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Saturday, May 23, 2015

Kerrville Daily Times does its job - more on Green Beret Wannabe Mayor Jack Pratt

The front page headline of the Memorial Day weekend edition of Kerrville Daily Times is "Questions remain over Pratt's military service record; mayor says mudslinging is politically motivated."

Hill Country Veterans Center director Alan Hill, a Vietnam vet, is quoted: "He personally told me three times he was a Green Beret with four tours in Vietnam.... He never was at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, for the Special Forces training; he never went to airborne school, which he would of had to go to get accepted in the Special Forces. But now he is saying he was attached to or on a temporary duty assignment with the special forces. Does he have those orders?"

Pratt did not return phone messages from the KDT reporters Victoria Aldrich and Caitlin Clark.

Here's what they have to say at "This ain't hell but you can see it from here" :

Pratt blames politics for the sudden scrutiny – but you know, if I was running for office and one of the reasons I was telling voters that they should vote for me is because of my military service, I’d have documentation in my pocket – and I’d make sure the NPRC has everything correct. The last thing I’d do is drag this thing out.
It looks like he has also embellished his education credentials and his work experience, as well as his career as a personal clerk that morphed into a Special Forces killer dude and seven weeks became four years. By the way, Kerrville, speaking from experience, the first thing the phonies do is blame the military’s record-keeping. The second thing they do is blame politics (or some other haters) for the sudden scrutiny. They never provide documentation to exonerate themselves (so you look like you’re on a witch hunt). They always keep digging hoping you’ll get tired of beating a dead horse before they get tired of digging.
Our friends at Special Forces Poser Patrol have his records


A real veteran whose records had been screwed up would show you the documents right now to exonerate him – a phony will tell you that an ex-wife burned them, or that a flood a few years back washed them away. An honorable phony (there are a few) would admit that they lied and apologize right now.

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Another Secret Squirrel in Kerrville - Mayor Jack Pratt

Another Secret Squirrel in Kerrville?
Kerrville mayor accused of inflating his Vietnam service record

From San Antonio Express News (Zeke MacCormack)
Alan Hill, director of the Hill Country Veterans Center, says Kerrville Mayor Jack Pratt twice told him that Pratt had served four tours in Vietnam with the Green Berets, claims not supported by Pratt's military records. "He's a wannabe" special forces member. Hill said of Pratt, who denies embellishing his resume.
His military records indicate he spent nearly eight years in the Army but just seven weeks in Vietnam as a personnel supervisor before leaving the service as a staff sergeant in 1971.

Pratt claims to have a masters in business administration from the University of Hawaii. Officials there say they have no record of him attending its Shidler College of Business.
National Personnel Records Center documents say Pratt was a radio operator in Germany in 1964, a personnel sergeant in Thailand from 1967 to 1969 and in Vietnam from May 25 to July 15, 1971.

The mayor owes the community an explanation, City Councilman Gene Allen said, calling the inconsistencies “alarming.”
Pratt spoke of mutiple tours in Vietnam with U.S. Special Forces in a candidate forum that year, Paul Wampler recalled, noting, “There was considerable talk and skepticism in town at the time about Mr. Pratt's claims.”

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When I caught Herbert C. Williamson III lying about being a heroic chopper pilot in Vietnam, I sent the  information to the publishers of the website This Ain't Hell But You Can See It From Here. They labeled Herb the Secret Squirrel. These blowhards that are so eager to describe their exploits as Seals, Green Berets, Delta Force and so on are suddenly all hush hush when they get caught, claiming their activities an status are classified. Well, if that's true, why have they been running their mouths about it? 

Monday, May 11, 2015

New Deputy U.S. Attorney General for Civil Rights - Vanita Gupta


Vanita Gupta Is Setting The Tone For Obama's Civil Rights Division
From Huffington Post
This is a very good article about the lawyer who heads the U.S. Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. I have not personally met Ms. Gupta but I have talked with her many times and corresponded about the asset forfeiture racket in Texas, especially during the Ron Sutton regime in the Hill Country. I see that she headed the investigation into the Ferguson, MO. police department, and she is interested in the militarization of police departments.

Maybe she will take a look at some of the police brutality in our fair Hill Country.


Friday, May 8, 2015

Life is hard, but it's harder if you're stupid

Great Quotes About Crime and the Justice System
I've been reading the classic crime novel by George V. Higgins, 'The Friends of Eddie Coyle.' It has some of the best dialogue in any fiction. Here are my favorite two examples:

One criminal to another: 'This life's hard, but it's harder if you're stupid.'

And this exchange between an old defense lawyer to a federal prosecutor discussing how the system grinds on and nothing really changes:

'And in another year or so,' Clark said, 'he'll be in again, here or someplace else, and I'll be talking to some other bastard, or maybe even you again, and we'll try another one and he'll go away again. Is there any end to this shit? Does anything ever change in this racket? '
'Hey Foss, the prosecutor said, taking Clark by the arm, 'of course it changes. Don't take it so hard. Some of us die, the rest of us get older, new guys come along, old guys disappear. It changes every day.'
'It's hard to notice, though,' Clark said.
'It is, the prosecutor said, 'it certainly is.'

And the wheel goes round and round.

Accused of Buying Sex Shop to Launder Money

A suspended Connecticut Roman Catholic priest who authorities say dealt pounds of methamphetamine and bought a sex shop intending to launder his drug money will spend another three years in prison after being sentenced on Thursday.
Federal investigators said Wallin had associates in California send him methamphetamine beginning in late 2008 or early 2009. By 2011, Wallin's partners were sending him one to three pounds of meth a month and Wallin was running the drug operation out of his apartment in Waterbury, investigators said.
Wallin also bought the "Land of Oz & Dorothy's Place" adult video and sex toy shop in North Haven and apparently intended to launder drug proceeds that totaled in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, federal agents said in court documents.

Rivers, who has since returned to Michigan, fell victim to civil asset forfeiture, a legal tool that has been criticized as a violation of due process and a contradiction of the idea that criminal defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Asset forfeiture allows police to seize property they suspect is related to criminal activity, without even charging its owner with a crime. The charges are filed against the property itself -- including cash, jewelry, cars and houses -- which can then be sold, with part of the proceeds flowing back to the department that made the seizure.

“We don’t have to prove that the person is guilty,” Sean Waite, the agent in charge at the DEA's Albuquerque's office, told the Journal. “It’s that the money is presumed to be guilty.”

Thanks to a new, cheapo way of manufacturing meth, labs are sprouting up in motels around the country—and blowing up next to unwitting guests.