EdCone.com

So long, Joey.

Thanks for all the good times.

Joe Wilson, RIP.

An old newspaper column starring Joe here. 

Defund research into gun violence, and eventually you get a society where gun violence is blamed on everything but guns.

Most of the stores on South Elm were closed today. The few that were open seemed crowded with shoppers, and it looked like a busy shopping day elsewhere in GSO (traffic at Honey Baked Ham had the right southbound lane of Battleground backed up a couple of blocks). 

I get that downtown has a lot of family businesses and that people have other things to do on Christmas Eve, just saying that the money I wanted to spend with local merchants went to chain stores instead.

Better late than never: Your weekly report from the City Manager.

(Report was on time, me not so much.)

Planning to do a little Christmas shopping after my lunchtime conference call. 

Starting early this year, for once. UPDATE: Well, that didn't happen.

Home. Dog seems glad to see me.

Delta told me on the internet to go to Terminal D at LGA, but when I got there the board said my flight was leaving from Terminal C. Because Delta knew I was running late and Delta hates me. 

Also, I don't want to order my pre-flight shot of Jack by futzing around with an iPad tethered to the bar. Just telling the bartender is easier, and it's what I ended up doing anyway when I got stuck on the frou-frou cocktail screen. Cut the needless hardware and shave a few bucks off your drink prices, why don't you. 

For dinner I had a Clif Bar that had been in my bag since I don't know when. The Best By date on those things is meaningless. 

And now it's late enough to say that the Mayan apocalypse is on hold, for everyone but John Boehner.

Which Pat McCrory did NC just elect?

Signs point to the more conservative one.

Your liberal media: "The Post opinion section exemplifies the most aggravating feature of the American punditocracy: that there are simply never any professional consequences for being constantly wrong or dishonest."

"It's just a shotgun."

I think I've used that exact phrase when discussing gun ownership with my wife.

Not all guns are the same.

Funny how the same people who will sound the buzzer to disqalify you from a debate about guns because (snicker) you confused semi-automatic and automatic weapons will turn around and argue, essentially, that a gun is a gun is a gun.

Dear Internet,

Please stop telling me that because X kills more children than guns do each year, we need not discuss the availability of certain types of guns.

It's a logical fallacy -- wake me up when people start bringing swimming pools to schools and perpetrating mass drownings -- and I'm pretty sure it's statistically flawed, too, and at this moment it seems morally obtuse.

If you want to argue that your right to own any gun trumps any public safety concern, or that our private arsenals are the bulwark of liberty, or that gun laws just won't be effective, or some combination of all those things, have at it. 

A primer on guns, ammo, and accessories, and some thoughts on possible legislation.

Staff meeting at the mothership includes photos for new website. They told us to look pretty. 

But they did not specifically tell us to remember to pack a razor. #myfirstbusinesstrip.

N&O paywall goes live. 

The "from 99¢/month" deal for the digital edition looks sweet, but it's just a one-month teaser before an automatic bump to $6.95/month. Yearly rate for digital is $69.95.

My child of drinking age and I agreed the other day that good red wine tastes like good red wine, but good white wine just tastes good.

This one tasted real good.

That was fast: Cerberus puts Freedom Group, which makes the Bushmaster, on the market.

I thought this thread was about as productive as any I've seen here. Framing the question as How To Prevent Mass Killings and breaking the problem into its parts -- e.g., mental health, gun policy, culture -- is a good approach.

And of course each of those parts is complicated. It will be interesting to see what happens when the broad support for improving the mental health system runs into the question of who pays for it. 

The stats on gun ownership and politics are interesting, but gun ownership is a mighty broad category, given the different types of guns (and accessories) and different reasons people own them.

A possibility: People who have a different opinion (or certainty) about what must be done in the wake of Newtown are as horrified as you are about what happened and think the solution you find obvious is as nutty as you think theirs.

Connecticut school massacre.

No words.

Trouble in Deaconland:

Usually, on those rare occasions when you rip a college basketball program with a dedicated fan base like Wake's, they jump in to defend their coach or the situation, or they decide to take out their aggression and troll you on your Twitter feed. Wake fans aren't doing that. They're now so despondent they are actually rooting for their program to be criticized as widely and loudly as possible...

"The web was an interesting and different place before links got monetized."

Yes. Yes it was.

We've lost key features that we used to rely on, and worse, we've abandoned core values that used to be fundamental to the web world. To the credit of today's social networks, they've brought in hundreds of millions of new participants to these networks, and they've certainly made a small number of people rich.

But they haven't shown the web itself the respect and care it deserves, as a medium which has enabled them to succeed. And they've now narrowed the possibilites of the web for an entire generation of users who don't realize how much more innovative and meaningful their experience could be. 

