The Rhinoceros Times March 21st, 2013

The Rhinoceros Times

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Vol. XXIII No. 12

© Copyright 2013 The Rhinoceros Times

Manager Pick Causes Carping

by Scott D. Yost county editor

The Guilford County Board of Commissioners is set to name Brunswick County Manager Marty Lawing as Guilford County’s new manager this week, and that decision by the board’s five Republican commissioners is

Greensboro, North Carolina

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Thursday, March 21, 2013

causing some grumbling among the four Democrats, who favored another candidate over Lawing.

Several Democrats on the board are complaining that the Republicans changed the scoring method for the candidates at the (Continued on page 36)

Nontrepreneurs Get Cushy Deal

by Alex JakubseN Staff Writer

The Greensboro City Council voted to extend the loan payment start date for the Nussbaum Center for Entrepreneurship by a year at its Tuesday, March 19 meeting in the council chambers, despite the fact that business incubator has

begun renting to an established company.

In May 2011, the Nussbaum Center received a $1.2 million loan from the city to move from the Revolution Mill complex to the former corporate office (Continued on page 28)

School Board Races Need Life by john hammer editor

The bill introduced by State Sen. Trudy Wade to change the way the Guilford County Board of Education is elected attracted immediate opposition, which should surprise no one.

Those who think changing the way school board members in Guilford County are elected is a terrible idea might want to take a (Continued on page 38)

Photo courtesy of Joseph Daniels, Carolina Peacemaker

The fans at the Greensboro Coliseum were treated to a great game in the finals of the ACC Men’s Basketball Tournament on Sunday, with Miami winning its first tournament by beating perennial powerhouse Carolina 87 to 77. More photos page 6

Rhino Rumors From staff and wire reports

Photo by Sandy Groover

The Battle of Guilford Courthouse was one of the key battles of the Revolutionary War leading to the defeat of the British at Yorktown, and this is a scene from the reenactment of that battle on Sunday in Greensboro Country Park. More photos page 32

We’d like to congratulate Marty Kotis of Kotis Properties on his appointment to the University of North Carolina Board of Governors. It is an honor as well as a responsibility to be a member of the board that runs the finest state university (Continued on page 4)

Inside this issue High Point News............ 8 Sound of the Beep....... 10 Entertainment Guide.....11 Puzzles............ 28, 30, 31 Uncle Orson Reviews... 14 Yost Column................ 15 Scott’s Night Out.......... 16 Rhino Real Estate........ 17 Letters to the Editor..... 27 Editorial Cartoon.......... 38 under the hammer....... 39

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Thursday, March 21, 2013

The Rhinoceros Times Greensboro

Deacon Paul Teich NEED CASH? by john hammer editor

Not all newspapers have a spiritual advisor, but we had one until last week when Deacon Paul Teich died after a long period of failing health.

Paul was a deacon at Our Lady of Grace Catholic Church. In the Catholic Church, deacon is far from an honorary title. Deacons go through four years of training and can baptize, perform marriages and preside at funerals. They can’t say Mass, but one of their duties is to read the Gospel and preach. So deacons do give sermons, and Paul’s sermons were always from the heart and always a little different.

At his funeral Paul’s sense of humor was described as quirky. I would say he had a well-developed sense humor because it had developed along the same lines as mine.

Paul and I met at The Rhinoceros Club in the 1980s. I don’t know what he was doing Sunday mornings in those days, but I know I usually found other things more important than getting up and going to church. When we met up again in the mid ’90s. My attendance at church was much more consistent, but Paul had done me one better he had become a deacon in 1995. At some point he became the official spiritual advisor of The Rhinoceros Times and we put him in the publisher’s box. A lot of people who had known the two of us back in the Rhino Club days thought that Paul being our spiritual advisor was a joke, and although we both got a huge kick out of the idea, and laughed about it a lot, it was no joke.

Paul was our spiritual advisor and he gave us good spiritual advice. In fact, I wish I had taken more of it. Paul was a plumber by trade and a good one. Some people still think that being a devout Christian is kind of namby-pamby, but there was absolutely nothing namby-pamby about Paul. He ended up enduring more pain than I can imagine.

After an unfortunate accident in which his truck was rear-ended by a school bus, shattering a vertebra in his neck, Paul couldn’t handle the physical labor of being a plumber and went to work inside for Johns Plumbing for as long as he could.

One of the last conversations I remember having with Paul was about his pain management. If he took enough pain medication to block the pain he was too muddleheaded to serve at Mass, preach or counsel people. So being who he was, he was enduring as much pain as possible so he could help others.

But, finally, even that didn’t work and he had to retire from public life.

Paul was a good man who made a difference. He will be missed by many, and at The Rhino we will miss our spiritual advisor

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It’s fun to go to ACC by john hammer editor

I grew up in Greensboro so by definition I love the ACC tournament. I remember sitting in grade school at St. Pius looking at the empty seats of Guy Andrews and others, knowing that those lucky kids had tickets to the ACC. Since men never really grow up (we just get older, and believe me there is a huge difference), when I walk into the Coliseum during the ACC tournament, I’m thinking I’m one of the lucky kids with ACC tickets, and truly I am.

The press is treated extremely well at the tournament. Coliseum Manager Matt Brown told me that this year the tournament attracted the second highest number of media ever. He also said next year, with the addition of teams from completely different media markets, he’s expecting more media than ever.

(Continued on page 33)

The Rhinoceros Times

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The Rhinoceros Times, an award-winning newspaper, is published weakly by Hammer Publications, 216 W. Market St., Greensboro, North Carolina.

The Rhino Times is intended to entertain and inform its thousands of readers worldwide.

Mailing address: P.O. Box 9421 Greensboro, NC 27429 News: (336) 273-0880 Advertising: (336) 273-0885 Fax: (336) 273-0821 Beep: (336) 273-0898 Website: www.rhinotimes.com Letters to the Editor: letters@rhinotimes.net

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Thursday, March 21, 2013

The Rhinoceros Times Greensboro

Nightclubs Guilty Until Proven Innocent

by Alex Jakubsen Staff Writer

Defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty, but apparently that doesn’t apply to nightclub owners in Greensboro when it comes to crimes on their property.

The Greensboro City Council is scheduled to vote on the proposed Entertainment Facility Use Ordinance at its April 2 meeting.

The security requirements in the ordinance will only apply to clubs that have two or more incidents of murder, aggravated assault, rape, sexual assault or robbery reported within a 12-month period.

But whether or not there are convictions or even charges associated with those crimes is irrelevant to the enforcement of the ordinance, according to Police Attorney Jim Clark, who drafted the ordinance.

“A charge may not be filed against anybody,” Clark said. “That doesn’t mean we can’t show the incident occurred.” He said that it doesn’t make sense to marry the civil standards of the ordinance to criminal proceedings.

However the ordinance lists specific criminal offenses that trigger the enforcement of civil penalties.

Clubs that could come under the ordinance if they meet the threshold include those that serve alcohol operating after 9 p.m. with occupancy of 150 or more, and strip clubs regardless of occupancy capacity.

The ordinance could also apply to temporary and special events open to the public where dancing and live entertainment are held.

Clark said the police would determine whether an incident occurred based on evidence at the scene. He said that in some cases it may be clear that a crime that would support a charge took place but it may not be apparent who the guilty party is.

Councilmember Nancy Vaughan agreed.

“If there is a murder in the club, I don’t think it matters who did it,” she said.

Vaughan said she will be voting for the proposed ordinance, although she said she would like the destruction of evidence by club staff to be added to the list of crimes that trigger its application.

Councilmember Zack Matheny, who chaired the Entertainment Ordinance Committee of the City Council, said that the types of “hardcore crimes” listed in the ordinance as triggers should be apparent whether there are criminal charges or convictions or not. “We want people to feel safe throughout our city,” he said.

Thurston Reeder, owner of Thirsty’s 2 on Chimney Rock Road, said that some parts of the ordinance do not sit well with him. He said he didn’t like the idea of the incidents being determined without charges or convictions, and said the ordinance as a whole was arbitrary and discriminatory.

Thurston said there was no good reason

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to target clubs with occupancy of 150 or more. “It makes no logical sense that one should be under the ordinance and the other shouldn’t,” he said. “Trouble is trouble.”

He also said he didn’t see why sexually oriented businesses should be targeted regardless of occupancy.

Eric Robert, who plans to open the Bread Mill on South Elm Street as an event space, said he is generally pleased with the most recent draft of the ordinance. Robert has been critical of earlier drafts of the ordinance for being too selective in the venues included.

“There doesn’t seem to be any more preferential treatment,” Robert said.

“My big issue with it was the selective approach.” Robert said he was not up to date on the incident threshold. “Every venue in town should be completely safe.”

But in some cases what constitutes an incident may be moot. The proposed ordinance would only be triggered by incidents that occur on a club’s property, and some of the shootings that spurred discussion about a new nightclub ordinance occurred outside of the club on public property.

The November 2010 shooting that police said stemmed from a dispute inside the N Club, now named Allure, took place off the club’s property and so would not count against that club under the proposed ordinance.

A Feb. 1, 2013 shooting near Club Inferno also took place outside of the club.

According to police the shooter was on the public sidewalk outside the club and fired towards it.

Outside of downtown many clubs own their own parking lots, including Thirsty’s 2. Reeder said he felt discriminated against, since an incident occurring outside of a downtown club would not count against it while an incident occurring outside of Thirsty’s 2 would count because it has a parking lot.

Clark said he was unaware of any other entertainment facility ordinances in other cities with a similar incident threshold to trigger application. “I honestly don’t know,” he said. He said he did not look to other cities when developing the ordinance.

The threshold emerged as a compromise between the Police Department and nightclub owners over concerns that clubs without a history of violence would be unfairly burdened by the costs of the minimum security requirements.

The proposed Greensboro ordinance applies to clubs regulated by Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) law, but according to Police Chief Ken Miller offers the city more local control.

Miller has also pointed out that even after losing a liquor license, clubs have the option of continuing to operate as a bringyour-own-bottle establishment.

The proposed Greensboro ordinance would be enforced by the planning and community development director and the

finance director.

The finance director would revoke the privilege licenses of venues that have two or more serious violent crimes in a 12-month period. The planning director would not recommend reinstating the licenses until the clubs come into compliance with the ordinance. The ordinance itself would be incorporated into the Greensboro Land Development Ordinance, commonly known as the zoning ordinance.

After two years of compliance the regulations would be lifted. Even if more violent incidents occur during the two years, facilities would not be penalized as long as they have complied with the security requirements of the ordinance, which include having a security plan and a minimum number trained security guards on staff for events.

Councilmember Marikay Abuzuaiter said that she supports the two incident threshold, but will be waiting until the public hearing and council discussion to make her final decision on the ordinance.

Councilmember Nancy Hoffmann said she would be supporting the ordinance. “I think the council subcommittee came to the best place that they felt they could hope for,” she said.

Councilmember Tony Wilkins said he would be going with the recommendation of the committee.

Rumors

(Continued from page 1)

system in the country. Kotis was elected by the state Senate to a four-year term.

--Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, depending on when you go to bed, our internet service went down. Since that is my writing time, I spent most of the early morning hours trying to get the internet service back before everyone else got to work. I was not successful and put in an emergency call to The Rhino Times IT guy Jeremiah Smith of Brainiac Computer Services. Jeremiah dropped what he was doing since he knew we needed immediate help, came to our office and stayed until the problem was solved at about 3 pm.

So you’re reading this paper thanks to Jeremiah, who is our hero for at least the rest of the week. If you have a computer that needs help, even if it isn’t a life or death emergency, we give Brainiac and unqualified recommendation and their phone number is (336) 310-9011. How we put out a newspaper every week in the years before email is beyond my comprehension.

--City Councilmember Nancy Hoffmann’s shtick is that she is an experienced, knowledgeable businesswoman. So she explains why she didn’t pay taxes on her (Continued on page 31)

The Rhinoceros Times Greensboro

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Page 5

The Most Important Meeting of the Day

by Scott D. Yost county editor

The Guilford County Board of Commissioners had some very important guests over for breakfast in the Blue Room of the Old Guilford County Court House on Monday, March 18, and one topic of conversation was a problem that’s remained unsolved for years – what to do about Guilford County’s county line dispute with Alamance County.

The Guilford County commissioners had invited the members of the Guilford County state legislative delegation to discuss the county’s legislative agenda for this year, and the commissioners conveyed their concerns about the county line, and other issues, to the members of the state legislature who accepted the invitation: Dist. 58 State Rep. Alma Adams, Dist.

61 State Rep. John Faircloth, Dist. 62 State Rep. John Blust and Dist. 57 State Rep. Pricey Harrison. Attendance might have been better but this was the second breakfast that morning for the delegation, which had an 8 a.m. breakfast with the school board.

At the breakfast meeting, one issue the commissioners said they would soon need state help on was the long-lasting, well-publicized, recalcitrant county line problem. Guilford County has been trying for years and years to reach an agreement with Alamance County to adopt a mutually acceptable county line; however, despite years of on-again off-again talks, zero progress has been made.

State surveyors determined theAlamance/ Guilford county line with great accuracy almost five years ago using modern hightech surveying methods. Soon after, the Guilford County Board of Commissioners sent a letter to the North Carolina General Assembly requesting legislators approve the straight line state surveyors deemed to be the original and true county line.

However, Alamance County claims a contingent of residents living along the line who don’t want to suddenly find themselves being treated as Guilford County residents and subject to this county’s high property tax rate – so Alamance County has made no move to resolve the issue.

Guilford County Commissioner Alan Branson said the issue wasn’t a major concern when the area along the line was farmland; but economic development, he said, has made it vital that the two counties settle the dispute once and for all.

“Since the mid-’80s that area has grown considerably,” Branson said.

Guilford County Attorney Mark Payne said one thing everyone agrees on is that some solution is badly needed.

Payne told the commissioners and state representatives that – whether the final county line is straight, it was originally drawn, or jagged, to take into account the will of landowners living along the line – the problem needs to be addressed.

There’s been a lot of heated dispute over the county line and Blust joked, “Are you going to request a border fence?”

Chairman of the Board of Commissioners Linda Shaw said Guilford County officials had recently met with representatives of Alamance County, and she said the Guilford County commissioners are scheduled to revisit the issue at a work session on Thursday, March 21.

On a different topic, Shaw said she wanted to learn more about a proposal that would end the requirement counties now have to advertise Planning Board public hearings and other county proceedings in the newspaper.

