MTBinDurham's blog

Blue NC is now more than just a great community site. It's reality!

From the Durham County Democratic Party (the best smelling one in the state! or something...), the winning hand for democracy in North Carolina...

I confess, I don't watch many political speeches these days on YouTube. It means sitting, staring at my computer screen for an extra 20 minutes more than I already have to, and while I appreciate the art of good rhetoric, unless it's someone I haven't heard before, I'm not inclined to tune in.

This one, though, is a different kind of speech, and one I found more compelling.

Stop. Everyone, just stop, and take a deep breath. We all want a progressive lieutenant governor. And, believe it or not, there is no reason whatsoever we need to consolidate on a candidate right now. The reason we don't need to is the magic number: 40.

Promoted by Betsy

This is a duplicate from a post I made in yesterday's open thread. I was replying to this comment from Blue South, and it got long. The short version: I'm starting to think the divide between Obama's supporters and Edwards's supporters is actually an indicator of a much deeper divide in how we see the future of progressivism.

Posting it here because I thought it was important enough to pull out separately.

Frontpaged for the same reasons. A.

The outbreak of huffing and puffing about economic stimulus in the face of recession should surprise no one, and of course the President's plan is nothing but tax breaks. (Can we take a guess who they'll benefit?) Depressingly, Democrats are chirping in with "me too!" when there's very sound alternative means of providing stimulus that could, you know, improve the country in addition to just getting out the economic defibrillator.

Lots of things to chose from here, but I want to focus on one. It's an option that could help people move about the country better, shore up the collapsing manufacturing sector, and decrease our carbon emissions all in one swoop.

I'm talking about our union's rail infrastructure.

All politics aside for a second, here, which may seem odd on the eve of the Nevada caucuses.

If the referendum on the transfer tax here in Durham County had been held among speakers at the Commissioners meeting, it would have been a rout. The Realtors showed up, but transfer tax supporters were here in much, much bigger numbers.

A fundraising plug, and a request for some DKos help.

Note: This is a cross-post from my personal blog, The Bull in Full.

I linked without comment to a YouTube video, which was a fake drug ad for a compound called Incarcerex.  The ad promotes haphazard incarceration of drug users as a means to fix political ills, and is a brilliant piece of satire—I can't recommend it highly enough.

After posting that video, I was leafing through my print edition of the Herald-Sun, and came across the latest from Malcolm Berko in the business section.  I like reading Berko—he's certainly not handing out tips for socially responsible investing, but his irreverence for the icons of the financial world, like brokerage firms and Alan Greenspan, make him fun to read.  This week's column (linked from a paper with a more reasonable archiving system), though, was a tad disturbing.  A read wrote in asking about his shares in GEO, which used to be called Wackenhut, which Berko had recommended a few years ago.  As Berko notes, the company's revenues have gone up 450% in the past decade.  Why?  Because they run prisons. 

I'm running a bit late on this, because the committee meeting is tomorrow (Thursday) at 1 PM, but please take a look to see if you've got a representative on the committe, and if so, please contact them.

Folks, the fight for local option funding sources has started to get hot. I'm on the WakeUP Wake County newsletter, and they're buzzing about Janet Cowell's proposal to let Wake County impliment a transfer tax.

As I mentioned in my kick-off post, we've got a lot better shot at this if every county doesn't try to bull rush the door and get their own bill. Currently, Orange and Chatham counties can charge school impact fees, and no one else, despite decades of trying by other counties. As such, I'm opposed to Janet Cowell's bill, just because it's a one-county deal. Let's settle this once and for all, for the whole state.

There are a number of bills in the general assembly about this right now. I'm saying, let's take a look at them here, find one (or more) to back, and give it a push from behind.

I know I've been AWOL for a while on this issue. (Too many things going on, as usual.) But we have yet another county that's starting to take a look at impact fees as a way of covering the spiraling costs of keeping educational construction up to speed with growth. This time, it's Granville county, which sits just north of Durham and Wake counties, home to Creedmoor, Butner, and Oxford, among other small communities. Sprawl, coming largely out of Durham County but also to a degree out of Wake, is putting pressure on their school system, and they're trying to find a way to pay for it.

Folks, I need help on this. I'm not terribly good at organizing -- I've tried, and haven't gotten anywhere. But the problem is that the NC Homebuilders will fight this to their dying breath, and that's more power than any one county has. (Orange and Chatham slipped through school construction impact fees in the '80s, before the Homebuilders had a chance to organize against them.) Or, if one county does muster the power, they might slip that one through, then draw a firewall on the rest. Durham County's legislative delegation tried for 12 years to get permission from the legislature to charge school construction impact fees, and were blocked by the Homebuilders every time. The ONLY way this happens is if there's enough local government and activist pressure on enough legislators that eventually there's too many for the homebuilders to stop.

Thanks to everyone for the great response to my first post about a statewide alliance to support local control over impact fees.

What I'm interested in now is knowing what parts of the state have the capacity to get behind it. I know what the story in Durham and Wake is like, but I don't know what it feels like on the ground in Mecklenburg, Buncombe, New Hanover, Guilford, Forsyth, Johnston, Alamance, Davidson, or any other county that's seeing fast growth. If this is going to work, we're going to have to put together a coordinated effort to bug legislators in a lot of different parts of the state.

So, here's my question: How much are your Commissioners amenable to impact fees? How about your legislative delegation? Are there existing environmental, smart growth, or other progressive groups which would be willing to lend their support in the form of coordinated letter writing or calling campaigns?

Quick introduction here -- I just created my account, but I've been lurking for a while. While this is the first time I've posted to BlueNC, I'm "Michael Bacon" at TPMCafe and nclefty at Daily Kos. (I created that username years ago, shortly after 2004, when I felt like I needed to defiantly state that I was a liberal living in North Carolina. Man, how times have changed... for the better!)

I'm here now because I'm trying to actually move on something I've been wanting to do for quite a while now. I don't think impact fees are a foreign subject around here, from what I've seen, but right now the topic of how to pay for schools, in the wake of the Wake County bond referendum, seems to have some life.

Having watched up-close the court battle in Durham to charge impact fees without explicit legislative approval, I think the only way to get alternate sources of funding like this is if activists from the impacted municipalities team up and get on the same page. If only one city pushes it, they'll get snowed, just like Durham. If only the legislators push it, it'll die of a whisper campaign by the homebuilders. The only way it will happen is if the activists, who in each district can get the ear of their legislator, work together and move the ball forward. That's the only way we can match the extensive influence of the homebuilders. And I think BlueNC and other communities like it are just the way to do it.