EdCone.com

Items listed under the "Issues" tab at KayHagan.com: 

• Jobs and the Economy
• Education
• Military and Veterans
• Women's Issues
• Agriculture
• Seniors

Item not listed: Healthcare.

Seriously.

Like if they ignore it, it will go away.

As if it's not Kind of a Big Deal Around Here.

I've been banging on the Hagan campaign for months about this. 

Maybe they'll listen to the President and the NYT.

Obama: "I think there is a strong, good, right story to tell."

NYT: "When one of those programs begins to do its job, its authors shouldn’t be afraid to say so."

Obamacare is doing pretty well.

The numbers aren't just better than they were this winter, they're better than many supporters of the ACA allowed themselves to hope they would be. 

The law is far from perfect. The rollout has not been flawless, either, even beyond the deliberate sabotage inflicted upon it in many states. 

But at this point, the unreconstructed failure narrative -- the essential GOP talking point of the past few years, rising in volume with the website fiasco late last year -- sounds like a press conference conducted by Baghdad Bob.

None of which necessarily gets Kay Hagan reelected.

But the good news on ACA -- which is to say, good news on healthcare and good news for millions of Americans -- doesn't just give Kay the green light on those Hal Riney-esque ads I've been pitching.

It creates a nasty wedge issue to use against her eventual opponent.

As noted here, "GOP [...] strategists have started to hint that flat opposition - repeal with no alternative that provides something like the same range of benefits - may no longer be viable from a political standpoint."

My guess is that a lot of hardcore Obamacare-haters in NC are not ready for that reality. So if Tillis is the nominee and mouths some ACA-lite platitudes, the base will be furious; if he tries a harder line, he risks his credibility with the rest of the voters.

And if Tillis is not the nominee, Hagan's chances look better from the start.

Kay Hagan owns Obamacare in this year's Senate campaign, so she should make the most of it. 

In February, I wrote that "Obamacare will need to maintain the momentum it's gained for this campaign to work, so pushback ads probably can't run until April." 

So, April, and the numbers look pretty good. I'd start running ads now. Feel-good stories about the stuff even GOP strategists know they can't roll back -- families with insurance, people with pre-existing conditions who got coverage, and so on. Positive positive positive. Like an old Hal Riney spot for Reagan, or a Coke commercial. 

Meanwhile, Hagan's eventual opponent is about to be the victim of some serious elephant-on-elephant violence, If she's lucky, this will continue into an ugly and expensive run-off. If the GOP survivor is an unrepentant ACA repealer, the changing healthcare narrative presents a problem; if the nominee is more in the Richard Burr Obamacare-lite mold, the base will be furious. (A local version of this drama is reviewed here.)

Last time around, Hagan surprised much of the country by winning a race she was supposed to lose, but it wasn't such a shock if you paid attention along the way. Early days, but it looks like it could happen again. 

When Brian Clarey raided his former employer to staff his new paper, Yes! Weekly seemed destined to become a listings rag supported by strip-club ads. Instead, publisher Charles Womack brought in the thoughtful and web-savvy Jeff Sykes to run editorial, and suddenly GSO has three alt-weeklies. None are great right now, but maybe as they find their voices and sharpen their foci we'll see them push each other to new heights. Certainly Uncle Warren's daily could benefit from the competition. 

Anyway, Sykes followed up the fight over disclosing salaries at City-funded non-profits with some details on the compensation of Mike Barber, who opposed the transparency proposal. I don't think there's any real a-ha in the relationship between the City, the Wyndham golf tourney, Barber's golf charity, and the proposed Wyndham hotel downtown, but the whole package gives off a whiff of cozy old-boyism (for example, tourney director Mark Brazil is listed as treasurer of Barber's organization on the 2012 IRS form). 

It does look like our local chapter of The First Tee spends an awfully high percentage of the money it raises on salaries. Maybe the value the organization delivers justfies the expense ratio; Barber says as much here.

In that same email, Barber makes allegations about public drunkeness by Yes! contributor George Hartzman, which Barber says explains Hartzman's hostility to him. But ol' BS George has been playing this game for years. In fact, he's done some sloppy work re Barber's non-profit at his blog. 

First, he words his headline to make it apppear that the total executive compensation listed on the 990 is Barber's personal compensation, although you can see clearly on p. 8 that the total includes compensation for both Barber and his executive director. Worse, his headline number is twice as big as it should be, because he's adding the total compensation to its three sub-components listed in the columns next to it on p. 10 (when he says "$121,458 + $54,041 + $37,230 + $30,187 = $242,916," he really means "$121,458 = $54,041 + $37,230 + $30,187") and, as just noted, he implies that this wrong number goes to one person instead of two. (Mr. Transparency has now edited the post without comment to remove some of his more embarrassing errors, but fortunately the screen-cap above shows his work.)

This incorrect analysis has been parroted already by at least one local blogger, so it would be good to shut it down quickly. Hartzman makes much of his skill at reading financal documents, but any such abilities are not on display here.

Joe Guarino comes out swinging against outside money in the NC Senate race, calling the massive infusion of cash "profoundly wrong and unjust on several levels." 

More: 

The 17th Amendment to the constitution clearly intends that the people of North Carolina choose their United States Senator. Our extraconstitutional party system determines who the major nominees will be. It is terribly wrong that out-of-state, wiser-than-thou national party bosses have such a disproportionate influence on choosing the state's nominee. This is supposed to be for Carolinians to decide. 

