EdCone.com

"I'm sitting this one out," said one weighty downtown booster when I asked about the rush-rush campaign to get a performing arts center on the ballot for November.

I heard the same about another big hitter this afternoon.

They are not alone.

Look, I'm a fan of Matt Brown, and I think the Coliseum is great for this city in more ways than one.

And I think a downtown PAC could be a huge win for Greensboro.

But this mad dash on the PAC is a reckless strategy -- and I don't think voters will just turn around and dump money on the Coliseum if the as-yet-non-existent downtown plan fails.

So that would be a lose-lose.

Why not slow down, allocate some hotel tax money to other projects, let the plan gestate and the economy heal and public support grow, and then build a great new facility?

I'd love to be wrong here -- to see a great plan and private funding and community support all come into focus by springtime. So far, though, it's sound and fury and what seems like a doomed backdoor strategy to build at the Coliseum.

I'm not sure of the exact point where talking about the weather goes from conversational elevator music to grasping of the zeitgeist, but we must be several degrees past it.

'Yeah! How you like me now, F.E.C? I'm rolling seven digits deep! I got 99 problems but a non-connected independent-expenditure only committee ain't one!''

Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow files a disclosure form.

Colbert talks Super PACs: "If that is a joke, then they are saying our entire campaign finance system is a joke, and [...] I have been paid to offended by that."

As noted here, Boeing got its money's worth from its logo designers, and MSFT should be happy about the way kids think of XBox controllers.

When speaking last week to the GDS seniors about social media and such I began with the Wikipedia blackout and asked them what was up with that.

"SOPA," responded the crowd.

Now, they had just discussed SOPA and the blackout in a class they're all required to take, but both the bill and the revolt against it had their attention. And when I told them that Hollywood was afraid of them, they got that, too.

Which should give pause to any dead-enders in Congress who think Chris Dodd matters more to their future than a bunch of voting-age web adepts.

I'm not convinced that Kay Hagan really gets this yet, so please tell her politely when you have the chance.

Here's a bit of a script:

And if you want to persuade Internet users to help you innovate solutions for your industry’s many problems, you’ll need to come without your handlers and spin doctors, and without any expectation that your credentials or past accomplishments will carry weight in a serious debate about the costs and benefits of changing the architecture of the Internet to reduce copyright infringement. Come armed with facts, not rhetoric. Bring an open mind. And some engineers.

Oh, and if you’re serious about making real progress, stop calling us nerds.

Erskine Bowles liked to tell a little joke on himself during his second Senate campaign.

He'd say: People ask why I'm doing this, and I tell them I just want to run for the Senate in the worst way possible...and they say, but, Erskine, you did that last time.

The GSO native is not a natural on the stump, and he knows it. 

Bowles is a business-and-banking centrist, too conservative for some liberal Democrats, for whom he might as well be Pat McCrory -- another GSO native with a less-than-stemwinding oratorical style.

But a lot of people think he should run for Governor anyway.

A defense of private equity, with specific responses to some recent critiques of the field, including the one I linked earlier today.

And even in this friendly post there is reference to "the unconscionable and indefensible carried interest tax break private equity gets treating its earned income as capital gains for tax purposes."

See, the problem isn't private equity, or rich people, or capital gains, or capitalism.

It's the way earned income gets taxed at a lower rate for one small group than for the rest of the working world.

Mitt Romney is a member of that small group. He didn't want to release his tax returns, because they illustrate the problem. And as far as I can tell, he has no interest in fixing the problem if he's elected, which is one reason this story won't go away.

Things I think about at funerals: "Mr Bloom stood far back, his hat in his hand, counting the bared heads."

One of the many nice things said this morning about Bill Snider was said by Ed Yoder, who described a man "unburdened by self-importance."

Trenton Doyle Hancock's show, We Done All We Could And None Of It's Good, opens soon at the Weatherspoon. It includes "new and selected works executed across a wide variety of media, including drawing, painting, collage, and sculpture. The exhibition will also highlight a commissioned wall drawing."

Hancock will speak at a preview party for the exhibition on Friday evening.

Roberta Smith, writing about an earlier TDH show in the New York Times, praised the artist's "sense of unity, economy and for-the-jugular directness."

Of ''The Bad Promise,'' which appears in WDAWCANOIG, she said, "At once tragic and comic, this work makes good on Mr. Hancock's debts to artists like R. Crumb and Philip Guston with a finesse all its own. As much a drawing as a painting, it is an altogether astounding sight."

Your tax dollars at work:

Freddie Mac, the taxpayer-owned mortgage giant, has placed multibillion-dollar bets that pay off if homeowners stay trapped in expensive mortgages with interest rates well above current rates.

