Truthful Politics

After two and a half days of deliberation the jury came back in the Robert Reaves murder trial of Latrese Curtis as guilty. After watching the trial for the past week I cannot figure out how they came to this conclusion as I would not have been able to convict him.

I will post more on the trials and evidence or lack thereof, and then we can all form our own ideas. In the meantime if you happen to have any information that can shed some light as to why all 12 said he was guilty please email me or call.

Thanks you.
Cathy

The state and defense attorneys rested their case today after 100 plus pieces of evidence was admitted and numerous witnesses and experts gave testimonies for the past 6 days. If I was on the jury I would have a very hard time deciding this case and Indo not envy them for the task ahead.

When the scene was first discovered by people on their way down I-540, until evidence was gathered, there were numerous cars and people on the scene. I was really not able to discern from testimony whether the scene was really kept pure from beginning to end. Tammy Malinowski, of the City County Bureau of Investigation (CCBI) sketched the scene and evidence, she also video-taped the path of the evidence leading to Latrese Curtis' body. However, there was a discrepancy in the sketch as it showed the cell phone was located differently than what the video showed.

In regards to Robert Reaves' (the accused) car it was not shown that Robert Reaves was actually behind the wheel. His boarder Steven Randolph also had access to the car and keys anytime he wanted to use it. Even though the car was reported on the scene other witnesses also said it was a white cargo van, one even stating that it had no windows on the side.

Shawn Lilyquist, also of the CCBI processed three vehicles; Latrese Curtis, Steven Randolph, and Robert Reaves. She collected evidence from Mr. Reaves vehicle but did not bag and tag all things in his car. She stated there was a screwdriver that she did not collect. All prints in Latrese and Robert's vehicles were there own. Here is where it gets sticky... over nine months later Robert Reaves' vehicle is again processed, but this time by Alfred Sternberg of the Wake County Sheriff's Office of Criminal Investigation. This time he found a knife in the rail under the back seat, he also found a fingernail, numerous papers, and another screwdriver among other things. Which made me wonder why didn't Ms. Lilyquist of the CCBI see and gather these things also. The defense asked Mr. Sternberg if he could tell if there was blood on any of the items and he stated that he could not tell. He was asked again by Mr. Kelly, Robert Reaves' attorney, and he said that he 'did not see anything overtly like a blood drop.' Defense then asked 'you collect not on your observation but on what SBI can find? Whereas, Mr. Sternberg replied that it is 'certainly an objective and his is to collect and preserve...' At no time did the defense ask if the vehicle was at all times in a secure area, at least not that I heard, I had made a notation ...if vehicle was secured from February '08 until October '08?

There were quite a few other things that made flags go up for me but I will not state them all here until after the jury has submitted a verdict. Tomorrow is closing arguments so we should hear from the jury sometime tomorrow.

September 29, 2009 was the first day at Wake County Courthouse for the murder trial of Robert Reaves. It is alleged that Robert Reaves murdered Latrese Curtis by stabbing her 36 times (according to the medical examiner's report) and leaving her body alongside Interstate 540 in Raleigh, near the Louisburg Exit.

This case is one where a score card is needed as there are threads of connections throughout.

Darin Curtis was her husband and he attended NC State while also working a part-time job.

Steven Randolph was Latrese's friend and lover who attended NC Central. He lived with the accused Robert Reaves in a basement apartment of Reaves' house. Also living in the house was Reaves' sister Wilma Mae Thorpe aka Poochie (spelling unknown as of this writing). Wilma, according to Wake County Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Lindow's opening statement, will testify that her brother did not go to church that evening like he stated.

Velma (last name unknown as of this writing) is a friend of Steven Randolph and supposedly had minor run-ins with Robert Reaves. According to the opening statement made by Ms. Lindow, Velma received threatening phone calls and phone records show that Robert Reaves had made a call to Velma's number. Velma also had her tires slashed but they did not state that Robert Reaves was found to have done this.

Kimberly Parker a friend of Latrese Curtis received a call at 2 a.m. from Latrese. Latrese did not speak but Kimberly could hear the sounds of someone walking on what sounded like gravel and cars passing by.

Testimony given by Darin Curtis explains the day before when he last saw Latrese. He awoke at 6:30 a.m., Latrese left for school around 7:15 a.m. and he left for work about 10 minutes after that. He talked to Latrese later that day around 5:00 p.m. and he told her he had a Beta Alpha Phi meeting at 7:00, and she said she was going to go to the library. Darin left the meeting when it let out at 8:30 p.m. to go home. He again talked to Latrese at 10 p.m. when she said she was going to leave the library, grab a bite to eat and then head home. Mr. Curtis went to bed around 11:30 p.m.

