Whipped Cream Difficulties

Apologies for being a little behind on these. I’ve been having some issues the past few days and am slowly getting back up to speed.

Hyena number one: Dawnna Dukes got curb-stomped in Tuesday’s primary.

Tuesday, Dukes picked up just 10 percent of the vote and finished a distant third among the three candidates who were believed to have had realistic paths to victory. Dukes will remain on the job through the end of the year before she’s replaced by the winner of the May 22 runoff between Jose “Chito” Vela and Sheryl Cole.

(Previously.)

Hyena number two: the mayor of Nashville resigned on Tuesday. This was part of her guilty plea to charges of felony theft.

Nashville isn’t my usual beat, but I’ve been sort of following this story from the edges. In brief: the mayor was having an affair with her “head of security”, and the felony theft charges apparently involve payments for overtime and travel expenses to her partner (who also pled guilty to felony theft charges).

As part of her plea deal, Barry was sentenced to three years of unsupervised probation and agreed to reimburse the city $11,000 in unlawful expenses. She paid the money Tuesday. She also was booked into the jail and had her mug shot taken.

…

Forrest also pleaded guilty Tuesday to property theft and was sentenced to three years of probation. As part of his plea agreement, he’s required to reimburse the city $45,000 paid to him as salary and/or overtime during times when he was not performing his duties as head of the mayor’s security detail. Forrest has not yet paid the money.

One thing I picked up elsewhere: apparently, the plea deals include deferred adjudication. Basically, if Barry and Forrest keep their noses clean (and, I assume, make restitution), they can have the felony conviction expunged from their records.

Open question: what’s going to happen to Forrest’s pension? He retired the day the affair was announced, and was approved for $74,000 a year. But that figure was based, in part, on the overtime payments Forrest collected while he was Barry’s lover…

Edited to add: I got to wondering, and I’m sure all of you were as well. According to this article from 2015, former mayor Barry was not a member of Crooked Mayors For Disarmed Citizens. But it wasn’t for lack of trying:

Megan Barry is among the nation’s mayors who support congressional action to close the so-called “gun show loophole,” and she also believes that local municipalities should be able to craft “reasonable restrictions” over guns and still protect Second Amendment rights.

…

Despite the push among some mayors demanding action on guns, Barry at this point isn’t part of former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns.
…
Mayor’s office press secretary Sean Braisted said Barry has no plans to join Mayors Against Illegal Guns at this time.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 8th, 2018 at 9:19 am and is filed under Guns, Law, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.