If you thought the folks at the Alliance Defense Fund took their ball and went home after taking the Forsyth County Commissioners' prayer case and running with it all the way to the US Supreme Court and losing, you'd be wrong. They've reappeared as an influencer of the controversial NC Amendment One on tomorrow's primary ballots. From the Fayetteville Observer:
The official explanation issued by the state Constitutional Amendments Publication Commission on next month's measure, written to help voters understand it, acknowledges the "debate among legal experts" over the possible effects. It concludes: "The courts will ultimately make those decisions."
Stam, the Raleigh lawmaker, said he wanted a more narrowly worded amendment but was "overruled" by "national experts" he identified as the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal advocacy group.
Stam says the state needs the amendment to protect marriage from efforts to de-legitimize it. If unmarried straight couples want the benefits of marriage, he said, they should get married.
This is an update to a February 19 post (Presidential Election 2.0) in which I wrote about a group called Americans Elect which described itself as:
a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that is not affiliated with any political party, ideology or candidate. It is funded exclusively by individual contributions—and not from corporate, labor, special interest, foreign, or lobbyist sources. And we intend to repay our initial financing so that no single individual will have contributed more than $10K.
Ultimately, Americans Elect is the first nominating process that will be led directly by voters like YOU…
THE GOAL OF AMERICANS ELECT is to nominate a presidential ticket that answers directly to voters—not the political system.
According to the Raleigh News & Observer they've been successful in getting on the ballot in North Carolina and 20 other states so far for the 2012 election. This could get pretty interesting.
Spend enough time at town council, planning board, or other various and sundry municipal meetings and you'll hear your share of strange ideas. Over in Wake County they're apparently worried that a sustainable development study is really a cover for the "one-world" folks to infiltrate the county (h/t to Ed for the link):
A work session of the Wake County Board of Commissioners on Monday turned into a debate about whether proposals to control the county's rapid growth are part of a one-world movement to deny individual freedoms.
What ignited the debate was the work session's first order of business: a task force report on "sustainability" that recommends how Wake should approach its future energy and resource needs.
Paul Coble, chairman of the Board of Commissioners, used the topic to propose a Wake County property rights commission. He said it would ward off any chance that United Nations-style notions of sustainability could infringe on individual rights in Wake…
Audience member John Markham, of Knightdale, said at the meeting that the "one-world movement" quietly infiltrates local governments to influence their actions. Markham was one of several members of the Wake County Taxpayers Association, an anti-tax group, who attended.
"They sneak around and don't go up front," Markham said. "They will not approach the federal government."
Prediction – Individual property rights will take a sudden trip to the back seat when someone tries to build a strip club next to a church (or vice versa).
It was the kind of college-basketball game that used to guarantee a packed house.
When North Carolina took the court to play Wake Forest in Winston-Salem, N.C., one night last month, it marked the reunion of two storied conference rivals whose campuses are separated by a short drive across the spine of a basketball-crazy state.
Yet when the No. 5 Tar Heels arrived, they found a crowd nearly 2,000 short of capacity. Never mind that Wake is having an off year; it was the lowest turnout for that matchup since Joel Coliseum opened in 1989.
It would be easy to blame the low attendance on Wake's horrific teams these last couple of years, but I think anyone from these parts who was being honest would tell you that in years past a UNC trip to Winston-Salem to scrimmage a high school team would have sold out the Joel.
The article goes on to posit several possible reasons for the ACC's attendance decline: conference expansion which has diluted traditional rivalries, mediocre teams, low-profile coaches, a "charisma deficit" and the proliferation of cheap HD TVs that make the at-home viewing experience better than ever before. I'd say all of those factors have contributed to the conference's current malaise, but whatever the reasons I'd say ACC basketball seems to have jumped the shark, at least for now.