The next morning at 6:30 a.m. he awoke to find that Latrese was not home. He called her cell phone but got her voice mail and did not leave a message. He did not think anything was wrong, he thought maybe Latrese went to her parents to eat and she spent the night there. On his way to work he took I-540 passing the crime scene. As he was passing and noticed the tarp, thoughts came to the back of his mind regarding Latrese. He then went back home where he made more phone calls looking for Latrese. He went online to AT&T's site to look up Latrese's call history. He found one number that was called a lot that evening so he tried the number and asked how that person knew Latrese. The man on the other end kept asking if Latrese was okay and Darin Curtis hung up the phone. Turns out that man was Steven Randolph.

When the defending attorney cross-examined Darin Curtis he asked, how long does it take to get home from Central? Darin estimated it to be 45 - 60 minutes. He asked Darin what time he went to bed, with Darin replying 11:30. The attorney then asked what time Mr. Curtis got up the next morning and Darin answered 6:30. Defense asked if Darin had seen his wife's car on the news and he stated he did not. Darin said he was on the scene at 7:45 a.m. when asked by the defense what time he initially arrived at the scene. Darin also responded to questioning that he went back home and then went back to the scene after making phone calls. He was asked by the defense if he went to GEICO.com at 8:58 a.m. to check on the car insurance of Latrese and Mr. Curtis denied this. He also was asked if he checked Latrese's voice mail and he denied that allegation. He also said he had no knowledge of Latrese's affair until it came about during the investigation.

Frank David a detective with Wake County Sheriff's Department for 14 years testified that he interviewed Mr. Darin Curtis that day and pictures were taken of Darin's head, torso, top and bottom of hands and there were no injuries to him. The pictures used during this testimony were State's Evidence 12-15.

Lunch break until 2 p.m. was called.

I am going to do a non-political post today and discuss Evernote, a wonderful free (you can upgrade to a premium account) utility to help keep you organized. If you are not familiar with Evernote please check it out. If you are like me and have paper bits all over the place; notes on napkins, business cards, receipts, any and all lists. How about when you browse the internet and find a snippet of something very interesting and want to remember it? or in an email?

Here are two examples of my favorite personal uses for Evernote. My husband and I love to tour our local vineyards and there are quite a few here in the Piedmont region of NC. We limit ourselves to purchasing two bottles of wine at each vineyard. If we find a third or fourth that we love I will take a picture of the wine label and send the label to Evernote and put it in my Wine Notebook. I also take a picture of our wine rating sheet so I can remember which ones we did or did not like. That way if I am in a restaurant that features local wines I can go to Evernote and look up my rating sheet. I do the same for videos that I might see on the shelf somewhere that I think we would be interested in seeing. Then the next time I go to my Netflix account I pull up my Evernote Notebook titled Movies and I have a few I can choose from.

For business uses Evernote is invaluable. I do a lot of research on the Internet, so I created a Research Notebook in Evernote to save my clippings. Not only will Evernote clip what I need but it will save the URL for me. I like to have my receipts sent to me via email, the Apple Store will do this, also anything I purchase online sends the receipt to my email account. I can save these receipts right from my MAC email to Evernote.

Recently there was a wonderful discussion on Chris Brogan's blog about the uses of Evernote and it seemed a few people commented that it would be great if Evernote had a way to save emails from MAC's email client. Here is a way this can be done.

Go to the email you want to save. Go to the upper left corner to File and in the drop down menu click on Print.*

A Print dialogue box will open with a button called PDF on the lower left. Open this box and scroll down to Save PDF to Evernote.

Once you click on this your email will now be in Evernote, a sweet program for organizing all the things you do on the computer or off.

*Click image to make larger

Saturday, September 26, 2009 at May Memorial Library from 11 a.m. - 2 p.m. will be a local author fair. The Friends of Alamance County Public Library is sponsoring this event which will give you the chance to meet local authors, who will be reading from their books and answering questions about writing and publishing your book. You will also have the opportunity to browse and purchase their books.

May Memorial Library is located at 342 South Spring Street, Burlington, NC. For more information regarding this event you may call 336-229-3588,

What is going on with this country lately? We have people wearing guns to political meetings, especially ones where President Obama is in attendance. We have a Senator disrupting our President while he is giving a speech, Kanye grabbing the microphone, from Taylor Swift while she is giving a thank you speech for winning an award, and giving accolades to someone else. Now we have a hanging of a man who survived non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, was a single dad, worked two jobs - one being for the government as a census taker.