To be clear, Joe is pissed about Karl Rove funding Thom Tillis, but I'm sure the same logic applies to those Koch-financed anti-Hagan ads and the general election. (Sidenote: I rarely see North Carolinians refer to themselves as "Carolinians.")

Joe's a Brannon man. I've seen Brannon supporters, like Palin fans before them, say Democrats pay so much attention to their favorites because they fear them. Trust me on this one: North Carolina Democrats are rooting for Brannon just as hard as Joe is. This GOP primary is Kay Hagan's dream scenario; combined with her ability to run against Raleigh and the improving ACA story, her seat looks a lot safer than it did a few months back. 

I don’t understand the arguments against Tony Wilkins’ request for more transparency into executive compensation at non-profits that receive money from the City. I know the City already gets reports on total salaries for these organizations, and that it’s easy enough to access individual salary info that’s already public via IRS form 990. I just don’t see how those facts make the request for further data unreasonable. 

Does Wilkins know something embarrassing about non-profit pay in GSO, or is he just fishing? Are his colleagues worried about him exposing something in particular, or are they reacting to what they perceive as grandstanding by Wilkins? Neither possibility is a good reason to limit information. If it's really not good policy, someone should be able to make that case. 

Not unrelated: Eric Robert has become a valuable advocate for transparency on the DGI board while going beyond showboating to outright hostility toward the downtown Old Guard he seems to perceive as personal enemies. His proposed sunlight measures should be discussed openly (some guidelines for non-profit transparency here and here).  Meanwhile, kicking him off the board would make DGI look thin-skinned and uninterested in change, no matter how obnoxious he’s been in meetings and on his blog. And it may be what he wants, in which case making him serve out his term without giving him the thrill of martyrdom looks like an even better plan. 

N&R has changed the name of its infotainment feature from "Online Poll" to "Question of the Day."

Thanks, N&R. 

As long as reporters refrain from pretending the results are meaningful, it's an OK way to engage readers.

I voted "Yes" in today's inaugural version. Wahoowa.

UPDATE: Romenesko on our small victory.

The High Point University chapter of the Delta Sigma Phi fraternity had its charter revoked by the board of directors of the national fraternity. 

This is the chapter where HPU student Robert Eugene Tipton Jr. was a pledge when he died two years ago. That terrible event led to a recently-filed lawsuit, but national Executive Director Patrick F. Jessee tells me "the decision to revoke the charter was not related to the tragic death of Mr. Tipton or any threats of litigation." Jessee says the board acted on March 17, 2014, prior to the filing of the lawsuit by Tipton's mother, and informed the Delta Zeta chapter six days later.   

Other sources close to the HPU chapter say the revocation followed a raucous recent party, which came after multiple warnings to the chapter about unsanctioned activities.   

Note re the Tipton case that lawsuits are one-sided documents. That's not a judgement of the suit's merits, just the nature of the beast. 

See also this article about frat life and its enablers. 

The News & Record runs a feature at its website billed as an "Online Poll." Although it appears to be part of the news coverage, the tool is unscientific: The sample population is self-selected (that is, anyone who shows up can participate) but also limited to people who use computers and visit that particular site at a given time. And it's easy to manipulate: I just voted several times, raising the dark green bar in the image at left, and a coordinated group effort to direct voting could dictate outcomes. This is not a robust method of measuring public opinion, it's infotainment. 

So, not great. But things get worse when the results of these pretend polls are touted by the paper's reporters via social media, without any caveats. Now the infotainment is granted a new layer of legitimacy. When veteran journalist Lorraine Ahearn and I said so to N&R reporter Amanda Lehmert on Facebook, re a recent question about GSO's panhandling laws, Amanda and another commenter replied that it's understood that these things aren't scientific. Ahearn's response: "Then stop calling it a poll!"

In fact, I doubt that some readers are quite so numerate as claimed, or that they think much about methodology when they see a paper put its brand on this feature. People do cite the results without any sort of health warnings attached. Meanwhile, the N&R participates in some actual polling, in partnership with High Point University. The casual reader may not differentiate between the two.

All of this is more than inside baseball. It raises questions of accuracy, influence, and ethics. An issue like the panhandling law deserves respectful treatment, as Donna Newtwon and Sharon Hightower said in that same FB thread. By billing this online popularity contest as a poll and having its news reporters pass it along with a straight face, the News & Record risks skewing the public opinion it purports to measure, and in the process it afflicts the afflicted.

Lots of papers run stuff like horoscopes for fun, but you don't see that content in the news hole, or find reporters promoting it to readers. Jeff Gauger should label his pretend poll accurately at the N&R site, and discourage his reporters from treating it as news. 

UPDATE: Alert reader Nancy points to the BizJournal, which runs a similar poll but at least adds a note saying, "This survey is not a scientific sampling, but offers a quick view of what readers are thinking." More accurate to say "some readers," but still better than the N&R.

UPDATE: More comments here.

UPDATE: Small victories.

More transparency for non-profits: Good idea.

Simple web searches for public information: Also a good idea.

You can find salaries for top execs of CFGG and the Community Theater in a few clicks. 

UPDATE: Most recent IRS form 990 for DGI and Nussbaum Center.

Tonight the Greensboro city council heard nearly a dozen speakers from the floor debate a toothless resolution urging the state to expand Medicaid under the ACA. Then the council members themselves each held forth briefly on the topic before passing it by a predictable 7-2 margin, whence it was dispatched to a circular file in Raleigh.