“It is my understanding that this will save us a lot of money,” Shaw said.

She added that easing the requirements on print advertising for public hearings would save the county some aggravation as well.

Shaw told the state representatives that, last month, the News & Record made a mistake and failed to run a Planning Board meeting notification that the county was required by law to run, and, because of that oversight the county had to cancel its Planning Board meeting.

“This is a biggy,” Shaw said. “This is one of the problems we have with the way it is.”

Shaw and other commissioners said the notification requirement could be fulfilled by announcements on the county’s web site, in conjunction with other methods of getting the word out, such as first class letters sent to affected property owners.

Adams said she was concerned about citizens who aren’t on the internet.

“Some people do not have access electronically and still rely on traditional methods,” Adams said.

Commissioner Carolyn Coleman wanted to know if the county would continue sending letters to property owners if the newspaper notification requirement is dropped, and staff informed her that the current proposals called for the other forms of notification – such as letters and signage – to remain in effect.

Commissioner Kay Cashion took some time to speak to the delegation on behalf of not just Guilford County but counties across the state. Cashion serves on a board of the NC Association of County Commissioners that sets a legislative agenda for all the member counties in the state.

Cashion also said counties want to see money from state lottery proceeds, meant for school funding, restored to the levels originally promised.

“If we were to fund the way it was set up,” Cashion said, “we should be getting about $9 million,” adding that Guilford County is now receiving several million less than that in lottery funds.

“We are getting the short end,” she said.

“That 2 to 3 million would mean a lot to us.”

In addition, Cashion said, counties don’t want to see a continuation of the state’s practice of “shifting costs” onto the county when it comes to the delivery of state services such as health and human

services.

Cashion said at the meeting that, just as the counties need to avoid taking on new costs, the state also must “preserve the existing local revenue base” for counties and not adopt legislation that will take away local revenue streams.

She said county boards of commissioners also need to have a better relationship with the General Assembly so that counties have input on “the front end” rather than find themselves “begging on the back end.”

According to Cashion, there are about 30

former county commissioners now in the state legislature, so those representatives at least should be sensitive to the needs of the state’s 100 counties. Cashion didn’t mention that one of those was former Guilford County Commissioner, now State Sen. Trudy Wade, though that did come up earlier in the meeting.

Cashion said the state’s counties didn’t want to see any “midnight legislation” that caught county officials off guard and left eave them scrambling to find money for state-mandated programs and services.

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Thursday, March 21, 2013

The Rhinoceros Times Greensboro

2013 ACC Tournament at the Coliseum

Photos courtesy Joseph Daniels, Carolina Peacemaker and by John Hammer

The Rhinoceros Times Greensboro

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Page 7

School Board Wimps Out At Breakfast by paul C. clark Staff Writer

The Guilford County Board of Education on Monday, March 18 held a two-hour breakfast with the Guilford County state legislative delegation without bringing up the bill in the 2013 state legislative session that would affect the school board the most.

That is District 27 state Sen. Trudy Wade’s Senate Bill 317, which would redistrict the school board and change the way its members are elected.

At the annual legislative breakfast, the delegation heard the usual requests for Guilford County Schools to be freed from paying state sales taxes, for more funding all around and for the return of total authority to set school calendars to local boards of education.

Yet not a single school board member brought up the bill, which would change school board elections from non-partisan elections and staggered four-year terms to partisan elections and two-year terms.

Wade’s local bill would also allow each voter to vote for only one of the two atlarge members of the school board.

The two at-large seats on the school board are usually held by Democrats, or at least people who vote like Democrats – now school board members Sandra Alexander and Nancy Routh.

Most of the school board members must hate Wade’s bill. But it wasn’t until the end of the meeting that the bill was mentioned

– and that was by District 58 state Rep. Alma Adams, not a school board member.

Adams said the bill was an issue that had come up. She said, “I’m curious about where the school board stands on that.”

Routh said, “I would always run as ‘unaffiliated’ if it came to that, I think.”

She said she had concerns about the bill.

She said she didn’t think it was necessary, and that Guilford County voters would lose one at-large vote if the bill passes.

In an odd counter-argument, Routh told the legislators that they should instead pass a bill to give the General Assembly fouryear terms.

District 61 state Rep. John Faircloth said, to laughter, “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

The state Senate is almost certain to pass Wade’s bill. Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger, who represents District 26, which includes part of Guilford County, and was present at the breakfast, reportedly supports the bill.

Faircloth said the House is likely to approve the bill when it crosses over from the Senate, although it might have to be “massaged” a little to get House passage.

He said the proposed change to nonpartisan elections was the most contentious element of the bill.

Other than Routh, the only school board member who mentioned Wade’s bill was school board Chairman Alan Duncan, who

said the school board had not met since learning about the bill, and so hadn’t voted to have an opinion on it.

Six of the 11 school board members – Duncan, Routh, Alexander and school board members Rebecca Buffington, Darlene Garrett and Linda Welborn – attended the legislative breakfast, meaning the majority of the board was there.

The school board will doubtless pass a resolution on the bill eventually. The school board members presented the delegation with a resolution opposing a bill that would transfer ownership of school system buildings from school boards to county boards of commissioners.

Or maybe, except for Routh, none of the school board members oppose it.

Instead of the school board taking on the legislators, as usually happens at these events, the legislators grilled school board members, Guilford County School Superintendent Mo Green and new Guilford County Schools Chief Financial Officer Angie Henry over the Guilford County Schools budget.

Henry said that Guilford County Schools had lost $43.2 million in state funding since 2008.

Berger seemed doubtful. He said, “So are you telling me that, if I compare the total state funding in 2009 to the total state funding in 2012, it’s $43 million less received?

Henry mumbled something

about the numbers not quite coming out that way after changes in employee benefits.

Berger said, “I’d like to see those numbers.”

Berger was right to be dubious. Guilford County Schools has vastly inflated its budget problems for years.

The school board projects catastrophic funding cuts each year, but they haven’t happened yet. Since the 2008 crash, they haven’t happened largely because the federal government has stepped in with hundreds of billions in stimulus money earmarked for education.

For the 2012-2013 budget, the school board estimated from draft state budgets and federal budget projections that it would have $28 million in reduced funding.

As usual, the reality turned out to be very different. The total reduction in Guilford County Schools funding wound up being $10.3 million – and all of that came from the loss of federal EduJobs stimulus money, which schools had already covered by saving money from the 2011-2012 school year. The General Assembly actually increased the school system’s funding by $2.48 million over the 2011-2012 fiscal year. All the projected cuts disappeared.

The other Guilford County delegation members who attended were District 28 Sen. Gladys Robinson, District 60 state Rep. Marcus Brandon and District 57 state Rep. Pricey Harrison.

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Facebook Spat Leads To Libel Lawsuit by paul C. clark Staff Writer

Former High Point City Councilmember Latimer Alexander on Wednesday, March 13 filed a lawsuit for libel against High Point Planning and Zoning Commission member Cynthia Davis over statements Alexander claims Davis posted on her Facebook page stating that Alexander stole to start his business and was “a bully hungry for power” with a “lack of accountability with the truth.”

Alexander asked the North Carolina District Court for Guilford County to award him actual damages, at least $10,000 in punitive damages, and order Davis to issue a public apology and pay Alexander’s legal costs. His complaint asks that the apology take the form of “obvious and well viewed” ads in The Rhinoceros Times and the High Point Enterprise, and that the $10,000, if awarded, be in the form of a check made out to the High Point Parks and Recreation Department for children’s sports.

It’s unlikely that a court, if it took the case, would order an apology. A courtordered apology would be “compelled speech” – something usually not allowed under the First Amendment.

The more usual format is for a plaintiff to ask for an apology or monetary damages, but that’s not how Alexander’s complaint is phrased.

Alexander’s attorney, two-time unsuccessful High Point City Council candidate Brett Moore, filed Alexander’s complaint against Davis on Wednesday, March 13. Davis said she received a civil summons on Friday, March 15.

Davis acknowledged posting such comments, but said they were on the Facebook page for only a brief period.

She said she took down the post because she felt, “It just wasn’t me.” She said she replaced the post with one that said merely, “God bless you ... Latimer.” The latter post was still on Davis’ Facebook page on Friday, although it had apparently been removed by Sunday.

Davis said she did not want to discuss the case in more detail, on the advice of her attorney.

Alexander’s complaint contains what Moore said are screen captures of both the post that Alexander considers libelous and the replacement post.

Both the posts are part of a Wednesday, March 6 dispute between Alexander and Davis on Davis’ Facebook page over a periodic survey the High Point City Council conducts asking about city services with which High Point residents are, and aren’t, happy.

Davis argued that the survey didn’t have a large enough sample to adequately

represent High Point’s population In two posts, Alexander told Davis to conduct her own survey if she wasn’t happy with the city’s, and that there were many opinions in the survey and among High Point residents, all valuable.

Alexander wrote, “You certainly like to express yours and you should but respect others that do as well when they differ from yours.”

According to Alexander’s complaint, Davis’ response was the following: “Latimer ...I don’t pay you much mind.

You have always been a bully hungry for

power. Nobody’s thoughts matter but your own, sadly. I am at least able to consider others before myself, unlike you. I would think you would be very sore from riding the fence for so many years. You stole to start your own business and proudly share the story from your former seat on Council.

Let’s not forget your lack of accountability for the Truth, when your are confronted by others on issues pertaining to past city matters. I guess your rude attitude towards me is that I strive to serve honestly and you just serve self. I truly do not give you (Continued on page 30)

Voters May Trash No-Primary System by paul C. clark Staff Writer

High Point Mayor Bernita Sims’ dream of keeping a no-primary election system for High Point City Council seats seems likely to die on Nov. 4, 2014 – on the general election ballot, on which the City Council voted unanimously on Monday, March 18 to place a referendum on the issue.

The referendum would ask voters whether they wanted to keep High Point’s current no-primary system, which allows anyone to get onto the general election ballot and winners to win by a mere plurality of votes, or add primaries that would narrow the field down to two candidates for each City Council seat before the general election.

The referendum would also, if approved, return High Point City Council elections from even-numbered years, as they had been since 2008, to odd-numbered years.

The City Council debate over elections started during the 3:30 p.m. meeting of the City Council’s March 18 Finance Committee. Note that the committee was the Finance Committee, not the “Committee of the Whole Finance Committee” that Sims created after being elected in November 2012.

Sims killed off all the City Council’s traditional committees, which were chaired by councilmembers other than the mayor, and pushed through a vote that would have had all debate done by the full City Council under the control of the mayor’s gravel.

Sims scrapped that plan after a revolt by other councilmembers. On Monday, it was At-large Councilmember Britt Moore, not Sims, who wielded the gavel in the Finance Committee meeting.

Councilmember Becky Smothers asked if the City Council was going to vote to suspend the rules at its meeting to consider the election referendum, which wasn’t on the agenda.

Sims said the main issues the City Council had to decide were when the

referendum would take place and when the new election system, if approved by voters, would take effect.

Smothers recommended putting the referendum on the May 2014 primary ballot, so that the issue wouldn’t get mixed up in the general election debates. Sims said that her only objection to doing so was the added cost of a referendum in a primary.

High Point doesn’t have to pay for part of a Guilford County primary if there are no High Point issues on the ballot.

High Point City Attorney JoAnne Carlyle said the City Council needed to ask the legislature for a local bill to authorize the referendum. She said the City Council could file the language of the bill and make its decision on having the referendum in May 2014 or November 2014. She said the deadline for local bills was Wednesday.

Smothers said, “Let’s go ahead and get this done.”

During the City Council meeting, Sims explained the history of the City Council’s votes on changing High Point elections.

The City Council on March 4 voted to restore primaries and elections in oddnumbered years to High Point’s electoral system. The votes on adding primaries and switching to odd-numbered years were 6 to 3, with Sims, Foster Douglas and Jeff Golden – the three black members of the City Council – casting the “no” votes.

High Point legal consultant and lobbyist Fred Baggett on Tuesday, March 5, took those issues to the Guilford County state legislative delegation to request a local bill – and was told that the legislators were unlikely to file a local bill in the General Assembly to make those changes because the 6-to-3 votes showed a lack of agreement, and local bills, which affect only one municipality, are generally based on a substantial agreement in the municipality and its legislative delegation.

(Continued on page 31)

The Rhinoceros Times Greensboro

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Page 9

School Board Turns To County For Help

by Scott D. Yost county editor

The Guilford County Board of Education is finally asking the county commissioners for something other than money.

On Thursday, March 14, at a meeting between the school board’s Legislative Committee and a contingent of county commissioners, school officials let the commissioners know a few of the things on the school’s legislative wish list this year.

School Board Members Rebecca Buffington, Linda Welborn, Darlene Garrett and Ed Price attended the meeting in the school’s administrative building at 712 N. Eugene St., as did Guilford County School Superintendent Mo Green, Chief Financial Officer Angie Henry and Chief of Staff Nora Carr.

They met with Chairman of the Board of Commissioners Linda Shaw, and Commissioners Bill Bencini and Kay Cashion, along with Guilford County Attorney Mark Payne and interim County Manager/Assistant Manager/Human Resources Director Sharisse Fuller.

School officials said they asked for the meeting to make the county commissioners aware of some of the school’s legislative initiatives for the General Assembly.

However, at times the meeting turned into a free-for-all discussion that hit on everything from iPad insurance to the Brunswick County manager that Guilford County is expected to hire this week.

At the meeting, school officials asked for the commissioners to support lobbying efforts that would give Guilford County schools the same sales tax break cities, counties and nonprofit schools and church schools enjoy.

Those entities get the sales taxes they pay refunded by the state. However, there’s no such refund for public school systems.

Guilford County school officials said they would like to see that state law changed and they want the commissioners to help make that happen.

Guilford County Board of Commissioners Chairman Linda Shaw asked if this was something that school board members had requested of state legislators before, and Shaw got a loud chorus in response: The school board members almost all said some version of, “Yes, every year!”

Henry said the schools should enjoy the same sales tax benefit the county does.

“It would have been one million additional dollars to educate our children,” Henry said. “We would like to go as a joint team to legislators or send emails.”

Henry said the county and the school system would both benefit if the state granted the request.

The school board also asked the Board of Commissioners to petition state legislators to restore funding for college textbooks for students who take college courses at Guilford Technical Community College,

or other area colleges, as part of the school system’s career and technical training programs.

