“There’s no doubt that, when Planned Parenthood was created, it was created to destroy the entire black race. That was the purpose of Planned Parenthood. That’s just the truth. That’s not just some bloc on the side. That was the purpose when that organization was created.
How the black community can’t come together and see that and understand that and fight against it, I don’t know. And how the white community can’t come together and see that and fight against it, I don’t know either.”
Dan Forest
Dan Forest is your Lieutenant Governor. If you haven’t heard, he’s running against Roy Cooper with a hope to remove the “Lieutenant” from his title.
Forest is a Christian conservative to the bone. He’s going to cloak his desire for political office as a calling from God. He may or may not be honest in his motives. But that’s between him and God.
However, Forest demonstrated this past weekend that he is very happy to conflate the support of a woman’s right to choose with the extermination of black people.
Welcome to the 2020 Gubernatorial Campaign in the Great State of North Carolina. This is only the beginning.
Donald Trump is a master of manipulating one of the most powerful forces in the human consciousness: fear. All master salesmen know how to use the fear of missing out to their advantage. Trump made you feel like your American Dream was being stolen, and he was the only one to protect it from all of those who weren’t looking after you.
Human beings have an inherent, primal response to fear: fight or flight. Not going anywhere, or perhaps stuck in same place, working class people were sick of eight years of Obama, anxious at their prospects, tired of a complicit establishment, and wanting someone to fight for them. Trump gladly obliged and urged Americans to fight back themselves.
At least one man in Fayetteville listened:
Prior to the events this week, I think Trump had a greater than 50% chance of being re-elected. The primary reason was that despite all of his aggravating nonsense on Twitter, he hadn’t made any real policy blunders. The economy is doing just fine, people generally like tax cuts, and Trump hadn’t started a war. In the meantime, Democratic candidates were tripping over their vision for the future, specifically whether they want to annihilate the current health care system and start from scratch. Most of the opposition to another Trump term centered around the man himself, which typically isn’t good enough to defeat a sitting president.
All of that changed with a drone strike in Iraq.
We’re now sending thousands of troops to the middle east to deal with growing unrest, and the Iraqi Parliament asked us to leave the country. In the midst of all this, Trump is threatening escalation against Iran in the form of “disproportionate” attacks, sanctions, and military strikes on “cultural” sites.
I’m going to take a quick detour, because the last one really aggravates me:
Cultural sites are political and religious sites that carry inherent meaning. When you destroy a cultural site, you are wiping away the identify of a group of people and a piece of human history.
Ancient City of Persepolis – Destroyed by Alexander the Great in 330 B.C. – Iran
Imagine how angry you would be if the Iranian President threatened an attack on the Golden Gate Bridge, Mount Rushmore, or the Washington Monument. There’s a reason the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were attacked on 9/11. Trump is advocating the same kind of thing, only in Iran, “cultural sites” often mean places of religious significance.
Americans do not attack cultural or religious sites. It’s a war crime and violates treaties that are decades old. Not even the Nazi’s did that, choosing instead to claim these sites as their own, rather than destroy them.
After the news of the drone strike, we quickly learned that thousands of our neighbors in Fort Bragg were being shipped overseas. Lines to get on base are backing up the All-American Freeway in the morning. It’s more of the same, but it’s still terrifying. “WWIII” and “draft” are trending on Twitter. That’s what happens when your Commander in Chief gets on there and threatens “disproportionate” military action.
These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!
Trump is scaring the hell out of America all over again, only the reason for the fear is not Mexicans, or Chinese, or swampy democrats, or crooked Hillary. The reason for the fear is Donald J. Trump. No one knows what he’ll do next as he trips his way through this hornet nest. The political landscape for 2020 is changing under our feet, and it’s not to the President’s advantage.
Maybe Jr. will help in his father’s crusade. It’s now become likely that they’ve got less than a year to finish it.
At the end of 2018, I wrote a “Top 8 for 2018” post that included links to the 8 most-viewed blog posts on this site for the calendar year.
I’m a fan of tradition, so here’s your top 9 posts for the year 2019:
9. Cumberland County Commission Districts are Unconstitutional: This post examines the racially gerrymandered nature of Cumberland County’s Commission Districts and discusses recent court opinions that call into question their constitutionality.
In short: The districts are drawn on racial lines without a compelling government justification. They need to be redrawn.
