakers couldn’t decide whether to draw it as land or water. The Spaniards who arrived in the 16th century told their king the peninsula was “liable to overflow, and of no use,” and white people mostly stayed away until the U.S. Army chased the Seminole Indians into the Everglades in the 19th century. The soldiers forced to slog through its mosquito-infested bogs described it as a “hideous,” “diabolical,” “repulsive,” “pestilential,” “God-abandoned” hellhole.

The story of Florida in the 20th century is about dreamers and schemers trying to get rid of all that water and drain the swamp. Eventually, they mostly succeeded, transforming a remote wilderness into a sprawling megalopolis, replacing millions of acres of wetlands with strip malls and golf courses and sprawling subdivisions, building the Palmetto and Sawgrass Expressways where palmettos and sawgrass used to be. But their war on nature had brutal environmental costs. They wiped out half the Everglades and discombobulated the other half. They destroyed mangrove swamps and other natural flood protections. They threw nature out of whack, which is why Florida routinely yo-yos between structural droughts and vicious floods, and why so many of its bays and lakes and reefs and aquifers are collapsing.

[stellagroup]

Real Estate Developers in Florida

Stella Construction Group stands out among real estate developers in Florida with a proven track record of excellence. Specializing in innovative design and quality construction, Stella delivers tailored solutions that redefine living spaces across the Sunshine State. With a commitment to craftsmanship and client satisfaction, they transform visions into vibrant realities, setting new standards in Florida's dynamic real estate landscape. For more details, kindly visit us at www.stellagroup.com

[iidgroupre]

hollimancapital.com

[loudlylovingreview]

Rick Campbell: Two Poems

The Wild Lament of Saint Teresa Two days’ storm, the beach wrack:grass, dark feathers from a tern, skimmer, a dark gull. We talk about love and death, suspect choices, derelict results. We walk beyond my usual end, and finally find it, wrapped in grass, and shells. Its long neck curved, not as in flight, not as in swimming, but as in dead. I nudge its whitecollar with a bare toe and think of…

[joshuafreed]

Joshua Freed - CEO of Equity Capital Inc

Joshua Freed believes in the importance of family. He lives in Florida with his wife and five children. Previously he lived in Bothell, Washington for 49 years and, for a time, served as mayor. Joshua is the CEO of a capital funding group, Equity Capital Inc. He and his wife believe in giving back and supports the local community in philanthropic endeavors. He is active in his church and has traveled to Kenya to install wells.

[theoutcastrogue]

Cartoon depictions of the homeless increasingly reflect the hostility of today’s political leaders toward people on the streets. We’ve gone from images of charming hobos with bindles to zombies taking over cities. If you consume any news at all, you’ve probably noticed that the United States is pathologically cruel to its homeless citizens. This May, the brutal killing of Jordan Neely—who was strangled to death, at the age of 30, simply because he was unhoused and shouting on the Manhattan subway—captured the national spotlight, but it was just one of many such cases of unprovoked violence. In January, two cops reportedly kidnapped a homeless man in Hialeah, Florida, drove him to an “isolated and dark location,” and beat him unconscious. That same month, art dealer Shannon Collier Gwin faced battery charges after he sprayed a homeless woman with a hose outside his San Francisco gallery, barking “Move! Move!” at her. (Predictably, Gwin got a lenient plea deal of just 35 hours of community service.) Elsewhere in the city, homeless San Franciscans have been attacked with chemical bear spray on at least eight occasions. Other assaults have been more impersonal but no less vicious. On July 14, the city of Houston abruptly closed its only public cooling center in the downtown area, potentially condemning anyone without shelter to suffer heatstroke in 90-degree weather. Among the property-owning class, the phenomenon of hostile architecture—sidewalks with spikes that stab anyone who tries to sleep, benches with iron bars, and the like—has become de rigueur. The widespread callousness and lack of compassion are both infuriating and hard to comprehend. How on Earth, we might ask, did things get this bad? [...]

