"It's brutal, it's cruel, it's senseless. It's so unnecessary."

"We have no money, we have no medicine and now they want to take away the panhandlers licenses."

The invisible man is mute too

Ed Cone called Greensboro city council candidate at-large Gary Nixon the invisible man for his lack of internet presence.

My dad suggested that I email Mr. Nixon and just ask him why he doesn't have a website or a blog. So I did, to the email address listed in the N&R candidate profile. My first email of Sunday afternoon got no reply, so I sent a second on Monday night. Still no reply.

Ed worried that, not only is there a lack of information about Mr. Nixon, but that his avoidance of modern communication tools might indicate "luddism, or at least fuddy-duddism." Whatever you call it, ignoring email is an indication to me that this candidate would not be good at responding to constituents if elected.

Martin Street: Den of iniquity or home of Greensboro's next big thing?

Ryan Shell wrote this on his blog today:

"I had a conversation with someone last night about Martin St, which is located off of Lee St and just a few blocks from downtown. It’s a small street, but one that is widely known for gang activity, drug sales, and public consumption of alcohol – not exactly a lot of positives."

Martin Street rang a bell for me. It is the address of the headquarters for Urban Hotel Group, the newly formed company that proposes to build a $75 million hotel on Lee Street.

A tale of two stories

Two media outlets, same crime, two descriptions of the suspects:

From the (Greensboro, NC) News & Record:

"...three suspects, including one armed with a handgun..."

From WGHP:

"...three black males wearing dark colored hoodies."

"Danny Thompson Common Sense"

Occasionally, I post candidate videos as a public service. It does not constitute an endorsement..

Caamano for City Council

Reminded that this year's primary ballot for Greensboro City Council will list candidates alphabetically starting with "C," the candidate formerly known as Ryan Shell officially changed his name today to Ryan Caamano.

Your other left

This sign on Pisgah Church Road today warned of lane closure ahead.

Here is the lane closure:

Litterbug for city council

Is throwing your campaign literature into the yards of voters a smart way to engender support?

I appreciate his effort, but I have to give district 3 candidate George Hartzman the award for "most annoying candidate."

And did fellow district 3 candidate Jay Ovittore go on vacation?

McDonald's suckage

The McDonald's Big 'N Tasy with Cheese as advertised:

The Big 'N Tasty with Chese as served at Battleground/Cone McDondalds in Greensboro, NC:

Handicapping the at-large race

My updated expected order of finish for the Greensboro city council at-large race. Determined by an informal assessment of positive name-recognition, money raised, yard-sign distribution, buzz, my understanding of the Greensboro electorate and expected voter turnout. Numbers in green (up) and red (down) indicate the candidate's change in position, if any, since the last prediction.

1. MariKay AbuZuaiter +1
2. Nancy Vaughan -1
3. Robbie Perkins
4. Danny Thompson +4
5. Sandra Anderson-Groat +2
6. DJ Hardy -1
7. Julie Lapham -1
8. Gary Nixon +2
9. Ryan Shell -4
10. Jorge Cornell -1
11. Max Benbassat

City News blog is written by a team of city employees and will focus on city related stories.

in Calgary, Candada.

But what a great idea.

Deleted from News & Record story: "The threats would be coming more from them than the criminals."

Before the (Greensboro, NC) News & Record scrubbed their story on the reinstatement of AJ Blake to the Greensboro Police Department, Jerry Bledsoe printed the original. Here is what he says was subsequently deleted from the story without comment or explanation.

"It's obvious I can't work with (the gang squad)," Blake said. "The threats would be coming more from them than the criminals." 

Why would the N&R remove this without comment or explanation? 

Piedmont Publius: News & Record launders another story

SamH at Piedmont Publius about the News & Record's story "Police officer gets his job back after appeal.":

"I could swear I saw a quote from Blake in yesterday’s N&R online version saying he wouldn’t be rejoining the gang unit because he probably would face more harassment from fellow officers than the gangs themselves. An interesting perspective from a police officer who’s lucky to have a job, I thought to myself.

"But the N&R —city government’s media partner —– appears to have deleted that quote from both today’s print edition and updated online versions. Evidently they have some sort of interest in helping Blake ease back into his duties as a public servant."

Did the News & Record remove that commentary by Blake from its online story without comment? (It would not be the first time, or the second, or the third, or the fourth, or the fifth, or the sixth.)

[UPDATE: Jerry Bledsoe provides the deleted quoation.]

Endorsement of Hartzman

A letter in today's News & Record:
--------------

I have known George Hartzman for six years and believe him to be careful in spending taxpayers’ money.

He is young and has the ability and strength to add to his family and investment lives that of being a political leader on the City Council in District 3..

