The Natural Resources Defense Council is running full-page newspaper ads, radio commercials and ads on the web against District 27 state Sen. Trudy Wade.
That’s politics, and Wade – who is an up-and-coming leader in the Republican state Senate – is considered a good target.
But the ads imply that the drinking water in Greensboro is contaminated. This simply isn’t true. Greensboro has some of the cleanest water in the state.
The ad also faults Wade for requesting that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) help the state with its water issues. Some North Carolina cities do have significant contaminants in their water, so doesn’t it make sense to ask for help from the EPA.
Maybe the City Council should buy some ads that say “Greensboro has great water and plenty of it.” We can and should brag about the quality of the water in Greensboro.
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Here is great idea for the state government, which has about $2 billion in its rainy day fund. The state doesn’t need $2 billion in the bank, and while that money should not be used for operating expenses, it would make sense to use some of it for a one-time expense. The North Carolina Court System really needs an updated computer system. A couple of years ago they quit chiseling messages into stone, but they aren’t far from that.
This is 2018. Something that takes place in any federal court in the country is up on the federal website almost immediately, available to anyone in the country at an extremely reasonable cost.
In North Carolina, if you want to know about a case you have to go down to the courthouse, stand in line and hope that when it’s your turn the clerk can find the case you’re looking for. If you want to make copies, you have to mark the pages with a paperclip, hand it back to the clerk, pay your fee and wait.
Going into the clerk of court’s office is like walking into a time warp where you are taken back 20 or 30 years.
If the state were low on funds then ignoring the courts would be justifiable, if not sensible. But the state has more money coming in than it knows what to do with, which is why the state has put $2 billion into a savings account.
Under the current system it is easier and cheaper for me to find out what happened in federal court in Hawaii than it is for me to find out what happened at the Guilford County Courthouse across the street.
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This weekend is stupid time again.
Twice a year everyone’s schedule – from sleeping, to eating, to walking the dog – is thrown out of kilter for a couple of weeks while the government pretends it is giving us more daylight. Everyone knows daylight is not the government’s to save or give away, but we pretend it is.
Isn’t it time somebody admitted the whole idea of Daylight Saving Time is just plain silly? Pick a time, any time. It doesn’t matter to me if I go to bed at what the government says is midnight or 8 a.m., but the time change twice a year makes no sense.
I think it’s spring forward and fall back but, to me, fall forward and spring back makes just as much sense. So we all get up an hour earlier or maybe it’s later. If people want to get up an hour earlier in the summer, they can. If they don’t, the government shouldn’t try to trick them into it.
On the upside, I have never figured out how to reset the clock in my car and I bought it in May, and it is set for Daylight Saving Time. So next week the clock in my car will be correct. But I have to remember not to subtract an hour for the correct time, so I’ll still be confused for a month or so.
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This is evidently going to be a weekly report. Once again the Sunday News & Record front-page was largely devoted to a story about Rockingham County.
We used to call the daily paper The Eleven County Area News & Record, because the editors claimed to cover not just Greensboro but an 11 county area around Greensboro. It appears we should update that name to the Rockingham County News & Record because the newspaper, which still has a huge building on East Market Street, appears to be far more interested in Rockingham County with a population of about 92,000 than Guilford County with a population of over 500,000.
Guilford County is the third largest county in the state while Rockingham is the 30th. Both Alamance and Randolph, which also border Guilford County, are larger than Rockingham, but how often do you see stories about Alamance or Randolph on the front page of the RCN&R?
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I’ve been attending Greensboro City Council meetings for over 25 years, and the one this past Tuesday was the most boring I can remember. One journalist was reportedly playing some game on her phone; I spent my time throwing away emails and looking for news on the web. I wish I could have gotten behind the councilmembers to see what they were doing. I suspect some of them have learned to sleep with their eyes open.
I got to the point I was hoping the door would open and Nelson Johnson and a bus load of his disciples would come bursting in the room just to liven things up.
The way it’s looking now, although the City Council was elected for four years, councilmembers will have served for the same number of meetings as the previous City Council’s that were elected for two years because they are meeting half as much.
