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BJ Barnes, via FB: "Personally, I don't see a big difference between [a sweepstakes cafe] or the state lottery, I play neither, except the state is regulated and winnings are taxed."

But a sheriff's gotta do what a sheriff's gotta do.

"We didn't really kiss and make up. Both sides went to bed mad." -- Nancy Vaughan, responding to the title of this post about the City's reconciliation with DGI.

Bob Braswell certainly sounds a little upset. He blames "an underlying political agenda" without telling us what it is. 

Many years ago in the Italian lake country it was time to eat again and horse was on the menu so I ordered it and it was OK but did not make me crave more horse meat. #allworldnewsreallyaboutme

150 million meatballs is a lot of meatballs.

I recently thought about linking to a post about eating dog in Vietnam, but it was too poorly written to share with you. Anyway, one culture's taboo is another's protein. Horse metaphors remain common in our language (e.g., phrases for deal-making, frolic, appetite, penis size, electromotive force, speed, differentiation, and many more) even though many or most Americans have never spent quality time with a horse; I suppose this is true in horse-eating countries, so it probably doesn't mean much on the edibility front.

We still say "bullshit," too,  and it's still one of our very best and most versatile words (I am partial to the adjectival usage), along with numerous riffs on pigs, sheep, geese, et al. I wonder if our great-great-grandchildren will use machine or electronic metaphors to replace the barnyard language that is anachronistic in our own time. 

Second-most-famous* alum of Livingston High School not invited to big party.

I've never been a believer in his presidential prospects, but that was more for reasons of temperment and morphology than ideology. 

*Readers have asked if I mean that my wife is the most famous product of LHS. I do not. She would top any list of my favorite grads, but in terms of celebrity I've always put Jay Greenspan at number one, as long as his stage name and fictional avatar are counted in the mix. As Christie's career continues and Seinfeld recedes further from currency, that may change. 

...almost half of DGI's funds come from taxpayers, and so those crying my BID money, my party, my downtown are wrong to exclude the rest of the city from decisions made about downtown. Downtown is comprised of people (some owners, some renters, mostly visitors), buildings (some private, some public), and a lot of public space - streets and sidewalks. DGI is simply too insular - representation on its board needs to be broadened to reflect, not just the moneyed interests, but the interests of everyone. If DGI's budget continues to be about 50-50, shouldn't a board reflect that balance?

We learned in school that taxation with representation is bad. Of course, we also learned cursive.

I've tried to bring out this idea of downtown as public space, but nothing makes it realer than putting a dollar sign on it. 

The City and DGI will try marriage counseling. Staying together for the kids, I guess.

Press release after the jump.  

Hagan signs letter urging approval of Keystone XL pipeline.

Signature strikes and the fog of war: "The definition is a male between the ages of 20 and 40. My feeling is one man’s combatant is another man’s – well, a chump who went to a meeting."

The ease of use of the copyright notice-and-takedown process gives people an easy hammer with which to, at least temporarily, stop speech.

NASCAR makes a bad move, but the problem goes way beyond racing.

Prospective tenants look at it and say, "Great location, great traffic, " (then, with eyes gazing up eight stories high) "When is the County going to bulldoze you?"

House proud, but trouble with the neighbors.

Carrboro Mayor Mark Chilton, via FB:

Without regard to the specific facts of the case discussed on Jezebel.com, could you please clarify under what circumstances reporting a rape would amount to a violation of the UNC Honor Code?

I last reported to an office on a regular basis in 1989. Telecommuting has allowed me to live (and shop, pay taxes, etc.) in GSO for most of my adult life, and I'd guess it also allows GSO companies to hire good people who for whatever reason want or need to live somewhere else. 

Mayer's new policy might be good for Yahoo, but my guess is it would be bad for cities like ours.

When we debate health care policy, we seem to jump right to the issue of who should pay the bills, blowing past what should be the first question: Why exactly are the bills so high?

Much more here.

More thoughts here: "In none of the countries with the lowest health-care costs can doctors charge $1.50 for a single Tylenol pill or $77 for a box of gauze. Many studies suggest that is a key reason why their costs have grown more slowly than ours."

Meant to post this yesterday, remembered this afternoon as I was cramming some chips into my face and the phrase "mouth feel" popped into my mind. Mmm, mouth feel. 

