EdCone.com

Which brings us back to the lenders. What is their role, if not to exercise expert judgment? If they cannot independently determine who is credit worthy and who is not, than why do they even exist at all? We might as well leave piles of money around and ask borrowers to self-regulate their appropriate credit limits.

That might actually work better than the way they've been doing it.

But they know they can count on taxpayers to make them whole, thanks to a system that "makes Mr. Dimon no capitalist colossus astride the Isle of Manhattan, but one of the great welfare queens in America."

I ran into John Hammer this AM. He confirmed that his brother, Willy, has stepped down as publisher of the Rhino Times, but says W will continue to be involved in the business on the internet side.

Meanwhile, John front-paged his apology for last week's cartoon in today's print edition. More here.

It's a good thing that virtually nobody in this country wants to be called a racist anymore.

But the welcome weight and power of the word "racist" put some obligations on people who use it.

John Hammer is not a racist. I say that because I know the man, and his wife, and his family.

A lot of people are sort of willing to accept that on a personal level, but still say that the Rhino Times is racist, and are calling on its advertisers to quit the paper.

Some of this is based on a very broad definition of racism that seems to encompass conservatism itself. That's wrong.

It would be great if John was more vocal in opposing the use of identity politics and race as a cudgel, even when his allies are the ones wielding them. But remember, that includes his longtime pal Skip Alston.

99 Blocks makes much of John's constant use of Obama's middle name. But John also mocked Bill Clinton's name, constantly. The back page of the paper has been consistently awful for two decades.

Certainly a lot of the Kenyan Muslim birther crap is aimed at portraying Obama's otherness, and certainly John should be careful about playing that nudge-and-wink game, on this particular subject and others.

The Rhino covers a lot of stuff that needs to be covered. I wish it did a better job. I wish it pandered less to its base and helped this city move past the politics of grievance in which we are mired.

Maybe this incident will be a push in that direction.

Tony Collins announces his candidacy in GSO D4.

Full text after the jump.

MySpace, unfriended.

[M]ost Americans assume that U.S. government social programs aid primarily the poor and the middle class, but tax expenditures generally shower their most generous benefits on those in the upper reaches of the income spectrum...in the main, such policies are upwardly redistributive, despite rhetoric to the contrary.

So if we're serious about balancing the budget...

A pre-release party for John Hart's next best-seller, Iron House, benefiting the Piedmont Land Conservancy, Saturday, July 9, at the O. Henry.

Y'all come.

Nancy Vaughan says she's running.

Replying to a FB comment -- "Run girlie!" -- she says, "I am!!"

One assumes this means she'll run at large again, but one could be surprised by a district run or even floored by a mayoral campaign.

UPDATE: Press release says at large. Please add me to the press release list.

Update II: Read it yourself after the jump.

State College's 1983  national championship team is a strong contender for several superlatives -- biggest upset in a title game, most exciting tourney run, best post-game moment (Valvano looking for a hug), and, of course, most dramatic finish.

Rest in peace, Lo Charles.

I remembered a lot about that Woofback ride, including the season-finale demolition of Wake and the late-night NCAA wins on the west coast, but I had forgotten they ended Ralph Sampson's college career in the regionals.

For almost two minutes, we get little more than a genius biker hitting the kettle drum while three superrich hippies prepare to be as awesome as they justifiably perceive themselves...

I wanted to love ITTOD when it came out, and for a while I convinced myself I did.

He's right about Presence, too.

Nancy Vaughan, on the Facebook:

It's been said that "It's a woman's prerogative to change her mind". I'm in the process of changing mine!:)

Sounds like she's running.

Nancy Vaughan says she is "very disappointed" that tomorrow's City Council work session on the curb market has been cancelled.

Vaughan, who really should reconsider her retirement from a Council that needs her badly, continues:

The reason that I was given was that since we are having an executive session this afternoon about the City Attorney, many council members did not want two meetings in two days. I think that is pathetic. We are elected to do a job. Let's do it!! Furthermore, if two meetings in two days are too many for some council members why didn't the Mayor schedule today's meeting immediately following tomorrow's? Two meetings in one day is more efficient than no meeting at all!