Former mayor Bill Knight and State Rep. John Blust, both congenial as always, speak in opposition. It’s expensive. No such thing as free money. We have a lot of debt already. Hmm. That’s all true! George Hartzman makes some good points about pricing transparency, negotiated rates, and insurance companies, and also takes an odd little side trip into the economics of abortion and says something inscrutable about the price and value of human life, so, you know, George.  And a nice man whose name I miss says the council shouldn’t address the issue because it’s a partisan issue.

Next come a bunch of speakers in favor of the resolution. Rabbi Guttman says non-expansion is hurting people, shutting down clinics and hospitals. Wayne Abraham makes a broad economic argument, Andy Brod a specific one (expansion will help, not hurt, the state budget). Sober words from the League of Women Voters, passionate ones from Rev. Peeples (she follows one sometimes called the great healer). Jay Poole (UNCG, social work) says vulnerable people are forced to use expensive emergency services.

Nice work, speakers from the floor. 

Councilmembers speak concisely and well.

• Hoffmann: “No sensible or justifiable argument" against helping the working poor.
• Fox: “Morally right.”
• Barber: So many of us are very fortunate, it’s hard to contemplate having to choose between the necessities of life, I support this resolution.
• Johnson: Against! LOL jk.  
• Matheny: This is a tough one. He wants to help others. He wants a true plan for citizens in need and hopes his retired healthcare CEO friend Dennis can whip one up. But, no. (Translation: “Normally I would vote for this, but I’m running for Congress as a Republican, so I can’t. Duh.”)
• Wilkins: Tough call for him, too. Appreciates the comments he’s gotten. Reads news brief saying GOP leadership in Raleigh has a plan of its own, pretends to believe that might work, and, out.
• Abuzuaiter: Yes we should be involved in state issues. Let’s fix this. The perfect time to help the poor.
• Hightower: Not a partisan issue, a human issue. We talk all the time about quality of life, live work and play, hard to do when you're not well.  Current system "absolutely absurd."
• Mayor Vaughan: We talk a lot about the at-risk population here. We're financing other states. This will save businesses money and also save hospitals and clinics. Many GOP govs have accepted, and in case you don’t believe me I will now read their names. Jan freaking Brewer, amirite?

Go Greensboro. Sometimes you make me proud.

Jeff Gauger says "many" people wanted a Trader Joe's on Friendly, while rezoning opponents were "few." 

If he has any evidence to support these contentions about the relative size of the two groups, he does not offer it in this column.

He also says most rezoning opponents live near the site. Really? Opposition leaders may live nearby, but what evidence does Gauger have for his broad assertion about the demographics of this story? I don't live near the site, and I doubted the wisdom of the plan, as I did the previous attempt to spread retail development west of its current boundary. 

Likewise, Gauger says there are many "fans of Trader Joe’s who don’t live close enough to Friendly Avenue and Hobbs Road to care much about more commercial development in that area." So he thinks all oppostion to sprawl is based on selfish NIMBYism and nobody has serious questions about land-use or GSO's profusion of unused retail space unless they can see it out their windows?

Here's an idea: Lots of folks from across the city would welcome Trader Joe's to town, but not at any cost or in any location. Contrary to Gauger's argument, the dispute really was not about the chain, except in the case of passionate advocates of that chain. 

Which leads to another problem with the column: Gauger's roster of participants in this drama leaves out one interested party: The N&R itself. He acknowledges criticism of the paper's ludicrous front-page cheerleading for TJ,  but makes no effort to justify the embarrassing article. 

It's been two years since Gauger's cringe-inducing first column, which he quickly followed with something much worse. Back then, it seemed sporting to give him a bit of credit for being new to the area and not really having his bearings.

What his excuse now?

You'd think that a big meth bust at a local store would be fodder for this city's daily newspaper, or one of its three alt weeklies, or one of the teevee stations. 

Early this month, confidential informants told Greensboro Police Officers that the Phongsavanh Oriental Market at 1810 Coliseum Blvd. was selling meth and operating a gambling room in the back of the store.

Interesting stuff, as is what came next.

But so far, the paid press hasn't touched it. 

The Troublemaker owns the story, and he's not waiting for the creaky old media to get on board.

You can see his petition to shut the place down here.

Happy headline from the BizJournal: "High Point University rates perfect score on finances."

But things get weird a few grafs into the article:

Other for-profit and nonprofit schools in the Triad that rated a perfect 3.0 composite score are Leon's Beauty School in Greensboro and Winston-Salem Barber School. Elon University received a 2.8 score and Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem garnered a 2.5.

The local weekly reports this odd grouping of schools without comment. 

Other sources are more skeptical: 

By the U.S. Department of Education’s standards, a small institute on the verge of collapse in California and numerous beauty schools across the country have lately been in better financial health than any university in the Ivy League.

Poor little Harvard. Your $30 billion endowment gets no respect.

I'm still rooting for HPU to succeed, which it seems to be doing despite some tough scrutiny -- although not so much from local media.

Good news for GSO: Prospect Brands is moving its HQ to South Elm St. It's good news as well for online flamethrower/real-world nice guy Eric Robert, who lovingly restored the old North State Milling Co. building (photo by Lisa Scheer, 2007).

The north end of downtown gets a lot of love, and with big wins like the baseball stadium, Center Pointe (sic), Center City Park, Elon Law, and the planned TPAC, it's enjoyed a run of success that once seemed impossible.

Positive things have happened on the other side of the tracks, too, including the Southside developments, Elsewhere, and CTG. But the southern gateway to downtown has been uninviting and activity there has stalled. Now, with Robert's success and serious plans for a mixed-use campus on the old brownfield site at South Elm and Lee, we may hit critical mass. 

