EdCone.com

This blog is taking a break.    

Thanks to each of you for participating in your own way.

I am stepping away after eleven years and 20,994 posts not because I no longer love the writing and thinking and interaction, but because I love them too well, and there are other things I want to do with my time and energy, and I know I cannot do those things right and do this thing, too. 

Be excellent to each other. Peace.

Mr. Ryan's budget calls for $560.2 billion in defense spending in 2014, roughly $100 billion less than the 4% formula. Over 10 years, he would spend at least $2.3 trillion less on defense than he and Mr. Romney advocated.

A week after Rand Paul's filibuster, another sign of the emerging GOP shift on policies marketed as "defense." A true Department of Defense would be a lot smaller than what Ryan has on the table. The Founders didn't euphemize -- they called it the Department of War.

Slowing the growth of the M-IC will require more than converting old-school Republicans, since plenty of Democrats (including some close to home) are military Keynesians.

"These are elected officials delivering prayers that value one set of beliefs over another."

ACLU sues Rowan County over sectarian prayer.

What's the story behind the story on the move to strip the QC of its airport? 

Is this a good thing or a bad thing for those of us in the hinterlands?

In any case, I would not have guessed that GOP control of state government would result in the persistent centralization of power in Raleigh.

When I came to the market last Saturday I had a roasted root vegetable dinner in mind, but I went home with the perfect ingredients for a winter market pizza.

Sounds good, but hold the spinach on mine, please.

Eight second-year students in UNCG’s masters program in history and museum studies, received the National Council on Public History’s 2013 Graduate Student Project Award for their work on Past the Pipes: Stories of the Terra Cotta Community, an exhibition that opened in December at the Terra Cotta Museum in Greensboro. 

Thanks to D for the pointer.

More here.

UPDATE: More here. "Projects like this don’t just speak to the former residents trying to preserve their past or history junkies. It falls in the vein of accessible work that Filene pursues — making history more meaningful and less remote through community and local history, especially by working with 'living memory' and conducting oral history interviews as his students did."

Janka Nabay & The Bubu Gang will headline this year's Mosaic Festival in downtown GSO. June 8. Good food, too.

Greensboro's future: A bunch of white people talking.

Thanks to SI for the pointer.

Urban Street Grill will be at Zeto all week.

I had the Korean bbq tacos. Recommended. 

Shawn and Jin built the truck themselves from an old Lance truck.

There was talk over lunch about getting some food truck action on our side of the tracks.

If you were paying attention during the bubble-before-last, it was clear that the IPO game playing out in exotic places like Silicon Valley and cyberspace was driven in large part from the familiar precincts of Wall Street. 

Now it's a little clearer: "Goldman took advantage of naïve Internet start-ups to fatten its own bottom line." 

Now, let's go monetize some eyeballs.

Learning to love sequestration:

In their more candid moments — almost always when speaking with a guarantee of anonymity — the Pentagon’s top civilian and military leaders acknowledge that the painful sequestration process may ultimately prove beneficial if it forces the Defense Department and Congress to reconsider the cost of cold-war-era systems that are still in inventory despite the many changes made to the military in the last 10 years.

We are doing this wrong: "The system is so irrational that those without any insurance can get stuck owing the most money."

Urban Street Grill Korean BBQ food truck is the latest venture from Jin and Shawn Chang, the brothers who made Sushi Republic into one of GSO's best restaurants.

Check it out tomorrow for breakfast on Spring Garden St. and lunch at Zeto downtown.  

This photo probably was taken in 1907, as the youngest child (my grandmother, Isabel) was born in early 1905. That's her sister Margaret on the left, their mom, Rena, and brother Eli Frank, Jr.  

Starting when our kids were born I felt a new understanding of my own parents and their parents and even the great-grandparents I never knew, because I realized that these people who always had seemed to me like such experts on life were probably just making it up as they went along, too. 

Many years ago Lex Alexander was kind enough to point out that my reference to downtown GSO's y-axis really indicated its x-axis, thus putting himself on the list with Mrs. Collins and Mr. Gilbert of people who tried to teach me geometry. Still, the basic point stands that downtown is more than Elm Sreet. 