Freddie began increasing these bets dramatically in late 2010, the same time that the company was making it harder for homeowners to get out of such high-interest mortgages.

The money that Mitt Romney made when he was at Bain Capital was compensation for his (apparently excellent) work, but, instead of being taxed as income, it was taxed as a capital gain. It’s a very cozy arrangement.

Really not that complicated: Tax breaks for financiers + socialized losses ≠ free market capitalism.

Tales my father told me: The night they nuked North Carolina.

"In 1961 a crippled B-52 dropped two megaton nuclear weapons on the farm community of Faro."

Here's the book.

Juanita Spalding of Greensboro died last May at 83.

Her brief obit listed no survivors. It said she had worked over the years for a doctor, a phone company, and some insurance companies, and described her as "a passionate advocate of protecting the environment." Commenters at the N&R online version said she was "a joy to be around" and "a delightful person."

And now, this, from Russ Williams at the North Carolina Zoo:

A check for $1 million from the estate of Juanita Spalding, Greensboro, was delivered at 5 p.m. yesterday. It is a partial distribution to allow the NC Zoo Society to acquire and protect land on behalf of its resident wildlife.

The wonderful, late donor described her intent to Zoo Director David Jones and me about a decade ago in her modest apartment near the Greensboro Arboretum.

In Chatham County, an open-source pioneer attempts to subvert the music industry's dominant paradigm:

Most of the building’s dimensions are based on the Fibonacci sequence and/or the golden ratio, with all the grids of the floors, walls and ceilings lined up to interlock and intersect with perfect symmetry. The wooden floor of the main studio is composed of a diamond pattern, and each diamond has 12 slats in honor of the 12-note scale of Western music...

...are there enough projects like that out there to support a studio that cost millions to build? Tiemann is convinced there is, citing parallels with the slow-food movement.

..."There is a new economy waiting to be discovered, new markets waiting to be engaged. We’re very early in addressing this brave new market, and doing so at a time when the record industry’s rhetoric is so wildly against anything new that it makes us look like the crazy ones."

Thnx to MS for the pointer.

Time heals all Heels, except, apparently, for B Mo and Fingleton.

Allen Johnson on the PAC: 

The rush to get a bond item on the ballot this year for a such a center downtown or at the Greensboro Coliseum — or somewhere — seems hastily conceived and ambiguous. It reminds me of my days as a kid playing sandlot football and drawing plays in the dirt (“Everybody go long!)”   

...Has anyone done any kind of business plan? How would the facility mesh with existing arts venues such as the Carolina Theater? What kinds of performers would it attract?

...It also would be helpful if there were some sort of master plan for sports and cultural arts venues that helped to determine what should go downtown, to the coliseum and elsewhere.

Tea leaves spilled after AJ filed his column indicate some measure of support from the Carolina Theatre crowd, but that situation needs to be defined more clearly, and all those other questions need answers long before this project earns a spot on the November ballot.

UPDATE: N&R obit, front page article.

A remembrance of Bill Snider.

The former editor of the Daily News and the Record, who died this morning, was a role model for generations of journalists. I'm told Ed Yoder will speak at his funeral on Monday at First Pres.

Allen's piece captures something essential about Bill -- his generosity. He had brains and talent and courage, and the way he engaged people made them feel that maybe they possessed some measure of those qualities, too.

To say that Bill and his wife, Flo, who survives him, embodied Southern graciousness is true, but it should not obscure the fact that they were usually the most entertaining people in the room.

Allen: "I am blessed to have known him and to have been able to call him my friend." Amen.

Would it be nice to have a Trader Joe's in GSO?

Apparently so. People seem to really like the chain. So, for the sake of argument, let's all agree that TJ is swell and we should have one here.

But that doesn't make the case for extending the commercial footprint out Friendly and paving more shopping-center space in a city where empty buildings are treated as disposable items.

This LTE plays the We Like Trader Joe's card, and then doubles down on the non sequiturs by saying that people living happily near a very different sort of development prove that people living near the proposed shopping center have nothing to worry about.

Grocery heaven does not require development hell.

Manager's weekly report includes the plan for a PAC plan, with a bonus document concerning the relaunch of the Police Citizens' Academy.

A roundup of reactions to the downtown performing arts center plan, including the minor detail that there is no plan.

Ed Wolverton mentions that land would not have to be purchased if city-owned land is used. Not sure if I've mentioned this or not, but the city owns seven empty acres at South Elm and Lee, which would be a prime location for this kind of facility.

Also interesting: Carolina Theatre CEO Keith Holliday is quoted, which makes it seem that he's not opposed to a new PAC. That jibes with what I've heard from Carolina supporters.

My question: Why rush this thing onto the November ballot? Why not take the time to develop a great plan, line up some private funding, and launch the campaign when the economy is further into recovery?