8. Historic Pandering in NC-09 Congressional Race: This post discussed the political history of the Lumbee Tribe and recent Republican gains in Robeson County. It will be interesting to see whether Robeson County supports Trump in the 2020 election.
7. The Case for At-Large Seats – Fayetteville City Council: I wrote this one after abysmal turnout in last year’s municipal elections. Fayetteville’s City Council Districts chop the City into 9 in-congruent parts. At-large seats would give Fayetteville voters the ability to choose more than one member of their city council and would create council members accountable to the entire city, not “their” particular districts:
“Council members have an incentive to look after “theirs” without regard to the needs of those in other districts or the city as a whole. As it stands today, the Mayor is currently the only decision-maker on Hay Street that is accountable to all of us. “
6. The Giving Trees of Fayetteville: This post analyzed the controversy over the City Council lowering fines for cutting down large trees in town. I pointed out a mistake in the Fayetteville Observer’s coverage of the issue and took the position that the fines were excessive, angering some of my readership.
5. When the Law Says it All: This post examines the legality of Fayetteville’s Downtown Development Project (a parking deck) under the North Carolina Statutes governing these projects.
Facility for a public purpose??? You be the judge…if the deck ever opens.
4. Dirty Bucks and Studies (Downtown Fayetteville): In this post I compared the parking infrastructure problems in downtown Fayetteville to the shoes I used to wear to church as a young man.
You also have the double entendre of “dirty” money in politics. I had fun writing it.
Readers of this site know I’ve been critical of the parking deck deal with Prince Charles Holdings for well over a year. I don’t believe it is a good allocation of tax payer resources, and it arguably violates the public purpose requirement of the North Carolina Constitution. In short, it’s an economic windfall for Prince Charles Holdings. But should we be surprised??? These guys literally wrote the book on how to do these deals. Of course they’re going to come out on top.
Today, the massive crane kept lifting steel in the air as construction continued downtown. The stadium should be done in a few months with the parking deck to follow. We seem to be stuck in this deal, despite the cost overruns. It’s going to happen.
In the last analysis, it’s a sad day for the City of Fayetteville when our downtown “business partners” are being exposed in “sunshine week” at the News and Observer.
Play Ball!!!
2. “Write-In” Campaign Gains Traction in City Council Race: This one was a case-study in Fayetteville politics: we often chirp an awful lot about things that don’t really matter. In this case, Mayor Colvin and Val Applewhite helped start the commotion around Dominique Ashley’s write-in campaign for city council. I fell into the trap, as did many others. On election day, Ashley was trounced by the incumbent, Tisha Waddell.
1. Full Court Press Downtown: This post is the culmination of all the problems I’ve had discovering the details of Fayetteville’s downtown development project. The plans for the deal have evolved into some kind of ephemeral legal smoke, and you can’t get a straight answer from anyone that should know what is going on. It’s frustrating, to say the least.
I can honestly tell you (and I hope I’ve gained your trust after these few years) that our City leaders have no idea what’s going on with this deal. Someone else is driving the ship.
In the end, it’s an irresponsible way to play with the full faith and credit of the City of Fayetteville.
I’ll try to keep shining a light in 2020. Maybe we’ll get somewhere.
Cumberland County has long since been carved into congressional districts that run a three-mile drive west. When your geographic voting block is on the flank of a district and cut in half, you lose political power, and hence, importance.
Congressional candidates (all seemingly from the western half of the District) will stop by from time to time if a new road or factory opens or they need money a few weeks before an election, but that’s about it.
This hasn’t been good for those of us that live here. We can’t elect one of our own and we get little attention.
But all that may change next year…
Washington Insider
Republican Incumbent, Richard Hudson, was groomed by the G.O.P. to be the 8th District’s Congressman. Robin Hayes held the seat from 1999 to 2009, and Hudson was Hayes’ District Manager for over half of that time. Hudson learned the ins and outs of the District along the way, and he’s never faced a serious challenge since first winning the seat in 2012.
Proud to help honor my friend & mentor Congressman Robin Hayes for his support of the @StanlyCountyNC Airport. Robin secured grants for major projects-from obstruction removal, to ramp expansion & critical improvements. He saw the big picture, and he made sure others saw it, too. pic.twitter.com/AtjYmrcG1r
— Rep. Richard Hudson (@RepRichHudson) June 1, 2018
Hudson’s “mentor” has since been indicted for corruption and bribery charges.