Anil has more on his mind than "some standard polemic" about walled gardens. So, as we used to say back in the day, read the whole thing.

Lots of boxes coming to the house this time of year.

Nice to have one that's for me.

Even if it's from me, and the timing is coincidental. 

Wifi works even in the closet. 

Threats often work less well.

Condolences to the family of Jason Alan Jones, including his father, local online personality Billy Jones. 

GSO's own Aldona Wos will run McCrory's Department of Health and Human Services.

She's about as smart and competent as they come.

There seems to be "a trend toward city living in smaller metros," including ours.

Our downtown has come a long way in the past couple of decades, which for all the legit complaints about it now is worth remembering. 

Airports have a big impact on the NC economy, almost 80% of it coming from CLT and RDU. 

Access to the full report is allegedly available here, but I couldn't find it easily UPDATE because i r dum doh here it is.

I need to make a day trip to Boston this week, which pretty much requires me to fly out of Raleigh instead of GSO. 

Stuff you know already that is news today anyway:

• Government doesn't create jobs, except when it does.
• The failed war on drugs and prison-industrial complex are just awful.
• Manufacturing jobs brought back to the US may not pay much.
• "Mr. McCrory has not discussed a conservative social agenda or, really, any political agenda at all."

Tony Wilkins seems to have disappeared his blog. 

Any comment by our newest Councilman on the memory-holing of his own public statements would be welcome.

I almost dedicated yesterday's Dylan clip to him, too. Tony used to laugh about everybody that was hanging out, now I guess he says do you want to make a deal.

No doubt this is terrible news for Guilford County, because, um, government schools:

Hagan Announces $30 Million For Guilford County School District 
District Selected As One of 16 Winners In Race To The Top-District Program 

Full press release after the jump. 

All I know about this subject I know from this post, which says up top that it's incomplete and argumentative, so maybe there are details that might make NC state government look like less of a bully and Asheville look like less of a victim? Please share such if you got 'em.

The good stuff's always in the comments: 

I want to know one thing from each Council member: Are you for a downtown PAC or not. Period. If you are for it, then work together to make it happen. Put aside egos and stop hedging your political futures on which way you think the wind is blowing with regards to the PAC. Show some leadership and show some collaboration that is reflective of the same expectations you have asked of a massive civic volunteer force. Stop airing petty grievances - valid or not - during the Council meetings. 

GSO has a huge opportunity to update our crumbling civic infrastructure and add a crucial element to downtown with one shot.

Let's not blow it, please. 

A smart lawyer with whom I worked on a difficult project would listen to people going on behind the scenes about the deal and the politics of the deal and then say, "Nevertheless, we are where we are." 

That was our cue to get back to work.

Because difficult projects are...difficult. Things don't always go according to plan. You have to adjust and keep moving forward. 

So to the GPAC team: You are where you are. It's not where you want to be, but you have a great product and now you need to adjust to the new realities to get the thing built.

That may mean winning a vote, and it definitely means winning a PR battle. So, you better get serious about doing that. And that means running a campaign that reaches young people and extends to zip codes you rarely visit (which means spending money).

If you're Robbie Perkins, it means finding ways to make the guy who wants your job and the woman who will eventually get it become solid proponents of this thing, and practicing persuasion instead of arm-twisting up and down the dais.  

Otherwise, you might as well quit now. 

Neither Mann nor Ornstein have been guests on any of the main Sunday public affairs shows since their book came out. Nor has anyone else on those shows talked about the concerns they raised.

Liberal media, still not liberal.

"[T]he absence of conventional cliffhangers doesn't mean an absence of unconventional cliffhangers."

I think I've mentioned here before my plan to re-read the Foundation trilogy, which engrossed me some 30 barbarous millennia ago, but now I'm wondering if I must deplore Hari Seldon because of this endorsement by Krugman, who despite continuing to be right about things like the mythical nature of bond vigilantes is just so shrill.

The case against economic development incentives.

I'm not convinced that all incentives are useless, although I have no doubt that incentives frequently are misused and poorly directed. 

But hasn't Texas, the surprisingly prolific econo-ho, added a lot of jobs? Not all good ones, but, still, what's the connection between the giveaways and job growth there? And hasn't South Carolina prospered around an incentivized auto industry? And might some of those gift-bearing places that had experienced "recent economic decline" have declined even more without the jobs they bought? 

Again, I don't doubt the data, but I'm suspicious of broad brushes, including this one. Some good points in the comments beneath the article.

Thanks to alert reader Marco for the link.

Stokes County, this afternoon.

