The Legacy of the Landfill Vote
Ed Cone posted this morning on yet another Letter to the Editor in the N&R about the prospect of a Trader Joe’s coming to Greensboro. Here is my comment:
I found Regency’s argument compelling. Sam Hieb’s comment noting that these NIMBY’s were also in favor of re-opening the landfill, as evidenced by the Bill Knight for Mayor signs, also had an effect on my opinion.
I consider it a foregone conclusion that TJs will never come to a place such as Golden Gate. So, if the solution is having a new shopping center to secure a TJs, then I’m for it.
Here’s the post at Piedmont Publiass to which I was referring, but it contains no such statement. Indeed, it contains quite the opposite:
I’m not knocking their ideas, but it’s clear the developer wants to build on this particular piece of property, period. Thus local gov’t —- most definitely this will go before the liberal NIMBY Greensboro City Council—- will be forced to choose between the developer and the nearby neighborhood. It will be an interesting decision.
Later, someone suggested to me that it is not in the interest of the John Locke Foundation to diss the old mayor or his supporters. So I conducted an exhaustive search of the places I might have read it, especially among the comments at the two N&R articles linked to in Hieb‘s post, to no avail. And I remain pretty sure that’s where I read what I commented at Ed’s. If I am right, then Art Pope’s Stooge was forced to edit his post to convey an idea completely contrary to what was originally written. If that is the case, I find it hilarious. In any event, I didn’t make it up and Roch Smith, Jr. immediately backed up my comment:
The irony is not found just in the anecdotal yard sign observations, but in the election results as well where proponents of re-opening the landfill received strong support from the precincts encompassing and abutting this proposed development. (Mayor, at-large, district)
It appears we have a neighborhood fighting a new shopping center which previously supported defeated Mayor Bill Knight. And apparently this matter must at some point come before the new council. The casual observer might think that the more these residents object to the shopping center, the more likely they are to get it. Again, I find this hilarious.
The attempt by the old council to reopen the White Street Landfill is apparently the gift which keeps on giving. There has never been any kind of apology to the residents of east Greensboro for the travesty which was attempted. And now those very residents are represented by a majority on council. Payback is indeed Hell. At this point, it appears likely that the shopping center at the corner of Friendly and Hobbs will at least get the approval of council and probably be built. Whether or not a Trader Joe’s is secured remains a matter of conjecture. Given that the proposed location will not have loading docks, TJs may just as well move to the old Harris-Teeter location at Golden Gate. Additionally, since Deep Roots Market will never be able to afford the lease downtown, TJs may go there.
Whatever happens, so long as the new shopping center at Friendly and Hobbs is built, my schadenfreude will be sated, and I look forward to shopping at TJs, no matter where it is located.
Nancy Vaughan and Reserve Officers
From John Hammer at The Rhino Times:
The city started paying reserve officers for the first time three years ago at the insistence of then Councilmember Mike Barber. On the present council it is Councilmember Nancy Vaughan’s cause. Police Chief Ken Miller was asked numerous times about the reserve officers, and every time he responded that he saw them as volunteers. He also said that he didn’t know of a single city in North Carolina that paid reserve officers and that Greensboro was unusually lenient in its requirements for reserve officers, only requiring them to work 10 hours a month when most jurisdictions required the equivalent of two shifts a month.
Miller said, “The reserve function in my experience has been a voluntary service.”
Reserve officers are usually retired police officers who want to keep their state law enforcement certification. The city keeps up their training so they can continue to be certified, and in exchange the officers work a few hours every month. As Miller noted, lots of people do volunteer work all over the community.
Vaughan wants reserve officers to be paid, and the council agreed to put the money in next year’s budget. Perkins said during a break that Vaughan really felt strongly about it and that they could have spent the entire retreat arguing about whether reserve officers should be paid or not. Instead, he said, they agreed to let Vaughan have this one and moved on to other topics. It will cost the council about $137,000 to pay the officers for a year.
Perkins is right that past councils have strained over gnats for hours and then swallowed five camels in the 15 minutes before adjourning, but $137,000 here and $137,000 there and pretty soon you’re looking at a substantial tax increase.
Miller, when asked, kept saying that he thought reserves were volunteers but that he would be glad to pay them if that is what the City Council wanted. There is no doubt that Vaughan wants reserve officers to be paid and it appears to keep peace the majority of the council is going to go along.