Bill Sparkman 51, was found hanging in Daniel Boone National Forest. Mr. Sparkman at the time was working in this rural section of Kentucky taking the census, and whether this is related to what he was doing or just a means to distract for the real reason, the word "fed" was found written on his chest.

There is speculation that the reason might not be political but that Mr. Sparkman happened upon one of many drug areas in the region and saw something that he shouldn't have. If this was the case it really could not have been one of the smartest moves a drug dealer could make, as a census workers is a federal employee and hence the FBI gets involved instead of the local police department.

I am not suggesting one way or the other, I actually have my own ideas but will not mention them here. I am only putting forth common commentary (what few there have been) of various news channels. Only time will tell us what happened and hopefully they catch who did this horrible thing.

Earlier this month I headed to San Diego, Ca., to attend the Creative Freelancer Conference. This was my first conference since my aunt passed away and I made the decision that I was going to get serious about my freelance writing business.

I was not sure what I was getting into but something told me that I was going to benefit immensely. I am glad that I listened to that little voice (something I need more confidence in doing), as not only did I get to meet some wonderful people, I heard awesome people speak, and I learned a lot.

I took away wonderful information from June Walker during her tax seminar. She explained about the myths regarding deduction for a home-based business during her session Money Saving Tax Solutions for Creatives. She was such a wealth of information that I bought her book Self-Employed Tax Solutions, a must read for any freelancer.

The Communicatrix aka Colleen Wainwright, was very knowledgeable and extremely funny. If you aren't following her please check her out, she has wonderful ideas on how to increase your communication skills.

Michelle Goodman, another great speaker, was a wealth of information. She gave a seminar on "Dealing With Nightmare Clients," and a round-table on getting your work out to mass media. Since she is a fellow writer and an author, I definitely had to pick up her book which has the same name as her blog Anti 9-5 Guide, and a wonderful read.

Petrula Vrontikis was hands down the best speaker at the conference. Okay that is opinionated but she really was great. Her session What Will Your Freelance Business Be When It Grows Up? on how to nurture your business and get it going in the right direction was the first session. It motivated not only myself, but many of the participants, and set the tone for a conference that beats all freelance conferences.

There were other wonderful speakers who were chock full of advice, Ilise Benun, Peleg Top, Lee Silber, just to mention a few more. The full list is on the Creative Freelance Conference site in the right hand column.

I stayed in San Diego for another two weeks after the conference visiting family. This conference had me so inspired and fired up that those feelings are still going strong today. So much so, that I created a home office and bought an office TV (to keep up with daily news), I am working every day researching articles along with questions asked in my comments. I am also in the midst of gathering names of publishers, editors and magazines to submit articles to. This conference has me not only motivated but thinking professionally regarding my business.

If you are a freelance designer, writer, fiber artist, photographer please check out CFC and join us next year.

After further research I found out that it was a contract company updating the signs. This means that our tax dollars were not used to pay overtime for a NC employee. It seems that the contract company is under deadline to put up the signs by October 1st.

Sunday September 13, 2009 we were driving down Interstate 40 around the Fayetteville Street exit when my husband happened to notice someone fixing a road sign. He immediately turned to me and said 'look someone working on a Sunday.' I turned to see someone wearing an orange pinny working on a road sign.

I called NC DOT's Communication Division and spoke with Bridget to see what division would be fixing the signs and if they are NC employees or contract employees. That would be the maintenance department and it turns out it could be either a state or contract employee.

If it is a state employee I have a question for our state officials, or better yet, head of maintenance; was there a potential dangerous situation regarding the sign that we needed a worker out there on a Sunday? Was it absolutely necessary that someone was out there on a Sunday? Was that person on NC payroll or do they work for a contract company?

I know NC received $735.5 million in formula funding from the federal government for Highway Improvement and if, only if, this was a NC state employee, do we really need to be wasting this money on Sunday pay?

Check back to see if I can discover if this person was a contract or NC employee.

I have been reading the Congressional Budget Office's preliminary analysis of H.R. 3200. It is interesting reading in light of what other pundits are saying. One such person is Rush Limbaugh, and on his show he made an interesting comment regarding the CBO's analysis of the bill. You can read the transcript of August 14th where he says "this monstrous, 1,017 page bill, after it passes -- ten years after it passes -- there's still 17 million uninsured Americans! It does (I am sure he meant to say NOT but it is missing from the transcript) even accomplish its primary, advertised objective." Well shall we see what the CBO analysis actually says?

