Memory loss

GREENSBORO, NC -- Former New & Record editor John Robinson bemoans the N&R's loss of institutional memory. It seems the paper has a short term memory problem too.

From a letter to the editor today:

The complete list of candidates who have filed to run for mayor of Greensboro, from the Guilford County Board of Elections:

Gary Marschall's big ol' gaping logic hole

GREENSBORO, NC -- The News & Record publishes a letter today from one Gary Marschall of Greensboro in which Mr. Marschall lights his hair on fire, warns of same sex marriage marking the end of "our culture" and  laments: "If only reason and logic would rule."

Mr. Marschall then proceeds to send his screed down a sink hole void of the very logic and reason he just wrote should prevail.

The reason Mr. Marschall has for thinking the Supreme Court should reject same sex marriage? Because there is, he writes, no "homosexual gene." Therefore, he concludes, homosexuality must be a "choice to fill felt needs" and such motivations do not justify a marriage.

Science agrees with Mr. Marschall, there does not appear to be a single determinant of sexual orientation.

And now for that logic and reason Mr. Marschall pleads for...

Just as there is no "homosexual gene" there is also no heterosexual gene. Mr. Marschall's sexual orientation is also merely a "choice to fill felt needs." Because that was his point: That without a gene to explain one's sexual desires, they can only be a choice.

Of course, for Mr. Marschall, his "felt needs" are God-ordained. He has every right to believe that, as I'm sure many gay people do also, but when he worries about damage to America's culture, he should take heart. 

The issue of same-sex marriage before the Supreme Court is not about mortals trying to read the mind of God, it is about what the Constitution of the United States of America says about equality; about whether a man who loves a woman has the same rights to legally sanctify that union as does a man who loves a man. Do adults acting on their "felt needs" have the right to be treated equally under the law? 

The promise that they do is American bedrock. God bless America.

Horrible, horrible; just pathetically and absolutelty the worst

GREENSBORO, NC -- Yesterday, the News & Record reported of a robbery in which a gaming console was stolen at gun point:

"Armed men tried and failed to rob two people... The suspects ran from the scene without taking any property." (Emphasis added.)

That story is still online.

It's bad enough the News & Record turned a press release from the police advising of a "robbery from person" into a fiction completely contrary to the facts, but today, when the police issued another press release about that crime, consistent with their first but adding new suspect information, the News & Record "reported" it again, this time writing that one of the suspects pulled a gun and took the gaming console:

"[O]ne of the two men pulled a handgun, took the system and the two alleged suspects ran off."  (Emphasis added.)

So now, at the illustrious News & Record, one can simultaneously find two accounts of the same crime, one where suspects fled without taking any property and one where property was taken. Both contradict each other, only one is accurate, the other remains uncorrected and yet both are online together.

It Matters

For all the thought and effort that various people and institutions put into advancing Greensboro, I am firmly convinced we will be forever held back from making the kind of progress we could as long as we are burdened by the dung heap that is the News & Record.

How can we as a community ever properly address our shortcomings and understand our strengths if our primary "news" outlet is a sloppy and indifferent pustule of perpetual misinformation and ignorance undemanding of itself and deceiving us about who we are and what's going on?

Day after day, the News & Record offers up mistake after mistake and each reveals a troubling fact: Our daily newspaper is not careful, not a checker of facts, rarely a source of insight or enterprising inquisitiveness* and not even any good at the simple task of regurgitating press releases.

Greensboro deserves better.



* This makes the situation even worse—that there are one or two reporters there who manage, against what must be monumental institutional momentum to the contrary, to occasionally deliver some quality reporting. I feel as bad for them about the burden of the News & Record's institutional incompetence as I do for my city.

2014 Reckless Reporting of the Year Award

GREENSBORO, NC -- The long knives are out at the News & Record for those currently in control of the International Civil Rights Center and Museum (ICRCM), and it's not pretty. It's embarrassing. Reckless, actually.

On the heels of last week's political hit piece based solely on anonymous sources taking aim at the controlling majority of the ICRM board, reporter Margaret Moffett launches another unfounded salvo so preposterous it seems as if it should be beneath even the very low standards of the very terrible News & Record.

Let's break it down (it won't take much). Moffett begins with:

"The sit-in museum's chief financial officer and interim leader may be violating North Carolina law by representing himself as a certified public accountant."

Says who? Nobody. Although Moffett has demonstrated her willingness to print unfounded assertions* in the past, this one isn't just unfounded, it's unattributed—to anybody. So it is Moffett's accusation. Can she make her case?