Anyway, I doubt we'll see anything this dramatic anytime soon in terms of infill between UNCG and center city, but surely we could make Spring Garden a more appealing pedestrian/bike route (and maybe spark some business development in the process). Not sure what can be done to reattach McGee, the severance of which by urban highways is a minor tragedy; Lee Street is a whole nother problem.

A query about the tools and tactics of the GPD.

Context: 

The American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina Legal Foundation (ACLU-NCLF) and ACLU affiliates in 22 other states today simultaneously filed public records requests to determine the extent to which local police departments are using federally subsidized military technology and tactics that are traditionally used overseas.

“North Carolinians deserve to know how much their local police are using military weapons and tactics for everyday policing,” said Chris Brook, ACLU-NCLF Legal Director. “Across the country, local law enforcement agencies are increasingly using military equipment to conduct traditional law enforcement activities. We need to make sure these resources and tactics are deployed only with rigorous oversight and strong legal protections.”

Previously.

Thanks to Jon Hardister for using the open web to keep constituents informed about goings-on in the NC House.

Elected officials need to use open media, not just walled gardens like FB.

Fine to repost everything from one to another, but access to your info should be as barrier-free as possible. 

Is this the kind of thing North Carolina will be able to wave around and say "we ain't payin' for shit for your stadium renovations"?

"Yes, there will be those that do so. But it is unlikely that they will prevail, given the history of the NFL owners' abilities to extract subsidies."

Deadspin crowd-interviews sports economist Rodney Fort about those leaked Panthers financials. 

Said it before, but, if NC gives them money they need to add a "North" to the Carolina in their name.

Landfill gas, sequestration at home, the legislative agenda, and more in this week's report from the City Manager.

Noted here for years: His modest statistical bias toward dook aside, Dukie V is general-purpose fluffer and not just a Cameron homer. Which makes a modest statistical difference in how annoying I find him.

I have enjoyed this UNC season more than many, including last year's expectation-laden campaign. Fun to see a team come together, and I like both the smaller lineup and Roy's willingness to use it. Kind of nice to see two North Carolinians starting, too. 

Hyperlocal cooties.

"Local" is a better word and it can include aggregation of the truly hyperlocal, and an organic, grassroots-up approach will probably work better than a corporate template. 

"The pro football business was very good in Carolina in those two years, even if the pro football wasn't."

Panthers are rolling in it.

Now, about that public funding for their stadium rehab...

Filibuster reform has been one of those issues that non-nerds don't get excited about. 

Maybe Rand Paul helped change that.

The answer to his question seems obvious, but it also seems to have taken the speechathon to elicit. 

How much money do you have to launder before you really piss off a regulator?

First in flight:

Public schools have lost more than 4,000 teachers within the first three years of their careers since 2008, the report said. Losing the newcomers is especially a problem in North Carolina, which has a strategy of developing rookies rather than bringing in veteran teachers...

...The low pay is pushing even the best teachers out, said Darcy Grimes, the North Carolina Teacher of the Year. Grimes, who teaches at Bethel Elementary School in Watauga County, said she knows from conversations that five of last year's nine regional winners of the top-teacher contest are thinking of quitting within a few years to find better-paying work.

If you want nice things, you need to pay for them.

Maybe by the end of the week? 1,200 words? We unfortunately can’t pay you for it...

Complaint.

Response.

Analysis.

No doubt The Atlantic editor screwed up, but doing it right still would have payed Thayer nothing. Tough to make a decent living as a digital freelancer, and tough to run a digital shop that relies on freelancers. 

When I think back on the magazine world I came up in it seems like a dream.

The foregoing litany of data, interviews, analyses, and history provides a substantial and sound basis from which to derive lessons about the Iraq reconstruction program. The Iraqis, the recipients of the United States’ extraordinary reconstruction largesse, largely lament the lost potential that the massive amounts of U.S. aid promised. U.S. senior leaders firmly grasp the shortfalls faced in Iraq, absorbing them as lessons learned and recognizing the need for improving the U.S. approach to stabilization and reconstruction operations. Congressional members acknowledged missed opportunities for more oversight but expressed approval of varying innovations elicited during the effort and anticipate reifying reform proposals that could strengthen future operations.