In the Congressional Budget's analysis on page three it says "...those provisions would yield a significant INCREASE (emphasis mine) in the number of Americans with health insurance." Here is the part Rush left out, "by 2019, CBO and the staff of JCT estimate, the number of nonelderly people without health insurance would be REDUCED (emphasis mine) by about 37 million..." Now here is where Rush Limbaugh picks it up again, "...leaving about 17 million nonelderly (sic) residents uninsured..." Now Rush decided not to continue from here but I will, "(nearly half of whom would be unauthorized immigrants."

Now first of all Rush called them Americans, ummm Rush are you sure you meant to call unauthorized immigrants Americans? I think I need to go back onto Limbaugh's site and see what he has to say about that subject. I wonder what Limbaugh's position is on illegal immigrants getting health insurance...

I will be attending a conference Wednesday through Friday in San Diego. It is the Creative Freelancer Conference and I will be writing my posts from there.

In the works:
Health care costs and who is going to pay for it?
Under Medicare/Medicaid doctors only take so many patients. Will this happen under the new health care bill if passed?
I also will be posting about the conference.

Over the weekend I had a chance go through Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity's transcripts and researched their citing. Just to let you know that anyone can do this and if you have a computer at home you do not even have to leave the house.

Let us start with Sean Hannity's transcript of his July 23rd show. Sean begins the show by saying "Now we here at "Hannity," we're not going to let that happen. Tonight, we're going to show what happens when the government takes your life and death decisions into its own hands."

He begins with Ainsley Earhardt a FOX news correspondent, telling Sean's viewers about Major General William Davies (no relations), US Army (Ret) who suffered from pain in the chest and went to a hospital who told him they were not sure what caused it, but possibly indigestion. Maj. Gen'l. Davies would not take that for an answer so he proceeded to go to a cardiologist in Carlisle, PA, Doctor David Kahn. After being on the treadmill for only a few minutes it was discovered that there was a problem with his heart. Dr. Kahn stated that "the quickest way to get him studied was to take him to the hospital, so I did." How wonderful of Dr. Kahn to be such a concerned doctor, but how does this show what will happen when the government takes your life and death decisions into its own hands? I am sure for every wonderful story as this, there are more that show how horrible our health care system is. For example my brother-in-law had the symptoms of a heart attack on a Friday night, he went to their local small-town hospital. He was then transferred to a slightly larger hospital in Kingston, NY for tests that could not be performed at Margaretville Hospital. It was discovered that he had blockage in one of his arteries and he was immediately sent to Albany Hospital to have a stint put in. Total time - from Friday night to Monday. His doctor did not drive him to the hospital, his wife did and then the ambulance. My sister will even tell you, 'do not have a heart attack on a weekend, they will just make you comfortable and keep you alive until the weekday.'

He then goes on to talk about Katherine Hale a cancer survivor but again her story can be repeated numerous times and it shows what is wrong with our system.

Now though the plot thickens. Sean Hannity goes on to talk about Shona Holmes from Canada, who was diagnosed with a "brain tumor" and came to the US for treatment because she would have to wait a few months for certain testings in Canada. Well there seems to be some hoopla over her story and I am not going to repeat them here, suffice it to say she did have a medical problem and did need to have it taken care of. However, I can cite the same thing here in the US. I recently was caregiver to my 94 years old aunt who lived in NJ. I called a doctor to get her an initial visit once I had her here in NC. This doctor was highly recommended to me by hospice. This was in June of 2009, do you know when his first available appointment was? January of 2010, my aunt passed away July of 2009. I did eventually find her a doctor and she did have an appointment soon after she moved down here in June.

Now to Sean's next example of how bad national run health care is; Katie Brickel, a cancer survivor, from England. Katie was approached by Conservatives for Patient's Rights, a group started by Richard Scott who founded Columbia Hospital Corporation. Here is a little tidbit on CHC, shortly after it's merger with Hospital Corporation of America, it was investigated by the government for Medicare/Medicaid fraud in the late 1990's and paid 1.7 billion in fines, one of the largest settlements ever made. Just a little side note-HCA was started by two members of the Frist family, one being former majority leader of the US Senate Bill Frist (R); however, Mr. Frist sold all his shares of stock in 2005, but not without some controversy (again I will not go into details here but you can search it). CPR has on their website a pamphlet for you to read under their Resources section called Medicaid's Cost, Like Medicare's, Have Risen Far More Than the Cost of Private Health Care the only thing I can say is yes as long as there are companies out there, like you ran Mr. Scott, and carry out fraudulent practices against the system, yes then the cost will rise. On to Mrs. Brickel, she and others claim they were mislead by CPR as they were told they were going to do a documentary on whether health care in the US should be nationalized and that what she had said was "skewed out of proportion."¹

