UNC “Saving” the Wrong Pedestrians

UNC is going to waste $8 million building a footbridge over South Road.

Meanwhile, at least two pedestrians have died on Columbia Street since 2008; where are the plans for Columbia? That’s the pedestrian problem that really needs to be solved.

I’m glad the students are speaking out against this atrocious waste of money. What was the point of the Bain & Co. administration study if UNC is going to continue throwing students’ and taxpayers’ cash out the window?

UNC Swim Clinic, Racist?

The call for Greek volunteers from UNC seems innocuous at first.

“Teaching Swim Lessons to Hispanic Children”

What? Why do Hispanic children need swim lessons more than other children? Do white children, black children, or Native American children not need to know how to swim? What about Burmese refugees’ children? What about children of professors from China who have never seen a swimming pool before?

What about just limiting the swimming lessons to low-socioeconomic status (SES) children, to ensure that those who can afford swim lessons are weeded out? That would be fair and not separate children solely by their race.

No, according to the “Carolina Swim Clinic,” only Hispanic children are in need of swim lessons. Rich Hispanic children, middle-class Hispanic children, any Hispanic child, step right up for your swim lessons.

Organization: Carolina Swim Clinic

Event: Teaching Swim Lessons to Hispanic Children

Date(s): Beginning September 13th & on Various Dates throughout the Semester

UNC students are in the process of beginning another semester of hosting a swim clinic and they need YOUR help. The clinic serves Hispanic children of the Chapel Hill area by teaching them swim lessons at a local community pool. No prior swim lesson training or ability to speak Spanish is required. Swim lessons will be taught every Sunday, and volunteers are needed every week! Even if you cannot commit to coming every Sunday, your help any week during the semester would be appreciated. Although the pool will be off campus, rides will be coordinated for those students without cars. If you are interested in helping with this program please email Lizzy Cooper at carolinaswimclinic@gmail.com for further information. All volunteers will meet for an informal training on Sunday, September 13th (time and place TBA).

Steve Minnick on “The Story” – The Story Doesn’t Add Up

Today on WUNC, as I often do, I listened to The Story hosted by Orange County, NC’s own Dick Gordon. Today his guest was a man from western North Carolina, Steve Minnick, who was having difficulties remaining in his construction job due to post-polio syndrome and didn’t want to quit his job in order to spend a few years waiting for Social Security disability to come through. They would have had to live off his wife’s earnings, which they determined were not enough. Since Steve was seven years shy of qualifying for Medicare without disability, and he and his wife both had pre-existing conditions which make health insurance expensive, they devised a plan to sell their mountain home, move to a lake by Guadalajara, Mexico and live there for seven years under the Mexican national health system until they could move back and get Medicare.

The plan was either ingenious or crazy from the start, depending on how you look at it, but no matter how you face it, it seems Steve and his wife had a problem handling their financial matters. First, they bought a $250,000 house by the lake in what is obviously a trap for foreign expatriates near Guadalajar, rather than a simpler condo, or renting, or finding a place not swarmed by rich Americans driving up the prices. Secondly, Steve repeats throughout that the Mexican equipment he saw was absolutely amazing, that the clinics were open 24 hours seven days a week and staffed with 20 types of doctors at all times– the way he describes it, it seems like a paradise. However, I suspect that Steve and his wife didn’t do much traveling within Mexico or get to know the locals (he stumbled a bit when asked if he was taking a bed from a local, or how on Earth this whole system was paid for, exactly), as I have done. I have seen “actual” Mexican hospitals, not lavish ones geared to rich Americans, and they made me glad for even our rural American hospitals. Perhaps I’m a misguided cynic, and there is another reason besides the million-dollar home dwellers that Mexico might have these lavish facilities, but in that case I’m wondering why I didn’t see them in the rural towns I stayed in or the mid-sized cities I visited on my missions trip to Mexico. Perhaps the technology just hasn’t spread and is on its way But Steve never considers any possibility beyond every hospital in the country looking like this, for only $100 a year! Sign me up!

He does make the point that $100 to a Mexican is a small fortune. Money buys more there.

So finally, Steve and his wife had to leave their $250,000 lakeside manse and move back stateside. It wasn’t anything about Mexico per se, but it was the financial collapse that wiped them of $300,000 in savings. Ah, so the truth begins to come out. $300k in savings wasn’t enough to live on in America or buy health insurance, even with a pre-existing condition? Most Americans wish they could have $300,000 in savings plus a $250k house. Anyway, whatever the case, Steve is now $300k lighter, is back to his construction job, and pays $200 a week for health insurance, or $800 a month, or less than $10,000 a year. This is the same price he thought was insurmountable a few years ago before the move to Mexico, when he had $300,000 in the bank. This is health care that is saving his life, that people of generations past only wished they could have had access to. Steve is now a “flaming liberal” because he thinks everyone should have world class health care for $100 a year, and he should not have to pay anything near what he is paying for his premiums. Like a lot of former Republicans, Steve is a Republican when it comes to getting his money, but when it comes to spending it, he wants a government bailout for his pet cause.

The bottom line of “The Story” is that Steve and his wife had more than $500,000 net worth when you include their house, and yet they didn’t want to spend 2% of that (yes, folks, that’s probably even less than the interest his money was gaining each year) for health care premiums. They wanted to spend it instead on buying a Mexican lakeside mansion in a rich people’s resort in a town with “the best weather in the world” and fix up the mansion because, as Steve explained, it was nine or 10 years old and needed updating. (!?!) I’m guessing they spent more than $10k on those upgrades, but maybe we’ll hear from Steve himself some day, in Part 2 of his “Story.”

