chatham county

Disaster Politics

During his January 1985 State of the Union Address to a joint session of Congress, and an international television audience, US President Ronald Reagan announced a new educational initiative: He would appoint a school teacher to join a shuttle crew on a flight into space.

Someone in the Reagan White House had the bright idea that the president’s 1986 State of the Union Address coincide with the successful return landing of the Challenger, with teacher Christa McAuliffe on board.
That’s when a tragic series of mistakes began to unfold.

The first glitch was when NASA scuttled the original launch date of the Challenger. The launch pad conditions did not meet the minimum safety conditions required for launch.

There once was an asshole named Bunky Morgan, a Chatham County Commissioner who led the charge on rampant development that rewarded nobody save a handful of wealthy land speculators. Today the results of Morgan's gluttonous greed resemble a road trip from hell.

As tired as we all may be about listening to environmental organizations preach about the need to reform our outlook toward global climate change, their message has still not fully been heard. The problems that climate change has placed on this world are very real, and are becoming more and more apparent everyday. Yet still, most Americans are content either giving in to apathy or ignoring these important issues all together.

Orange County residents have been on the receiving end of dubious push poll telephone calls recently, described by one recipient as:

...what may very well be the most egregious violation of research ethics I have ever experienced.

Why all the fuss? Tuesday evening, February 5th, at 7.30pm, the Orange County Board of Commissioners, at its regular meeting, will a public hearing regarding a Local Revenue Options Referendum. The purpose of the hearing is "to solicit opinion from voters regarding which, or both, of two local revenue options should be placed on a May 2008 referendum for voter consideration." In other words, they are trying to decide between a 1/4% sales tax or a 0.4% transfer tax increase, to pay for growth.

Yesterday’s Pilot reports Moore, Chatham, and Orange Counties are joining together to request new local taxing options as alternative sources of revenue to existing sales and property taxes. It is hoped that three counties working together and which happen to be represented at least partially by the Speaker will be more effective in bringing fairness and consistency to taxing authority for all 100 NC counties.

An important element of these resolutions is that the counties are asking to have these options so they can put them up for referendum. This is an important distinction, because if the legislature is to deny these options, they are saying they know better than the voters do about how the people would choose to be taxed. Of course, would also be saying, in not so many words, they desperately need the money that flows from the homebuilder and real estate lobbies. If we're talking about referendums, there should be no need for the Legislature to act to “protect” people from their county governments.