For all the rolling around Moffett does in the law and regulations, it all is predicated on one criterion. It's what we programmers recognize as a conditional statement: If a is true, then b; Moffett writes it like this:

"[A] CPA licensed in another state who moves to North Carolina to practice accounting 'must obtain a certificate of qualification from the board prior to using the CPA title in any way in this state,' according to the law."

What is the condition? What is the if that must be true for the law to apply? "WHO MOVES TO NORTH CAROLINA." If a person does not move to North Carolina, the laws Moffett says Swaine may be violating do not apply.

So has Swaine moved to North Carolina? Has he satisfied the condition that would make these laws apply? No. According to whom? According to Moffett herself, who writes:

"Swaine, who commutes to Greensboro from his home in Roanoke, Va., has held a CPA license in Virginia since 1999."

Her conditional fails. MOVED TO NORTH CAROLINA does not equal true. So all that stuff about what is required of a CPA who moves to North Carolina—those laws Moffett says Swaine "may be violating"—do not apply.

Additionally, Moffett cites as examples of Swaine "representing himself as a CPA" in North Carolina posts to Twitter and Linkdin. That's absurd. Such posts are no more "in North Carolina" than they are in Texas or Sri Lanka.

Moffett doesn't let logic and the facts get in her way though. With no regard for whether or not the law even applies in Swaine's case she doesn't hesitate to write that he "may" be breaking the law. Maybe—maybe he's double parked—but Moffett offers nothing to back up her suggestion that Swaine may be breaking the laws pertaining to CPAs. This is the kind of untenable character assassination that has had bloggers kicked off of Greensboro 101. It is shocking to find it in the "professional" media.

Whatever one's opinion on the best policy for the ICRCM, and there are advantages and disadvantages to the options on the table, we cannot allow slander to influence our decision making. Advocacy journalism has its place, but to do it, one must get her facts straight and think.

This is not journalism, it is a horrible and unconscionable smear piece. Greensboro deserves better.


* Moffett is Margaret Banks in the post at this link.

Incongruous

GREENSBORO, NC -- Downtown Greensboro, Inc. is floating a proposal to add more places for people to sit, read a book or just people watch, according to the News & Record. They are calling them "parkletts." They sound like a great idea to me.

It is unclear how well this idea would work with downtown's city council representative Zack Matheny's ideas for surveillance cameras and his desire "for people that are loitering to know that we’re watching them."

Councilman: Militarize downtown

GREENSBORO, NC -- The News & Record reports district 3 councilman Zack Matheny's ideas for public safety downtown:

“I want there to be an army down here,” he said. “Because I want people who are coming from Winston-Salem, from High Point, from Siler City to know that we mean business. I want cameras downtown. I want people that are loitering to know that we’re watching them.”

Think about a downtown policed by militarized patrols where the city "wants you to know" that lingering a little too long will have you subject to closer secret and remote observation, where all of your movements are subject to being covertly tracked and monitored.

These ideas, were they to come to fruition, would be costly, oppressive, hostile and, worst of all, they would kill downtown.

Cityfi would inspire inventions like this

GREENSBORO, NC -- In our entry to Greensboro's Strong Cities, Strong Communities Challenge, my partner Andrew Brod and I discuss the numerous benefits of city-wide public Wi-Fi. We are calling it Cityfi.

One of the things we suggest is that a city blanketed with public Wi-Fi would make Greensboro a hotbed for innovation and invention, especially for wearables (fitness bands, smart watches, etc.) and for the Internet of Things.

In describing the Internet of Things, we wrote this:

"The Internet of Things generally describes connecting ordinary things to the Internet so that they can convey information about their location or condition. A smoke detector might alert the fire department, for example, or a refrigerator might text to its owner a reminder that it’s out of milk. A municipal environment in which there is pervasive wireless Internet will be an attractive place for the innovators and inventors of such devices."

Today there is news of a company inventing a battery that uses Wi-Fi to bring smoke detectors online. From MIT Technology Review:

"A startup has come up with a simple way to make smoke and carbon-monoxide detectors more useful: a nine-volt battery with built-in Wi-Fi. The battery can alert you on your smartphone if the alarm goes off or the battery itself is about to die."

Nineteen years ago, I made the rounds in Greensboro talking to anybody who would listen about this great thing that was about to explode called the Internet. It is going to revolutionize just about everything, I'd explain to anybody willing to listen. Some people got it.* Some people were way ahead of me, kindly patient with how little I actually knew.

Others, doubtful and not to be convinced, said things like "Why would I need email when I have a fax machine." Really. An important man, rocking back in his big chair behind his polished oak desk actually said that to me.

