EdCone.com

A major Amendment One foe has raised more money than the big group supporting the terrible amendment, got more of its funds from individual donors, and has more money left for a final push against the attempt to write bad things into the constitution of this state.

Please vote against Amendment One.

A Kickstarter campaign to help fund the Mosaic Festival in downtown GSO on June 2.

I gave a little. Hope you'll consider supporting it, too.

"I write as a Baptist minister to defend something dear: the separation of church and state and religious liberty."

Dr. H. Stephen Shoemaker, senior minister at Charlotte's Myers Park Baptist Church, writes about his opposition to Amendment One.

Tony Wilkins keeps racking up endorsements in the District 6 county commission race, including some kind words from a sitting GSO councilman, Zack Matheny.

With no incumbent and no household names in the race, I wonder if endorsements might be more important than usual in this one.

Lenwood Edwards, a teacher who saw kids as they really were and liked us anyway, died this weekend.

My 2002 column about him runs after the jump.

Last night's interfaith prayer service opposing Amendment One drew a crowd to Green Street Methodist Church in Winston-Salem. 

If I'd known it was about to pass the Empire State Building as the tallest structure in New York, I might have taken a better picture of 1 World Trade Center, aka Freedom Tower, from my hotel room this weekend. As it was, I was just messing around with my new phone. My informal poll of two people revealed a preference for a park at the site. 

Previously, the site viewed from another hotel window.

Not sure how valuable an NYT editorial is in terms of bumping turnout and raising cash, but good to see one anyway:

In their zeal, lawmakers got careless with the wording of the measure, known as Amendment One. It would constitutionally prohibit recognition not just of same-sex marriages, but of other legal arrangements like civil unions and domestic partnerships. 

Has our local paper run an editorial on this topic? 

Third time's a charm: N&R mentions a big local anti-Amendment One event after ignoring the first two.

The news tab at the website has two related stories up high -- one about the issue being hard for local pastors, the other about voter confusion. They did run a Jeri Rowe column about Laurelyn Dossett's widely-covered protest song, Vote Against Amendment One, although I think they hid it from most North Carolinians in their Google-proof vault.

I'm not convinced our daily paper is covering this story accurately, at least from a Guilford County perspective.

Has the paper done an editorial on this subject? Early voting has been going on for a while, and is expected to play a big part in deciding the issue.

Some debate over dinner last night about this being the high point of Western culture. I think we settled on "a" high point, although I was in the absolutist camp.

Two-way traffic on Greene Street and an update on performing arts center planning, in this week's report from the City Manager.

GSO101.com offers online classified ads for the greater Greensboro metroplex.

Prices start at free. More details here.

An interesting bit of local history, via 99 Blocks: Annie Oakley in GSO. 

NYT headline: "Lousy but not lovable, Bobcats perfect losing."

It's been a rough patch for some of the QC's big brands, from megabanks to NASCAR.

At least Cam season is just a few months away.

Jon Stewart checks in on the state of our state's Democrats, going so far as to compare NC to our crazy neighbors to the south.

"Not every bubble is bound to burst."

Actually, that's pretty much what bubbles do, isn't it? 

I don't blame Doug for taking umbrage at big-media condescension toward High Point, and like him I'm rooting for HPU to succeed. Maybe his headline, which differentiates between booms and bubbles, will prove out.

But the questions about debt, sustainability, and succession are worth asking. Here are HPU's numbers for last year. Interesting to see what this year's report looks like.

Some good discussion beneath this post.

Rep. James Crawford, a sponsor of Amendment One, says he will vote against it.

Amendment opponents and supporters agree that health insurance and other benefits offered by local governments – for gay and unmarried heterosexual couples – would be disallowed if the amendment passes...

...Michigan passed a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and civil unions in 2004, setting off a years-long legal and political fight in that state.

More here.

In honor of its 10th birthday, Lex Alexander has posted a greatest hits page for his blog.

10 years is like 100 years in web time. 

Dr. Brod writes via electronic mail:

The saddest thing about this is the unnecessary economic pain that's still being felt by the British public, but the second-saddest is this graf:

"The G.D.P. numbers caused bewilderment among some economists, including Andrew Goodwin of Ernst & Young’'s economic forecasting unit, the ITEM Club. “'Our reaction to these figures is one of disbelief,'” Mr. Goodwin said. '“I would be very surprised if these figures were not revised upwards.'"”

