June 9, 2016

Vol. IV No. 23

Greensboro, North Carolina

www.rhinotimes.com

Thursday, June 9, 2016

City Bonds $ Grow to 179M

County Salaries plus Under The Hammer, Uncle Orson Reviews Everything AND MORE

JUNE 7 PRIMARY WINNERS

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RHINO TIMES | Thursday, June 9, 2016 | www.rhinotimes.com

HINOSHORTS

Much that I have read about former Greensboro Police Chief David Wray’s lawsuit for legal fees against the city appears to be incorrect. The city has a policy dating back to 1980 that it will pay for the legal fees for employees that are incurred as the result of their employment.

Wray was sued by former police officers for his actions while police chief, but the city has refused to pay his legal fees.

The Court of Appeals overruled a lower court that ruled that the city had sovereign immunity in this case and Wray had a right to sue.

If this ruling were allowed to stand it would mean that the case would go back to Superior Court for a ruling on the merits of the case.

But according to City Attorney Tom Carruthers,

(continued on page 4)

Photo by Sandy Groover The Parisian Promenade on Sunday at the Tanger Family Bicentennial Garden featured artists, live music, children’s activities, family games, sidewalk cafes, a strolling accordian player and more.

Laser Centers of NC. I understand what it feels likeand to live in pain, because see it every We’ve out your plan to being pain free.

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you tried just about everyth NON-Surgical Pain Relief with Have Deep Laser pain? forTissue your neuropathy

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RHINO TIMES | Thursday, June 9, 2016 | www.rhinotimes.com

RHINOSHORTS (continued from page 2)

the city plans to appeal the ruling to the North Carolina Supreme Court.

That appeal will likely take over a year and the legal fees for both the city and Wray will continue to mount.

The City Council has settled almost all of the cases that were an outcome of the city manager, Mitch Johnson – who was later fired – locking Wray out of his office in January 2006 and then accepting Wray’s resignation.

At the time, the city said that Wray would likely be charged with a number of crimes related to his activities as police chief. Numerous investigations resulted in no charges but a whole host of lawsuits from police officers and former police officers.

This is one of the last two lawsuits still pending.

The 13th Annual Beach Music Blast kicked off last week on

Thursday, June 2 and will continue on Commerce Place every Thursday evening from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. for the month of June. This week, Thursday, June 9, Too Much Sylvia will provide the musical entertainment; next week, Thursday, June 16, it’s Special Occasion Band; Thursday, June 23, is the always-popular Sleeping Booty; and the Beach Music season will end on Thursday, June 30, with The Embers.

table of

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CONTENTS

VAUGHAN PRESIDES AS CITY BONDS GROW TO $179M

BY JOHN HAMMER

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7

23 YOST COLUMN

BY SCOTT D. YOST

25 ASK CAROLYN ...

BY CAROLYN WOODRUFF

GOOD TO GET A COUNTY SALARY

35 UNDER THE HAMMER

BY JOHN HAMMER

ANIMAL SHELTER FACES NEW SETBACK AFTER DIRECTOR FLEES

BY SCOTT YOST

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BUDD, WALKER, DAVIS, EDMUNDS ADVANCE TO FALL

BY JOHN HAMMER

10 ACTION PLAN FOR

FIXING COUNTY’S ECONOMY STARTS WITH LOTS OF TALK

BY SCOTT D. YOST

BY SCOTT D. YOST

BY ORSON SCOTT CARD

BY JOHN HAMMER

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LACKING LOCKS

15 UNCLE ORSON

CITY BUDGET PASSAGE MAKES COUNCIL’S 60% RAISES A GO

BY JOHN HAMMER

The Rhino Times Schmoozefest is a Thursday night tradition, but not this month. The June Schmoozefest, through the magic of modern technology, is brought to you one day early and will be held Wednesday, June 22 from 6 to 8 p.m. at Porter House at 4608 W. Market St. So be sure and set your smart phones back a day.

12 SHERIFF NO LONGER

2

RHINO SHORTS

8

SUDOKU

12

PUZZLE ANSWERS

17

REAL ESTATE

18

NYT CROSSWORD

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CHILDREN’S SCHEDULE

21

THE SOUND OF THE BEEP

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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

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EDITORIAL CARTOON

Cover: 6th District Republican primary winner Congressman Mark Walker, 13th District Republican primary winner Ted Budd, 13th District Democratic primary winner Bruce Davis and NC Supreme Court primary winner Justice Bob Edmunds (from left). Cover by Anthony Council

PUBLISHER Roy Carroll EDITOR-IN-CHIEF John Hammer

GENERAL MANAGER Joann Zollo

managing editor ELAINE HAMMER

creative director ANTHONY COUNCIL

county editor SCOTT D. YOST

advertising consultants MICK HAYWOOD TYE SINGLETON

contributing editor ORSON SCOTT CARD

cartoonist GEOF BROOKS

216 West Market Street, Greensboro NC 27401 P.O. Box 9023, Greensboro NC 27429 | (336) 763-4170 (continued on page 11) (336) 763-2585 fax | sales@rhinotimes.com | www.rhinotimes.com

www.rhinotimes.com | Thursday, June 9, 2016 | RHINO TIMES

Vaughan Presides As City Bonds Grow To $179 Million

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by John Hammer The Greensboro City Council has decided to put a bond package of $178.7 million before the people of Greensboro for discussion.

The City Council began the bond work session in the Council Chambers at 3 p.m. on Tuesday, June 7 with a $104.7 million bond proposal, and about an hour and 15 minutes later had the bond package up to $178.7 million. The only thing that kept the City Council from adding more money to the bond package was that it ran out of time.

What is amazing is that the City Council began the secret bond discussions with over $200 million in proposed bonds and whittled it down to $106, and then in a previous open meeting cut an additional $1.3 million.

But once they got going adding money to the bonds, it was Katie bar the door.

Mayor Nancy Vaughan made some curious statements after the meeting.

She said she was hoping for an $80 million bond package and also that she had no idea how or why most of the bond discussions were held in secret, small group meetings. Vaughan said she didn’t like small group meetings and thought they were inefficient, since the staff had to hold three meetings instead of one. Vaughan is the mayor and is theoretically running the City Council, but evidently she doesn’t feel her powers extend to determining how the City Council meets.

In theory, the city staff works for the City Council; in reality, it’s the other way around. The City Council is working for the staff. How else can

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you explain the City Council holding most of its bond discussions in secret when Vaughan and councilmembers say they were not in favor of it.

But one thing the City Council can do that staff can’t is add big-ticket items to the proposed bonds, and the City Council did that.

It started with Councilmember Nancy Hoffmann suggesting that $15 million be added to the proposed $10 million bond for the downtown. She said about $250 million was being invested in the downtown currently and the area hadn’t been significantly updated since the 1980s.

Both Councilmembers Jamal Fox and Sharon Hightower said they would support $20 million but not $25 million for the downtown. However, Vaughan and Councilmembers Mike Barber,

Justin Outling and Tony Wilkins joined Hoffmann in agreeing to put $25 million before the public.

Hoffmann then suggested that the $1 million for infill development be increased to $5 million and Hightower and Fox were the only no votes on that.

Fox suggested that the bonds for Windsor Recreation Center and the Vance-Chavis Library be increased from $5.5 to $8.5 million and that passed.

Barber noted that there was no money in the proposed bond package for street resurfacing and suggested $10 million be added.

Fox said why not make it $20 million for street resurfacing. It passed with only Councilmember Yvonne Johnson (continued on page 14)

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RHINO TIMES | Thursday, June 9, 2016 | www.rhinotimes.com

City Budget Passage Makes Council’s 60% Raises A Go

by John Hammer If you don’t like the $520-million 2016-2017 Greensboro budget, don’t vote for City Manager Jim Westmoreland the next time he’s up for election.

Wait a minute, Westmoreland is never up for election, but how can you blame the Greensboro City Council because they had almost nothing to do with the budget, which holds the property tax rate steady at 63.25 cents per $100 valuation but raises water rates and some fees.

The major change the Greensboro City Council made to the budget proposed by Westmoreland is that the City Council voted to give themselves a 60 percent raise, from $13,895 to $22,680, so they are now one of the best paid city councils in the state.

But other than giving themselves a substantial raise and adding a couple million in spending, the City Council made virtually no changes to the budget proposed by Westmoreland. The City Council accepted Westmoreland’s budget, had one meeting on the budget that lasted about 90 minutes, during which a considerable amount of time was spent discussing, but not changing, the funding for nonprofits.

The City Council passed its own raise at a work session on the bonds on a 7-to-2 vote with Mayor Nancy Vaughan and City Councilmember Justin Outling voting against the raise. The council did add $2 million in spending to the budget – $1 million for repaving streets and $1 million for

some kind of program for food deserts – but Westmoreland said that both were funded from savings and moving some money around, not reductions in spending elsewhere. It should send a message to the taxpayers that the city staff at the last minute can add $2 million in spending to the budget without making spending cuts elsewhere. This budget is not just fat, it is obese.

The 2016-2017 budget passed with virtually no discussion at the Tuesday, June 7 City Council meeting on an 8-to-1 vote, with Councilmember Tony Wilkins casting the lone no vote, which means that both Outling and Vaughan voted for the City Council raise when it actually put money in their pockets.

At the bond work session on May 23, Wilkins spoke in favor of the raise, seconded the motion for the raise and voted to put the raise in the budget, but then voted against the budget. So the entire City Council voted for the raise either at the work session or the regular meeting.

During the budget discussion on May 17, Councilmember Mike Barber asked Westmoreland to cut 1 percent from the rest of the budget to put an additional $5 million into resurfacing streets. Tuesday night Westmoreland said he didn’t really cut anything but found an additional $1 million to put into repaving streets and evidently that was enough to satisfy Barber.

Vaughan asked that a $1 million food program be removed from the bond and added to the budget, which

was also done.

The truth is that the city is awash in money. The big problem the city staff is going to have in the upcoming year is finding places to hide the money.

All the normal cubbyholes and cigar boxes have to already be stuffed full.

Although the city budget doesn’t raise property taxes, it does raise the water and sewer rates by 4.5 percent.

According to the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report for the city, there is currently over $35 million in the Water Resources Capital Reserve Fund; this will allow that fund to increase.

That rate increase resulted in the only surprising vote of the night. With no discussion, the increase passed by a 5-to-4 vote, with Councilmembers Yvonne Johnson, Marikay Abuzuaiter, Sharon Hightower and Tony Wilkins voting against it. However, raising the water rates requires six affirmative votes or else it comes back for a second vote. On the second vote, if it passes 5 to 4, it is enacted. So this should be put on the agenda for the June 21 City Council meeting.

However, Councilmember Mike Barber will be out of the country on June 21, so if nobody changes their vote, the water rate increase would fail by a 4 to 4 vote.

Since the entire budget passed 8 to 1 and the next 13 votes on various aspects of the budget passed 9 to 0, this water rate increase vote with no discussion caught everyone off guard.

No doubt the city staff will come up

with some method of finessing this past the City Council with or without Barber’s vote.

The one portion of the $520-million budget that did evoke some discussion was the increase in the vehicle license fee from $10 per year to the highest rate now allowed by the state of $30 per year.

Hightower said, “We haven’t had a chance to talk about it.”

Hightower said that in light of the proposed $20 million bond for street resurfacing, she wasn’t convinced the city needed an additional $20 per vehicle from every vehicle owner in the city for street resurfacing, which is how the City Council had agreed to spend the money at the budget work session.

Hightower at that time had objected to all the increased revenue going to street repaving and asked that some of it be allocated for the Greensboro Transit Authority, the city bus system.

Vaughan noted that the bonds have not passed and this money from the vehicle license fee could be spent immediately.

Hightower said, “I think we need to have a little more opportunity to talk about it.” She added that she thought the street bonds had a good chance to pass since the streets are in such bad condition. Hightower said that $20 a year per vehicle might not be a lot of money to some people but to some of the people in her district it would pose a hardship.

Barber said, “You know any tax (continued on page 16)

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www.rhinotimes.com | Thursday, June 9, 2016 | RHINO TIMES

Good to Get a County Salary

7

by John Hammer

The Guilford County salaries for 20152016 don’t have any big surprises, but they do prove an old adage: You can’t buy loyalty.

They also give a good indication of why working for the government may be the best deal around.

First, loyalty: Last year Guilford County was paying Joe Raymond over $160,000 as the director of the brand new Health and Human Services Department.

He was a new county employee and head of a new county department that combined the old Public Health Department and Social Services Department.

That meant he had two department heads working for him, except they were no longer department heads but division directors.

Raymond jumped over all the other department heads in compensation and was paid the second highest salary in the county. But when he was offered a job in Washington, DC, he barely paused from packing his bags long enough to write a letter of resignation and was gone.

The other curious part of this is that Director of Public Health Merle Green, who is no longer a department head, certainly didn’t get a cut in pay simply because she went from being a department head to a division head. Raymond left and Green got a raise from $158,000 last year to $161,000 this year.

Last year the county considered it worth $160,000 of taxpayer dollars to have a director of Health and Lawing, Marty Green, Merle Payne, Mark Barnes, BJ Grier, Clarence Baker, Reid MacDonald, Cheneta Dean, John Desai, Hemant McNiece, Robert Halford, Michael Bell, John Skeens, Heather Gobar, Aja Powers, Thomas

County Mgr Public Health Dir County Attorney Sheriff Deputy County Mgr Finance Dir Dentist III Human Resources Dir Chief Info Officer/Dir FAC/Propty & Park Mgt Dir Budget Dir Planning & Develpmnt Dir Social Svc Dir Dentist II Chief Dpty Sheriff/Colonel

$193,262 $161,472 $160,103 $150,278 $145,000 $143,886 $133,400 $132,200 $130,029 $128,107 $127,953 $124,718 $121,945 $120,000 $119,030

Human Services; this year the county decided it really doesn’t need to fill that position at all. But despite the fact that Raymond was being paid $160,000 a year for a job the county believes is not necessary, there was no indication that Raymond was encouraged to leave.

What is also interesting is that, as head of Health and Human Services, Raymond was being paid $15,000 more than Deputy County Manager Clarence Grier, who last year was paid $145,000 and is one of the few employees at the upper end of the salary scale who has not had a raise and is still being paid $145,000.

At the top of the county salary list is County Manager Marty Lawing, who was being paid $190,000 last year and got a raise to $193,000. Third on the list, behind division director Green is County Attorney Mark Payne, who went from $157,000 to $160,000.

Payne works directly for the Guilford County Board of Commissioners and cannot be hired or fired by the county manager.

Guilford County Sheriff BJ Barnes, who is an elected official and doesn’t work for the county manager or anybody else, other than the people of Guilford County who elected him, got a raise from $147,000 to $150,000.

It looks like, at the top of the list, $3,000 raises were fairly standard, including for Robert McNiece, the facilities, parks and property management director, Chavis, Ben Lindsay, Bridgett Thigpen, Jeff Liverman, Angela Carter, Ken Mason, Matthew Bigelow, Sherri Batten, Mary Eliz Fox, Peggy Lockey, R Michael Albright, James Pratt, Crystal Eanes Hicks, Calvin Solomon, Jeffrey Turcola, Matthew

Tax Dir $118,691 Deputy Dir/ISV $117,006 Register of Deeds $116,016 Child Support/Court Serv Dir $114,831 Asst Health Dir $112,790 Chief Deputy Cnty Attorney $111,806 Enterprise App Mgr $110,941 Pharmacy Svc Mgr $107,698 Pharmacist $107,556 Sr Software Architect $107,111 Emergency Svc Dir $106,304 Clinical Pharmacist $103,129 Cash & Debt Mgr $101,876 Enterprise Tech Mgr $100,988 Deputy County Attorney $100,243

from $125,000 to $128,000. McNiece is over parks and recreation and responsible for the little train that couldn’t, but is now reportedly running the ongoing mess at Rich Fork Creek Preserve. And then there’s the recently opened Cascades Preserve, where the county could afford to build a parking lot but could not afford a sign informing the people of the county where the park is.

Which brings up the other point about salaries.

What county salaries prove is that, if you can manage to get hired on by the government, you can expect to receive regular raises until you retire. In the private sector the economy goes through corrections, like in 2008, where lots of people through no fault of their own lose their jobs, or have to take a pay cut to keep their jobs. In government that doesn’t happen; the very worst that happens is a year or two without a regular raise, but then they pick right up.

Plus, in government jobs, the taxpayers pick up most of the cost of retirement and after 30 years you qualify for full retirement benefits, based not on what you have paid in but based on your highest salary.

Try to find that in the private sector.

We are printing the salaries for the 336 county employees who make $60,000 or more. There are, however, 2,304 county employees. For a complete list of salaires, go to rhinotimes.com.

Next week we’ll have the salaries for the City of Greensboro.

Williamson, Clarence Detention Serv/Major Park, Frank Plans Engineer Dietz, Jeffrey Sr Dbase Admin Waddell, Ruchadina Deputy County Attorney Johnson, Michael ISV ERP Analyst Thompson, Myra SSV Division Dir Burleson, Terri Sr Physician Extender Henkel, Frederick Apps/ERP Mgr Jacobs, Jonathan Deputy Sheriff/Major French, Gregory Tax Dir Asst Reid, Chavis Detention Serv Admin Gershon, Lori Deputy County Attorney Roland, James Asst Tax Collector Lands, Deborah Financial Plan & Report Mgr (continued on page 11)

$99,756 $98,183 $97,393 $97,363 $96,735 $96,382 $96,113 $95,827 $95,801 $94,812 $94,763 $94,250 $93,760 $93,621

8

RHINO TIMES | Thursday, June 9, 2016 | www.rhinotimes.com

Animal Shelter Faces New Setback After Director Flees

by Scott D. Yost It may be good to be the king – but apparently it’s not always so good to be the Guilford County Animal Services director.

Former Animal Services Director Logan Rustan discovered that the hard way after about six months in that job, and now the county is looking for its third shelter head in less than a year.

Former Guilford County Animal Shelter Director Marsha Williams was removed from the position last August due to a huge scandal that included over 60 findings of animal neglect and cruelty by state animal welfare investigators.

Williams was later charged with felony animal cruelty in Davidson County.

Rustan, who was the county’s Animal Control director at the time, took over the shelter’s operations after the scandal and, in December, was named the head of a new county department, Animal Services, which included the Animal Shelter and

Animal Control for Guilford County.

Then, two weeks ago he announced he was stepping down. His last day was Tuesday, June 7 – and now Guilford County has no Animal Services director, no Animal Shelter manager and no Animal Control manager.

Deputy County Manager Clarence Grier, who along with Rustan has been overseeing the shelter – is now running the show when it comes to animal services for Guilford County, and he, like many other county officials, is intent on finding a new director. A new search to fill that position began as soon as Rustan resigned.

Before the animal shelter scandal hit last August, Rustan seemed perfectly happy running Animal Control for the county, but once he became shelter director as well, it took its toll on him.

