The Cowardly Tactics of the Purely Self-Interested

Several Boone residents have contacted us about an anonymous mailing they're received spreading fear about the steep-slope regs currently under consideration. "Your property rights are at risk," it says.

We received this same "pre-sorted" and bar-coded mailing today, so we're assuming it's gone to every property owner in town ... an expensive undertaking. The return address says the sender is something called "Committee for Responsible Environmental Regulation" and lists a P.O. Box in Boone. The two sheets inside contain no names of actual people who make up this "Committee" ... with the highly theatrical (and we suspect, misleading) name.

So we'll just have to stake out P O Box 2630 and see who picks up the mail. We can guess ... but we have a reasonable need to know just who's stirring this up, since we've been targeted by this particular "educational" campaign.

Bottomline: It's just plain cowardly to put this kind of stuff out without putting your name on it. If you feel so strongly, looks like you could also be honest about it. So until the "committee" identifies itself, and despite however sensible and "responsibly environmental" its message is, I find this mailing wholly unreadable and approximately tantamount to night-riders burning crosses.

UPDATE: A simple Google search indicates that P O Box 2630 is an address for Templeton Tours.

FURTHER UPDATE: The N.C. Secretary of State's corporate registry says that the "agent" for Templeton Tours is Maurice Templeton.