theCLog

Today is Veterans Day, and the nation is having its annual festival of hurrahs and heart-tugging nods toward the flag. And then, if the past is any indication, the country will go back to giving veterans about 2 seconds’ worth of thought each day.

Hopefully, though, the past won’t be a guide this year — not with the recent massacre at Ft. Hood still fresh in our minds. Nor with reminders from VA Secretary Shinseki that veterans “lead the nation in homelessness, depression, substance abuse and suicides.” Nor with a new study revealing that more than 2,200 U.S. military veterans under the age of 65 died last year because they lacked health insurance. The Obama administration deserves credit for its array of efforts to improve the lot of veterans, but there’s still much more to be done.

One important thing the President can do is establish policies that would drastically cut the number of wounded vets coming home from some Third World hellhole, starting with getting American soldiers out of the hopeless, never-ending mess that is Afghanistan.

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Now that the health care reform fight has moved to the U.S. Senate, North Carolina’s Sen. Kay Hagan is seen as a key figure in determining what kind of reform comes out of Congress. Hagan supports reform, but has made noises about being “flexible” on the public option part of a reform bill. Our view is that not including a public option would be disastrous, with little to keep the health insurance companies honest in terms of premiums and coverage. You can be sure that Hagan is going to have her ear bent every which way by health industry lobbyists — including the galling folks who run Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina – who are urging her to oppose a public option. It’s up to supporters of real health care reform to contact Hagan and tell her to stand up to the insurance interests. This is how real politics works, folks, so go beyond your vote for Obama, and make some calls if you want to help move a progressive agenda forward.

Here are phone numbers for Sen. Hagan: Toll Free, 1-877-852-9462; D.C. office, 202-224-6342; and the Charlotte office, 704-334-2448.

Hey, how's it going — call me!

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Religious fundamentalists are pretty much the same everywhere. Which is kind of funny, considering that each fundie group, whether Muslim, Christian, Jew, Hindu, or what-have-you, thinks it’s the one true source of Truth with a capital T. One of the things shared by fundies worldwide is their sheer hatefulness; they see God as a wrathful avenger, and applaud other fundies who deal out “punishment” to those they see as enemies of their faith.

Yesterday, the similarities were crystal clear. Anwar al Awlaki, a radical American Muslim imam now living in Yemen, praised the Ft. Hood shooter, Maj. Nidal Hasan, as “a hero” who was following God’s wishes when he killed U.S. soldiers last week. Officials say Hasan has communicated with Awlaki at various times.

Around the time Awlaki was praising Hasan and promoting his own hateful vision of religion yesterday, Rev. Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church group was rallying in front of the school attended by President Obama’s children, bearing signs proclaiming, “God Is Your Enemy.” Phelps’ group is known for its hatemongering, and have often disrupted the funerals of American troops killed in Iraq, claiming that God is punishing the U.S. for its support of “rampant, disgusting fags.” The group also picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard, declaring that the victim of homophobic violence was a “filthy sodomite” who deserved what he got – a sentiment all the Anwar al Awlakis and Fred Phelpses of the world would agree to.

A member of Phelps' family shares the love

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County Manager Harry Jones must be awfully good at schmoozing the commissioners. That’s the only explanation I can find for the fact that rumors are not flying about Jones’ job being in jeopardy. That’s especially true after the daily paper’s Sunday story about the DSS “Case of the Disappearing Kids’ Christmas Money” fiasco, and Jones’ handling of it. As Fred Clasen-Kelly reported, Jones and other members of county government received an e-mail from a Bank of America employee named Harry Lomax, who criticized the county’s handling of the DSS mess.

“There seems to be a need for a wholesale cleanup of many county agencies, and I think that starts from the top down,” Lomax wrote. A week later, the “top” in “top down,” County Manager Harry Jones, forwarded a copy of Lomax’s e-mail to a BofA VP with the question, “Do you know Harry Lomax?” There’s no way to interpret Jones’ e-mail as anything but an attempt to quash Lomax’s complaints, but BofA seems to think Jones’ move was a good idea. The bank’s government liaison Betty Turner replied quickly to Jones, saying Lomax’s e-mail was “embarrassing” and that she was “tracking it down.”