I have a thing about textbooks. As I've written before I think the textbook industry is basically a crock and that our school systems need to seriously consider blowing up the current system and looking at innovative ways to use technology to serve students rather than requiring them to carry around 50-pound backpacks filled with dead trees. As you might expect I'd love to attend the panel discussion on textbooks tomorrow (Thursday, November 17)at UNC, but sadly I won't be able to make it so I'm hoping they post video or a transcript of the session online.
Wells Fargo is trying to make a splash here in the home territory of the former Wachovia Bank it absorbed a while back. It did a full wrap of today's Winston-Salem Journal, Greensboro News & Record and Charlotte Observer, and apparently some GNR readers aren't thrilled with it. I know this because John Robinson, the GNR's editor, maintains a blog and wrote about it, but I have no idea what WSJ readers' reaction has been because the Journal's folks don't do the blog thing that I know of.
Wells Fargo has a long way to go to win Carolinians' hearts and I don't think buying any amount of fish wrap will do it, although I guess they have to try. Its western roots and garish red and gold signs don't help here in the land of Carolina Blue either.
An interesting article in the Charlotte Observer outlines how Wallace Kuralt, father of longtime CBS newsman Charles Kuralt, led Mecklenburg County to sterilize the larger number of people than any other county in North Carolina's infamous eugenics program.
Compassionate. Visionary. A champion of women and the poor.
That's the reputation that Wallace Kuralt built as Mecklenburg County's welfare director from 1945 to 1972. Today, the building where Charlotte's poor come for help bears his name – a name made even more prominent when his newscaster son, Charles Kuralt, rose to fame.
But as architect of Mecklenburg's program of eugenic sterilization – state-ordered surgery to stop the poor and disabled from bearing children – Kuralt helped write one of the most shameful chapters of North Carolina history.
The Charlotte Observer has obtained records sealed by the state that tell the stories of 403 Mecklenburg residents ordered sterilized by the N.C. Eugenics Board at the behest of Kuralt's welfare department.
It's a number that dwarfs the total from any other county, in a state that ran one of the nation's most active efforts to sterilize the mentally ill, mentally retarded and epileptic.
North Carolina voters will decide in the May 2012 primary whether to add an amendment to the state constitution that bans legal recognition of same-sex marriages, after a 30-16 vote Tuesday in the stateSenate in favor of a referendum.
The state House approved the vote by a 75-42 vote Monday. Votes in both the House and Senate were more than the three-fifths margin required to send the issue to the voters.
Supporters and opponents of the marriage amendment say they expect to be busy trying to persuade people between now and next spring.
I'm personally against the amendment, and in fact I have some pretty strong feelings about the appropriate role for government in defining relationships at all, so you can safely assume that I'll vote against the amendment. You can also safely assume that a great number of people, including the amendment's supporters, assume that I'm in the minority here in North Carolina and so they feel confident that they'll get the amendment passed. It's also probably a safe assumption you'll hear at least some of the amendment supporters say something to the effect of "Well, most people here are straight and are good Christians and believe that a real marriage is only between a man and a woman. Since we're the majority we should be able to say that marriage is only rightly between a man and a woman. That's our right in our democratic system – majority rules."
That last statement opens up a lot of arguments (equal rights/protections for minority groups, the proper role of religion in public policy, etc.) that would take about 800 pages to dig into and I'll save that for another day. I will, however, tell you that I'm always made uncomfortable by that argument because it uses the same logic that has been used to oppress people in the minority throughout our history. I will also tell you that I'm far more concerned with the state of our economy than with the fact that Harry might marry Barry.
I'd really rather not have our leaders play the marriage fiddle while tens of thousands of our citizens suffer through high unemployment and soaring rates of hunger and poverty in a burning Rome. (See Nero Fiddling While Rome Burns).
On a more fundamental level I'll also tell you that I will vote against the amendment because I don't happen to think that if someone is gay there's something wrong with them. I don't think being gay is something that a person can, or should, be cured of, and I find any law that singles out our gay fellow citizens and treats them as a second class citizen to be a stain on our society. Just wanted to make that clear.