South Elm and its cross streets -- an urban area built to human scale -- should be among GSO's greatest assets. Downtown itself is not just another neighborhood or collection of neighborhoods, but our public face and shared public space. 

The fact that Prospect is coming without government incentives is great, but downtown's revival has many drivers, including non-profits, developers, investors, government, entrepreneurs, and, if all goes well, education and healthcare. And, of course, people who like to live, work, and play in an urban landscape. It's been four decades since Betty Cone and a small band of stalwarts started what was then a lonely fight to make our city center relevant again, and progress has been uneven and sometimes painfully slow. But good things keep happening there.

Pricey speaks truth to power: Both parties in Raleigh have put water quality at risk for years by favoring big donor Duke Energy. 

She tried to deal with the coal ash problem long ago. "The bill went absolutely nowhere," even though she was a leader in the Democrat-controlled state house.

Duke is not the only corporation to have fought against coal ash regulation.  

And coal is not the only industry in this state that throws its weight around at our expense (I'm looking at you, cable). 

It took an epic financial crisis to restore some half-ass semblance of banking-industry regulation at the national level.

If the Dan River spill leads North Carolina to better balance monied interests with the public interest, then something good will have come out of the disaster.

Photo by Lisa Scheer, 2007

If productions staged inside the planned GSO performing arts center turn out to be as entertaining as last night's pass-the-popcorn City Council meeting, the place is not going lack for business. Drama, comedy, mystery, star turns...

The envelopes, please:

• Our Town award: Greensboro, which gets a great new performing arts center to replace its superannuated public facility, and a huge boost for its rejuvenated downtown as well.
• Small-d democracy award: The people's PAC. Criticized as an elitist endeavor, our music hall is designed to be inclusive of the local arts community to an extent undreamt of by those swells down the road in Durham...and also will support the arts thanks to the $1 ticket surcharge dedicated to that purpose.
• Ringmaster award: Nancy Vaughan, who kept things moving (for the most part) as the project that will define her legacy sailed toward approval.
• Best mystery: Who is Mike Barber's secret downtown investor? (Bonus Barberism: The Alice-in-Chains-citing, concept-of-risk-slowslpaining councilman said TriQuint is the acquiring company in the RFMD deal, which is contrary to every published report I've seen. What does he know that we don't?)
• Taking one for the team award: Zack Matheny. His command of the facts, particularly about DPAC funding, was impressive, but it's hard to see how coming out swinging in support of a big public project is going to play well in his GOP congressional primary. 
• When you've got a hammer, everything looks like a nail award: Tony Wilkins, who whacked that "blank check" line until he got blisters.
• Closed in Previews award: GSO's conspiracy-mongering bloggers, who raged against the PAC for months but failed to get opponents to the meeting, much less influence the proceedings to any noticeable degree. Nice comic touch when Hartzman suggested the Community Foundation might get bought by a for-profit entity, though.
• Behind-the-scenes mastery award: Kathy Manning, who spoke early, briefly, and effectively, then let her work speak for itself.
• Best cameo appearance: Oh, hi, Jamal, have you been here the whole time?
• Equus award: Walker Sanders, for performing while hoarse.
• Banquo's ghost award: Robbie Perkins, for revenge from beyond the political grave.

One of the many good things about GSO's new downtown performing arts center is the amount of private funding it has attracted. The project simply would not have happened without that $35 million investment.

And there's more good news in the details of the private funding: A lot of the money is coming from the quick instead of the dead.

Greensboro has been fortunate to enjoy the strong support of local foundations during a time when our economic fortunes were eroded by globalization, automation, corporate consolidation, and financial meltdown. Those foundations, created with industrial-age fortunes, helped immensely during some fallow years, and they're represented among the donors to the PAC.

But look closely: The two lead gifts, comprising more than 1/3 of the amount pledged, come from living people (Steven Tanger and the Kaplan family, the latter through a foundation). A third big gift comes from the Phillips Foundation, a new player on the scene.

The spirit of philanthropy is alive in Greensboro, and it's backed up with fresh resources.

That's huge.

And because of it, we're going to get a great new facility. Our downtown, which has made enormous progress in the ten years since I wrote this column, is about to get better, with the prospect of the mixed-use campus at South Elm and Lee on the horizon. 

There's a lot of work left to do, and we need a few breaks to go our way.

Tonight, though, if the City Council votes as expected, we will have something to celebrate. 

Cross-posted from a FB thread about Duke Energy and the DENR. Getting bogged down in party politics is a distraction -- there's a much bigger story here, and it keeps getting worse:  

 1) The problem at hand is unsafe storage of hazardous material.

2) Inadequate regulation in NC is a long-festering issue that has come to a head now because a long-feared spill actually happened.

3) Discussing the problem without mentioning the policies and direction set by the current administration would be pointless.

4) Addressing the deeper question of the state's long-term lack of action, going back through years of Democratic control, would be a great thing to do.

5) An honest examination would mean confronting the reality of corporate political power and acknowledging that regulation is not always a bad thing.

6) That's a conversation I'd love to have.

The NYT article linked at FB and previously at this blog has plenty of vaulable info in it, but it also misses the deeper story about Duke's influence across the decades and across party lines.

Think of every cavalry charge you’ve ever seen in a Western movie; now think of every time all the troopers in the scene were black. Our national myth-making machinery was programmed to elide the truth about the Buffalo Soldiers, but for some reason it reversed itself in the case of the art student from Greensboro.

