News & Record editor, duplicitous or seclusive?

The (Greensboro, NC) News & Record editor coughs up the name of the hotel that hosted the Nazis (La Quinta). He does so with "Now that the 'threat' is over, I fully expected someone to ask the motel be identified. No one did."

Well yes, we did ask. Here, here and here, well before the update appeared on JR's blog. I am left wondering, is the editor of our local daily really oblivious to the local blogs discussing his paper and his decision or was he aware of these blog posts and just pretending he did not see them?

"Why is it important to you that you know the name of the place?"

The (Greensboro, NC) News & Record editor John Robinson defends his paper's decision not to disclose the location of the local hotel hosting a meeting of about forty Nazis. After commenters condemn and commend, Robinson asks, "Why is it important to you that you know the name of the place?"

I'd like to know what local hotel would host this group so that I can boycott them forevermore. Now that the original reason for keeping this information secret, the safety issue, has passed, the N&R has no reason not to reveal the name of the hotel-- add it to their online story and JR's blog post so that it becomes a part of the record, unless they are also interested in protecting an advertiser.

Requesting Records in Greensboro

Based on a true story.

Who "passed" those polygraph tests?

The (Greensboro, NC) News & Record's editor John Robinson mentions on his blog today that all of the Greensboro City Council members who took a polygraph test over who leaked the RMA report "passed" the lie detector test. To his credit, and for good reason, Robinson puts "passed" in quotation marks.

Let us remember, the results of these tests were verbally self-reported by each test subject to then-Mayor Keith Holliday who then relayed them to the public.

A subsequent records request by yours truly for the records of the actual tests came up short when City attorney Jemiah Watterman first claimed that the polygrapher said he did not have any records then, when confronted with the polygrapher's statement that he did have records, the City failed to request those records from him on this citizen's behalf.

Instead, the City invited the council subjects to consent to have the polygrapher prepare a report summarizing in writing the results of that individual's "test."

Three council persons consented and there is a written summary from the polygrapher that says they "passed" (i.e. did not "show deception" when asked if they leaked the RMA report). Those who consented and who the polygrapher reported as having passed were:

Yvonne Johnson
Mike Barber
Sandra Anderson-Groat

Five other council people did not give their consent to have the polygrapher prepare a report of their test, so there is no record that they passed other than Keith Holliday's account of what he says they said their results were. Those who did not consent to a written report were:

Keith Holliday
Tom Phillips
Florence Gatten
Sandy Carmany
Goldie Wells

T. Dianne Bellamy Small says she did not leak the RMA report, but would not take a polygraph exam. Five of her colleagues say that they passed a polygraph test but would not consent to a report of their results. I don't see the difference.

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"Open your minds and your eyes wide enough to see more than black and white."

"That’s so 1950s."

The Late Show with Fecund Stench

Jeff Martin, aka Fecund Stench, is becoming Greensboro's John Stewart. More of his mechanized mockery here.

Greater Greensboro

There are some things about the city of Greensboro that are just great. Whenever the need arises for someone from the city to perform some psychical task, in my experience, the work force has always been commendable. When we first moved into our house, we discovered that heavy rains would send gully washers down the street and into our gravel driveway, washing pounds of rocks into the street. With then-city council person Sandy Carmany's help, it was arranged for a crew to come out and pour a cement apron that fixed the problem, the first time and for good. When a storm uprooted a huge oak tree and sent it sprawling across Normandy Ave., a crew was on the scene as soon as it was safe to be outside again, getting the street cleared.

Today it was a little thing, but one more to remember. The ravages of time had done a number on our garbage can. A little horizontal crack around the middle of it had been growing progressively larger. Yesterday, it finally gave way, nearly splitting in two and spilling garbage onto the street beneath the helpless mechanical arm. As he shoveled up the spill, the truck driver told me to call 333-CITY for a new can, Which I did. I didn't have to get transferred around or wait on hold very long at all. The first person to answer the call was able to take my information and instruct me to leave the dead can at the curb and it would be replaced.

When two o'clock rolled around today and we still did not have a new can, I called again, just to see if I should leave the old one out over the weekend. "Leave it out until 5:30 and I'll send a reminder," said the man who answered the phone. Sure enough, within an hour the old can was removed and a shiny new garbage can was rolled up our driveway.