I met Steve Cavanaugh several years ago when we were both coaching our daughters' Challenge soccer teams for Twin City. Not long after that he and the boys on the White Lightning made the mistake of letting me join their over-40 soccer team in the PASL, a dubious decision for which they continue to pay. Let's just say I've seen Mr. Cavanaugh on many a green field around Winston-Salem, so it seemed kind of appropriate when I received an email about the recognition his firm received from Google for a green-initiative project they were involved with here in North Carolina. Below is a video about Google's program – the swine farm project in Yadkin County that Cavanaugh & Associates designed starts at about the 2:20 mark – and below that is the text of the press release from Cavanaugh & Associates.
Google Inc., Endorses Bio-Energy System on NC Hog Farm
Winston-Salem, NC -Yesterday on YouTube, Jolanka Nickerman, Google's director of carbon offsets, announced Internet giant, Google, will invest in high-quality carbon offset credits generated from a swine farm that was transformed into a green-energy animal waste treatment facility designed by Cavanaugh & Associates, P. A. Headquartered in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Cavanaugh, in partnership with Duke University and Duke Energy, developed this $1.2 million prototype system at Loyd Ray Farms, a 9,000-head hog finishing operation northwest of Yadkinville, N.C.
In an effort to bolster sustainable agriculture by reducing green house gas (GHG) emissions and creating alternate revenue sources, Cavanaugh was commissioned by Duke University to develop a biomass renewable energy project that generates electricity from the methane gases produced and captured by the innovative swine waste management system. Methane is captured from a digester and used to fuel a microturbine to generate electricity. Methane is 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide, as a green house gas, and this project is designed to capture and combust all the methane generated by the farm's waste treatment system. In keeping with the innovative approach to managing waste produced on this hog farm, Loyd Ray Farm is the first swine facility in North Carolina to generate REC credits and produce enough electricity to power over 35 homes a year.
Like Duke, who credits the greenhouse gas emission reductions (otherwise known as carbon offsets) toward its voluntary carbon neutrality goal, Google is a proponent of green energy and investing in alternative energy projects like the one found at Loyd Ray Farms. Google announced today that it is purchasing carbon offsets from this project. Both Duke University and Cavanaugh hope this is the first of many swine farm biomass energy projects in the Southeast.
"Loyd Ray Farms is a testament to the importance of creating sustainable agriculture and Cavanaugh's commitment to Stewardship through Innovation when it comes to finding ways to keep North Carolina moving forward," said Cavanaugh's CEO, Steve Cavanaugh. "Because this is our home too, Cavanaugh welcomes creative partnerships with companies like Google who support the idea of using animal "waste" as an alternative fuel source. It's truly a win-win scenario for us and our environment."
For more information on the Loyd Ray Farm project or to obtain a detailed description of the project in PDF form, please contact: Gus Simmons, PE, Principal in Charge/Designer:gus.simmons@cavanaughsolutions.com or 910-392-4462.
If you live long enough you're bound to see the damndest things:
As part of a legal settlement, the N.C. Republican Party is offering a very public mea culpa to former Democratic Rep. Jimmy Love Sr…
Shortly before last year's election, the GOP mailed an attack ad in the home district of Love, a seven-term Democrat from Sanford.
The ad said Love owned a piece of land and suggested it was bought by the N.C. Department of Transportation in a "sweetheart deal." The text of the mailer called Love a "swindler," featured his photo and falsely quoted him as saying, "I Love Gettin' Rich Off The Taxpayers!"…
Now, House District 41 voters who were sent the ad last year are finding another message from the Republican Party in their mailboxes.
"The accusations made against Mr. Love in the mailer were unjustified and the facts stated in support of the accusations were false," the new mailer says. "Accordingly, the North Carolina Republican Party hereby retracts the statements made in the mailer, apologizes to Mr. Love, and expresses its sincere regret for any distress or embarrassment caused to Mr. Love, his family, or his supporters."
Befuddled 