Here is a  PDF of my O.Henry magazine article on Thomas Reese Alexander, a Buffalo Soldier from Greensboro.

The story turns on incorrect newspaper reporting, yet relies on the same now-suspect papers for many of its facts. I tried to find multiple sources, but of course some of these may have been repeating each other, and it all happened a long time ago. I used original documents where possible and think the published timeline is accurate, but I'd be happy for certain items to have an asterisk. And there's probably more out there -- the fate of Britton/Britten, for example, and maybe some understanding of how this 17-year-old from GSO ended up studying art in New York years before the Harlem Renaissance.  

I also pondered the question of cultural appropriation and the ethics of challenging the heroic narrative. And I wrestled with perspective. The main character's voice is missing, and many documents I found were written by officers and scholars who tend to be older and whiter than the Troopers themselves. My own point of view got in the way, and I had to remind myself to imagine the city Reese Alexander left more through his eyes and those of his parents, and less as my great-grandfather might have seen it.

Not done with this subject yet.

In recent years, the county’s economic development officials have pushed tourism-related strategies to promote its most enduring assets — the vast forests and miles of rivers for fishing, tubing and boating. Cruelly, now that Rockingham County and idyllic-sounding Eden are gaining national attention...those assets are connected to an environmental disaster. As state health officials warn people to stay off the river below the spill, experts predict the economic losses could reach into the millions.

Justin Catanoso, on the Dan.

"The General Assembly doesn’t like you," an official in the Department of Environment and Natural Resources told supervisors, who had been called from across the state to a drab meeting room here. "They cut your budget, but you didn’t get the message. And they cut your budget again, and you still didn’t get the message."

Charming.

The only solution is less regulation, amirite?

Make no mistake, the biggest Triad business story this past week — in quite a while — was the news that RF Micro Devices plans to merge with Hillsboro, Ore.-based TriQuint Semiconductor.

I'd quibble only to say that if the combined company is effectively based in GSO, it's not just the biggest business story in the Triad but the biggest story, period. 

I keep saying this to people, here and in the physical world, where I've bent the ears of some movers and shakers in the past few days.

I get a lot of polite nods.

I don't think people quite get what this could mean to the region and the state.

It's easy to understand why the RFMD merger matters to the mobile phone industry: It creates a major supplier to one of the most important growth businesses on the planet. And phones are just the beginning -- we're headed into an era of mobile devices and smart machines that will take us far beyond the handsets we use today. 

But this is also a huge deal for Greensboro. We need HQ jobs and advanced manufacturing jobs. We need companies to build around as we create a new economic ecosystem to replace the one devastated by globalization, automation, the financial crisis, and corporate consolidation. 

NewCo fits the bill on all those particulars. It's the kind of business that could easily attract and sustain other good companies. Along with HondaJet, it's one of the best things we've got going for us.

GSO, Guilford County, and the State of NC should already be working on ways to keep the merged company here and encourage growth around it. This is a very big moment. Please don't blow it. 

The RFMD-TriQuint deal is billed as a merger of equals, but outlets including the WSJ and Reuters are calling it an acquisition by the Greensboro company.

Let us hope that is the case.

And let's hope that Nancy Vaughan has already sent a congratulatory candygram to Bob Bruggeworth, the RFMD boss who will be CEO of the combined company, and even now is on the phone with Pat McCrory, planning ways to keep the HQ in Guilford County.

This would be an excellent time to focus our state and local economic develpment efforts on a home-grown, high-tech manufacturer. 

UPDATE: As reported from Oregon, TriQuint's home, it sounds like a lot of things are up in the air: 

“Both Hillsboro and Greensboro will be headquarters, if you will, for a reasonable amount of time – perhaps forever,” [TriQuint CFO Steve] Buhaly said.

The deal does create uncertainty, though, about the future of TriQuint’s Hillsboro factory, known as a fab in industry terms...

“There’s at least equal possibility that the Greensboro fab closes and this one is busier than it is now,” Buhaly said.

GSO should put the money it was going to give "lend" the Civil Rights museum toward the Retain RFMD Fund. 

Ronald Reagan is sometimes credited with this nugget of political wisdom: "If you're explaining, you're losing."

Right now GOP Senate hopeful Greg Brannon has got some 'splainin to do.

The candidate favored by Rand Paul, Glenn Beck, and our own C4GC recently was found by a jury to have misled investors in a tech company where he served as a director. Brannon has to pay back $250K, although he says he did nothing wrong and will appeal. 

That's good enough for some of his supporters, but it's hard to see Brannon's protestations convincing a lot of GOP primary voters who aren't already in his camp that the Cary obstetrician is not damaged goods. (Brannon isn't the only MD running as a GOP outsider to find himself in hot water last week.)

One person who must be hoping that Brannon survives the primary is Kay Hagan, who is tasked with plenty of explaining of her own over the ACA. 

GoogleFi may be coming to North Carolina.

But not to GSO. 

Sigh.

If you are looking for a much more detailed version of the strategy I outlined yesterday ("Force the GOP establishment to put some daylight between themselves and the repeal-only dead-enders, then hammer them on the specifics of maintaining the parts of ACA that people love") you can read one here.

That's the thing about dead ends, they don't leave you any place to go but backwards. 

[P]arty leaders have decided on an aggressive new strategy to address the widespread unease with the health care law, urging Democratic candidates to talk openly about the law’s problems while also offering their own prescriptions to fix them.

This is a step in the right direction.

