The Citizen-Times posted some peculiar pictures of the governor, apparently living it up yesterday with lots of beer. She was celebrating the state’s appropriation of twenty teacher salaries toward corporate welfare to coax Sierra Nevada to locate a brewery in Mills River. The photos seemed inappropriate, but in retrospect, they’re even weirder. Today, WWNC 570AM talk show host Pete Kaliner described the governor’s at her last hoorah as “walking dead.”
In sum, the government could be construed to be sacrificing 100 (one-year, full-time) teacher jobs for the beer joint:
Henderson County is offering about $3.5 million in incentives over five years, and Mills River is offering $86,800.
The project was made possible in part by a $1.025 million grant from the One North Carolina Fund.
Now that I’ve cast the governor in a negative light (which sounds darker than dark), it’s time to shine rainbows of heavenly light on her. According to news stories, she has repented; and I support wholeheartedly her verbal commitment to get on the right track, now. She announced today she will not run for a second term in order to fight for education dollars. Let’s give her all the support we can to help her keep her word.
No CommentsThere’s nothing a little taxpayer dollars can’t fix. AppalCART, the transit provider for Watauga County, wanted to build a new headquarters a couple years ago. They procured $5.5 million in porkulus. Then, they were blasted by the ever-amplifying reverberations from Bush’s economic turndown. To make matters worse, some weird microclimate caused extremely cold winters to occur at the work site, when the rest of the world was warming at an accelerated pace.
Why the project should have run into difficulties, however, remains a mystery. After all, it features such green features as solar heating and rainwater collection. However, the FTA did not like the fact that a change of plans called for $700,000 steel canopies. They should have been green roofs growing hemp. Regardless, the NCDOT came to the rescue and agreed to provide a cool $300,000 to get the show back on the road.
The project is, reportedly, “on budget.”
No CommentsI commend Mission Hospitals for a brilliant marketing strategy: boasting mass layoffs in their marketing department.
No CommentsThe Occupy movement gets a bad rap, but they have at least done one thing good. They appear to have motivated the Asheville Citizen-Times to practice extinction – ignoring the fifth marathon public hearing failing to address subsidized urban camping for one-sided political speech – to the extent they are scrutinizing council’s consent agenda for headline material.
No CommentsThe governor wants to raise taxes so there will be enough for education. The Citizen-Times reports Asheville City Council is going to try to get $75,000 from the state to pay for almost half the remaining amount needed to complete a greenway. Most of the money is expected to be spent purchasing rights of way.
Of particular humor is either (a) the subtle way the reporter compared government’s need to spend to the circular logic of addicts or, more likely, (b) the editor danced on the original:
No CommentsThe city wants state help in finishing a greenway that will finish Asheville’s highest profile greenway.
Read the story, and fill in the blanks.
[A multiple of 100] jobs, with an average pay of [x] times what anybody else can get in the area, will be created thanks to the opening of [the new facility]. The new plant will require a capital outlay of [y] million dollars, investing it in the local economy with economic multipliers. Beverly Perdue was here on [day] to celebrate the collaboration of state and local government. The state offered to give the company [something big], and the [local government] managed to find [z] hundred thousand it could do without in tax revenues for the next five years.
No CommentsThe Black Mountain ABC voted to return a request to fire their chair before the municipal board of aldermen. Two members of the board allege the third is not following through with the responsibilities of her position. The aldermen unanimously declined to hear the matter, saying they could not be impartial, so the board appealed to the NC ABC Commission. The ABC Commission, in turn, threw the matter back to the aldermen.
No CommentsWaynesville is still trying to decide where to stash its Folkmoot statue. NIMBY’s object to its disturbing “disco-ball effect,” and complain of the dangers posed when the spinning flags are torn off by high winds.
2 CommentsI regret to present in short succession another story on how people are blamed for thinking with their pigment and profiling, while cause and effect are ignored. To be painfully explanatory, do African-Americans get fewer business loans because they don’t want to start businesses, because they don’t have much collateral, because they don’t major in business when they go to school, or because bankers are bigots?
Another item on council’s agenda was a presentation from a group formed to address the disparity between the percentage of entrepreneurs who are African-American and citizens who are African-American in Asheville. Tasked with addressing “capital access” and “business literacy” challenges faced by African-Americans, the group received $10,000 from Asheville taxpayers for staffing meetings.
The group complained that lending institutions turned a jaundiced eye on African-Americans. They wanted startup capital and mentoring, among other things. It was even suggested that the city create a reserve to cover defaulted loans made to African-Americans.
City staff was leery. They didn’t mind supporting minorities, or ethnic minorities; but the requests were being made expressly for the African-American community, and that is not considered (yet) to be Constitutional.
At Tuesday’s meeting, while presenting the report, Al Whitesides asked council for $70-some thousand dollars. Councilwoman Esther Manheimer challenged the request. Community Development Director Jeff Staudinger pointed out the request was not in the staff report and would therefore not be accepted with receipt of the report.
One might also be interested in looking at the statistics presented by a senior in political science at UNCA.
No CommentsI left the Asheville City Council meeting early in order to get to a computer and blog. Council was tied up for over three hours trying to negotiate a settlement with Occupy Asheville. City staff has complained that the lack of adequate sanitation has left the turf now occupied “saturated.” A business owner adjacent to the campsite objected having business scared off by the “shanty town,” the increased use of his restrooms, and the creation of a compost pile on his property.
Of course, property is an old-fashioned concept. Council listened to persons talk about how, for example, they should be like Washington, DC, and let people camp wherever they want as long as it doesn’t obstruct a public right of way. Another speaker said hygiene is the responsibility of those who demand it. After several motions, council finally agreed to allow the Occupy movement to accept one or more port-a-potties from a union (three different names were thrown out).
Members of council for the most part expressed whole-hearted support for the movement, which was acting like a sovereign nation negotiating for a treaty. Several members of council asked that the Occupiers move on to tackle larger issues than whether or not they can erect tents next to city hall. It was further argued that the Occupiers had a beef with the national government. Council could do nothing but pass resolutions against Wall Street.
Councilman Cecil Bothwell proposed having council draft a resolution descrying corporate personhood in exchange for the Occupiers breaking camp. The lady who was acting like the leader of the leaderless group twinkled her fingers in the bad direction as she went around the room commanding energy in a way that elicited compliance.
Council also agreed to have a point person from the leaderless movement meet with the assistant city manager Monday to hash out something, because members of council were too weary, impatient, and inattentive to go through another motion and public hearing. The appointed spokesperson asked if he could bring friends. The mayor consented, but said he had to take whatever he and the city manager agreed to back to his group for their input, and get a response on her desk in writing.
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