When he turned in his resignation at the end of May, he stated publicly that one key reason was the impossibility of pleasing all of the disparate people

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and groups that advocate for animal welfare in the county.

County officials wasted no time starting the search for a new Animal Services director. In fact, for what appears to be the first time in county history, the official statement from the county announcing a director’s resignation also included information on how to apply for the job.

One interesting aspect of the search is that the brand new Guilford County Animal Services Advisory Board meets for the first time on Thursday, June 9, and one question on everyone’s mind is how much of a role, if any, that group will play in helping pick the new Animal Services director.

When Grier was asked that question, he said that issue has not been addressed.

“I haven’t had a discussion on that in any way, shape or form,” Grier said.

The deputy county manager said the animal committee will meet on Thursday night and he added that he is sure issues related to filling the position will come up at that meeting.

Grier said it made sense to hire an Animal Services director first and then address the vacancies for the Animal Control manager and the Animal Shelter manager. He also said the county will likely name an interim manager for Animal Control this week.

Before coming to Guilford County a year and a half ago, Grier was the assistant county manager for Orange County, which is considered by many to have an excellent animal shelter.

Grier worked closely with the shelter in that county and many animal welfare advocates in Guilford County say they want to see Guilford County’s shelter operation and administration modeled after Orange County’s.

Bev Levine is a researcher at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine who runs Halting Overpopulation and Preventing Euthanasia (HOPE) and was selected to serve on the county’s new advisory board. Levine said that, since the board hasn’t met, she doesn’t have a clear view of what will or will not be expected in regard to the search.

“I am not sure how much we will be involved,” Levine said of the selection of the next shelter director.

She said many people in the animal welfare community have a lot of thoughts on that subject, however, and she said that some experts in the field who recently spoke at a HOPE meeting stated that, in cases like Guilford County’s, where there had been such huge problems, it might be wise to bring in “someone who has a reputation as a fixer.”

Levine said county leaders should consider bringing in an interim Animal Services director with a pre-set term of service of a year or two – someone who has experience fixing difficult animal situations in large communities.

She said it’s her understanding that there’s a good pool of people with those qualifications out there, and she added that an animal welfare troubleshooter/director with a set term of service could feel less “trapped by politics and personalities,” and have more autonomy.

According to Levine, it’s something done frequently in the world of business and religion when a company or a church has gone through a particularly tumultuous period. Levine added that the option would always be open for the person to stay on at the end of the set period of employment if both the county and the employee were happy.

She also said she thought it was important that the shelter manager position and the animal control manager position be filled as well, so the burdens on the new Animal Services director aren’t overwhelming.

She said she’s seen the constant demands that come with the job of Guilford County Animal Shelter director. She also said that, given the numbers of animals taken into the shelter and the mix of different animal constituencies, this county’s animal advocates are an “exceptionally tough crowd.”

Levine wrote in an email to other animal welfare advocates after Rustan’s resignation was announced: “I’m surprised and saddened on a personal level, though I (and I’m sure many of us) can understand the reason Logan gives for his decision. Think about it: not only does leading a large county animal shelter mean dealing with all the politics of government

(continued on page 34)

www.rhinotimes.com | Thursday, June 9, 2016 | RHINO TIMES

9

Budd, Walker, Davis, Edmunds Advance To Fall Election

by John Hammer 13th Congressional District There were 17 candidates, now there is one. It looks like political newcomer Ted Budd from Advance, who won the Republican primary in the 13th Congressional District, is the oddson favorite to be the congressman from the district that includes most of Greensboro and almost all of High Point.

Budd won the Republican primary with 6,308 votes for 20 percent and will face former Guilford County Commissioner Bruce Davis in November.

Davis narrowly won over Bob Isner in the Democratic primary. There will most likely be a recount in the Democratic primary since Davis won by only 112 votes, but regardless of the eventual winner, the 13th was

drawn as a Republican district and it is unlikely a Democrat can win in November.

Political consultants said that any candidate who could put $500,000 into the Repbulican primary for 13th Congressional District would win, and it turned out the political consultants were right. Budd didn’t put $500,000 into his campaign but the Club for Growth Action political action committee (PAC) did, and it turned out that PAC money won out over political experience.

There were three state representatives, one state senator, two county commissioners and a register of deeds in the race and Budd beat them all by a wide margin.

This is Budd’s first run for public office. Budd owns a gun range and

shop in Rural Hall and is member of the Budd family that owns the Budd Group, a multistate company with over 3,400 employees.

Long-time Greensboro state Rep. John Blust finished a distant second with 3,293 votes for 10 percent, Guilford County Commissioner Hank Henning from High Point finished third with 3,270 votes for 10 percent, and Mocksville State Rep. Julia Howard finished fourth with 3,230 votes, also 10 percent.

The newly drawn 13th District is made up of portions of Guilford, Rowan and Iredell counties and all of Davidson and Davie counties. Because of the short time frame for the new districts ordered by the federal courts, there is no runoff election and candidates were allowed to run for Congress and

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simultaneously run for another elective office. The special rules and the fact that there was no incumbent led to 17 candidates filing to run.

As one might expect in a new district with so many candidates, the voting fell into regional patterns. Blust won Guilford County where more votes were cast than in the other four counties combined. Henning finished second in Guilford and Budd finished third. In both Davidson and Davie counties, Budd finished first and Blust finished 10th. Iredell County Register of Deeds Matt McCall, who came in fifth overall, finished first in Iredell County, Budd finished second and Blust finished 10th.

In Rowan County, Jason Walser from Salisbury, who finished seventh in the (continued on page 33)

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10 RHINO TIMES | Thursday, June 9, 2016 | www.rhinotimes.com

Action Plan for Fixing County’s Economy Starts with Lots of Talk

by Scott D. Yost The biblical dictum is, “Ask and you shall receive,” and a group of consultants asked for ideas on how to fix what’s wrong with Guilford County’s economy and, just like the Bible promises, they got them.

Consultants from Development Counsellors International (DCI) and Garner Economics met all morning and afternoon on Thursday, June 2, with four different groups of county business leaders, developers, workforce development officials and others in various fields to get ideas on how to revitalize Guilford County’s economy and make this area attractive to businesses and visitors.

The consultants are attempting to help the relatively new Guilford County Economic Development Alliance (GCEDA) find what Guilford County needs in order to be an economic success story. Other parts of the state, like Wilmington, Asheville, Durham, Mebane and Raleigh, have been killing it when it comes to economic development, as have other Southern communities like Chattanooga Tennessee, and Greenville, South Carolina.

The DCI/Garner consultants met with the local invitees in Colfax in a large conference room of the Cameron Campus of Guilford Technical Community College (GTCC).

NAI Piedmont Triad President and former Greensboro Mayor Robbie Perkins said he stated in the focus group he attended that it is absolutely vital, given the current state of the economy in this area, that Greensboro and Guilford County get their act together if they are to bring in new business and revitalize the county’s economy.

He said after that meeting that he hopes these consultants and the coming GCEDA plan will help this area in that regard.

“I do think these guys are doing well,” Perkins said. “I am pretty impressed. They have worked in Chattanooga and Greenville and helped those cities.”

Perkins told the Rhino Times what he told consultants during the meeting.

“We have to have a sense of urgency,” Perkins said.

He said a young man in his office brought him a statistic recently and left it on his desk. Perkins said he could hardly believe what that stat revealed: the astonishing lack of job creation in this area over a

recent 10-year period.

“From 2004 to 2014, Guilford County had a net increase of 1,678 jobs,” the former mayor said.

“During that same time, Wake County had 89,000.”

He said 1,678 net new jobs in a decade was ridiculously poor, especially in light of what was happening in other parts of the state and the South.

Perkins said the giant lack of job creation here was extremely telling and it had major consequences.

“What is that doing to your home prices?” he said. “What is that doing to your economy? We namby-pamby around but what we need is strong, aggressive leadership.”

“It’s an alarm bell going off,” Perkins added. “We got devastated by the recession. It killed me; it killed a lot of people. If we let it go another five years, we’re going to look like Danville rather than Greenville.

Danville is a nice place to live – as long as you don’t need a job or need to make money.”

Perkins said he was optimistic that Greensboro Partnership President and CEO Brent Christensen and Executive Vice President David Ramsey were taking the right steps to improve things.

“They are strong and enthusiastic and they know what they’re trying to do,” Perkins said.

However, he added that this community seems to keep shooting itself in the foot every chance it gets. He pointed to the way some members of the Greensboro City Council repeatedly attack state legislators.

“I didn’t say this in the meeting but one thing you have to do is fix the relationship with the state legislature,” Perkins said.

He said the North Carolina legislature was a primary source of funding for programs and economic development initiatives, and local government leaders who antagonize them are doing nothing but hurting this area. He said that constant criticism of state Sen. Trudy Wade or President Pro Tem of the state Senate Phil Berger serves no good purpose.

“Every time you say something negative about Trudy Wade or Phil Berger, and you’re sitting on the City Council, you’re hurting yourselves,” he said.

Perkins served as Greensboro mayor from 2011 to 2013 and he said that, at the time he left, the city was making some progress getting out of the economic hole, but in recent years that hasn’t been the case.

“We had good momentum when I left office,” he said, “and it’s gone straight down the tubes.”

This research on ways to draw more business is being conducted to create an “action plan” meant to help this area’s economy. In April, GCEDA chose a joint proposal from two groups to help Guilford County form that plan. DCI is a New York-based company that helps regions, cities and states attract more business and visitors, while Garner is an Atlanta firm that specializes in economic development research and targeting industries. GCEDA is paying the two companies about $78,500 to come up with the plan for branding and selling Guilford County to businesses across the country and around the world,

and these focus group meetings were the first step in that effort.

Triad Real Estate and Building Industry Coalition (TREBIC) President Marlene Sanford attended the same focus group Perkins did.

“I think it went well,” Sanford said. “We had a large group of about 20 people in the room.”

She said it is good idea to attempt to figure out what needs fixing.

“The question is an important one that needs to be answered,” she said. “It’s not a glamorous answer.

The short answer is that we need to stick to our knitting and continue efforts that we have been working hard on for 15 years. We need to get strategic about targeting industries and improving our infrastructure.

We need to address the shovel-ready-sites problem – we don’t have enough big sites.”

She also said that expansion at Piedmont Triad International Airport (PTIA) and the completion of the urban loop around Greensboro were steps in the right direction for improving the local infrastructure. She added that there are four areas in or near Guilford County that seem to be right for megasites: The well-publicized sites underway in Randolph County, Chatham County and at PTIA; and she added the undeveloped land at the Guilford County Prison Farm, now closed, is an area considered by many to be a good place for a large technology park or related industry.

Sanford said that all came up at the meeting.

“We talked about the ‘big want,’” Sanford said.

“We need a big economic development win; we need someone to use the megasite.”

She also said the formation of GCEDA last year – a joint economic development alliance between Guilford County and the cities of Greensboro and High Point, was a good start. She said this is the first time the three governments have been working together in a “formal and funded economic development partnership.”

“We’re doing all the right things,” Sanford said.

“The challenge is to keep that going. When we’re not in glory days, it’s easy to get down and lose focus. So it’s important to keep going until we have some glory days again.”

Sanford, like Perkins, said it was her understanding that these consultants have done good work for others.

“The questions were interesting,” Sanford said of the focus groups. “For instance, one was, ‘If you could write one headline for The Wall Street Journal one year from now, what would it be?’ Other questions were about the things we needed to do – and what were our strengths and weaknesses. It was pretty much, ‘Where would you want to be in 10 years?’”

Sanford said several members of her group expressed a need for more regional cooperation.

“They said the Guilford County Economic Development Alliance was a great start and a real, (continued on page 13)

www.rhinotimes.com | Thursday, June 9, 2016 | RHINO TIMES

salaries

(continued from page 7)

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$93,500 $93,448 $93,000 $92,534 $92,519 $92,148 $92,090 $91,374 $91,355 $91,174 $90,650 $90,409 $90,084 $90,013 $89,994 $89,983 $89,584 $89,291 $89,178 $88,793 $88,587 $88,570 $88,287 $88,259 $88,219 $87,915 $87,809 $87,506 $87,367 $86,829

Conrad, Larry Capote, Nestor Johnson, Deborah Alston, Deborah Wood, Frederick Davis, Jenise Redmon, Scott Stevens, James Myrick, Alan Canter, Lisa Southern, Judy Maynard, Johnnie Wingfield, Viveca Alexander, Lisa Antonelli, Leonard Moye, Randall Eger, Leslie Ledford, Odes W Halberg, James Nunn, Daren Shepherd, Randall Smith, Mark Sutton, Melvin Earl Beamer, Richard Albright, David Best, Durwood Burroughs, Howard Hargett, Brenden Sanders, Samuel Hamilton, Robert R

Asst to ROD/Ops Deputy County Attorney Deputy Dir ROD/Admin Internal Audit Dir ISV ERP Analyst SSV Division Dir Web Apps Mgr LWE Warrant Officer Asst Tax Assess/Real Prop Info Serv Project Mgr PH Program Mgr Detention Serv Supv III Detention Serv Supv II Nursing Svc Mgr Deputy Sheriff/Lt Telecomm Mgr Deputy Dir/Planning Detention Serv Supv III Facilities Project Mgr Emergency Svc Mgr Deputy Sheriff/Capt Epidemiologist Inspection Svc Mgr Chief Appraiser/Reval ERP Spec Detention Serv Supv III Deputy Sheriff/Capt Social Work Program Mgr Detention Serv Supv II Deputy Sheriff/Lt

$86,610 $86,542 $86,466 $86,429 $86,182 $85,809 $85,618 $85,456 $84,684 $84,238 $84,161 $83,951 $83,784 $83,554 $83,343 $83,000 $82,027 $81,877 $81,542 $81,392 $81,246 $81,241 $81,162 $80,982 $80,290 $80,209 $80,017 $79,841 $79,699 $79,590

Whitley, Anthony Detention Serv Supv II Torres Colon, Alfredo Web/Internet Developer Oliveri, Tia Physician Extender Spec Steele, Bradley Sr DbaseAdmin Tollison, Teresa Nursing Svc Supv Lemonds, Ronald Deputy Sheriff/Capt Moore, George R Deputy Sheriff/Capt Sansour, Yousef Deputy Sheriff/Capt Rogers, Robert Detention Serv Supv II Oaster, Cary Physician Extender Spec Jackson, Cedric Detention Serv Supv II Raspberry, Li Web/Internet Developer Williams, J Internal Auditor White, Elizabeth SSV Division Dir Paschal, Kyle ES Deputy Dir-EMS Jones, Heather Physician Extender Spec Anders, Onitisha Physician Extender Spec Montoya, Margareta Physician Extender Spec Brown, Vashonda Physician Extender Spec Baker, Sandra Physician Extender Spec Inman, Demarr Deputy Sheriff/Sgt Springs, Cynthia Sr Finance Bus Analyst Thompson, Donna Soc Wrk Supv-Protect Serv Miller, David Financial Sr Analyst Christy, John B Deputy Sheriff/Sgt Loftis, William Deputy Sheriff/Lt Burns, Robert Deputy Sheriff/Sgt Hairston, Terry Detention Serv Supv II Boyers, Jeffrey ESV Tech Support Supv Dawkins, Kae Nurse Spec I-School O’Connor, Brian EMS Shift Commander (continued on page 16)

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$79,579 $79,500 $79,500 $79,444 $79,284 $79,225 $79,162 $78,913 $78,594 $78,400 $78,324 $78,153 $78,107 $78,000 $77,855 $77,843 $77,843 $77,843 $77,843 $77,843 $77,702 $77,579 $77,251 $77,050 $76,992 $76,897 $76,890 $76,877 $76,253 $76,233 $76,228

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12 RHINO TIMES | Thursday, June 9, 2016 | www.rhinotimes.com

Sheriff No Longer Lacking Locks

by Scott D. Yost

Apparently, if you’re going to build a Sheriff’s Department’s special operations center that will contain stores of drugs, piles of money, other evidence and guns and ammo, it’s important to have the ability to lock the building’s doors.

However, when the newest county building – the special ops center at 508 Industrial Ave. in Greensboro, south of I-40 and west of Old US 421 – was complete in every other way early last month, a delay in installing the building’s locks let the $4 million structure sit idle for nearly the entire month of May. When the Guilford County Sheriff’s Department was ready to move into their new building, and the lease was expiring for a building owned by Koury Corporation that the department had to be out of by the end of June, all they could do was wait on the locks that are necessary to prevent access to the multiple, highly secure areas in the new building where roughly 65 sheriff’s officers will work. The building will house undercover officers, detectives, the K-9 unit, officers who investigate major crimes including murder, the crime suppression division and other special divisions of the department.

In early May, the floors were shiny and the walls were finished and the evidence storage racks were in place – but nothing could be moved in because the Sheriff’s Department couldn’t get the locks for the building.

On Wednesday, May 25, the Sheriff’s Department threw the grand opening of the empty building that had holes where all the locks should

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Solution sudoku_528B

From last week’s issue K A R S T S

have been. Sheriff’s Department Capt.

Ken Whitesell, who gave a tour for one of the groups that day, explained that a subcontractor working for Bar Construction Company – which built the special ops center – hadn’t been able to provide the locks by the time the rest of the structure was ready.

This week, Whitesell said the locks had arrived and the building could finally be put to use.

“I’m happy to say all the locks are in,” Whitesell said.

He said nothing could happen until those locks were delivered.

“It was probably a good three weeks,” Whitesell said of the wait.

He said sheriff’s staff had presented the “keying process” to the key provider five months ago, so there should have been plenty of time for the locks to be prepared and delivered before the building was complete. The locks shipped on May 27 and arrived after the Memorial Day weekend, and were then installed quickly.

According to Whitesell, the cost sudoku_528B of the locks for the building came to about by $12,000.

Created Peter Ritmeester/Presented by Will Shortz Whitesell said some factors that 8 that the made2the9 job difficult are building has both electronic locks 8 9 1 operated by fobs as well as mechanical locks opened 3by physical keys, 2 and some staff have access to certain areas1but not others. For instance, an evidence storage worker would have 1 access to the evidence room, but not to, say, the DNA lab – while lab 4 workers wouldn’t have access to the cash and 9 6part of drugs locked away in 5 another the building.

7 4 3 Guilford County Sheriff BJ Barnes

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said that the keys to the secure area of the building are more advanced than the house keys you take to the local hardware store and have duplicated.

For instance, he said, he’ll have an electronic master fob that allows him all access – and that’s something that could be a real problem if, as most people do from time to time, he loses his keys.

“If I lose my key, I could block it from working using a computer,” Barnes said.

The sheriff said the security of this building in particular is extremely important, which is one reason it’s tucked away on a low profile site surrounded by industrial buildings.

Anyone attempting to see the undercover officers coming in and out of the building would likely be noticed.