Looking back at older cartoons, one of the things that stands out immediately is the absence of negative attitudes toward the homeless. In fact, during the Golden Age of animation, creators seemed to have had a real affinity for the poor and unhoused, often placing their most iconic characters in that role. There’s a wonderful 1948 Warner Bros. short called “Riff Raffy Daffy,” in which Daffy Duck is looking for a place to sleep—first on a park bench, then a trash can, and finally a furniture display in a shop window—and has to dodge the harassment of the police, as represented by Porky Pig in a little blue uniform. (Literally, the cop is a pig!) Or, in the 1950 cartoon “Homeless Hare,” Bugs Bunny’s rabbit hole is destroyed by a new construction project, leading him to unleash his usual slapstick mayhem against the developers until they put it back. In these cartoons, homelessness is something inflicted on people by outside forces—gentrification and the real estate business, in Bugs’ case—and something which can be successfully resisted. Even Disney cast a homeless dog as a romantic lead in 1955’s Lady and the Tramp, contrasting Lady’s sheltered naivety with Tramp’s superior knowledge of the world. The title invokes the memory of Charlie Chaplin’s “Tramp” films, which similarly brought dignity and humanity to the role of a homeless man. (Bugs Bunny, too, takes inspiration from Chaplin, and multiple Warner animators have drawn him as the Tramp.) In 1961, Hanna-Barbera’s profoundly underrated Top Cat followed the adventures of a gang of wisecracking Manhattan alley cats, who, like Daffy, are always outwitting a meddling policeman. At worst, classic cartoons may trivialize the suffering and danger associated with homelessness—there’s a certain recurring image of the carefree hobo carrying a bindle, which paints the whole subject in a romanticized light—but the homeless themselves are rarely disparaged or made the butt of the joke. Quite the opposite. 

It took a few years, but cartoons caught up to the Reaganite turn. In episodes from the ’90s and early 2000s, there’s a palpable shift in the way homeless characters appear compared to earlier decades. The perspective is different: we’re now seeing them through the eyes of comfortably housed characters, rather than their own. Often they don’t even get proper names. [...] This trajectory leads us, perhaps inevitably, to SpongeBob SquarePants. [..] Squidward gets accused of stealing a dime by his comically greedy boss, Mr. Krabs, and quits his job in a fit of outrage. We then flash forward to see Squidward, now bedraggled and unshaven, living in a cardboard box on the street and begging for change. [...] Mercifully, the ever-cheerful SpongeBob gives Squidward a place to stay—but the moment he’s safely off the street, Squidward turns from a sympathetic victim of circumstance into a lazy, entitled freeloader, straight out of a Reagan speech. He makes no effort to find work and loafs around SpongeBob’s house for ages. [...] Eventually, an exasperated SpongeBob writes “GET A JOB” in his alphabet soup, before shoving him (bed and all) back to work at the Krusty Krab. [...] Worst of all, though, the episode suggests that homelessness can be solved on an individual basis if the people in question simply stop being lazy and “GET A JOB.” This is the biggest myth of all. In 2021, a statistical analysis by the University of Chicago found that 53 percent of people in homeless shelters, and 40.4 percent of unsheltered people, do have jobs. The problem is that their wages are too low, and rents are too high. According to statistics from the same year, it’s impossible for someone working a full-time, minimum-wage job to afford a single-bedroom apartment in 93 percent of U.S. counties, and there are no states in which someone can rent a two-bedroom space on the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. In other words, homelessness has little or nothing to do with personal responsibility, or lack thereof. It’s a consequence of large-scale economic decisions made by landlords and bosses. [...]

— Alex Skopic

[liberalsarecool]

Florida's economy depends on real estate and the reliance on insurance coverage for the properties.

Much of Florida is close to sea level, and has developed shoreline. Disaster capitalism at its finest. Destroy it, then rebuild it.

Until it's too late.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Trumps of the Tropics: Brazil’s Far Right Plots Its Return

As president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro was often called the Trump of the Tropics, an association the Bolsonaro family actively cultivated. From the moment he was elected in 2018, he loudly celebrated the United States — in his first year in office, he even saluted the U.S. flag — but he saved his most intense loyalty for one American. When he met President Trump at the United Nations in 2019, he told him: “I love you.”

