Politics

Politics

There are 1,056 posts filed in Politics (this is page 68 of 106).

When is a parking violation not a parking violation?

My neighbor Mike Stenke runs a food truck business, Klausie’s Pizza. Recently there’s been a battle between the food truck operators and some downtown restaurants, who want some rules put in place on operating food trucks on public streets.

While I can sympathize with the restaurant owner’s arguments, I find it curious that no one’s raised a stink about the hot dog vendors that operate around town. I figure if a hot dog vendor can operate his food establishment on a public street, why not a food truck? Also, why should a required distance be placed between a food truck and a restaurant when no rule would keep a brick-and-mortar restaurant from opening right next to an existing restaurant? Do the existing restaurant owners want to legislate buffers between all potential competitors? If a restaurant owner is going to have a competitor, one would think he would prefer a competitor that could go away once in a while.

Anyway, the City Council heard the issues in a session last week and Stenke, because his livelihood depends on it, was also present for the discussion. After the meeting, though, someone pulled a dirty trick on Stenke, calling the cops about how his truck was parked.
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Airlines Raise Fares as Federal Taxes Expire

Our dysfunctional Congress blocked the re-funding of the FAA, and as of Sunday now our already rickety, abysmally-underfunded air traffic control system is losing $25 million per day. Meanwhile, greedy airlines (almost all of them) are quietly pocketing the same 7.5% of ticket prices that has been set aside to run the FAA.

Our nation’s air traffic control system is shockingly antiquated as it is. If more people knew just how bad it is, no one would set foot on a plane again. And I’m just talking about the equipment here: there’s a whole other world of problems with the FAA’s staffing.

So, why starve the FAA of even more money? To break the unions, of course.

House Republicans are playing chicken with our nation’s air safety. When do the grown-ups get to drive the country again?

Let’s talk about taxes. Wait a second, come back here! I mean airfare taxes.

The subject comes up because of what Congress just did — or, rather, did not do — and what the airlines did in response.

On Friday, Congress failed to approve the extension of a bill to keep the Federal Aviation Administration running. Among other things, that meant the agency no longer had the authority to impose the various federal taxes that airlines add to the price of each ticket.

So as of 12:01 a.m. Saturday, the federal government began losing an estimated $25 million a day in tax revenue.

via Airlines Raise Fares as Federal Taxes Expire – NYTimes.com.

City wants healthier New Bern Ave.

While I am happy to see that N&O’s Matt Garfield is shining a light on the city and community’s effort to spruce up the New Bern Avenue corridor, I’m disappointed he didn’t talk with one of the main forces behind the push: the East CAC. Nearly all of the proposed improvements are in the East CAC area, with the remaining portion in the Central CAC.

None are in the South Central CAC area.

As the city moves toward a makeover of New Bern Avenue, planners are eyeing possibilities to create a “spectacular and innovative gateway” they describe as a model for urban street design.

There’s talk of a 60-foot “super transit strip” with a sidewalk, bike path and gravel jogging path on the south side of the corridor.

Streams concealed in pipes could be exposed to serve as a natural feature winding through the area.

Neighbors dream of seeing the Longview Shopping Center, once home to a Winn-Dixie, redeveloped as a walkable urban village with a farmers’ market.

via City wants healthier New Bern Ave. – News – MidtownRaleighNews.com.

Taking Raleigh back?

Raleigh mayoral candidate Billie Redmond says “it’s time to take Raleigh back.” The question I have is “back to what?”

It seems to me that Raleigh is doing just fine, thank you very much. Raleigh has topped so many best-of lists in the past few years that I’ve lost count:

  • #1 Among Best Places for Business and Careers – Forbes, 2011
  • #2 Next Big Boom Town – Forbes, 2011
  • #3 America’s Cleanest Cities – Forbes, 2011
  • #1 Best Situated for Economic Recovery – Newsweek, 2011
  • #1 Great Cities for Raising Families – Kiplingers, 2010
  • #3 Best Places for Business and Careers – Forbes, 2010
  • #2 Cheapest Midsized Market to Do Business – KPMG LLC, 2010
  • #1 Top Business Climate in North Carolina – Site Selection, 2010
  • #2 Best City to Live, Work and Play – Kiplinger’s, 2008
  • #1 Best Place to Live in the U.S. – msnbc.com, 2008
  • #1 Best Place for Young Adults – Bizjournals, 2008
  • …and many, many more.

Does this sound like a city in distress to you?