In fact, it was somewhat surprising that Barnes and his department held the public ribbon cutting on May 26, since the sheriff has never liked calling attention to the building’s location given the sensitive nature of its contents. Barnes said that, in the end, he felt the county’s taxpayers should get to see what their money had paid for. Some of the costs that went into buying the land and equipping the building were from the department’s federal forfeiture fund, made up largely of money officers confiscated from drug dealers, as well as from the sale of criminals’ possessions.

Barnes also said the practice these days is that, even when drugs are being held as evidence, much of it can be destroyed fairly soon after it’s confiscated. The officers measure it, photograph it and keep some to prove that it’s an illegal substance, but the department doesn’t usually hold onto large amounts for court.

“There was a time when we pushed carts full of drugs into court just for effect,” Barnes said, adding that, these days, nearly everyone has seen multiple large stashes of drugs displayed by law enforcement agencies after a big bust, so the effect is not as pronounced.

At the Thursday, June 2 Guilford County Board of Commissioners meeting, the special operations project got some additional good news: The commissioners unanimously approved a new “rapid DNA” system that provides the office with the tools they need to do DNA testing and matching here in Guilford County, rather than

having to send it off to the state lab where wait times can be a year and a half. Sometimes the department elects to pay for private labs to do the testing, which costs taxpayer money and can still take a long time.

The Sheriff’s Department is purchasing the rapid DNA testing equipment from IntegenX, a California company that makes the only commercially available rapid DNA system able to process up to eight DNA samples at once. One county memo on the system states that it “has been featured in numerous peerreviewed forensic publications” and has been “presented and accepted in US courts to obtain convictions, and will aid the Sheriff’s Department in the accurate and efficient identification of crime suspects for swift apprehension and conviction.”

The commissioners approved $230,625 for the system, which includes $200,000 for the purchase of the testing unit and $30,625 for one year of maintenance and support.

This week, Barnes said he was glad the locks are in place and the DNA equipment is on the way.

He said it was important to begin moving out of the old building the county has been renting from the Koury Corporation since that lease was expiring.

When it was pointed out to Barnes that he could leave pretty much whenever he wanted because it’s the county’s Sheriff’s Department that evicts people, Barnes said that was true, but added that he would be guilty of “maleficence” if the Sheriff’s Department didn’t kick the Sheriff’s Department out of Koury’s building once the lease was up.

Once the big move into the new special ops center is completed, Barnes will start focusing on another major transition: The county plans on moving the Sheriff’s Department’s administrative offices from the Otto Zenke building at 400 W. Washington St. to the old jail in downtown Greensboro after massive renovation to the structure.

The Board of Commissioners hasn’t approved the funding for that project.

At a recent commissioners work session, Chairman Jeff Phillips made some comments that indicated the sheriff’s switch from the Zenke building to the old jail might have to get in line behind other county projects.

economy (continued from page 10) tangible thing,” she said.

Sanford also said that some problems with city planning staff were a thorn in the side of those trying to advance projects to the county.

“I wouldn’t say the whole thing is broken, but we do have some pockets where we need real improvements,” she said, adding, “Local governments are working on those.”

“It takes way too long to get a building permit in High Point,” Sanford said. “They did a lot of study as to why that was and they are working on it.”

She also said that Greensboro has similar issues and that Greensboro, like High Point, is making improvement in its planning operations, including some “staff upgrades.”

Sanford also said there was a lot of talk about “identity” and the county area’s notable lack of it. She said that people outside of the state don’t have a distinctive impression of the area, and, though they may have a fuzzy impression of the “piedmont triad,” or of Greensboro, High Point or Winston Salem, they might not be able to tell those places apart from similar communities.

“Sometimes people can’t even tell the difference between North Carolina and South Carolina,” Sanford said.

Greensboro Convention and Visitors Bureau President Henri Fourrier also took part in the afternoon discussion with the consultants.

“I was kind of the lone wolf in the group,” he said, adding that most of the other attendees in his session were developers.

Like Sanford and many others, Fourrier said branding this area well is key.

“No one says when you ask them where they’re from that they are from ‘Guilford County,’” he said.

The “piedmont” is one name that this area has tried to use to distinguish itself, he said, but it’s a geographical designation that denotes the transition from flat land to mountains that applies to many locations all over the world.

He said one poster his tourism bureau had placed at the airport stated this was the place where the mountains meet the sea, but he added that that also left a lot to be desired.

Fourrier said the task of promoting tourism, something he works at on a daily basis, goes hand in hand with promoting economic development and there’s a lot of overlap in those two areas. He said the things that make Guilford County attractive for businesses are to a large degree the same types of things that make it appealing to tourists.

www.rhinotimes.com | Thursday, June 9, 2016 | RHINO TIMES

He said that some key selling points to this area are its accessibility, affordability and key attractions, such as the Greensboro Aquatic Center and other athletic facilities.

“We’re continuing to develop our infrastructure,” he said.

Fourrier said that Bryan Park in Greensboro is a premier soccer site and the city is currently spending $4 million to add more fields. He also said that renovations at the Greensboro Coliseum and the planned Steven Tanger Center for the Performing Arts would benefit this area, and he said J. Spencer Love Tennis Center did quite well in attracting clay court tournaments.

Fourrier said the Greensboro Science Center has been phenomenal and it has more plans coming, and Greensboro has landed the National Folk Festival, which he said is a big draw.

He said the community needs to continue working on its infrastructure.

For instance, he said, A&T’s track is “tired and needs some improvement.”

“We, as a community, need to support these changes,” he said. “It enables us to compete in the national market.”

East Market Street Development Corp. President Mac Sims was invited to the June 2 focus groups but couldn’t attend due to a conflict. He said he felt like this current effort was very positive.

“I think we are working toward a plan, a strategy,” Sims said. “It’s got to be a collaborative effort between Greensboro and High Point.”

Like others, he said Guilford County’s location makes it an ideal spot for growth.

“We’re right on the I-85 corridor between Richmond and Atlanta,” Sims said.

He said recent moves by the City of Greensboro to attempt to help revitalize east Greensboro will make it more attractive to businesses.

“The attitude the city has taken recently makes a lot of sense,” he said.

Sims said state road construction will also benefit east Greensboro.

“The loop will help us,” Sims said, adding that he was optimistic about the future.

“We’ve got a lot of opportunities in east Greensboro,” he stated, citing recent projects on McConnell Road and Gate City Boulevard.

Christensen said this week that he’s looking forward to the consultants’ report and that he expects the final result by the end of the summer.

He said the plan will offer specific steps for improving economic development in the county.

“That’s why this is an action plan rather than a strategic plan,” Christensen said.

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14 RHINO TIMES | Thursday, June 9, 2016 | www.rhinotimes.com

bonds

(continued from page 5)

voting no.

Vaughan said, “Thank God I don’t run my household budget like this.”

Councilmember Marikay Abuzuaiter suggested increasing the $10 million for sidewalks and bicycle and pedestrian improvements to $20 million. Outling objected to this because he said there was no basis for the increase. He said, “It’s always easy to say yes to everything.” But only Outling, Vaughan and Hoffmann voted against it.

Hoffmann proposed another $1 million for the Greenway for a bike program and it got unanimous support.

Hightower proposed another $1 million for Gateway Gardens on Gate City Boulevard and Barber Park.

Barber and Outling cast the only no votes.

Hightower tried to remove the $500,000 for the Galyon Depot renovation and bus shelters, but Vaughan said, “It’s not going to make a while lot of difference. Why take this out?”

Wilkins suggested $14 million to finish the streetscape on Gate

City Boulevard from I-40 to I-73.

Westmoreland said it would cost $20 million to $25 million and Wilkins went with $20 million and got five votes for it.

The council also discussed how the

bonds would be put on the ballot and how specific the categories would be, since they didn’t want the voters to think they were trying the “old bait and switch.” They were told that the categories cannot be specific.

The Greensboro Aquatic Center is an example of the bait and switch.

The money was passed in a parks

Wilkins Trys To Feed Kids At the end of the meeting when other councilmembers were gathering up their papers to leave, District 5 City Councilmember Tony Wilkins brought up Participatory Budgeting, which doesn’t have anything to do with bonds or committees, the two items on the agenda.

Wilkins said that in his district, 70 people voted to spend $20,000 on two outdoor game tables and he wanted to put that money to better use.

Wilkins suggested that the $20,000 instead be used to buy 27,000 servings of macaroni and cheese to be distributed throughout the city.

Mayor Nancy Vaughan said, “Let’s make that $50,000; $10,000 for each district. I think we can find the money in the budget.”

District 1 City Councilmember Sharon Hightower said, “I’m not going to vote for it.”

Wilkins said, “Why do you hate hungry children?”

Hightower responded, “Tony, don’t you be an idiot. Don’t be an idiot.”

Vaughan said Wilkins could bring up adding $50,000 for food during the budget discussion at the regular City Council meeting upstairs and on that note the meeting was adjourned.

However, Wilkins did not bring it up during the regular meeting.

and recreation bond for a community swimming pool. But the bonds were spent on a competition swimming facility at the Coliseum, which is an entirely different city department.

So in a matter of a little more than an hour the City Council added about $74 million to the $104.7 million bond. The public will get an opportunity to weigh in on the bond package this summer, and a public hearing is scheduled for August 1.

It was estimated that the $104.7 million bond would require a 3.5 cent tax increase. How much of an increase is required for a $178.7 million bond is not clear, but it will be more than 3.5 cents in a city that already has the highest property tax rate of any comparable city in the state.

The council spent the final 20 minutes of the work session discussing the committee system that it has been using since last fall.

About the only plus for the committee meetings is that the regular meetings have been shorter and it is good practice for councilmembers to get to run committee meetings.

Outling described committee meetings as “exceptionally short, unproductive meetings.” He said, “I’ve spent more time getting into the (continued on next page)

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www.rhinotimes.com | Thursday, June 9, 2016 | RHINO TIMES

UNCLE ORSON Reviews

Uncle Orson Reviews Everything

X-Men, Apocalypse Rain

by Orson Scott Card There are a lot of X-Men movies. They are all based on comic books about mutants with superpowers, most of which defy the laws of physics. If such people really existed, regular people would be correct to be terrified of them.

We’re not talking about people who are “different” and therefore entitled to tolerance and respect in our current political climate (as opposed to people with conservative religious and political beliefs, who should all die, and do so silently).

We’re talking about people who can kill you with a beam of hot light from their eyes, or blades that emerge from under the skin of their hands, or

by invading your brain, or dropping huge objects on you, or passing small metal items through your jugulars, or disintegrating you, all without breaking a sweat themselves.

Please go to another planet, X-Men. But of course the movies are all about how ordinary humans just won’t let these mutants with moviestar looks live out their lives in peace. The X-Men never initiate conflict; they are always Just Trying To Help. Such unrelenting virtue would be laughable if all these Good People were, say, Christians whose superpower was praying for people.

But complete innocence can be bestowed in a comic-book movie with the stroke of a pen.

bonds

(continued from previous page)

building than in discussion.”

Hightower said, “I’ve spent 20 minutes driving here for a five minute meeting.”

Vaughan said that one of the problems with the work sessions, which committee meetings replaced, is “we let anyone come talk to us. We didn’t do a good job of saying no, don’t put this on the agenda.”

It seemed that Vaughan didn’t realize she is mayor and it was her job to control the agendas of the work sessions. If anyone who walked in the door was being allowed to speak then it was because Vaughan was allowing them to speak. They were City Council work sessions, not city staff work sessions. It would seem the real problem was that the mayor wasn’t controlling the agenda.

Wilkins said that when committee meetings were proposed,

councilmembers were told it would give them a chance to “drill down” on topics and have much more in-depth discussions than they could have at work sessions with all nine members of the council present. There was a lot of agreement that the committee meetings have not brought about that kind of discussion.

City Attorney Tom Carruthers suggested that all four committee meetings be scheduled for the same day at half hour intervals, which would encourage all councilmembers to be present, not simply the four members of the committee.

It appeared the City Council was going to try this, but since it’s the staff that makes these decisions, not the City Council, and certainly not the mayor, it will be up to staff to decide how the City Council will meet.

It’s a case of the tail wagging the dog.

After nine X-Men movies (if you include Deadpool), plus a couple of off-line Wolverine movies, if you can keep the storylines straight you are something of a mutant yourself, I’m afraid. In fact, the true fans of the series divide it into two chronologies — one that takes place before the time alterations of X-Men: Days of Future Past and the timeline of events that happen after they altered the past.

Confusion does not lead to suspense, it leads to tedium. What saves you from dying of boredom is that the constant search for new superpowers and new villains leads to such absurd antics that you have to gaze in wonder.

Here’s the miracle of X-Men: Apocalypse. Long after I stopped caring about the series enough to bother keeping track of it – I’ve seen several of the more recent films only as they appeared on HBO, and then only in bits and passages – I went with a friend to see Apocalypse on Monday night and found that by the

(continued on page 22)

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16 RHINO TIMES | Thursday, June 9, 2016 | www.rhinotimes.com

city budget (continued from page 6)

increase or fee increase is never popular.” He said there were certain essential things the city had to do and paving streets was one of them.

Vaughan noted that Charlotte and Raleigh had been charging $30 for years after special legislation passed the General Assembly to allow them to do so. Vaughan didn’t mention that both cities have lower property tax rates than Greensboro.

Barber said, “I’m willing to accept the beating to raise these fees. We need to do what the City Council needs to do: public safety, good paved roads and pick up the trash.” It does make you wonder why all of that other stuff is in the budget and if perhaps next year the City Council might want to spend a few minutes prioritizing spending so that fee increases were not deemed necessary to perform a service that the City Council believes is a core function.

Wilkins said the people get to vote on the $20 million bond, but in the case of the vehicle license fee the city is just going to reach into citizens’ pockets

and take the money.

Hightower said, “This is not about posturing. I have people who put me here in this chair that expect me to listen to them as well.”

Hoffmann said, “A significant number of miles of roads in this city are in deplorable condition.” She said this wouldn’t fix the problem but would move the city in the right direction.

Outling said, “I think this does smack of politics and doing what people think will protect their own hides.”

Hightower said she didn’t have to posture for anybody. She said, “Am I supposed to be just a push button monkey and push yes on everything.”

She added that she needed options on how to improve the roads, not simply one vote to raise vehicle license fees by $20.

The motion to raise the fees 200 percent passed on a 7-to-2 vote with Hightower and Wilkins voting no.

In other business, an issue that caused the City Council on May 17 to take an emergency recess and hold an

illegal closed meeting to decide what to do about the downtown Business Improvement District (BID) fund was no problem at all at this meeting.

On May 17, while Eric Robert was at the podium speaking on behalf of Qub Studios – the company that he owns and that had put in a proposal for two of the five items for the BID money – the City Council immediately recessed.

The only other proposal that was deemed responsible by the city was from Downtown Greensboro Inc. (DGI).

Zack Matheny, the president of DGI, was waiting to express his views on why all the BID money should be awarded to DGI, but Matheny didn’t get a chance to speak because the City Council came back from its illegal closed meeting and voted to continue the item while Robert was still at the podium.

What a difference three weeks makes. Robert did not attend the City Council meeting on Tuesday, June 7 to finish his presentation. Matheny spoke about DGI and the council voted unanimously to award all the BID money, $600,000, to DGI. Before the vote, City Attorney Tom Carruthers explained that the staff had

salaries

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Deputy Sheriff/Sgt Enviro Serv Program Mgr SSV Division Dir Court Svc Program Mgr AFIS Supv Deputy Sheriff/Sgt Pharmacist Nursing Svc Consultant Detention Serv Supv I ISV Internal Auditor Detention Serv Supv I Deputy Sheriff/Lt Deputy Sheriff/Sgt Nursing Svc Mgr Deputy Sheriff/Sgt Child Support Mgr Detention Serv Supv I Nursing Svc Supv GIS Analyst Agency Bus Mgr Deputy Sheriff/Lt Clerk to the Board PH Disaster Prep Mgr Nurse Spec II-School Nutrition Program Dir Hydrogeologist Financial Sr Analyst GIS Analyst Deputy Sheriff/Sgt Soc Work Supv-Protect Serv Deputy Sheriff/Lt Nursing Svc Supv Object Oriented/GUI Dvlpr

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Rustan, Logan Wood, Dwane Pabon, Vonda Willis, Ernest Dudley, Lisa Brown, James Courts, Julia Sprinkle, Mark Legnetti, Deborah Blackwell, Richard Coble, Jerrell Mueller, Jeffrey Miller, Patricia Scruggs, Gregory Davis, Earl E Church, Jeanie Monk, Lydia Langley, Millie Early, E Wesley Reek, Todd Surratt, Janis Fortin, Joe Doub, Michael Neal, Sherri Newton, William Campbell, Donald Jones, Ryan Dupree, Tonya Phillips, John Powe, Nathaniel E Pope, Kathy Ward, Brian Breece, Pamela

Animal Svc Dir Detention Serv Supv I Nursing Svc Mgr HR Mgr Social Work Supv Building Inspec II Internal Auditor ISV Ops Mgr Soc Work Supv-Protect Serv Detention Corp Asst Fire Marshal Dept Bus Process Analyst Asst Tax Assessor/Pers Prop Emergency Svc Mgr Soil Erosion Section Chief Nurse Spec I Nursing Svc Supv Soil & Water Conservationist Social Wkr-Protect Svc DHHS IT Mgr Nursing Svc Supv MH Senior Practitioner Detention Serv Supv I Building Maint DVN Dir Sr Enviro Health Spec EM Division Dir EMS Shift Commander Soc Work Supv-Protect Serv Appraiser III Detention Serv Supv I Social Work Supv Enviro Health Prog Spec Financial Sr Analyst

$71,120 $71,071 $70,833 $70,209 $70,187 $70,179 $70,165 $70,147 $70,009 $69,866 $69,677 $69,578 $69,403 $69,288 $69,247 $69,238 $69,182 $69,101 $69,086 $69,000 $68,944 $68,838 $68,773 $68,769 $68,660 $68,452 $68,447 $68,211 $68,098 $68,089 $67,889 $67,873 $67,852

reviewed the proposals and that all the polices and procedures of the city were correctly followed in the request for proposal process.

Robert, before the sudden recess on May 17, had accused the city of improperly allowing DGI to revise its numbers after Qub Studios had already submitted its proposal. According to the city, DGI was asked to clarify its numbers but there was no significant change in the proposal.

Carruthers said that in the request for proposal process the city reserves the right to ask for more information, noting that it is not a bid process where the city is required to accept the lowest responsible bid.

At the end of the meeting, in this politically correct world, Hightower made a politically incorrect statement when she said they needed to be concerned that the Parks and Recreation Commission was becoming all male. Since we are supposed to be gender neutral, it shouldn’t matter whether the members of the Parks and Recreation Commission all look like males or not. Hightower has no idea how many of those people who look male identify as women.

