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This is an off the cuff post that is basically about a book I'm reading now called Big Box Swindle (www.BigBoxSwindle.com) by Stacy Mitchell.

I remember my father telling me three decades ago after returning from a business trip that they were moving textile finishing operations out of the country. He was flabbergasted that they could ship cut cloth off-shore, have it assembled, ship it back and make it cost less than doing all that here. As a Personnel Manager in the textile industry the implications for the people in the mills that he knew personally and cared about worried him. He didn't say that ... but I could see that worry on his face.

An Associated Press story about this week's Manhattan explosion highlights the dangers of aging infrastructure. Just this Wednesday a large sinkhole caused by a 12-inch water main break in a Greensboro street swallowed a car and caused traffic headaches. Last week a sinkhole opened up in the middle of a Charlotte road. This follows another road closure in Charlotte the previous week due to a sinkhole caused by a water main break. While in June a parked SUV fell into a sinkhole in Shelby caused by a water main break.

It's a critical issue for North Carolina explored here: Report Paints Dark Picture of State's Infrastructure and here: Reality Check

Yet more dust ups out at Under the Dome on the Transfer Tax. A winger from afpnc (I think that's Americans for Prosperity, a right wing free-market fundamentalist church group) is over there slinging hooey ... one of the anti-TT guys actually used the term "force a vote" to refer to a referendum on a Transfer Tax.

What???!!! Is he kidding? Force a vote?

Letting the citizens decide is now "forcing a vote?" ... of all the cockamamey rightwing b.s. I've ever heard, that's gotta take the big-fat-hooey cake.

Anglico posted a few blurbs in favor of the TT, but he needs a hand if you get time today.

Remind the afpnc dude of the 10:1 poll PPP just did.