So why are the diabetes and obesity and hypertension numbers still spiraling out of control? It’s not just a matter of poor willpower on the part of the consumer and a give-the-people-what-they-want attitude on the part of the food manufacturers. What I found, over four years of research and reporting, was a conscious effort — taking place in labs and marketing meetings and grocery-store aisles — to get people hooked on foods that are convenient and inexpensive...

...the next question was how to expand the [Lunchables] franchise, which they did by turning to one of the cardinal rules in processed food: When in doubt, add sugar...Eventually, a line of the trays, appropriately called Maxed Out, was released that had as many as nine grams of saturated fat, or nearly an entire day’s recommended maximum for kids, with up to two-thirds of the max for sodium and 13 teaspoons of sugar.

Sequestration's impact on the states. NC gets it worse than some but not as bad as others.

Austerity has been a drag on European economies, so I guess it makes sense to try it here.

I don't doubt that learning cursive has some benefits beyond learning cursive, but that's probably true of a lot of things, so it may not be such a strong argument in favor of teaching that particular skill. Being able to read cursive seems more important than being able to write it, and I don't know how separable the teaching of those two things are. Penmanship was never my strong suit and after decades behind a keyboard I am scarcely able to print legibly and cursive is a memory, yet I'm able to make a living in the word business, although of course the argument might be made that my long-ago training in cursive somehow informs my abilities. 

In any case, this is what your elected representatives are worrying about now.

Budget meetings, War Memorial Stadium, and oversize wiener carts, all in this week's report from the City Manager.

McCrory's new communications hire was touting an interivew with the governor nine days before taking the job, leading Romenesko to ask her if she knew at the time she was a possible hire. No response yet. JR tweets, "If she wasn't a job candidate at that time, then it's an ex. of another bad hiring process in state govt."

Her Twitter feed shows posts about McCrory as recently as Tuesday of this week.

What's the purpose of dropping the state geologist from the Mining & Energy Commision -- the group that will work out NC's fracking rules?

Please stop annoying your elected representatives with your opinions:

The House Rules Committee has killed a bill that would have legalized medical marijuana, an effort by House leaders to stem a tide of phone calls and emails on the topic.

[W]e have been inexcusably neglectful in keeping an eye on North Carolina — aka The Smart Carolina. They had all that academia going on in the middle of the state, and all that medical smartitude breaking out all throughout the Research Triangle, and we were so dazzled that we didn't notice that, politically, the people running the place were casting envious eyes southward toward The Dumbass Carolina and thinking, "We need to get us some of that!"

Thanks to KG for the pointer.

"He also asserted multiple times that his involvement with the blog is not newsworthy, before abruptly hanging up."

I'm fine with anonymous blogging, except when I'm not, and a public official who pushes his agenda and (especially) attacks his opponents without taking ownership of his words falls squarely into the not.

Save your bbbbut-the-1st-Amendment pixels, this is about what's right, not what's legal. 

John Hammer says "[Orson Scott] Card is being called a homophobe because he supports traditional marriage."

Nope.

Card has made the same agument himself, but it just won't fly. His issues with teh gay predate NC Amendent 1 by many years, and are broader and deeper than the marriage issue alone. 

Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books, not to be indiscriminately enforced against anyone who happens to be caught violating them, but to be used when necessary to send a clear message that those who flagrantly violate society's regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society.

FWIW, my wife and I support traditional marriage, so much so that we'd like to see its benefits extended to other loving couples.

Florida Gov Rick Scott looks reality in the eye, blinks: 

On Wednesday, he called the proposed Medicaid expansion, at least for an initial period, "common sense."

North Carolina's decision to reject the expansion is going to hurt a lot of people, including patients, taxpayers, and healthcare providers here in Guilford County. 

Here's an assigment for the local paid media: Pick up the phone and find out what the money Raleigh just turned down would have done to close the budget gap at TAPM.

Eric Robert, a downtown entrepreneur and vocal critic of DGI, writes about the group's crisis and its response:

Downtown Greensboro belongs to more than just us property owners; we must therefore value the participants’ cultural contributions as much as the financial ones. We need to embrace urban diversity and accept that it takes all kinds; Young and old, rich and poor, black, brown and white.  We must embrace the notion of public citizenship rooted in safety with respectful, responsible and accountable neighbors and patrons. 

Read the whole thing after the jump.