There are a lot of people working for the city who work hard and treat "customers" right. It doesn't go unnoticed or unappreciated.

News & Record fooled again

They say as you age, your sense of smell starts to go. That certainly seems to be the case with the opinion pages of the (Greensboro, NC) News & Record as another letter to the editor full of misinformation passes the editors' smell test to make it into print.

Today there is a letter from Robert L. Simpson of Burlington. In it, Simpson refers to an "article" published in Pravda titled "American Capitalism Gone With A Whimper." Simpson reminds us that, if anyone should know what the death of capitalism looks like, Pravda is "an expert on Marxism."

LOL. The "article" in question is an opinion piece first published on a Russian man's blog in which he makes the convoluted assertion that Wall Street is behind the advancement of Marxism. As for Pravda's Marxist bona fides, the Pravda that was once the official Communist newspaper of the Soviet Union was shut down in 1991. The Pravda web site on which the blog post was republished, begun in 1999, is decidedly capitalistic, running ads for pictures of Miley Cyrus in her underwear and for "Dog gives birth to mutant creature that resembles human being," pictured here.

Why does the city of Greensboro send cryptic press releases in DOCX format?

I am on the city of Greensboro's media list. They send press releases by email with the release as an attachment with cryptic or meaningless subjects, some recent examples:

- HumRel092509.docx
- 08.24.09 0300 Press Release Nothing to Report
- School supplies2009.doc

There are a few smart exceptions, but most of these emails are void of any body text describing what the release is about, much less the release itself. There is no reason why the email body could not contain the message. Instead, one must open a compatible image or document program to view the attachment and solve the puzzle of what it is about.

Now, to make it even more cumbersome, documents are being attached in the DOCX format. So if you don't have Microsoft Office 2007 or later, you have the pleasure of trying to figure out how to open that file type on your computer.

It seems to me that the city might give some thought to how it distributes its press releases, with some consideration of efficiency and accessibility to a broad range of recipients.

"Nearly any business in the county?" N&R's Witt inaccurate in his characterization of incentives plan

The Guilford County Commissioners are contemplating an incentives plan that will provide for tax abatement for businesses that add value to real estate by building, adding or remodeling. The News & Record's Gerald Witt characterizes this patronage of the construction industry as an incentive for "nearly any business in the county."

It is not. If you rent your place of business, a program that offers tax abatements for improvements to property you do not own is not an incentive for you. "Nearly any business?" Hardly. My guess would be, in fact, a minority of businesses.

Nataly Dawn

The closing credits of HBO's Hung had me going to the Google to see who performed the song "Play the Game." It was Queen. I found a cover though that is delicious. It is by Nataly Dawn. She has a small following on MySpace, a channel on YouTube and no record label... yet.

She will.

This was one of my favorites.

And here is the sweet cover of Play the Game.

Emotions as a cause, Ayn Rand on the popular right

A thread at Ed Cone's turned to a discussion of epistemology, ie. how do we know what we think we know? I am reading "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand and Rand has a lot to say about epistemology and politics and how one influences the other. Rand asserts that there is such a thing as objective reality, that the success or failure of a populace in assessing objective reality has social/political consequences.

I find it ironic that Rand, a philosophical wellspring of modern conservatism, admonishes the socialists/communists villains of "Atlas Shrugged" for failings of reason in a way that can be properly directed at the modern popular right.* I've observed it as people trying to assert a point of view by untethering themselves from reality, Rand describes it thus:

"[They] have reversed causality in their consciousness, then strive to reverse it in existence. They take their emotions as a cause, and their mind as a passive effect. They make their emotions their tool for perceiving reality. They hold their desires as an irreducible primary, as a fact superseding all facts."

"They want to cheat the axiom of existence and consciousness, they want their consciousness to be an instrument not of perceiving but of creating existence, and existence to be not the object but the subject of their consciousness..."

And, elesewhere, this:

A rational process is a moral process. You may make an error at any step of it, with nothing to protect you but your own severity, or you may try to cheat, to fake the evidence and evade the effort of the quest--but if devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion that the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.

