Representative Matt Gaetz: Dangerous Driver and Threat Generator

Matthew Louis Gaetz II is a Representative for the 1st congressional district of Florida in the United States in Washington, DC.  He is a staunch Republican and a "yuge" supporter of the man who was installed as the 45th sitting President of our nation.  He was born and raised in Florida.
   Matt's father, Don, was born in Rugby, North Dakota, and was the son of the Mayor of Rugby, who went on to become a state legislator for that state.  Don was a registered Democrat until his father, running as a Republican, died while running for the office of Lieutenant Governor of North Dakota in 1964.  Don then registered as a Republican.  He moved to Florida in 1978, working as a hospital administrator in Jacksonville and lobbying in Tallahassee to create hospice programs.  In 1983, Don created VITAS Healthcare Corporation with a group of investors; the business was sold in 2004 for almost half a billion dollars.  In 2013, the US Department of Justice charged VITAS Healthcare with Medicare fraud beginning in 2002. Don declared no knowledge of the fraud.  (But the company had to pay $75 million to the government in fines and false charges.)  In 1994 Gaetz dipped his own toes into politics, beginning small, with the Okaloosa County School Board, and won.  Six years later, he ran for Superintendent of Okaloosa County schools, won, and kept the position until he ran for the Florida Legislature.  Don served in the Florida State Senate for 10 years, from November 2006 through the same month in 2016; and he was President of the Florida Senate from 2012 to 2016. (Being a member of the Florida state Senate was important in 2008.)
    Matt, in the meantime, graduated from Florida State University in 2003 with a BS degree.  He then traveled to Williamsburg, Virginia, where he received his Jurisprudence Degree in 2007.  He then returned home, to Fort Walton Beach and worked in a local law firm.  (There is a delicious, but unfounded, report that an FSU roommate of Gaetz was found dead in their dorm room, and that Gaetz was suspected of his murder sometime between the years 1999 and 2003.  There are no reports of such a death in local or state papers, and no investigations by either FSU police, Tallahassee police, or the Sheriff's Office.)
   In the early morning of 31 October 2008, Matt Gaetz was driving back from a bar called The Swamp on Okaloosa Island in the 2001 BMW that was registered to his father, Florida state Senator Don Gaetz.  He was driving at 48 mph in a 35 mph speed zone.  A Sheriff's Deputy pulled him over.  According to the Deputy's report, Mr. Gaetz's eyes were red and watery, and he stumbled and swayed getting out of the car.  The Deputy smelled alcohol coming from the driver.  The Deputy first made a field sobriety test by asking Gaetz to follow his moving finger with his eyes.  Gaetz failed that test twice, nearly falling over.  He refused to take a breathalyzer test to check his alcohol level.  He was arrested for DUI, and mug shots taken.  The firm that employed Gaetz took up his defense.  --  However, before the court date for Gaetz's hearing, the Sheriff's Deputy was forced to resign over a previous arrest, and Daddy Don Gaetz made certain that all charges against his son were dropped.
      In Gaetz's hometown in Florida, the local newspaper describes him as "an entitled ne'er-do-well."  A political opponent said, in 2016, "Matt would be a WalMart manager, if it wasn't for his father."  Steve Schmidt, a veteran Republican political strategist, says of Gaetz, "Matt Gaetz is living proof that Veep was less parody and more prophecy. To some degree, he's a character in the grandest reality show of all. He exists at the hinge of reality and alternate reality."
     Between 1999 and 2014, Gaetz has racked up 16 speeding tickets in Florida alone, and is particularly well known for rear-ending a car stopped at a traffic light while he was talking on his cell phone in 2014, while a member of the Florida House of Representatives.
    In  February 2010, a Republican Florida House member resigned from office due to corruption charges.  Matt Gaetz began his run for that Special Election seat in March 2010.  He served at the district 4 (southern Santa Rosa County and Okaloosa County) from April 2010 through November 2016.  During Gaetz's time in the Florida legislature, the killing of Trayvon Martin, an un-armed African-American youth, took place. After the trial of George Zimmerman for the murder of Martin, using a Florida "stand your ground" (law) defense, the Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives ordered a hearing regarding the "stand your ground" law.  Matt Gaetz, the Chairman of the Criminal Justice Subcommittee, was tasked with reviewing the legislation, and announced before the hearings that he would not support changing "one damn comma," though he said he would listen to arguments on both sides. 
   He was sworn in to the US Congress as Representative of the 1st District of Florida on 3 January 2017.  And he has been 45's lick-spittle ever since.