"The City Council action on this non-agenda item was surprising."

DGI says it's done a good job, dammit.

As Brian says at the previous post, this could be a good thing all around.

If I had to raise a bunch of money for a project, I'd start out by doing what the PAC team has done, and what fundraisers have done forever -- contact all the rich people and companies and foundations I could find that might possibly be interested in supporting that kind of thing.

The next thing fundraisers tend to do is open the campaign to smaller donors. These people don't get buildings or rooms named after them, but they do get to put their names on bricks and seats and such, and they feel involved and, in aggregate, chip in some real money.

But what if there was a technology that allowed you to do that public phase in a much bigger way -- to throw fundraising open to the whole city and county?

Could you raise $1 million that way? Maybe. Maybe you could do more. You might be able to find 1,000 people who would give $1,000 apiece, and many more at lower levels (and some at higher levels, too). Seems like kind of thing that would bring out matching challenge gifts, too.

And in the process you would build community support and a real sense of ownership for your fancy downtown music hall. 

It won't get you the full $20 million you need, but it would jumpstart that effort in financial and political terms. 

“We don’t seem to be getting new ideas,” said Councilwoman Nancy Vaughan, who made a motion at the end of Tuesday’s council meeting to have the city manager research the city’s options. “It seems like we’re seeing the same thing year after year.”

A unanimous vote to review DGI and rethink the marketing of downtown GSO.

Feminism (like liberalism) is a word often redefined by people who despise it, or think they do, and so in a lot of conversations it means pretty much whatever someone doesn't like about feminism, or women, or themselves. 

Anyway, I'm one of the many people who have never read The Feminine Mystique, but I am rereading Anna Karenina, the latter being one I'd recommend to people who think they despise feminism, and I bet you my favorite Bryn Mawr t-shirt you probably are more of a feminist than you might think.

Areolaphobia is about to be codified as North Carolina law, driven by a legislator who was concerned that one of her constituents might wander into a far-away district and trip on an errant nipple.

Relax, strip clubs and skin mags are still protected. Your god-given right to pay for or sell the sight of skin shall not be infringed. It's just giving it away at a woman's discretion that's wrong. (I presume art museums are safe, too, but somehow they didn't make the list.)

National attention to Raleigh's priorities has been predictably sober and thoughtful and positive for the image of our state.

We can't get answers from our local government about the uses of surveillance video.

Soon enough the cameras will have wings. And guns.

Hard to write that without anticipating the Sarah Connor jokes, but really not very funny.

Energy-efficient traffic lights, land purchases for le boulevard périphérique, and more in this week's report from the City Manager.

Not just another sky-is-falling post.

Cascade Saloon survives but faces an uncertain future. 

"Marsh Prause of Preservation Greensboro said the building may be so old that it predates that railroad and therefore could trump the railroad’s right-of-way claim." 

The building is described as nearly 120 years old, which means it went up in the waning years of the 19th Century. The first rail line predates the Civil War, and the north-south line was added during that war, so they would seem to predate the building, although I don't pretend to know all the details. It does raise my earlier question about the tracks crossing South Elm Street and the issue of who should have the right of way  -- there's not much downtown that's older than those rail lines, but the main N/S artery of the town might be one of them, no?

Back to the idea that big corporate deals often kind of suck for the people on the ground: 

The owner and operator of the major showrooms at the High Point Market has outsourced its housekeeping and security work...

...International Market Centers bought the International Home Furnishings Center, Showplace, the former holdings of Merchandise Mart Properties Inc., which includes Market Square, and the World Market Center in Las Vegas. The $1 billion deal gave International Market Centers a corner on the U.S. home furnishings trade show field...

...One of the sources said that employees affected by the outsourcing were offered jobs with the contractor at noticeably lower pay levels.

Looks like M&A season is open.

Not unrelated: How Pittsburgh is surviving after the HQ are gone.

Said it before, will say it again: Mergers and corporate asset-shuffling are underrated (at least compared with other big things like globalization and technology) in terms of imposing change on local folks.

Good luck to the USAirways workers in Winston-Salem and beyond.

County takes over management of beloved parks. 

What could possibly go wrong?

Waiting for one of the commissioners to argue that parks have failed because they don't turn a profit.

Here's an enjoyable post about notable preservation projects in GSO.