I'm in no hurry for winter to arrive, and apparently neither is winter.

Much about the downtown PAC in this week's two-part report from the City Manager.

Most manufacturing jobs in the US have been lost to productivity gains, not off-shoring and competition. But textiles and furniture are labor-intensive tradables -- the green line on the chart -- meaning this region got the worst of both trends. 

Advanced materials, including nanotech, and good logistics make the list of things driving manufacturing in the future, according to this report. So if we have the workforce to do the jobs, we could be a contender...

Although the promise of manufacturing jobs may not mean what it used to.

I grew up after all the rules were broken in the '60s but before the brakes were, however tentatively, reapplied. The world felt genuinely lawless to a lot of teenagers and young adults in the '70s and early '80s.

Not saying current college students aren't often out of control, just that my generation is well-positioned to recognize the behavior and its consequences and, I hope, to address them. 

Tea Party fave takes the Palin route. 

The view from Columbia: "DeMint’s stunning move sets the stage for an explosive 2014 election -- with his position, the governorship and South Carolina’s other U.S. senator, Lindsey Graham -- all on the ballot."

Which Pat McCrory will govern North Carolina -- the sensible guy from Jamestown and longtime QC mayor, or the say-what-it-takes campaigner? I guess we'll know he's doing a good job when they start calling him a RINO.

I understand that the GPAC volunteers have been very busy coming up with a plan for the faciilty, and they've done a kick-ass job of it. 

Now they've got to sell it to the public. 

The lowest-hanging fruit is the moribund and frankly embarrassing Facebook page, which should be brought up to date and then maintained on a very regular basis.

Put up a link to this week's Council meeting. Then edit that footage into short bursts and link those, too (I know a highly-competent video editor who is available for volunteer work for the next several weeks). 

Get a road show together -- you can use much of the same material, and get Keith Holliday to host it -- and start hitting the campaign trail. 

Don't get caught in the downtown do-gooder bubble. It's a big city. 

Were I involved in the downtown PAC project, I would be advocating for a marketing and GOTV effort, and arguing that the marketing part should happen even if this thing doesn't come to a public vote. Maybe even use this internet thing all the kids are talking about. Make something as sophisticated and exciting as the PAC plan itself.

The team has come up with a project that looks like a winner for GSO. But that's not enough. Most people don't watch City Council meetings. This is not the answer. Time to get the word out.

His very stubbornness and strangeness — the polytonality, the blockiness of his playing, the oppositional push-and-pull between his piano and Paul Desmond’s alto saxophone — makes the Brubeck quartet’s best work still sound original.

In answer to Kim's question, posting a little Brubeck last week was just a coincidence. In Your Own Sweet Way might have been a good choice for today.

Has the N&R fixed its archive problem?

I don't know, because I'm too lazy to walk to the other end of the house to get my credit card. But in any case, links from the search results page now take you to a registration page, which is different from the comment registration page, after which you are given a chance to pay for the archived story (or buy a package of archived stories).

I can't tell if subscribers get past articles for free, as I am not currently a subscriber, but if they don't get at least a fixed number with their subscriptions that is quite uncool. 

Seems like fodder for a blog post from the EIC, but there's been not a peep from him since that brief, initial post on the launch -- even as problems with the site are evident enough that Zack Matheny cracked a joke about the broken archives during last night's Council debate over Wilkins' blog. 

Blogging is the least of Tony Wilkins' sins. 

For the record, we don't really hang out, but our shared quest to eat all the good food in Greensboro and then tell people about it online is a legit threat to the Republic.

I hope the new guy will blog about being a Council member. 

Video here begins around 5:25.

UPDATE: I think the first thing TW should do is invite TDBS to lunch. Clear the air, make a connection, move on.

City Council meeting: Performing arts center presentation looks great (video when it posts begins at 2:35).

They found the right place for the building, and the LeBauer Park makes it even better. 

Greensboro has a superannuated performing arts center. We're not repairing it. Time to replace it.

We should build this thing yesterday.

Based on the emailed opinion of a person knowledgeable about such things -- "This is a good move" -- I suggest that this is a good move:

In a strategic effort to enhance its approach to housing compliance and code enforcement, the City of Greensboro is restructuring its Planning and Community Development Department (PCD). Among the moves is the formation of the Neighborhood Services Division, which renews the City’s focus on addressing neighborhood and housing issues.

My lonely comment at the N&R asking for some sunlight on their website problems has been up all day. Crickets. 

I wonder if the paper's new real-name-only comment policy is keeping staffers from speaking out at their own site.

That wouldn''t explain the ongoing radio silence from the editors at their blogs, but there's only so much a company man can say in public.