Sometimes technologies reach a tipping point — a point where it is not hard to see that a significant leap forward—better yet, a wave—is coming. I see the same thing with the new generation of Wi-Fi and I'm hopeful our entry into the SC2 Challenge will do well so that Greensboro will take notice of this: There is a transformative opportunity here. We should prove ourselves vibrant and progressive and take it.



* I continue to have a special fondness for Ed Mathews, the meteorologist from WFMY, because he was one of the early "visionaries" -- one of the first people of influence to say yes in my search for collaborators. I am certain it sounds like no big deal now, but at the time, around 1996, when Ed and I arranged for him to email me the weather forecast twice a day, which I copied, added some graphics to, and pasted "by hand" onto The Wire's local weather web page, it was a pretty damn big deal. Even Ed's employer wasn't online yet, much less with twice-a-day weather.

There were plenty of other people who saw the future too. But not enough of them among the movers and shakers to put us in the fast lane of the nascent Internet industry. On the eve of what would prove to be the decimation of of our textile and furniture industries, there was simply a lack of enthusiasm among the powerful and entrenched economic forces to kickstart Internet related business. I imagine, sometimes, how different things might be now for Greensboro if we had diversified some of our capital and tried to lead in technological innovation.

I hope we do things differently this time. I hope we can see that there is something coming and that it is our chance to reach for something better than the status quo. Better than our fax machines.

.

This chart about Greensboro will shock you

GREENSBORO, NC -- It is common knowledge that pay for women lags that of men in the United States. Nationally, women earn about 78 cents for every dollar a man earns. There are various guesses about why that may be, from gender bias to other possible factors.

Overall, women in Greensboro earn about 83 percent of what men do, but that hides a shocking disparity. Break it down by education, and things look worse — for those with the greatest and the least educational attainment. The chart below illustrates the pay gap between men and women over 25 in Greensboro with information from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Fact Finder. 

Women with a bachelor's degree earn only 78 cents for every dollar a man earns while the most educated, those with a graduate or professional degree, earn just 60 percent of what men with equivalent educational attainment earn in Greensboro.

The pay disparity for women in Greensboro is the worst though for those who do not finish high school, with those women earning 59 percent of what their male counterparts are paid.

The Data

MEDIAN EARNINGS IN THE PAST 12 MONTHS
(IN 2013 INFLATION-ADJUSTED DOLLARS)

Population 25 years and over with earnings, all 
Male: 34,771
Female: 29,056
Female percentage of male:  84%

Less than high school graduate
Male: 23,317
Female: 13,717
Female percentage of male: 59%

High school graduate (includes equivalency)
Male: 26,143
Female: 21,287
Female percentage of male: 81% 

Some college or associate's degree
Male: 29,596
Female: 25,599
Female percentage of male: 86% 

Bachelor's degree
Male: 45,902
Female: 35,754
Female percentage of male: 78% 

Graduate or professional degree
Male: 72,211
Female: 43,178
Female percentage of male: 60% 

Bill Robinson's fallacies printed as fact in News & Record

GREENSBORO, NC --  The News & Record continues its wretched practice of publishing errors of fact in its letters to the editor. Today, it's this from Bill Robinson of Greensboro:

For those of you under 30 and concerned about jobs and the economy, in 1998 and 1999 the country was spiraling down into recession. Who do you think was [sic] president and first lady?

There was no recession in 1998 or 1999. In fact—you know, real fact, not ideological hallucination—the 1990s were the longest period of growth in U.S. history. The nearest recession was in 2001, George W. Bush's first year in office—a point of fact that would be quite inconvenient to what one assumes is Robinson's "logic."

It would be a simple thing for the News & Record to check the claims of empirical facts asserted in the letters it receives and, when they are wrong, to reject the letters on that basis. Like this:

Dear Mr. Robinson, there was no recession in 1998 or 1999. You are welcome to correct the error and resubmit your letter.

Otherwise, what is the letters page but a comfy home for every crackpot with a mistaken understanding of the world? Isn't that what the Internet is for?

Hyping minor achievements

GREENSBORO, NC -- When did we start pretending that minor achievements deserve the same recognition as major accomplishments? Two examples from this past few days: The area's fifth grade "graduations," and the Greensboro Grasshoppers "winning" the "first half" pennant.

Graduation is for granting a diploma or degree and a baseball pennant is for the winner of a league's season. What's next? Kindergarten graduation and a fifth inning pennant?

This is ground control, do you read me?