 ***  United States House of Representatives Committee Assignments  ***

   House Committee on Armed Services
     (1) Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
     (2) Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces

  House Committee on the Budget

  House Committee on the Judiciary
     (1) Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet
     (2) Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law

  Republican Safety Committee

In April 2018, Politico described Matt Gaetz as "one of the most enthusiastic defenders of President Trump on cable news" and a "proud Trump protege."  Aaron Blake of  The Washington Post referred to him as "one of the most controversial members of Congress," and as someone who has "unabashedly aligned himself with Trump on basically all things."
   Gaetz wants to completely abolish the Environmental Protection Agency, because "our small businesses cannot afford to cover the costs associated with compliance, too often leading to closed doors and unemployed Americans.  It is time to take back our legislative power from the EPA and abolish it completely."  He says there is climate change, but it has nothing to do with humans and their waste and factories.
   Matt Gaetz has an A+ rating from the NRA and is a lifetime member.  While serving in Florida, he fought for both open carry and concealed carry gun rights.   Former NRA President Marion Hammer said that Gaetz was "one of the most pro-gun members to have ever served in the Florida legislature."
   Gaetz opposes sanctuary cities and has stated that illegal immigrants "suck us dry."  In January 2018, Gaetz defended Trump's statement that Haiti and African countries were "shithole" nations, saying that Haiti was covered by "sheet metal and garbage" and was in a "disgusting" condition.  In October 2018, Gaetz falsely declared that George Soros paid for a caravan of migrants travelling from Central America to the United States.  -  The man is bursting with hatred for anyone not of his race or his monetary standing.  -  In January 2019, Gaetz invited Charles C. "Chuck" Johnson to be his guest at the State of the Union address by 45.  Johnson is a known alt-right Holocaust denier and has raised money for neo-Nazi website "The Daily Stormer."  Gaetz said in an interview that Johnson "is not a Holocaust denier, he's not a white supremacist."
   The stupid asshole even believes that his buddy Jim Jordan didn't know about the sexual abuse at Ohio State while he was coaching there, and that then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions had "...got Stockholm Syndrome" over there at the Department of Justice, "he's become sympathetic with his captors over there in the Deep State."  - Yep, Gaetz is a true believer in all the "Deep State" idiocy, too.

Matt Gaetz - Doofus Deluxe

On 26 February 2019, the night before Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen was to testify in an open hearing to the House Oversight Committee, Gaetz directed a Tweet to Cohen that implied - without evidence - that Cohen had had several extra-marital affairs, and also suggested that his wife might do the same if he was incarcerated. Other members of Congress saw this as an attempt by Gaetz to intimidate the witness, Cohen. Gaetz defended his Tweet, saying it was "witness testing, not witness tampering," and "I don't threaten anybody." Asked to clarify, he said the "tweet speaks for itself."  After multiple complaints from other Congressmen, and a rebuke from Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Gaetz deleted the Tweet and gave a wishy-washy apology.

   In late October of this year, Deputy Defense Assistant Secretary Laura Cooper was to begin testimony before the House Intelligence Committee regarding 45's behavior and the possibility of impeachment.  She was scheduled to begin her testimony at 9 o'clock in the morning.  Representative Gaetz organized a "storming" of the Secret Compartmentalized Information Facility by almost two dozen Republican House members.  They took their cell phones with them breaking all security rules, and camped out on the steps  and in the hall - even ordering pizza to be delivered - until finally leaving.  They managed to delay Ms. Cooper's testimony by 5 hours.  They did this because they claimed they weren't being allowed to sit in on secret meetings.  There were - and are - 8 Republicans sitting on the House Intelligence Committee, who can ask questions and share their findings with their Republican colleagues.

    Matt Gaetz is a Trump-humping brown-noser and has no reason to be on this planet.  Let's send him in a rocket to explore an asteroid.  He's stupid enough to open the door and get sucked into space.  (And I wish that would happen to him.)
   

