Recent editorials from North Carolina newspapers:
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July 20
News & Record of Greensboro on Charlotte hosting the 2020 Republican National Convention:
What if you were entertaining bids for a convention that figured to be a big pep rally for a president seeking re-election and almost no city wanted your business?
And what if you are Charlotte, and by the tightest of margins - a bipartisan swing vote on your City Council to approve the bid, 6-5 - you were that city? You won, but did you?
That is what has played out these past couple of weeks. The Republican National Committee’s site selection group unanimously chose Charlotte from a field of one, and in 2020 Donald Trump likely will be renominated in a Democratic stronghold of a state where registered GOP voters are less than a third of the electorate and where, in 2012, Democrats held their love fest for Barack Obama.
Seven cities were sort of interested in the convention. Las Vegas, the perceived runner-up, had a bid from its state party to be a standby.
Charlotte won when its Democratic mayor made a pitch to an overwhelmingly Democratic City Council to put aside boiling partisanship and do what is economically right. She found that unanimity.
There are obvious advantages here. Officials estimated the Democrats boosted the area’s economy by $164 million. The GOP figures to increase that, given eight more years and Trump’s big-business bandwagon. And events such as this allow cities to find ways to pay for infrastructure improvements - think roads, light rail and amenities - that otherwise might be difficult.
So why wouldn’t Charlotte - or Atlanta or Orlando or Dallas or Denver or Phoenix - or any other city be piling on the love and promises to lure this event? Why did no one want this convention? Would Greensboro have wanted it?
First, let’s be clear: Greensboro has neither the facilities - the coliseum aside - nor the hotel rooms and amenities to accommodate the roughly 50,000 visitors who would attend. Give the place 20 years and maybe see if Baron Trump wants to bring his convention to town.
The issue here is not the dollars but the sense that Donald Trump’s polarizing approach to politics and society will draw not only his grass-roots supporters, the people who show up at his rallies, but also those who love to protest against him during this time of heightened incivility. Does any city want to prepare for such a potential eruption?
There are protests at every convention. But gathering, yelling and holding up signs is like a small-group meeting at church compared to what could happen. We have seen face-offs along the campaign trails, to be sure.
So could something ugly erupt in 2020? Such thoughts could be why the choice to pursue the RNC was one-city, one-vote.
Remember the outrage in Greensboro when the City Council, responding to the aftermath of the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., in February, considered canceling a gun show at the coliseum. Eventually that idea was dropped. The right thing was done, but people on both sides were convicted. Throw in the Trump factor, and you can imagine the hue and cry over such a choice.
Charlotte did pause in its bid for the RNC, then won easily. But did it? That is to be seen.
Online: https://www.greensboro.com/
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July 25
StarNews of Wilmington on how much it costs to have University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus police guard a monument honoring students who died in the Civil War:
Can North Carolina still afford Silent Sam?
Sam, of course, is the monument to UNC Chapel Hill university students who lost their lives fighting for the Confederate Army during the Civil War.
Since 1913, when it was erected with funds from alumni and the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the statue of a young Confederate soldier has stood at the north end of campus near Franklin Street.
Over the years, Sam became an object of affection, at least among some white students and alumni. It didn’t matter, as some scandalmongers discovered, that sculptor John Wilson had used a Bostonian - indeed, a Yankee! - as the model for Sam. Or that Sam was a virtual copy of a statue of a Union soldier Wilson completed for a Northern town.
Others aren’t so fond. Folks have been calling for the statue’s removal since the early 1960s. Those calls renewed after the white supremacists’ march in Charlottesville, Va., last year. The statue was vandalized in 1968, in 2016 and again earlier this year.
Now comes word from the university’s campus police that security for the statue - posting guards around it, including one around-the-clock, etc., to keep it from being defaced and the area safe - cost some $390,000 last year. That’s not including $3,000 to clean off the blood-red paint that one protester splashed on it.
That’s a lot of money. As some cheeky students pointed out at a recent UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees committee meeting, that $390,000 could have been used to pay half of UNC System President Margaret Spellings’ salary. Or, to pay full tuition for 44 poor undergraduate students.
Given the cost - and regardless of the argument over the statue’s appropriateness - one has to wonder if keeping Sam in place is worth the money and fuss.
We’re not talking about demolishing the statue. But couldn’t it be moved away from its prominent location - essentially, the university’s front door - to a quieter, less controversial spot?
(There is, for example, a lovely antebellum cemetery on the southeastern end of campus, across the road from the old Carmichael Auditorium. Sam would fit in there.)
Moving all that bronze and granite would be expensive, of course, but certainly not as expensive as $390,000 per year for, how long?
Of course, the statue is going nowhere, at least not yet. In a move to protect similar Confederate monuments, the folks in the majority at the General Assembly passed a law in 2015, essentially providing that no memorial can be permanently removed from state property without approval by the N.C. Historical Commission. Even with that approval, lots of added hurdles in the law stand in the way. Given the political leanings of most of the Honorables, such approval isn’t likely to come any time soon.
So, remember this when some candidate tells you that we can’t afford new textbooks and supplies for our schoolchildren. Apparently we CAN afford $400,000 or so a year to have policemen guard a statue.
That’s something voters shouldn’t stay silent about.
Online: http://www.starnewsonline.com/
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July 22
Winston-Salem Journal on a personal-finance website ranking Winston-Salem and other North Carolina cities among the country’s best to drive in:
There’s plenty to brag about in the City of Arts and Innovation: Rich cultural traditions, low unemployment and cost of living, a beautiful cityscape with a lot of greenery and generally friendly behavior, among other good points. We can also take pride in the results of a new rating: Winston-Salem is among the best cities in the country in which to drive in 2018, ranking No. 6 out of 100, according to the personal-finance social network website WalletHub.
These results were reached by comparing a sample of the 100 most-populated U.S. cities across four key dimensions:
1) Cost of Ownership & Maintenance, 2) Traffic & Infrastructure, 3) Safety and 4) Access to Vehicles & Maintenance.
Within those broad categories, WalletHub considered “29 key indicators of driver-friendliness. Our data set ranges from average gas prices to annual hours in traffic congestion per auto commuter to auto-repair shops per capita.
“Our sample considers only the city proper in each case and excludes cities in the surrounding metro area,” WalletHub says.
Before reading the report thoroughly, we might have guessed that our ranking was the result of criteria like the ease of access when moving from one area of town to another and the ability of drivers to refrain from reckless behavior behind the wheel.
Of course, there are exceptions, but our impression is that Winston-Salem drivers are particularly collegial when it comes to allowing fellow drivers to merge lanes and patient when waiting their turn to proceed through traffic lights. And aside from rush-hour on Business 40, traffic jams are almost non-existent.
Those aspects were probably factored into “Traffic & Infrastructure” and “Safety.”
We do have to wonder a little bit about our ranking when we see that Raleigh is No. 1 on WalletHub’s list. We’d rather drive here than there. For the record, Greensboro ranked No. 4, Durham No. 7 and Charlotte No. 19.
But for the most part the results seem reliable.
Of course, our standing may be challenged as Business 40 continues to suffer from a series of temporary closures of various lanes in preparation for the Big Close this fall, when main thoroughfare will be upgraded considerably. This closure is expected to extend for about 20 months into 2020. Displaced commuters will shift to city streets in residential areas, causing delays that may strain good citizenship.
This is the time to plan a strategy: Podcasts. Deep breathing. Mindful (and open-eyed) meditation on the shiny new highway that will replace Business 40.
We’ve had fair warning. Now we have a reputation to maintain.
Online: https://www.journalnow.com/
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