How to journalism on the Twitter.

And on the Facebook.

"We're definitely looking at buildings as net generators of electricity, at least during some parts of the day."

Alt fuels as we know them seem incapable of remaking the core of the energy economy, but maybe alt fuels won't remain as we know them.  Left, windmills as seen from the road to Vizzini, Sicily.

 In response to Williams’ letter, Thompson was quoted in The Rhinoceros Times newspaper as saying, “That’s one less bloated bureaucrat asking for more and more money.”   

Williams’ situation represents another source of tension between city employees and council members — what some consider a lack of respect for or trust in staff members’ professional opinions.   

Perkins said council members consistently are ignoring the advice of “highly talented staff.”   

“Council can do a Google search and get the information and they come in — all of a sudden they are an expert,” Covington said.

N&R front-pager hidden in GPV; this link may work.

It's beyond arrogant for Councilmembers to assume they can micromanage the professionals who run these big departments -- it's fiscally irresponsible.

And replacing the talent you run off is expensive, too.

A nice story on NPR about Etta and Claribel Cone and the JewMu show, which is worth a visit if you're in New York this summer

The piece does get at least one relatively minor piece of family history wrong. So did the New York Times (a different mistake) and many other articles I've seen on the show. Nothing of relevance to the collection or the exhibition, but sloppy nonetheless.

If you can't make it to New York or Baltimore, the Weatherspoon usually has some of its Matisse lithographs and minor Picassos from the sisters' collection on display; left, Picasso's Paulo as Harlequin with Flowers, 1923.

The e-mails do not explicitly accuse any companies of breaking the law. But the number of e-mails, the seniority of the people writing them, the variety of positions they hold and the language they use — including comparisons to Ponzi schemes and attempts to “con” Wall Street — suggest that questions about the shale gas industry exist in many corners.

North Carolina would be wise to go slow on fracking.

But if natural gas ultimately proves more expensive to extract from the ground than has been predicted, landowners, investors and lenders could see their investments falter, while consumers will pay a price in higher electricity and home heating bills.

There are implications for the environment, too. The technology used to get gas flowing out of the ground — called hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking — can require over a million gallons of water per well, and some of that water must be disposed of because it becomes contaminated by the process. If shale gas wells fade faster than expected, energy companies will have to drill more wells or hydrofrack them more often, resulting in more toxic waste.

With his position still undeclared, Senator Mark J. Grisanti, a Republican from Buffalo who had sought office promising to oppose same-sex marriage, told his colleagues he had agonized for months before concluding he had been wrong.

“I apologize for those who feel offended,” Mr. Grisanti said, adding, “I cannot deny a person, a human being, a taxpayer, a worker, the people of my district and across this state, the State of New York, and those people who make this the great state that it is the same rights that I have with my wife.”

Well said.

Stonewall was 42 years ago next week.

Meet Todd Drake, the artist behind the show "Esse Quam Videri: Muslim American Self Portraits," which is now on display at the Civil Rights Museum in downtown GSO; Saturday 6/25, 1-2PM, at the musem, 134 S. Elm St.

Your weekly memo from the manager, including a rundown of the costs and benefits of all that preparation for SuperJam, the rules for Potter's Field, and a request that everyone on the City Council just resign, already.

UPDATE: News 14 Carolina's coverage is even better than the article in the N&R.

Last night's showing of Gasland drew about 50 people to Elon Law, which seemed like a pretty decent turnout to me.

It's an agenda movie, but if it's only 50% true this is something North Carolina needs to think hard about.

Pricey Harrison gave a legislative update before the movie started. GOP leadership in the House has been appropriately cautious on the issue, and coalition-building with hunters and fisherman is possible. The Senate is another story, they'd frack yesterday. Perdue needs to hear now that people are interested in this topic.

Two strands of debate are whether to frack, and how to frack if fracking is allowed. Given the possible impact, not just on the environment but on North Carolina property-owners who would have to navigate leasing and liability matters, not discussing it at all is out of the question.

I had to leave before the discussion portion got going, but I was happy to hear that a range of views were expressed, and, to quote Eric Fink, the conversation remained "cordial and thoughtful." I'd like to hear more, if anyone cares to chime in.

