Category Archives: Current Affairs

HB2 Fallout: $42K Taxpayers Money Produces $Millions in Bad PR

Several times, NC senators who supported HB2 repeal noted that the one-day special legislative session cost the state’s taxpayers $42,000, money spent to achieve nothing.

Well, the senators were not fully correct abut that last part. Yes, the session produced nothing in legislative terms.

But as an investment in public relations for the state, it was a bonanza, a real goldmine. We’re talking negative PR, but hey: this is the year when such notions have been upended, right?

The Wall Street Journal, another business bible that is hardly a liberal rag, was right there too. I looked up its ad rates: for a half page, it would be $157000, not counting the color.

Why My Knees Were Knocking That Morning

I finally went to a physical therapist, who gave me some stretching exercises to do. I did them just before the election, and afterward, voila! –both knees hurt. A miracle of modern medicine.
As the election results sank in, my knees hurt worse. By the weekend, a friend had lent me a cane, and some pain pills.
Anyway, the aches come and go. Eerily enough, talking about the impact of the election really bothers them. Like it did when I asked Mansoor the Big Question today.

Mansoor has a shop in the Durham area, and has helped me with some of my gadgets. Right now he was preparing to do heart surgery on my desktop. And as in life, so in tech (or is it now vice versa?): I’m not as worried about the desktop’s survival, as I am about the bill.

I first brought it in, a couple days before the election, just before I had to leave town for a few days. We scrolled across files as if they were MRI images, looking for blocked electronic arteries. In this procedure, up popped my blog post about the 1920s Ku Klux Klan, showing how its agenda and spirit, minus only the robes, had pervaded much of the 2016 election campaign.

I pointed it out and slowed the mouse. Mansoor’s expression was impassive, but I could tell he was interested.

Messages for The Day After

#1 Paid a call on Ms. Hazel next door. She grew up here when it was segregated, She and her people couldn’t vote,

Vote Suppression for Lunch: North Carolina, Part Two

Another part of the Republican vote suppression scheme is aimed right at my old home turf, Cumberland County, a heavily nonwhite area which includes Fayetteville & Fort Bragg. And part of the plan is probably going to work. And this is important. To see why, a bit of background: in 2004, George W. Bush beat … Continue reading Vote Suppression for Lunch: North Carolina, Part Two →

Vote Suppression for Breakfast: North Carolina

Durham, which is a city and a county. It’s a largish county, with about 300,00 population. It’s the most heavily Democratic of NC’s 100 counties. In 2012 its citizens cast 109,000 votes for Barack Obama, about a 75% margin. (Romney won NC by 97000 votes)

I already voted, on the first day of early voting, October 20. (Early voting was one of the targets of vote suppression, which the courts largely restored.) So did many others.