Williams, Rodney Moebs, Yvonne Jones, Laurie Schurk, Charlene Goldean, John Millmore, Cheryl Godette, Mae Toney, Sharon Simpson, Cynthia Williamson, Karen Cihak, Sharon Boone, Rubea Cole, Timothy Call, Patricia Hill, Denise Thomas, Stephen Popek, Timothy Streeter, Wayne Buckner, Bryan Matthews, Donald W Doyle, Patrick Henderson, John Cross, Kerry Hall, Brian Johnson, Catherine Nykamp, John Horvath, Susan Lee, Robert Gritton, Larry Underwood, Alexis Shearin, Billy Joe Jones, Allen Cardwell, Susan Smith, Jordan

Detention Corp Risk Mgr Social Work Program Mgr Nurse Spec II-School EMS Capt Social Work Program Mgr Soc Work Supv-Protect Serv MH Unit Supv Medical Social Wkr Social Work Program Mgr Toxic & Health Hazard Spec Social Wkr II Building Inspec II Nurse Spec II-School Social Work Program Mgr Fire Inspections Chief Deputy Sheriff/Detective Sgt Sr Software Engineer ESV Tech Support Admin Deputy Sheriff/Sgt Telecomm Analyst Deputy Sheriff/Lt EMS Training Supv Deputy Sheriff/Lt Family Justice Center Coord Enviro Health Prog Spec Nursing Svc Supv Social Work Program Mgr Deputy Sheriff/Sgt SSV Contracts Admin Building Inspec II Building Inspec II Nursing Svc Consultant Financial Sr Analyst

(continued on page 26)

$67,794 $67,724 $67,717 $67,674 $67,580 $67,385 $67,223 $67,213 $66,962 $66,929 $66,837 $66,837 $66,835 $66,577 $66,521 $66,464 $66,445 $66,336 $66,301 $66,242 $66,159 $66,128 $65,973 $65,955 $65,557 $65,548 $65,489 $65,473 $65,360 $65,360 $65,213 $65,173 $65,159 $65,052

REALESTATE RHINO

www.rhinotimes.com

June 9, 2016

Everything you need to find, finance and buy the house of your dreams

HOW TO PACK FOR MOVING

BY SANDY GROOVER

You’re moving and you have to start packing, but where do you start?

Whether it’s across town or across the country, here are some tips that may help make your move less stressful.

First, try to start well in advance of the actual move date. Walk through every room in your home and decide what you will be taking with you. Set aside the things you no longer need or want – they can be given away, donated to charity, sold or thrown out.

The fewer things you have to pack and move, the easier and less costly your move will be.

Make a list for each room of the things you are definitely taking. This is your inventory and will help you determine the number and sizes

LOCAL REALTOR DIRECTORY www.realestate.rhinotimes.com

Successfully selling homes for 30 years

Betty Howard 336.337.7535

Gil Vaughan 336.337.4780

Karen Bickham Jobe 336.430.6552

www.justcallgil.com

http://www.trmrealestate.com/broker/karen-bickham-jobe

Chidi Akwari 336.337.1927

Wayne Young 336.253.4472

GilVaughan@gmail.com

Chidi@Akwari.com

betty@bettyhoward.com

Lender Directory

(continued on page 18)

karen.jobe@trm.info

wayne.young@allentate.com www.allentate.com/wayneyoung

Realtor Directory

Open House Listings

New Home Listings

REAL ESTATE

18 RHINO TIMES | Thursday, June 9, 2016 | www.rhinotimes.com

The New York Times

crossword puzzle No. 0529 BEST-PICTURE ADAPTATIONS

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1 2013 Best Picture nominee in which a main character isn’t human 4 Airplane part 9 “Hairspray” mom usually played by a man 13 Leg presses work them 18 60 minuti 19 Successors to Cutlasses 21 Best Picture adaptation about … a search for the perfect brew, with “The”?

23 Disney Channel’s “____ and Maddie” 24 … inaudible metrical poetry, with “The”?

26 Northeast Corridor train 28 Like groaners 29 River islet 30 1988 chart-topping country album 32 Game for bankers?

33 Psychedelic 37 … a fat Eastern monarch?

43 One in a no-blinking contest 45 Second draft 46 Neighbor 48 Extended rental?

49 Sea urchin, at a sushi bar Online subscriptions: Today’s puzzle and more than 4,000 past puzzles, nytimes.com/crosswords ($39.95 a year).

50 … fools accompanying a pack of wild animals?

56 King’s handful 59 Chance occurrence, old-style 60 Bad sound in a changing room 61 Vegas-to-Denver dir.

62 Part of a city network 63 “Relax” 64 Reusable part of a common thank-you gift 67 … a reed and percussion duet?

71 Group standing at the U.N. 74 Treat with a “Golden” variety 75 They rank below marquises 79 Words before and after “what” 80 O.T. book before Jeremiah 81 Chorus line?

82 Obstacle in road repairs, maybe 84 … an éclair or crème brûlée, with “The”?

90 Previously 91 Spork part 92 Daughter in E. M. Forster’s “Howards End” 93 Neighbor of Irkutsk on a Risk board 96 Badger 99 … gorgeous fur?

103 Shred 105 Lit ____ 106 Safari sight?

107 Singer DiFranco

108 Like a portrait that seems to be watching you 110 Winnower 113 … cooties from hugs and kisses?

121 Blender setting 122 … a salon woman I go to?

123 Tush 124 Set of anecdotes 125 A while, in hyperbole 126 Olympian with a bow 127 Jet similar to a 747 128 Benedictine title DOWN

1 Chihuahua greeting 2 Country singer Church 3**** 4 Honeydew cousins 5 U.S. women’s soccer star Krieger 6 Volume measure 7 Cause of boiling over 8 Sarge, e.g.

9 Jet 10 Stand up to 11 Bit of safari equipment 12 Enlightened Buddhist 13 “Enough is enough!”

14 “____ voce poco fa” (Rossini aria) 15 PIN point 16 One having a ball?

17 G.R.E. takers: Abbr.

20 Ice-cream order 22 Juniors, maybe 25 Writer ____ Stanley Gardner 27 1880s-’90s veep ____ P. Morton

31 Step ____ 32 Half of a Vegas show duo 34 Shroud 35 ____ Drive (street where Harry Potter grew up) 36 Dweller along the Mandeb Strait 37 Bridge support 38 “As such …”

39 College-campus offering 40 Like carpaccio or crudités 41 Geisha’s accessory 42 Metaphorical low point 44 Physicist Nathan who postulated wormholes 47 Attempt at a dunk tank 51 Spiced teas 52 The White House’s ____ Room 53 Peeping Tom’s spot 54 Modern encyclopedia platform 55 Muses 57 Simon of the “Mission: Impossible” films 58 It circles the globe 63 Merino mother 64 Stethoscope’s place 65 War on Poverty agcy.

66 Main ingredient in queso relleno 68 Bite 69 Like candied apples 70 Gillette razor name 71 Liquor purchase 72 Ring around the collar?

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108 Prefix with spore 109 “Slow Churned” brand 111 Antipasto pairing 112 Reason for a class struggle?

113 TV inits. since 1975 114 Photographer’s asset 115 Certain fraternity chapter 116 “Wowie!”

117 Musician’s asset 118 Lapel attachment 119 Suffix with subsist 120 Never, in Nikolaus

NEW LISTINGS

4 Briarbranch Court Greensboro, NC 27405 4BR 2.5BA (788075) Mary Ellen Feeney 336-545-4625 $159,000 COLDWELL BANKER TRIAD, REALTORS

3229 Edenwood Drive Greensboro, NC 27406 3BR 2 BA (772440) Sharon Taylor 336-497-8667 $129,000 COLDWELL BANKER TRIAD, REALTORS

2 Levelwind Court Greensboro, NC 27455 5BR 4BA (788805) Lynda Evans 336-209-0326 $475,000 COLDWELL BANKER TRIAD, REALTORS

211 Winged Foot Court Winston Salem, NC 27107 5BR 3BA (768569) Andy Millsaps 336-816-3699 $399,900 COLDWELL BANKER TRIAD, REALTORS

127 Winged Foot Court Winston Salem, NC 27107 4BR 3BA (776094) Lawana McNeill 336-880-1100 $377,500 COLDWELL BANKER TRIAD, REALTORS

REAL ESTATE

www.rhinotimes.com | Thursday, June 9, 2016 | RHINO TIMES

pack

(continued from page 17)

of boxes needed and the amount of supplies required to pack and secure each box.

Along with boxes, your supply list may include packing tape, packing paper, newsprint or shredded paper, bubble wrap, scissors, box cutters and markers.

Moving kits come in a variety of configurations such as an apartment kit, small home kit or deluxe home kit and include boxes, tape, bubble wrap, packing paper and markers. They are found at moving companies, big box hardware stores and office supply stores. Here in Greensboro, you can also find all the packing supplies at Bee Safe Storage’s two locations: 1016 Battleground and 4435 Jessup Grove Road.

Specialty boxes are available for items such as artwork and large mirrors.

These are stronger than regular boxes and shaped to fit. Some ospecialty boxes available are lamp boxes, guitar boxes and mattress and crib boxes. Corner protectors and corrugated cardboard can also help protect furniture and glass surfaces during the move.

If you will be using a moving company and would rather let them do the packing for you, be sure to ask whether the packing materials are included in the overall price, when the actual packing will take place and what the fee is for the movers to pack your possessions. Moving companies all have their own list of services and will generally give you a free cost estimate for the ones you plan to use.

When packing on your own, it’s best to start early collecting boxes.

Sources include friends and coworkers who have recently moved, your place of work or grocery and convenience stores and pharmacies. ABC and wine stores are also good places to find sturdy boxes. Wine boxes usually have dividers that work well for things like glassware. If you can give the managers advance notice, they may be able to set aside boxes for you. Be sure to get a lot. You will probably find that you need far more than you first estimated.

Once you have your supplies on hand, start your packing with the nonessentials. For instance, if you are moving in summer, pack all your winter clothes, heavy blankets and winter sports equipment first. As you pack, be sure and label the boxes contents, where the box goes in the new location and any special instructions such as “fragile” or “open first.” You can use stick-on labels or write directly on the box with a marker. Be sure each side

of the box, as well as the top, is clearly labeled.

It’s a good idea to number each box as well, and keep a list of the box number, contents and location. This can help keep you organized as you unload in your new home. It will also be helpful if you check off each box as it’s unloaded. If a box is missing, you’ll know it; and, if using a moving company, you’ll be able to identify the missing box and its contents for insurance purposes.

At the new location, consider making signs for each room that correspond to the way in which you numbered and labeled the boxes, for example, master bedroom, Susie’s room, family room, Kitchen, etc., and then tape them where they can clearly be seen.

When packing your boxes, you can use towels, linens, pillows, even clothes to keep fragile items safe.

Don’t forget to mark on the box that these materials have been used for packing. You don’t want someone inadvertently whipping open a towel that contains a glass vase and have it crash on the floor in pieces.

Place heavy items on the bottom of the box, with lighter items on top.

Use medium-size boxes that are a manageable size and weight. Fifty pounds is the suggested maximum weight for the contents of any box.

The bottom of boxes can be reinforced with packing tape.

Wardrobe boxes are perfect for bulky, lightweight items such as comforters, pillows and blankets, as well as clothes. Wardrobe boxes come in different widths, and you can measure the clothes in your closet to determine the number of boxes you’ll need.

Remember to measure the coats in your coat closets and be careful not to make the wardrobe boxes too heavy.

Tempting as it may be, it is probably not a good idea to put linens, bedclothes, or pillows in large garbage bags. It’s can be too easy to mistake the bags for actual garbage and toss them out. Instead, consider using extra suitcases, duffle bags or boxes for items like these.

The kitchen is the room that will, in all likelihood, require the most boxes.

As with the other rooms in your house, start your packing with non-essential items – those you don’t use on a daily basis. As you go through your pantry, cabinets and drawers, you can sort and cull unused items. Set aside a box for “essentials,” those items you will need immediately upon arrival in your new home.

With time and planning, you can make the move as easy as possible.

CAROLINA THEATRE 310 S. Greene St.

Carolina Kids’ Club

Wednesdays mornings, June 22 through July 27, enjoy a familyfriendly Disney movie preceded by exciting, kid-focused, live stage entertainment from Mad Science and lobby fun from Bricks 4 Kidz leading up to the show.

June 22 – Cars; June 29 – Aladdin; July 13 – Toy Story; July 20 – Mulan; July 27 – Finding Nemo Doors open at 9 a.m.; stage games and live entertainment begin at 9:30; movies begin between 10:15 and 10:30, with events ending by noon. Children must be accompanied by an adult. Tickets are $5 and include a kids’ snack pack. Five-packs of tickets are $20.

For more information, call (336) 333-2605 or visit carolinatheatre. com. For group tickets, call (336) 333-2600, ext. 5.

COMMUNITY THEATRE OF GREENSBORO 520 S. Elm St.

Summer Theatre Camp

June 13 through July 15, the Community Theatre is offering weeklong summer theater camps for ages 3 to 16. Camp sessions include auditioning for musical theater, improv, acting and singing. For information, visit ctgso.org or call (336) 333-7470, ext. 201.

GREENSBORO SCIENCE CENTER 4301 Lawndale Dr.

Summer Camp

From June 13 to August 19, enjoy science fun ranging from amazing animals to rockin’ robots. For ages 4 to 15. To learn more or register, visit www.greensboroscience.org or call (336) 288-3769.

GREENSBORO PUBLIC LIBRARY

Summer Reading 2016

Pre-readers through high school students, register at your favorite library location, then track reading minutes to earn prizes every month this summer. Bring your reading sheet, with total number of monthly reading minutes, back to the library anytime in July to receive your prizes. Continue reading and return in August to get even more prizes. Get more information at your favorite library branch.

ARTQUEST AT GREENHILL 200 North Davie St.

Free Family Night

Wednesdays from 5 to 7 p.m., ArtQuest hosts a free Family Night.

Create art, working with paint, clay or new and unexpected materials.

For more information, call (336) 333-7460 or visit GreenhillNC.org.

CHECK US OUT ON THE OPEN HOUSE PAGE

This schedule brought to you by your friends & neighbors at

Coldwell Banker (336) 282-4414

19

REAL ESTATE

20 RHINO TIMES | Thursday, June 9, 2016 | www.rhinotimes.com

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www.rhinotimes.com | Thursday, June 9, 2016 | RHINO TIMES

The Sound of the

beep

What follows has been transcribed from the answering machine on our comment line. 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 763-0479 and start talking at The Sound of the Beep.

Yeah, I’m just reading this in the paper here about “Obama urges no nukes.” He wishes that there would be a time when no nuclear weapons would be in the world today. What part of that is the biggest load of baloney you’ve ever heard of? He just gave Iran the right to have nuclear weapons, a country that would love nothing more than to blow us all up over here. They hate our guts. And this fool is giving Iran a nuclear weapon? I thought Jimmy Carter was a bad president. He’s got him beat.

%%% OK. So I was able to contact either by voicemail or in person on the telephone each of our city councilmembers concerning their 60 percent pay raise they granted themselves. And had a conversation with at least five. And the most amazing conversation I had was with one of the city councilmembers was that they actually voted themselves this raise for the good of Greensboro, that they felt like if they raise their salaries to the level of Durham, Raleigh and Charlotte that they would in turn enhance the vision of Greensboro and Greensboro city government. Now if that isn’t something for somebody to laugh at, I don’t know what else is. That’s what they think of us, and that’s what they think of Greensboro, and that’s fine. There’s not much we can do about it.

%%% I’m just coming down Cone Boulevard where you cross over 29, and two people ran the red light. I’m talking about ran it. It was already red before they got across. And a city cop, sat right there at the stop light and did not one thing about it. Got down to Summit Avenue. My light is green.

I’m going through the light, and a city bus ran the red light and turned right in front of me, and I’m going to get the license number of the bus. I know you won’t print it, because I just don’t think you will. I’m just sick and tired of these people breaking the law and this sorry police department we got won’t do nothing about it. Thank you very much.

%%% I recently went for a bicycle, ride which I often do. No, I don’t wear the popular apparel, just shorts, T-shirt, ball cap and tennis shoes. While stopped at a traffic light waiting for it to turn green, three other cyclists blew the red light and whizzed by me, leaving me sitting, still waiting for the green light. Maybe wearing spandex suits and sporting high-tech helmets has its privileges. But now I understand why cyclists are involved in accidents in broad daylight. Southern Guilford County here.

%%% Hi. This is Moochi. With that pay increase that the City Council got, I believe I may run for City Council next time. Also, in regards to Phillips pointing out about the animal shelter has been perfect for Wendover Avenue, yes, it has. But it’s sitting back, not in full view of everything like it would be if it was on Burlington Road. As a resident of that area, I am strictly opposed to it. Now, if it had not been sitting back, would those businesses have built up like they did around it? Thank you.

%%% I sat this day, this day Memorial Day, and watched the wonderful tribute to our troops before the Indianapolis 500 race, and I just sat and watched the Coca-Cola 600, the tribute they made to our troops on that. It’s really

(continued on page 24)

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22 RHINO TIMES | Thursday, June 9, 2016 | www.rhinotimes.com

uncle orson (continued from page 15)

end, I was moved. I cared.

Plus, there were enough bright lights and simulated violent acts that my eyes were continually engaged with the screen. This is the crudest definition of entertainment, but the CGI did its job. The spectacle was there, even if the premise was fundamentally incoherent.

The prime silliness was that the whole story rested on having a super-mutant from ancient times assassinated just as he’s transferring himself to a new, unkillable body. The transfer is completed via the sacrifices of his four mutant assistants, but he is buried under tons of stone and he’s in a coma for 4,000 years.

When a worshipful cult, plus a CIA operative, expose his resting place to sunlight, he wakes up and immediately has the power to push the stones out of his way and rise to the surface, where he plans to resume his role as a god.

How many movie and book plots have depended on the persistence of a secret cult through thousands of years, waiting for the return of a powerful being? Yes, I know perfectly well that there are real analogues to this – but (a) they aren’t secret and (b) they have a lot of activities beyond mere chanting, wearing funny hats and waiting for godot ... or elvis, depending.

Think of the stupidity of Nicolas Cage’s grandfather’s cult in Peggy Sue Got Married. Or the stupid secret societies in various Sherlock Holmes and The Mummy movies.

But at least when this demongod (Oscar Isaac) arises, X-Men: Apocalypse plays him with earnestness rather than campiness (though the campiness is there, because it can’t help but be).

My friend and I were entertained and, as I said, were even moved by the characters’ storylines. But at the end of the movie, when I said, “I’m so done with comic book movies,” my friend agreed.

It’s possible for a popular genre to run its course, the way mafia novels did during the years after The Godfather. Yes, the diehard comic book fans will still love their comic books — that’s not at issue. It’s the willingness of the general public to plunk down their money and put their bums in theater seats to watch random special effects that’s in question.

Westerns followed this trajectory.

In the 1930s, some of the hugest stars in cinema history specialized in oaters, and if you couldn’t or wouldn’t ride a horse, you cut yourself out of a

significant percentage of Hollywood roles. When television came along, every network had a full stable – literally – of western series. And some of them, maybe even a lot of them, had good human stories told within the tropes and cliches.