Some of my neighbors, judging by the little signs on their yards, appear to have contracted with a company called Mosquito Squad (local review here.)

The mosquito population at our house is much lower this summer than in previous years.

Coincidence?

Le Batard piles on UNC football (audio, starts just before 6:20); Kornheiser cuts Carolina some slack, in part because they aren't that good.

UPDATE Thursday evening: John's apology and explanation: "We regret the error and offer sincere apologies to everyone who is offended by the cartoon. We are also offended by the cartoon. As it appears in the newspaper it is racially insensitive and promotes a negative racial stereotype we find offensive...

..."Both the cartoonist and the graphic artist who colored the cartoon were shocked today at how it appeared in the newspaper. The cartoonist said he was sick when he opened the paper and saw his cartoon. He said he drew the characters as New York mobsters."

You can see the decolored version here.

UPDATE 6PM Thurs: The comment thread beneath my initial request for reactions to today's Rhino Times cartoon has two dominant themes -- "wow, that's racist" and "I wish to talk about anything other than that cartoon." I have not seen anyone attempt a serious defense of the cartoon's content or the decision to publish it.

Here's my take: it's shocking. As in, I was very surprised when I saw it and didn't quite believe what I was seeing. And when I looked more closely, it was worse. The Rhinoceros Times chose to publish a drawing of two black men in jail jumpsuits, captioned in Amos n' Andy dialect, with one guy complaining that he wasn't getting his free meals and cable in jail.

Good thing CNN isn't reporting its article this week.

I once wrote a newspaper column defending John Hammer from charges of racism after an altercation in which he called a black public official "boy." But it's hard to imagine that the content of this cartoon went over his head, and he was able to see it as just a commentary about jail funding. Maybe his front-page apology will include a plausible explanation of his decision to run this thing.

In any case, he's created a mess for himself, and done his hometown no favors, either.

Interested to hear your thoughts on this cartoon from today's Rhino.

For this plan for the White Street dump to fly, the garbage companies would have to like the numbers on Greensboro-only trash,which is a big question I've yet to see answered.

Also, the sacred 15-year contract would be iffy, and permits that are relatively easy to obtain in theory would have to be attained under legal crossfire, and the details would have to be worked out very quickly.

The political costs of escalating this fight even further might give people pause, too.

By rushing the project and scrimping on due diligence, the Council may well have made this a now-or-never project. If it turns out to be never, the people who pushed hardest deserve a big share of the blame.

Portions of the film Gasland will be shown at Elon Law School tomorrow evening, Thursday 6/23, followed by a discussion of fracking in North Carolina, including remarks by Pricey Harrison. The event starts at 6:30 and is free and open to the public.

Check out Big Media Jeff here.

"I don’t think we’re making enough out of incompetence as a primary reason we’re mired in a zero-growth decade."

Pathetic.

From a press release I would have just ignored if the writing had been better:

"Bad Feng Shui can ruin anyone’s work day without realizing it."

I guess Bad Feng Shui should pay a bit more attention, huh?

Metro papers like the Boston Globe and Dallas Morning News that have adopted a high price/high quality circulation strategy know readers will not be satisfied with skinny papers that have little worth reading. So those newsrooms are protected and, in a few cases, growing.

Other individual papers or chains, especially those that are debt-free, like Scripps or A.C.Belo, are willing to operate at break even or at a modest loss for now to keep the news core strong and invest in a range of digital startups.

Quality sells. New business takes investment.

Who knew?

"White Street landfill: What the…..?"

PP looks like a lock for Pithy Headline of the Day.

Craft told council he would recommend that Rodney Gann serve on the board of Greensboro Farmers Market Inc. should it be chosen to manage the market. He said he received a response from the Gann camp last week indicating they were not interested in working together.

Foster concurred with that sentiment. “It’s too little, too late,” she said. “Their philosophy and the farmers are two different ones. The city needs to decide: Do they want a farmers market or do they want a market?"

Actually, no.

The City doesn't need to buy into that no-compromise mentality.