Why are we paying reserve officers if, by Chief Miller‘s contention, no other city does it? Was Barber and is Vaughan addressing some constituency? I think the citizens require an explanation.
Brad Miller for Governor
Yesterday, I had a chance to listen to the podcast of the Brad & Britt Show on FM Talk 101.1 WZTK, which featured an interview with Congressman Brad Miller, who, due to redistricting, recently announced his intent not to seek re-election in what would be a race with incumbent David Price. I’ve become a big fan of Miller because of his work on the House Financial Services Committee. He also regularly exhibits a lot of candor and common sense in interviews.
Prior to Miller’s announcement not to run for re-election, I had been looking forward to voting for Republican, Pat McCrory, for governor. However, if Miller decides to run, I’ve got a tough choice to make. Indeed, I just received a phone call surveying my feelings about a slate of a dozen or more Democratic candidates, should they run against McCrory. Miller is the only one I would consider voting for against McCrory.
I sincerely hope Miller runs and believe he would make an excellent governor. And no matter whom I end up voting for, I believe either McCrory or Miller would do a great job.
Sheets Endorses Gingrich
From Brian Tashman at Right Wing Watch:
Newt Gingrich’s campaign announced today that Dutch Sheets, a self-appointed apostle and a major figure in the New Apostolic Reformation, will join his Faith Leaders Coalition as a National Co-Chair. As first reported and confirmed by Rachel Tabachnick of Talk to Action, Sheets endorsed Gingrich and warned that America “cannot survive another 4 years of the current leadership”…
Sheets is an avowed dominionist and at a recent event, The Gathering Eagles, he said that while he doesn’t think “that we’re going to take over everything and rule the earth completely for the Lord…we’re supposed to try.” While holding up a gavel in one hand and the word ‘family’ in the other, he said that Christians have become weak by emphasizing the ‘family’ and are now “lazy sheep,” calling on Christians to become “kingdom warriors” for dominion
The Human Rights Campaign points out a report by CNN that says Romney’s charitable foundation gave at least $35,000 to antigay groups in 2010, with $10,000 going to the Massachusetts Family Institute, which ran radio ads last year warning parents that a transgender civil rights bill could lead to all manner of danger in bathrooms.
At this point, I no longer have a candidate to vote for among the Republican challengers for POTUS.
But according to Sheets, there is reason for hope:
From my grandparents’ day until now, we have gone from 65% of Americans having a biblical worldview to now 4% of today’s young people sharing these beliefs.
Absolute Truth
I have finally found an explanation of this balderdash:
Our perspective on absolute truth should be determined by the one who is the ultimate authority, or maker, of all things. (This follows because the maker of all things has defined reality, thus becoming the standard for what we understand to be real.) For those who believe that the “maker” was God (a personal, all-powerful Intelligent Being), absolute truth is derived from properly understanding who God is and what His “will” is for His creation.
Those who reject the idea of a personal maker must believe that an impersonal one — chance — has determined reality. Hence, chance (which by definition has no standard or objective sense) is the only “real” thing in the universe. Everything is a chance occurrence, including our ability to understand who and what we are talking about! “Meaning” is a fantasy. There is no way to derive a standard of truth that has any authority. Anything goes!
Another dumb conservative trapped in binary thinking. Fortunately, there’s a great deconstruction in the comments:
[Y]our statement that lack of belief leads to the idea that actions have no consequences is, at best, silly–and at worst it is insulting and condescending, and you will anger or lose readers with lazy and fallacious logic like that.
Even your first statement is erroneus, and it is the closest to being accurate of the four. You say nothing is truly knowable to someone who doesn’t believe in God. But that same person doesn’t believe in God–oh, crap, see? You’ve made the same mistake as the logical contradiction of saying “There are no absolutes.”
Since the person has analyzed this God person, and come to a conclusion (in this case that there isn’t one), then they’ve probed the issue to their satisfaction–I’d say they found the subject *very* knowable, directly contradicting your sentiment.
I guess my point is…hell, there’s no nice-sounding way to say this but I do mean it constructively:
Christians should stick to preaching scripture and telling scary stories, and leave the chore of logic and rationality and explaining how the universe actually functions to those who specialize in it.
