VOLUME 6 ISSUE 41 | WWW.NSJONLINE.COM | WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2021
2022 election filing begins Candidates running in the 2022 election file for office. See more about candidate filing in Jones & Blount on page A5.
Gov Cooper names new NC ABC chairman Raleigh Gov. Roy Cooper appointed Hank Bauer to be the North Carolina Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission chairman following the resignation of former chairman Zander Guy. “Hank Bauer has over thirty years of valuable experience in the industry,” said Gov. Cooper in a statement. “He will be an asset to the ABC Commission and I am grateful for his willingness to serve.” Bauer is a former general manager at Empire Distributors, where he also served as the director of sales and on-premise director. He was previously with Boston Beer Company and Blue Ridge Beverage. Bauer earned his Bachelor of Science degree from Western Carolina University. The N.C. ABC Commission controls the sale, purchase, transportation, manufacture, consumption and possession of all alcoholic beverages in the state.
Top row: John Szoka (U.S. House), John Bradford (N.C. House) Bottom row: DeVan Barbour (U.S. House), Warren Daniel (N.C. Senate)
COURTESY PHOTOS
Toyota chooses North Carolina megasite for major batterymanufacturing plant
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No currency manipulator labels from US, China on watch Washington, D.C. The Biden administration will not designate any country as a currency manipulator, but it did name China, Vietnam and Taiwan among the nations that have failed to live up to global agreements not to use their currencies to gain unfair trade advantages. In a report to Congress, the Treasury Department cited China for a number of failures that prevent trading partners from gaining full knowledge of how it manages its currency. The Treasury plans to closely monitor the foreign exchange activities of China’s stateowned banks to get a clearer picture of China’s currency practices, according to the report. Being named as a currency manipulator under U.S. law does not carry any immediate penalties but it does require Treasury to engage in negotiations with the foreign country in an effort to get it to alter its currency practices. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Major outage hits Amazon Web Services; many sites affected New York Amazon Web Services suffered a major outage Tuesday, the company said, disrupting access to many popular sites. The company provides cloud computing services to many governments, universities and companies, including The Associated Press. Amazon said in a post after the outage began that it had identified the root cause and was “actively working towards recovery.” The issue primarily affected its services in the Eastern U.S. It did not disclose any additional details about the cause. ″The outage also affected Amazon’s ability to provide status updates,” it said. According to DownDetector, a clearinghouse for user reports of outages, Southwest was also affected, but not American, United, Alaska or JetBlue. People trying to use Instacart, Venmo, Kindle, Roku, and Disney+ have reported issues. The McDonald’s app was also down. It wasn’t immediately clear how, or whether, the outage was affecting the federal government. The White House referred questions to the nation’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a component of the Department of Homeland Security, which directed queries to Amazon.
Project will bring over 1,700 jobs, $9.5 billion to state economy
Cooper hits veto No. 66 on election day integrity bill By A.P. Dillon North State Journal RALEIGH — North Carolina Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper added veto No. 66 to his list of record-breaking vetoes with his veto of Senate Bill 326, The Election Day Integrity Act. Since veto power was granted to North Carolina governors in 1996, Cooper’s four predecessors had only issued 35 vetoes combined. “The legislature ironically named this bill ‘The Election Day Integrity Act’ when it actually does the opposite,” Cooper wrote in his veto message. “Election Integrity means counting every legal vote, but this bill virtually guarantees the opposite.” Cooper’s message appears to conflict with much of the content of the bill. One of the key provisions is shoring up the date ballots are accepted to Election Day instead of continued acceptance three days later. Additionally, not only does Senate Bill 326 count every legal vote, but the bill would also have extended the Election Day deadline for absentee by-mail ballots. Except for military and overseas voters, the bill would have added hours for those applications and mail-in absentee ballots to be returned to boards of election, going from the current 5 p.m. deadline to 7:30 p.m. on the day of the election, regardless of postmark. Additionally, If the N.C. State Board of Elections were to extend the closing time of the polls, ballots could be received and counted by the extended
closing time. During the 2020 election, ballots were to be accepted nine days beyond Election Day, causing delays and controversy in certifying race results. The nine-day extension was the result of a secret settlement entered into by the N.C. State Board of Elections (NCSBE), N.C. Attorney General Josh Stein, and Democratic-aligned activist groups. Dubbed a “collusive settlement agreement” by lawmakers, it made the changes to ballot-acceptance dates just 41 days before Election Day and while absentee voting was already underway. “Election Day should be the election deadline because it boosts confidence in elections to have results as close to the end of voting as possible. Election Day is the election deadline in plenty of Democrat-run states, yet Gov. Cooper and Democrats keep peddling this bizarre theory that the policy is an attempt at voter suppression,” the bill’s primary sponsor, state Sen. Paul Newton (R-Cabarrus) said in a statement. The statement from Newton notes that the bill would have aligned North Carolina with “Democratic-controlled states like Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and others,” that have “identical policies” recognizing Election Day deadlines for ballots. Newton went on to ask, “Will the press finally ask Gov. Cooper or Democratic legislators whether they believe Democrats See VETO, page A2
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTO VIA N.C. DEPT. OF PUBLIC SAFETY
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Gov. Roy Cooper briefs media from the Emergency Operations Center in Raleigh in this undated file photo.
By David Larson North State Journal LIBERTY — After years of planning and negotiations, the Greensboro-Randolph Megasite landed a partner that more than satisfied what organizers had dreamed of for the site. On Dec. 6, Toyota Motor North America announced they were investing $1.29 billion to build their first battery plant on the continent, which will also be the largest private investment in state history. The manufacturing site is predicted to bring $9.5 billion to the state economy over the next two decades, and the initial 1,750 jobs are just the very early impact on the region’s employment. NSJ was on site for the 2 p.m. announcement, which took place in a packed tent in a windblown field at the Greensboro-Randolph
Megasite. The site is in the small town of Liberty in Randolph County, but is only minutes from Guilford, Alamance and Chatham counties. The tent held a who’swho of North Carolina government officials (local, state and federal) as well as major business and nonprofit interests. In the speeches of those presenting, as well as in interviews with those present, two themes frequently surfaced — the transformational nature of the project to the region and the firm belief that this announcement was only the first of many. During the event, the loudest applause seemed to come for Toyota Motor North America chief administrative officer Chris Reynolds. He gave Gov. Roy Cooper two gifts on behalf of the company — one an aluminum race car with the number 21 on it, representing 2021 starting a race to the future, and the other a figure of a battery, like those that will be manufactured on the site. Cooper had moSee TOYOTA page A2
Wake Forest Baptist Health concludes antibody portion of COVID-19 study Top findings include 30% had antibodies pre-vaccines, 95% post vaccine rollout; 91% ‘real world effectiveness’ in preventing disease By A.P. Dillon North State Journal RALEIGH — In mid-April of 2020, an antibody study, to be conducted by Wake Forest Baptist Health and Atrium Health, was given $100,000. Almost a year later, the study had enrolled over 23,000 individuals to log daily symptoms, and nearly 11,000 of those enrolled have taken at least one antibody test. The antibody portion of the study concluded at the end of October. Dr. John Sanders, chief of infectious diseases at Wake Forest Baptist Health, who led the study, tells North State Journal they ended up doing 222,968 antibody tests over the course of the study. There are 29 different research papers related to the study which have either already gone through the process and are ready for publication, have already been published, or are still being worked on. Sanders said that as of mid-tolate December 2020, of the 20,000 plus people in North Carolina who were being regularly tested, about 30% had had antibodies at some point before the vaccines became See ANTIBODY, page A2