As Jeff Taylor at the MeckDeck Web site aptly put it, this kind of behavior is reminiscent of “the time when uppity mill hands who questioned local leaders were met with, ‘What’s your name again? I know your pastor.’ The threat was clear — shut up and know your place.”

Jones’ ill temper and extreme defensiveness in the face of criticism — two deadly traits for a supposed public servant — come as no surprise to this writer. A few years ago when I held the editor position at CL, Tara Servatius wrote a lengthy expose of myriad problems in the county’s utilities department, specifically the miserable job they were doing controlling (or not controlling) sewage spills. Jones pitched a fit, and had his PR folks write up a massive reply to the story, which still didn’t satisfy our objections or refute our points, but that’s a whole other issue. What was most interesting was Jones’ fevered reaction to the story; at one point, he told the commissioners he was sending out copies of the county’s rebuttal, but not to Creative Loafing “because they don’t care about the truth.” Then-chairman Parks Helms had to remind Jones that he was obligated to send us a copy, and Mr. Big Stuff finally calmed down a little.

The latest example of Jones’ manner of operating falls in line with numerous previous reports of him treating county government as an Uptown good ol’ boys’ club. It’s time the county commissioners did something about him. The DSS scandal; the continued payment of a full salary to a former employee in ill health; his recent bonus of nearly $40K during a time of cutbacks; followed now by his attempt to intimidate Mr. Lomax by appealing to the concerned citizen’s boss, well, the pile has just gotten too high. Jones’ entrenchment and his snarling attitude toward criticism have become counterproductive to good governance. The Commission should censure Jones, take back the bonus (undeserved in any case, considering the DSS fiasco), and apologize to Lomax and the citizens of Mecklenburg County.

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Sarah Palin didn’t want anyone to bring recording devices or cellphones to her big speech Friday night at a Wisconsin Right to Life fundraising banquet. No wonder. The Politico Web site bought tickets to the event, and their report is a showcase of Palin’s, er, limited vocabulary, tortured sentences, and, more troubling, her goofball conspiratorial view of government and all those evil liberals. Besides going off on a factually challenged rant about the “In God We Trust” motto being moved to the edge of new dollar coins (a Bush era episode which was reversed two years ago), “Palin … frequently wandered off-script to make a point, offering audience members a casual ‘awesome’ or ‘bogus’ in discussing otherwise weighty topics,” according to the account by Politico’s Jonathan Martin.

Here’s our favorite quote from Palin’s Friday speech (see if you can make sense of it): “It is so bogus that society is sending a message right now and has been for probably the last 40 years that a woman isn’t strong enough or smart enough to be able to pursue an education, a career and her rights and still let her baby live.” Quick question: Who in hell is telling women this? Anyone you’ve heard of? Didn’t think so.

Don’t forget, Ms. Eloquence has a book coming out soon. In case you missed it, author and columnist Carl Hiaasen wrote a hilarious column, posing as Palin’s book editor, for last Sunday’s Miami Herald. Don’t miss it.

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Welcome to the Stupid Thing of the Week. North Carolina Republican Party chair Tom “I’m not gay, dammit!” Fetzer is throwing his party’s support behind the Palin/Beck faction and its move to purge the GOP of “moderates.” In a move that is leaving some political observers gasping or scratching their heads, Fetzer has invited New York Conservative Party congressional candidate Doug “Mr. Excitement” Hoffman to speak at the Republican Party’s Hall of Fame Dinner on Nov. 21 in Raleigh. Hoffman was endorsed by various Republican bigwigs – Palin, Pawlenty, Perry – over the GOP’s own candidate, Dede Scozzafava, who just wasn’t Neolithic enough for the new, improved, and increasingly nutzoid party.

Hoffman — who doesn’t even live in the New York congressional district in which he ran —  of course lost the race, giving that congressional seat to Democrats for the first time since the Civil War.  That’s success enough for Fetzer, though, who said Hoffman’s candidacy – against a Republican, remember – “inspired conservatives across the country . . . he will reach out to North Carolina conservatives to help us reclaim our government.” Well, good luck with that, Tom. Encouraging disarray in your own party is certainly one way to be remembered. By the way, here’s the kind of oratorical excitement you can expect from Hoffman if you head to Raleigh for his speech:

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Sometimes blogs are useful for simply passing along something worthwhile. If you’re like me and enjoy dark humor, like The Onion, and can’t stand even the thought of Glenn Beck, then check out this video from Onion News Network.