It can follow the recommendation of its committee and select the group with the best operating plan, which also says it's willing to share leadership and run open meetings.

If the City selects the group that says it won't compromise, then it's ruling out a compromise. If the City goes with the recommended group, the other group is still invited to participate.

Considering U-verse. Got as far as a credit check. Lady on the phone asked me three questions -- my middle name, my previous phone number, my employer.

I answered. She told me my answers were incorrect.

Pretty sure I know my middle name and my employment history, and I've only had two phone numbers in the past 18 years.

But for now, I don't have U-verse.

Where do jobs come from, mommy?

[A]gendas that cede responsibility for job creation to the private sector over the next few years are simply dazed or perhaps crazed. The private sector is the source of long-term job creation but in the short term, no rational observer can believe that global or even small businesses will invest here when the labor over there is so much cheaper. That is why trillions of dollars of corporate cash rest impotently on balance sheets awaiting global – non-U.S. – investment opportunities. Our labor force is too expensive and poorly educated for today’s marketplace.

More from Bill Gross here.

The GSO area will take years to return to full employment, according to this map from a report on US metro economies, but the report also makes it seem that things are worse in a lot of places.

Thnx to TP for the pointer.

Rory McIroy's big win, in perspective, or at least a perspective. The numbers imply but don't fully capture his wire-to-wire brilliance, and miss altogether the dramatic reversal of his Master's collapse. But whatever the limitations of the Z-Score, the fact that Love's second-place number is closer to #20 than to Tiger's #1 is pretty incredible.

The minutes of the curb market RFP committee show some thoughtful discussion followed by a decisive win for the Greensboro Farmers Market, Inc.

If the City Council doesn't trust its own process, why have the process in the first place?

UPDATE: More here.

Allowing the trivialization of the War Powers Act to stand will open the way for even more blatant acts of presidential war-making in the decades ahead.

Not really the change I was hoping for.

Donna Myers on the strange politics behind the City's decision to revisit what seemed to be a slam-dunk decision on the downtown curb market.

This story just keeps getting weirder. After the original attempt to game the system was exposed and a reasonable process reached its conclusion, why are we still running in circles?

After executives, managers and financial professionals, the next largest groups in the top 0.1 percent of earners was lawyers with 6.2 percent and real estate professionals at 4.7 percent.

Crony capitalism, lawyering, and asset shuffling do not a healthy economy make. More here.

Portions of the film Gasland will be shown at Elon Law School on Thursday 6/23, followed by a discussion of fracking in North Carolina, including remarks by Pricey Harrison. The event is free and open to the public.

Here's some fact-checking on claims and counterclaims about the movie. I don't think Gasland is the last word on the subject. Neither is, "we need domestic sources of energy, and the industry says fracking is completely safe."

Meanwhile, public scrutiny of fracking is yielding some results: "The natural-gas industry, bowing to longtime pressure, will disclose more information about the chemicals it uses in the controversial process of hydraulic fracturing."

UNCG economist Andrew Brod calls the N&R's FPAF analysis of Guilford County's unemployment figures "crazy and misleading" (see comments beneath article). 

The news is grim, and the absolute job-loss numbers are indeed the highest in the state, but, says, Brod, "The only reasonable way to make comparisons like this is in percent terms." Viewed that way, he says, our stats are still "terrible," but much less bad than several other counties. 

Brod: "Things are bad here, but the worst in the state? Not even close. And maybe that's the saddest part of the story, i.e. that Guilford's situation isn't as bad as in rural N.C."

Brod also says, "The lede sentence says these numbers are about the Great Recession, and that's just not right," and questions the methodology of the survey used to generate the data.

Thanks, Clarence.

More.

I was too young and in the wrong geography to catch the ESB during its legendary early years, but I did see them at the Spectrum in '80, close to a home game for the band and, though well into Bruce's stardom, well before supernova, and it was pretty great. Saw Springsteen with and without Clarence and the band a few more times over the years; with was better.

Gates, on his way out the door, says he's grown "much more cautious on wars of choice."

This should be a prerequisite for the job, not a lesson learned from it.

Lisa and Luna and I spent a very pleasant Friday night downtown, all but oblivious to the Visigothic peril brewing just a short drive down Lee Street.