Before assuming power, Bolsonaro was an anti-democratic ideologue and former military man with a decades-long career in politics; Trump was a real estate developer and a media personality. But over the six years that Bolsonaro drove the news cycles in Latin America’s largest nation, he gave journalists a long list of reasons to equate the two men. Both made a show of praising authoritarian leaders, past and present, and liked to style themselves as defenders of law and order while acting as if the rules didn’t apply to them. Both formed an alliance with the religious right late in their careers and enlisted their sons to help push their respective agendas. Both frequently took to Twitter to attack their enemies, troll traditional media and rile up their supporters. And both retreated to Florida when things got tough.

For decades, the Brazilian right had looked to the United States, and when Donald Trump began to transform the rules of political discourse, it took note. “We learned to have the courage to speak up,” says Damares Alves, an evangelical pastor who served as Bolsonaro’s minister of human rights, families and women. “We began to be more incisive on the question of abortion. We learned we could be more direct about the question of arming the population. We realized we could take a tougher stand against the left-wing transformation taking place across our continent.”

As president, Bolsonaro seemed eager to import as much of the MAGA movement to Brazil as possible. So when Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to protest a “stolen” election, many Brazilians worried that Bolsonaro supporters might try something similar. That’s exactly what happened. On Jan. 1, 2023, when Bolsonaro’s opponent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, leader of the left-wing Workers’ Party, took office, Bolsonaro skipped the ceremony, holing up instead in the Orlando suburbs, at the home of a mixed-martial-arts fighter. For weeks, Bolsonaristas had been camping out around the country, under banners calling for an “intervention.” In an echo of Jan. 6, they chose Jan. 8 to occupy and attack government buildings in the capital, Brasília, even though the transition had already taken place and the buildings were largely empty. Military police officers arrested more than 1,000 people, and Lula quickly reasserted control of the country.

Bolsonaro, like Trump, now faces a host of criminal charges for trying to impede democratic elections. Trump has been convicted in one case, but only Bolsonaro has been deemed ineligible to run for president. In June 2023, Brazil’s electoral court ruled that his attacks on the voting system disqualified him from running for any political office until 2030. He is now facing hundreds of other court cases. In February of this year, authorities confiscated his passport after arresting several former aides accused of plotting a coup, making another escape to Florida impossible. Bolsonaro took refuge for two nights in the Hungarian Embassy in São Paulo, perhaps hoping to leverage his relationship with Prime Minister Viktor Orban (one of many friends he shares with Trump) if flight became necessary.

While Bolsonaro is barred from the political arena — at least for now — the movement that he unleashed is very much alive. Bolsonaristasdid well in the election that he lost, demonstrating that the movement was bigger than the man, and they now have real power at federal and state levels. Because congressional politics in Brazil are byzantine — there are 23 parties in Congress, and members can shift allegiances quickly — it would be difficult for Lula to govern even if Bolsonaro’s right-wing Liberal Party were not the largest party in the legislature. As things stand, the Bolsonaristas routinely complicate things for Lula, as they try to pull the country back to the far right.

In 2023, Bolsonaro’s allies began working to create a kind of Bolsonarismo sem Bolsonaro, or Bolsonaro-style politics without Bolsonaro. In interviews in the capital late last year, a rough philosophical and tactical division emerged. One group wants to show that it is moderating its positions and committed to responsibly governing the country; another is doubling down on the kind of fiery rhetoric that drives engagement online and reproduces tropes familiar to observers of right-wing media in the United States.

Continue reading.

[annieqattheperipheral]

NHLPA launches a new program to help players prepare for life outside of hockey

i.e. dad yelling at u to get a real job bc ur etsy shop aint be bumpin forever

the kids are getting a high school guidance counsellor and co-op term! what colour is ur parachute nursey

no wonder sabres on the rise oko's media hits so beautifully eloquent. they got smartypants mini gm at the helm

i just find this so interesting and wonderful ...and like if a big hockey butt wants to come hit me up for improv classes i'm not complaining🫠 imma make a union actor (nate. realistic) two time emmy winner (sid. dream on u don't have that ass) outta u

full article under cut:

Early in his time in the NHL, Darnell Nurse says he did not notice a lot of players talking about what to do after hockey. Going into his ninth season, the chatter is now normal.

“People are curious as to what there is outside the game and what you can do to prepare yourself,” Nurse said.

Plenty of players have taken it upon themselves to prepare for the future, like Zdeno Chara getting his real estate license and others finishing college degrees or exploring business opportunities. The NHL Players’ Association on Thursday launched a program that gives its members the chance to do a personality analysis and delve into real estate, business or other avenues while still in the league.