* I recognize that I am making a generalization, one that I think is credible but, as a generalization, implicitly acknowledges that there are individual exceptions.

Wyndham washout

Went to the Wyndham golf tournament today. The course looked great, good crowd, friendly workers, easy access to great viewing with the abilities of professional golfers made all the more impressive in close-up person -- then the rain came.

Although it was heartening to see Greensboro City Councilor Mike Barber soaked to the bone, working the shuttle bus line, shuffling people with young children off to dry confines, the rest of us bums had to stand outside in a line easily one thousand people long for an hour as the rains came down and a trickle of shuttle buses ferried people back to their cars at the coliseum.

A little better planning for inclement weather next year, and I'm sure the Wyndham will be an unqualified success. This year though, bring a poncho and plenty of patience.

"Right wing garbage?" Me?

A commenter whose anonymity should in no way call into question the certain courage of his convictions says I'm writing "right wing garbage" -- apparently because I equate gangs with organized crime. Maybe the Latin Kings are not that organized, I really don't know, but I am certain a lot of people will get a chuckle out of this chowderhead's characterization of my opinions as right wing.

At the Wyndham, parking or not? Which is it?

Greensboro Sports reports that heavy rains have closed parking at the Wyndham for the remainder of the tournament. The tournament website says spectators can still park at the venue (with no information about the shuttle from the Coliseum). So, who to believe? The official site of the tournament or the "amatuer" sports reporters?

More "death panel" idocy, this time local

Greensboro blogger and curmudgeon Bubba posts a super scary video about a woman on a public health care plan in Oregon that declined to pay for a cancer fighting drug for her. The health plan will pay for "physician aid in dying" though, that being legal in Oregon. See? SEE?!? DEATH PANELS!!!

So, the drug in question is Tarceva. A course of treatment can cost up to $100,000. My $300 a month Blue Cross Blue Shield of NC policy has a $2,000 annual maximum payout on this type of specialty drug. Should I need this drug, my cost, after my insurance "pays for it" would be $98,000.

So tell me, all you Bubbas, am I -- or anybody with BCBSNC insurance -- are we really in any different situation than that lady in Oregon with our "free market" solution?

Let's face it, because it is abundantly obvious, there are some people so damn insistent that Obama not achieve any success, that they are willing to keep Americans, their neighbors, on the brink of disaster and no tactic, no matter how despicable, is off limits. It is really disgusting.

Inside Triad Stage

A new blog showed up on We101 today, Inside Triad Stage. I think I'm going to really like this one.

Making the public option simple: Allow me the option of buying into Medicare

I am in my mid forties. With the exception of three months of prescription quit-smoking drugs, my utilization of professional health care services over the past ten years has been limited to six physicals. Including the drugs, about $1,500 worth of health care over a decade.

During the past ten years, my insurance premiums have totaled just over $20,000. My monthly premiums have risen every year from their original $90. Most recently, they jumped from $200 to $300 three months after I quit smoking.

My "non-profit" insurer pays its CEO $4M a year, spends 18% of its premiums on administrative costs, rewards its top couple hundred sales people with Caribbean vacations and is currently spending my premiums on advertising trying to block health care reform. It also employs a cadre of nurses not as care providers, but as gatekeeping bureaucrats whose jobs are to ration care by approving or denying payment.

Here is the simple "public option" I want: Let me buy into Medicare if I want to. Price it so it is self-sustaining, heck add a couple bucks a month if it helps ameliorate the coming financial challenges. Then let me decide if the care and costs work for me.

Unless you are a mean self-centered fart who just cannot stand to see people have better options or a rigid slave to a broken ideology, how can you possibly have a problem with that?

Council candidate's 'Troubling association with organized crime?' More yellow journalism from Yes! Weekly

Going downhill fast. That's my perception of the deteriorating "journalistic" standards at Yes! Weekly that have them willing to smear people for sensationalism's sake.

Recently, Yes! decided the best way to promote a story of prosecutorial incompetence was to plaster the mug shots of innocent people on its cover and web site (no pictures of the prosecutors who actually fumbled the cases though).