"For my money, we should go back to public hangings."

Cabarrus County Rep. Larry Pittman says "murderers...abortionists, rapists, and kidnappers" should swing at the end of a rope.

What a candyass.

Back in the day, my people favored user participation.

The biggest problem with HPU is the school's educational philosophy: the buyer is always right. Students and their wealthy parents are catered to non-stop with a whirlwind of exciting activities in glamorous surroundings. There is pressure to inflate grades (frustrating for faculty) and even more pressure to overlook bad behavior outside of the classroom (frustrating for staff).

Anonymous reviews are problematic in more ways than one. Still, there is some consistency among these (claimed) experiences of (alleged) former High Point University workers.

Greensboro Farmers Market Chili Challenge, 10 until noon, tomorrow, Saturday, Jan. 28, at the eponymous facility on Yanceyville Street.

Meat! Beans! Celebrity chefs!

Press release after the jump.

Apparently North Carolina has an office called "Lieutenant Governor," and apparently this job is held by a person named "Walter Dalton," and apparently this person is now running for the Democratic nomination for Real Governor.

[T]he Supreme Court's ruling has created a nightmare for the Republican Establishment.

Who could have guessed that turning elections into playgrounds for very rich people would not work out so well?

BJ Barnes, via FB:

Pat McCrory [...] is going to make an announcement in Greensboro on Tuesday Jan. 31 (wonder what it could be) at 5:30 pm at the Shrine Club at 5010 High Point Rd., Greensboro. There will be refreshments and the opportunity to meet and talk to Pat. I would love to see all my FB friends there to make official his intentions."

Congress has exempted fracking from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act, leaving it largely to the states to police this industry. North Carolina, which has slashed the budget of its environmental agency by more than a third, will be hard-pressed to provide adequate protection for the state’s waters and rural lands. 

The NC Piedmont makes the Southern Environmental Law Center's list of endangered places in 2012.

So does Southside VA.

Thanks to Brian for the link.

National Dems to Perdue: Thank you for not running.

And as Jeff Sykes predicted here yesterday before Perdue's announcement was even official:

Opponents of the proposed constitutional ban on gay marriage and civil unions say they got a boost Thursday with Gov. Bev Perdue's decision not to seek a second term.

UPDATE 10:40PM: Not sure how clearly this came across on teevee, but the crowd intensity in the Dome tonight was almost Dookgameish, and both teams seemed really into it from the start. Definitely felt like a rivalry game. UNC is still the better team at this point and played to the level expected pre-season. Zeller ate his Wheaties. State is on the way back. /update

I'm repeating myself, as old people do, but when I was a lad the big basketball rivalry in this state was between UNC and State College, because both of those schools were national powerhouses at that time, while Dook was not diddly for much of the '70s.

Anyway, things are looking up in Raleigh, and that's good for the ACC, although of course I'm hoping things don't get too different tonight in Chapel Hill.

Some kind words for Mineshaft from Andrei Codrescu, who says the "quarterly review, edited by Everett Rand, is one of the best kept secrets of the magazine world. The covers are often by R. Crumb, and you'll find in its pages some of the most uncompromising artist/cartoonists and writers working today.  Some of them: Aleksandar Zograf, Rika Deryckere, and many many more, from the U.S. and abroad."

Everett is a GSO boy, yo.

The latest edition is available now.

Bev Perdue reportedly will not seek a second term as governor.

As Jeff Sykes points out in another thread, a resulting Democrat primary could have an impact on the anti-gay marriage amendment vote.

Politically, we still seem to be very far away from a fiscal solution to Europe’s problems, and the baseline scenario has to be that we’re not going to get one — ever.

Reports from Davos are not cheery.

Meanwhile: "Europe is confronting a descent into chaos and conflict. In America he predicts riots on the streets that will lead to a brutal clampdown that will dramatically curtail civil liberties. The global economic system could even collapse altogether."

If there's one thing Congress has in excess, it's members who understand the banking industry and are willing to fight for consumers, so good riddance to Brad Miller.

That was sarcasm.

Irony is a gerrymanderer getting gerrymandered out of a job.

The Federal Reserve said on Wednesday that it was likely to raise interest rates at the end of 2014, but not until then, adding another 18 months to the expected duration of its most basic and longest-running response to the financial crisis.

On the bright side, these guys didn't recognize an imminent depression, so maybe they don't know from recoveries, either.

Meanwhile, cheap money all around!

Sorry, savers. No soup for you.

A Facebook page supporting a downtown performing arts center for Greensboro.

An ambitious program lies ahead at Carolina Performing Arts, celebrating the 100th anniversary of The Rite of Spring.

Below, a popular non-balletic use of the music:

Hip-Hop Family Tree: A Look Into the Viral Propagation of a Culture.