The hope is to help them develop interests outside of hockey while playing and ease the transition to life afterward.

“It’s something that’s been missing a little bit,” veteran center Lars Eller told The Associated Press. “It’s kind of well known that one of the struggles for a professional athlete is the transition on to the next thing once he’s done with his professional career. And this platform helps you with that transition, and it’s something you can start even while you’re still playing so you can sort of hit the ground running once you’re done.”

New union boss Marty Walsh made helping former players one of his top priorities. His arrival in March coincided with a process two years in the making, after player feedback indicated the desire for more assistance outside of hockey.

The result is the NHLPA UNLMT program. Retired defenseman-turned-psychologist Jay Harrison is available to do an assessment, and players can get involved with companies ranging from Money Management International to The Second City comedy and improv theater and institutions like the University of Florida and Stanford’s graduate school of business.

Former goaltender Rob Zepp, who’s spearheading the program as the union’s director of strategic initiatives, said an extensive survey provided the building blocks for something that was designed to be 1-on-1 and customized for players to figure out what might interest them.

“What we’ve seen so far it really runs the gamut: anything from enhancing one’s personal brand to starting a podcast to taking these certificate-level courses in real estate, in entrepreneurship, in business, in leadership, communication skills, networking skills,” Zepp said. “We have players that are interested in or are currently pursuing commercial real estate avenues or farming ventures or construction.”

Eller, Nurse and Buffalo captain Kyle Okposo are among the players who have tried UNLMT so far. Okposo has already graduated from Stanford’s business leadership program, while Eller has spoken with Harrison and taken some of the courses offered.

“They’re not waiting until people’s careers are over,” said Nurse, who is still in his prime at 28. “It’s something that you can dip your feet into and grab a hold of while you’re still playing and giving you resources and opportunities to kind of figure out what you want to do.”

Zepp got a degree from the University of Waterloo and an MBA from the University of Liverpool the old-school way — tapes and textbooks sent by mail and tests taken in front of a proctor — while playing mostly in the minors and Europe before before 10 games with Philadelphia in 2014-15. He felt like having something to study made him a better goalie and understood there was plenty of idle time on the road.

Eller, who is a silent partner involved with helping start-up businesses, thinks the same way.

“We, as players, we have — not a lot of freedom once the season is starting — but we do have a lot of free time,” said Eller, who scored the Stanley Cup-winning goal for Washington in 2018 and is a pending free agent at 34. “It’s a huge positive if you have something else that you can take your mind off of hockey and do something productive with that time.”

Walsh got to know several Bruins alumni when he was mayor of Boston and has since talked to other former players and come away with a mandate to protect guys beyond their time on the ice.

“When they played, they gave it their all, and a lot of them didn’t really have anything after that,” Walsh said. “They didn’t make big contracts. They really didn’t have a strong pension system. A lot of them, even going back further than that, lost stuff. We can’t let that happen again.”

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Kevin Robillard at HuffPost:

In June 2015, former President Donald Trump infamously came down a golden escalator and declared himself the man who couldn’t be bought. “I’m using my own money,” Trump said in the opening speech of his presidential election campaign. “I’m not using the lobbyists. I’m not using donors. I don’t care. I’m really rich.” Trump, who did self-fund large portions of his 2016 primary campaign, would return to this theme again and again. He would run against a field of more mainstream GOP politicians, each backed by super PACs filled with million-dollar checks from wealthy donors, and then against Democrat Hillary Clinton, who many voters saw as the embodiment of a moneyed class of Washington insiders. Now, almost a decade later, he is running as a candidate who is openly for sale. He has said he’ll offer plum jobs to major donors like Elon Musk, promised favors to oil executives, bragged to the wealthy about the tax cuts he can deliver and has even taken time away from his campaign to pitch a cryptocurrency project for his sons.