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Gerrymandering

The problem with gerrymandering (no matter who does it) is that it makes it impossible to vote for leaders solely on the basis of who has the best solutions to our common problems. The goal should not be “how can we remain in office?” Instead, the goal should be “how can we find the best solutions to our problems?” If one team has a better idea of how things should be done let’s put that team up for an honest vote, not a vote that’s a foregone conclusion. We voters aren’t stupid – why shouldn’t we be trusted? Why are politicians afraid of giving us a fair choice?

I guess I’m old-fashioned, but the partisanship-at-all-costs stuff got old a long, long time ago.

Mr. Public Service

I helped put together a meeting tonight of neighbors about an issue affecting the neighborhood. I didn’t have to speak, either. I just sat back and watch an engaged citizenry work to make their community better.

It’s stuff like this that gives me such a kick. I love being useful!

Crispy lawns

The Triangle is in another drought, with little substantial rain falling in the last few weeks (ever since I planted the garden, it seems. Hmm). The lawns around the neighborhood are all crispy brown. While I wish we had some rain to refresh those lawns, I’m very happy to see that everyone is resisting the urge to water their wilting grass because it means folks are conserving water.

Because of everyone’s efforts, Raleigh’s main fresh water reservoir, Falls Lake, is at 251.2 feet, just four inches below full. This is in contrast to December 2007, when Falls Lake dropped to a record low of 242.62 feet, or almost nine feet below full.

I know the city’s public utilities department has conflicting goals of conserving water and selling it (as the Raleigh Public Record so eloquently pointed out), but it’s hard to sell something you don’t have. Although the area lawns might taking a beating, at least the city is in good shape to weather this drought.

Update 2:30 PM: Rain! Glorious rain! Bucketsfull! Half an inch so far in the past half-hour! It’s wonderful!

Google hunts government business


There was a full-page ad in today’s newspaper from Google, trumpeting how “the State of Wyoming has gone Google.” Apparently, the state government there has transitioned from hosting their own mail servers and commercial office applications in favor of Google Apps.

I’ve got mixed feelings about this. UNC Chapel-Hill’s Ibiblio transitioned its email accounts from in-house servers to Google’s GMail and has been happy with the results. So has UNC Asheville. I know some local governments in North Carolina which are considering the move, too. But I’m still smarting from Google’s no-show during this year’s losing municipal broadband legislative battle. Google could have become a high-profile proponent of open networks in this state but instead its efforts were limited to lending its name to a form letter. Google’s lobbyists (Capstrat, apparently) have been all but invisible.

I wonder how Google hopes to persuade governments to turn over a major portion of their IT work based on a newspaper ad (and a spectacularly uncreative one at that). We’ll see how effective this approach turns out to be.

Carter: Call Off the Global Drug War

Former President Jimmy Carter rightfully calls for the end of the failed “War on Drugs.”

IN an extraordinary new initiative announced earlier this month, the Global Commission on Drug Policy has made some courageous and profoundly important recommendations in a report on how to bring more effective control over the illicit drug trade.

The report describes the total failure of the present global antidrug effort, and in particular America’s “war on drugs,” which was declared 40 years ago today. It notes that the global consumption of opiates has increased 34.5 percent, cocaine 27 percent and cannabis 8.5 percent from 1998 to 2008. Its primary recommendations are to substitute treatment for imprisonment for people who use drugs but do no harm to others, and to concentrate more coordinated international effort on combating violent criminal organizations rather than nonviolent, low-level offenders.

via Call Off the Global Drug War – NYTimes.com.

CACs and the Open Meetings Law

A question came up during last month’s RCAC meeting, regarding the legal standing of CACs with regard to the city. RCAC Chair Will Allen got an opinion from Raleigh City Attorney Tom McCormick. Will says:

Tom advises that the CAC is an organization created by the Raleigh City Council and is therefore a public body and subject to the Open Meetings law. Email is a type of communication that is covered by that law, and so any of the types of email communication involving CAC and/or city matters would be public record.

But the CACs aren’t advisory boards in the spirit of North Carolina’s Open Meetings Law. From the City’s own page on CACs (emphasis mine):

CACs are nonpartisan. They also are independent of the City Council. In fact, CACs are the only advisory boards to the City Council that are not appointed by the Council. Instead, residents of each CAC region elect the chairperson and other officers of their CAC.

Membership in a CAC isn’t by appointment like other city boards: one becomes a member of a CAC based on where one lives. That means every city resident is now subject to the Open Meetings Law. And since there are over 10,000 residents in the East CAC (for instance) and therefore 10,000 members in the East CAC, does that mean a quorum of this “advisory board” is 5,001 citizens?
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