 

Most Disgusting Scumbag of Ohio

James Daniel Jordan, currently 55 years old, is one of the most disgusting people serving in the Congress of the United States today.  Somehow, he has been elected to serve at the United States Congressional Representative for the 4th District of Ohio since 2007.  His District is obviously gerrymandered, having been redrawn over time to avoid the urban areas of Toledo, Columbus, and Cleveland (and their suburbs), and to include as much rural area as possible.  A panel of three Federal judges that the District was unconstitutional due to the obvious gerrymandering, and that the Districts in Ohio needed to be re-drawn by the 2020 elections.  This decision was made and ordered in May 2019, and absolutely no work has gone into seeing the order followed so far. (It is currently believed that the re-districting will not be looked at until the results of the 2020 Federal Census are in, counted, and calculated - which means sometime in 2022.)  Prior to his political work in the US Congress, he was a 3-term Representative in the Ohio state legislature, beginning in 1994; in 2000 he ran a winning campaign for a seat in the Ohio Senate, and then won a second time, before running for a national seat of governance.
   Jim Jordan was a high school and collegiate wrestler, and failed in  his Olympic try-out. He earned a BS degree while wrestling at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. He was the assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University from 1987 to 1995.  During his tenure, at least 53 members of the wrestling team that he coached were sexually assaulted by the OSU team physician. Jim Jordan has refused to cooperate in any and all investigations regarding the sexual abuse that occurred during his time as the Assistant Coach.  He has also refused to answer any questions regarding this horrendous event, and ends any interview that brings up the sexual abuse of students that in his care. He is a monster in this regard.  Young men trusted him, and he repudiated them and their trust.

Jim Jordan, at left, coaching the OSU wrestling  team

   Jim Jordan earned a Master's degree in education during his years as the Assistant Wrestling Coach at Ohio State University. And, while working so diligently in the Ohio State Legislature, he also earned his Jurisprudence Degree in 2001, when a state Senator.  Jordan joined the 110th United States Congress in 2007.  Four years later, in the 112th Congress, Jordan was appointed Chairman of the Republican Study Committee, and turned down a seat on the House Appropriations Committee.
   During the 114th Congress, Jordan became one of the nine founding members of the House Freedom Caucus, a bloc of Congressional Conservatives, whose stated purpose is "to advance an agenda of limited Constitutional government" in Congress.   - No wonder he's doing his damnedest to stop the Impeachment of 45! - He was chosen as the Caucus's first Chairman.  This group is credited with pushing then-Speaker John Boehner into retirement.
    Representative Jordan is described as "being one of Congress's most conservative members."  He has earned a perfect score from the American Conservative Union every year he has served in Congress.  He is  very much in favor of the Pro Life movement and for the group "Americans for Prosperity," founded by the Koch Brothers.  He voted for: (a) continued production and upgrades to the M1 Abrams tanks that are manufactured in his district, (b) opening the Outer Continental Shelf for oil drilling, (c) Barring the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases, and (d) barring greenhouse gases from the Clean Air Act, among many other items.  He is very much against Planned Parenthood, and voted against: (a) enforcing limits on carbon dioxide emissions contributing to Global Warming, (b) tax credits for renewable electricity, (c) tax incentives for renewable energy, (d) tax incentives for energy conservation, and (e) curtailing government subsidies for oil and gas exploration, along with many other items.
   Jim Jordan is a rabid supporter of the person currently seating itself behind the desk in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC.  In April 2018, Anderson Cooper asked Jordan if he had ever heard Mr. Donald Trump "tell a lie", and Mr. Jordan responded, "I have not."  In April 2019, Jordan warned pharmaceutical companies not to comply with a request sent by Representative Elijah Cummings, then the Democratic Chairman of the House of Representatives Oversight Committee, about how they set the prices for the drugs they sold.  Jordan suggested in his communication with the drug-making companies that Representative Cummings would "leak cherry-picked information" in an attempt to harm the stock prices of the pharmaceutical companies.  - Talk about slander! -

      ***  Currently held, and one past, House of Representatives Committee Assignments  ***

  Past:   House Select Committee on the Events Surrounding the 2012 Terrorist Attack in Benghazi

Current:   House Committee on the Judiciary
               (1) Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet
               (2) Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice

               House Committee on Oversight and Governmental Reform (Ranking Member)
               (1) Subcommittee on Health Care, Benefits, and Administrative Rules
               (2) Subcommittee on Government Operations

              Temporary member  of House Committee on Intelligence

Caucus Memberships:  Freedom Caucus, Congressional Constitution Caucus, Congressional Western Caucus, U.S. - Japan Caucus

Former Ohio Representative Capri Cafar said that Jordan "... is someone who has built a reputation as an attack dog...."   In my opinion, this attack dog needs to be given a rabies shot, muzzled, and placed in a fenced-in run with a dog house.
   In a Politico article published 29 October 2017, former House Speaker John Boehner called Jordan "an asshole."  Stating that "Jordan was a terrorist as a legislator going back to his days in the Ohio house and senate."  -  I also endorse the asshole label.