Shane had every cliche in the book, I think – but if you don’t feel at least wistful for the boy calling out Shane’s name as he rides away, you have no heart.

Likewise, the fact that some of the comic-book movies are good stories does not mean we’re going to keep watching them forever. Westerns lasted a long time, despite such fantasy tropes as the hero never needing to kill anybody because, firing a pistol from his hip, he shoots the gun out of the bad guy’s hand. But along about 1970, westerns went away.

It was partly a decision of television network executives to go a different direction, but nobody wept, because those execs had sensed something true: The American public was done with westerns.

Maybe it was even simpler than that. Maybe it had become impossible for television writers to come up with new western series ideas to pitch. Maybe it was the growing shame of the fashionable Left about American history. Maybe it was the death of the myth of the Good Guy ... and it took comic book movies to resurrect it.

As for movies, the comic book franchises are so expensive to film, partly because of the huge casts of actors able to be convincing in front of a green screen, and partly because of computer effects that require a dozen different CGI companies and a year of post-production, that they have to earn a lot of money to repay the costs.

Poor DC Comics seems to be on the cutting edge of the death of the comic-book movie franchise, especially because the Justice League is even stupider than the X-Men, who at least have a coherent premise to work from.

But Marvel isn’t immune. How many times are they going to try to make us believe in and care about the Fantastic Four? How can we possibly take the Avengers seriously when we have Norse gods commingling with a World War II-era action hero who uses a shield that can deflect, well, everything?

It took us exactly one movie to be done with Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland “franchise”; the sequel

was made because nobody realized that even the general public can only be pushed so far when it comes to obnoxious, unfunny “comedy” that includes nobody we care about. All Tim Burton movies star Tim Burton, and maybe, to my great relief, we’re done with his pretentious ain’t-I-cool style.

The movie studios are generally led by executives who have no clue what a story is, so if they can slap a numeral on the end of a previous hit title and be sure of making money, they know they won’t lose their jobs.

That’s why we see travesties like movie series based on books, where they split the (usually weak) last volume in two so that they can eke two more guaranteed moneymaking films out of the franchise. The extreme example is, of course, The Hobbit, an embarrassing “trilogy” reconceived as a prequel to all the stupid mistakes Peter Jackson made in wrecking the storyline of Lord of the Rings.

But this year seems to be showing that sequels aren’t such a sure thing, even when they’re pretty well written and very well performed by living actors and computer graphics artists alike.

I didn’t feel like I wasted my time watching X-Men: Apocalypse. It was better written than it deserved to be; I cared about some of the characters.

But if Jennifer Lawrence never has to paint on that blue body suit again, and instead gets to play characters who are commensurate with her talents, we movie-goers will be better off, and so will the actors.

When modern movie-goers dip into the black-and-white westerns of the past, they quickly learn that, even when the writing and acting are good and they are certified as “classics,” if you’ve seen a half-dozen great westerns, you’ve seen them all.

Twenty years from now, or even sooner, I think younger movie-goers will watch a few comic book movies from our time and say, “Millions of people paid money to watch this?

How did they stay awake?”

We already feel this way about the original Christopher Reeve Superman franchise, and the constantly rebooted Batman and Spider-Man franchises hit the point of sadness long ago – though the kid they’ve got playing Spider-Man in the latest Avengers movie is so promising that, yeah, I’ll probably watch the third reboot of Spider-Man since 2002.

Has any other franchise been rebooted so rapidly? At least the Fantastic Four movies have all stunk the great stink, so we probably won’t see a third reboot of that mess.

Is there any comic book series so stupid and awful that it doesn’t have a legion of diehard fans pushing for a live-action movie?

Maybe we’ve still got 20 years of mostly-computer-generated comic book movies ahead of us. Or maybe, mercifully, X-Men: Apocalypse is helping to lead us out of such nonsense franchises at a decent level.

....

Because some of them are very good, I tend to pick up books about fairly commonplace aspects of our world. Salt, pencils, the sea, seeds, rust ... they have all provided me with informative and, usually, entertaining treatments of a broad subject that touches on many aspects of history and contemporary life.

It’s hard to think of a more ubiquitous, familiar and not-thoughtmuch-about subject than rain.

Cynthia Barnett, in Rain: A Natural and Cultural History, does a very good job of making rain seem like an unknown phenomenon that deserves our rapt attention, even when it’s not falling.

I had just finished listening to Rain (read by Christina Traister, from Audible.com) a few days before I drove up US 29 to visit a friend in Potomac Falls, Virginia, this past Saturday. In the early evening, with plenty of light in the sky, I ran into one of the worst gullywashers I’ve every experienced.

On the hilly, winding four-lane between Charlottesville and Culpeper, the wind gusts were so powerful that the rain was truly sideways for many seconds at a time. During such gusts, there was so much water in the air that I not only couldn’t see the white stripes at the side of the highway, I couldn’t even see the hood of my car.

My only guide was the taillights of cars ahead of me, which happened to be at enough of a distance that there might have been some curves that I wouldn’t see. Fortunately, the gusts were intermittent, so a second at a time I could see the stripes on the road very faintly, allowing me to continue – at a speed somewhere between 10 and 15 miles an hour.

Cars behind me, following the guidance of my taillights, became impatient, and some of them whipped past me at a speed I thought very unsafe. So did they, since they always braked very quickly when they passed me and no longer had my taillights to guide them. Oh, they were thinking. That’s why that old coot in the Hyundai Santa Fe was going so slow.

I can reassure them: Their (continued on page 27)

www.rhinotimes.com | Thursday, June 9, 2016 | RHINO TIMES

23

YOST Column

Yost Column

Yost Dreams of Jeannie

by Scott D. Yost A horse is a horse, of course, of course.

– Mr. Ed theme song

I realized the other day that the new crop of kids growing up now knows absolutely nothing at all about the TV shows that you and I grew up with, and that’s why, whenever we absentmindedly refer to something from these shows, the kids just look at us exactly like Nanny looked at the professor when he did something really nutty.

I realized recently that kids today have absolutely no idea what you and I watched for entertainment when we were growing up – even though all of these shows are so second nature to us that they’re deeply engrained in our being.

Today, kids while away their hours watching PewDiePie or 15 straight hours of Minecraft videos on YouTube, however they don’t know about the “Golden Age” of television when even our sad little low-def TVs with no remote control were where it was at – simply because all the shows were fantastic.

So it seems a great shame that an entire new generation should remain completely void of all knowledge of this milieu that shaped our entire culture so completely; so, for their edification, and in the hope that they will, in the future, understand references made by myself and others, I’ve decided to use the column this week to help familiarize the kids with just a few of the shows that were nearly as important to us as the air that we breathe.

If you’re an adult then you already know all this so you can stop reading this week; however, if you’re a kid, you should read on because it will open up a whole new world to you, and, with any luck, you can even find some of these terrific shows on YouTube and see them for yourselves …

Hogan’s Heroes: I know that, for your generation, history is not one of

your strong suits, but I feel sure you learned in school about the Nazis. You remember when the teacher talked about Germany’s Nazi reign of terror that, headed by sadistic madman Adolf Hitler, led to the creation of Auschwitz, Dachau and other concentration camps where the mass extermination of six million people took place. Well, Hogan’s Heroes is a jovial, light-hearted comedy romp through that place and time – about a group of happy-go-lucky American POW’s held prisoner by their clueless but loveable Nazi captors.

An actual commercial for the series in 1964 stated, “If you liked World War II, you’ll love Hogan’s Heroes.”

If the Nazi regime of mass genocide seems like an unlikely setting for a sitcom – well, I guess it was in a way, but the show was actually a big hit and turned out pretty funny.

And the laughs continued off screen after the show ended: Bob Crane, the show’s sex-crazed star who got caught up in the sleazy world of underground pornography and orgies, was mysteriously bludgeoned to death with a camera tripod and choked with an electrical cord.

Surprisingly, the story behind Crane’s later life and murder has never been made into a comedy series. Not yet anyway!

Gilligan’s Island: This is about two hot young women who are trapped on a deserted island with a bunch of weirdoes. They were all on a threehour tour but ended up shipwrecked.

Fortunately, despite the fact that they were on a three-hour tour on the small boat, they took five-years worth of costume changes, theatrical equipment, record players, musical instruments and feather boas with them.

You know, apparently only Noah was a more efficient packer.

Two of the people on the tour were extremely rich and I’m not exactly sure why, given their immense wealth, they were on a short tour on a cramped

small boat with a group of strangers and 40 trunks of theatrical costumes, formal dresses and feather boas.

(Surprisingly, the group packed all that but didn’t bother to pack a working, backup two-way radio or more than one flare for the flare gun.)

Ginger, the “movie star,” was widely billed as the hot one of the group, yet really, in a way, “innocent” little Mary Ann was truly the steamy enticing vixen who was the kind of girl who shyly gives you those come hither looks that really made you want to step through the TV screen and take her into the thatch hutch and – Well, I digress, and this is, after all, a column for the kids, so let’s move on …

Anyway, where were we? Oh yeah, Gilligan’s Island.

I still remember my favorite episode.

I can’t recall the title but it’s the one where they’re about to be rescued but at the last minute Gilligan screws it up and they end up still being stuck on the island.

The Brady Bunch: This is about a man and woman whose spouses both died mysteriously around the same time and then, “after” that convenient little coincidence, the two of them got together. They each have three kids, making six when you put them all together.

The show is kind of like Modern Family without the gay family members.

(Well, actually, I forgot about Alice being on there; I will have to check and get back to you on that.)

I like this show but, if you ask me, it is too much focused around Marcia.

Marcia is hit in the nose. Marcia gets the big school prize. Marcia gets the lead role in Romeo and Juliet. Week after week, you watch the show and there are six kids in it – but it’s all about Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!

The family had a dog named Tiger but did not have a tiger named Dog. They also had a cat named Fluffy, so that makes me think that the family (continued on page 24)

24 RHINO TIMES | Thursday, June 9, 2016 | www.rhinotimes.com

yost

(continued from page 23) meetings where they named pets weren’t very long ones.

By the final year, ratings were beginning to slump so they brought in a new character, Cousin Oliver, which completely rejuvenated the show.

Bringing in a new family member was a great idea in much the same way that it’s a great idea to bring in a new kid when you and your wife are having problems in your marriage. In that case, the best thing to do to help fix those is to have a baby – because nothing brings you closer and makes you forget all the anger and bitterness you have for one another like the joy of bringing a newborn into the world together. It makes everything near perfect again.

And it works pretty much the same

for saving TV shows as well. Sadly, despite that great idea, however, after they added Cousin Oliver, they were never really a “bunch” in the true sense of the word.

I Dream of Jeannie: This was a very, very racy show, one of the raciest on TV. I mean, let’s be honest about it: Barbara Eden was hot. Smokin’. At first, the censors didn’t approve of her skimpy costume, but then they put a jewel in her belly button and that made it OK that she was running around half naked on prime time TV in the 1960s.

Not that I’m complaining one bit, mind you.

This show was very true to life because Major Nelson always did what any red-blooded, single, adventurous

beep (continued from page 21) wonderful to watch all the passion and all the love that the people in America have put out for our troops. And it’s a shame we don’t have a real commander in chief. I apologize again. I called last year and apologized to them for not having a commander in chief worth their salt. But, hopefully, next year we won’t have the same Obama in the White House, and you’ll have a real leader, a real man that will get behind you like he says he’s going to do. He’s going to increase our military. He’s …

%%% I just read that Hillary Clinton is saying that Donald Trump is attempting to scam America the way he scammed all those people at Trump University and that we should remember what he has done is a pretty good indicator of what he will do. Let’s take a look at Hillary.

She lied about being under fire at Bosnia. She didn’t do what she should have done in the Benghazi situation. She lied about her emails.

Following her own line of thinking, these are pretty good indicators of what she will do.

%%% Yeah, the Republican headquarters in Greensboro has moved out of that real nice shopping center into a real small building off Old High Point Road, which is Golden Gate Road

now. But, technically, now, I guess, you’re seeing Adam’s Farms now.

Way out there. Almost in Jamestown.

And I was just wondering, why would they leave a nice, easy-to-find building to a location that’s only onethird the size and it’s out in the middle of nowhere, and the road – High Point Road has now been modified and goes – doesn’t even go up the road that even takes you into that shopping center. You have to basically do a U-turn to come around the back …

%%% Editor’s Note: Their lease wasn’t renewed.

%%% Hey, did you see where Trump is not going to take donations from a super PAC. And then he says that he would just basically pay his self back for the money he has spent on his campaign? And I’m sitting there thinking, you can’t do that. It actually states, the campaign funding, that when you put money into that account that that can only be used for campaign funding. So, what’s he going to do, loan the money back to himself out of the account? Or is he just going to flat-out take it out and pay his self a huge paycheck or something? You know? I’m curious how he’s going to do that. Because I know people that ran for office, and I’ve worked campaigns, and I know for a fact when a politician leaves

alpha-male would do if he had his own incredibly gorgeous, scantily clad Jeannie – he refused to let her grant him any wishes and unswervingly turned down her constant sexual advances.

Just like any of us would do if we were in his position, myself included.

And don’t even get me started on the fact that he does so knowing full well that this is a woman who has the pent up energy of being trapped in a bottle for 2,000 years.

Even thinking about this show 50 years later now gets me hot and bothered. Or rather, I mean, it would get me hot and bothered if my mind thought that way. Again, I feel a need to move on …

H.R. Pufnstuf: This was one of those shows that should have never gotten past network censors. It was written and produced by heavy dope

office, or runs for office, he has an amount left over, they’re supposed to give that amount for another candidate or there is some things you’re supposed to do with it.

%%% Editor’s Note: Candidates frequently loan money to their own campaigns. If they raise a lot of money, they can pay themselves back. If they don’t, they can forgive the loan.

%%% If Hillary Clinton should be elected president, will she show up at state dinners wearing her fake smile and one of her tents?

%%% Good morning. This is a few sour notes. North Carolina, Greensboro and Guilford County is messed up by the bad politicians we have.

And we keep putting them back in.

What’s wrong with us? Get rid of them all. We won’t be any worse off.

Maybe better. I need a raise, too.

%%% Yes, I’d like to say just because someone is transgender doesn’t make them a pedophile, a rapist or a stalker. This stuff is blown out of proportion. Transgenders are neutral and they’re not out after to rape your kids or anything else. Just leave them be. Thank you.

%%% Looks like we’re headed for the third president that dodged the military. Clinton went to Canada.

Who knows about Obama? I don’t (continued on page 28)

smokers for heavy dope smokers. It has a bunch of talking animals and some other bizarre psychedelic creatures that one might encounter on a four-day drug binge, depending on what “stuff you were puffin.” It should have never been on the air the same way New Zoo Review should not have been, and in the same way that “Puff the Magic Dragon” should never have been allowed on American radio.

Lassie: This is like that show you kids watch these days called the Dog Whisperer, only instead of reading the dog’s mind, the humans can understand what the dog’s barks mean. “What’s that, Lassie? Timmy’s trapped in the well!? He’s bleeding from the left side and he’ll only last approximately 23 minutes if we don’t get there to help!? What’s that? I also need to bring someone who knows CPR? Slow down, Lassie. I’m writing all this down.”

Mr. Ed: Speaking of talking animals, this show was about a very wise old talking horse.

When you kids hear the phrase “straight from the horse’s mouth” and you wonder where in the world that expression comes from, well, it’s from this show with a talking horse, of course, of course. This was also a show written by drug users for drug users. This show is kind of a rip-off of the ’50’s Francis, the Talking Mule movies, and it is not to be confused with Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp, which had talking chimps rather than horses. (Talking animals were very big when your parents were children.)

Plenty more where that came from.

There are a lot of other great shows that you are missing out on as well.

When you get some time, you really should turn off your Minecraft videos and take a break from PewDiePie and go online and check out your parents’ shows from the ’60s and ’70s. You’ll be delighted by the wondrous, highconcept, politically incorrect shows, and I should also point out that our part of the country – the South – got a lot of love with shows at that time like The Beverly Hillbillies, The Andy Griffith Show, Petticoat Junction, Hee Haw, Green Acres and more.

And check out Lost in Space (“Danger, Will Robinson!”), F Troop and Family Affair. (But, whatever you do, don’t Google what happened to sweet little innocent Buffy.)

And, while your at it, be sure to check out Love, American Style, Fantasy Island and especially The Love Boat, which I think, despite its age, you will find exciting and new.

ask

C

www.rhinotimes.com | Thursday, June 9, 2016 | RHINO TIMES

arolyn...

25

Straight Talk

from the Dancing Divorce Attorney

by Carolyn Woodruff

Ask Carolyn…

Dear Readers, The second question today is about parental supervision and refers to the incident at the Cincinnati Zoo with the gorilla and the child. I’d like to hear from readers with opinions and questions on that incident.

Dear Carolyn, My husband and I are the proud grandparents of a 2-year-old grandson. We would like to do something meaningful to help ensure our grandson’s future, particularly college. We have enough money to start saving for college for him, but I’d like to understand some of the best ways to do this. I also am concerned if the grandson’s parents’ divorce, how would the college money be handled?

I read about all of the college kids having so much debt when they enter the workforce. Our lawyer for our wills

says that we do not have an estate tax problem. What would be best for us?

Carolyn Answers ...

There is no question that college costs can be a crippling burden. I applaud you for thinking ahead. Costs today are staggering. According to the College Board, private colleges average $40,000 per year; in-state tuition for state collleges averages $17,000 per year; and the top 50 top tier private colleges, like my alma mater Duke, averages $60,000 per year.

I suggest that you start a 529 plan in North Carolina, assuming your grandson is in North Carolina. If he lives in another state, I would do some research for that state’s 529 plan.

These plans are managed by large mutual fund companies. While the College Board does not keep statistics on how much is invested in 529 plans by grandparents for grandchildren, we do know that $25 billion was invested in 529 plans last year alone. And there are 12 million 529 plan accounts. The big deal is that the earnings on the 529

(continued on page 26)

26 RHINO TIMES | Thursday, June 9, 2016 | www.rhinotimes.com

carolyn

(continued from page 25) plan can be accumulated tax free.

You should maintain the ownership yourself, with your grandson as beneficiary. First, this insures it would not get “caught up” in a divorce of your grandchild’s parents. Second, in the event you ended up needing the money yourself, you could reverse the transaction, with some tax consequences, of course. Finally, under the current financial aid rules, you have an advantage that parents and children do not have.

Under the rules, a calculation is made of “expected family contribution.”

These contributions are only of the child and the parents, and grandparents are not included in the calculation. Twenty percent of student assets are included in the calculation, so a gift to the child lessens the likelihood of the child receiving financial aid for college.

Also, 5.64 percent of parents’ income and non-retirement assets are part of the parents’ expected contribution, so giving the money to the parents has this problem as well as the potential of

a divorce problem.

