90 Miles From Tyranny

Saturday, March 17, 2018

Nucor will build a $240 million steel rebar mill on a 400-acre site in Frostproof Florida..

The 25 percent tariff on imported steel announced last week by
President Donald Trump helped seal the deal on the Frostproof plant

FROSTPROOF – With the announcement of a nearly quarter-billion-dollar steel mill outside Frostproof, Polk County economic-development officials are celebrating one of the county’s biggest recruitment successes.

Nucor Corp. of Charlotte, North Carolina, officially said it will build a $240 million steel mill on a 400-acre site on U.S. 27 just south of Frostproof, about 65 miles east of Bradenton. The company said it expects to create 250 jobs paying an average annual salary of $66,000, plus benefits.

The new plant is one of the biggest new industrial companies ever recruited to Polk County.

“There hasn’t been a project of this size in many years,” said Sean Malott, executive director of the Central Florida Development Council, which helped recruit the company. “This is the biggest manufacturing property Polk County has had the chance to compete on.”

The next-largest project was the Coca-Cola Co. Main Street bottling plant, which opened in 2003 on a 64-acre site in Auburndale, Malott said. The $113 million, 620,000-square-foot plant initially created 100 new jobs and more than 100 additional jobs with later expansions. Beyond the Coca-Cola plant, Polk may not have seen an industrial facility of this size since the 1975 opening of the New Wales phosphate fertilizer plant, now operated by the Mosaic Co., south of Mulberry.

The Nucor “micro mill” will make steel rebar from scrap metal, according to the company, which expects construction to take two years after obtaining required regulatory approvals.

Malott said he had worked to recruit Nucor since June but the breakthrough didn’t happen until last month, when the Polk County Commission approved property-tax and impact-fee breaks worth about $1.5 million.

The 25 percent tariff on imported steel announced last week by President Donald Trump might have helped seal the deal on the Frostproof plant, Malott said. Although he couldn’t say how much of a factor it played in Nucor’s decision, “I think it helped, and it’s one of the reasons the company is looking at expansion opportunities,” he said. “This would be a good thing for U.S. steel.”

Nucor officials were looking for a site of more than 300 acres with railroad access near a major electricity substation that could provide enough power to operate the facility, Malott said. The Frostproof site fit the bill.

Frostproof Vice Mayor Martin Sullivan said he was excited about economic impact to the area. But he was more cautious about how much the city would benefit directly from the Nucor plant because of its location just outside the city limits.

“It will be great; it will be a boon to the local economy,” Sullivan said. “It will be much-needed, given the loss of jobs in the citrus industry.”

Frostproof would benefit more if it annexed the Nucor site into the city, which would add hundreds of thousands of dollars in new property-tax revenue to city coffers, he said.

The city could also benefit by...

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Ireland’s oldest pub dates back to the year 900 CE. When Sean’s Bar was renovated in 1970, they found the walls were made of 10th-century structures. The pub has a record of every owner in its history, including Boy George, and has centuries of photos, artifacts, and memorabilia on display. Guinness World Records has named it the oldest pub in Europe, and it’s most likely the oldest in the world.

FISA judge now linked to demoted anti-Trump FBI agent

A FISA judge who earlier handled proceedings against former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, who was targeted by special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into so-far unsubstantiated claims of Trump campaign collusion with Russia, was friends with a now-demoted FBI agent also involved in the scandal, a report says.

Investigative reporter Sara Carter writes that newly released text messages obtained by congressional investigators show the agent, Peter Strzok, “was close friends with a District of Columbia judge who recused himself from the criminal case” involving Flynn.

The messages, given to Congress by the Department of Justice, show Strzok and his paramour, FBI attorney Lisa Page, exchanged messages about Strzok’s relationship with Judge Rudolph Contreras.

He presided over a Dec. 1, 2017, hearing in which Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, a charge resulting from Mueller’s work.

Strzok was removed, Carter reported, from the special counsel team when anti-Trump text messages he shared with Page were revealed.

The messages were found by the DOJ’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz.

Then, Carter reports, on Dec. 7 Contreras was removed abruptly from Flynn’s case, with virtually no comment.

Page wrote in a text message to Strzok on July 25, 2016: “Rudy is on the FISC! Did you know that? Just appointed two months ago.”