GREENSBORO, NC -- Dr. Joe Guarino writes a post in response to mine last week about the false comparisons of the Veteran's Administration to Obamacare; or should I say, he pastes another writer's thoughts. His title: Why the VA Scandal is Extremely Relevant to Obamacare.

It's flawed right from the get-go. Rather than tackle the facts on their face, rather than make an argument from reality, Guarino's writer requires a heavy dose of paranoia first:

"Americans need to take a close look at the VA—and not only because of their concern about poor treatment of our wounded warriors. It is the prototype for Obamacare. The intent behind Obamacare is to completely centralize control over health care, and thus turn American health care into one huge Veterans’ Administration." [emphasis added]

Actually, the prototype for Obamacare was Republican Mitt Romney's health care plan from Massachusetts, itself a product, in part, of the conservative Heritage Foundation. But while the Heritage Foundation praised the individual mandate and subsidies of RomneyCare, when the same policies are implemented under Obama, well, then it's all just part of the real intent for the guvmint to own all health care facilities and have all health care providers on its payroll. Got that? Good, then you are all set to swallow Guarino's "extremely relevant" comparison of the VA to Obamacare.

On the other hand, here's what a comparison of the two looks like when tethered to the facts as they exist and not from orbit in the paranoiasphere. From Sam Baker at the National Journal:

"If you want to argue that the VA's problems are a sign of what happens under true government control of a health care system, well, there's an argument to be made there. Some of the problems at the VA—namely, long waits to see certain doctors—are similar to the biggest complaints about other socialized or quasi-socialized health care systems, including the UK's.

"And the VA is about as socialized as it gets: The federal government owns the hospitals, employs the doctors who work in those hospitals, and finances the coverage that veterans use to get care.

"Obamacare, though, is not socialized medicine. It's not a government takeover of the health care system. Sure, people call it that, and in comparison with charges like "death panels," those characterizations don't sound so off-the-reservation. But they're still wrong.

"Most people accessing the health care system through Obamacare will do so by purchasing private insurance through the law's exchanges. The federal government regulates those insurance policies and requires them to cover certain services. The vast majority of exchange customers also receive subsidies, funded by the government in the form of tax credits, to help pay for their premiums. So it's not like the government isn't involved at all.

"But, unlike with the VA, no one on the exchanges is buying insurance from the government; it's all private coverage. The government doesn't decide how much that coverage costs. It doesn't employ doctors, or decide how much they'll get paid, or require them to accept any of the insurance plans sold through the exchanges. "Obamacare" is not a health care system. The VA is."

Dr. Wolicki's deep thoughts

GREENSBORO, NC -- Greensboro physician Karol Wolicki (an ear, nose and throat man) writes a letter to the News & Record today. Here it is in its entirety:

"The parallels are obvious. Any discussion of the comparison is thus far conspicuously absent. If you like the way the government administers health care to our veterans, you'll love Obamacare!"

Maybe the exclamation point is meant to head off any further consideration of his opinion, but I don't find his parallels "obvious" at all.

The VA is a cabinet level veterans benefit system, Obamacare is a series of laws passed by congress that mandate private insurance coverage for use among private health care providers and which helps pay for that private insurance with sliding scale subsidies.

Obvious? I think what's obvious is that Dr. Wolicki, who himself received over $30,000 in public payments last year through government administered Medicare, has something against Obamacare he is unable to articulate cogently.

Cheese eating results in bedsheet entanglement deaths

GREENSBORO, NC -- The Greensboro Police Department (GPD) and the regurgitating News & Record, have been saying that police data shows the GPD's program of intensified traffic patrols made streets safer and reduced crime in the areas of their deployment despite the fact that police data shows a mixed bag of increases in some accidents and crime during such efforts.

Still, that hasn't stopped News & Record police stenographer Joe Gamm from drawing an unjustified straight line of causation: "That campaign resulted in a 16.9 percent drop in crime," he writes of last year's campaign on Wendover Avenue.

Gamm and the GPD should take a look at Spurious Correlations, a website that crunches various datasets to illustrate the reasoning mistake of, well, spurious correlations (although the GPD and News & Record take it beyond correlation and actually proclaim a cause and effect). Did you "know," for example, there is a "correlation" between per capita cheese consumption and the number of deaths caused by people becoming entangled in their bed sheets?

If the News & Record were to receive a press release with the claim, it would report: Cheese eating results in increased entanglement deaths. 

Here is more about the site from Popular Science:

"Data suggest: marriages in Alabama are causing deaths by electrocution, divorces in South Carolina are causing bees to produce more honey, and Nicolas Cage movies are saving thousands of lives each year. 