I inherited from my father the habit of calling some old houses (including one on this list) by the names of their original owners, many of whom were long gone before I was born. 

"The councilwoman [Abuzuaiter] denied all correspondence with Detective Rob Finch, and also said she never communicated with Capt. John Wolfe about the Beloved Community Center or Latin Kings."

Yes Weekly publishes emails that say different.

(I got a notice from my AVG anti-malware that the main Yes! page was trying to send me the Blackhole exploit kit. I emailed Clarey, no clue if that's real or not but it's worth checking out).

Obama mentioned in last night's SOTU the launch of three new manufacturing innovation institutes, "where businesses will partner with the Departments of Defense and Energy to turn regions left behind by globalization into global centers of high-tech jobs," and he repeated his call for a total of 15 of these hubs.

The first one is live in Youngstown, Ohio.

Say, I know a region that was hit hard by globalization.  

So, are these things worth having?

And if so, how do we get one?

Michele Forrest, following up on an email circulated by Billy Jones, who was following up on the mental health and jail article by Joe Killian:

Monarch, which contracted with Sandhills to provide mental health services in Greensboro, is not offering financial assistance with psych meds. Previously, Guilford Center offered meds at lower prices and provided free meds for homeless people (and maybe others, as well -- it was based on income). Our StreetWatch team is finding that some homeless people are now going without medicine for bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, PTSD, depression and other mental illnesses that can result in them harming themselves or others, and/or engaging in other criminal behavior. This is a serious problem. From a cost/benefit perspective, it's less expensive to subsidize meds than to pay for jail beds. And it's inhumane to allow mentally ill people to suffer because they're poor.

"If it’s such great economic development, let’s define it," said Charles Byrd, a local CPA and an A&T alumnus. "Why is it an economic benefit? Who does it benefit economically? ... Then it may be something that everybody is in favor of."

Worth asking, and worth explaining, not just for Florida Street.

"Partisan politics is also at play," notes Binker dryly in this article about McCrory's decision to thumb his nose at Obamacare.

This one's going to leave a mark.

That said, it sounds like our existing Medicaid system is an epic disaster. Not sure if the remains of the tech press still covers that kind of story, but I'll see if I can get someone interested.

Superman, Scott Card, and teh Gay make for a volatile combination.

Previously: By whatever means necessary.

With fewer local resources available to them before or after they end up in police custody, the mentally ill increasingly end up in jail...

...The officers don’t have extensive mental health training, Barnes said, and the commissioners have for years refused to pay for a full-time mental health nurse.

With a looming $41 million budget deficit and departmental cuts on everyone’s mind, the commissioners aren’t likely to approve such an addition this year either.

Bad situation, may get worse.

I hope Mr. Buffay will fix the daily paper's comment system soon, it seems incredible that a story this rich has attracted 0 reader responses.

Good news at the local aerodrome: Non-stops to Denver. A lot of the value seems to lie in numerous connecting flights to western destinations. Use it or lose it.

North Carolina gives mineral rights owners the right to drill on land without a property owner’s consent. A bigger problem is that some of its citizens live on plots of land with severed mineral rights and don’t know it...

...A split estate applies to someone who owns a parcel of property, but not the rights to the minerals beneath it. It was adapted from a 16th century English law that declared the monarchy as the rightful owner of all the country’s buried gold and silver deposits.

I guess we're about to find out who wears the crown around here.

I picked up Anna Karenina the other day just to enjoy the opening chapters over lunch and now I seem to be rereading Anna Karenina, so it's probably not a total coincidence that this popped into my mind when I was looking for office music this morning. The whole movie is online (Nevsky, that is, although you can find versions of AK, too); seminal works in a given genre often are objects of interest more than pleasure for me, but the Eisenstein flick still works as entertainment.

Just finished Cloud Atlas, which I enjoyed a lot. Guess I have to watch that movie at some point, too, although my expectations there are not very high.

Is there a Libertarian wing of the NC Democratic Party?

If the uppercase L on "Libertarian" signals Libertopian, as it often does in the wild, then probably not.

If the question is, are there North Carolinians who vote Democratic and hold some libertarian principles, then, sure. On social issues, the Democrats trend more libertarian than the GOP. 

Not sure this is the most pressing question facing the NCDP, but if you're rebuilding a brand it helps to cover all the angles, and there are places (e.g., gun laws) where this could be important.