Washington County

In recent days, longserving Democrat, James W. Crawford of Oxford in Granville County has attained a new and shocking level of notoriety as the ringleader of the infamous Party of Five collaborators who voted with the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. The poisonous fruit of this nefarious conspiracy will impose a disastrous budget featuring draconian cuts of $900 million to the University of North Carolina as well as slashing funds for Planned Parenthood and Medicaid in what many now see as a political pact with the devil.

While the Party rank and file is stunned to see senior Democrat Crawford openly conspiring with Republicans to topple the bright, shining edifice of public instruction built by progressive Democratic leaders in the mold of Terry Sanford and Jim Hunt, little is generally known about his political ideology and his personal background. Crawford's background is a fascinating case of political devilry.

Perfect to start our day! Go Grannies, indeed. Thank you, James.

Remember all the OLF protests to the Navy's misguided attempt to take over Washington County? Well, the Grannies in the northeast part of the state seem to have caught the bug! They're now acting up against George Bush's War in Iraq.

One woman at the center of the firestorm is named Pat Seibert. Pat was born in Pennsylvania, and moved to Kernersville in 1978 with her husband and four kids. She graduated Winston-Salem State 1988 - and earned an MPA from UNC 1990. When she retired in 1998, she moved to Beaufort County.

According to a mutual friend, Pat had this to say about the Gathering of Chickenhawks who harass the Grannies every weekend:

According to the Washington Daily News The NC Association of Realtors misled many county residents this week with letters and advertisements claiming that a public hearing was going to take place about the imposition of a transfer tax. No such hearing was scheduled and no such decision was on the table but many people showed up at a county commissioner's meeting Monday night for nothing.

There's a great column in the News and Observer today by Laura Marciniak about the Navy's insane plan to build an outlying landing field in Washington County.

All that nice open land probably looks good from 10,000 feet in the air. The northeastern section of North Carolina is some of the last undeveloped land on the Eastern seaboard. You can see it yourself from Google Earth. But what you can't see from a plane or a satellite is what's taking place on the ground.

The family farmers and the birds of the wildlife refuges have a symbiotic relationship. The birds do more than eat the farmers' leavings of grain and corn. They also leave nitrogen for the next crop and they dine on insects and weeds. Good land stewardship should be rewarded, not betrayed.