If you would like more information on how this financial aid calculation of “expected family contribution” works, see studentaid.ed.gov/sa/fafsa/ estimate.

Strategically, the best time for the grandparents to give college money from the 529 plan is the beginning of the second semester of the grandchild’s junior year of college.

This strategy maximizes the financial aid because the 529 plan assets on this timetable have the least impact on the 20 percent of the child’s share of expected family contribution.

Dear Carolyn, My ex allowed our 6-year-old to wander in the woods alone. Our son got bitten by a snake.

Luckily, he was able to get to a neighbor’s house who called 911.

I am furious and I consider my ex to be negligent in parental supervision. We are not yet settled and we have an upcoming

custody case. What can I do about my ex’s negligence in supervision?

Carolyn Answers ...

I trust your son is OK and healing from the snakebite. You are also lucky that the snake’s venom apparently was not so toxic as to keep your son from getting to the neighbor’s house, who luckily was home. Now on to parental supervision.

The judge should look seriously at the supervision issue in your custody trial, and you should make a big deal out of this. Accidents certainly can happen. I suppose if your ex had even been with your child, a snakebite could have occurred. But think what supervision would have provided. First, the bite might have been avoided. But, let’s say the bite was accidental. Had your son been supervised he would have immediately had assistance from an adult. The adult might have had a cell phone to immediately call 911. Further, the adult probably could have used some first aid for snakebites and carried the child out of the woods, reducing the “rush” of the venom throughout the body.

In my opinion, children should be

salaries

(continued from page 16)

Howlett, Wayne Detention Corp Rogers, Charlotte Deputy Sheriff/Corp II Parker, Cynthia Deputy Sheriff/Sgt Wilson, Christopher Emergency Svc Mgr Hand, William Chief Building Inspec I Staton, Rorie Soc Work Supv-Protect Serv Price, Joseph Deputy Sheriff/Corp II Griggs, Lan Nursing Svc Consultant Melton, Richard Crime Analyst Alston, Avis Social Wkr-Protect Svc Darden, Rosetta Soc Work Supv-Protect Serv Shelton, Veronica Child Support Supv Reppert, Daniel Social Wkr-Protect Svc Gerringer, Casey Chief Building Inspec II Wilson, Teresa Sr Software Engineer Rowell, Claretha Social Work Program Mgr Ramachandran, Anita PH Program Mgr Harding, Leslie Comm Envir Serv Prog Mgr Jackson, Roy Detention Serv Off II Jaekle, Beth Nursing Svc Supv Nowack, Diane Nurse Spec II McKamey, Ross ES Mgr-Quality/Compliance Kirkley, Tammy Nursing Svc Supv Gillett, Mary Comm Health Ed II Koonce, Tammy Nursing Svc Consultant Ramsey, Patricia Detention Serv Off I Cassada, Annette ERP Spec Thomas, Floyd Enviro Health Prog Spec Shaw, Mary Nursing Svc Consultant Overcash, Chrystal Deputy Sheriff/Detective Jackson, Delores Deputy Sheriff/Corp II Cook, Ramon Medical Lab Mgr Crosby, Valerie Child Support Supv

$64,983 $64,830 $64,821 $64,767 $64,722 $64,711 $64,603 $64,581 $64,506 $64,378 $64,361 $64,243 $64,202 $64,166 $64,042 $64,042 $64,042 $64,000 $63,931 $63,920 $63,884 $63,858 $63,761 $63,754 $63,664 $63,594 $63,568 $63,562 $63,515 $63,395 $63,363 $63,301 $63,296

Wilson, Melanie Ray, Jimmy Henderson, Brian Renn, Christy Bryant, Crystal Stephens, Cameron Johnson, Kerry Funderburk, Broadus Todmann, Stephanie Lowes, John Garrett, Philip Corbett, Vicky Paladino, Jan Lanier, Darryl Bowden, Judy Penick, Harold Stanley, Eric Williams, Terrell Carpenter, Renee Burton, Brian Godwin, Dwight Nixon, Anna Pouncey, Monica Mackey, Wanda Ellington, Sandra Stevens, James Poston, David Abernathy, Laura Fields, Heather Ireland, Arleen Hayes Joyner, Susan Kennedy, Deborah Gleiser, Jeff

Social Wkr II Detention Serv Off I Deputy Sheriff/Corp II Social Wkr II Social Wkr II Deputy Sheriff/SRO Enviro Health Prog Spec GIS Analyst Nursing Svc Consultant Deputy Sheriff/Corp II Building Inspec I Tax Mapping Supv EMS Training Supv Detention Serv Supv I Eligibility Supv I Soc Work Supv-Protect Serv Deputy Sheriff/Corp II Social Wkr-Protect Svc Lead Child Support Agent Enviro Health Prog Spec Parks Ops Mgr Nursing Svc Consultant Software Engineer Comm Health Ed I Comm Health Ed I Deputy Sheriff/Corp II Deputy Sheriff/Sgt HR SR Analyst Nurse Spec II Social Wkr II Child Support Mgr Dental Hygienist-School EMS Capt

$63,284 $63,246 $63,054 $62,953 $62,801 $62,790 $62,784 $62,614 $62,576 $62,566 $62,482 $62,459 $62,353 $62,311 $62,265 $62,193 $62,182 $62,124 $62,114 $62,101 $62,000 $61,966 $61,921 $61,769 $61,719 $61,590 $61,573 $61,500 $61,442 $61,338 $61,320 $61,275 $61,244

supervised at all times until at least age 8. Certainly, until age 8 children should not be left home alone or in the woods alone. I have to think about the recent case of the little boy who was unsupervised and slid into a gorilla pit at the Cincinnati Zoo. That incident has started a national dialog on parental supervision, and that is a very good thing. Perhaps parents will realize that zoos are not particularly safe places for the very young. Personally, I think that the very young should be tethered to an adult in a natural habitat zoo.

Kids can be “gone” in a heartbeat.

They do not recognize the danger, so the adult has to do it for them.

Send questions on family law and divorce to askcarolyn@rhinotimes.com, or P.O. Box 9023, Greensboro 27427 or at Ask Carolyn’s comment section at rhinotimes.com.

Note that answers are intended to provide general legal information and are not specific legal advice for your situation.

The column also uses hypothetical questions. A subtle fact in your unique case may determine the legal advice you need. Also, please note that you are not creating an attorney-client relationship with Carolyn J. Woodruff by writing or having your question answered by Ask Carolyn.

Stone, Timothy Cromartie, Valerie Grady, Barbara Clendenin, Carter Harlee, Jimmy L Honeycutt, Laura Eaton, Jason Clark, Charles R Dodson, Mantrese Wagoner, Lynda Wright, Avis Odell, Wendelyn Sluder, Charles T Brandon, Leslie Netter, Catherine Boggs, Andrew McEntire, Robert Corbett, Venessa Simpson, Marcia Purcell, Alex Fuller, Jeremy Kimber, Angelia Wright, Betty Gwynn, Catherine Morehead, Babby Morgan, Rodney Brown, Sharon George, Sara Beth Westcott, Clarence Crawford, Chriselda Whitehead, Eric Ganim, Kathleen Corbett, Jarad Teal, Ronda Currie Gaddy, Vincent

Enviro Health Prog Spec MH Practitioner Agency Bus Mgr Deputy Sheriff/Sgt Detention Serv Off I Sr Enviro Health Spec Deputy Sheriff/Detective Sgt Enviro Health Prog Spec Detention Serv Supv II Nurse Spec II Nurse Spec II Enviro Health Prog Spec Deputy Sheriff/Detective Sgt Nurse Spec II Detention Serv Supv I Detention Serv Supv II Soc Work Supv-Protect Serv Detention Serv Off I Detention Serv Off I Deputy Sheriff Deputy Sheriff/Lt Detention Serv Off I Detention Serv Off I Detention Serv Off I Detention Serv Off I Detention Serv Off I Eligibility Supv I Soc Work Supv-Protect Serv Chief Building Inspec I Eligibility Supv II EMS Capt Nurse Spec I-School Deputy Sheriff/Lt Soc Work Supv-Protect Serv Deputy Sheriff

$61,237 $61,204 $61,178 $61,130 $61,126 $61,108 $61,104 $61,097 $61,079 $61,027 $61,027 $60,962 $60,907 $60,876 $60,762 $60,726 $60,693 $60,623 $60,623 $60,623 $60,554 $60,519 $60,519 $60,519 $60,471 $60,425 $60,369 $60,335 $60,328 $60,328 $60,311 $60,275 $60,265 $60,164 $60,096

uncle orson (continued from page 22)

assessment that I’ve gomered out and drive like an old man was quite correct. Even without my lights ahead of them as a guide, they were able to drive at 25 or 30 miles per hour, soon leaving me behind. But I didn’t mind. Once they passed me, I could use their taillights as a guide, greatly improving my own safety.

Gullywasher? Frog-strangler?

We do have colorful language to describe heavy rainfalls. As nonaquatic mammals, we do sometimes find ourselves in rainstorms that feel as if we’re underwater – or, because of flooding, actually put us under the water.

Cynthia Barnett went through a list of equivalents to “raining cats and dogs” from other cultures. Because I listened to the audiobook, I don’t have the book open before me and couldn’t easily look up the list if I did. Instead, I’m looking them up where she quite possibly found them, at Omniglot.com: They range from the obvious – Catalan “It’s raining barrels and casks” – to the creative – Danish “It’s raining shoemakers’ apprentices,” French “It’s raining like a pissing cow”

or “It’s raining nails,” German “It’s raining strings,” Greek “It’s raining chair legs,” Japanese “Earth and sand are falling,” Polish “It’s raining frogs,” Serbian “The rain falls and kills the mice,” Spanish “It’s even raining husbands,” and my favorite, Welsh “It’s raining old ladies and sticks.”

Speaking of “it’s raining frogs,” Barnett, while trying not to commit to it, had to take the claims of frogs falling like plagues from the sky rather seriously, because there have been so many occurrences of this phenomenon, with many credible witnesses. The best speculation seems to be that waterspouts suck frogs up along with their pond water, and then, miles later, the frogs fall back down to earth, fouling the water barrels and swimming pools where they splat.

(Unlike cats, frogs apparently do not always land on their feet.)

Barnett deals with drought and flood, and her history of human mistakes about both is sad reading.

When the Army Corps of Engineers was assigned to tame the Mississippi and stop the damage from periodic flooding, the result of

www.rhinotimes.com | Thursday, June 9, 2016 | RHINO TIMES

their construction of miles of levees was to demonstrate the principle of the Venturi tube, in which fluids confined in narrow channels flow faster and with more force in order to move the same volume of water through a narrower space.

They soon learned that while the levees protected against ordinary flood seasons, they made the abnormally heavy flood years far worse disasters, partly because the confined waters, breaking through, struck with more force, and partly because, reassured by the levees, people had built homes and towns much too close to the river.

People who build close to floodprone rivers are like people who build beachfront houses – and like the people who chose to stay on Mount St. Helens despite the warnings of impending eruption. We’ll miss them, but what were they thinking?

Even sadder, though, were the homesteaders who tried to farm cheap land in parts of the country that were once called “The Great American Desert.” Tall grasses grew there, because their roots made such a thick sod that whatever water fell there was soaked up and remained long enough for the grass to thrive.

27

But farmers broke up that thatch, and their annual crops didn’t build up enough of a root system to retain water or shield it from evaporation.

At various times in the late 1800s, there was a series of wet years when rain fell copiously enough to raise good crops. After all, the Gulf of Mexico is busily evaporating water all summer, and when the winds are right, that moisture gets blown up into the prairie states where it gets dumped out like sticks and old ladies.

Then come the years when the winds are different, and all that moisture falls on Georgia and North Carolina, leaving the prairie states high and very, very dry. Long before the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, homesteaders on the high plains had to pick up and move back to the east, where rainfall was far more dependable.

Of course, there’s always Seattle, as the rainiest place in America. Right?

Wrong. Barnett looked at the actual rain statistics, year by year, and while there are incredible rain levels near Seattle – the Olympic Peninsula gets up to 200 inches of rain a year in the higher elevations – Seattle itself is not all that close to (continued on page 28)

28 RHINO TIMES | Thursday, June 9, 2016 | www.rhinotimes.com

uncle orson (continued from page 27)

being America’s rainiest city.

Think of Seattle with 38 inches in a year, Portland Oregon with 43 inches, and you can understand why they’re so green.

But then look at Tallahassee, Florida, and Port Arthur, Texas, with 61 inches a year each; Mobile, Alabama, with 67 inches – the wettest place in the US. – and Miami, West Palm Beach, Baton Rouge, New Orleans and Pensacola somewhere in between – and you begin to understand that Seattle’s people are so depressed, not because it’s raining, but because it’s cloudy – and because it rains so often.

Portland and Seattle, for instance, usually have 154 days each year in which rain falls, compared to only 59 days with rain each year in Mobile.

Along the Gulf coast, it doesn’t rain all that often – but when the rains come, they’re vast.

By the way, Greensboro gets an average of 43 inches of rain each

beep (continued from page 24) know if he even registered.

And, then, we’ve got Hillary and Trump. Trump gets his medical deferment through his dad’s money and then turned around and says that he didn’t like McCain because he doesn’t like people who were captured. So, here we go again.

%%%

Last week I received a questionnaire from the City of Greensboro. Wanted to know my opinion about requiring all homeowners to keep three large trash cans. I think it is a terrible idea. It is a lose-lose situation for homeowners who already have a problem finding room for two large trash cans much less three.

The City of Greensboro already has a much higher property tax rate than Raleigh or Charlotte.

Requiring all Greensboro homes to add an extra-large trash can would significantly increase the city tax rate.

%%% I just saw a television clip of Hillary Clinton walking in a Memorial Day parade flashing her pretend smile and waving to spectators on both sides of the

(continued on page 30)

year, as much as Portland and five inches more than Seattle, while the US average is 37 inches. No wonder our city is so lush with tall trees and beautiful gardens.

Compare all these with Los Angeles’s average of 15 inches a year, and you begin to wonder. How can they tell if LA is having a drought?

Well, since LA’s own rainfall is ushered out to sea as quickly as possible, it doesn’t matter how much rain falls on Los Angeles. What matters to Angeleños is how much rain falls in the watersheds of the rivers and reservoirs from which they pipe their water.

And Los Angeles is lush compared to my teenage home in Mesa, Arizona, with less than 10 inches a year. Hello, cactus!

With all our rain in Greensboro, we suffered several water-shortage years mostly because we’re at the crown of a watershed and have few places to catch all that rain and save it for later consumption. Anti-human environmentalists delayed Randleman Dam, and then lazy and incompetent local governments delayed the distribution system, long enough that we had two completely unnecessary water shortages during the 33 years I’ve lived here.

In other words, rain’s gonna fall, but it’s up to us what we do about it.

Barnett spends a good number of pages on the effort to develop waterproof clothing using the sap of the rubber tree. After coming up with the brilliant idea of sandwiching the rubber-in-naphtha solution between two layers of cloth, Charles Macintosh had to struggle with the smell of rubberized clothing, as well as the fact that stitching the fabric he finally developed caused it to leak along the seams.

Somehow the coat named for Macintosh acquired an extra “k” so we now spell it “mackintosh”; and after years of fading, the company he founded is once again prospering as genuine Mackintosh raincoats are upmarket fashionable again ... to the tune of hundreds of dollars per waterproof garment.

One of the most entertaining parts of Barnett’s book was her account of rainmakers in the United States. I really like Richard Nash’s play The Rainmaker (made into a pretty good Katharine Hepburn/Burt Lancaster movie) and Jones and Schmidt’s musical 110 in the Shade, based on the play. In this story, Starbuck is a professional rainmaker who comes into town pretending he can make

rain by pounding on drums and other such magical nonsense. He finally admits to the woman he falls in love with that he’s never made rain in his life; he’s a con man, just as she supposed.

But rainmaking in America did not begin as a con. In fact, it began as a government investigation into a phenomenon that was often remarked upon during the Civil War. Massed artillery in Civil War battles produced incredible barrages, and volleys of rifle fire were so intense they could cut down trees. Then, as many soldiers and civilians noted, within a day of the battle, and often right as it ended, the battlefield would be soaked in a heavy rainfall.

People speculated that it was the concussion from the booming cannon that brought thunder and lightning; others suspected it was the smoke from burnt gunpowder that formed clouds that turned into rain. This made a perverse, magical kind of sense, because clouds of gunsmoke look like, well, clouds, while the booming of cannons can sound like thunder.

But what people overlooked was that most of these battles were fought during thunderstorm season in a very rainy part of America.

Given ordinary weather patterns, it would have been a surprise if it had not rained on these battlefields within 24 hours of the battle.

After a year of congressionallyfunded experiments with firing off artillery and other nonsense, Congress cut off the rainmaking research program. But the experts who were performing the experiments had already demonstrated one of the most common ways that science goes wrong: They were trying to prove something, and in order to succeed, they would seize on anything that looked like a positive result.

They embarrassed themselves by claiming that any rain that fell within a few counties of their experiments, whether upwind or downwind, was the result of their efforts. They claimed clouds as theirs even when there was no rain.

But the real reason for their failure was that they were trying to produce rain in places and seasons where rainfall was rare. If they had performed their experiments in Greensboro, they’d have had a much greater chance of “success.”

Despite the withdrawal of congressional support, their flamboyant methods and their wishfulthinking claims of success were much publicized in the newspapers, so the profession of traveling rainmakers was born. They not only tried the

government-attempted methods, but also added various chemical stews, which they boiled to make chemical steam or put into shells and rockets that burst high over the area they meant to bless.

Some of these rainmakers may well have believed, or at least hoped, that their methods actually did something.

Yet because rain simply happens, it’s probable that sometimes rain will fall reasonably close to the site of a rainmaker’s antics, and he can claim success.

The most successful rainmaker in the 1920s would draw up a contract with a municipality, specifying that if X number of inches of rain fell anywhere within a certain area between a certain start and end date, they would have to pay the equivalent of a very good annual income ($10,000, in the case of San Diego, California).

Invariably, his target inches were several below the average rainfall in that locale during that season, so his odds of “success” were pretty good.

In the case of San Diego, however, he got more than he bargained for. His mix of chemical emissions apparently worked so well that he brought down a murderous flood of rain that overwashed a dam or two and caused millions of dollars in property damage.

He hid from a wrathful public for a time – after all, he couldn’t very well claim that the flooding was not his fault or he’d be out of business entirely – and then, when he came to San Diego to collect, they told him they’d gladly pay, if and only if he also covered the millions of dollars of damage from the rain he brought.

The litigation lasted years, and San Diego’s case was weak because the contract said nothing about indemnities for an excess of rain.

The rainmaker died without ever collecting. Rainmakers weren’t the only liars and frauds working the public during that time.