North Carolina pays some of the costs associated with those programs; however, school officials said at the meeting that college textbook funds for that purpose had been slashed in recent years.

Carr said, “College texts are very expensive and some families don’t have $100 or $150 for books.”

School officials didn’t go into whether or not used books were an option – a time honored practice of students watching their money.

At the meeting, the school officials and commissioners also talked briefly about proposed statewide legislation that would allow counties to take over ownership of school buildings. As it is now, the schools own those buildings.

Price said, “It’s no problem whatsoever if the county commissioners want to take over these buildings – I’ve got a stack of emails I need to give you.”

At the meeting, the commissioners had a few questions for the school board members on other topics. For instance, Shaw wanted to know if the school system is planning on buying insurance on the millions of dollars worth of iPads the schools will soon buy for middle school students as part of a grant program.

“Absolutely,” Green told them.

OurFirst

Dance

He said the schools had already conducted a pilot program with iPads in an elementary school, and Green said that lost or stolen iPads hadn’t been a problem.

He added, however, that distributing iPads in county middle schools would be “a new experience.”

The first 20 minutes of the committee meeting were spent with the commissioners and school board members discussing the prospective hiring of Brunswick County Manager Marty Lawing as the next Guilford County manager. The story had just broken that morning when The Rhinoceros Times was delivered an hour or so before the meeting took place.

While the committee meeting was primarily used to address the legislative concerns, school officials did use the forum to hint at the schools’ increasing needs for the upcoming 2013-2014 county budget.

After the meeting, Green said the school board would have an official request for the county portion of the school’s operating funds soon. He said that, after the economic crisis in 2008, the county commissioners had been good about keeping Guilford County’s school funding for operations at previous levels – despites cuts in other counties across the state, but more funding from the county was now needed.

This year, as every year, the schools are expected to request an increase in county funding.

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Page 10

Thursday, March 21, 2013

The Rhinoceros Times Greensboro

The Sound of the Beep What follows has been transcribed from the answering machine tape on our comment line 273-0898. We edit out what is required by the laws of the state, of good taste and of good sense. The limit on phone calls is one minute and each caller may make up to two calls per week.

If you have something to say, call our comment line at 273-0898 and start talking at The Sound of the Beep.

One of the nicest and largets facilities in NC! We have Frontier Gaming and 100 computers!

Smoking and Non-smoking available!

Ladies Day

Sunday’s beginning at 8am

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Call us for directions or questions! 336-578-9713

Must be 18 years or older to play! No ALCOHOLIC beverages allowed on premises!

Good evening. This is Quiet Sob here. And I was calling to congratulate Orson Scott Card for making it on jeopardy. Saw a jeopardy clue with his name in it, and thought it was great. Congratulations. And there’s something political. I forgot what that was. Oh, well, I’ll call back. All right. Take care. %%% Yes, I’d like to know why our attorney general cannot stop this Western Sky from advertising here. I see they’re charging 89 percent interest on a loan; 89 percent, are they crazy? It’s people that are hard up that need the money, that are in trouble that are taking these loans. You could never get out of something like that. But 89 percent interest? Come on. You are killing everybody. Indian reservation. Come on, stop already. Do something here.

McCrory, maybe you can stop this. %%% Hello. This is the Blue-Eyed Devil. Shout out to Steely Dan Fan Man. Just keep on talking the truth. And Scott, who writes the columns, don’t get too concerned about other people that say they know the mind of God. And I’m so glad to see Dr. Simpson is getting honored with a school, and everybody ought to learn about the life of that man. %%% Oh, snap. What happened to the guy that used to beep in about women’s feet? And, then, there was a guy that called in about contrails all up in the air. Back in the day. %%% I assume that most people in this country has been to school. Even if they didn’t graduate they went to the seventh, eighth grade. They should have enough common sense to know that you cannot spend more money than you make without running completely out of money, and then not having any to buy anything with. That’s exactly what Obama has got planned for us.

And, then, he’s going to start us all over again on some kind of new system.

He said that he was going to transform America if everybody remembers it.

He told us that’s what he was going to do. If the Republicans don’t get him stopped, we’re headed for doom. I mean we’re going to the very bottom.

I’m 78 years old. I might not live to see it, but the younger people will. And it’s not going to be good. %%% Hey Rhino. Just wondering if you’re bringing back the Schmoozefest.

Hopefully, the weather is turning warmer. Hopefully, it’ll come back soon. %%% Editor’s Note: We have one scheduled for Thursday, April 25. %%% Today I saw on my way back from church services one of the funniest looking bumper stickers I’ve seen in I don’t know how long. It had the classic World War II era image of Uncle Sam on the left hand side. On the right hand side it looked like he was saying, get that commie out of my White House. If anyone out there in Rhino Times land knows where I can get one of these bumper stickers, please, share it with us on The Sound of the Beep. %%% Yes, I know you don’t give out shout outs, but I’d like to give a shout out of rest in peace to Mr. Hugo Chavez. He was an outstanding man. He did a lot for his country and the people of the third world. It’s unfortunate and awful sorry how the so-called Westernalized so-called white media always trying to make people like Mr. Hugo Chavez a bad guy when reality he’s not the bad guy. Because he helped out his people and stuff, and he distributed wealth and all that. And, plus, he also gave a hand to help out black people in New Orleans when they were struck by Hurricane Katrina years ago. But other than that, rest in peace Mr. Chavez. And, plus, he was a good man, too. And he’s the hero of a movie and revolution. I mean him and Fidel Castro are two of my greatest heroes. But other than that, I give all due respect to Mr. Hugo Chavez. Long live the dictator. He’s a hero in my book. Anybody that calls Bush a devil is a hero as far as I’m concerned. %%% Hey, I was just reading The Sound of the Beep in the March 7 issue. And (Continued on page 27)

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Are you ready to “Shake Your Booty”?

with

“get down tonight!”

The Rhinoceros Times Greensboro

thursday, april 18, 2013 Support the Carolina Theatre by attending a ‘70s-inspired Benefit Gala featuring KC and the Sunshine Band.

Choose from an elegant pre-show dinner or high-energy cocktail party or just attend the concert.

www.carolinatheatre.com (336) 333-2605

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Thursday, March 21, 2013

The Rhinoceros Times Greensboro

Uncle Orson Reviews Everything Oz, Applesauce, Skinny Pop, Foote’s War by orson scott card

Oz, Applesauce, Skinny Pop, Foote’s Civil War It was such a good idea, to make a movie about the backstory of the Wizard of Oz himself.

The trouble is, nobody actually wrote or invented anything.

All the money they spent on special effects, on a first-rate cast, and a normally good director, and what they shot was a script that could have been written by a high school student creating an Oz parody.

We walked out a half hour into the movie.

In that time, poor James Franco was given absolutely nothing to say or do. The movie couldn’t make up its mind whether he was an awful magician or a good one, an effective con man or an inept liar.

Every lie he told was obvious – he showed us (and therefore the other characters) that he was lying. This is how you act and direct farce, pointing to every artifice. But wasn’t the point of this to bring the Wizard to life?

Wouldn’t it have been wonderful if Franco had played Oz as a first-rate illusionist, so we and the audience were fooled? As a really effective con man, so that we believed everything, too?

Then we wouldn’t conclude that all the

other characters were idiots, too, because they believed him.

And when he gets to the cheesy-looking landscape of the land of Oz, nothing is believable. The 1939 musical was more real – including the flying monkeys.

Mila Kunis was given absolutely nothing to do by the time we left. We assumed she would turn out to be the wicked witch (duh), but just as Franco was given nothing to play but Crude Con Man, Mila Kunis was given nothing to play but Pretty. They didn’t even give her enough script to make her intriguing or mysterious.

They gave her nothing, as they gave Franco nothing.

These are both good actors. Clearly they signed on to the idea of the wizard’s (and the wicked witch’s) backstory, without a script in hand to let them see that nobody involved with this movie had a single interesting idea.

Not one in the first half hour, anyway.

There was nobody to care about. Nothing intriguing. Nothing amusing. Nothing emotionally compelling. Nothing to look at with wonder. Nothing to think about.

We went home and watched a little television, every moment of which, including the commercials, had better writing than the portion of The Wonderful

Wizard of Oz that we watched.

....

One of the diseases of age is that items from your childhood come back and plague you.

I can’t reliably remember song lyrics – unless, of course, it’s a song that was pounded into me when I was young.

Because my mother had us watch the Lawrence Welk Show, the products they advertised – even then aimed at older people – became part of my permanent musical heritage.

“Take Sominex tonight and sleep.

“Safe and restful.

“Sleep.

“Sleep.

“Sleeeep ...”

And of course we all knew that the laxative “Serutan is ‘nature’s’ spelled backward.” I never could understand why that was clever or meaningful. But it goes right along with Sominex.

Now if only I could remember the words to any but the third (“Pop”) verse of the Rice Krispies jingle ...

....

In Earth Fare I spotted two different brands of organic applesauce, Santa Cruz Organic and Earth Fare’s store brand.

Both had no added sugar. No added

anything, except that Santa Cruz Organic had a dash of ascorbic acid – the ingredient term for Vitamin C. How in the world could I tell which was better, from the packaging? And since my last taste test had involved regular store brands like Mott’s and White House, I bought both and had my own unofficial taste test.

First, I refrigerated them, because I like my applesauce cold, and why run a taste test under less than optimal conditions?

Then I dished up a small serving of each in separate bowls (see how careful I’m being?) and then tasted them with a plastic spoon.

This is vital, because I don’t eat applesauce at meals. I eat it as a snack. I serve it into a plastic cup, and I eat it with a plastic spoon. So to test them with a metal spoon would be useless. Metal changes the taste, texture and temperature of the experience.

This is, like, science, man.

Here is my result: Santa Cruz Organic’s initial impression is that it is a little on the runny side. Earth Fare, on the other hand, was thicker – indeed, it almost felt too stiff coming out of the jar.

Both of them were smooth and tasted (Continued on page xx)

The Rhinoceros Times Greensboro

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Lap Dances Half Price with ACC Stub

by Scott D. Yost county editor

I would like to see the tournament always be in Greensboro.

– Mike Krzyzewski

Friday afternoon when I took the media shuttle from the Sheraton at Four Seasons to the Greensboro Coliseum, there were only two people on the bus – myself and another man, someone who appeared to be in his 60s, and who looked very familiar.

The bus dropped us off at a different spot than it has in previous years, so I was a little confused. I wondered if the media entrance had moved, and I asked the other man if he was with the media.

He said he wasn’t, and I asked him if he knew where the media entrance was, and he pulled out a small map of the Coliseum, but the map wasn’t any help. I asked him what entrance he was supposed to use and he said he didn’t know.

I told him I imagined it’s in the same place it was last year – which was also the same place I had picked up my press credentials on Wednesday – so I led the way for both of us.

As we walked, the people we passed lit up happily. They waved to us eagerly, and shouted out, “Hello!” I could tell that everyone was excited to see this man, whoever he was.

Finally, someone called out, “Hello, Gary!” and I put it all together.

My walking companion – whom I had presumed might be a lowly member of the press – was none other than legendary former Maryland Coach Gary Williams, the third all-time winningest coach in the history of the Atlantic Coast Conference and coach of the national champions just over 10 years ago. In the league, he’s only behind Coach K and Dean Smith, which is fine company to be in if you’re a basketball coach.

Williams took over the Maryland program from Coach Bob Wade in 1989, when that program was in tatters after Len Bias died of a cocaine overdose in 1986.

And, on Friday, Williams was at the ACC tournament to see his Terrapins – for whom he once played as well as coached – take on my Duke Blue Devils, where I went to school.

When I entered Duke, I considered playing basketball for the school but in the end I decided against it since I wasn’t tall enough, fast enough – and I couldn’t shoot, pass dribble or defend well enough. Also, I had no experience playing organized basketball.

I did, however, have my four years of college eligibility, something I retain to this day.

Not long ago, Maryland announced that it’s leaving the ACC, so Coach Williams and I were both going to see the last game that Maryland and Duke would ever play in the ACC tournament.

While teams have been added to the conference over the years, only one team from the original eight that made up the ACC has ever left the league since it was formed at a meeting at Greensboro’s Sedgefield Country Club in 1953. South Carolina left the conference in 1971 to become the Notre Dame of the south – an independent sports powerhouse. So, not only was South Carolina the first state to secede from the Union before the War of Northern Aggression, it was also the first school to break off from the ACC. Soon, Maryland will be gone and three brand new teams will be entering the conference – so this year’s tournament in Greensboro was something of an end to an era, and I have a few thoughts on the last ACC tournament before things in the conference get crazy and become almost unrecognizable …

First of all, everyone who went to this year’s tournament, or has been to any of the tournaments in Greensboro in the past, can see full well why Coach K wants the ACC tournament to have its permanent home here.

Last week, on his three-minute weekday radio broadcast, the Duke Basketball Report, Coach K said, “Really, during my 33 years in the league, nobody does it better – it’s not even close — than the people of Greensboro.”

He added that the atmosphere for the tournament in Greensboro is “Final Four-ish,” and “classy in every way.”

Coach K’s comments caused quite a stir in this area last week when people heard or read them, but he’s been making that same point emphatically for the last three decades.

Years and years ago, K said he likes the way that the tournament in Greensboro, “takes over the entire city” – something that doesn’t happen when it’s held in Charlotte, Atlanta, Landover or in other cities that the tournament has visited in the past.

I’ve been to the ACC tournament in Charlotte and Landover and, just from what I’ve seen, I have to say I agree with the coach.

Likewise, if you ask members of the national media, they’re consistently thrilled to come to Greensboro. If you’re reporter, coach, player or ref, it’s absolutely astonishing (Continued on page 14)

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Thursday, March 21, 2013

Yost (Continued from page 13) how well they treat you: From the moment you get here, they ply you with ice cream bars, nuts, candy, and great meals all day and night – not to mention that they have pretty girls with stats sheets and other helpful information before and after every half of basketball.

During the ACC tournament, the Greensboro Coliseum staff treats you like they are a homely desperate spinster who’s been on Match.com for 20 years without a date, and you’re a great-looking multimillionaire who just blew into town and asked them out.

Now, as great a job as the ACC tournament does, and as much as they put their best face forward during the event, I think Greensboro really needs to change the hotel which acts as the conference hotel.