Bewilderment and disbelief?  Really?  I could see such a reaction if there were no economic model that predicted these results, i.e. if these data had come completely out of the blue, theory-wise.  

But there is such a model, the simple IS-LM model (the mathematized version of Keynes' theory) that most economists learned in senior-level undergraduate economics. And there's been a public debate about the very issue of whether austerity is expansionary. Adam Posen, the chief economist (I think that's his title) of the Bank of England, has been arguing for sensible policies. That must have been in the papers.

I don't expect someone to reject his model at the drop of a hat, but bewilderment and disbelief strikes me as a doctrinaire reaction based on a belief system that starts with the axiom that a Keynesian model can't be valid. 

Related: "Credibility, after all, comes after results."

Lenslinger has been "playing Frogger with the planet's most unpopular millionaire."

The John Edwards trial seems a bit anticlimactic, if only because so much salacious stuff had been established in advance. Even the N&R dropped its moon-landing coverage below the fold today.

But covering the circus brings moments of excitement. 

Professional associations representing several types of health care providers used a news conference at the General Assembly to publicized their opposition to the proposed constitutional amendment on the May 8 ballot.

Good for them, but sorry to see Binker limit his initial explanation to "The amendment would add a definition of marriage as between one man and one woman to the state constitution," when of course it also would rule out civil unions.

Meanwhile, "North Carolina's top law enforcement official said Wednesday he'll vote against the marriage amendment on next month's ballot, pointing out potential legal problems with its language."

Sarah Ivory took this pic of Luna today at lunchtime in the office building where the three of us work.

Doug Clark: "I will vote against this amendment."

More from the conservative-leaning editorialist:

I predict a very close vote -- which adds up to a loss for the Republican sponsors of this amendment whether the final tally shows a narrow win or a loss. By forcing this vote, rather than leaving well enough alone, they have put the state through a wrenching campaign and -- as PPP polling shows -- weakened overall opposition to same-sex marriage or civil unions.

The devastating impact of a vote against Amendment One: "My wife, the poor dear, is learning that peeing standing up isn't all it's cracked up to be."

I believe Bishop Jugis's endorsement of Amendment One violates the Second Vatican Council's Declaration on Religious Freedom Dignitatis Humanae...

...Thus, with all due respect to my bishop, I dissent. I will vote against Amendment One.

Read David Wharton's essay on Amendment One here.

Strong stuff.

But surely, for a downtown that can come together with 70 or more of its prime movers and shakers to pursue a $50 million performing arts center, we ought to be able to come up with a better solution to the homeless problem than taking up the benches.

Don't call me Shirley, but otherwise, yes.

I have not been ignoring CISPA, but I haven't posted about it, either, so, here ya go.

The White House [has criticized] CISPA and said any cybersecurity bill with information sharing provisions "must include robust safeguards to preserve the privacy and civil liberties of our citizens." The White House declared they would not support a bill that would "sacrifice the privacy of our citizens in the name of security." Below are all the ways CISPA would violate that principle...

Thanks to alert reader JD for the nudge and the pointer.

We tried to find a CEO who supports Amendment One to interview. We worked with the two lead organizations campaigning for it, the North Carolina Family Policy Council and the NC Values Coalition. They could not find a pro-Amendment CEO willing to be interviewed for this documentary.

Our economy is not good, and there seems to be some consensus among business leaders that A1 could make it worse.

Some Durham County homeowners are getting back the rights to the oil, natural gas and other materials under their land after Texas-based home builder D.R. Horton Inc. said it didn’t disclose that it was reserving those rights in those buyers’ contracts.

This seems like good news.

Hoping for fair treatment of North Carolinians in any coming gas boom is, I realize, pretty much equivalent to arguing against the use of fossil fuels, and also it coddles weaklings who should be prepared at all times to take on a fleet of corporate sharpies by themselves, but I just can't help myself. 

Previously.

Based on our professional expertise, the language of the proposed North Carolina amendment is vague and untested, and threatens harms to a broad range of North Carolina families. The amendment is phrased more broadly than most similar amendments in other states, and would therefore likely be construed by courts more broadly than in other states.