Then Barnett goes on to tell of genuine rainmaking, which wasn’t possible until crop-dusting airplanes and equipment were invented. By the middle of the 20th century, scientists had come to understand a great deal more about clouds and rain formation, and they began to experiment with cloud-seeding – spraying clouds of the right size and type with various particulates and chemicals that could form the kernels around which raindrops coalesce.

This was controversial, not because it didn’t work – it did, to a measurable degree – but because many people feared that cloud-seeding upwind of them would wring out all the rain

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and leave them dry.

Fortunately, cloud-seeding isn’t all that useful, and remains uncommon, because if you have the right kind of clouds for cloud-seeding to work, they’re probably going to rain anyway, so what are you spending all that money for? Besides, the substances being sprayed up there were going to come back down to levels where they might pollute the ground or the drinking water or the lungs of those who breathed them in, exposing the cloud-seeders to a risk of fines and lawsuits.

Here’s what amused me most about Barnett’s treatment of the pretensions of the would-be rainmakers. She saw how ridiculous it was for “scientists” to claim the random occurrence of rain within a ridiculously large area as proof of the effectiveness of their pathetic efforts. And as she pointed out, there was no control against which to compare – nobody could say how much rain would have fallen absent the booming and blowing-up of the rainmaking cannoneers.

Yet she went on and treated the even phonier science of humancaused global warming with great solemnity, as if only idiots and liars could fail to believe that carbon dioxide was going to cause calamity.

This despite the fact that globalwarming alarmists face exactly the same problem in their fake science that the rainmakers faced: There is no control. They can’t tell us what the global temperatures would have been without the increases of carbon dioxide emmissions.

There was already a global climate change in progress long before human carbon emissions reached a level where they might possibly affect global mean temperatures. The Little Ice Age of about 1250 to 1850 (people choose different start and end dates, but that’s close enough) had caused increases in glaciers, drops in ocean levels (port cities left a mile or more from the ocean), and so much cold weather that crop failures and disease epidemics were common.

But when the Little Ice Age ended, we moved into an era of – let’s admit it – Good Weather.

While global warming shifts wind and rain patterns, so that some areas suffer bad outcomes from a warming trend, and other areas lose coastline because ocean levels rise, this is a “disaster” that has happened with great regularity for thousands of years.

People simply change their dwelling places.

A constant shift between centurieslong cooling and warming periods has driven history; Genesis shows Jacob having to take his family to Egypt like his grandfather did, because drought was making it impossible to live in the ranges where cattle used to thrive. It has happened over and over since then.

The fall of the Roman Empire was preceded by devastating epidemics that left cities depopulated and land unfarmed – which always happens during extended cold periods. But then the Medieval Optimum, from about 950 to 1250, brought far better conditions, to the point that wine grapes were being grown in the south of England, something that is not yet workable today despite our not-yetremarkable warm period.

In other words, we have zero evidence that this temporary warm period has anything to do with human carbon emissions. While it’s true that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, so that an increase in it is bound to have a warming effect, it is also true that scientists cannot yet measure or even estimate the natural balancing and venting processes that keep global climate more or less regular.

The most important of these is that during warming periods, ocean evaporation increases, and the greater volume of clouds causes more light to reflect out of the atmosphere at altitudes where the greenhouse effect can’t trap it.

Thus, to some degree, water vapor – the most powerful greenhouse gas – also has the opposite effect because clouds are white.

Global temperature is absolutely the result of the amount of solar radiation that reaches the lowest levels of the atmosphere. Astronomy rather than meteorology may offer the best account of the cycle of global warming and cooling. We cannot prove or disprove the idea that human carbon emissions have caused the climate to reach dangerous or even different average temperatures than would otherwise have prevailed.

The only thing that might have supported this is if global temperatures tracked with increases and decreases in carbon emissions, but there is no correlation whatsoever. If global warming were not an article of faith in the religion of Environmentalism, real scientists would regard this failure to correlate as a strong indication that human carbon emissions were relatively trivial in accounting for temperature fluctuations.

Instead, like those rainmaking

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“experts” in the 1800s, they seize on average warming that was already happening and use it to “prove” that human activities are causing it.

Then, in the best tradition of prophets of doom, they keep making predictions of disaster that don’t happen.

Not one prediction of the global warming alarmists has come true.

A stock portfolio manager with a track record as bad as theirs would be selling shoes or running a movie studio by now.

Yet a sensible, talented author like Cynthia Barnett can write about fake science like the rainmaking experiments and recognize all the logical and methodological errors in their well-meant but ridiculous efforts, while never even examining the methodology (and outright fakery and puffery) of the global warming alarmists.

It’s easy to recognize the bad science of the past, while ignoring the wishful thinking of the present.

Global warming alarmism is so useful in trying to further the agenda of destroying the global industrial economy, which true-believer Environmentalists regard as a desirable outcome, not in spite of but because of the drastic reduction in human population that would ensue.

Such are the times we live in. It’s easy to see the absurdity of beliefs and practices of earlier and inferior cultures; it’s always harder to detect the absurdities of common beliefs in our own time.

So I don’t regard Cynthia Barnett’s blind spot about global warming as a particular flaw in Rain: A Natural and Cultural History. Just as with racism in writings from before 1960, when stupidity is endemic in the culture it’s unfair to point out particular writers and hold them responsible for going along with the witchcraft and humbuggery of their day.

After all, it isn’t Barnett who’s trying to criminalize good science by creating an Inquisition to punish scientists who question the dogma of global warming. She’s just repeating the lies she’s been told.

How long did it take anthropologists to realize that Piltdown Man was an obvious fake?

Because it seemed to play a key missing-link role in the arguments between religious creationism and scientific evolutionism, those impossible bones found in England were not debunked for 45 years, during which time many scientists wrote of Piltdown Man as an important discovery in the study of human evolution, on a par with Peking Man and Java Man and Neanderthal Man. When there are ideological

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reasons to cling to fake science, scientists, being human, often leave ridiculous lies on the table as if they had some truth content. But at no time since Galileo has the insistence on fake science been so dangerous to the practice of science as a whole as the Global Warming Inquisition is today.

And books like Barnett’s, that treat global warming as a settled fact when it hasn’t yet been subjected to anything like rigorous scientific examination, do the same job as the newspapers that spread the word about every rainmaker in a distant state or county who had been “proven” to be able to bring rain.

Never mind. I mean really, never mind. Barnett’s book is a good one, within its limitations, and even though the Outer Banks of North Carolina are not under 10 or 20 or 40 feet of water, as should already have happened according to the predictions of global warming alarmists, and there has been no increase in storms or decrease in worldwide vegetation as predicted, we can still enjoy the vast majority of Barnett’s stories about rain, giving us a fresh look at a natural phenomenon that we take for granted except when umbrella shopping.

30 RHINO TIMES | Thursday, June 9, 2016 | www.rhinotimes.com

Letters EYE OF THE REPORTER DEAR EDITOR,

I suppose some of us think that the Hillary Clinton email matter is of some importance. So why do those of us in that category see this headline on page A6 (repeat, A6) of the News & Record: “Clinton email use broke federal rules”? The article was only a few paragraphs.

Yet I notice on the front page (repeat, front page) of the May 26, 2016 edition of The Wall Street Journal is this headlline: “Clinton Violated Policies on Email”? The coverage was extensive.

Comment is not required. Most of us “get it.” I guess the resolution is figuring out what is important to liberals and what is important to conservatives.

But comment is required on another matter involving The Journal. Its May 10, 2016 edition ran an op-ed by the editor-in-chief of Essence magazine, supporting a group of 16 black female West Point cadets who posed together in uniform with their fists raised. (Black Panther, anyone?) The cadets will not be punished since their gesture was found not to be a political statement.

(Political correctness, anyone?)

I think comment is required

LETTERS To The Editor

TO THE EDITOR here: Imagine the outcry if a group of Caucasian male cadets struck a similar scene and gave the Hitler salute. The Jesse Jackson and Essence sirens would be wailing full blast.

The world is again wobbling on its axis. I wish someone could restore some cosmic order.

Charles A. Jones

TO PROTECT AND DETER DEAR EDITOR,

Is it intentional or circumstantial that there are no police cars or officer visibility in the so-called areas of high crime or black neighborhoods – until a crime is committed?

I say neighborhoods because in a community the residents control all or at least some of the resources. All businesses in the black neighborhoods are controlled by outsiders – people who do not live or spend in that community.

You can ride in the black neighborhoods and not see any police officers or cars – police visibility is a deterrent to crime. What happened to patrol cars that used to patrol neighborhoods?

Is a traffic ticket for a driver doing

beep (continued from page 28) street. So she thinks Memorial Day should be a fun day?

%%% It sure is refreshing to see someone stand up to the unbiased media types. Y’all listening? You listening, Susan? You listening, Mr. Leonard?

%%% Yes, I am so outraged about how people want to blame the parents of that little boy who fell in that hole with that gorilla this weekend. And, then, they turned around and killed that gorilla in Cincinnati. I think it’s stupid and illogical. Why do they want to blame the parents because the child wandered off? I know it’s the parents’ fault. But, really, the fault falls on the zoo people.

They should have made that thing fool proof. That child should have never got in there with that gorilla in the first place. Anyway, that gorilla could easily kill that child. So, really, I blame more the zoo’s fault than the parents. I know the parents should have been paying attention, but still that child shouldn’t have even got near that gorilla to begin with. But other than that, I blame the zoo more than the parents. Because if it wasn’t, that child would have been dead already. That child would probably have been dead if he had landed on his head. But in a way I blame the zoo more than the parents, because they should have been doing their job keeping people safe.

%%%

38 in a 35 mph zone more important than preventing a murder, rape, sexual assault, robbery or home burglary.

Check the lines at the traffic court and come to your own conclusion.

Abdul-Saleem Muhammad

FOOLISH GESTURE DEAR EDITOR,

I would like to comment on the recent renaming of Aycock Auditorium by a committee of 11, and a “board” action at UNCG. As you may know, Aycock was born in 1859 and was governor of North Carolina from 1901 until 1905.

For those unfamiliar with him, he promoted excellence in education for both white and black citizens. His political positions of the time were consistent with the political climate, and historically necessary to succeed in obtaining office. I note that recently, Yale University declined to rename Calhoun College because of his stance on slavery, saying, “we cannot erase American history.” Indeed.

UNCG has engaged in historical revisionism.

One wonders if this committee or the board even wants any tradition or history for their college.

I’m an avid news watcher. I’m 81 years old. And I’m still piddling around and working some. I do not hear these politicians, Trump or Hillary Clinton, talk about what they’re going to do about this $20 trillion that this country owes. What are they going to do about that? I won’t be here to pay it off. The first thing, if I had anything to do with it, we wouldn’t be owing it. You can’t drink champagne off of lager beer money. And that’s what this country is trying to do. I never will forget Obama said George Bush run up the national debt $3 trillion.

He said, that’s not patriotic. So, he comes along, runs it up $10 trillion.

But he don’t want to talk about it. I saw him when O’Reilly asked him, said, you worried about the debt?

He said, no. I’m not worried about it. Well, no, he won’t be when he’s down in Hawaii with is feet stuck in the water. (continued on page 32)

I watched a video of the board’s proceedings, in which a member gave an impassioned little speech, calling out Aycock for his stance on race in his Democratic campaign for governor. How pathetic is it, that this man must attack someone dead for so long and not able to tell any part of his own story. All of these people are faux intellectuals, and sycophants to be “PC.” I was born in North Carolina and got most of my formal education there, and until now, thought I still has some connection. I have been on the UNCG campus many times, and have had occasion to attend events at Aycock. Maybe I am completely wrong, but I always thought the idea was to expand the horizons of the university, by creating something to be acknowledged by the outside world as “excellent.” I do not think renaming old buildings qualifies as one of these activities.

I know really productive people at UNCG. I only can wonder what they must think. They are past millennial, though, and likely just will put their heads down and push forward.

When I heard of this, I was reminded of a line from the movie Animal House, when the character “Otter,” a recently expelled student, was trying to come up with something meaningful, when having to face actual reality. Otter said, I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part.”

I believe the chancellor, his committee and the board have gotten that part right.

John Eckerd

HEAVY CARD TO CARRY DEAR EDITOR,

Did you know that there is an organization that demands anyone running for political office, they have to be for abortion, same sex marriage, global warming, gun control and for men that say that they are a woman and can go into a shower, locker room or bathroom in our schools or place of work with your wife, daughter or granddaughter. In simple terms, if you do not agree then do not apply. And then you have liberal entertainers and heads of companies that will not do business

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letters (continued from previous page) with the state unless we agree with this. I think you know which party I am talking about.

Sixty million abortions is not enough, they are shooting for double that. If you woke up tomorrow morning and found that everyone in the whole Southeastern United States (North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana) had been killed, what your reaction be? You know, of course, there would be none, because you would be included.

The most extreme on abortion are President Obama and Hillary Clinton. They believe in late term abortion right up until the birth date, and Obama is for any baby surviving this horrible murder to be placed on a stainless steel table in an empty room and left with no assistance from anyone until there is no longer life In the past we have had electric chairs and they would always have someone pull the lever or switch. In our civilized world we have a better way of doing this: You just get half the people in the country (Democrats) pull that lever in the voting booth (straight ticket) and it sets the process in motion. You elect a liberal and they go off Washington and vote for liberal judges that rule that abortion is moral and legal and want us to pay for it (Planned Parenthood), for same sex marriage and men using women’s bathrooms, etc.

Now you sit there in your easy chair, all comfortable and say it does not get any better than this. Do we live in a great country or not? That city was called Sodom and Gomorrah for a reason, and God took them out of their misery. I can hear you now; you are just giving a woman the right to choose. You have a choice all right, to let live or let die, and we are watching this happen right before our eyes. I do not have the nerve to ask God to forgive us.

Bennie Taylor

ON SELF-PROMOTION DEAR EDITOR,

I am not trying to be hard on anyone, but recently I’ve been getting items in the mail for the upcoming June 7 primary for the 13th Congressional District. The mailers were interesting as I was thinking they were recruitment cards for the Army and Marines, and what came to mind is that I am too old and fat to join the service now. But it was for Congress, so I felt better.

The purpose of serving our nation is just that, to serve and not self promote and take pictures or brag about your service. The ones that need to brag are the dead and injured that served our country. I love the self-promotion, and people complain about me when I run. I don’t brag on my service and mine has not stopped yet. I serve to serve and not brag about what I do or have done. God knows what I have done and that’s all I need. So let’s stop all the self-promotion and do not tell me what you did years ago, tell me what you going to do.

Sal Leone

MOB KNOWS BEST DEAR EDITOR,

There are several ways to deal with the lone gunman in a community situation such as at schools. Ideally, someone in the group would have a gun and return fire. This would be an element of surprise to the shooter and may make him flee.

Second is to barricade the place.

The problem with this is that very few schools have furniture suitable to the task, and door locks can be shot through.

The most effective technique is to mob the shooter. The shooter anticipates that people will try to get as far away from him as possible. This makes the victims “fish in a barrel,” as he or she can shoot individuals at leisure. One shooter is vulnerable to multiple targets moving forward to attack him. He will surely continue to shoot but the probability is that he will be shooting wildly and less effectively.

A good place to gather is around the door. It is the most unprepared he will be, as he doesn’t know what is behind the door.

Emphasis should be aimed at getting control of the gun. Mobbing calls for a totally ruthless response from the group. Eyes are a primary attack area as is the groin. Once the shooter is on the ground, and a mob should be able to knock him down, kicking aimed at the head is a desirable goal.

This technique requires courage and will still result in casualties, but has the best chance of survival for the group.

Remember Flight 93?

They overwhelmed the hijackers. They knew they were going to die if they did nothing. Mobbing the hijackers was their only rational response. Think about it.

Ed Philpott

Send to letters@rhinotimes.com

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beep (continued from page 30)

%%% Hello. I’ve got two comments to make. I was reading the Rhino Times today, and I saw a comment regarding the police going on Spry Street. The reason the police didn’t do anything is because the police hands are tied due to Nancy Vaughan tying the hands of the Police Department.

So, therefore, the police cannot do nothing if their hands are tied. And it’s going to get really worse if she doesn’t let the police do their job. We, the citizens of Greensboro, are paying the Police Department to do their job and, unfortunately, the mayor that we are paying as well has got their hands tied, and therefore is putting the citizens of Greensboro in at a very unsafe risk because she don’t want the police to do their job.

%%% A call last week and said that 86 percent of US citizens and Canadians believe in God. I think that number might be a little exaggerated. But his point was, with that big a percentage, that why couldn’t Christians have their way in this country? Because the percentages don’t matter. It doesn’t matter if it’s 100 to 1. Just because it’s a 100 to 1 doesn’t give the 100 people the right to trample all over the one because that person might be different.

Different for whatever reason.

It doesn’t matter why they’re different. You still don’t have the right because you have a higher percentage to trample on them.

%%% I sat here today and watched Hillary Clinton give everybody in America a lecture about Donald Trump not being qualified, being trigger happy and all such as that about our world affairs. I think that’s an absolute disgrace.

That woman is the epitome of the biggest liar. The only other liar worse than her is Hussein Obama. This woman has been involved in all kinds of activities ever since she made her debut in Washington with that clown, Clinton, that’s massaged and managed to manipulate every intern and every woman he could get his hands on. She

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under

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Southerner, or pretends to laugh, long ago made up their minds.

It’s weird that Hillary Clinton is considered some kind of feminist icon because without her husband she is just another lawyer struggling to make a living.

Her law career took off, not because of anything she did, but because she was the wife of the governor of Arkansas. In fact, it appears her job at the law firm was largely to be the wife of the governor.

It certainly wasn’t to do legal work because the records show she didn’t do much.

She didn’t accomplish much of anything in the Senate and even less as secretary of state, and now after waiting for eight years she is the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.

The San Jose police evidently have a different protocol from most police departments when it comes to protestors who oppose each other coming to the same area.

The standard protocol is for the police to set up a line between the two groups so that they can yell at each other if that’s what they want, but neither side can physically attack the other.

At the Trump rally in San Jose, from the videos it appears the police did the opposite – they set up a perimeter and allowed Trump protestors to physically attack the Trump supporters coming out of the rally.

The police were safely behind the lines where they served absolutely no purpose, except perhaps if an injured Trump supporter could fight their way to the police, the police would call an ambulance.

Waving signs, marching, yelling, all these are protected forms of free speech. Physically attacking people you disagree with has no constitutional protection and is illegal.

However, if the police choose to hang out and watch, there is no one there to make arrests so the attacks can go on unabated, which they did.

The mayor of San Jose should be ashamed of the way the police handled the protests, and of those from his city that resorted to violence.

But he doesn’t condemn them, he condemns Trump.

Protestors who are upset that Trump believes in legal immigration from all countries, including Mexico, are seen burning American flags and waving Mexican flags. I don’t get burning the flag of the country where

you want the right to live and waving the flag of the country that you don’t want to be sent back to.

My grandfather was a legal immigrant from Norway. He learned English, made a point of giving his children American names and assimilated into this country.