This time around, reporter Jordan Green asks Greensboro city council candidate Max Benbassat "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" Okay, not really, but he might as well have. In a profile of Benbassat, Green writes:

"Benbassat’s purist attitude towards politics contrasts with what some may see as a troubling association with organized crime."

What!?!? Are your friggin' kidding me? "Some may see?" Some who? "You the reader after I insinuate it right here?" And what association with organized crime? An association as asserted by whom and where? I asked Green to clarify. His response speaks for itself (or, in case it does not, the allegation is anonymous, uncoroborated and unreported):

"Roch, I received an anonymous tip from someone raising the possibility that Benbassat had been involved in organized crime in New York. I am duty-bound to maintain confidentiality, so I don't have a lot more to say about it.

There is an old saying in the newspaper business: "If your mother says she loves you, check it out." If some anonymous person insinuates something derogatory about a political candidate, you might want to check that out too... unless you are striving to be the local version of The National Enquirer.

Postscript: What is sadly ironic is that, of Jorge Cornell, the one candidate in the council race who actually has acknowledged ties to organized crime, Green inserts editorial praise into in the same article, writing that Cornell has "Upstaged the rest of the slate with an uncanny ability to connect to the man and woman on the street..." Anonymous, unsubstantiated rumors of gang associations? Troubling. Actual gang leader? Man of the people.

Forget the unprincipled construction industry patronage, the fair and smart way for Guilford County to spend $1.3 million

Thinking more about the Arnold/Austin proposed economic development incentives construction industry patronage, would not the proposed first year $1.3 million cost of the plan be better used if it provided a $1,000 grant for every new job created paying above $11.00/hour?

Would not that truly be an incentive for all businesses? Would not that be far fairer and more equitable than the current proposal? Would not that be the more direct, purposeful and justifiable reason for incentives, the creation of jobs?

Which is the better incentive?

- Giving a business a $1,000 grant each year for three years for adding $130,000* in value to a property through construction of or renovation to a building.

- Giving a business a $1,000 grant each year for three years for creating a new good paying job.

* Correction, 8/21/09: At Guilford County's current tax rate, $1,000 of property taxes would be on a property value of $130,000, not $13,000 as originally stated. That has been corrected.

Alston's and Arnold's notion of economic development unimaginative

Construction is not economic development. Making construction the centerpiece of an economic development plan is an upside down approach to economic development. It is the kind of "build it and they will come" thinking that is delightful for real estate and construction businesses, but which will fail Guilford county in two ways: One, by lessening the risk of building useless crap more prone to vacancy than productive use it will encourage it; and, two, in opportunity costs, directing our economic development energies away from the true economic engines of the future which, trust me, are not more strip malls and burger joints.

The proposal by Guilford County Commissioners Steve Arnold and Skip Alston to provide monetary "grants" equal to three years of property taxes to property owners who build, renovate or remodel property is a nice little gift to a narrow group of industries, but it is laughable to call it an economic incentive. It is a development incentive.

Arnold and Austin are relics who have turned to the only thing they know -- an antiquated notion of economic development. A real plan would have as its measure the creation of good paying jobs. This plan isn't it. It will pass because it will line the pockets of enough people to make it popular. It will also mark the continuation of Guilford County leadership as unimaginative.

[added] If you are opposed to incentives in general, this plan is a bad idea because its largess could otherwise be spread to all businesses in the form of an across the board tax reduction. If you find incentives acceptable, the plan is unimaginative because it encourages only construction. It does not extend grants for the purchase of a new x-ray machine, computer or other business expanding equipment or even for what should be the real bottom line, the addition of a new employee.

Higher ethical standards for local elected officials?

Keith Brown at Triadwatch has a post (scroll down past irrelevant video) about a new law in Greensburgh, New York that would "make it illegal for public officials to accept campaign contributions from developers, contractors or their lawyers or agents for a year before and a year after an application is reviewed by a town board."

When asked about contributions from developers and attorneys who bring matters before city council, often to win a rezoning or multi-million dollar tax abatement, council people will often say, "My vote cannot be bought." Fine. If that's the way it is, then they should have no problem with an ordinance similar to Greenburgh's. I wonder if any council candidates will propose this.

"Greensboro Savings & Specials" email? Proceed with caution

You probably already have your email program configured not to load images by default and up-to-date anti-virus software that scans your email messages... right?