We started in Center City Park, which was full of people enjoying the lingering daylight and the breeze and the fountains. Lots of kids. Families and couples were beginning to set up shop on the lawn for the free showing of Breakfast At Tiffany's on a big screen at the east end of the park. I wondered how Mickey Rooney's grotesque portrayal of a Japanese man would play with the highly diverse crowd -- I don't think a mainstream movie would have been trafficking in such stereotypes of African-Americans by the time Audrey Hepburn donned that little black dress in 1961 -- but we didn't stay to find out.

We wandered as far as Manny's on MLK while contemplating our dinner options, but ended up eating slices from Pizzeria L'Italiano on a bench in the wide alley between Chakra's and Simple Kneads. Across the street at Triad Stage, the crowd had filed in for Masquerade, about which I keep hearing good things.

At Elsewhere the front windows were open and we sat on the stage, people-watching and drinking cold beer. A kitten named Pete, aka Pet Peeve, maintained an uneasy truce with Luna. More bike cops than usual were on the street, in anticipation of post-SuperJam crowds; they know a lot of the regulars up and down Elm, and mixed comfortably with the artists and scenesters and suburban gawkers and Graham from Table 16. (Photo of Luna playing dress-up stolen from Elsewhere's FB page).

We headed back north before 11. Now the second wave of downtowners had arrived, young women poured into tiny dresses, navigating clubward in very high heels, and young men in, for the most part, more casual attire (it was Ovid, IIRC, who said, "the girls comb their hair in rear view mirrors and the boys try to look so hard.") A firetruck was parked on Washington. I asked the crew what they were doing, and they said they were standing by. For what? "There's a concert in town tonight..."

Back at CCP, the crowd had grown but the vibe was mellow and happy. On the big screen, Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard embraced in the rain. Luna submitted to the affections of yet more children, and heard yet again the words that must echo in her tiny brain (No, a Portuguese Water Dog...Yes, like Bo...)

After the event, my SuperJam correspondent reported that the show had been excellent; Travis Porter, she said, was the best act. The crowd skewed female, with a tendency toward dancing. There was some traffic on High Point Road afterward, but she and her friends observed no drama.

This morning, downtown and the Coliseum area seemed clean and no worse for wear. I stopped at the Christian Family Center on Terrell and S. Elm-Eugene, where a community car wash was underway. Free hot dogs, too. There's so much talk about race in this town, from CNN to the more terrified and resentful quarters of the blogosophere, and of course we live in the real world with its real problems, but seriously, folks, sometimes you just need to relax and have a little fun, and this is a pretty nice place to do it.

After eight years of struggle we have yet to turn in a decent profit.  Which makes me feel like a loser. But instead of feeling like a Private Sector loser, perhaps I should recast myself as the King of the Fourth Sector.

Thanks, again, to Ed Whitfield for the tip.

“Do you guys even CARE what I write? Does it make any difference if it’s good or bad?” I said.

“Not really,” was the reply.

Tales from the content farm.

Previously.

German and French bankers being forced to drive last year's BMW or spend less time on St Barths would be as heartrending as Mitt Romney's unemployment.

Can somebody other than a sitting Guilford County commissioner explain to me why it's a good idea to let the commissioners draw their own district lines?

We don't need a map made in Raleigh, either -- some sort of independent board might be a good idea.

The NC Fourth Sector Cluster Initiative strives to advance a cluster-based strategy for promoting economic growth, job creation, and community problem solving in North Carolina’s Research Triangle region and throughout the state.

Thanks to Ed Whitfield for the pointer.

More here.

Even though I hoped for change and am a recovering internet utopian myself, I had some reservations, circa late 2008, about the power that a massive, networked field organization might put in the hands of Obama (or any president), at the expense of democratic institutions. 

Turned out not to be a problem.

I wonder if Geithner or Summers unplugged the router.

Less-laughable landfill argument still fails to impress judge.

The injunction would seem to rule out a Plan C from the City. Kind of a shame, just from an entertainment perspective.

Maybe the honorables should have crossed a few Ts before trying to rush this thing through.