But Democrats shouldn't underemphasize other aspects of the strategy mentioned at the end of the article -- "optimism when talking about the law" and the fact that repeal would be a disaster.

Move the debate to what works and what comes next. Force the GOP establishment to put some daylight between themselves and the repeal-only dead-enders, then hammer them on the specifics of maintaining the parts of ACA that people love.

You could start here. Some of these "older Americans who lost jobs during the recession" live in NC. Put them on TV, now.

Here's an ad attacking Thom Tillis for his alleged stance on health insurance reform.

It's paid for by Patriot Majority USA, a DC-based advocacy group that doesn't want to tell you much about itself but seems closely tied to Democratic leadership and union funding. Complaining about opaque, out-of-state organizations pumping money into this campaign is going to be like complaining about the weather, which is to say common, legit, and useless.

The ad is deemed by people who follow such as things as, essentially, true enough (credit WRAL with a reasonable caveat for the months ahead: "It's hard to imagine any 30-second attack ad on health care getting a clean bill of health.") 

As for effectiveness, it does an OK job of reminding North Carolinians that Kay Hagan's presumptive opponent (and, really, any GOP nominee) will either be against the stuff that people unabashedly like about the ACA, or have some not-very-convincing plan to repeal it and fund the popular parts only. This commercial is not as polished as the rival AFP spots, and I'd guess it's not supposed to be. While the anti-Hagan ads carry a dual message -- "Obamacare failed, and, we really do care about reg folks like you" -- this one has a single, blunt point to make.

I'd like to see some Obamacare messages voiced in a more positive way. Show me a guy from Rocky Mount who has coverage despite a pre-existing condition, and a woman from Pineville who was able to leave her job and start a company of her own. Let's hear from some of the surprisingly-large number of North Carolinians who have signed up for coverage in our exchange-free state. Less happy stories work, too -- say, from individuals and institutions hurt by the failure to expand Medicaid -- but those still would be grounded in the intended benefits of the ACA. 

Attack ads seem to be effective, so I don't expect them to go away. But I prefer a positive message, and I think it's important for Hagan to stake a claim to the good things she helped bring about.

My spam filter, which swings between publishing obvious junk and velvet-roping legit comments for no apparent reason, is in overly-sensitive mode, and after nearly a year off I'm rusty and forget to check it.

So, sorry if your comments have been mysteriously disappeared, I think we're all good now. 

The research uncovered a few key lessons on what makes certain cities more attractive than others. While a strong quality of life, talent pool and customer base were the most cited considerations, there was also a surprising lack of mention of business-friendly regulation as a factor. City leaders who dedicate resources to fostering these identifiable characteristics have the highest potential of drawing the types of innovative entrepreneurs, companies and jobs that can transform their local economies.

GSO seems like a contender based on these criteria. We've got some real QOL strengths and are working hard on that kind of stuff. Talent pool may be more of an issue, and we're part of a million+ metro region as defined in certain not-entirely-realistic ways.

So, maybe our whale-catching econ dev strategy should be supplemented by more nurturing of local growth companies and our own version of the Mittelstand.

Unfortunately, we've already torpedoed our own ship on another important front: 

With the prospect of more consolidation in the broadband market, places with competitive providers offering gigabit speeds or even an alternative to the cable/telco duopoly are looking better if Comcast manages to grab a larger market. Google’s plans to build out fiber-to-the-home networks in Kansas City and Austin, Texas, is one example, but even municipally owned networks or places with smaller providers such as Sonic.net may get a boost.

tl;dw version: Those "likes" you buy from Facebook are kinda worthless.

More here, including a not-so-compelling response from FB.

So here's another anti-Obamacare ad aimed at Kay Hagan, running now across the state with the frequency that big out-of-state money can buy.

Like the spot discussed here, this commercial is carefully constructed in terms of tone and feeling. It's not a red-meat call for repeal, but a pitch to moderate voters by a soft-spoken woman who seems disappointed that she has to deliver this critique of the Affordable Care Act: "It just doesn't work." 

It's another effective ad, but also one that shows how the conversation about healthcare reform is changing -- and how Hagan can fight back (as noted in the previous post, Hagan is going to own Obamacare in this race whether she wants to or not, so she'd better make the best of it). For starters, the ad reflects the reality acknowledged by the Burr/Coburn/Hatch proposal -- our healthcare system really was broken and something has to be done to fix it (another inadvertent lesson of the GOP plan: coming up with a workable strategy is not easy). 

The pushback should begin by pointing to ways that the ACA is working. That means addressing claims about the damage done by Obamacare, correcting any misstatements or overstatements, and promising to fix what's not right. And it means telling the stories of real people who have benefited from the changes to date. It means saying, "It does work."

Of course, Obamacare will need to maintain the momentum it's gained for this campaign to work, so pushback ads probably can't run until April. It would be very helpful if North Carolina's surprisingly strong enrollment numbers continue to trend upward. And Hagan is going to need a whole lot of money to move the needle after the long barrage of ads against her.

But pushing back against this campaign is possible, and, again, the only choice Hagan really has. 

"Gig City," as Chattanooga is sometimes called, has what city officials and analysts say was the first and fastest — and now one of the least expensive — high-speed Internet services in the United States. 

..."It created a catalytic moment here,” said Sheldon Grizzle, the founder of the Company Lab, which helps start-ups refine their ideas and bring their products to market. “The Gig,” as the taxpayer-owned, fiber-optic network is known, "allowed us to attract capital and talent into this community that never would have been here otherwise."

