“Why is it that we spend almost three times per capita as to what they spend in the U.K. — 50 percent more than what they pay in France?” Sanders asked. “The insurance companies, the drug companies are bribing the United States Congress. We need to pass a Medicare-for-all single-payer system.”
Politics
Politics
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Shaming Sanders supporters
Some of the reasons I support Bernie Sanders
Some supporters of Hillary Clinton for President are getting annoyed by supporters of Bernie Sanders, accusing Sanders supporters of “splitting the party” and trying to shame them into supporting Clinton. As a Sanders supporter, I’m tiring of this approach and tired of the insinuation that I’m not a true liberal if I don’t support a female candidate for President.
As a liberal who supports gender equality (though I maintain equal pay is fiction), I would be thrilled to vote for a female Presidential candidate but unfortunately Senator Elizabeth Warren opted not to run this year. Instead, I’m going with a candidate who had the courage and foresight to vote against the disasterous Iraq War, voted against the privacy-gutting PATRIOT Act, wants to decriminalize marijuana use, supports reinstanting the Glass-Steagall Act to rein in Wall Street abuses, opposed the Keystone XL pipeline, and opposed the job-killing Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade treaty, among other differences.
Woodland gets hammered over public solar opposition
A story that ran last week in the Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald reported that the town of Woodland, NC voted against a rezoning request for a solar farm after citizens opposed to the farm were concerned the solar farm would suck all the energy from the sun. Wrote News-Herald reporter Keith Hoggard:
Bobby Mann said he watched communities dry up when I-95 came along and warned that would happen to Woodland because of the solar farms.
“You’re killing your town,” he said. “All the young people are going to move out.”
He said the solar farms would suck up all the energy from the sun and businesses would not come to Woodland.
Jane Mann (Bobby Mann’s wife), also weighed in:
Jane Mann said she is a local native and is concerned about the natural vegetation that makes the community beautiful.
She is a retired Northampton science teacher and is concerned that photosynthesis, which depends upon sunlight, would not happen and would keep the vegetation from growing. She said she has observed areas near solar panels where vegetation is brown and dead because it did not receive enough sunlight.
She also questioned the high number of cancer deaths in the area, saying no one could tell her that solar panels didn’t cause cancer.
Brewery shutdown runs head-on into bad policy – The Fayetteville Observer
Wonderful takedown of Sen. Phil Berger by the Fayetteville Observer’s Tim Miller. Now that Berger’s district faces massive layoffs, will the good Senator find any value in those unemployment benefits he so cheerfully gutted?
But where did this new Berger come from? Where was his deep concern when he was chasing the film industry out of Wilmington and the rest of the state? Where was his concern when we exported thousands of television and motion picture jobs to surrounding states, most notably Georgia, which boosted its film tax incentives just as Berger was killing ours? Just two years ago, North Carolina was Hollywood East. Now, Atlanta owns that title.
And do you suppose Berger might be a little worried about what his constituents will face when they’re laid off? He should be. All those families whose votes he counts on will bedumped into the unemployment system that he also gutted. They’ll be getting some of the smallest, shortest-duration unemployment checks in the country and won’t be eligible for long-term benefits. Berger and his colleagues slashed all of those benefits, suggesting they only inspired laziness. Sorry, folks, but it was the right thing to do for the state. So get out there and hustle for those jobs — which, unfortunately, may not even exist.
Source: Brewery shutdown runs head-on into bad policy – The Fayetteville Observer
Energy law change sours Facebook on NC
The market is speaking. Are our Republican state legislators listening?
Changing attitudes toward renewable energy in state government are apparently prompting Facebook to unfriend North Carolina.
An official with the California-based social media company told a reporter at the COP21 climate summit in a Paris suburb recently that Facebook would probably not expand further in the state because of ebbing support in state government for clean energy.
“We are only considering states with strong policies and a determination to produce renewable energy,” said Bill Weihl, head of sustainability at the company. He was quoted by Justin Catanoso in a story that appeared in slightly different forms in Triad Business Journal and The News and Observer of Raleigh.
Democrats Could Pick Off Some Trump Supporters on Creators.com
Columnist Froma Harrop seems to be farther into the Clinton camp than my liking but she does have a point here about a blind spot among Democratic candidates when it comes to respect for ordinary folks. Dems can win back the disgruntled rural voters if they would only follow this advice.
Bill Clinton has that magic, no doubt. Hillary? I’m not convinced, whether or not Harrop says she should have excellent coaching.
Democrats routinely hold up polls showing that the American public favors their agenda. Yet time and again, politicians opposed to what the voters want win the elections. Here’s Trump appropriating some of their agenda while tacking on populist lunacy — and look how well he’s doing.
Here’s an explanation: People badly want respect, and liberal “leaders” tend not to be good at making ordinary folks feel respected — or even noticed. They come to the debate armed with logic, facts and historical analogies. But Republicans go for the gut. To do that, one has to understand what’s in the gut. Trump the salesman has an excellent endoscope.
Source: Democrats Could Pick Off Some Trump Supporters on Creators.com
Saying hello to Isaac Hunter’s Tavern
Isaac Hunter’s Tavern with roads overlayed
After staying up too late Thursday night searching maps for Isaac Hunter’s Tavern, Friday morning I pulled up a Google Search which corrected me on the actual location. My friend and fellow armchair historian, Mike Legeros, took my 2010 post and ran with it, connecting with Hunter descendent Betsy Hunter Amos along the way.