More here and here, and more to come.

Dear Mr. Obama,

Thanks for the shout-outs to North Carolina in your SOTU speech last night.

We understand that you would very much like to win our state again come November!

But when you talk about reviving American manufacturing and say the same good things happening in Detroit "can happen in Cleveland and Pittsburgh and Raleigh," you're not really connecting with the home folks, you're just pandering.

North Carolinians know that Wake County (that's where Raleigh is located!) was not our traditional manufacturing heartland, nor was employment there anywhere near as hard-hit as in many other parts of the state. If "Greensboro" was too obscure a reference for a national audience, surely you could have made your point by saying "the North Carolina Piedmont" or some such sonorous phrase.

Sincerely,

A Resident of NC's traditional manufacturing heartland, where unemployment remains really damn high.

As the City begins considering a new performing arts facility, it should ponder the good advice involving transparency and due diligence in a recent letter from Robert Malekoff to the N&R.

My guess is that a downtown location will be more appealing to voters than the Coliseum complex. Having Matt Brown run the thing would be great, but a the first law of real estate says choosing the right spot is critical. The City-owned lots at South Elm and Lee strike me as strong contenders, but there may be several good sites in the ambit of walkability.

Timing is important. Rushing this thing into a still-stagnant economy would be fatal, and rightly so. Proponents should take their time in developing -- in public -- a meticulous planning and marketing campaign that explains where the money will come from and where it will go, and why we want to do this in the first place.

Maybe they just got tired of being slobbered on by Dookie V:

Student attendance at men’s basketball games has fallen consistently over the last five years, even dropping after Duke won its fourth national championship in 2010. This season, approximately 650 undergraduates have attended each game, 150 fewer than during the 2008-09 season. As a result, Duke Athletics has begun to sell an increasing number of general admission tickets in the student section on a regular basis.

The Caymans holdings and holdings in a Swiss bank account - which was closed in 2010 after an adviser decided it could be politically embarrassing to Romney - were reported on tax returns and were not vehicles to avoid taxes, the advisers said.

Whatever. I'm not sure there's a good way to spin Swiss bank accounts and offshore holdings in Caribbean tax havens.

If you're going to Charlotte, leave your backpack at home.

[A] new era of unlimited political money is reshaping the rules of presidential politics and empowering individual donors to a degree unseen since before the Watergate scandals.

The wealth of a single couple has now leveled the playing field in two critical primary states...

Quite a relief to read in the Wall Street Journal opinion pages that this is not a problem -- that, in fact, complaints are part of a "war on political free speech" -- otherwise I might be getting a little worried.

Taking a drastic step to stem a glut of natural gas that has pushed prices down 45% in the last year, the nation's second-largest producer said it will slash gas drilling by nearly half...

...federal and private forecasters predict an oversupply will last for years.

North Carolina has plenty of time to figure out the right course on gas production.

We need to update our regulations and understand the environmental consequences of fracking.

And the market is telling us that there's no need to hurry.

“What do you think the likelihood of that is?” asked Rep. Mel Watt.

Really? That's the standard we're going to use -- a supporter of the bill says bad outcomes that are possible given the actual wording of the legislation probably won't happen?

Hagan, meanwhile, tells Binker: “Now that a lot of these industries have said, ‘Whoa, we don’t like this bill,’ we certainly need to look at that and address those issues.”

I'm happy to see her say that, especially since Leahy is not giving up on PIPA.

...the group wants to address “an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another.

One of the (many) problems with this nonsense is that it ignores the heated debates about these things among the Founders themselves.

You can't just teach kids, hey, everybody did it back then, because not everybody did do it back then, and a lot of people were organized and vocal in their opposition at the time.

The difference between the blather between playoff games and the blather between primaries is that somebody might accidentally say something that matters between primaries.

But I can't make myself pay much attention to either one.

"Candidly, those who count on quote 'Hollywood' for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who's going to stand up for them when their job is at stake," Dodd told Fox News. "Don't ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don't pay any attention to me when my job is at stake."

As a former Senator, the guy knows how the system works.

Yesterday's big article on Apple's manufacturing operations was interesting for many reasons, including this one:

The Chinese government had agreed to underwrite costs for numerous industries, and those subsidies had trickled down to the glass-cutting factory. It had a warehouse filled with glass samples available to Apple, free of charge. The owners made engineers available at almost no cost. They had built on-site dormitories so employees would be available 24 hours a day.

The Chinese plant got the job.

Also, this:

“They could hire 3,000 people overnight,” said Jennifer Rigoni, who was Apple’s worldwide supply demand manager until 2010, but declined to discuss specifics of her work. “What U.S. plant can find 3,000 people overnight and convince them to live in dorms?”