Don’t get me wrong: the Sheraton at Four Seasons is beautiful with top-flight service. However, every time I make that shuttle ride from the hotel to the Coliseum, I just shake my head.

All sorts of important out of town decision-makers and big wigs take that shuttle ride to the games, and, once the bus leaves scenic Four Seasons Mall and crosses over I-40, here’s what it passes on the way.

First, you pass some homeless people with signs asking for money; then there’s an abandoned shopping center with gang members in the parking lot. Then you pass a Dollar General, a pawn shop, the PillowTalk Club, Club Cabaret, and a patch of retail that looks like war-torn Beirut in the 70s.

On the trip from the Sheraton to the Coliseum, about the only truly bright spot you pass is Hooter’s.

I’m just saying that, for a lot of people, that bus ride into town on High Point Road is their very first impression of Greensboro; and, for some – the ones who never get out and about during the four days of the tournament – it’s their only impression of Greensboro.

(On second thought, ACC officials might consider keeping the Sheraton as the main hotel, but have bus drivers simply use a different path to the Coliseum.)

Scott’s Night Out Many thanks to the Greensboro Coliseum and the ACC officials who worked so hard to make the tournament a great success this year – even if the wrong team did win it. Reporters from all over the country gained an average of nine pounds over the four days thanks to all the ice cream, candy, chicken, fish and pasta provided. The Rhinoceros Times doesn’t get the best media seats at the Atlantic Coast Conference in Greensboro every year, but we do have the best seats in the house whenever Florida State is playing because we are right in front of the Florida State cheerleaders, who, unlike the basketball team, don’t have a weak link in the bunch. The word that kept coming to mind for the Florida State cheerleaders was “unholy.” Seriously, for that reason, I would rather have our seats than ones on the 50-yard line.

- Scott D. Yost

Expansion of the league apparently generates a lot of money, but look how well it’s turned out. Do you know who won the ACC tournament this year?

Miami.

And do you know why, years ago, we added teams like Miami and Boston College to the league?

It was so they would be good in football.

But now, Miami is no good in football, like they were supposed to be, and they are good in basketball, like they were not supposed to be.

This year Miami beat both Carolina and Duke by over 25 points, becoming the first team to do so since the ACC formed. But when we let them join the league, being any good in basketball wasn’t part of the deal.

The Rhinoceros Times Greensboro

So this was the last year that Maryland is in the ACC, and on their way out of the league they knocked Duke – clearly the best basketball team in the league and clearly the rightful ACC champions – out of the ACC tournament in Duke’s first game on Friday night.

Now, first of all, I don’t think Maryland should have even been allowed to play in the tournament after announcing in November that it’s leaving the ACC for the Big 10. I can tell you that, if I were the ACC commissioner, I wouldn’t have even considered letting Maryland play in the tournament this year.

If Maryland loves the Big 10 so much, then they can just play in the Big 10 tournament where they belong. And, if Maryland did play in the ACC tournament, they should have at least had the courtesy not to beat Duke – something that hurt TV ratings and prevented the Duke-Carolina semi-final that everyone in the country wanted to see.

Maryland announced months ago that it was leaving the ACC, and I think it should be exactly like when your girlfriend tells you she’s leaving you. At that point, you tell her to just gather her stuff and get out.

If she asks, “Well, what about that big dance that we are supposed to go to next week?” you don’t even consider taking your lying, cheating no-good girlfriend who doesn’t know how good she has it to the dance. Instead you say, “Hey, just get your stuff and go!”

It’s going to be very strange with Maryland gone, along with all the other changes to the league. For instance, now, all of the sudden, they’re talking about holding the ACC tournament in New York.

If you think about it, in the not too distant future, the tournament semi-finals might consist of Syracuse, Pittsburg, Notre Dame and Boston College playing in New York City.

Does that sound anything remotely like the ACC to you?

Me neither.

The good news is that it’s not too late to solve some of the league’s problems, so, even though it’s certainly not my job to save the ACC, I’ve come up with a fivestep plan to do so: (1) Make a rule that the ACC tournament will, now and forever forward, be held in Greensboro.

(2) Change the route for the media/VIP shuttle. On the trip from the Sheraton to the Coliseum, we should have the bus go through Irving Park, New Irving Park, past NewBridge Bank Park and past the new SciQuarium. It will add about 45 minutes to the trip, but think about what a good first impression that would make on visitors.

(3) Toss out Miami’s win in this last ACC tournament and replay the 2013 tournament without letting Maryland play this time.

Also, Duke should get an automatic bye to the final game this year and every year in the future – and, if Duke doesn’t win the championship, then the teams should (Continued on page 29)

The Rhinoceros Times Greensboro

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Page 27

Letters to the Editor Average citizen is radical Dear Editor, This is the letter I sent to Entertainment Weekly.

Your article on Orson Scott Card makes him sound like some sort of extreme radical for believing marriage should be restricted to opposite sex couples. It’s hardly a radical position when that’s been the accepted norm for all of recorded history and a majority of the population has similar views. Perhaps we should boycott magazines and movies that promote same sex marriage.

Timothy Tribbett

persuaded local dogs to stop harassing the wolf. He freed a rabbit from a trap, returned caught fish to their stream, and fed half-frozen bees in wintertime.

I hope that Pope Francis will inspire Catholics and all persons of goodwill to show non-human animals the respect and compassion they so richly deserve, particularly when it comes to subsidizing their abuse and slaughter for food at the checkout counter. Joining the meatless Mondays trend may be a good start.

Rick Harris

Pope Obama?

Following St. Francis’ example Dear Editor, I was delighted to learn that the newly elected pope chose for himself the name of St. Francis of Assisi, generally known as patron saint of the animals. Indeed, Catholic and Anglican churches hold ceremonies blessing animals on his feast day of Oct. 4.

During his nature walks, Francis reportedly preached to the birds and is often portrayed with a bird in his hand. On another occasion, Francis concluded a pact with a ferocious wolf that was terrorizing local townsfolk, whereby the wolf would quit preying on the town’s sheep in exchange for being fed regularly. He even

Beep (Continued from page 10) the last caller in there was talking about the inspection station owners making all the money. What they don’t seem to realize is the station owner has to buy the machine that does the inspection, and those costs tens of thousands of dollars. So, the inspection fee is just going towards paying back that money that the inspection station owner had to pay out. And he makes very little labor. Thank you very much. Bye. %%% Yeah, this business of making a prairielike area downtown is all well and good, but if it’s going to attract rabbits and mice, which are fine, seems to me it’s also going to attract foxes, coyotes, rabies, not to mention snakes, and this is downtown.

People live around there. It’s a college campus. I’m not really sure that’s the best place to put that. All right. Thank you. %%% This is for John Hammer. Your editorial on March 7, first editorial I’ve ever agreed with regarding Duke Energy forgiving a $10 million loan to the Democrats. I’m a Democrat, but that’s not the point. So, basically, like you said – everyone who buys electricity from Duke, like you have a choice, is going to be supporting the Democratic Party. That’s wrong. That’s just very, very, very wrong. I would hope that the Public Utility Commission would exclude that $10 million right off the top before they look at Duke’s latest and

Dear Editor, Why wasn’t Obama elected pope? He’s everything else.

Michael Evans

Take education back from feds Dear Editor, To our education officials: Please help our state become independent from the federal government’s Common Core Education requirements that were adopted in our state in 2010 when North Carolina accepted federal stimulus funds. This new curriculum takes the authority to govern education standards away from local and state school boards and, therefore, families,

greatest rate request. Thank you, Sir. %%% Once, again, your paper is covered for the Republican sheriff and Republicancontrolled county commissioners from Guilford County. Now the YMCA has security guards in the parking lot towing people’s cars who park there to go to the jail to visit inmates and conduct business.

Before everybody was praising the Y for allowing people to park there, solving the parking problem crises.

County commissioners and the sheriff blew that, but yet your paper won’t make a big deal of it, people having to pay for their cars being towed. It just doesn’t make any sense. %%% Editor’s Note: This is the first I’ve heard of the YMCA towing cars. %%% After seeing the taxes that are due from people in Guilford County and so on in the News & Record, some of them owing $30,000, I can see why our taxes keep going up. Maybe these people should be required to pay their taxes quarterly. Maybe then they can get them paid. Thank you. %%% This caller has a brief, yet poignant message to all you freedom haters and Socialist wannabes out there. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands. One nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all, including you.

(Continued on page 28)

and gives it to the federal government.

As a mother of four school age children, I am very concerned about the state of education in North Carolina, and especially in Guilford County. Our children should be taught in such a way that they may have the ability to take care of themselves and their future families without government assistance, be able to sort through all information and the whirlwind of views about that information to form their own opinions, and contribute to our communities through career success and intelligent participation in the political process.

Common core will not contribute to our children’s future in this way. Instead, it dumbs down education, makes math counterintuitive, takes away the joy of reading and abolishes the classics, as well as teaches outright historical revisionism.

This curriculum is so bad that experts from such revered places as Stanford and Harvard have decried it, and the countries of the world have rejected it as substandard.

This curriculum will not allow students to one day lead our state to the forefront of industry and economic growth and will ultimately lead to the next generation’s dependence on government for everything from basic needs to what to think.

I understand that it is an attractive thought to receive federal funds and yet be held to a lower standard. After all, schools which are currently failing will still be eligible for those monies. And if North

Carolina refuses to participate in common core our students will be held to an even higher standard in order to receive federal financial support. But isn’t that a good thing? Aren’t higher educational goals better? Isn’t that what every parent wants for their child, and what every politician promises?

Help us to raise the next generation with an outstanding education by guaranteeing our local say in our children’s future. Reject common core as the state curriculum.

Georgia Butcher

Furloughs not so bad Dear Editor, “Army Civilian Workers Face Furloughs ...

“Approximately 251,000 Department of the Army civilians expect to be notified soon if they will be furloughed up to 22 days starting in April.”

This is supposed to be a story of unintended consequences, but is it?

In my day, furlough was what we called a soldier’s vacation.

In reality, Obama and DOD have initiated a government civilian employee’s dream – the four-day workweek.

Have you heard any of the civilian employees complaining? Neither have I. The complaining will begin, if the furlough ever gets cancelled.

Mike Linnane

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Page 28

Thursday, March 21, 2013

The Rhinoceros Times Greensboro

Nontrepreneurs (Continued from page 1) of Carolina Steel on South Elm-Eugene Street.

At the council meeting the center, a nonprofit intended to serve as an incubator for emerging local businesses, asked for a one-year extension on the start date for repaying the loan. The Nussbaum Center was given 13 months to start repaying the loan after closing the New Market Tax Credit Transaction on which it was contingent in 2011.

The Nussbaum Center was scheduled to start repaying the loan January 2013.

Assistant City Manager Andy Scott said they were requesting the extension because of real estate circumstances surrounding their move.

The nonprofit had said their preference was to have two years to start repaying the loan when they received it in 2011.

Councilmember Nancy Vaughan questioned whether one of the group’s tenants, Italian furniture manufacturer Europeo, qualified as a local start-up business.

Europeo was incorporated in the US in January 2013, but has been headquartered in Italy for almost 40 years, according to the company website. The company is part of the Petrovich Group, associated with high-end home and office furnishing.

“I understand that they’ve recently rented some space to a company called Europeo, which is an Italian manufacturer that has three facilities over in Italy,” said Vaughan. “I have a real concern that this is not a start-up business.”

Vaughan said she thought that by renting to Europeo the Nussbaum Center was giving them a competitive advantage over local businesses. “I don’t think that the goal of the Nussbaum Center should be for renting space to companies that have already started up,” she said.

President and CEO of the Nussbaum Center Sam Funchess said the mission of the Nussbaum Center is to attract, house and advise start-up companies. “I don’t think this particular company falls outside the balance of that mission as it is a growth company and is emerging, certainly in the US,” he said.

He also said the cost was $16 per square

foot, which he characterized as “strong.”

“That is not a discount rate,” he said.

Councilmember Tony Wilkins asked if Europeo would be engaged in manufacturing or retail. Funchess said the company was for distribution and retail.

He also said the company plans to acquire warehouse space in the US, likely in High Point.

The motion to extend the start date for the Nussbaum Center’s loan payments passed 6 to 3. Mayor Robbie Perkins and Councilmembers Yvonne Johnson, Nancy Hoffmann, Dianne Bellamy-Small, Jim Kee and Zack Matheny voted in favor.

Councilmembers Marikay Abuzuaiter, Wilkins and Vaughan voted in opposition.

At the end of the meeting Wilkins brought the issue up again.

“Councilwoman Vaughan was correct about the retail portion of that,” he said. He said he wanted to be

Beep (Continued from page 27) %%% I’m calling about our mayor whose wife wants him to be charged with contempt.

Well, he needs to be. If he can’t manage his own personal problems, how in the world can he manage the city’s problems?

Not only should get his personal life straightened out, and paid up, maybe he needs to resign as being mayor. He has been the sorriest mayor. He’s a poor excuse for a mayor. He’s a poor excuse for being on the city council. Matter of fact, all the members of the city council need to be cleaned out in the next election.

They haven’t done a thing. They just set up there and think they’re cute. I think it’s a time we got a whole new nine-member city council and Perkins needs to straighten out his personal life, get his wife’s support going back, and act like he’s got some sense whether he does or not. %%% Hello this is to all the people calling about Mr. President Barack Obama. Y’all don’t know the man. You never knew him. Only thing you know he’s the president. And all of y’all got something to say. But y’all

clear that renting to Europeo didn’t conflict with the Nussbaum Center’s commitments to Greensboro.

City Attorney Mujeeb Shah-Khan said, “We’ll have a better answer when we’ve had the opportunity to look into it.”

According to the Nussbaum Center’s website, “The incubator is designed to support non-retail, new or emerging businesses. The Center provides modestly priced office and light manufacturing services such as business counseling, a receptionist, copier, fax, mail boxes and data entry.”

The council also approved the sale of roughly seven acres of South Elm Street Redevelopment area to South Elm Development Group LLC for $429,000 per acre as recommended by the Greensboro Redevelopment Commission.

Dawn Chaney, the chair of the Greensboro

Redevelopment Commission said, “This will enhance downtown Greensboro to a whole level or dimension that we probably can’t even conceive at this point.”

Terms of the agreement set a 12-year deadline for project completion after the Redevelopment Commission executes it.