NC Democrats Throw Seniors To the Curb

The Democrats are in control of both houses of the NC General Assembly and the governor’s office. They appoint patronage appointees to places of power in the UNC system and the DMV– and I’m sure those people make a pretty penny more than the $300,000 the Dems recently cut from the NC budget.

What did this $300,000 go to? Senior citizens could take free classes at UNC system schools. Obviously, we have to stop that right now. Heaven forbid we let a senior delay Alzheimer’s for a few years while they put their mind to work learning. That’ll save us some bucks.

Great work, NC Democrats!

Bill Strom Lived in a Winnebago Down By the River

Well, almost.

Bill Strom, longtime Chapel Hill town council member, announced he would be moving out of state and leaving the town council– conveniently, just a few days after the filing deadline for fall candidacies had passed. He sold his house in June and has been living in a Winnebago since then, which Mark Schultz of The News & Observer had been informed of, but did not report. So much for the days of Woodward and Bernstein– and Cronkite– huh? Nope, Orange County doesn’t have any of that moxie among our news reporters.

When you are a Democrat managing to get criticism in the comments of Orange Politics, you know you’ve done something wrong.

Here’s to Chapel Hill’s “Voter Owned Elections.” Oh— wait. Forget that. Here’s to purposely waiting until after the filing deadline so that voters can’t choose your replacement.

If Bill Strom was so scared about his seat going to a Republican, it’s the first sign I see that Chapel Hill might actually elect a Republican as its mayor.

Ironically, the backlash from Strom’s un-democratic act will certainly help the Republican mayoral candidates.

Durham Herald-Sun: City of Durham’s Mouthpiece?

Some have worried that The Carrboro Citizen might be beholden to the special interests of the town of Carrboro, since it got a $50,000 loan from the town and all.

But at least The Carrboro Citizen hasn’t (as far as I can tell) stooped to publishing word-for-word city press releases from Carrboro’s town hall, as The Durham Herald-Sun has in the Bull City.

The one thing changed on the press release in the newspaper’s pages was the headline. That, after all, would really be stooping low!

The point here is not whether the press release was written objectively or anything else. The point is that the city of Durham now knows it can just write its own newspaper articles and have them published in its mouthpiece.

What would Walter Cronkite have said about that? And where are the Triangle’s local Cronkites who are going to stand up against this garbage style of reporting?

Chris Fitzsimon Is Wrong

I’ve thought it often as I read his thoroughly un-thought-out, thoroughly unenlightening op-eds published in The Carrboro Citizen, but I’ve never said it before.

Chris Fitzsimon is wrong.

Fitzsimon writes in his latest work that “Republicans across the country and in North Carolina are complaining about early-voting sites, same-day registration and voter-registration drives.”

First of all, bashing Republicans in The Carrboro Citizen is like telling a priest that you like the Pope. It’s preaching to the crowd just to pat yourself on the back.

Secondly, there are plenty of things to bash Republicans about that don’t involve any of this nonsense Fitzsimon published. I haven’t heard a Republican– in NC or anywhere– bash early voting or same-day registration lately. Fitzsimon brings up incidents from several years ago.

I have heard them bash ACORN, because ACORN has been investigated in about 30 states and a few ACORN workers charged in a few of them for turning in false voter registration. I haven’t heard that the GOP is against valid new voter registration– only fake ones that waste time of county and state elections officials and actually may prevent valid registrations from being approved in a timely fashion.

Apparently, despite convictions in other states, Fitzsimon knows for sure that there are absolutely no shenanigans going on with ACORN registrations in North Carolina. Good for him. He’s more up on this than the police or state elections officials, who are investigating ACORN right now. Maybe he should let them in on his superior knowledge. Or, perhaps he should not “distort the meaning of democracy” and let the state officials do the job they’re appointed to do.

UNC Students on Hillsborough Amtrak station: Me, Me, Me

The Daily Tarheel writes about Hillsborough’s new Amtrak station and demands that a bus stop be located directly next to it for UNC students: it “must include students’ needs.” It can’t just be one bus line, either, no it has to be an “ample number of bus lines.” Just redirect all the Hillsborough hard-working commuters to UNC, forget about their needs and think about the students!!!

Sure, an Amtrak station in Hillsborough will benefit Hillsborough residents (although they’ll see their tax bills go up for sure!) but how does it benefit UNC students exactly? There are already Amtrak stations in Durham (20 minutes away) and Raleigh (40 minutes away). Hillsborough is a good 30 minutes away from campus, so I’m failing to see how it’s better for students than the station already existing in Durham. If people can commute 20 minutes to an airport (RDU) to go home, they can surely commute 20 minutes to the train station in Durham.

The fact that these existing train stations weren’t even mentioned is puzzling. The DTH acted as if no other option for train travel currently exists for UNC students.

Carrboro Free Press on an Integrated Carrboro

Last Wednesday’s Carrboro Free Press focused on some Carrboro history, with John Weaver and Henry Lloyd selling slaves and all that. One of the most interesting segments was a piece on how Carrboro historically was always very working class and suprisingly integrated for the times. The census taker in the 1920s noted black and white families living next to each other. And why not? Everyone was working class.

But today in Carrboro, it’s just not the case. How many black people live in Carrboro, and where do they live? Do they hang out at Weaver Street? Can hey afford the high property taxes that the Board of Commissioners and town council foist on us?

I’ll let you answer these questions.

The Story of David Price