Notes on North Carolina’s Growth
We're going to be hearing a lot about the census. North Carolina legislators are gearing up for their latest exercise in gerrymandering the state, with redistricting committees set to meet and rumors flying about a 10-4 Congressional map in the works from a Republican...
A lifetime of bogeymen
Fred Mills is an acclaimed music critic, writer, and editor who grew up in North Carolina. Stop me if you've heard this one before. It's a weekend afternoon during the pre-Beatles '60s, in Smallville, USA (technically, a tiny cotton mill town [name redacted] located...
Trump is both an old-school American racist and a new threat
Which century do you think these stories occurred in? One politician called for Black Americans to be sent to Africa as a means of maintaining white supremacy. Another taunted his own (American) opponents that they should "go back and help fix the totally broken and...
A significant achievement
Let’s start with the credit where credit is due department. North Carolina Senators Richard Burr and Thom Tillis both voted for the $1 trillion infrastructure bill that will provide resources for upgrades and repairs that are desperately needed. It’s the first large...
An ounce of prevention…
Apparently, conservatives have never much understood the old saying “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Florida Governor Ron DiSantis brazenly berated any attempts to reduce the spread of the virus and now faces a crisis. Down in Texas, Governor Greg...
The Roots Of The Trump Cult
Donald J. Trump is a serial adulterer and lifelong vulgarian who adorns himself with gobs of orange makeup, tweets with the grammar and spelling of a Chick-Fil-A cow, befriends brutal dictators, and incited a terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol that nearly got his...
Our Nero Moment
If we don't make huge changes, and do it now, Earth Day will become our second Memorial Day. A blockbuster report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change produced by hundreds of leading scientists around the world has definitively linked this year's...
State of sin
Throughout most of the history of the state, evangelical Christians held sway over the moral direction of the state. Until very recently, alcohol sales were strictly forbidden until after 1pm on Sunday. They kept gambling at bay. North Carolina was one of the last to...
Idiots, opportunists, and cowards
Yesterday was quite a show for the GOP. From local government to international politics, we could see where the conservative movement is heading and it’s both hilarious and scary. Anti-democratic agitators “overthrew” the elected school board in Asheville. The...
Hispanics did it
When I was a kid, I had an imaginary friend named Mo-mo. Every time I did something wrong, like drawing on furniture, I told my parents that Mo-mo did it. That Mo-mo was a bad actor and I was just a victim of his poor choices. It seems the conservative White people...
NC Republicans’ Claims To Support Equal Opportunity Are A Bad Joke
"We support equal opportunity, not equal outcomes," North Carolina Republicans like to say. What they really mean is that they support school vouchers and charter schools, not a social safety net. It's that simple. But rather than dismiss their protestations as empty...
The pandemic shows that, sometimes, elections are a matter of life or death
First, I want to give credit to Roy Cooper and Mandy Cohen for managing the pandemic in North Carolina. Our state has done far better controlling the spread of the virus than our neighbors, particularly those to the South. The administration has made tough decisions...