     Jim Jordan is a sorry excuse for anything that is alive on this planet we call Earth.  Invective words fail me when I think of him and the orange faced monstrosity that sits in the White House.
     Jim Jordan may be an attack dog - but that dog needs to be euthanized, and put out of our misery!

The Bathroom Leak

Finally, the bathroom leak has been fixed...  -  Or, at least it is no longer dripping.  The leak began just before or after the midnight hour Saturday morning, 23 November.  Rex, our assigned Maintenance man for this 6 month period, sealed or blocked or fixed the leak from a water pipe in our ceiling and caused it to finally stop spraying water into the ceiling at 4:30 pm on Tuesday, 3 December.  He cleaned up after himself, and left the apartment at 6:30 that evening, having arrived at 9:50 that morning.
   So we had water continuously dripping from the screws holding the metal HVAC access panel in the ceiling dripping on us for 10 + days - for 256 1/2 hours.  We were placing, exchanging, and washing multiple beach, bath, and hand towels every 2.5 hours.  This interrupted our sleep patterns, our eating, cooking, and normal life patterns.  At one point in time, the two screws above the toilet (at shoulder or arm width) were both oozing 75 drips per minute, while the two screws at the other end, over the towel rack had drips falling at 45 and 37 per minute.
   Beatrice noticed Saturday evening, 30 November, that the wall and baseboard at the front corner of the bathtub looked different.  I felt them and they were damp.  By Sunday morning, the baseboard join at the corner was separating, and there was a crack up the plaster of the wall.  I dutifully called in these observations to the Maintenance office.
   Now, when I first called the leak in to Maintenance on Saturday, 23 Nov., I called it in as an Emergency call.  I did so because the last time we had a leak at the same place, it had been summer, and while the leak was being fixed, the two men who did the work explained that it was from the condensation drip pan, and that this happened frequently during the summer, when air conditioners were running constantly.  Since this was winter and the air conditioner had not been in use for 5 weeks, I thought it should be treated as an emergency.
   When I called the Maintenance request number at about 8:30, since I pressed "2" for an emergency, I was connected to the person on call for that day.  He listened to me, said it was not an emergency, but that he'd be down to Boulder after he finished his breakfast and coffee.  He arrived, said he was Tyler, and that he was the manager in charge of plumbing and HVAC things, but he was on call this weekend.  He opened the HVAC door, and was finished in about 5 minutes (for once I didn't watch what the repair person did).  He closed the door and screwed everything closed.  He commented that it was just a drip, and when Bea and I voiced our concerns, he brushed us off.  He said he had fixed the problem and that if there was any more dripping, call it in as a normal work order.  He grossly offended both Bea and I, acting as if he were a King, and we were "ignorant females" - you could read that in his eyes.  We were stupid old women that were upset over nothing.
    Less than 20 minutes  - maybe only 15 - after he left, we suddenly had three screws dripping water at a much greater rate than the first one that Tyler had "fixed."  I immediately called it in to Maintenance as a non-emergency work order.  I called Maintenance to report on the leaks and drips 16 times over 11 days, telling them how many screws in the overhead were dripping, and at how many drips per minute, as well as the splitting of the baseboards and the cracking and plaster peeling wall.
    After Tyler visited on Saturday, our next Maintenance visit was on Wednesday, 27 November, the day before Thanksgiving, just before noon.  (We had the 23-inch snowfall that began Monday afternoon and ended Tuesday afternoon.)  Mickey, the man who arrived that day, opened up the HVAC door and was surprised that the condensation drip pan was dry, but the insulation around the HVAC unit in the ceiling was dripping wet.  He took photos, talked to someone on the phone, and closed up the HVAC door.  He told us that Elevation Mechanical, who had installed the HVAC unit would be contacted, and they would come as soon as they could.
   Around 2 o'clock Friday afternoon, 29 Nov.,  Kevin K, from Elevation Mechanical arrived.  He opened up the unit in the ceiling, checked everything that he could, and turned various water lines on and off.  He, too took photos of the unit and the dripping wet insulation, talking to 3 different people on the phone.  He finally asked us to experiment with the HVAC water lines.  We had to turn off the heat, and shut off the intake and outflow water lines from our water heater, and see if that affected the leaking.  So we did that for 4 hours Friday afternoon and evening.  Besides my usual report to Maintenance Saturday morning, I also called Kevin and reported.  We turned the heat off for 14 hours on Saturday, along with the water supply.Sunday morning, the 1st of December, day 8, I called Maintenance and talked about the drips and the baseboard and wall; I also called Kevin and reported to him.  He stated that since there was no change in the drips and leaking, the problem was not with the HVAC system - it was somewhere, and something, else.
