The Washington Post has a new opinion column called The Spirited Atheist (h/t to Ed Cone for the link). I'm thinking it won't be picked up by the Journal, News & Record or any other local paper here in the Piedmont Triad, although if they really want to gin up some angry "Letters to the Editor" they should give it a go.
From a press release received this afternoon:
Billy Kennedy, a Watauga County talk radio host and community leader, will formally announce his candidacy on February 8 for the U.S. House of Representatives, 5th District of North Carolina. The “Billy Kennedy Caravan” will stretch from Boone to Raleigh that day, with stops in Wilkesboro and Winston-Salem…
Billy Kennedy is a well known Friday morning personality on WATA-AM 1450 “High Country Radio,” where he has co-hosted “Watauga Talks” for several years. Kennedy has turned the “Watauga Talks” spotlight onto the work of non-profits, charitable organizations and community-building efforts. He regularly interviews both elected officials and candidates running for office. Kennedy is known for his willingness to confront tough issues and ask hard questions…
Kennedy believes Washington is out of touch with working peoples’ lives and values. “My father always taught me to stand up for what was right and fair,” says Kennedy. “I see very little of what is right and fair on either side of the aisle in Washington.”
Here's his website: http://www.billykennedyforcongress.com/
You know how we read articles about the results of studies and carrying headlines like "In 2020 Number of Octogenarian Turtle Farmers Will Outnumber Septuagenarian Muskrat Herders." Many of those studies use data sub-sets of the US Census that are made publicly available by the US Census Bureau for exactly that purpose. The problem is that those data sub-sets have some glaring errors:.
The errors are documented in a stunningly straightforward manner. The authors compare the official census count (based on the tallying up of all Census forms) with their own calculations, based on the sub-sample released for researchers (the “public use micro sample,” available through IPUMS). If all is well, then the authors’ estimates should be very close to 100% of the official population count. But they aren’t...
These microdata have been used in literally thousands of studies and countless policy discussions. While the findings of many of these studies aren’t much affected by these problems, in some cases, important errors have been introduced. The biggest problems probably exist for research focusing on seniors. Yes, this means that many of those studies of important policy issues—retirement, social security, elder care, disability, and medicare—will need to be revisited.
It's kind of hard to make good policy decisions if they're based on inaccurate information. Still, no one is disputing the accuracy of the census itself which is important to remember as we gear up for the 2010 count. Hopefully The Census Bureau will be diligent in making sure that the data sub-sets that are generated from the new count are far more accurate than the 2000 versions.
One thing that truly gets my goat is the debate over taxes. For too long our leaders have engaged in a simplistic, name-calling exchange in which supporters of lower taxes get labeled as mean-spirited robber barons looking out for the rich and those in favor of higher taxes on more government services get labeled as the expletive du jour, socialists. It's overly simplistic and it doesn't get to the heart of the matter, which is that we will always have to pay some taxes because we will always need the government to provide some services. The rub is that we need to agree on which services the government provides and then somehow create a tax structure that will fund those services.
Unfortunately our leaders have been totally negligent in, well, leading us in the essential debate on the role of government. It's easy to blame one side or the other, but in the end it's a two way street and all of our leaders are responsible, as are we for not calling "BS" on them a long time ago.
I bring this up today because of a couple of news items that Ed Cone pointed to. One is about Greensboro's budget gap, and the other is about the drastic service cuts that "tax averse" Colorado Springs is having to make. From the second article:
More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.
The parks department removed trash cans last week, replacing them with signs urging users to pack out their own litter.
Neighbors are encouraged to bring their own lawn mowers to local green spaces, because parks workers will mow them only once every two weeks. If that.
Water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead, brown turf by July; the flower and fertilizer budget is zero.
City recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools, and a handful of museums will close for good March 31 unless they find private funding to stay open. Buses no longer run on evenings and weekends. The city won't pay for any street paving, relying instead on a regional authority that can meet only about 10 percent of the need.
I don't know what the leaders of Colorado Springs have been saying about taxes and city spending over the last couple of years, but if that city is like the vast majority of the country the issue was framed as a choice between paying higher taxes so that "welfare mothers" could soak the system and lower taxes that would spur a dynamic business environment. I'm simplifying, but hopefully I'm also making a point.
For too long our leaders have failed to do the hard work of explaining the relationship between taxes and services. I'm sure that if you asked the citizenry you could pretty quickly come up with a list of "must have" services like fire departments, police departments and public works departments. The harder part is getting citizens to agree on what's more important; health clinics for the poor or one more park; a new library or a homeless shelter; adding more lanes to the roads or starting a light rail system.