"Tyler Vigen created a program, appropriately titled Spurious Correlations, that finds correlations between random data sets and produces a chart every minute. Thus, the .95 correlation between mozzarella cheese consumption and civil engineering doctorates is finally uncovered. The sets appear to use easily available information, including loads of statistics about deaths, which lends the correlations a hilariously dark humor.

"Funny? Yeah. Clearly it's a sendup of the sometimes dubious findings of certain studies. But, hey, good time for a reminder: we know "correlation is not causation" but don't immediately dismiss every correlation as irrelevant. Otherwise how will we recognize and stop the swimming-pool-related deaths caused by The Wicker Man?"

Serious question on News & Record's suspect descriptions

GREENSBORO, NC -- When it comes to describing criminal suspects, the News & Record will scrub race from descriptions in police press releases if it deems the descriptions to be otherwise not "complete." Fair enough, that's their prerogative. One might think that as much information as possible, no matter how scant, would aide the public in helping to identify possible criminals—presumably, that's why the police provide the information to begin with—but the News & Record regularly proves itself allergic to inclusion of all the facts, so no real surprise that it would be okay with intentionally withholding public information.

But here's the thing: Why is that delineation made for race but not gender? While the News & Record will take police descriptions that include gender and race and scrub race from what they print, they will still report gender. Even as they cite the lack of "complete descriptions" as the reason for not reporting suspects' race, they will still identify the same suspects as "male."

I question the journalistic purpose of scrubbing anything from police issued descriptions to begin with, but it is truly unfathomable to me why a newspaper would describe "white males" as simply "males." The way I see it, either as much information as is available should be reported or, if characteristics are to be scrubbed because the description is otherwise too broad, then gender should not be reported either. If not "white males," it should be "people." What am I missing? What is the justification for reporting only the gender of suspects when only gender and race are known?

Records contradict police P. R.

GREENSBORO, NC -- At the conclusion of a months-long intensive traffic enforcement campaign on Battleground Avenue earlier this year, the Greensboro Police Department announced that a "benefit" of the campaign was a decrease in "part 1 index crimes"—the worst offenses, like murder, rape, robbery and auto theft—during the period of the patrols compared to the same period the previous year. Records contradict the claim that crime decreased.

From Greensboro Police Department press release.

It is ludicrous to claim that because two things correspond to each other, one caused the other. Without including other factors that influence crime, such as population and demographic changes, weather, economic conditions and other crime-fighting efforts, it is impossible to credibly say that increased traffic enforcement caused a decrease in crime. It's even worse when the numbers used to come to that conclusion are wrong.

Faulty logic did not stop the media from dutifully regurgitating the claim, however. No surprise there considering local media's lazy preference for stenography over journalism. Nonetheless, it turns out that the claim of a reduction in crime during that period, no matter its cause, is actually contradicted by police records.

Information provided by the police in support of their press release said that there were 24 part 1 crimes within a 1/4 mile of the traffic enforcement area in 2013 and 22 during the same period in 2014.

GPD's list of crimes

Among the crimes in 2014, the GPD said there was one motor vehicle theft. Police records contradict that representation. A search of crimes just on Battleground Avenue alone (not even including the 1/4 mile radius the police said they included) in the confines of the enforcement area (Cornwallis Drive to Horse Pen Creek Road) and only during the hours of operation of the campaign showed there were actually four reports of motor vehicle theft during the period of the enforcement campaign, not one.

They were:

01/16/2014 17:09 Incident Case #: 20140116343
Primary Offense: MOTOR VEHICLE THEFT - AUTOMOBILE 2906 BATTLEGROUND AV

01/30/2014 12:00 Incident Case #: 20140227146
Primary Offense: MOTOR VEHICLE THEFT - AUTOMOBILE 2605 BATTLEGROUND AV

02/12/2014 12:00 Incident Case #: 20140227152
Primary Offense: MOTOR VEHICLE THEFT - AUTOMOBILE 2605 BATTLEGROUND AV

03/03/2014 07:00 Incident Case #: 20140317073
Primary Offense: MOTOR VEHICLE THEFT - AUTOMOBILE 2630 BATTLEGROUND AV

When asked about the discrepancies, Captain John Wolfe, the officer in charge of the enforcement campaign said in an email:

"I can't speak to the numbers specifically as they are generated and reported through our crime analysis unit. I can speak to the methodology but not in this format. I will look into the discrepancies you've noted to determine how they occurred."

With four auto thefts instead of one, the total number of Part 1 crimes actually increased year over year, from 24 to 25. If the correlation-as-causation thinking still applies, one would say that as a result of the traffic enforcement campaign, serious crime rose 4 percent. Of course, the enforcement campaign no more deserves such sloppy blame as it deserved the sloppy credit assigned to it when the numbers were thought to imply something positive.