Betsy is a 7th generation neice of Isaac Hunter who connected with me via email shortly after my 2010 posts, offering photos and family history to fill in the blanks. What Mike and Betsy showed me was that the building I thought was the tavern is not the tavern at all. The real tavern is the building on the far western end of the property, not the ramshackle building I saw behind the home in the 1959 aerial photograph. The grand home itself was the home of Judge Biggs and went by the equally grand name of Hardimont. You can read more about it on Mike’s excellent website.
Tavern site as it appears today. Stones and bricks are on the right.
I visited the North Raleigh Hilton at lunch Friday to see what I could see. As Betsy said, the hotel library has a wonderful display of tavern photographs as well as artifacts from the tavern. One handy annotated photo showed how the tavern was originally positioned at the “top of the key” or driveway, across from where Hardimont was built. You can easily imagine it as it once stood between the “Lafayette Oaks” in the photographs. Judge Biggs moved the tavern out from in front of his stately home in 1936 and put it 100 yards west. It remained there until sometime in the early 1970s, when it was bulldozed.
Isaac Hunters Tavern foundation stones
With a little time on my hands, I decided to venture into the woods behind the hotel to see if I could locate the old site. After a few minutes of wandering I came across a clearing. To the left of me was a few mounds of raised dirt. A closer look showed a pile of large stones and brick. It was the foundation of the old tavern!
I whipped out my cellphone camera and snapped photos of the bricks and stones. A concrete bench that once provided respite in the beautiful backyard gardens lay in sections to the left of me. Near it is a set of stones seemingly configured in a step formation. Could these be the old horse mounting stones that once stood outside the tavern?
Bricks from foundation of Isaac Hunter’s Tavern
Broken bench from gardens, and are these the mounting stones on the right?
I quickly turned on my phone’s GPS and got a fix of the foundation site. After returning to work, I compared my coordinates to the historical photographs. Bingo, it fits!
For those who would like to visit what’s left of the tavern, it can be found at 35°49’52.3″ N 78°37’21.5″ W. Surprisingly, its last location is not on hotel property but the parcel directly behind it (roughly 900 St. Albans Drive), so if were bulldozed due to potential development that development never came. Perhaps it was demolished after being deemed a hazard.
Accounts say that local historian (and current Apex resident) J.C. Knowles was supposed to take ownership of the tavern but it was bulldozed before he got it. I will try to get up with Mr. Knowles to see what he might know or remember.
The Jones Street Exodus
The architects of North Carolina’s so-called “conservative revolution” are abandoning ship in droves now. Paul “Skip” Stam, Leo Daughtry, Bob Rucho, and Tom Apodaca, have all called it quits. Thom Tillis started the ball rolling, leaving town to go to the U.S. Senate.
The N&O’s Rob Christensen posits that it’s because the “revolution” has been a success. Apodaca agrees:
“We’ve come to a point where we’ve accomplished almost everything we set out to do,’’ Apodaca said.
Let’s take stock:
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Reagan and Gorbachev Agreed to Pause the Cold War in Case of an Alien Invasion | Smart News | Smithsonian
Interesting. Did Reagan know something about aliens?
At one point during the 1985 Geneva Summit, President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev took a break from negotiations to take a walk. Only their private interpreters were present and for years, the details of what they talked about were kept secret from both the Russian and American public. But during a 2009 interview with Charlie Rose and Reagan’s Secretary of State George Shultz, Gorbachev revealed that Reagan asked him point-blank if they could set aside their differences in case the world was invaded by aliens.
Update: You can watch Gorbachev’s comment here, beginning at the 2:53 mark.
Wake judge rules against teen facing off against NC on climate change | News & Observer
News and Observer reporter Anne Blythe wrote a follow-up story on Judge Morgan ruling against Hallie’s climate change petition case. Perfectionist that she is, Hallie was really nervous about how she thought her interview went but was pleased with the final result.
I was also glad that Anne’s story mentioned the outrageous attacks some have launched against our daughter and her efforts. Hallie could truly care less about them and Kelly and I find them sad. I really only mentioned them here in my blog because I think these folks really don’t understand how this makes them look. I’m sure their parents taught them manners, so they would certainly be above spewing hate towards a kid.
The truth is that Hallie is a tough, determined young woman posessing more self-confidence than many adults. She can handle herself just fine. And besides, when you pick a fight with a kid you’ve pretty much already lost, right?
Hallie Turner, the 13-year-old girl who took North Carolina to court over climate change, received disappointing news the day before Thanksgiving.
A Wake County Superior Court judge ruled against her effort to overturn a December 2014 decision by the N.C. Environmental Management Commission.
But with the pluck of a teen wise beyond her years, Hallie said Friday the ruling from Judge Mike Morgan had not deterred her.
“It’s an issue that I’m always going to continue trying to make a difference in,” Hallie said during a phone interview. “There’s lots of next steps that can be taken.”
Hallie, an eighth-grader at Ligon Middle School who has been marching and rallying against global warming since the 4th grade, is one of a number of teens taking their states and politicians to court over climate change.
Source: Wake judge rules against teen facing off against NC on climate change | News & Observer