It is a Greensboro tradition, beginning with the November 3, 1979 massacre, to convene a Truth and Reconciliation Commission with the intent of holding those involved accountable and securing contrition through apology. Currently, we are seeing backlash in the community to those residents opposing the new shopping center in the Friendly-Hobbs area who supported the mini-majority during the ill-fated attempt to reopen the White Street Landfill.

Greensboro as a community will never heal until those involved are held accountable, admit the reasons for their actions and are given an opportunity to be forgiven. Indeed, rather than a virtual tar and feathering of those involved, the invocation of a White Street Landfill Truth and Reconciliation Commission is an opportunity for those involved to clear their names and gain the peace of mind which is the right of every person.

At present, some Greensboro citizens consider those who supported the conservatives on council’s attempt at reopening the landfill to be racists. A Truth and Reconciliation Commission will also give these voters an opportunity to publicly admit their actions and apologize to those citizens whom they have offended. Such acts of contrition are necessary to heal this community, not only of the egregious insults committed by elected officials, but also of those who supported them.

Colorblind racism is the new normal in American conservative political thought. Well after the election of the nation’s first African-American president, in 2012 Republican candidates are using egregious signals and dog whistles to incite racial divisiveness as an effective tool for political gain. But when confronted about the nature of their offensive rhetoric, the answer is either an innocuous denial or dismissive retort.

It is curious that people bold enough to make outlandish racial claims never admit guilt or receive a proverbial trial and conviction by the greater populace. Paul Rosenberg, a political contributor to Al-Jazeera, recently explained that this curious phenomenon of “racism without racists” has become de facto in today’s political discourse and is best described as “colorblind racism.”

There’s no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy.

The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario. Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson wrote in an email to LiveScience.

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.

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.

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.

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

Meanwhile:

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.

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.

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.”

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.