As far as I can tell, Hudson’s never had a job outside of Republican politics. He is, however, very effective at touring all of the places where real people work.
Hudson even married inside the beltway. Hudson’s wife is the Chief of Staff for Kellyanne Conway.
Which leads me to Donald J. Trump….which leads to me to 2020, where we find that the 8th District is not quite as safe as it once was for Mr. Hudson.
The District went from “red” to “pink,” as one might say on a farm somewhere in Montgomery County.
Hudson still had a reason to smile after the changes. Pink is better than blue or purple for a guy like him. But after a particular announcement last week, Hudson knows he’s got some serious work to do to hold onto to his seat.
Cumberland Challenger
Former N.C. Supreme Court Justice Patricia Timmons-Goodson thinks she can win a pink district and has decided to challenge Hudson in 2020.
I think she may be right, and it will all start with her hometown.
2020 will be a referendum on Donald Trump. Democrats are sick and tired and will vote like it.
You’ll also have a highly contentious race for Governor up for grabs.
Roy Cooper will be fighting for his political life. Dan Forrest is a smart, eloquent politician and is going to come after Cooper with a boat-load of money behind him. As a result of these high-profile races, there will be massive turnout.
Cumberland County will show up to the polls in 2020. Just trust me on that.
If Timmons-Goodson does what she should do in her home county and steals enough women voters from Hudson throughout the District, she can flip this seat.
While the Mayor and the Fayetteville City Council are “up in arms” about contributing 7.5 Million in city money to the planned Civil War Museum, these same politicians are poised to give another 1.4 Million tax dollars to Prince Charles Holdings for a parking deck that the citizens of Fayetteville won’t get to use.
If you have missed this blog for the past few years, here’s a refresher:
P.C.H. is building a parking deck right now. They are behind schedule. We (the city) are buying the deck from P.C.H. “at cost” once it’s finally finished. After we buy the deck from P.C.H., we are obligated to lease most of the spaces in the deck to P.C.H. for 15 year terms for a really cheap price. It seems strange, right? Why would we buy the deck from P.C.H. just to lease it back to P.C.H.??? Well, it’s called an “economic development incentive.” Instead of giving P.C.H. cash (which is unconstitutional), we are being creative and “economically encouraging” P.C.H. to invest downtown by allowing them to make money off of a parking deck exchange. Presumably, this passes constitutional and legal muster, although many, including yours truly, disagree.
Now, the cost of the deck has risen, again. P.C.H. is falling on hard times, again. Taxpayers need to bail them out, again.
The City Council will vote to give P.C.H. the money at the upcoming meeting on November 25. Perfect timing, now that the election is over.
The cost of the Prince Charles parking deck has now more than doubled the entire cost of the City’s expected contribution to the Civil War Museum. At least the public will get to go use the museum, and with the rate of construction on Hay Street, the museum will probably be completed long before we ever see a Hyatt Hotel in downtown Fayetteville.
By the way, we’re not even borrowing this money in the form of bonds. (That was the original plan). This “extra” money that we have gladly used to line P.C.H.’s pockets is being taken from the general fund, away from important “city” obligations (loose leaf pickup, police, fire, parks, speed bumps, etc.).
Breakdown
This thing is beyond ridiculous.
It’s honestly starting to feel like we’re being scammed, and the frustrating part is that our City government is complicit. Simply wait until after the municipal elections, then throw another 1.4 Million Dollars at our new “business partners,” even though we have a completely enforceable contract price of $14,845,000 $16,345,000 already.
Here’s exactly what will happen at the upcoming meeting: all of the council members and the Mayor will express “grave concerns” about giving P.C.H. the additional funds. They will post-pone the vote a few weeks seeking “assurances” that Fayetteville will “recoup its investment” over time.
A few weeks later, they will vote to give them the money.
It’s happened before.
When they ask for more money in a few months, I’ll change some numbers around and re-post this article.
UPDATE – NOVEMBER 25
Tonight, the City Council and the Mayor unanimously voted to give our development partners the money. They claim it is for “SOFT COSTS” that the City is obligated to pay under its contract with the developers.
The developers have already breached the contract in two ways:
The original price went up 1.5 million several months ago; and
The deck was supposed to be completed October 1. It isn’t finished.
City Leadership hasn’t seemed to mind either breach.
But I hope you will sleep at night knowing that you, as a taxpayer, honored your end of this deal.
Cross Creek Divide 