Even so, I got an email today that looks like trouble. I haven't tried to confirm my suspicions, but if you get an email with the subject "Greensboro Savings & Specials," be advised that it attempts to load an application octet stream from a domain name registered just nine days ago. Seriously suspicious. You probably should delete this email without opening it if you are the least bit uncertain of the strength of your anti-virus protection.

Greensboro Rooms to Go tried to rip us off, made us JC Penny customers

Unbelievable. We tried to buy a sofa at Rooms to Go on Friday. They were willing to sell it to us at the prior week's sale price under one condition, that we buy it that day. We agreed. At checkout, we declined the $100 additional fabric protection. Mike, the salesperson, told us he did not think we could buy the sofa at the sale price if we did not also buy the fabric protection, a condition not mentioned to us verbally or represented in any of the written displays.

We told him we would leave if he insisted. He did. We did.

We ended up back at JC Penny, where an honest salesman told us the sofa we were looking at (our first choice, but just a little too expensive originally) would be 10% cheaper the next day as part of Penny's Friends and Family sale. The next day, we purchased the better (made in America, not China) sofa from JC Penny, in our price range and thanks to Rooms to Go's shortsighted stupidity.

I recommend John at the Four Seasons Town Center JC Penny's furniture department if you are in the market for some furniture.

News & Record scrubs another article. Who misrepresented 'neighborhood's wishes' on night out cancellation? Reports contradict city officials' claims.

The (Greensboro, NC) News & Record's new practice of updating articles on its website by scrubbing information from previous versions is really discouraging. It makes it difficult to pin down the facts and it diminishes the value of the N&R for one of a newspaper's primary missions: as an official record for the purpose of holding those in power accountable.

Who said that residents of Hickory Trails did not want a "national night out" at their apartments?

Various un-archived versions of the News & Record report attributed that secondhand account of residents' sentiment to Interim City Manager Bob Morgan, Mayor Yvonne Johnson, Police Chief Tim Bellamy, unnamed Housing Authority officials or unnamed city officials. Who was it?

Who can we hold accountable for attributing that unverified sentiment to unnamed residents when the documented actual sentiment expressed by actual residents contradicts that account both in the most recent version of the N&R article and in this interview by council candidate Ryan Shell with the mother of Tuesday's shooting victim? City Council district one candidate, Ben Holder, who had the idea for the event, also reports a series of events that contradict city officials and points the finger at Interim City Manager Bob Morgan.

Strange bedfellows

Jeff, on the "compromise" watershed protection rules:

"The developers ran around the rest of us and made a deal with the tree huggers, all the while waving eco banners as they take our money. The stormwater didn’t get cleaned, the fish still died, but the do-gooders got paid."

Thank you City Council

This evening, I went before the Greensboro City Council to ask that they postpone consideration of a new records retention and disposition policy. Records may have been improperly deleted under the old policy and passing a new policy before the extent of the improper deletions is known would obscure the issue.

Most importantly however, Assistant City Manager Denise Turner, who is currently on maternity leave (congratulations Denise and Mr. Turner), has been working on an update to the city's public records policy and procedures. Her initial efforts, as I've seen them so far, are encouraging and her intention to solicit public comment will be far more productive than tonight's hasty attempt to slide something through on a consent agenda without any public announcement until the quiet inclusion on the agenda four days ago; with no public input; with no copy of the policy made publicly available.

Thank you Mayor Johnson and City Council people for getting this one right. It will pay off in the long run.

Recalling email?

I am on the City of Greensboro media email list. Occasionally they send out something with some wrong information and that is followed by another email "recalling" the first email. I only ever get email recalls from the City of Greensboro and I am never sure how to respond. Should I send the original back to the sender, as I would return a recalled can of tuna? Isn't attempting to recall an email like trying to recall a fart?

City council candidate arrested

Last night, gang leader and Greensboro city council candidate Jorge Cornell was arrested in what Cornell describes as "a clear case of racial profiling and dehumanization." At the beginning of the video, one can see Cornell step in front of a police officer and the officer can be heard telling Cornell to "Get out of my face" and "Get away from me" or be arrested.