Tag Archives: #ncpol

McCready’s Choosing the Battlefield (NC-09)

July 16, 2018 By in Fayetteville Politics, NC Politics Tags: 1 Comment

Andrew Dunn over at longleafpolitics.com wrote an interesting post criticizing Dan McCready’s response to controversy surrounding a sermon given by his opponent, Mark Harris.  McCready (D) and Harris (R) are set to battle it out in November for North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District.

Harris gave the sermon in 2013, but it found its way to the internet and made national news.  In sum, it lays out traditional “biblical womanhood” with man as “head” and woman as “helper” and criticizes society’s treatment of young women:

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N.C. Republicans Gasping For Power

June 26, 2018 By in NC Politics Tags: 1 Comment

If you ever fish a blackwater river in Eastern North Carolina this time of year, you’ll come across an interesting phenomenon.  Bowfin (aka blackfish, dogfish, or grindle) are a prehistoric fish that can survive in hot, oxygen-starved water by inhaling air into a swim bladder that works like a lung.  In short, they can breathe if they have to.

Pull your boat into any oxbow on a really hot summer day, turn off the motor and sit still.  You’ll soon see and hear the bowfin rising to the surface, holding onto life, one gulp at a time.  Pull up on Jones Street on a hot day this week.  Listen.  You’ll hear something similar.

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Fox News or the Fayetteville Observer???

June 11, 2018 By in Fayetteville Politics, NC Politics Tags: Leave a comment

Where do you get your political news?

FiveThirtyEight has an interesting article up about the nationalization of our news sources and the increasing partisanship and polarization of our politics.  In short, even the smallest of local issues is now examined through a national, partisan lens.

The article even gives a shout-out to the Fayetteville Observer:

Americans today are far more engaged with and knowledgeable about national politics than state or local politics, a gap that has been growing in recent decades. And it turns out that the changing media environment is a key engine of today’s nationalization. More and more, Americans are turning away from the media outlets that are most likely to provide a modicum of state or local coverage. They are substituting Fox News (or maybe FiveThirtyEight) for the Fayetteville Observer, and The New York Times’ website for the Nevada Appeal.

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Setting Fire to the Big-Tent

June 7, 2018 By in Fayetteville Politics, NC Politics Tags: 1 Comment

By: Andrew Porter 

orange tent

Last week, I went to a town hall with U.S. Senator Thom Tillis and Rep. Richard Hudson at the Greater Fayetteville Chamber. The topics ranged from as broad as taxes and tariffs to as specific as Dodd – Frank. However, it wasn’t the content that struck me; it was Tillis’s demeanor and candor. Tillis had a fairly conservative, wealthy, and friendly audience in front of him, yet he spoke as a centrist. While Hudson was towing the party line, Tillis was challenging the folks in the room to discard extreme ideologies and to think of your fellow man when making business decisions; cautioning some of the wealthiest people in Fayetteville about the dangers of greed. I was stunned and dismayed. Dismayed because he’s going to be Senator for life if he wants it.

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“Say they’ll clear it up another day”

May 31, 2018 By in Fayetteville Politics, NC Politics Tags: , Leave a comment

The legislature has delayed, yet again, the cleanup of Jordan Lake.  The lake has become tainted with algae blooms due to runoff and development in the Triad and Triangle.   If you live in Cumberland County, this matters to you.  Jordan Lake is fed by the Haw River.  The Haw River joins with the Deep River below the Jordan dam, and this junction marks the start of the Cape Fear River (and a great cat-fishing spot).  The Cape Fear River flows through Fayetteville where it is used for your drinking water.

I grew up fishing and camping at Jordan, and I like clean drinking water (as all human beings should), so I’ve been frustrated to see the overall decline of the lake.  With increasing development upstream, the problem is getting worse.

Cape-Fear-Map1

In 2009, rules were put in place by our legislature to attempt to curtail pollution in the lake.  These rules were costly for developers in the surrounding metropolitan areas of Greensboro, Durham, Cary, etc.  They required stream buffers, retention ponds, and other ways to limit runoff into the watershed.

Developers didn’t like the rules, so they gave money to powerful Republican candidates who took control of the legislature in 2010.  The legislature has delayed the implementation of the rules four times over the past decade.  This week makes five.  Developers are happy.

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