Everything posted by BearSchlong
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Texas -- a failed state
Texas family care network. https://txfcn.org/ Great website. Synergies, partnerships, and other mealy-mouthed jargon just to say “we now run foster care for region 5.” A Pennsylvania company. Using that private agency as a placeholder for shenanigans in the DFCS system. “Privatizing” foster care - and they are calling in cases to CPS to remove not just one, but all the children in a family where there has been a removal, even if no evidence for subsequent removals exists. Example - a mom has a child removed and placed in foster care, but in the meantime gets her life in order and ends up having another child. No evidence of abuse or neglect, clean drug and alcohol tests - and the hospital where the birth occurs has no problem releasing the child to go home. Enter these thugs, many who retired from state employment, who call in an unwarranted CPS case for exigent removal of other children - no investigation, affidavit, or court order - because its a profit center, with costs shouldered by the state. What a lucrative racket! Makes one wonder if they pay their workers bonuses for each removal. In recent sessions, the state lege has been incrementally rolling back CPS authority, which in many cases makes good sense - only to have private contractors overreach. File under private prisons, state agencies bypassing the judiciary, ICE contractors, tow truck companies, etc. My friend owns a glass company. At lunch, I always joke “hey if business is lagging, I’ll grab my shotgun and go break some windows for you,” to which he exclaims “NO!.” Privatization is just another word for grift.
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July 4th Hill Country Flooding Tragedy
I just had a meeting with a friend whose daughter was Reese’s roommate for 3 1/2months in Italy during a UTSA semester abroad program last fall. Damned sad.
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July 4th Hill Country Flooding Tragedy
By now every single SEC coach and various celebrities have stepped up to pay for all the victims funerals. Facebook said so. AI Sark hugging families in Hunt, too. Unless that was real.
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July 4th Hill Country Flooding Tragedy
They found Ella within the last hour, still looking for young Mr. Heartfield. Cadaver dogs doing work.
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Floods - how you can help
My company is the same. I donate to my halfway house via payroll deduction but they won't match like they do with larger charities like the ASPCA. I can't think of the 3rd party administrative company but I also log service work time as we allow for that. Edit - we use https://benevity.com/
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July 4th Hill Country Flooding Tragedy
The mom of a missing girl and I are both on the board of a nonprofit; our quarterly meeting is tomorrow - obviously she will be absent, but I’m dreading that meeting. I just hope we can get through the agenda before everyone is crying.
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July 4th Hill Country Flooding Tragedy
He's talking about you, not me.
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July 4th Hill Country Flooding Tragedy
Actually, it was the grand niece of a different friend, a lady named Debbie who is a lifelong teacher/principle and a close family friend. But my stepbrother and first cousin have children in her classes. The young man Heartfield is another, but that family is closer to my cousin’s family.
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July 4th Hill Country Flooding Tragedy
Mary Grace Baker, 3rd grader at St. Anne’s in Beaumont, has been recovered, deceased.
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July 4th Hill Country Flooding Tragedy
Yeah, lots of damned if you are, damned if you aren't going around, all magnified by social media. I feel like a ghoul, monitoring my friend’s Facebook for news that he and his wife found her daughter’s body. I just hope they get closure soon. Here is his wife (Ella’s mom). https://www.foxnews.com/video/6375339052112?fbclid=IwQ0xDSwLZJXVleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHtP_IvCJunDm_DlsYvWBj0Vx0KFEP6hiz00rZ6RIUDoi3fyWCXKML6s-RBJS_aem_bD0IRi4J91y_8ipG1NcGGw A different Beaumont mom who was searching for her daughter was the one who found her remains. The mother posted “God told me to look here and that is where I found her.”
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July 4th Hill Country Flooding Tragedy
A psychologist is having free zoom calls tomorrow to help parents game plan how to discuss the loss of friends to flooding. https://www.facebook.com/share/p/166qdudWUi/?mibextid=wwXIfr
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Floods - how you can help
Done and thank you. If anyone looks at you funny, remember, I chose my username before I quit drinking.
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2025 Thread of the Rains
Southeast texas uses this. https://www.everbridge.com/?trk=ggls-mnbrand&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_content=evbg_branded&campaign=96612624&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=96612624&gbraid=0AAAAAD_dm_ydS8QFgmjXuhLAME7QAczwz&gclid=Cj0KCQjwvajDBhCNARIsAEE29Wq3E1bdpqiEbi3jtUebBb-RqRyxZERtITGqJ33jjwY4FbyytcCeHMgaAh55EALw_wcB Everytime a warning hits I get a text, a phone call, an email. I also get a slack from my company’s weather alert system. There is almost no way I cannot be alerted when an event occurs, unless I am in a plane without wifi or - and I realize this is common in the hill country - cell service.
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2025 Thread of the Rains
Quit hogging all the vitriol; leave me some please.
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2025 Thread of the Rains
Spent an idyllic week in the first campground on the other side of that creek. Even a small squall swells it enough to make things sporty.
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2025 Thread of the Rains
I am very very close friends with her mother. Just gut-wrenching. Texting right now with her husband, to whom in some ways I owe my life.
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2025 Thread of the Rains
Shit. I remember the day Ella was born. Her mom and Dad are two close friends. https://kfdm.com/news/local/search-underway-for-kelly-hs-grads-missing-in-catastrophic-hill-country-flooding?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR4HO9TMSU6vvH5zx7qyVSODdnoGk8I0CFl6M660C50BG3KfjnfNTfwLNWwLjg_aem_WRQL1u6kacGok7ZBH8_xsw
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2025 Thread of the Rains
Thanks, fellow Presby.
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Whatcha reading?
I'm reading a biography of John D Rockefeller and discovered he greatly endowed the Spelman Seminary for Black Women in the 1880s. That's where Martin Luther King’s mother and grandmother studied.
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what are you watching on youtube?
Skote Outdoors. Guy buys a decrepit shack on an island in Newfoundland and goes off the grid with his cute little wife. Oddly satisfying to see adventurous living.
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Getting old sucks
Oh man…sending positive energy your way.
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Texas may have accidentally legalized marijuana
The weird thing was they were airside of TSA, so intended for departures.
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Texas may have accidentally legalized marijuana
The cops always have the best drugs. Just saw this at ORD and guffawed.
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The "Post a Picture You Took" thread
Walked around the Manassas battlefield this afternoon. Twas but 103 degrees but I did take a while to imagine the short-range artillery battle in July ‘61 at first Bull Run where they wailed on each other from a mere 300 yards. One can imagine the blood soaked earth.
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I've decided to dig a hole
TIL i can buy a San Angelo Husky bar for any upcoming hole requirements.