The city is expected to receive $3 million over the life of the project, which will be used to repay the $3 million loan to the city by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The council unanimously approved the purchase of property at 2210, 2220 and 2222 High Point Road for parking for the Greensboro Coliseum Complex. The $1.4 million purchase was funded by $75,000 from the 2008 Transportation bond funds and $1.3 from the $24 million Coliseum Complex Improvement Plan approved by the council last year.

need to think about what God say. Let in January that as a result of Obamacare people live. Love somebody like you love our self-employed and independent market yourself. And leave people alone, because premiums will rise anywhere from 50 to you don’t know nothing about him. Why 100 percent. No wonder Obama embraced do you keep running your mouth? You the term Obamacare. I mean he can hardly know, it’s going to be what it’s going to call it the Affordable Care Act anymore, at be. Y’all got to realize God is in control least not with a straight face. This is how of everything. All things he’s in control of. we’re losing our freedom to the … %%% If you call yourself a Christian, zip your lip and sit back and let God take control Good afternoon. I was just observing like he’s been trying to do all the time. You the coverage of the ACC Tournament know what I mean. He knew who he want in Greensboro over the weekend for the next four days. And I am very curious. in the White House. It’s up to him. Bye. sudoku_354A %%% Young children are attending a basketball

by Peter Ritmeester/Presented

by Will Shortz tournament.

Are they exempt from When the statists, totalitarians, Created having to go to school during the ACC authoritarians, liberals and other closet fascists want to transform a free society Tournament? Is that a North Carolina rule into a totalitarian one, the biggest threat to or byline somehow? Because 9 really? I them are independent people who do not think anyone under 18, they should be in school. to 12th grade 3 9 Kindergarten 8 need government. If you can make a man 4 dependent upon you, it’s much easier to should be in school, not out and about in 5 2 the parking lot1of Greensboro ready to go enslave him than if he is an independent 3 sovereign citizen. That’s why Obama and watch some basketball, some hoops. Just 7 his fellow travelers are diligently trying to an observation from Your Yankee. %%% 4 provide food stamps to 47 million people.

1 Those 47 million are not going to rise up Editor’s Note: In North Carolina we 9 6 to have be1allowed against the government I can tell you that believe kids should much. And in today’s News & Record some fun. It’s sad that you don’t agree.

6 8 2 5 apparently it’s going to be the case beginning (Continued on page 35)

3 8

Crossword Solution

Sudoku Solution

Solution sudoku_354A

From last week’s issue W I T H 2O L D S T E P I N

B A A E D

A D A G I O

S A L A D E

P H O T O S H A V O R I P M O A L D E S A T A F T I E A H H R E A T A R I R B N Y O E A R

O N E S T F O O L R T Y S A O T S H R E I G K H 2O I R U S B

T R A C E R Y C N N A S H E S S H A

B O R A X

A M I N

R O A D S P T S E E C A R H S O S T H E T I T G U H H 2O P O P S N E S A B H E D A M U S I L

T A M A L W A L M B O A T T I H 2O F U S S E A Q L U G A A T I C S

U L I P M I S H A C H I N O P E T H R A M A I M I C N A T E D T S T E E S B R O N T M E L S C A T C H R L U U I B B L X L O A C U Z T L E O F R A S E O R K U U E Y

354A

Distributed by The New York Times syndicate

(c) PZZL.com

From last week’s issue

E L E V E N T H 2O U R

R E G A L I A

M O U T H 2O L E

A N N E S

B I G W F I R G E N E C O H 2O L R I N T S H

E N T I R E

N E S T E D

R O O K I E

S K O A L S

6 7 4 3 8 9 5 1 2

8 5 3 7 2 1 4 6 9

1 2 9 4 6 5 3 8 7

4 6 8 1 3 7 9 2 5

7 1 2 5 9 6 8 3 4

9 3 5 2 4 8 1 7 6

2 9 7 8 1 4 6 5 3

5 4 1 6 7 3 2 9 8

3 8 6 9 5 2 7 4 1

354A

The Rhinoceros Times Greensboro

Uncle Orson (Continued from page 12)

good. Santa Cruz Organic is a little sweeter and has a more pronounced apple flavor.

Earth Fare tastes just fine, but it’s a little bland and not as sweet by comparison.

If I had not had them side by side, I would have found nothing negative about either.

Earth Fare’s blandness is only by contrast; by itself, you wouldn’t think, “Ick. Bland.”

Likewise, Santa Cruz’s slightly more liquid texture is just fine. By itself, you wouldn’t think, “Ick. Runny.”

That’s the bad thing about taste tests.

Because of the contrast, both came off worse on some features. Whereas by themselves, both would have been absolutely fine. Very good, in fact.

Applesauce does not need sweeteners. It can, sometimes, use cinnamon – but you’re much better off putting on (or mixing in) your own cinnamon, especially if you use one of the stronger cinnamons from Savory Spice Shop. And I daresay that it’s the Earth Fare that would provide a better base for cinnamon applesauce.

Still, preference is preference, and when I shop again, what I’ll probably buy, for the way I use it, is the Santa Cruz Organic.

I didn’t compare price. Nothing has price tags anymore, just product codes, and I had already thrown away the receipt by the time I wrote this. If the price matters to you, taking whichever one is cheaper will leave you with a very good unsweetened organic applesauce.

....

Speaking of simple, with nothing added, I have a new favorite packaged popcorn.

At Fresh Market they had a point-of-sale display of Skinny Pop popcorn. Zero trans fat, cholesterol-free, 39 calories a cup.

All it has on the ingredient list is natural popcorn, sunflower oil and salt.

With such simplicity, it shouldn’t be so addictively delicious. Flavored popcorns often slather on the flavor so that your hands are coated with powders, oils and dyes.

Skinny Pop doesn’t have anything like that. Even the oil is so lightly applied that you don’t have to wash your hands before touching anything else. Or, at least, I didn’t. But my wife and I, who usually disdain anything but fresh-popped popcorn, finished the bowl during one hour-long TV show.

I happened to find Skinny Pop at Fresh Market, but the skinnypop.com website says that in Greensboro you can also buy it at Earth Fare, Harris Teeter, Walgreens, and Total Wine (which rather makes me question the name of the place).

....

A friend who is also a history buff mentioned that he had recently reread Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: A Narrative.

I felt a little stab of guilt: I had never read it at all. What kind of student of the Civil War was I? I was only a kid when I read Bruce

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Catton’s brilliant three-volume Army of the Potomac. The overarching narrative was Abraham Lincoln’s search for a commander who would actually lead the splendid Army of the Potomac to victory.

Without realizing it, when I wrote my own Ender’s Game I showed all the ways someone can be a bad military commander that I had learned from Catton’s books.

Since then, I had read many books about the Civil War, each of them focused on one commander, one campaign, one year, one theme.

What Foote created, however, was much more ambitious: A single long work in which he narrated every battle in the entire war.

Most histories – even good ones – perform a kind of triage, deciding what to leave in and what just doesn’t matter enough to be included. For instance, the entire Civil War west of the Mississippi is usually summarized briefly, referred to rather than recounted.

Not in Foote’s book. He gives a reasonably detailed account of every combat in which more than a handful of soldiers died, from the coast of Texas to a miserable little failure of a campaign in Florida, from the naval campaigns along the coasts and rivers to the slogging marches from Memphis to Selma, from Chattanooga to Vicksburg.

And he wrote it well enough that I continued to look forward to every chance I had to listen to the Audible.com recording.

No, he wasn’t a perfect writer. There were the normal range of petty annoyances – he didn’t understand that “harried” is not an exact synonym of “hindered,” for instance, so he said that the civilian onlookers who fled the First Manassas battlefield “harried” the Union Army’s retreat.

This conjures up the image of civilians darting their carriages at the flanks of the retreating soldiers, taking potshots at them as they passed. What he meant, however, was only that the civilian wagons and horses blocked the road here and there, making it hard to get the army and its equipment safely out of harm’s way and back toward Washington.

The most annoying thing about the book was that Foote apparently thought that repeating the names of certain generals too often was Bad Style. So he came up with nicknames for the ones he mentioned again and again.

Sometimes they were just obscure.

Did it matter and was I really required to remember who was from Ohio or Virginia?

Because a couple of generals were often called each other’s “fellow Ohioan,” and General Thomas’ endless nickname was “the Virginian,” which was unusual in the Union Army but very common in the war as a whole.

Most annoying was the fact that General Sherman was almost never mentioned without reference to his red hair. “The redhaired general” may have been used more often than his name.

Sheridan was “the bandy-legged” general, but he didn’t become important until much later in the war, so the repetition

didn’t become so nauseating. But there came a point where I was saying “redhaired general” along with the narrator in a sing-song voice.

Alas, you see, Foote was completely wrong about style. Repeating the name of a general is exactly what good style requires.

The name is the label, and it doesn’t feel repetitive because that’s the guy you’re talking about.

But his replacement monickers became obtrusive and annoying precisely because they were not the names, so each time he used a replacement I had to register – oh, that means Sherman; oh, that means Pemberton; oh, that means Sheridan.

Was Sherman’s red hair really the most important thing about him? What about the fact that he understood the whole picture of the war better than anyone else, right from the start? How about “clear-thinking general”?

Aw, what the heck. Shelby Foote died back in 2005 (he was 88) so he’s not going to learn anything from my comments.

What matters is that even with a few annoyances the book is extremely well written. To keep such a complicated narrative clear and alive, with as many as six or seven theaters of combat at any one time, is an astonishing achievement.

There’s a reason most historians skip the “unimportant” battles – because it’s easy to lose the thread of one narrative while you cover another. But Foote balanced it all very delicately, making sure that we knew which events were happening at the same time.

I’ve heard Foote criticized for being too much in favor of one side or the other. That, at least, is nonsense. Foote’s Civil War is a paragon of balance. He gives every commander and both presidents, as well as many politicians, their due. He worships no one – he’s as candid about Lee’s flaws (which were few, but real) as Grant’s.

If he spends more time on Jefferson Davis’ life after the end of the war than Lincoln’s, perhaps that’s because Davis had a life after the war.

Foote doesn’t try to cover Reconstruction – there had to be some boundaries to the book – but he does refer to the process caustically.

If there’s one group he dislikes, it’s the radical Republicans, the liberals of the day, who were determined to punish the South for causing the war because of their stubborn insistence on keeping slaves.

But then, he spends plenty of time on the useless absurdities of diehards among the Confederate Congress – the kind of people who would rather lose the war because of upholding a principle than win it because they compromised even slightly.

The miracle wrought by both Lincoln and Davis was that they managed to wage war while being tugged this way and that (or jabbed and prodded) by self-righteous or ambitious idiots of every stripe.

Honest Abe had a tendency to make promises that he already planned not to keep – that’s documented and in developing our picture of Lincoln it’s good to keep in mind. He had a way of telling the general

Page 29

he had already decided to fire, “I’ll stand by you no matter what.”

It was a necessary lie, in most cases – if they knew they were on the way out, they might do something crazy or subversive to the cause. But it does jar a little.

At the same time, Foote does love to quote the people who criticized Lincoln as an idiot – often for the very things that (Continued on page 31)

Yost

(Continued from page 14)

continue replaying the tournament until Duke does win as God intended.

(4) The ACC should sue Maryland for $100 million or $200 million for breach of contract or alienation of affection or whatever you can sue them for. The ACC is very rich and has tons of lawyers who can certainly think of some grounds to sue Maryland. The lawyers can tell the Terps that they have to stay in the ACC or pay the piper.

(5) Tell Notre Dame, Syracuse and Pittsburg, who are now set to join the league, that we are sorry but we’ve decided not to let them in after all. We should tell them that the ACC is full right now.

I think if they take my recommendations then the ACC can be saved.

If not – well then, we may all soon be saying … R.I.P, ACC, R.I.P.

Johnny R. Poplin, CPA Has opened an office at 2121 Eastchester Dr., Suite 109 High Point, NC 27265 (Spring Tree Office Park) Phone 336-885-0628 jpoplin@triad.rr.com Providing accounting and tax services to individuals and small businesses

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Page 30

Thursday, March 21, 2013

The Rhinoceros Times Greensboro

The New York Times Crossword Puzzle

No. 0317

ANY PUN FOR TENNIS? By J.R. Leopold / Edited by Will Shortz

Across

1 Polite response to “Thank you”

9 Classic verse that begins “Ah, broken is the golden bowl!”

15 Kafka or Liszt

2 0 Wr i t t e n j u s t i f i c a t i o n 21 Part of a doubleheader

22 Esther of “Good Ti m e s ”

2 3 Te n n i s c l i n i c focusing on drop shot skills?

25 More competent 26 Haunted house sound

2 7 “ I t ’s a Wo n d e r f u l Life” cabdriver 28 Meter reader?

30 Architect Saarinen 3 1 “ D o n ’t g e t a l l worked up!”

3 2 Yo u n g a c t o r S m i t h 33 Cutter

34 Churchill, e.g.

36 Pigs

RELEASE DATE: 3/24/2013

38 Coaches who help you use your wrist in shots?

4 2 E d . ’s p i l e

45 Spiny ___ 46 Fleece

48 Chooses not to participate

4 9 Te n n i s p l a y e r s w h o clown around?

For any three answers, call from a touch-tone phone: 1-900-285-5656, $1.49 each minute; or, with a credit card, 1-800814-5554.

52 “One can only ___ much”

5 3 B l a c k B e r r y, e . g . , i n brief 54 Having freedom of tempo 55 Illumination unit

5 6 Ye a r t h a t “ S h r e k ” and “A Beautiful Mind” came out 58 Putter (along) 60 “The fix ___” 6 1 “ H a v e n ’t t h e foggiest”

64 Photo developing compound

6 7 “ F o r a r i g h t y, y o u hit the ball pretty well on your left side,” and others?

73 Allay

74 Destroy

75 In ___ form

76 Source of the line “They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind” 7 9 P a r t o f R . R . : A b b r.

81 “___ in cat”

8 2 Yo u m i g h t s e t o n e out for a cat 84 Due follower

8 5 P a r t o f R . S . V. P. 8 8 L i n e j u d g e ’s mission?

1 0 0 C a p t a i n H o o k ’s alma mater

101 Ready follower?

102 Bit of voodoo

1 0 4 Te c h r e l e a s e o f 2010 108 Mex. miss

11 0 O f t w o m i n d s

13 Celebrity

14 Art Deco master 1 5 M o n k ’s t i t l e

1 6 B a r b i e ’s l a s t n a m e 17 Mistakenly hitting into the doubles area during a singles match?