Yes, I'm sure we'll get it right next time. Just like we brought all the lessons learned from Vietnam to OMPS. 

"I may not agree with everything Orson Scott Card says, but I feel the work and the person are two different things."

It works for Wagner and Ezra Pound, so why not the guy writing Superman comics?

One possible answer for some folks is timing -- we're in the middle of this particular civil rights struggle. 

Good for Lopez for going beyond the flimsy it's-just-gay-marriage story.

Food Truck Fridays are coming to downtown GSO, starting 3/15 at the Greensboro Children's Museum with The Great Escape.  

Another exciting day at the dog track.

I'm so old I can remember when the Dow was proof that Obama was a socialist. 

Some people in this country are doing just fine, for now.

Good thing they're kicking the state geologist off that fracking commission: 

Forty years ago, when North Carolina banned using deep wells to permanently dump industrial waste, some thought the issue had been decided for good. Now state lawmakers who want to turn North Carolina into the nation’s next fracking hotspot are reopening the case for injecting brines and toxins deep underground.

This time, the proposal is shifting the fracking debate from the center of the state, where the energy exploration and economic benefits would occur, to tourism-dependent coastal communities where the disposal wells would have to be drilled.

Dr. Wharton: 

In the last decade and a half, council has farmed out the vision thing to other groups (like Action Greensboro) and then sometimes supported them by encouraging them to spend their own money, or putting something on a bond (hope it passes -- fingers crossed!). I don't recall hearing a clearly articulated vision of downtown coming from any council member...

...Instead, they beat up on Ed Wolverton.

Read the whole thing after the jump. 

UPDATE: And the hits keep coming: "...the split between American workers and the companies that employ them is widening and could worsen in the next few months..."

 /update

Meanwhile: "America’s middle-class jobs have been decimated since 2007, replaced largely by low-wage jobs."

How have good people, with good intentions, allowed our democracy to be co-opted by outside interests, weakening our institutions and especially public trust in those institutions? What role has the media played in this weakening and what should be its role going forward?

That's what Lawrence Lessig will be talking about tomorrow in Chapel Hill. Free and open to the public, and also available via the magic of the internets.

Thanks to JS for the pointer.

Charlie and I believe that papers delivering comprehensive and reliable information to tightly-bound communities and having a sensible Internet strategy will remain viable for a long time. We do not believe that success will come from cutting either the news content or frequency of publication. Indeed, skimpy news coverage will almost certainly lead to skimpy readership...Our goal is to keep our papers loaded with content of interest to our readers and to be paid appropriately by those who find us useful, whether the product they view is in their hands or on the Internet.

From Warren Buffett's annual letter to shareholders.

Good news for GSO.

Heritage House, Cascade Saloon (with some history of the railroad in GSO), cop-worn cameras, and more in a meaty report from the City Manager.

As mentioned here earlier, our UVA correspondent was among the throng that took to the floor after last night's big win over dook. I asked her about the controversy. 

Her response:

Coach K was correct to be concerned for safety in the madness of court storming [but] we were more focused on getting on the court to congratulate our boys and possibly touch the great Joe Harris, we could not have cared less about dook. K had to be restrained for throwing F-bombs at the storming fans.

More after the jump.

Crowds can get scary very quickly. I'm old enough to remember the fatal crush at the Who concert in Cincinnati, and also saw things get close to very ugly as a festival seating crowd pressed people against a fence at a Led Zep show in GSO. Roy Williams took heat for evacuating (most of) his players early last year at HalfAssU, but it was probably a smart move, except for the men left behind part. It's all fun and games until someone punches a player.

GSO author (and longtime denizen of this site) Ian McDowell has been really ill and faces a bunch of bills that his insurance will not cover.

Please pitch in if you can.

He does have a point about storming the court, though: "Krzyzewski chose his words carefully, saying several times that he didn’t want to take away from Virginia’s great win. But he was bothered by the lack of protection for his players and coaches."

I've reached out to our UVA correspondent, who texted me a jubilant post-game video from the floor last night, for comment.

Earlier, Calvin Leslie's best move of the season.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/02/28/2715886/virginia-leads-duke-28-23-at-the.html#storylink=cpy