News & Record's superficial endorsement of superficial candidate

GREENSBORO, NC -- Is the News & Record even serious any more? In endorsing Greensboro district three city council person Zack Matheny in the Republican primary for United States House of Representatives, N.C. district 6, they ask readers to ignore important issues, ignore the realities of the political climate, local and national, and suggest we join them in a willful suspension of critical thinking.

The News & Record touts what they see as Matheny's:

"[W]illingness to work across party lines for the benefit of the people [he] represent[s]. That approach is sorely needed in Congress."

The fact is, Matheny is a member of a non-partisan city council where party matters so little that the mayor has served on council as a Republican, then unaffiliated and now as a Democrat. Such an environment gives us no indication of how Matheny will operate in the partisan pressure cooker of the U.S. House of Representatives. A better indication is in Matheny's campaign platform and here, the News & Record gives Matheny cover from scrutiny. They write:

"Matheny’s top issue in this campaign isn’t repealing Obamacare, opposing same-sex marriage, banning abortion, denying climate change or impeaching the president — topics that occupy some of the other candidates. It’s finding ways to create more jobs."

In congress, Matheny will have to—we, his potential constituents, will want him to—act on health care, marriage equality, reproductive issues, climate change, economic inequality and more, including budgetary, foreign affairs, defense, and entitlement issues such as Social Security. Yet, the News & Record is asking us to dumb down our examination of Matheny by suggesting that we ignore how he might act on these important issues and, instead, be swayed by rhetoric on "jobs." Voters will be wise not to oblige.

Despite what the News & Record may wish us to ignore, Matheny has staked out some positions that give a better picture than the News & Record's wishful thinking of how he'll operate if elected. No matter one's political inclinations, it will interest voters to know what Matheny has to say on the issues (and on what he has remained silent).

Health Care:
In January, Matheny's website called for an unequivocal repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act: "Congress must repeal Obamacare," he wrote. Now, along with some good news about Obamacare, Matheny's website no longer calls for repeal. While he still remains critical of what he calls "government intrusion" in health care and maintains that Obamacare "hurts far more people than it helps," he seems confused about the role of government in health care as he cites as a good example of the delivery of health services the medical testing company LabCorp, which happens to be North Carolina's single largest recipient of Medicare payments (i.e. "government")  — some $157 million in 2012. (As it turns out, LabCorp made a $5,000 campaign contribution to Matheny days before he came to use them as an example on his website.)

I wrote to Matheny, in whose congressional and city council districts I live, to ask if he still opposes Obamacare and why. I also, separately, asked if he supported Republican changes to expand Obamacare signed into law by President Obama. Matheny replied that he was out of town and would get back to me when "time permits." That was two weeks ago. Matheny's views on health care have been inconsistent, confused and self-contradictory. Had the News & Record been serious, it would have explored the implications of Matheny's muddled thoughts on this issue. Voters will.

The Budget:
Matheny promotes a Constitutional amendment "requiring the federal government to balance its budget every year." As with the Affordable Care Act, it's not clear to what extent Matheny has thought this through or his level of commitment as he qualifies his support by saying we should "consider" it.

Taxes:
We'll let Matheny speak for himself here and leave it to the reader to decide if this is something the News & Record would have ignored in a serious endorsement.

"As your Congressman, I will fight for legislation to sunset our current tax code and create a simple, fair, and honest tax system. Our current code is too complex, 70,000 pages and growing every year. No one knows what’s in it, or understands the current system. If we sunset our tax code after 3 years, that gives Congress 1000 days to take out a clean sheet of paper headed 'Fair, Simple, Honest.' "

Education:
Again, Matheny's words themselves are the most illustrative and, again, the reader will evaluate the seriousness of a News & Record endorsement that, in a city with six colleges and universities, ignores Matheny's idea for education:

"We must TEACH FOR THE JOB." [Emphasis in original]  

Guns:
Yet again, another topic on which the News & Record would have had something to say, were they serious. Here's Matheny:

"As your Congressman, I will continue to support gun owners and protect their right to bear arms. Protecting Second Amendment rights is not only a Constitutional issue. Our region has an economic interest to protect these rights as well. Remington Arms has been headquartered in North Carolina’s 6th District for nearly 20 years and Ruger Firearms opened a manufacturing facility in Rockingham County just last year. Guns equal jobs in North Carolina’s 6th District."