11 2 A u t h o r o f a 1 7 1 9 literary sensation

18 Pirate, e.g., for short

11 4 P l a n c h e t t e h o l d e r

24 Biloxi-toB i r m i n g h a m d i r.

11 3 Tr a n s a m e r i c a Pyramid feature

19 One goes after it

11 6 L u k e S k y w a l k e r ’s volley?

29 Sporty car features

11 9 H i t s i n g l e - p l a y e r game of the 1980s

120 Goes over the top, in a way 121 Does again

122 It falls between 3760 and 3761 on the Jewish calendar 123 Housekeeping

124 Broad-minded Down

1 Vi c e p r e s i d e n t J o h n ___ Garner 2 Setting for a 1935 Marx Brothers comedy

3 P u b l i c r a d i o o ff e r i n g s 4 Ever

32 Middle brother in a 2000s pop trio 33 Jerk

35 Epithet for Nadya Suleman 37 Riga resident

38 Spanish irregular verb 39 Ski-___

40 Like some awakenings

41 Neither raise nor fold 42 Sloppy fast-food sandwich

43 “Semper Fidelis” composer 4 4 _ _ _ B a y, f o r m e r U.S. base in the Philippines

6 Cabinet dept.

46 Eliza Doolittle, for one

93 Canadian natives

8 Scottish landowners

5 0 Ve x

9 5 “ A l e x a n d e r ’s Feast,” e.g.

10 Lightish blade

91 Commercial law firm specialty 94 Mastery

96 “Nothing” and “aught”?

9 8 P a r t o f R . S . V. P.

Facebook

(Continued from page 8)

much thought. I do pray for you to walk in the truth of your faith. I didn’t attack you or anyone else...I simply expressed my frustration with the math...anyone that can do simple math would. Have a restful, peaceful nite and may God truly bless you...Cindy.” (Ellipses in original).

Alexander’s complaint lists his ownership of two companies, FDH Decorative Fabrics and, as the complaint describes it, the “aptly named” Latimer Alexander Inc., which he recently sold.

“He built tremendous value in his namesake brand and his company,” the complaint states. “The Plaintiff started this business without having ever received a college education, and without stealing, cheating, or using untoward measures.”

Alexander’s complaint goes on to list other accomplishments aimed at supporting his good name, from his five terms on the City Council to a claim that, over 30 years, Alexander has donated more than 85 gallons of blood to the Red Cross. “This is not a typo,” the complaint states after that

5 Swiped

7 Pleasant

9 Modern kind of name 11 H o m e o f t h e Shoshone Mtns.

1 2 I t ’s h i g h e r t h a n a n ace

47 Subjected to voodoo 51 White Castle o ff e r i n g s

52 Barely remembered days of old 57 Zoo department

59 Batting champ John

number.

The brief Moore prepared for Alexander claims that Davis’ post, as represented in the complaint, is “libel per se.” Libel per se is a category of untrue defamatory statements that are considered libelous on their face. Statements that are libelous per se, if publication of them is proved, are grounds for a claim without the plaintiff having to prove damages – such as having lost money as a result of the statements.

In North Carolina, the categories of published statements that are considered libel per se are untrue statements that a person has committed an “infamous crime”; that a person has an infectious disease – usually a venereal disease; that tends to impeach a person in that person’s trade or profession; or that otherwise subjects the person to “ridicule, contempt or disgrace.”

Alexander is claiming that Davis’ post, as represented in the complaint, is defamatory under the categories of untruthfully accusing a person of an “infamous crime” and impeaching a person in his trade or profession. He claims that the statements in her post are untrue.

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89 D.D.E. opponent 9 0 F r a n k i e Va l l i s a n g in it

“The allegations clearly state that the Plaintiff, ‘stole to start [his] business,’ Alexander’s complaint states. “This is a clear impeachment of the Plaintiff in his ‘trade or profession.’”

Moore said in an interview that Alexander’s suit was filed largely because Alexander’s personal name is also the name of the company he recently sold, and that brand was the prime asset for which his company was bought.

“His name was his brand,” Moore said.

“The company was more interested in his name than anything else.”

Moore said that Davis’ statements, as claimed, might have been an incorrect version of something Alexander said from the dais as a councilmember.

“I don’t know exactly what was said by him,” Moore said. “Whatever he said was clearly meant to be a joke. Latimer has a self-deprecating sense of humor.

Somehow, that didn’t get through to her.”

In High Point, political disputes frequently play out in comments posted on newspaper websites, Facebook pages and blogs, and their rhetoric is frequently

92 1958 hit with the l i n e “ Yi p y i p y i p yip yip yip yip yip” 9 3 J e ff e r s o n ’s v i c e president 97 Response to “I bet y o u w o n ’t ” 98 It can be gross 99 Container on a c o u n t e r, m a y b e 102 Perfume 103 Mysterious blip 105 Michelangelo masterpiece

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heated.

Even if a judge finds Davis’ claimed statements libelous, the judge might not take their presence on a Facebook page terribly seriously. For example, there is nothing in Alexander’s complaint that claims, much less proves, that anyone but Davis and Alexander saw the posts.

Alexander claims that Davis has 88 “friends” on Facebook. As of Sunday, March 17, Davis’ Facebook page showed her having 86 friends.

Alexander’s complaint states that many people other than Davis’ “Facebook friends” can see the posts, but does not attempt to prove that any have done so.

If a judge were to find the claimed statements libelous, the judge could grant Alexander his $10,000 – or $1, or nothing.

Another thing judges consider before assessing damages in libel cases is the plaintiff’s ability to respond to the statements that are considered libelous.

Alexander, a longtime politician and businessmen, could have disproven Davis’ statements, if untrue, on her Facebook page, (Continued on next page)

The Rhinoceros Times Greensboro

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Page 31

Uncle Orson (Continued from page 29) prove him, from our perspective, to have been brilliant. It’s one of the best things in the book, to see how blind people are to greatness in their own time.

And we’re left with a yearning for Lincoln’s life to have been prolonged in order to use his enormous personal prestige to have a more kindly approach to the beaten South than was actually used.

Then again, if Lincoln had lived, the struggle with the radical Republicans might have gone badly – the impeachment of Andrew Johnson might have been the impeachment of Abraham Lincoln, and for precisely the same reasons.

No-Primary (Continued from page 8)

A bigger issue was the fact that adding primaries to City Council elections will make it harder for Sims, High Point’s first black mayor, to get reelected. That, combined with the racial-breakdown votes, made it likely that the US Department of Justice would scrutinize the election changes closely. The Justice Department must approve the changes under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, unless the US Supreme Court overturns Section 5.

The Supreme Court in February heard oral arguments in a challenge to Section 5, which allows the Justice Department to review election changes in states and counties with a history of racial discrimination in voting. The court is expected to issue a decision this summer.

Councilmember Judy Mendenhall made a motion to adopt the request for a local bill as presented by Carlyle.

That set off Douglas, who said that the request for a local bill this year was “steamrollered in.”

“I didn’t agree with the primary process,” Douglas said. “I thought the plurality vote was sufficient.”

Douglas’ statement enraged Smothers, who gave him the evil eye. She said, “Why didn’t you make that motion, Mr. Douglas?”

Douglas stared back at Smothers as if

Facebook

(Continued from previous page)

in newspaper articles, or on Alexander’s own websites.

Alexander said he did not want to discuss the lawsuit.

“Things like that will play themselves out,” he said. “I’ll let it play itself out.”

The civil summons delivered to Davis gives her 30 days to provide a written response to Alexander or Moore.

Moore said he had the summons mailed to Davis rather than having it served on her because he didn’t want to be malicious. He said, “I didn’t want the sheriff coming into her house.”

9On the other hand, it’s hard to imagine Lincoln ever letting himself get maneuvered into the awkward corners that Johnson was constantly getting into.

What-ifs make bad history – but entertaining fiction. Let me just say that even though Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: A Narrative is thousands of pages long, it’s worth reading it – or listening to it.

If there’s ever been a book that proved the benefit of downloading audiobooks into convenient portable players, it’s this one. I don’t know if I would have stuck to it, reading it at night before going to sleep.

But letting it be read to me as I ran my errands and drove from place to place and

he considered her a little dim. The votes were not there to support keeping the noprimary plurality system.

“If you and two other members of the council had voted for it, it would be in now,” Smothers told Douglas. “I’m glad now that you can support it.”

The City Council voted unanimously to approve the request for a local bill allowing the referendum to be placed on the general election ballot.

If the referendum fails, the terms of those elected in 2014 would continue to be two years, and the plurality election method would remain in place. If the referendum passes, the bill would specify that the terms of those elected in 2014 would last three years until the November 2017 election.

Rumors

exercised and worked in the yard – well, those thousands of pages passed by in less than a month.

I felt, at the end, as if I really did grasp the whole war for the first time. I was keenly aware of how much detail even Foote was leaving out, having just read 1861: the Civil War Awakening, Adam Goodheart’s wonderfully detailed and anecdotal account of the first year of the war.

Even with thousands of pages to work with, Foote couldn’t include everything.

But his choices were so excellent, his treatment of every event and topic so thorough, that at the end you really do feel as if you had seen everything.

There is no better grounding in the history of the seminal event in American history.

And as we live through another time of irrational hatreds and attempts by two opposing sides to compel obedience to their contradictory visions, it is a sobering reminder that win or lose, such singleminded unwillingness to admit that the other side has even a shred of merit to their claims leads nowhere worthwhile.

Slavery could have been ended far more cheaply and without the loss of a single life if the government has simply bought all the slaves at par and then freed them. It would have been a bargain in every way.

Instead, it took more than a million casualties, including more than a half million deaths, and untold millions of dollars in expenses and destruction, to determine that we would be one country, without slavery.

And even with that decision, blacks were soon returned to a bondage that was in some ways even more repressive, since they lived for decades in constant fear of random acts

of murder, with constant daily humiliations that were hardly distinguishable from the conditions of slavery on the worst plantations.

It was as if all the kindly owners were removed, and only the cruelest were left to exercise random authority over all black people.

Yet the war did not resolve nothing.

Even if it took nearly another century to complete the work begun then, it eventually was completed, even if it profits some today to pretend that it was not. Freedom finally came, along with freedom’s price: inequalities resulting from the choices that free people make.

It’s simply true that you can’t have both freedom and absolute equality. The latter cannot be achieved anyway, but all attempts to approach it are made at the expense of the ability to choose and the responsibility of living with the consequences.

The soldiers and officers of the Civil War faced the consequences of their choices – the whole nation did. And perhaps we learned this one lesson: Never again.

But since today we don’t teach history to our children, except a highly politicized version that assigns blame incoherently in order to serve contemporary political ends, the danger is that the bitter lesson of the Civil War might yet have to be learned again.

I hope not. But there are those whose need to compel and punish others has no limits; if they are allowed to have their way, all will pay for it.

Take on the burden of this book; in the end, it will so enlighten you or re-enlighten you that its very weight and length will become part of what you liked best about it.

(Continued from page 4) downtown property by saying that she didn’t know she had to pay because they didn’t send her a bill. Really? At the grocery store do you think Nancy just wheels her cart right out the door if there isn’t a cashier there to tell her she has to pay? I suppose at restaurants if the bill doesn’t come with the meal she just gets up and leaves because she doesn’t know any better. It is no wonder that she is known as the silent member of the City Council. She follows the saying by President Abraham Lincoln, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”

--City Manager Denise Roth sent a memo to city councilmembers about the article in last week’s Rhino about public records requests.

Roth has evidently greatly revised the policy from the earlier plan that we wrote about, which has every public records request being signed off on by the city manager’s office, legal or the police.

That is what the plan stated, but that is not true, however. What is true is that you cannot add an employee and several layers of red tape and expect things to move along more quickly. It looks like we are going to (Continued on page 33)

The New York Times Hyper-Sudoku sudoku_354B

Created by Peter Ritmeester/Presented by Will Shortz

3 9

8 5

4 6

1 3 2 9 1

7

2

2 8

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7 354B

Distributed by The New York Times syndicate

Solution sudoku_354B

PAGE CJ16 Page 32

MARCH 2013 | CAROLINA JOURNAL The Rhinoceros Times Greensboro

Thursday, March 21, 2013 P arting SHot

Battle of Guilford Courthouse Reenactment Order of The h e t L f o o b r e l o d l r l y O P e Loblolly Pine ine h T (a CJ Parody)

By CJ staff

T

is hereby bestowed upon

RALEIGH

he Order of the Long Leaf Pine, once a rare and prestigious award, has been so devalued by governors in the past decade that seemingly the only requirements are a pulse and the ability to give generously to campaign funds.

That being the case, the Carolina Journal Parting Shot staff has created a more exclusive award, The Order of the Loblolly Pine.

The award was named in honor of the tree that also is known as the North Carolina Pine, and which has provided jobs to the pulp and paper industry for decades.

A mere 70,000 of the awards are being made available in this month’s CJ, and no more will be created. Simply print your name in the award certificate at right, date it, cut along the dotted line, and frame or laminate it for posterity.

Impress your friends and neighbors, and feel comfort in the fact that only you and 69,999 others can be members of this select order. CJ

by the Carolina Journal Parting Shot staff for believing that a purely ceremonial award, suitable for framing, enhances the bestowee’s self-esteem, impresses business associates, and serves as a substitute for any and all similar honorary awards which the bestowee may have been denied.

Know ye that the above-named recipient enjoys all the honors, rights, privileges, responsibilities, and ridicule thereunto appertaining.

Be it known that the Great Seal of Parting Shot was affixed, and this worthy award conferred by my hand, on this date, ______________.

Photos by Sandy Groover

E. Geaux Stroker,Awards Chairman

The John Locke Foundation thanks the Event Sponsors who helped make our 23rd Anniversary Gala a success Title Sponsor

Reynolds American International

Executive Sponsors BB&T Blue Cross Blue Shield of N.C. CaptiveAire K.P.B. Corporation New Breed Logistics Inc.

Partner Sponsors

Christine Mele Baker and Marlene Mitchell Duke Energy DesignHammer Triangle Securities Wealth Management

Entrepreneur Sponsors Coca-Cola Bottling Co., Consolidated Carolina Strategy Group Hicks and Associates

(A financial advisory practice of Ameriprise Financial Services, Inc.)