Also, I have read one of his books, “Thinking,” which is challenging.

John Hancock
Greensboro
 ------

No doubt.

The book, BTW, is titled "Think." From the book's description:

"Think is an evolving philosophy questioning what did, is, could, should and shouldn't. The who to find, is you and what to do now."

WSJS newsman does not understand divorce rate

For the second day now, I've caught WSJS's newsman Smith Patterson reporting on Rockingham County's high divorce rate. A rate of over 15%, highest in North Carolina -- he says.

Wrong.

Patterson is reporting that 15% of the people living in Rockingham County are divorced and calling it the divorce rate. That is not the divorce rate.That is a measure of marital status--not the same thing. The divorce rate measures the rate at which marriages end in divorce not the percentage of people in any given population who are divorced.

Think of it this way. If you wanted to know a county's school system's graduation rate, would you measure the number of high school seniors who graduate from among the high school seniors in that system or would you measure the percentage of the entire county population who have a diploma? One thing would measure the schools' graduation rate, the other would measure the populace's educational attainment, two different things. Smith Patterson is erroneously reporting the populace's marital status as the county's divorce rate.

There are two big mistakes in saying that the divorced percentage of the population reflects the divorce rate.

1. A divorce rate must measure against marriages, not against the population at large (Children and other people never married cannot meaningfully be included in the population from among which the rate of divorce is measured). A county that has 1,000 marriages with 400 of them ending in divorce has a higher divorce rate than the county that has 10,000 marriages ending in 400 divorces -- same number of divorces, different divorce rates.
   
2. It fails to account for people moving in our out of the county. If I get divorced in Florida then move to Rockingham County, I contribute to the percentage of divorced people in Rockingham County, but I do not contribute to the percentage of marriages ending in divorce (the divorce rate) in Rockingham County because my marriage did not end in divorce in Rockingham County.

The Winston-Salem journal gets it right, reporting accuratley on the percentage of people living in Rockingham County who are divorced. WSJS's Smith Patterson, in reporting that this is the divorce rate, is just wrong.

Speakers from the floor. It could be worse.

Hat tip Lex.

Public Access Gold - He's scaring the boy scouts in the audience - watch more funny videos

"It is time for those who supported Mitch Johnson's witch hunt to give up and admit they were wrong."

Talk to enough people about the "black book" and you'll hear the kind of whispers I have. In fact, as John Hammer points out in this week's Rhinceros Times, the accusations against cops Wray, Brady and Sanders have, all along, been nothing more than unsubstantiated whispers.

They still persist in updated versions: "Oh, it's not THAT black book, it's the others that remain secret," or "Wait til the secret tapes come out." Yeah? Those sounds awfully similar to the "If you only knew what we know" that Hammer rightly recalls was the empty message that justified this colossal failure in public policy. In the end, the people saying "If you only knew what we know" did not know shit. And the people who tell me that there is another shoe, or two, to drop do not know shit either, except that they have a problem with reality. Hammer puts their BS straight up against the undeniable facts:

"It has been investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the State Bureau of Investigation, the United States Department of Justice and the Greensboro Police Department, and the allegations made against Wray and his staff are unfounded. Certainly if what Mitch Johnson said were true, one of these investigations would have turned up sufficient evidence of wrongdoing to take action, but they have not"

Read the whole thing.

Handicapping the at-large race -- UPDATED

It occurred to me that in my previous handicapping of the at-large Greensboro city council race, I ignored an obvious tool at my disposal--one that ads to the knowledge of "buzz." By using the search function of the main page of Greensboro101, I can see the number of times a candidate's name appears in a blog or news story in the past week. Armed with that additional data, here are my current predictions for the order of finish for the October 6th primary.

1. Nancy Vaughan
2. MariKay AbuZuaiter
3. Robbie Perkins
4. DJ Hardy +1
5. Ryan Shell +1
6. Julie Lapham -2
-------
7. Sandra Anderson-Groat
8. Danny Thompson
9. Jorge Cornell +1
10 Gary Nixon -1
11. Max Benbasst

Handicapping the at-large race

Judging by media coverage, finance reports, buzz and my perception of the Greensboro electorate, here is this week's predicted order of finish for the October 6th, Greensboro city council at-large primary, from which six will advance. (They do not reflect my order of preference, I remaining largely undecided, for what that's worth.)

1. Nancy Vaughan
2. MariKay AbuZuaiter
3. Robbie Perkins
4. Julie Lapham
5. DJ Hardy
6. Ryan Shell
-------
7. Sandra Anderson-Groat
8. Danny Thompson
9. Gary Nixon
10 Jorge Cornell
11. Max Benbassat

Jorge Cornell's Statement at 9/22 Candidate Forum