Foreign Policy, National Defense, Social Security, Agriculture, Domestic Surveillance, Climate Change, Poverty, Marriage Equality, Reproductive Rights/Abortion, Income Inequality, Civil Liberties, Energy, Trade, etc:
On these issues, Matheny offers no comments on either of his two websites. Yet, silence on these issues is a plus in the minds of the News & Record editors. That should tell you all you need to know about the quality of their endorsement: A superficial endorsement for a superficial candidate.

News & Record's irresponsible dissemination of outright falsehoods

GREENSBORO, NC -- What responsibility does the News & Record have to its readers to see to it that outright falsehoods are not disseminated on its pages? Apparently, none.

While people are entitled to their own opinions, they are not entitled to their own facts, but not so on the opinion pages of the News & Record where the editors don't concern themselves with factual accuracy; case in point, a letter to the editor today from one Ned van Buren, in which he writes:

"Buried in the Affordable Care Act are what the Economist magazine (Oct. 5, 2013) describes as death panels designed to “unplug Grandma.” Section 1553 of Public Law 111-148, page 259, tells how the risk of death increases by withholding treatment, but not for the purpose of causing death." 

The claims of fact presented by Mr. Van Buren here are false. The News & Record printed them anyway.

Did the Economist magazine describe death panels "buried in the Affordable Care Act?" No, it did not and it would have been an easy thing, as it was for me, for the News & Record to check, find Van Buren's statement false, and invite him to resubmit his letter without the falsehood. 

What the Economist described, in an article about "Ted Cruz, bomb throwing reactionary," were the fears of some people that the Affordable Care Act would result in "death panels," the scare quotes are theirs. The Economist did not describe such a thing as being in the Affordable Care Act, as Van Buren wrote, it described a fear of such a thing existing in the minds of people: Not in the law, but in some people's minds. Furthermore the term itself—"death panels"—was put in quotes by the magazine to identify it as a catachresis—a strained metaphor—not the Economist's description. Here, read it for yourself:

"Obamacare seeks to insure millions more Americans and rein in sky-high medical costs. Lots of insiders suspect that change will hurt them, whether via higher premiums, skimpier coverage or government 'death panels' with the power to unplug Grandma." 

What about the second part of Van Buren's claim, the confused but seemingly ominous observation that a provision in the Affordable Care Act provides for withholding treatment? Again, the News & Record could have, should have—as I did in two minutes—checked Van Buren's citation to see if it says what he says it does. It does not.

The provision Van Buren "describes," right down to the page number, deals with assisted suicide, specifically PROHIBITING the denial of health care funds to health care providers that DO NOT offer suicide assistance. In other words, it demands the exact opposite of what Mr. Van Buren seems to think it says. It mandates that insurance MAY NOT require services "for the purpose of assisting in causing, the death of any individual, such as by assisted suicide, euthanasia, or mercy killing."

From his woefully wrong "facts," it is a short hop for Van Buren to come to his Nazi comparison—fully accommodated by the News & Record.

This should not happen. If the News & Record is going to allow just any claim, no mater how wrong, to appear on its pages, it could save hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by dismissing its editorial staff and just allowing people to post to its Op-Ed pages directly from the internet. Presumably, the News & Record employs editors to add value superior to the cacophony of bull crap that abounds on social media. That value should begin with filtering for blatant falsehoods.

Greensboro hypnotized

GREENSBORO, NC -- This city would be a lot different if we had a decent newspaper, a place where reason and intellectual rigor prevailed. Instead we have a marionette dancing at the ends of strings pulled by entrenched interests, sometimes for good, sometimes not, but rarely independently challenging what it is told with skepticisms and a will to find the empirical truth.

A case in point comes today in an article by police reporter Joe Gamm "reporting" on the results of a period of increased traffic patrols on Battleground Avenue by Greensboro police. Gamm reports:

"The data from Battleground Avenue also showed a drop in crime, with the seven types of crimes tracked — murder, sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny and auto theft — decreasing by 8 percent during the campaign, (Greensboro Police Captain John) Wolfe said."

This paragraph is problematic in a number of ways. First of all, it purports to characterize empirical data and yet it is attributed only to a police spokesperson. That's nothing new, unfortunately; the News & Record is loath to check the facts against the pronouncements of authorities. Parroting assertions is one of the least valuable services journalists can perform. Making sure those pronouncements align with the facts is the value the News & Record fails to provide.

Second, it is woefully unclear whether the police are making the claim that each of the types of offenses declined by 8 percent individually or whether that is overall, with some crimes increasing and some declining. A curious reporter would have wondered himself and clarified.