Among the flock, those with a mastery of scripture are presumed to have mastered all knowledge, since their clabber-filled brains believe that all knowledge is derived from God. Thus encouraged, these leaders find all manner of false knowledge to feed the sheeple. In this way the simpletons not only share an erroneous world view filled with imagined threats and magical prophecies which have them yearning for death, but also versions of important concepts contrived to support their fantasy existence. It is little wonder that fundamentalists are incomprehensible, for they have passed beyond the veil of reality. In such a place, xenophobia is not a symptom of their condition, but a bulwark supporting the fantastic lies. So it is that hatred and intolerance are merely defense mechanisms. From that warped perspective, their actions are not evil, but perfectly natural.
This is the pathology of authoritarian leaders and their followers.
NC Amendment One: The Musical
From Lauren Walters at NYU Local:
In response to North Carolina’s Amendment One, which will appear on the May 8th ballot and would define marriage in North Carolina as between one man and one woman, the students created NC Amendment One: the Musical, which aims to educate viewers and protest the amendment.
From Jen Jones at HuffPo:
North Carolina faces this amendment at the very time when state and national public opinion has shifted against this type of discriminatory legislation. In 2011 America asked, “What’s the big deal?” with no less than six national polls, from Gallup to CNN, showing majority support for marriage equality. Similarly, in our Southern state, polling consistently shows that the majority of North Carolinians support marriage equality or civil unions — recognitions North Carolina’s Amendment One would ban. As a result, time and time again we see that once our state’s citizens actually learn the harms of this discriminatory measure, support plummets, and opposition to Amendment One grows by the day.
The Coalition to Protect North Carolina Families
Those supporting this hateful amendment of intolerance are neither true Christians nor true conservatives. Regardless of fundamentalist rhetoric, God does not subject those whom he loves to a litmus test of “absolute truth.”
Guarino Slanders the Homeless
From The Evil Dr. Guarino:
State legislators in Florida are proposing that professional sports franchises there be required to house the homeless in their taxpayer-subsidized facilities– for instance, in stadiums and arenas used by professional sports teams. Of course, this proposal is much more bold than that which I offered. They are proposing housing the homeless; whereas I only requested that the showers be made available to them one hour per day.
Only someone so diabolical could think to use our least most unfortunate for criticism of public projects paid for out of his taxes. He commits a logical fallacy by supposing that the Aquatic Center was constructed for such purposes, but camouflages with the implied arguments that the homeless are unclean and can’t afford to swim there, with the corollary allusion to the poor in general.
Anybody paying attention knows that Greensboro has a large competitive swimming community going back decades and simply wore out their facility. The Aquatic Center is a natural solution for those taxpaying families and a public amenity.
Greensboro has facilities like the Interactive Resource Center which are specifically designed to meet the needs of the homeless.
Conflating the swimmers with the homeless is a gross misrepresentation of the responsible governance which has addressed the needs of both groups of citizens. The social retards no doubt think the notion humorous, but such a highly contrived expression of intolerance is the very definition of evil:
Recently, there was a service here in remembrance of homeless individuals who had died. Robbie and Marikay attended; but neither have advocated allowing the homeless who are still alive to use the facilities at the aquatic center.
Newt’s Religious Endorsements
From the American Family News Network:
While Santorum received the endorsement of a few select evangelicals in Texas this past weekend — as well as that of Dr. James Dobson and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council yesterday — former House Speaker Newt Gingrich also is seeing a rise in support among influential evangelical leaders. The personal endorsements of individuals like George Barna, Don Wildmon, and pastors Jim Garlow and Michael Youssef have allowed him to move within striking distance of frontrunner Mitt Romney, who pundits just a week or so ago contended had the nomination sewed up.
From Wikipedia:
Barna leads seminars for church leaders, speaks at ministry conferences, has taught at seminaries, and has been a pastor. As an author, he has written more than four dozen books on contemporary Christian issues, with topics ranging from worldviews, trends and children to church life, spiritual growth and leadership. He also writes columns which are published on the website of The Barna Group.
From Wikipedia:
Donald E. Wildmon (born January 18, 1938, Dumas, Mississippi) is an ordained United Methodist minister, author, former radio host, and founder and chairman emeritus of the American Family Association and American Family Radio.
From Right Wing Watch:
Pastor Jim Garlow, the Proposition 8 campaign organizer and now co-chair of Newt Gingrich’s Faith Leaders Coalition, appeared on The Steve Deace Show Friday, where he argued that Gingrich is the only candidate in a position to stop President Obama and “the radical homosexual agenda” from causing the imminent “destruction of the definition of marriage.”Garlow appeared on the show to defend the twice-divorced Gingrich, whose second wife last week claimed that he wanted an open marriage with his then-mistress and now-third wife Callista, and described Gingrich as the savior of marriage and Western civilization. He said that Obama is “going to destroy America as we know it and eventually bring a halt to Western civilization as we know it” and soon it will be “virtually illegal to say the name Jesus.”