To wrap up his show Mr. Hannity goes back to Mr. Davies regarding his health care and this is how Major General Davies sums up what would have happened if it was under this current bill "I can only suppose that given, you know, the circumstances that I was facing, if that happened in Canada or the United Kingdom, that perhaps I could have died. That's the conclusion I can draw." (bold inserted by me) So I suppose what happened to Mr. Davies to begin with is not saying that our system needs to be fixed? So this is how Mr. Sean Hannity wants everyone to believe that the bill HR 3200 will devastate our current wonderfully run health care system. I can only suppose... that does say a lot to prove it to me. How about to you?

¹Times Online

UPDATE: I am glad to see that Rachel Maddow also reported on Richard Scott.

First I need to say I am an ex-Republican turned Democrat during the 2008 presidential campaign. However, I try to look at issues and research the he said/she said blather that is on the Internet and emails through a non-partisan eye for this site. I try my hardest to keep my political ideas out of this site and report on the issues as best as I can and am able to do.

I really have no opinion as of yet one way or the other on the healthcare bill HR3200. I have been reading it, I printed it out in small print and did it by printing front to back and I have a total of 328 pages not 1,000 and some that is reported by others. Now mind you, yes I can get 1,000 pages by going to one government site that is printing it in huge letters, I preferred going to Thomas.loc.gov and printing out from their site. So far I am not stuck on the language, I don't find it very legalese as suggested. Yes there are a lot of references to other bills, and yes I do plan on going to some of those bills and seeing what they are referencing but first I want to get through HR3200.

I want to tell a little bit about myself and why I am concerned about healthcare. I suffer from Fibromyalgia and Meniere's disease. My husband has worked for a company for the past eight years and had/has wonderful health insurance. Until about two years ago. His insurance has changed every year for the past four years and has steadily gone down in what they cover, and they have also increased our deductible - we pay a deductible even we see a preferred provider, and there is also a cap (which has transferred among the different insurance companies) and I am steadily getting to the top of that cap. Why? because of my Meniere's mostly. The testings conducted; hearing test, vertigo testing and other tests, are not cheap and they take a big chunk out of my allowed amount. When I saw the huge chunk taken out due to an outpatient knee surgery (arthroscopy) and testings in the last four years my heart sank. I stopped going to the doctors and now try to go once or twice a year for just my yearly check-up (oh and they also cut into my cap so that yearly mammogram, whatever it costs, is deducted from my cap). Recently I was lucky enough to finally get approved for social security disability and will soon be covered under Medicare so all of this really is a moot point for me. Yes for me, but not for others who will be going through this and other things, and I am a concerned person and care about my fellow citizens and if I can help them to understand what is going on politically in a truthful manner I am going to try.

Day One:
I spent the morning reading HR3200 and the afternoon listening online to MSNB'c Rachel Maddow - taking notes to research what she said.

Day Two:
I went online to Sean Hannity to listen to his sound bites regarding HR3200. I had to sign up and pay for this service, no I did not pay the money so I will not get to hear what Sean had to say and research his citations. So I went to Rush Limbaugh's site. I am still there and still reading through his shows transcripts. Thank you Rush for putting them online and not charging us a fee.

continuation Wednesday August 19, 2009

Please notice the city change.

A health care town hall meeting will take place from 6:30-8 PM in Greensboro, NC on August 19, 2009 at the Teamster's Union Hall on Sandy Ridge Road.

This meeting is to make your voice heard now that health care reform is closer than it has ever been, as proclaimed on the flier. I do hope this is for us to make our voices heard and not to have a screaming match as has been the norm at most town hall meetings lately.

I want to know what is being done in Washington and Raleigh to make my health care more affordable and to report on what was asked and said at this meeting so I will be attending.

If you are interested in attending, the flier invites everyone to bring a friend and to please RSVP to Heather Welborn - Call: 704 609-5906 or email her at hwelborn@seanc.org.

Look for my follow up post on Friday the 21st.

I am sorry but these two blogs have been down for a few months while I dealt with an illness in my family. I was finally able to bring my aunt home the end of June which was originally planned for the fall. We had a wonderful five weeks together until she passed from this world on the 29th of July at 10:30 PM.

May she finally rest in blissfull, painless, sleep until she is ready to come back again.

Cathy
Editor