Full statement here.

Some interesting numbers in this article, including stadium costs, government handouts, and QC tax and fee increases, but the best part is BB&T slapping its name on a ballpark in the hometown of its megabank rivals.

The John Edwards trial is national news and NC news...but is it really local news? 

To some extent, yes.

It's happening here. Local people are involved, from Judge Catherine Eagles to lawyers, jurors, court personnel, even people trying to navigate around the news vans on Market Street. 

So a certain amount of close coverage is warranted. But there's no shortage of coverage in real-time media and big-time papers, and the N&R is famously short on both page-count and manpower. We don't need more than half the front page devoted to news known already to anyone who cares about it, with almost everthing above the fold given to a not-great drawing from the courtroom. 

Teevee time ain't cheap, please do what you can to help get these on the air.

What I've learned* about comment threads in 10 years of blogging:

Try to convince the readers, not the person arguing with you.

Your last word doesn't have to come at the bottom of the thread.

A passerby can't tell which one of you is crazy.

There are a lot of smart, informed, generous, and passionate people out there. 

Sarcasm does not play well in text.

Bonhomie is fleeting, grudges abide.

People are going to talk about what they want to talk about.

When you paint your masterpiece, someone is going to draw a mustache and funny glasses on it.

Sometimes the mustache and funny glasses make it look better.

*Learning something and remembering it when you need it are not always the same thing.

"Where can you find Bhutanese, Burmese, African, Vietnamese and Mexican music and food all in one place? Answer: CWS Mosaic Festival on June 2nd at Festival Park."

You had me at "food." 

Last year's event was pretty great, this year's should be, too.

Tweets. And here's an old-school website for you FB haters.

To fall for Wade’s lie is one thing. To not correct it is another. But to repeat it with an allusion in the title smacks of an agenda on behalf of the N&R against Conrad. But that might be giving them too much credit. Occam suggests they are simply incompetent.

Sir William is a handy guide to our local paper.

Join Rev. Pam Strader at West Market Street United Methodist Church on Sunday, April 29, 2012, at 7:00pm in Room 415 to learn more about the issues around Amendment One, the proposed North Carolina constitutional amendment that voters will decide on May 8th.

More here.

Big series on the hospital business in NC at N&O and QCO; much the same material with some regional focus. 

Related: Wake Forest Baptist talks to the BizJournal.

Looking at Amendment One through the lens of local religious leaders is OK for a Sunday feature, but it's just a start...good that the N&R is covering this issue after ignoring some notable local news about it this past week, but there are many other aspects of the story to tell, and not a lot of time left before the vote. 

Meanwhile, here's an op-ed piece against the amendment from the Fayetteville paper, another from Hendersonville, and, from Burlington, a breakdown of the amendment and the campaigns for and against it.

What an honor to be included in this montage of the lameness that is MSNBC (my moment of infamy starts just after 1:40). 

I remember the original segment from May 2005, but I hadn't seen the recent clip -- thanks to Tony B for the pointer.

Thanks, Rebecca. More here.

Our overriding conclusion can be stated briefly and explicitly. The pepper spraying incident that took place on November 18, 2011 should and could have been prevented.

A report details the breakdown in process at UC Davis.

An unexciting report this week from the City Manager.

The allegedly real real story behind America's stoner holiday.

They tortured innocent people. They tortured people who may have been guilty of terrorism-related crimes, but they ruined any chance of prosecuting them because of the torture. They tortured people when the torture had nothing to do with imminent threats: They tortured based on bad information they had extracted from others through torture; they tortured to hide their mistakes and to get confessions; they tortured sometimes just to break people, pure and simple.

And they conspired to cover up their crimes. 

We have met the enemy and he is us.

Excuse me, but your logical fallacy is showing.

A live performance of "Vote Against Amendment One" at the College Park Baptist Church rally on Monday night; more here.

A photo from yesterday's early-voting rally against Amendment One at city hall plaza; much more here.

Businessweek takes a not unskeptical look at HPU:

Even if Qubein avoids financial calamity, he may be left selling High Point as it is today—a school with OK academics, packaged in a dazzling campus with pricey extras and clean-cut rich kids.

Marketing college as a luxury product seems off to me, but I hope it works out well for the city and region.