That's where leadership comes in. Explain to us the consequences of choosing the library over of the homeless shelter, or if we choose both explain to us how that will affect our taxes. We won't all agree on the priorities, but if we're engaged in a serious discussion and treated like the adults that we are, then maybe, just maybe, we'll re-elect you even when you make the unpopular but necessary decision to raise our taxes and give us a community to safely and happily live in.
Mark Cuban has some great advice for anyone looking to make a little cash:
And finally, if i was just out of school and fluent in all things Wi Fi , networking and wireless, I would immediately go door to door offering to fine tune your home’s wireless network. With new HDTVs coming out with Wi FI, the IPad, SlingBox, Netflix Streaming and other applications consuming tons of bandwidth in the home, it is an ABSOLUTE certainty that 99pct of home networks can be improved and perform significantly better. Be that kid in your neighborhood that comes in and fine tunes everyone’s wi fi in their home for 50 or 100 bucks (or more if you live in a fancy part of town) and you will make some good money.
Beats mowing, that's for sure.
Thankfully the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools spared us the 5:30 a.m. phone call to announce the obvious: school's out Monday and they just called at 5:00 p.m. Sunday to inform us. I was worried that they were going to act all, you know, "We have to wait and see if God sends a rogue heat wave through the area tonight before we assess the situation" and then wake us up at some awful hour to inform us of the obvious. Here's at least one reason I think they made the right call:
That's Concord Church Road, a relatively well traveled secondary road in Lewisville, at about 3:30 on Sunday. That's gonna be one slick road tonight and in the morning and I have a feeling that there are roads just like it all over the county.
We've had more snow in the Piedmont Triad this year than we had the first four winters we lived here combined, thus it's worth a picture:
or two
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Ethics have been on my mind of late. One reason is a hot story in Greensboro involving government, developers and stimulus funds and another story about Gov. Easley's right hand man being indicted for a multitude of crimes. The main reason, however, is the time that I'm spending on the Lewisville Planning Board.
Tonight the Planning Board will be holding a joint public meeting with the Town Council to kick off the five year Comprehensive Plan review process. Over the last several weeks we've been preparing for the meeting and in doing so we've spent a lot of time and energy making sure that we don't create the impression that this is a plan we're putting forward to be rubber-stamped by the citizens of Lewisville. We want them to understand that this is their plan, their process and their recommendations to make and our role is merely to be available for feedback and, eventually, to enact what they give us. We're painfully aware that some people think we're there to somehow game the system at their expense and to our benefit. Whether or not there's a basis for that belief (I don't believe there is, or I wouldn't serve on the Planning Board), the public attitude towards government, whether it's local, state or federal, is one of great distrust.
Unfortunately the day-to-day business of governance is, quite frankly, boring as hell. Want proof? Just try and read a proposed tree ordinance and stay awake (I've tried and have yet to succeed). That's why most people don't pay attention to governance issues and leave it up to someone else to do it for them. That's great IF that someone else behaves ethically and in the best interest of the people, but it's trouble when that person puts his personal interests before the interests of the people. Sadly, you can legally do that in some cases, but ethically/morally you tread a very fine line. Let's just say the gray area is huge, and if I were to identify one area that most governing bodies could improve upon it would be in the area of creating a culture of strong and emphatic ethical governance.
I recently came across a blog called Legal Landscapes that is produced by a partner at Smith, Mooore, Leatherwood LLP and the following quote from the post Of Bribery, Extortion and Racketeering sums up the ethical issue as well as anything I've read:
Whether a public official operates on a local, state or federal level, the precepts of ethical conduct remain the same.
In cities, hamlets, counties, congressional districts and states across the country, we entrust average citizens with great power to look after the rest of us. The operative word is “entrust.” An elected or appointed official is a fiduciary of that power just as a bank officer is a fiduciary of customers’ money.
The power to control the levers of government is the most sacred power a democracy bestows. Abuse of that power is not defined by the stupidity of an official’s decisions or the repercussions of his or her actions. Abuse of entrusted power is marked, foremost, by whether the action was intended for self benefit.
I think we have a culture of governing ethically in Lewisville, but I'm certain that there are people in Lewisville who would disagree. That's why I think it's important to be emphatic about ethical governance. It's okay to act ethically, but I think it's better to do it and let the world know loud and clear that's how you roll.
Unfortunately my little 'ol hometown has been in the news a bit lately, and not for good reasons. A couple of days ago an elderly couple was found shot to death in their home, apparently by an elderly Mocksville man who had dated the woman and was upset that she was trying to reconcile with her husband. Then yesterday two teenagers disappeared on the Yadkin River when they decided that it would be a great idea to go kayaking while a flood warning was in effect. Just down the road from where the boys went on their little misadventure a man decided to jump off a bridge into the Yadkin because he thought it would be fun. Despite his best efforts to win the Darwin Award the man was rescued.
That's a lot of action in one week for a little town of 14,000-ish people.
Befuddled 