After years of pushing the City and foundation leaders to think about digital infrastructure as a key to economic development, I find this story to be kinda depressing. The same location atop big internet pipelines that makes us appealing to data centers could be valuable for other connectivity options as well -- options that the Chattanooga model suggests work pretty well.

Sorry, dead horse, to whack you yet again, but...are our econ dev people looking at the right things and operating off a coherent, 21st Century plan?

We made a decent run at GoogleFi, and then...what?

Been a long time since I wrote a feature-length magazine article. Enjoyed writing this one, which concerns unreliable sources, cavalry, Greensboro, race relations, barbers, and more.

Photo by Lisa Scheer, who also taught me a lot of what I know about African-American intellectual history and Warnersville. She was mentored on the latter topic by James Griffin and the late Otis Hairston, Jr., and has explored it in depth with the help of Harvey Robinson and Carolyn de Berry.

Lots of interesting stories to tell in this town. 

This week a Senator from North Carolina acknowledged that "Our nation’s health care system was unsustainable before Obamacare" and promised to defend such core principles of the Affordable Care Act as broader access to insurance and coverage for people with pre-existing conditions.

That Senator was Richard Burr.

The plan he was promoting would replace the ACA with a new law, but clearly the goalposts have moved and the GOP establishment (Burr was joined by Orrin Hatch and Tom Coburn) now believes that Obamacare defines the healthcare debate; they’re talking means more than ends. Nobody understands this better than the folks to the right who hate Burr's idea the most.

Kay Hagan should be taking notes. She’s going to own Obamacare in this election whether she wants to or not, so she’d better figure out a way to leverage it to her advantage. And that may turn out to be a good strategy in and of itself.

This would have sounded crazy a month ago, but less so now. It’s still too early to tell, but the national signup trends are positive – and the North Carolina trends are surprisingly robust, indicating that a lot of Hagan’s constituents want to be having this conversation. The further we get from the botched website launch, the easier it may be to separate that genuine disaster from the actual program -- the program that does all the things that Burr recognizes as appealing to many voters.

None of which makes the own-it strategy easy, or makes Hagan a lock for reelection. North Carolina has a habit of ditching senators after one term. Much of the state is still in severe economic pain and Obamacare will always be a red flag for some voters, even those who might support the Lite version floated by Burr. And there’s a flood of money coming into the state to take Hagan down (credit the folks who made this ad with understanding the semiotics of North Carolina; from the color of the speaker's shirt to her hometown, the spot is pitched right at the centrist voters it means to reach).

But Hagan has real advantages, too. GOP rule in Raleigh has motivated Democrats like nothing I’ve seen before, and her likely opponent, Thom Tillis, is part of that operation. I’ve been told by insiders that Hagan will have a GOTV machine that builds on Obama’s statewide success in that realm (although I have no recent verification that this is actually happening). It’s possible to imagine a campaign in which Hagan stands up for the ACA (and talks about fixes for its problems) while pinning Tillis down between some form of Obamacare Lite and the hardcore repealers.

It could work, and I don't see another way for her to win.

Matheny has developed an elaborate economic development plan that he will present at the beginning of the 4:30 p.m. meeting...

In great detail, Matheny’s plan focuses on creating shovel-ready development sites, incentives for development in east Greensboro and such major deals as the proposed Project Haystack data center park.

It's not clear from the article if the N&R has had the chance to analyze the plan, which does not seem to be on Zack's campaign website. I hope the public can see it soon, and that it addresses some of the questions raised here about data centers and their role in our overall econ dev strategy.

This stuff is not easy.

[Post updated 1/24 to add a link] 

With each passing year, the absurdity of the Little Rascals charges has become more obvious. But no admission of error has ever come from prosecutors, police, interviewers or parents.

From an N&O op-ed by Lew Powell, a retired Charlotte Observer journalist who maintains an excellent site dedicated to the Little Rascals case.

It can be hard, in calmer times, to imagine the power of a moral panic like the one in Edenton, itself part of a broader national hysteria. Lisa and I wrote about the case and in our reporting found a community where rational people seemed afraid to dissent from the fantastical narrative. As young parents ourselves we were sympathetic to the families we met, but clearly things had gone very wrong in Chowan County. 

Certainly the State of North Carolina did not appreciate our efforts, as the letter above from the state DOJ shows; Mr. Hart seems to remain a part of our state's top legal team. (I hope to post our pre-web article soon. Here's a PDF of the 1993 Elle article.)

More than a year ago, Powell petitioned Attorney General Roy Cooper to acknowledge the injustice done to the Edenton Seven. Cooper has not responded.

Good news for Winston-Salem on the tech-job front, but it’s important to remember that technology has become so pervasive that the line between “tech jobs” and just plain jobs is a blurry one.

Look at GSO’s massive AmEx data center – financial services is an information industry – or consider what it takes to design and build a HondaJet. Or check out Google’s acquisition of Nest, another sure sign that the Internet of Things is transforming traditional businesses into technology companies.

So, sure, it would be great if the software industry added a slew of programmers and engineers to the local workforce, but at this point “technology jobs” is a category that transcends traditional tech firms. Even smaller companies, traditionally viewed as somewhat tech-averse, are increasingly capable in that realm – and I wonder if that’s an area we should be emphasizing more in terms of economic development.

A lot of the focus of our econ dev efforts – at least the public and media focus – seems to be on landing a huge project that will jumpstart the local economy. Which is great, if you can pull it off. But whales are not so common, and I’m not clear on what we’re doing in parallel to those efforts to help our smaller, homegrown businesses grow and to encourage others to move here.