Americans can even buy DJT on the stock market, in the form of shares in the publicly traded holding company that owns his social media site, Truth Social. That company’s revenues are meager, with the share price hitting all-time lows, but it’s still being propped up by the former president’s loyal political fandom. “He just thinks he operates in his own world,” Fred Wertheimer, a veteran of decades of fights over campaign finance and government ethics, told HuffPost. “What he’s doing is incredibly brazen in both asking for large amounts of money and telling people what he’s going to do for them in return.” “Bottom line, I’ve never seen anyone do what he’s doing,” Wertheimer said. Trump’s campaign did not respond to an email seeking comment for this story. His new strategy may have created an opening for Democrats, if Vice President Kamala Harris and her campaign can seize it.

[...] Trump’s image as an outsider/businessman, unafraid to upset political apple carts, powered his run through the 2016 GOP primaries. He took special aim at former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the beneficiary of the outside group Right to Rise, which had stunned observers with its explosive fundraising. “They will be bombarded by their lobbyists that donated a lot of money to them,” Trump told a crowd in Iowa of his primary rivals, not long after his campaign’s launch. “Jeb raised $107 million, OK? They’re not putting that money up because it’s a wonderful charity.” Standing on a debate stage in Boulder, Colorado, that October, Trump decried how super PACs were corrupting his fellow candidates. “Super PACs are a disaster,” he said. “They’re a scam. They cause dishonesty. And you better get rid of them because they are causing a lot of bad decisions to be made by some very good people.”

Republicans who worked on the campaigns against Trump remember the message as particularly devastating, if not especially novel. Alex Conant, who was then the communications director for the presidential campaign of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), noted plenty of candidates had tried to run as outsiders taking on the establishment before, but said the tactic was far more effective for a New York real estate developer. “That was his most salient message in 2016,” Conant said. “He was a uniquely good messenger for it, because he was such an outsider, and it also kind of excused all the unconventional stuff — attacking John McCain, attacking Republican Party leaders. A more typical politician, if they were doing that, you would think they were idiots. For him, it was part of what made him so authentic.” In the general election, Trump relied more on outside groups and traditional fundraising than he did during the primary campaign. But as he took on a rival from a second political dynasty ― Democratic nominee Hilary Clinton, who was battling scandals about her email account and a trio of paid speeches she delivered to Goldman Sachs — he still ran as an insurgent.

[...]

‘Always Will Be A Con Man’

Despite his rhetoric, Trump did little to “drain the swamp” upon taking office. He failed to follow through on a promise to divest his business holdings. His hotel quickly became a gathering spot where those hoping to win Trump’s favor could also line his pockets. He appointed lobbyists to key government positions overseeing defense, trade and environmental protection. He took in up to $160 million from international business deals while he was president. “He has and always will be a con man who’s really only looking out for himself and whatever helps him to obtain power,” said Tiffany Muller, the president of the Democratic campaign finance group End Citizens United. “All his promises went out the window. Instead of draining the swamp, he brought the swamp to him and his properties and cashed in.”

Donald Trump and his supporters have long pushed the baseless refrain that “he can’t be bought.”

Well, I have some news that the MAGAdonians don’t like: Trump didn’t drain the swamp but expanded the swamp and has been bought by Super PACs to fulfill their agendas.

[generalcontractorsflorida]

General Contracting, Construction Management, and Real Estate Development

WGPITTS is a full-service, award-winning firm with a proven track record in general contracting, construction management, and real estate development. The company has expertise in delivering projects using the design-build project delivery method and is known for its value-based.

[fatehbaz]

During the Florida Land Boom of the 1920s, entrepreneurs and real estate developers deployed creative tactics to woo potential clients [...] to invest in Florida land. [...] At Miami Beach, where Indianapolis-based entrepreneur Carl Fisher invested millions in resort development during the 1920s, tourists encountered a surprising attraction: elephants. Two elephants were brought to Miami Beach. They were named Carl II (named after Fisher himself) and Rosie [...]. Seeing the elephants’ work at Miami Beach positions these more-than-human actors in the histories of leisure in South Florida, as they signal the uncomfortable degree to which work and leisure were deeply entangled in this place. [...]

