N.C. House Speaker Tillis gives his staff fat raises

It sure is good to be king.

House Speaker Thom Tillis in the last few months handed out raises as high as 27 percent to half his staff after vowing in January to set an example for others in state government by cutting his office payroll.

Tillis’ general counsel Jason Kay got a 27 percent raise, from $110,000 a year to $140,000.

Chief of staff Charles Thomas got a 25 percent, $30,000-a-year increase, from $120,000 to $150,000.

Policy advisers Christopher Hayes and Amy Hobbs received $12,000 raises, both going from salaries of $70,000 to $82,000 a year. Kay, Hayes and Hobbs are all new hires who joined the state payroll for the first time in January. Thomas is a former state House member from Asheville.

In all, Tillis gave raises to seven members of the 14-person staff he had before April. He hired an additional employee in May, paying him $70,000 annually.

via N.C. House Speaker Tillis gives his staff fat raises – Politics – NewsObserver.com.

Chipping away at the speeding

Raleigh Police are making progress with the speeding motorcycles. Last night officers cited two motorcyclists for careless and reckless driving. The officers caught them as they were lining up, apparently to race each other. Six other motorcyclists fled the scene.

Police have learned that motorcyclists come here from all over specifically to race. The word on the street is that they meet at a gathering place and then go to the racing area (which is, unfortunately, my neighborhood apparently). Printed fliers are apparently used to organize these events. If officers find evidence that motorcyclists have been deliberately racing each other they can not only arrest the perpetrators but they can also seize the motorcycles involved.

I know many officers are motorcyclists themselves and I understand the appeal. I just don’t want anyone racing at 120 MPH down a street near my neighborhood.

United Nations report: Internet access is a human right – latimes.com

The United Nations says Internet access is a human right.

The Special Rapporteur believes that the Internet is one of the most powerful instruments of the 21st century for increasing transparency in the conduct of the powerful, access to information, and for facilitating active citizen participation in building democratic societies.

Indeed, the recent wave of demonstrations in countries across the Middle East and North African region has shown the key role that the Internet can play in mobilizing the population to call for justice, equality, accountability and better respect for human rights.

via United Nations report: Internet access is a human right – latimes.com.

Media-police dichotomy

There was one more thing I wanted to say about yesterday’s Amber Alert. The police were looking for a missing girl. The media responded in force with photographs and news trucks, keeping the story front-and-center all day long. The media’s wide exposure was needed for the girl to be found, yet police blocked the media from the street in front of her home. The road was open to through traffic but not to reporters. Any reporter who dared venture closer was gruffly told to stay in the “staging area.”

Why? Why treat the media so poorly when went above and beyond to help locate the girl? It was the top story all day yesterday, for goodness sake. I don’t know whether the coverage made the difference (and I’m inclined in this case to say no as I had a strong hunch she was with her boyfriend the whole time), but is this the proper way to treat your partners in a missing-child search?

I’m a staunch supporter of Raleigh Police but at best this looks ungrateful and at worst a breach of First Amendment law. Time for the officers to get some PR training.

On the air with Rivendell

By LeRe Pics

My use of online music services like Pandora, Mondomix, TaintRadio.Org, and my recent voiceover dabbling has gotten me itching to start my own online radio station. Or reignite my itch, I should say: back in 1997 I became one of the first to apply to the Library of Congress for a compulsory license for Internet radio (back when the list of online radio stations would fit on just few pages). I never followed through with it because it was a leap of faith: the song royalty rates were not fixed and could have been enormous once they were.
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Amber Alert

It’s not every day that I awake to find police cars and news media in the neighborhood, fortunately. It was because there was an amber alert in our neighborhood, with a 15-year-old girl reported missing early this morning. While the news was at first certainly distressing (especially since I’m acquainted with the family), when I realized who was missing I was almost certain there was no abduction.

It started just after midnight this morning. According to the 911 tape which was released later today, the girl’s mother got texts that indicated her daughter was in mortal danger. The search by police began soon after (followed by the media stake-out). Police put up crime-scene tape around the home and blocked off the road in front of the house, steering the media away from the home.
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Road Rage

I rediscovered this gem today.

Catatonia
Road Rage

If all you’ve got to do today is find peace of mind
Come round you can take a piece of mine
And if all you’ve got to do today is hesitate
Come here, you can leave it late with me

You could be taking it easy on yourself
You should be making it easy on yourself
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Rat Snake or Copperhead, How To Tell the Difference?

A great page on properly identifying copperheads from rat snakes.

It is startling to walk into the chicken coop and come face to face with a large rat snake though, especially since they often look very much like a dangerous copperhead. How does one decide which is which?

Rat snakes are not poisonous. They will bite when startled or threatened and the bite looks very much like a human bite on the skin. It lacks the two distinct fang marks of a poisonous snake. While it does hurt it is not going to make you sick. Just wash the area carefully with soap and water and watch for signs of infection as you would with any other wound.

via Rat Snake or Copperhead, How To Tell the Difference.

Skating on Thin Ice

Seems I’m not the only one who has grown tired of John Edwards’s publicity-hound ways. Carter Wrenn of Talking About Politics quotes Will Patton, who nails it.

… but then old Will Patton raised an even tougher question, saying, If I was prosecuting this case I’d only ask John Edwards one question: If you wanted was to keep your affair a secret from your wife why on earth did you run for President?

Richard thought that over and said: He might not testify.

Mr. Patton snorted, You couldn’t keep that fellow off the witness stand with a shotgun.

Sad but true.

via Skating on Thin Ice > Talking About Politics.

International intrigue in Raleigh

A story ran in March that caught my eye but didn’t seem to catch the full attention of the press. Federal officers from the U.S. Department of Commerce raided the offices of Law Enforcement Associates in Raleigh, charging the company with unlawfully exporting a sophisticated surveillance vehicle to Morocco.

The company, on whose board the former House majority leader Tony Rand once served as chairman, has been in trouble before. In 2005, founder John Carrington was charged with illegally exporting police equipment to China. He paid an $850,000 fine and agreed not to export anything for five years. Except Carrington couldn’t resist and got in trouble two years later for violating the ban again.

What’s up with this company? Is this another Blackwater in our own backyard? Are these sophisticated, Big Brother-ish tools being used against Middle Eastern democracy protesters? Was China using its “police equipment” to crush dissent? What’s the story here?