Finally, and most importantly, is that attributing an alleged change in crimes to increased traffic patrols is such sloppy reasoning, the News & Record should decline to report it to begin with. That two things — increased patrols on a particular street and a vague description of a decline of certain types of crime in a unspecified surrounding "area" — imply a cause and effect is not reasonably justified. It is a failure in critical thinking.

Any serious examination of the factors influencing crime cannot examine one possible factor in a vacuum. Weather, economic conditions, population changes, even other public safety efforts such as neighborhood watch efforts, all may have an effect on crime. Correlation is not causation. To attribute a decline in crime to a single particular factor without considering others is a crock.

Here's why it matters. When the police officer in charge of these intensified traffic patrols offers the opinion, as he does, that, "people go back to their old habits after police are gone," he is not only implying that people, by nature, are prone to criminal activity (an insulting and disturbing view of the citizenry), he is also, not so subtly, arguing that we are better off with the intensified patrol efforts he oversees and, thanks to the sloppy and unskeptical reporting of the News & Record, that appears to be so.

Should we, as citizens, support the allotment of police resources for these kinds of traffic enforcement crack downs? Absolutely, I read in the News & Record that they make crime go down!

Without end, we, as a community, are offered these unthinking and doubtful reflections of our community by the News & Record. Although they look like reporting, they are crafted messages intended to manipulate public opinion by self-interested parties using the obliging News & Record as an authoritative conduit to give them a stamp of approval they don't deserve. The result is Greensboro is a community deluded by fictions. The repository of what should be truth and accuracy instead offers us figments and confusion that we mistake for an accurate representation of our reality.

How can a community possibly thrive under the spell of such an illusionist? How can it even survive?

On closer inspection, PAC scheme worse than thought

GREENSBORO, NC -- After posting yesterday's open letter to Greensboro's City Council, I have come to better understand the financing scheme being put together for the performing arts center. It's worse than I thought for the people of Greensboro. In a nutshell, rather than the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro (CFGG) or donors putting put up a portion of their own assets to guarantee their $35 million in pledges towards the project's $65 projected costs, a separate non-profit will be created that will own the center for the first ten years and put it up as collateral for the donor pledges.

That inspired another letter to city council:
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Hello Folks,

Since writing to you yesterday with some questions about the memorandum of understanding on the performing arts center, I have come to better understand the ownership issue and it is even more discomforting.

If I have this right, the City will not own the center for the first ten years while it is used as collateral for the bank backing of the donor contributions. Then, after ten years, even if all has gone according to plan and ownership successfully transfers to the city, the city can only further transfer the center by giving it away to the non-profit; no other options.

I hope it is as obvious to you, as it is to me, the kind of financial jeopardy to which that scheme exposes the citizens of Greensboro. Should something go awry in the first ten years -- cost overruns, donor contributions fall short, loan default by the non-profit or some other fiscal speed bump -- the people of Greensboro will be over a barrel: Either come up with more money to ameliorate whatever problem may have arisen, even if it was the responsibility of other parties, or lose ownership of the center and our tens of millions put in it. Even if we successfully pass the ten year mark and the center transfers to the city, the center would be encumbered in a way unlike any other city property: ours, but not to do with what we will.

This alternative strikes me as simpler and more fair: Have the CFGG and the PAC donors, especially those whose names will supplant Greensboro in the naming of the facility (even though we are its largest financial contributor), have them get a bank letter underwritten by their assets instead of "borrowing" public property to underwrite their financial promises. The Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro has $146 million in assets, why must it put public property at risk to back its donor pledges instead of using its own massive assets? If that is a risk they are unwilling to take, we should ask why.

Yours,

Roch

Correction: This post has been updated with the correct amount of the donor pledges.

N&R's online commenting scheme shrinks youth access

GREENSBORO, NC -- When the News & Record implemented a mandatory Facebook login for story comments last year, I originally thought that bringing to their attention the fact that people could not even read comments on the N&R site without allowing Facebook tracking cookies might have inspired them to implement an alternative to the Facebook-or-nothing comments. Not so.

Maybe this will have them reconsider: Young people are leaving Facebook in droves.

Since 2011:

AGE
13-17: -25.3%
18-24: -7.9%

A mandatory Facebook login to comment or read comments should never have been implemented to begin with. Although it was defended as a way for people to have to use their "real" (haha) identities and, therefore, raise the quality of comments, it was short-sighted and deficient ( -- and a policy so conducive to the free exchange of ideas that the government of Communist China has just implemented a real-identity mandate too).

Now that the must-Facebook requirement has tied the N&R to a diminution of young readers will the N&R take note and make a change?