Carter said: “At that point, the pair continues to discuss other issues but comes back to Contreras, ‘I did. We talked about it before and after. I need to get together with him.’ Then later Strzok appears to return to his discussion about Contreras.

The conversation included messages about being careful not to put the judge in a position in which he would have to drop out of the case.

Page wrote, “I can’t imagine you either one of you could talk about anything in detail meaningful enough to warrant recusal.”

When Strzok explained he was in charge of espionage for the FBI, Page suggested: “Standards for recusal are quite high. I just don’t think this poses an actual conflict. And he doesn’t know what you do?”

Strzok then suggests that a “social setting” meeting would be better than “one-on-one.”

FISA court Judge Rudolph Contreras. Appointed to prior federal court position by former President Obama

Carter reported: “Investigators working with Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Rep. Mark Meadows, both with the House Oversight Committee, discovered the text messages during their ongoing investigation into the FBI’s handling of the alleged Trump-Russia collusion investigation, the congressional members told this reporter.

“Under rules established by DOJ officials, congressional investigators could only review the less-redacted version of the pairs’ text messages at DOJ headquarters and only the highly redacted version of the texts was allowed to be removed during the ongoing process, they said. Of the 1.2 million documents collected by Horowitz’s team, the House Oversight Committee has only received 3,162 “unique documents,” they...

Though many in D.C. thought it could happen, those many are still shocked it actually did happen.

Twenty-fours away from a nearly two-million dollar retirement package, former FBI #2 Andrew McCabe was fired by Attorney General Jeff Session – effective immediately.

McCabe’s loyalty to departed/infamous FBI Director James Comey was well known. So too were his equally anti-Trump leanings. McCabe himself has been implicated in abuse of power and related cover-up allegations, all of which are said to have sealed his fate at the FBI.

Word is Mr. McCabe’s firing is to be “one of many” to follow as President Trump continues to push out those in his administration he understandably finds himself unable to trust. The firing is alos believed to be one of the primary motivators for the “Trump scandals” attempt that is now being ramped up by the Mainstream Media that was rolled out in conjunction with special counsel Robert Mueller’s sudden attack on Mr. Trump’s family business.

Further speculation is also pointing to formal charges being brought against McCabe and others for the roles they played in attempting to illegally influence the 2016 Election outcome – influence that is alleged to directly include both Hillary Clinton and...

Five Things You Didn't Know About St. Patrick's Day:

St. Patrick Was Not Irish

His birth name was actually Maewyn Succat -- it wasn't until he was in the Church that it was changed to Patricius, or Patrick. St. Patrick, the Apostle of Ireland, was born in Kilpatrick, near Dumbarton, which is in Scotland. As a teenager, he was kidnapped by Irish raiders and enslaved as a shepherd for several years. He attributed his ability to persevere to his faith in God.

Did St. Patrick Drive All the Snakes Out of Ireland?

Despite the popular lore, St. Patrick did not drive the snakes out of Ireland because the island did not have any to begin with. Icy water surrounds the Emerald Isle, which prevented snakes from migrating over.

Green?

Green may be the national color of Ireland, but the color most associated with St. Patrick is blue. The Order of St. Patrick was established in 1783 as the senior order of chivalry in the Kingdom of Ireland. The color associated with the honor needed to differentiate it from the Order of the Garter (dark blue) and the Order of the Thistle (green). So they went with blue.

Largest St. Patrick's Day Parades Are Held Outside of Ireland

The first St. Patrick's Day parade was held in the U.S. The Irish have been celebrating the feast of St. Patrick since the ninth century, but the first recorded parade anywhere was in Boston in 1737. The parade was not Catholic in nature, though, because the majority of Irish immigrants to the colonies were Protestant. Ireland did not have a parade of its own until 1931, in Dublin. Even today, 18 out of the 20 largest St. Patrick's Day parades are in the states -- New York's is the largest.

Shamrock Used to Explain the Holy Trinity

St. Patrick used a three-leafed shamrock to explain the Holy Trinity to pagan Irish, forever linking the shamrock with him and the Irish in the popular imagination. He would tie shamrocks to his robes, which is why the color green is worn.