Carl II, came to Miami Beach from Peoria, Illinois, in February of 1921. According to the Miami Daily Metropolis, [E.B.], who owned several circuses in the Midwest, gifted the elephant to Carl Fisher [...]. “I am going to get a million dollars’ worth of advertising out of this elephant.” [...] Carl II also carried advertisements on boards hung over a saddle. [...] Infantilizing Carl II, as reporters often did in the Miami newspapers, seems to have [...] helped uphold his value as a toy of sorts, which supported the idea of Miami Beach as a “playground,” as it was called at the time. [...] [A]rticles stressed, however, that the elephant’s education would involve more than “play.” The Miami Daily Metropolis reported that “Carl, the elephant will be put to work.” This is coupled with language that strikes a disciplinary tone; the reporter stated that “he must earn his keep.” [...] Such work ranged from moving portable houses on the beach to pulling presses on the polo field. Carl also cleared mangrove swamps to make land suited for residential development [...].

Like other resorts that pandered to a growing middle-class market for leisure in the roaring 1920s, Fisher’s venture on Miami Beach was carefully curated as a “playground to the World.”

Just as Henry Flagler had separated “work” from “leisure” by building Palm Beach separate from West Palm Beach in the 1890s, Fisher kept his beach workers’ labor largely invisible - except when it enhanced the tourist experience of its middle- and upper-middle class clientele, as when the elephants caddied on the golf course or stomped divots on the polo field. Fisher’s plan was to attract visitors to Miami Beach to come back year after year [...] [and] to prompt permanent settlement in his island subdivisions. These subdivisions, like his hotels, were meant to be exclusive. [...]

And while this landscape depended on an African American workforce, the city enacted Ordinance 457 in 1936, requiring the more than 5,000 service workers at the time to “register.” In addition to being photographed and fingerprinted, Black workers had to carry identification with them. [...]

---

In March of 1921, Carl II lived at the local fairgrounds [...]. An article in the Miami Daily Metropolis that celebrated Carl II’s presence there also noted that “the fair doors are not open to the colored population this year.” [...] 

Part attraction and part workhorse, Carl II moved across spaces dividing work and leisure, non-human and human, and Black and white on which Miami Beach’s status as a “tropical paradise” for the white leisured classes depended. [...] Carl II was shipped off to the Circus in 1926, the same year that a devastating hurricane struck the beach and brought the “boom” years to an end. His companion, Rosie, eventually met the same fate. [...] While Miami Beach was developed as a playground for the white leisure class, its success was inextricably bound with the labor force that built and sustained it.

---

Images, captions, and all text above by: Anna Andrzejewski. “Work, Play, and Elephants in South Florida’s Leisure Landscape.” Edge Effects. 27 April 2023. Published at: edgeeffects.net/miami-beach-elephants/ [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism purposes.]

[stellagroup]

General Contractors in Puerto Rico

Stella Construction Group stands out among General Contractors in Puerto Rico for its unwavering commitment to excellence. With a proven track record of delivering high-quality construction projects on time and within budget, Stella offers comprehensive services tailored to meet clients' diverse needs. From residential to commercial ventures, trust Stella Construction Group to bring your vision to life with precision and professionalism.

[tomorrowusa]

Donald Trump's racism has been normalized by too many people. But this is not the sort of mindset America needs in a head of state.

Fred Trump III, Weird Donald's nephew, has a new book out which makes our already low opinion of Trump plummet even further.

⚠️ Caution: Article quotes racist language used by Trump. ⚠️

In a new book, Donald Trump’s nephew recalls the future US president, at the start of his New York real estate career, surveying damage to a beloved car and furiously using the N-word. The shocking scene appears in All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way by Fred C Trump III, which will be published in the US next Tuesday. The Guardian obtained a copy. “‘Niggers,’ I recall him saying disgustedly. ‘Look what the niggers did,’” Fred Trump writes, describing his uncle’s racist outburst. In the midst of a tumultuous election, in which Trump faces Kamala Harris, the first woman of color to be vice-president, the book may prove explosive. Allegations of racism have followed Trump through his life in business and politics. Rumours persist that tape exists of Trump using the N-word during his time on The Apprentice, the hit NBC TV show that propelled him towards politics, though none have emerged. Omarosa Manigault Newman, a Black contestant, has said she has heard such a tape. Trump denies it. Since winning the Republican nomination for president in 2016, through four years in the White House and in his third presidential campaign, Trump has repeatedly used racist language and has faced accusations of race-baiting. He has vehemently denied all such accusations. [ ... ]