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Well, that’s a breath of fresh air. Mayor-elect Anthony Foxx says his first act as mayor will be to sign the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement. We’ve written about the USMCPA before, Mayor McCrory’s refusal to sign it, and City Council’s dithering on the issue. Check out this link for a reminder.

The irony of McCrory’s refusal to sign the USMCPA is that he was chairman of the U.S. Conference of Mayors environmental committee, which drafted and approved the measure in the first place. At the time, McCrory was bucking for a federal job — scuttlebutt had it that he wanted to be head of the EPA, thus his slot on the mayors’ environmental committee — but it’s one of the jobs he couldn’t talk his way into, sort of like the governor’s office. McCrory wouldn’t sign the agreement because it didn’t include nuclear power as a recommended power source. As the Observer pointed out at the time, McCrory’s objections were irrelevant since local governments don’t build nuclear plants. Local governments can, however, carry out the climate agreement pledge’s suggestions, such as preserving open space, enforcing land-use policies, promoting public transit, and inventorying greenhouse gas emissions in city operations.

At the time, of course, McCrory was on the payroll at Duke Energy, which wants to build more nuclear plants. Now, I’m not saying McCrory was in Duke’s back pocket, but … yeah, actually, that is what I’m saying. Also, I’m saying it will be a nice change to have a mayor who’s able to tell the difference between the public interest and corporate profits.

FYI, the linked column above is included in my upcoming book, Deliver Us From Weasels, to be released later this month. End of commercial, thank you and good night.

Mayor McCrory as Duke Energy mascot Reddy Kilowatt

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In my ongoing efforts to point out the neverending wackness of my homestate of South Carolina, I couldn’t have asked for more than Rodell Vereen. You may remember him as the guy who had sex with a horse named Sugar at Lazy B Stables in Longs, S.C., near Myrtle Beach and, when he was given parole, went right back and was caught again, having sex with the same horse. At the time of the second arrest, the host of NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me comic quiz show said maybe the problem was that Sugar is “an unusually alluring horse.” A judge took another view yesterday, though, and sentenced Vereen to three years in prison and ordered him to stay away from Sugar. There was no ruling on the possibility that Vereen was unstable – ba-da-boom.

Sugar enjoys a post-coital smoke

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Mayor-elect Anthony Foxx ran strongly in all areas of the city other than the heavily Republican south and southeast. Why is that? Well, besides the usual reasons for winning a mayoral race — solid financial backing, strong grassroots organizing, a fairly dull opponent — I get the sense that Foxx’s victory reflected a deep, underlying concern with the way the city has been run.

John Lassiter is part of the Uptown/Chamber/development crowd that has run the city for so long, and it hurt him. Simply put, many Charlotteans are tired of seeing their part of town being neglected in favor of Uptown and southeast Charlotte; or even if their part of town is fine, many don’t like the fact that formerly vibrant parts of Charlotte have been allowed to seriously deteriorate. This may be hard to imagine if you haven’t been in Charlotte long, but back before all the money started flowing Uptown and toward the southern ‘burbs, the east side of town, North Tryon St., and the Independence Blvd. corridor were all solid, lively areas with strong businesses and safe, well-maintained neighborhoods. The Wilkinson Blvd. and Freedom Drive corridors, although less-populated and perhaps a little grittier, were also thriving areas.

The kind of deterioration that has taken hold in these formerly vital parts of Charlotte didn’t have to happen; it was the result of lousy planning and a thoughtless rush toward sprawl. It’s time to pay attention to the rest of Charlotte, and voters saw Foxx as the more likely candidate to do that. In this economy, there’s no way to predict whether the new mayor will be able to help revitalize the neglected parts of Charlotte, but no one can deny that it was “the rest of Charlotte,” which is, of course, most of the city, that voted to put Anthony Foxx in office.

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