Metro Productions NC Beer & Wine Wholesalers Parker Poe Adams & Bernstein, L.L. P. Golden Corral Corporation Hollingsworth, Avent, Averre & Purvis, PA McGuire Woods Consulting Hackley Endowment for the Study of Capitalism and Free Enterprise at Fayetteville State University Jason Deans and Associates Wells Fargo

The John Locke Foundation, 200 W. Morgan St., Suite 200, Raleigh, NC 27601 • (919) 828-3863

The Rhinoceros Times Greensboro

ACC

(Continued from page 2) Brown also said that because this was Maryland’s last tournament that he was afraid the crowd might boo the players, but if any of that happened it was certainly isolated to a few people. The fans may have been disappointed that Maryland was leaving but they didn’t take it out on the players, who had absolutely nothing to do with it. It’s a tribute to the ACC that Maryland is only the second team to leave.

Other conferences seem to have teams jump in and out, but not the ACC. I think Maryland may already regret leaving. I know some of the fans do.

I don’t know about people booing Maryland, but on Saturday, I was pulling as hard as you can pull for Carolina on press row, where it is considered in poor taste to pull for one team. I had mixed feelings about the game going in. Being a Duke grad, my natural tendency is to root against Carolina. But I grew up as a Carolina fan.

Both of my parents went to Carolina, and two of my grandparents met in grad school at Carolina, so I have good reason to pull for Carolina when they aren’t playing Duke. Maryland knocked Duke out of the tournament so it makes Duke look a little better if Maryland beats Carolina, but Saturday before the game even started I was rooting hard for Carolina because I had the loudest, most obnoxious Maryland fan I have ever heard sitting right behind me. He never shut up, or even seemed to breath. When the ball boys came out on the court during a 30-second timeout when absolutely nothing was going on he was yelling so loudly both of them looked up to see what it was.

Writing the words can’t do them justice.

Just imagine someone yelling as loudly as they can in your ear, without letting up, for 30 or 40 minutes. Here’s one spiel: “Keep him, baby. Block him, Nick. Block him, Nick. Stay on the ground and play.” One phrase that he fell back on when he wasn’t giving advice about passing, shooting, blocking out, dribbling, rebounding or getting back on defense, was “Play it, baby.

Play it, baby.”

I noticed a guy in front of me had his finger in his ear and I tried that for a while.

It helped. But I really started pulling for Carolina when I realized the Maryland fan would quiet down if Carolina got up by close to 10.

I talked to some sports writers who agreed that fan belongs in a class by himself for volume and verbosity.

One of the great things for me about going to the ACC is getting to sit around and listen to the conversations in the press room. On Sunday there was a discussion about the last ACC tournament finals to be played on a Saturday. It was evidently between 1978 and 1981. Everyone in the discussion knew who the teams were in those finals like it was their mother’s maiden name. I know that there was a presidential election in 1980 and Ronald Reagan beat the pants off Jimmy Carter, and given about 20 guesses I could probably come up with the two teams in the finals of the ACC

Thursday, March 21, 2013

tournament that year, or maybe 30 guesses.

To have that kind of information at the tip of my fingertips is unimaginable to me, but the four or five people in the discussion had no doubts. The only question was which year was the last for the Saturday final.

During half time of the Miami-Carolina finals all I heard in the press room were people talking about what a great game it was. One guy said, “I haven’t seen better basketball this year.” Another one said, “That was the most fun 20 minutes of basketball I’ve seen all year.” It’s important to remember that these are guys that have been to three or four games a week since November.

Another discussion among sportswriters was that because of the NCAA brackets being announced Sunday that two hours after the ACC finals nobody would care who won. Of course, that could be said about most of the things we do in life, but most of us don’t have 23,000 people watching us do them.

It is amazing how hard those sports reporters work. After the finals I went in to watch Roy Williams be interviewed. He couldn’t say enough nice things about his team. I talked to a few people, sent a few emails, and then headed out to the parking lot. By the time I got out there the police directing traffic were long gone and the Coliseum parking lot was mostly emptied out, except for media parking, and that was mostly full. Although I was one of the last people to leave the Coliseum I was among the first of the so-called working press.

When I left Saturday night, News & Record Sports Editor Ed Hardin was sitting at his desk in the press room typing away at his laptop. When I arrived for the finals on Sunday afternoon he was in exactly the same position, and the only way that I could be sure that he hadn’t been there all night was that he had on a different tie.

If being a sports editor means you have to wear ties to things like basketball tournaments, I think I’m fortunate I chose a different career path. Also, when I did write sports, covering football I would get in trouble for writing things like, “He gamboled down the sidelines for a 30 yard gain.” I think gamboled is a perfectly good word, but my editor didn’t like it.

Richard Beard is one of those people who I seem to bump into all the time. He’s active in the community and we wind up at a lot of the same events. Still, I was a little surprised to look up during the finals of the ACC tournament and see Beard out on center court surrounded by the Miami cheerleaders. He had a huge check for $50,000 for a scholarship fund, and now we know how much it costs to get to center court during the finals of the ACC tournament. When I asked him about it after game, Beard said he just went where he was told and said, “How much was that check for anyway?” Everybody in the Coliseum could see it on the court or on the scoreboard except Beard.

Friday I didn’t think I was going to get to the Coliseum. I left downtown not realizing that Lee Street was still blocked off because of the fire, and then I tried to

be clever and cut down Oakland Avenue, which was also blocked off, so I wisely followed the lead of a pickup truck and retraced my route back to Tate Street and Spring Garden Street. I saw the cars that I had been behind on that Oakland detour still trying to get on to Spring Garden as I made my way by in bumper-to-bumper traffic. I went down to Chapman Street to go to the Coliseum and found out that the city didn’t want me to do that. Chapman was blocked off at Lee Street where it turns into Coliseum Drive so I had to turn right and then I pulled into the North Parking Lot used by the Diamond Club.

And that is where I experienced what so many people experience when they come to the ACC tournament at the Greensboro Coliseum – incredibly nice, helpful people.

The woman in charge of the lot didn’t yell at me for pulling into the lot when I clearly didn’t have the proper pass, but instead she helped me figure out where I was supposed to be and then called the guard at the lot where I should have gone and told him I was on my way. She also told me how to take a short cut to get there.

And then it got better. The guard at the media entrance let me park for a minute while I ran in and got my credentials and parking pass. While I was inside he walked up and opened the gate so I could get into the parking lot where I was supposed to be without having to go back out into traffic.

He didn’t have to do that, and the first guard didn’t have to call ahead and pave

Page 33

the way.

But that is how things are run at the Greensboro Coliseum, and it’s why some coaches always want to come back to Greensboro.

Rumors (Continued from page 33) go back to the bad old days when a simple public records request took weeks. So expect to be reading a lot about problems getting public record in the future. Only by shedding light on the problem can we hope to get anybody’s attention. Fortunately both Councilmembers Nancy Vaughan and Marikay Abuzuaiter have said they don’t like the way the city staff appears to be going.

--Special thanks this week to Joseph Daniels of the Carolina Peacemaker who provided us with our front-page photo and some shots in our ACC spread. We are not sports photographers and Joe is, which makes a world of difference in the quality of the photos.

--The Greensboro City Council claims to be business friendly, but nothing could be further from the truth for small businesses.

(Continued on page 35)

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The Rhinoceros Times Greensboro

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The Rhinoceros Times Greensboro

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Page 35

Beep (Continued from page 28) %%% I am calling in regards to voter identification.

I am in favor of it. It’s not a discrimination issue, because it would be across the board.

Everybody would have to have an ID to prove they’re eligible to vote and who they are. And I really think it would cut down on fraud. So, if people think it’s a discrimination issue, it is not. Because everybody would have to have one, or they can’t vote. It would cut down on fraud and people voting illegally. But the people who are legitimate, they can continue to vote, and it would be nondiscrimination issue.

%%% Talking about taking anger management for buying ammo. You know I think they really should make it enforceable that if you get a marriage license you should take anger management. And, also, when you get a driver’s license take the anger management for road rage, you know, and let’s get it all together now. This is a country that we are just going crazy. I don’t know what in the world is going on. By the way, Bo Dog has still got his entourage, and his limousines, and he’s OK. He’s only got $106,000 a year, you know, to take care of him. %%%

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Page 36

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Manager (Continued from page 1) end of the selection process, and they said that, if the Republican commissioners had stuck with the original scoring system, the other finalist would have been chosen as the next Guilford County manager.

The Republican commissioners, on the other hand, say that the original scoring method was never supposed to be used as the last word for choosing the manager.

When the board interviewed candidates earlier this year, the nine commissioners asked each of the candidates the same 10 questions. Commissioners ranked each candidate’s answers on a scale of 1 to 10.

Those score sheets were turned over to interim Guilford County Manager/ Assistant Manager/ Human Resources Director Sharisse Fuller, and Fuller or her staff tallied those results. That process gave an average score for each candidate – out of a possible high score of 100 – and, at the start of the process, that ranking was used to decide which candidates got further consideration.

However, when the Board of Commissioners was down to choosing between the two finalists, the runnerup apparently had a numerical ranking higher than Lawing’s. Despite that, the five Republican commissioners decided to

The Rhinoceros Times Greensboro

make Lawing the offer.

Commissioner Hank Henning said he considers the current complaints by the Democratic commissioners unfounded since there was never any question that, in the end, the decision would come down to a vote of the Board of Commissioners.

Henning said that, while methods such as a numerical ranking of candidates may be a useful tool in helping the board decide, some commissioners were mistaken to presume the board would rely on a raw numerical count to make its final decision.

Henning said that, if the board just went by that scoring method, a minority of Democratic commissioners could

have determined the outcome simply by assigning high scores to the answers of the candidate they liked and low scores to the one they knew the Republican’s preferred.

According to Henning, in the end, the choice of a new county manager comes down purely and simply to the will of the majority of the board.

“It’s the same way the county commissioners vote on a budget,” Henning said. “Five commissioners may vote for it, and you don’t go with the choice of the other four just because they have more intensity.”

He also said each commissioner had his (Continued on next page))

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The Rhinoceros Times Greensboro

Manager (Continued from previous page) or her own subjective “baseline” for the candidates, so it wouldn’t have been fair to just go by a raw score.

“One commissioner might have five as the baseline and another might have nine,” he said. “What’s fair about that?”

Henning stressed that it comes down to how five or more commissioners choose to vote.

“It doesn’t matter how many points you have,” Henning said. “We are a ninemember board that makes decisions with five or more votes; it shouldn’t be based on arbitrary numbers.”

Commissioner Carolyn Coleman, a Democrat, has made her dissatisfaction with the selection process known both publicly and in closed session. After the Board of Commissioners selection of Lawing, she said she was disappointed that decision, like many other board decisions recently, had fallen along straight party lines.

Coleman said that, when the three new Republican commissioners joined the board in December, they promised to work with the Democrats in a bipartisan way, but she added that the board is now resorting to politics as usual with Democrats on one side and Republicans on the other.

Coleman said that was true even when it came to something as simple as a recent dispute over whether or not the commissioners should continue to have their individual names on signs in front of their parking spaces in the lot beneath the Old Guilford County Court House. When the board did away with individual spaces, however, it made an exception for Coleman and so now it is she, not a Republican, who is the only commissioner with her own parking place.

With the selection of the county manager also coming down to party lines, Coleman said it’s clearly on both big and small issues that the board is split along party lines.

Coleman said two weeks ago that she wouldn’t vote to approve Lawing as manager, and Commissioner Bruce Davis, also a Democrat, sounded recently as though he wouldn’t vote for Lawing either.

In fact, there’s reason to think the new manager might get the job on a thin 5-to-4 vote by the board – though, once the writing is on the wall, Democratic Commissioners Coleman, Davis, Kay Cashion and Ray Trapp might vote to hire Lawing so that he starts off with a strong show of support.

Even former Commissioner Skip Alston, who was chairman of the board for four years in a row before Commissioner Linda Shaw took that job in December, said he had questions about Lawing.

“He doesn’t have many minorities in his administration,” said Alston, who added that he knows Lawing.

Alston made no comment about the kind of job Lawing was doing, just a comment about the skin color of those who work for him.

Shaw said this week that she’s been encouraging the board to show unified

Thursday, March 21, 2013

support for the next manager in the vote, and Shaw said she’s still optimistic that at least some of the Democratic commissioners will come around in the end.

On a positive note, while the Democratic commissioners have said they support another candidate, all of them also have said that they’re willing to work with him to see that he’s a success as manager.

Shaw said The Rhinoceros Times hurt the cause of the Republicans on the board by printing the name of the candidate in the Thursday, March 14 edition of the paper.

She said she was “disappointed” The Rhino would make known the name against the wishes of the board. It is not known if Shaw is also disappointed that Starbucks employees have been selling Starbucks coffee to the public.

Shaw was at a committee meeting on Thursday morning, March 14, right after that issue of The Rhino Times hit the streets, and Shaw discussed the story at the start of the committee meeting.

Shaw had just heard the news shortly before she arrived at that meeting.

“I’m a little dazed,” she told Board of Education members and fellow commissioners at the committee meeting.

Shaw said this week that Lawing hadn’t informed his board or his staff of the opportunity in Guilford County and so Brunswick County officials were taken off guard by the story in The Rhino Times.

That may be true, however, last summer Lawing was a finalist to take the job with Horry County, South Carolina – home of Myrtle Beach – as that county’s top administrator, and it was public knowledge at that time that he might take that job.

Horry County commissioners chose another candidate, but since then it has been well known that Lawing was looking to jump to a larger county.

Guilford County, with over 480,000 residents, is roughly four-and-a-half times the size of coastal Brunswick County, whose county seat of Bolivia has a population that is less than the attendance of an average Schmoozefest.

Guilford County Commissioner Alan Branson said this week that he wishes The Rhinoceros Times had included a profile of the runner-up candidate along side of the information about Lawing so that county residents could have gotten a better idea of how the two candidates compared.

Branson said that, if that had happened, readers would no doubt have come to understand the virtues of Lawing over the other top contender for the job.

When Branson was asked the name of the runner-up so that The Rhinoceros Times could look into the matter, Branson said he would not reveal the name.

Some details about the runnerup candidate have surfaced in recent weeks. He is a black man who resides in a neighboring state and he’s currently between jobs with local governments. One source said that the candidate had been doing consulting work and had a history of moving relatively quickly from one local government to another.

That gave him experience in running governments from different parts of the country. However, some Guilford County commissioners were turned off by the fact that he appeared to be such a journeyman administrator.