Maybe GSO should be trying to nurture something like Germany’s Mittelstand – the vast network of smaller firms that are a major part that country’s economic success. The success of those companies, though, depends on factors like access to technology and a well-educated, skilled workforce. Those things don’t happen by accident, and I don’t know that Guilford County is concentrating its very real resources on such goals.

I’d be happy to learn that my questions (including yesterday’s queries about data centers and overall strategy) have easy answers. But I have the same lack of clarity as Hoggard, who asks, “What is our economic development master plan, and where can it be viewed?”

What is the Greensboro/Guilford County master plan for attracting technology and advanced manufacturing jobs?

I was wondering about that as I looked at ideas for Project Haystack, the ambitious proposal to develop land now occupied by the County prison farm in eastern Guilford. The concept includes a substantial concentration of advanced manufacturing, but at this point seems focused on giving over a bunch of valuable acreage to giant data centers.

Would locating data centers on the farm be the best use of the land at a time when large, undeveloped tracts are a dwindling asset? I’m not certain that a data farm is a bad idea, but I’d like to have a better understanding of the overall strategy and the perceived role of data centers in bringing a substantial number of quality jobs to the region.

We know Guilford County is good for data centers – we’ve got abundant water, cheap power, and sit atop major fiber-optic pipelines. That’s why we have a very large American Express facility, which doesn’t get as much press as other major North Carolina data centers (e.g. Google, Apple, and Facebook) but is a whale nonetheless.

And we know that data centers can be good things for a local or regional economy in terms of tax revenue, while bringing a relative handful of good jobs and of course a massive construction project at the front end. There’s also the promise that these facilities give host communities a place in the information economy, which is true, as far as it goes – it’s just not a very exalted place in the value chain. On their own, data centers are about extracting resources from one place to support job creation and wealth generation somewhere else.

So, back to my queries: How do data centers fit into our economic development master plan? Are they an end to themselves (and if so, is that a good deal for us), or can we leverage them into something beyond (needed) tax dollars? How do they tie into our better-articulated econ dev plans, including nanotech and an aviation cluster? And is that big piece of public land in eastern Guilford best leveraged by putting up massive buildings that are largely empty of people, or is there a plausible better possibility out there?

Anyone know the answers to these questions?

"We knew that this thing called love worked, this thing called patience."

From my 2009 interview with Franklin McCain, a key figure in the Greensboro sit-ins, who died this week.

More from McCain, who told me he had a Gandhi comic book as a kid:

"People don't know how to combat nonviolence -- when they do something to irritate or harm you, and you turn and say, 'I love you because you're my brother,' they say, 'What kind of nut is this?'"

"I was angry as hell about what was happening to us. A man can't live without a modicum of dignity. I felt I had nothing to lose. I had a commandment to do what I did. It was the less terrible choice."

I was fortunate to speak with Joseph McNeil and Ezell Blair Jr. for the column as well. This town owes an enormous amount to these local heroes and their commitment to non-violent social change.

(Photo by Lisa Scheer)

The announcement just before Christmas that HondaJet’s HF120 engine has been certified by the FAA was good news for Greensboro – potentially very good news.

If production of the small jet ramps up as planned, and if the company goes on to capture anything close to the 15% marketshare projected by Honda Aircraft Company CEO Michimasa Fujino, then we’ll have a shiny new $2 billion manufacturing firm on our hands, complete with headquarters, service, and assembly jobs It's true that the plane has been beset by delays, and new entrants into the private aviation game have a poor track record. But the engine certification was a genuine milestone and Honda has demonstrated a serious commitment to both to this plane and this region, so it’s reasonable to hope for the best.

Beyond the value of the company itself would come other benefits to the local economy, including: 

• Validation of the GSO as an emerging player in the aviation industry, with a meaningful HQ and assembly operation joining FedEx and the big Timco service facility at our passenger-starved airport. Boeing was never going to bring its 777 production here – but if this goes well we might make the cut for future projects.
• Strengthening the regional identity and self-awareness of the Greensboro/Burlington metroplex (the engines will be produced in Alamance County). Last year’s merger of Cone Health and Alamance Regional Medical Center, along with the potential development of the County farm in eastern Guilford, underscore the momentum this long-term trend toward regionalization has achieved.
• The PR value of having a genuinely sexy high-end product made here in the NC Piedmont.

Most important, to my mind, is the big boost HondaJet would represent in terms of advanced manufacturing. America still makes a lot of stuff, but we don’t make it the way we did back when manufacturing turned this region into one of the richest parts of the state. These days it’s all about the highly engineered design and service of smart products, and, yes, that’s a jet engine on the cover of this report that I worked on for the day job. Building engines and assembling planes at the end of a complex supply chain is a sweet spot in the modern economy, and it could attract and also spin off other high-value businesses.

HondaJet alone isn’t going to be a silver bullet. This is a strength we'll have to work to develop. GTCC, A&T engineering, the nanotech campus, our logistical muscle, and smart political leadership – all could play important roles.  

There were other big local economic stories in 2013, including the ongoing changes to the healthcare industry (not just the Alamance/Cone deal but the large, negative impact of North Carolina’s refusal to expand Medicaid) and of course the significant progress toward two major downtown projects, the performing arts center and the joint higher-ed campus.  But if HondaJet pans out and then spurs development of our advanced manufacturing muscle, that easy-to-overlook certification notice could be the biggest news of all.

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.