Barna and Wildmon don’t seem so bad, but I’m afraid that Garlow and Youssef are a couple of real whack jobs.
Among the religious who are not endorsing Gingrich:
Gingrich has said poor children as young as 9 years should work at least part-time cleaning their schools in order to learn about work. He also has said the heads of families that receive benefits from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, also called Welfare, simply don’t want to work.
“We ought not stigmatize the poor, some of whom were middle class last week,” Warnock said.
Gingrich also put on his Twitter post that he would go to the next meeting of the NAACP to “tell the African-American community why they should demand paychecks instead of food stamps.”
Yes, sometimes the poor get in the way of dumb conservatives hating blacks.
Newt’s Religious Fanatic
From Media Matters:
Michael Youssef, an Egyptian-born evangelical pastor, has endorsed former House Speaker Newt Gingrich for president. The Gingrich campaign has announced that Youssef, head of an Atlanta megachurch, will be the National Co-Chair of its Faith Leaders Coalition. Youssef’s divisive views include the belief that democracy is not possible in any Muslim-majority country, and he has said that “socialists and leftists” try to “present Islamists and Jihadists as peace lovers.” Youssef also advances the idea that there is a war against Christianity in America, yet he directs a share of his vitriol toward other Christians, particularly Presbyterians and Episcopalians.
Excerpted from Gingrich‘s website:
Michael Youssef is the Founder and President of the worldwide ministry, Leading The Way with Dr. Michael Youssef. Dr. Youssef’s weekly television and daily radio programs are broadcast in 20 languages to more than 190 countries — airing 3,300 times per week. He is also the founding pastor of The Church of The Apostles in Atlanta, Ga. [...]
The rest links to evidence that Youssef has a hard on for the “secular media” which conveniently covers everyone who disagree with him.
Have you witnessed the tyranny around you? We see it as the government removes Christian symbols from all aspects of public life. Christians can no longer fully express their convictions without fear of reprisal. Prayers are omitted even during private functions involving certain military officials. More and more, our Christian voice is being denied. Politicians want to make speaking certain biblical truths a hate crime — silencing pulpits across this free land. I, for one, would be happy to go to prison for my faith. Politicians are trying to control the lives and behaviors of their fellow citizens and are moving the country toward total secularism and dependence upon the government. [The Christian Post, 7/16/10]
The certain biblical truths being that they hate gays, minorities, women, the poor…
When he takes a break from demonizing Islam:
The Episcopal Church is not Jesus’ church. The few…very few faithful ones left within this Church need to run for their lives lest they be held accountable for complacency on the Day of Judgment. [OneNewsNow, 1/19/11]
This is nonsense:
This whole homosexual debate boils down to this: God created a man and a woman to anatomically fit. He created them for fellowship and for procreation. When a person chooses other forms of sexual expression, they are basically shaking their fist at God and saying: “I don’t like the way you created me so I will choose a person of my own gender instead.” [...]
Uh, lots of gay people actually like the way they God made them. This is subtly moronic. Reasonable people agree that homosexuals are a natural creation. The conventional right wing claim is that gay sexual behavior is a matter of choice. That is to say that gays were created no differently than heterosexuals and therefore anyone is susceptible to homosexual behavior: a patently homophobic attitude. But Youssef manages to give God credit for creating homosexuals. Their sexual urges are merely the result of anger. This is moronic because it discounts the obvious element of passion. The cool thing about preaching to dumb conservatives is you can get away with almost anything.
Target of Opportunity
On the day that Gabby Giffords says farewell to the House of Representatives, the SPLC posts this:
Anti-liberal propaganda has been ramping up for years. Former Fox News host Glenn Beck, who was cited as an inspiration for at least three rightwing extremists accused of committing or plotting violence, called himself a “progressive hunter” and attempted to rebrand Hitler as a leftist. Anti-Muslim activist Frank Gaffney routinely warns of a “red-green” alliance between liberals and violent Islamist terrorists. But the people behind a website called “Target of Opportunity” (motto: “Eliminating the planet of liberals one at a time”) have taken things several steps further, creating a “Hit List” profiling supposed liberal enemies of America.
Anyone doubting the violent intent of right wing lunatics need look no further.