Lawing, 52, has been Brunswick’s county manager since 2001. He seems to be highly regarded in Brunswick County, and in December a departing longtime commissioner gave Lawing much of the credit for the economic growth that county has experienced in the last decade.

Before taking the Brunswick County job 12 years ago, Lawing worked as the top administrator of three cities in South Carolina: Bishopville, Bennettsville and Conway, Lawing lives in Supply, North Carolina, at the intersection of US 17 and NC 211 on the Lockwoods Folly River in Brunswick County.

One source said that a contract had been finalized last week and sent from Guilford County to Lawing.

Lawing is already one of the highest paid county managers in the state, making $175,862 a year. In Guilford County, he’s expected to make about $183,000 annually when a car allowance is added in.

Lawing is expected to be approved by the Guilford County Board of Commissioners at the Thursday, March 21 meeting. The agenda for that meeting calls for the board to hold a closed session at the end to discuss a “personnel matter.” It’s expected that,

Page 37

after the closed session, the commissioners will come back into open session and name Lawing as the new county manager.

One source said Lawing is expected to begin working for Guilford County on Monday, May 6. That means Lawing may not have any significant contribution to the manager’s proposed 2013-2014 budget, which will be presented to the Board of Commissioners on May 16.

According to Guilford County Budget Director Mike Halford, county staff needs one or two weeks prior to that date to make final revisions and corrections, and print out copies for the commissioners and the media.

Once the Board of Commissioners gets the proposed budget from the county manager, the board will make its changes, and the 2013-2014 budget could be passed sometime in early June, or even early July.

However, in some years a budget hasn’t been approved by the board until the end of June. So Lawing may have some time to provide input on the county’s final 2013-2014 budget before it’s adopted by commissioners.

If things proceed as planned, after Lawing begins work for Guilford County on May 6, Fuller will continue in her job as assistant county manager and human resources director until the end of June, when her current contract runs out.

During that time, Fuller is expected to familiarize Lawing with the ins and outs of Guilford County government.

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Page 38

Life

(Continued from page 1)

look at the ballot for the Nov. 6, 2012 election before they start talking about people’s voting rights being taken away.

The voters in the November 2012 school board election had no choice in five of the six school board races on the ballot. In the at-large race, Pat Tillman ran against and lost to incumbent school board member Sandra Alexander. Every other school board member on the ballot ran unopposed.

Also unopposed was Rebecca Buffington, who former school board member Kris Cooke hand picked as her successor. So not only do school board members not have to worry about anyone running against them, sometimes they even get to pick the person who will replace them.

Linda Welborn also ran unopposed after she beat incumbent school board member Paul Daniels in the primary and he dropped out of the race.

So you had two candidates running unopposed who were not incumbents and three incumbents running unopposed.

It’s not an election if nobody runs, and one reason candidates don’t run is because they know that the districts have been drawn so they can’t win.

It’s obvious from looking at the November ballot that something needs to be done, but nobody was doing anything. If the school board even considered making any change so that someone who was not a member of

Thursday, March 21, 2013

the school board club could join then they didn’t talk publicly about it.

Some people don’t want a partisan board, but nobody is running in the nonpartisan races. If the board is partisan, whatever party holds a seat, there will be pressure for the other party to find candidates to run against them. The parties should not only recruit candidates but encourage people to vote.

The editorial in the News & Record Sunday opposing Wade’s bill is funny, if you know a little of the history. The school board districts for the 11-member board were drawn identical to the Guilford County Board of Commissioners districts when it was increased from seven members to 11 members. That change was done by the state legislature, at that time dominated

by Democrats as it had been for about 120 years. There was no public discussion or debate. The Democratic legislature just did it, for the obvious purpose of getting a Democratic majority on the Board of Commissioners. The school board was an afterthought, but the Democrats have certainly benefitted from that decision, made by the state legislature.

According to our friends at The Eleven County Area News & Record, that was evidently how God intended the school board to be elected, and for the Republicans to dare to tamper with it is akin to heresy.

At least with this Republican plan there is some public discussion. But it is no wonder the liberals don’t want the school

board districts changed because as long as they are based on those original districts drawn by the Democrats in 1992, it is going to be nearly impossible to elect enough conservative school board members to make a difference.

A problem that this change would help solve is the persecution complex that the school board has. School board members seem to think that the Guilford County commissioners, the state legislature, parents, students and sometimes even their own teachers are out to get them. The school board has developed an us versus them mentality, and they circle the wagons at the first sign of opposition.

If the board were partisan it would be more difficult for those bonds between school board members and against everyone else to be so strong. The school board members would have loyalty to their political parties and to their constituents.

You would expect Republican school board members to have some rapport with Republican county commissioners and Democrat school board members to have some rapport with the members of their party on the Board of Commissioners.

One part of the bill that seems to have taken people by surprise is the method of electing the two at-large board members, where voters get to vote for one candidate in the primary and one in the general election.

The reason for “limited voting,” which has been used in Anson, Bladen, Martin and Robeson counties, is usually to provide

The Rhinoceros Times Greensboro

minority representation. It can be used to provide representation for a racial minority or for a political minority. In some states it is used frequently to ensure that both major political parties are represented on a local governing body.

In the case of the Guilford County Board of Education it would pretty much assure that one at-large seat would be won by a Democrat and one by a Republican.

In the at-large race for the school board in November, about 182,000 people voted, which was about 74,000 less than voted in the presidential election.

Partisan races tend to attract more voters, so one way to increase voter participation is to make a race partisan.

As far as the two-year terms go, it’s going to be hard to convince the state representatives and senators that two-year terms are a bad idea since they all serve two-year terms, as do members of US House of Representatives.

If the school board is changed to twoyear terms then it will leave the Guilford County Board of Commissioners as the odd man out, being elected to four-year terms. And it would not be a surprise for the state to change those terms also.

For the past 140 years the Democrats have drawn districts and designed elections so that they could stay in power and now that the Republicans have control of the government you have to expect the Republicans to try and swing the pendulum back in their favor.

The Rhinoceros Times Greensboro

President Barack Hussein Obama has decided that he doesn’t have the money to let people tour the White House because of the sequester, which really was his idea.

But there was plenty of money for a St. Patrick’s Day party at the White House.

Obama has decided that there isn’t enough money to send a second aircraft carrier group to the Persian Gulf. The US normally has two carrier groups in that area, so the US is down to one. But there is plenty of money for Obama to fly to Israel and travel around on what sounds like a campaign tour where he intends to win over the Israeli people.

Stranger things have happened, but Obama’s father and stepfather were both Muslims, and he has expressed great love for the Muslim culture. Unfortunately for Israel, part of that culture in the Middle East is wiping Israel off the face of the earth.

Maybe Obama can swing it. After all, he pulled off a big win in November after overseeing the weakest economy since the Great Depression. He convinced a majority of Americans that the economy was not his fault but rather the fault of former President George Walker Bush, and that he would have been able to fix it except the Republicans in the House weren’t being nice to him.

I think Israelis are generally smarter than Americans and won’t fall for that song and dance, but you never know.

,,, If the Republican Party does a couple of more smart things, we might have to stop calling them the Stupid Party and call them the Slow Party instead. But the Republicans have decided that perhaps they should have some influence over the moderators of the presidential debates.

I wonder how many high level meetings it took for the brain trust to come up with this strategy. Let’s see, in the last round the “non-partisan” but extremely liberal groups that picked the moderators picked Martha Raddatz, who knows Obama so well she invited him to her wedding.

If this were a small town and we were talking about the mayoral debate that would be one thing. Although in that situation you would try to have a moderator who had invited both candidates to their wedding. The United States has over 300 million people. Certainly there are at least 299 million people who have never invited Obama to their wedding.

Four years ago the Republicans allowed a moderator to be chosen who had written a book about Obama. I don’t care how unbiased you think you are, money is hard to ignore. When Obama got elected her book became a book about the president, not just some senator from Illinois.

Then there was debate moderator Candy Crowley, who with the nation watching stepped in to defend Obama, and in doing so misled the nation about the Benghazi fiasco. She may have changed the course of the election right there. No presidential

Thursday, March 21, 2013

candidate should have to debate the other candidate and the moderator.

So the Republicans have decided that maybe letting liberals pick the moderators is not the best idea.

,,, OK, so the president of the United States takes his own car everywhere he goes and that isn’t cheap, but it is for his security and evidently there is no cost too high when it comes to security.

But the story is that somebody put diesel instead of gasoline the the president’s limousine and and broke down on his first day in Israel. It’s a little hard to believe that the guys working for the president, protecting the president, don’t know the difference between diesel and gasoline.

If Obama is surrounded by that level of incompetence, it’s a wonder he even found Israel.

It is reminiscent of when James Earl Carter was president, and because Carter had to do everything himself the White House hired an interpreter basically out of the phone book. That’s why the Polish people were told Carter said he lusted after Polish women.

So the president issimply had another limousine flown in at no-telling-what expense. But I bet the cost of getting another limousine to Obama would pay for a couple of days of White House tours.

,,, We are a couple of weeks into the sequester and once again, except for those who had reservations for White House tours, it doesn’t seem that anything has changed. At this week’s Greensboro City Council meeting they were still spending federal money as fast as they could.

It is something that some day will affect local government. It is absurd for the federal government to hand out so much money to local governments. It makes sense from a political standpoint but not from a commonsense or financial standpoint. If cities, counties and states had to pay for what they spent it would be an entirely different budget. You can bet the Greensboro City Council would not be raising taxes to buy shiny new hybrid buses. Nor would the city build a $20 million garage to repair the buses. But since those things are bought with federal money nobody cares. Why not build the most expensive building possible and buy the most expensive buses?

But some day, the federal government won’t be able to afford all of these handouts, and cities, counties and states will have to decide where they want to spend their money.

,,, I wonder about North Korea. But is there anybody in the present government who we can trust to give a realistic answer about what North Korea is really doing?

The other big worry is Iran. It appears that Obama kind of likes Iran. He postures a little because even he has to admit that a

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nuclear Iran wouldn’t be the best thing for the world. But he also seems determined to wait until Iran has all the pieces in place to make a bomb and then, right before they push the button, no doubt, a drone is going to swoop in and take the whole thing out.

But what if that day comes and Obama has a golf match scheduled? He could hardly be expected to give up a good round of golf over something like world security.

I suppose he would allow Iran to explode a bomb and then explain that there was nothing that could be done, since they already had the technology.

,,, The situation in Cyprus is really scary to anyone with any money in the bank at all. If Cyprus gets away with stealing money out of the bank accounts of its citizens, what is to stop Greece, Spain, France or the US from doing the same? Taxing people is one thing, but actually taking the money out of their bank accounts is something else.

No doubt if another European country tries this then all the smart people in Europe are going to keep as little money in the bank as possible. I suppose it could send precious metal and stock prices through the roof because people will have to put their money somewhere, and you can only bury so many jars in the backyard before you start forgetting where they are, the dog starts digging them up and eating all the cash, and that kind of thing.

,,, I am amazed at the lack of recognition of the reality of the current North Carolina state government. People, including and particularly our local elected officials and the local media, don’t seem to have grasped the reality of what has happened in Raleigh since the last election.

The Democrats don’t run the show anymore. One of the three people in Raleigh who is running the show is State Sen. Phil Berger from Eden who represents Rockingham and Guilford counties in the Senate. Berger is president pro tem of the Senate and he, Speaker of the House Thom Tillis and Gov. Pat McCrory are running the state.

A great example of this lack of understanding was the attempt by Mayor Robbie Perkins and City Manager Denise Roth to pay Marlene Sanford of the Triad Real Estate and Building Industry Coalition (TREBIC) $25,000 to lobby the state government for changes to the Jordan Lake Rules. This was taken off the agenda at the Tuesday, March 18 meeting, but up until Tuesday afternoon the belief was that it had the votes to pass. Four years ago, maybe you could have made a convincing argument for a lobbyist against Jordan Lake Rules, but not today.

Berger was just in Greensboro meeting with the City Council in February. He said that the Jordan Lake Rules would be taken care of. The old rules are the epitome of liberal pseudo-environmentalists run amuck. The rules enforced in Greensboro

By John Hammer would have done nothing to help solve the problem with pollution in Jordan Lake and would have cost hundreds of millions of dollars. It was simply an effort by one arm of the state government to stop development.

That’s one thing that the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) did under the Democrats – inhibit development in the state. The bureaucrats may still be there, but they have a new boss. And their boss has a new boss.

Berger said it would be taken care of and he has the power in the state government to do it, so why on earth pay any lobbyist?

It isn’t necessary when you have sensible pro-business leadership in Raleigh versus what the state had for years.

People seemed to understand when former President Pro Tem of the state Senate Marc Basnight ran the show down in Raleigh. For some reason people simply accepted it as politics when he had the state build a new $50 million bridge to Manteo where his restaurant was and did nothing to build a bridge across the Yadkin River between Greensboro and Charlotte – one of the busiest roads in the state.

And that brings up a change that may be as significant as the switch from Democrats to Republicans – there has been a major shift in power from Eastern North Carolina, where relatively few people live, to the Piedmont, where most of the state lives.

Basnight, former Gov. Mike Easley and former Gov. Bev Perdue were all from the coastal region. Now you’ve got McCrory, who grew up in Jamestown and was mayor of Charlotte for 14? years, Speaker Tillis, who is from the Charlotte area, and Berger, who is from Eden. The three most powerful men in state government are from the Piedmont. Do you think that there is any chance these three would have decided the state needed to spend $50 million on a new bridge to Basnight’s restaurant instead of improving the roads around Charlotte or the Research Triangle?

All it takes is one drive Down East notice that the roads are about 20 times better than they are here. Do you think that this state government is going to be busy building roads Down East on the off chance that someone might want to use them someday, while people sit in bumper to bumper traffic in Charlotte and Raleigh?

But people just don’t seem to realize that Republicans now run the state, or just how powerful Berger is in state government.

Berger can send any bill he wants to committee to never be heard from again, and he can whiz a bill through a committee and to the floor of the Senate in no time.

It’s politics. Nobody wants to be on Berger’s bad side because he does have that power.

When Berger says that he is going to take care of the Jordan Lake Rules, the sensible thing for the City Council to do is to say thank you and move on, not talk about hiring a lobbyist.

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Thursday, March 21, 2013

The Rhinoceros Times Greensboro