Trump III describes in detail a stunning moment he says happened in the early 1970s at the house of his grandparents, Donald Trump’s parents, in Queens, New York. It was “just a normal afternoon for pre-teen me”, Trump III writes, but then his uncle arrived. “Donald was pissed,” Trump III writes. “Boy, was he pissed.” Trump says his uncle showed him his “cotillon white Cadillac Eldorado convertible”. In its retractable canvas top, “there was a giant gash, at least two feet long [and] another, shorter gash next to it”. “‘Niggers,’ I recall him saying disgustedly. ‘Look at what the niggers did.’ “‘I knew that was a bad word.’” His uncle, Trump III writes, had not seen whoever damaged his car. Instead, he “saw the damage, then went straight to the place where people’s minds sometimes go when they face a fresh affront. Across the racial divide.”

Grandpa Fred Sr. also had racism issues.

In 1973, Fred Trump Sr, Donald Trump and the Trump company were sued by the US justice department, alleging racial discrimination at New York housing developments. Fred Trump III writes: “This was a painful period for the company and therefore for Donald … all the publicity was bad publicity. The ‘r’ word – racist – was thrown around.” The Trumps counter-sued and the case was settled “with no admission of guilt”, as Donald Trump has said. Trump III also addresses his grandfather’s apparent arrest at a Ku Klux Klan rally in 1927, which he says surprised the family when it was recently reported.

But wait, there's more!

Donald Trump thinks disabled people are a waste of flesh. In a separate article about Fred III's book, we hear how Uncle Donald told Fred III to let his disabled son die.

Donald Trump told his nephew he should let his disabled son die, then “move down to Florida”, the nephew writes in a new book, calling the comment “appalling”. “Wait!” Fred C Trump III writes. “What did he just say? That my son doesn’t recognise me? That I should just let him die? “Did he really just say that?” The shocking exchange is described in All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way, which will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy. [ ... ] On Wednesday morning, Time published an extract detailing Trump’s callous remark about his disabled great-nephew. It came days after family members at the Republican national convention portrayed Trump as a “very caring and loving” grandfather and family man. But Trump family history is complicated. [ ... ] In his own book, Fred Trump III describes a call to his uncle after the White House funeral of Robert Trump, the then president’s younger brother, in 2020. Fred Trump III says Donald Trump was then “the only one” of the older Trumps still “contributing consistently” to William’s care. He contacted his uncle even though he “really didn’t look forward to these calls” and “in many ways … felt I was asking for money I should have originally received from my grandfather” – Fred Trump Sr, the New York construction magnate whose will prompted the family feud. Fred Trump III says he called Donald Trump after seeing him at Briarcliff, a family golf club in Westchester county, New York. He says he described his son’s needs, increasing costs for his care, and “some blowback” from Trump’s siblings. “Donald took a second as if he was thinking about the whole situation,” Fred Trump III writes. “‘I don’t know,’” he finally said, letting out a sigh. ‘He doesn’t recognise you. Maybe you should just let him die and move down to Florida.’” Fred Trump III writes: “Wait! What did he just say? That my son doesn’t recognise me? That I should just let him die? Did he really just say that? That I should let my son die … so I could move down to Florida? Really?” Fred Trump III says he shouldn’t have been surprised, since he had recently heard his uncle say something similar in an Oval Office meeting with doctors and advocates for disabled rights.

[odinsblog]

Uh oh 👀

A squad of FBI special agents, assisted by local police, descended on Trump Tower III at 15811 Collins Ave. to carry out a search of unit 4102. It’s owned by a shell company, MIC-USA LLC, that is controlled by two Russian businessmen, Oleg Sergeyevich Patsulya and Agunda Konstantinovna Makeeva, according to state corporation records.

Sunny Isles Beach has been dubbed “Little Moscow” by locals because it’s home to many Russian expatriates. Some expressed concerns about a backlash against their affluent beachfront community after the Russian military invaded Ukraine last year and the U.S. government started pursuing sanctions against oligarchs who hide their wealth in real estate in South Florida and other parts of the country.

Before becoming president in 2016, Trump signed a deal with the developers of the 45-story condo buildings to name the property after him to help promote sales. Foreign buyers, especially from Latin America and Russia, flocked to Trump Towers, as they did with other Trump-branded properties in Sunny Isles Beach.

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