Many of these protestors are in this country illegally, but they don’t want to abide by the laws of this country and want the country to change to accommodate them.

Protests like this are going to convince more and more people that Trump is right and that it makes no sense to have 11 million or 12 million illegal immigrants here.

As to those who say they can’t all be deported. I have not found in any of speeches where Trump said that all illegal immigrants would be deported in one day or even one year. In fact, he says first he is going to build a wall.

Building a wall along the Mexican border cannot be done in a day or a year. If Trump plans to build a wall first and then deal with the illegal immigrants already here, he will have plenty of time to come up with a plan on how that will be done.

The Republicans are supposed to be the ones who are stodgy and controlled by tradition. The Democrats are supposed to be with it, out there and ready for anything.

But look at the presidential nomination process. In the Republican Party the people who voted determined the nominee. None of the establishment types wanted Donald Trump to be the Republican nominee. House Speaker Paul Ryan still has the clothespin on his nose from having to publicly admit he would vote for Trump.

The establishment types wanted Jeb! Bush. The only thing marginally exciting about Jeb Bush was the exclamation point after his name.

But if the Republican Party ran its presidential nomination process like the Democrats, Jeb Bush could well be the nominee because he would have started out with a huge advantage in super delegates.

People would have looked at the vote totals and decided that Bush had already won so they might as well vote for him.

It’s exactly what the rank-and-file in the Democratic primaries are finding out. It doesn’t matter how many states Sen. Bernie Sanders wins, the Democratic Party royalty has tapped

Hillary Clinton to the be nominee. Let the little people vote for whomever they want because Hillary Clinton is the chosen one.

It’s one of the reasons that it was so hard early on for Sanders to gain any traction. The vote totals that the mainstream media constantly broadcast were the totals counting the super delegates. So Sanders started off, according to pundits, needing to win big everywhere to overcome Hillary Clinton’s friends and supporters who all get to vote for her.

If the party primary systems were switched in November, it would be Bush versus Sanders. I think Sanders would win that one in a landslide because there are actually voters who like Sanders.

Instead it appears at this point it will be Trump versus Hillary Clinton.

However, although Hillary Clinton has the delegates she needs, she is still under federal investigation and, despite what her supporters say, it would be really tough to get elected president while indicted for various felonies.

Of course, there will be no indictment unless President Obama says there will be an indictment.

Note to CNN News reader Jake Tapper, Mexican is not a race.

When Trump said the judge in the Trump University case should be recused because he was biased based on his heritage, that is not racist.

It also isn’t all that unusual, although it is not the least bit politically correct. Black defendants have gotten new trials because there were too many whites on the jury. The legal assumption is that a white man can’t fairly judge a black man because all white men are racists. That argument is made all the time and it isn’t considered an awful opinion, although it seems a bit harsh for the courts to decide that all of us white folks are horrible racists who would convict any black man or woman who came before us, regardless of the evidence.

Trump has once again left the mainstream Republican leadership behind because he refuses to succumb to the political correctness that the liberals in the Democratic Party and the press have forced on everyone.

Someone shouts racists and the Republican leadership dashes to the nearest microphone to prostrate themselves and publicly ask for forgiveness. The Republican leadership plays into the hands of the liberals in the media every time. No (continued on next page)

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elections (continued from page 9)

district, came in first, Budd finished fourth and Blust came in tied for 11th.

That fourth place finish was the worst for Budd in the five counties and it appears it was the fact that he did well all across the district that made the difference for him.

In Davie County, where Budd lives, the voter turnout was the highest in the district with almost 19 percent. In Guilford the turnout was just over 10 percent.

People complain about super PACs like Club for Growth, and you can see why – putting $500,000 into a congressional race puts another candidate in Congress beholden to the Club for Growth.

The only other candidate to get considerable outside money was Howard, who is a Realtor, received over $300,000 of support from the National Association of Realtors.

An indication of how hard this race was to call is that state Sen. Andrew Brock from Mocksville, who was considered by many to be the frontrunner early in the race, finished sixth with 9 percent of the vote.

6th Congressional District In the 6th Congressional District, which includes the rest of Guilford

beep

(continued from previous page) has done absolutely nothing for the American people. She can’t name one thing she’s done since she’s been up there.

Nobody else can. And it’s an absolute disgrace to think that the American people would even want to vote her into office.

%%%

I wish Fox News would replay Barack Hussein Obama when he was elected president and how this is going to be the most transparent administration that has ever been in Washington, DC. And a Democrat with an open mind whose sixth grade in school was his senior year would listen to that and know what has been going on, and realize that Hillary Clinton is not the person for the job. She said she was going to carry on what Barack Obama started. If she does, it will be the end of this country. It nearly is now.

County, Congressman Mark Walker easily won the Republican primary with 78 percent of the vote over Chris Hardin with 22 percent.

Hardin tried to run to Walker’s right, claiming that Walker wasn’t a true conservative. Since Walker is rated as one of the more conservative members of Congress, that was a hard argument to make. It didn’t look like there was much running room to Walker’s right and that turned out to be the case.

Walker, who was first elected in 2014, was faced with a redrawn district that was 51 percent new.

Walker campaigned hard, particularly in the new parts of his district that now includes Randolph, Chatham and Lee counties along with Alamance, Rockingham, Caswell and Person counties. Part of Guilford County that Walker now represents was in the old 12th Congressional District. Walker, in his victory speech to supporters at Marshall Free House on Tuesday, June 7, said he was proud to have NC A&T State University, the largest historically black university in the country, in his district.

Walker in 2014 faced a primary with eight opponents and finished second in the first primary to Phil Berger Jr. Walker then won the runoff election in a landslide. This primary was not nearly so difficult since this time around Walker was a well-funded incumbent against only one relatively unknown challenger.

Tuesday night Walker said, “We’re overwhelmed with the support.”

Walker said that a lot of his supporters who had been redistricted into other districts still got out and worked for him. He said, “Some knew they were in the 13th District but they still wanted to put signs in their yards.”

He also said that he’d heard from several supporters who didn’t realize they were in the 13th District and were disappointed when they went to the polls and found they couldn’t vote for him.

Walker said that he felt he had a good relationship with his constituents because “not only do I listen, I am genuinely concerned.”

Walker said he felt confident about the fall when he will face Democrat Pete Glidewell from Elon.

North Carolina Supreme Court North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Bob Edmunds won the only statewide race on the ballot with 234,142 votes for 48 percent over Mike Morgan, who had 167,221 votes for 34 percent. Those two will face each other on the Nov. 8 ballot. Sabra

Jean Faires finished with 12 percent and Daniel Robertson with 6 percent of the vote.

Republicans were calling this race the most important one on the June 7 ballot.

Edmunds was the only Republican on the ballot in what is, in name only, a nonpartisan race. Both Republicans and Democrats work hard to let the voters know the party of those running.

With Edmunds on the North Carolina Supreme Court, the Republicans have a 4-to-3 advantage, and with Edmunds as the only Republican among four candidates on the ballot Tuesday, there was fear among Republicans that voters would be unaware of the political affiliation of the candidates.

Although the state Supreme Court

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is considered nonpartisan, on political issues the votes invariably fall along party lines and many of the legal challenges to action by the Republican state legislature have been upheld on 4-to-3 votes in the state Supreme Court.

Edmunds started off running in a retention election where his name would have been the only one on the ballot, but that type of election was ruled unconstitutional by a 3-to-3 vote of the state Supreme Court, with Edmunds recusing himself from the vote.

So Edmunds went from no opponent to three in the only statewide race on the June 7 ballot, and with no indication on the ballot that he was the incumbent or a Republican.

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one wants to be called a racist so they succumb to whatever foolishness the left is now promoting.

Trump as usual didn’t state his case very well. As I have said before, a lot of the attacks on Trump could be blunted if he would soften his speech, but being outrageous is what got him where he is.

If Trump had said, “This man is a member of radical Hispanic organizations that support illegal immigration and I think that because of my statements against illegal immigration he has allowed that to cloud is otherwise fine judicial judgment,” that would have been more acceptable.

It would still have brought an onslaught of criticism. The truth is that we live in an extremely racist, ethnicitist world. The government every day makes decisions based on the race of those involved.

The federal government requires diversity in construction contracts. It sounds great but it means awarding contracts based on the race, gender and ethnicity of the bidders.

According to the philosophy behind these laws, only a black man can be fair to a black man, only a woman can be fair to a woman and only a Hispanic can be fair to a Hispanic. So if you area a white employer who employs blacks, women and Hispanics, you are by definition exploiting them.

According to federal law, a company with 100 percent black employees including everyone from the CEO to the ditch digger and where the employees own 49 percent

of the stock, if that other 51 percent of the stock is owned by a white man, then the company is a white company. However, if the reverse is true, if you have a company where every single employee is white but 51 percent of the company is owned by a black man or woman, it is a minority company and deserves to get contracts whether it is the low bidder or not.

Tell me, how is that fair?

We have government department heads who are told to have a certain percentage of their department made up of minorities within some period of time, but are told they can’t consider race when hiring. It’s impossible.

But what I would really like to see Tapper do is ask Hillary Clinton about her emails 23 times in a row. See if she can survive that.

Here’s how a rare interview with Hillary Clinton goes: First, there are three minutes of apologies for the question that the reporter is about to ask, then the question about emails or Benghazi or whatever the latest Clinton scandal is; Hillary Clinton gives a non-answer and the reporter apologizes again for putting her on the spot and thanks her profusely for being so kind to a mere commoner with a microphone.

Then the other sycophants in the media all report on how brave Tapper or whoever was to ask Hillary Clinton the tough question. It’s not asking the tough question, that’s the easy part with politicians; the difficult part, the crucial part, is to get the politician to answer the question, and with Hillary Clinton that is never done.

34 RHINO TIMES | Thursday, June 9, 2016 | www.rhinotimes.com

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bureaucracy … but it also means dealing with daily decisions about life and death for creatures you care about. Sometimes the law requires you to do precisely what your heart and emotions do not want. There is no counterpart to this huge moral/ethical dilemma when you work in human services, though of course there are many difficulties there as well, many of which (human poverty, lack of resources) our animal services people have to deal with as well in their work.”

There’s no question the new director will have his or her hands full the moment he or she is hired, given the strong feelings of those in the county who run various animal rescue operations and animal welfare groups.

Perhaps only a youth sports coach has more strong demands coming from every direction. When Logan was running the shelter, there were times he would be answering questions in person at night after work for an animal welfare group while simultaneously texting with other animal lovers about all of their concerns.

Rustan was very well received by the vast majority of the local animal

welfare community and he was dedicated to his work – at one point he even took a monkey from the shelter home with him when there were no other accommodations and let the monkey run around his house and climb on the curtains.

But some area animal advocates told the Rhino Times at the time that Rustan was hired for the director’s job that they would have preferred to see the position filled by a highly experienced Animal Services director brought in after a national search.

Guilford County did conduct a search but in the end Rustan was chosen as the best person for the job.

According to the Guilford County Human Resources Department, the county received 80 applications in that first search that led to Rustan’s hiring.

Only nine of those 80 met the minimum qualifications for the job.

Guilford County Human Services Director John Dean, when asked about that seemingly low percentage of qualified applicants, stated, “Actually, it is not uncommon to see such a ratio of unqualified applicants to qualified applicants for the vast majority of

our positions. It appears that some applicants don’t bother to read the minimum requirements and/or they just go ahead and apply and see what happens. That ratio does get closer when we are filling the more entry level positions with fewer qualifying requirements.”

In this case, the minimum qualifications for the job are a “Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, Public Administration, Animal Science or a related field, and five to seven years of progressively responsible experience in Animal Welfare Administration, Management, and/or Animal Control with supervisory experience.” The job also requires the applicant have a valid North Carolina driver’s license. One thing that’s preferred but not required is a certification as a certified animal welfare administrator.

Guilford County Manager Marty Lawing said there may be a crop of new applicants for the latest search since some potential candidates might have not applied for the job last time, given that it came right on the heels of the shelter scandal last year.

As of Wednesday, June 1, Guilford County has received 16 applications for the Animal Services director job

that has a pay range of $64,042 to $108,871.

Grier is fulfilling Rustan’s duties while the county conducts the search and he clearly wants to find the right candidate quickly. Commissioner Alan Branson said he saw Grier around the time of Rustan’s resignation and he could tell something was weighing greatly on the deputy manager. Grier, who has gotten very high marks from the commissioners since he arrived in Guilford County, has been given a lot of responsibility and is in charge of a number of county operations in addition to his new obligation of overseeing all animal services.

When Rustan announced he was stepping down, Grier released the following statement, “While this does come as a surprise, we are thankful for Mr. Rustan’s leadership as we first began our transition of the Shelter operations back to the County in August of last year. We have made a lot of progress since then and will keep moving forward.”

The very first line of the classified ad expresses what’s expected: “Ensuring that all services and staff are thoroughly professional and meets or exceeds professional standards in the field of animal welfare.”

www.rhinotimes.com | Thursday, June 9, 2016 | RHINO TIMES

under theHAMMER

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by John Hammer

Do you think the Associated Press might be supporting Hillary Clinton for president? On the eve of the California primary, with the largest number of delegates in the country at stake, the AP declared Hillary Clinton the winner of the Democratic presidential nomination.

If she had actually won the nomination, as she has now, that would have been bad for Sen. Bernie Sanders – but it was based on super delegates who are not pledged to vote for anyone. They are perfectly free to say who they support, but more importantly perfectly free to change their minds.

If Hillary Clinton were to be indicted before the Democratic National Convention, more than a few delegates might decide, for the good of the Democratic Party, that they needed to shift their loyalty to a candidate who is not under federal indictment.

But it gave Hillary Clinton a huge boost. People like to vote for a winner and the Associated Press had declared her the winner.

Some enterprising reporter should check and see if the Associated Press recently received a big contract from the Clinton Foundation.

Hillary Clinton hasn’t held a press conference in months, so when she answered eight questions from reporters the other day, the press was understandably excited. They were so excited that none of them asked her a substantial question about anything.

My guess is that the press aide who set it up had told them that at the first mention of emails, Benghazi, her husband Bill, her failed healthcare plan, Whitewater, Vince Foster, cattle futures, the Clinton Foundation, Sidney Blumenthal, Huma Abedin, her successes as secretary of state, her cough that won’t go away or anything else that might be deemed difficult, the candidate would be whisked away.

So Hillary Clinton took eight questions from what were

supposed to be journalists, but they were so enthralled with getting to speak to the woman herself that they didn’t act like journalists. They behaved much more like adoring fans.

She was asked several questions about being the first female nominee of a major party. She was asked about how it felt for the primary to be almost over, preceded by the given that she would win California.

She was asked the tough question of whether the use of super delegates should be re-evaluated. Of course the answer was that there will be plenty of time to consider that before the next primary.

She was asked if Sanders should drop out. This is a gimme. The answer is, that it is up to Sanders.

She was asked how she felt about President Barack Hussein Obama’s support? Let’s see, the support of the sitting Democratic president.

Now that is tough. She could say, “excited,” “elated,” “thrilled.” Or should she combine them all into one sentence?

She was asked about women at her events crying because they are so excited about having a woman presidential candidate. This was not even a question, but simply fawning by some supposed reporter who probably put down her recorder to fill out a job application for the Clinton campaign as soon as the interview was over.

She was asked again about the presidential endorsement and then the tough questions from the press were concluded.

It was utterly astounding. Not really a single question about anything, but it gave Hillary Clinton the opportunity to say that she took questions from the press, and technically that is correct.

Watch the press go after Donald Trump and then watch this interview; the difference is mind-boggling. If only the press got to vote, Hillary Clinton would win the election with something over 80 percent of the vote.

And people in the news business wonder why journalists don’t get any respect.

The American people, as is conclusively proven by the campaigns of Jeb Bush and Hillary

Clinton, are bored stiff with policy statements. Perhaps bored stiff is the wrong term. They don’t give a hoot about policy statements because they know they don’t mean a thing.

Nobody cared what Bush’s long tedious policy was on education, or his twisted incomprehensible policy on how to individually handle each illegal immigrant in the US. Hillary Clinton has won the nomination but it has taken her all year to beat a crazy old socialist who wants to raise taxes and give away everything including the kitchen sink.

The American people do understand, “Build a wall.” It makes sense because we all know from experience that walls work. It’s the reason prisons have walls. It’s the reason that the White House has a big fence around it. It’s the reason that school playgrounds are fenced in.

Barriers exist to keep some people in and other people out.

Trump says, “Build a wall.” The critics say walls won’t keep everybody out, which is obviously true. Walls aren’t perfect, but nothing this side of heaven is. Cars break down, planes fall out of the sky, roofs leak, basements flood, toilets run, but nobody is suggesting because they are not 100 percent effective that we should not use them.

The fact that a wall shouldn’t be used because it won’t keep everyone out is nonsensical. And although political pundits might not realize that, the average American voter does.

The reason why Hillary Clinton’s email scandal is not a bigger deal is because even if the worst is true, nothing new has been revealed about Hillary Clinton.

It proves that she doesn’t think the laws of the land apply to her and that she is an extremely good liar. Her supporters know these things about her and support her anyway.

When Hillary Clinton was put in charge of health care by her husband and then president, Bill Clinton, she ignored all the laws about public records and open meetings. The entire bill was done in secret. It was only after a lawsuit was filed and she was ordered to release the records that they were released.

It’s extremely similar to the whole email scandal. The State Department is not releasing anything they haven’t

been ordered to release by the courts.

Hillary Clinton lies on a continuous basis. It doesn’t matter how many news organizations run video clips of Hillary Clinton saying one thing one day and something entirely different the next and then lying about what everyone can see for themselves on the video. She is dishonest to the core. Her supporters know this and support her anyway.

She lied for Bill Clinton all those years. Back in the 1990s when Bill Clinton was running for president, it would have killed his campaign if the American people had known what a womanizer he was. Hillary Clinton lied for him and convinced others they should lie for him as well.

Take just one scandal – the Rose Law Firm billing records that were subpoenaed but were lost so they could not be produced for court.

Those records were found in the White House right outside Hillary Clinton’s office.

Who could have possibly put them there other than Hillary Clinton? And what better place to hide something that has been subpoenaed than the White House? No judge is going to issue a search warrant for the White House over something like law firm billing records.

Hillary Clinton lied, everybody knows she lied, but her supporters continue to back her.

It’s like if some big scandal revealed that Trump was bombastic and spoke without thinking. This would not bother his supporters because they know that he is bombastic and speaks without thinking.

The other reason the email scandal is not a big deal in the campaign is that very few people in this country are on the fence about Hillary Clinton; either they support her despite her flaws or they can’t stand her and she makes them a little sick to their stomach.

But she’s been on the national scene with that shrill voice, fake accents and fake laugh for 25 years.

The people who support her aren’t bothered enough by that to withdraw their support. The crowd that cringes when she tries to talk like a (continued on page 32)

36 RHINO TIMES | Thursday, June 9, 2016 | www.rhinotimes.com