   Because the dripping had become much more frequent, I called the Maintenance line Sunday afternoon, and reported the heavier leaking, the continued splitting of the baseboard, and that Kevin K of Elevation Mechanical had said that the problem was NOT in the HVAC system.
   I called and made my usual report to Maintenance Monday morning.  I was fed up and angry by 11:26 and called again and left a message to please return my call.   Forty minutes later, the Office Manager called and told me that she was trying to make an appointment with us "with a vendor" and she'd call back when she had the appointment set up.  She called me back in another 30 minutes and said the vendor said he couldn't do anything - I asked if it was Elevation Mechanical, and she said yes.  I said that I had explained in a Sunday call that they said it wasn't a problem with their HVAC system, and that the Thistle maintenance people needed to deal with it.  Hadn't she listened to that message and made a note about it?  She did not answer my question and said that they were looking into our problem.
    I called Tuesday morning and made my normal report, detailing the leaks and the baseboard and wall splitting.  Bea got upset and made a call demanding a call back around 9:05.  She never received a return call...  But she stepped out to take the recyclables to the main bin, and saw, first Mickey (who had been here the day before Thanksgiving) and a few minutes later, Rex.  She stopped and spoke with Mickey who told her there had been a Maintenance Department meeting, and that our ceiling leak was the only topic.  Chris, who was the maintenance man assigned here for 18 months, asked which apartment? When told our number, he declared "If Beatrice and Betty are complaining about something, you can be certain it's a REAL concern.  They don't contact us about piddly things."
    Rex had been on vacation starting 23 November, and had just returned to work on 3 December.  He arrived at our apartment at 9:50.  Bea and I shared our tale of woe with him, including what we had done for Kevin to test the possibility of an HVAC leak.  He told us no one had given him that information...  When Rex opened the HVAC door Tuesday morning, almost a gallon of water poured out onto the floor.  We, and he, were glad we had the towels down.  After he had been here for a couple of hours, another man, who I didn't know arrived and started working with him.  They cut two holes in the ceiling and removed the bathroom exhaust fan.  Besides the ceiling that is visible to us tenants, there were two more layers of drywall ceiling separating different layers of pipes and duct-work.  The men couldn't find the leak.  They had thought it was from the upstairs bathtub or toilet, but it wasn't.  They thought they were going to have to cut off the water supply to both apartments for 2 days and cut through the concrete floor in the bathroom above us to  see the water pipes.
   They were about to give up and decide to do that, when I heard Rex exclaim, "Holy fuck, I've found it!"  A water pipe that supplies both our apartment and the one above us, had a saw cut next to a joint.  Rex and John (the other man who joined him), decided that it had been a cut that had almost cut through the pipe, and that since the pipe held up and didn't leak, the construction crew let it go.  However, after 4 1/2 years of differing water pressure and varied temperatures, the weakened area of the pipe opened.  Rex and John were able to feel water spraying out of the pipe. So our water was cut off for 3 hours while it was repaired, and while Rex and John removed wet dry wall, wet insulation, slime and mold from all the areas they could reach.
 
So.....   we have holes in the ceiling and the HVAC ceiling door has to stay open until everything is dry enough for the drywall, insulation, and ceiling to be replaced.  Then it's got to be re-plastered and re-painted. The same goes for the baseboard and wall at the front edge of the bathtub.
  Since we were working to save our rental until for 256+ hours, which equals 31+ 8 days of work, we have asked to have our rent for January reduced by half.  We have also stated that we hope there will be no retribution against us for expressing such a wish.  We had to send the recompense message to our "Community Manager" - who made us stop feeding the birds and squirrels with a bogus report of rodent infestations and complaints from tenants on the ground floor - so we also sent copies to his Senior Community Manager, the Maintenance Office Manager, and the CEO of the apartment complex/low-cost housing company.  Rex and John said they'd put in words backing up our request and saying that our constant vigilance had helped keep damage to a minimum.
  We'll see what happens.