PRIVATIZATION IS THE CULPRIT

Did you see Madam Virginia Foxx turn shades of beige today when the Congressional panel she was a part of started burrowing into privatization as the original fount for conditions at Walter Reed Hospital and the deplorable way American soldiers have been treated there (not to mention elsewhere in the Army medical establishment, about which we're only just beginning to learn).

Privatization has been Madam's Foxx hobby horse for a long time, at least since she was elected to the N.C. Senate in 1994.

How privatization squares with the Madam's other supposed hobby horse, accountability, is nowhere explained.

Except maybe here.

INSERT TAB A INTO SLOT A (A.K.A., FOLLOW THE MONEY)

The Progressive Pulse points out that...

Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina is once again spearheading the opposition against regulation of the tobacco industry. ... He is joined in opposition by Senator Elizabeth Dole and NC Reps. Mike McIntyre, Robin Hayes, and Virginia Foxx.

Then this:

...if you follow the money of tobacco industry contributions to Congress ... you will find Senator Burr's name at the very top. ... Similarly, in 2002 Sen. Dole was number three, and in 2006 Reps. Hayes, McIntyre, and Foxx were numbers 10, 13, and 19 respectively.

Bought and paid for. A little campaign cash can cause you to defend to the death a tar and nicotine delivery industry that has made death-dealing not only a science but an art.

NOW HERE'S AN ATTITUDE VIRGINIA FOXX COULD GET BEHIND

Was watching Congresswoman Virginia Foxx a few moments ago on C-SPAN, doing her best to feign concern for the treatment of wounded soldiers in Army rehab units ("It doesn't do us any good to place blame," sez the Rubber Stamper) ... when I ran across Newt Gingrich's comments about Katrina victims and realized you just can't soften an iron heart that easily.

Gingrich:

How can you have the mess we have in New Orleans, and not have had deep investigations of the federal government, the state government, the city government, and the failure of citizenship in the Ninth Ward, where 22,000 people were so uneducated and so unprepared, they literally couldn't get out of the way of a hurricane.

We're assured that the emphasis on "and" above was in the original, and it's fairly crucial to Mr. Gingrich's political philosophy. The real culprits in the Katrina disaster? Why, the victims. Why couldn't they just climb into their SUVs and get the hell out of New Orleans, like, maybe go to their summer places early? Uneducated scum!

"The failure of citizenship"? It's the lack of empathy that's even more amazing.

ASHEVILLE MOVES TO BAN GATED NEIGHBORHOODS

The Asheville City Council took steps this past week to institute planning ordinances to ban gated subdivisions. For the health of the community, that's a no-brainer. For some developers, it's whine-inducing:

Newcomers, many of whom come from California and Florida, expect gates to protect amenities for which they pay extra, including clubhouses, golf courses and swimming pools, said Cathey Bailey, owner of Biltmore Realty.

Don't come NEAR my amenities, you PLEBE, you great urban unwashed!

Several years ago, during a previous Boone city government, a gated subdivision was approved for the flank of Howard's Knob up behind the Episcopal church. When some of the public and some on the Planning Commission objected to walling off part of our little mountain town, the developer made representations that he would leave the gate open. They'll drink our water, flush their toilets into our sewer lines, drive on our streets, but aren't of us, you understand.

Open or not, a gate closing off public access to municipal acreage, to give its residents a puffed-up notion of their exclusivity, is not something an American town ought to indulge in. Certainly not to make a few people feel better about themselves.

WHATTYA DO WITH A GIRLIE LIKE ANN?

...for calling John Edwards "a faggot," in front of a whole passel of super-Christians, who laughed and applauded?

Why, write something like this.

TIME AND TIDES

North Carolina is the sixth fastest-growing state in the country. Our population is expected to increase by 50 percent, to more than 12 million people, by 2030.

What are all those people going to drink (other than micro-brews and Yadkin Valley wine)? Where's the water coming from to keep all those people hydrated?

That question was being addressed at a Raleigh conference yesterday. Former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt was there and said there's another potential water problem NC had better be preparing for ... rising sea levels.

He predicted North Carolina would be one of the states most affected by rising sea levels, along with Florida and Louisiana, and could see the disintegration of the Outer Banks within the century.

There's no question in our mind that Raleigh's eventually going to be wanting our mountain water for drinking purposes, because they seem to have the same impression that a lot of our mountain natives have, that we have a limitless supply of sparkling clean rushing waters, coming down like righteousness.

On the other hand, maybe we'll also be selling beach-front property in Lenoir by the time the Raleigh crowd figures out how to rook us for our H2O.

LIDDY DOLE GO BYE-BYE?

Is this bombshell all over the Internets today? News via e-mail (at least) from the Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group, a D.C. polling outfit working for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, has filtered out to the NC Mtns that Sen. Liddy Dole ain't in such good shape for her 2008 reelection campaign (assuming she runs, which she says she is but which the smart money in Raleigh still isn't betting on):

Despite enjoying near universal name ID, only 35% of likely North Carolina voters say that they will vote to reelect Dole. Furthermore, fewer than half approve of her job performance as a senator -- 49% rate her performance as excellent or good, while 46% describe it as fair or poor.

Yikes, sez you, if you're working on Liddy's reelection effort.

Hmmm, sez you, if you're Mike Easley.

Plus this further polling of interest, also from Garin-Hart-Yang:

North Carolina voters also overwhelmingly disapprove of the job President Bush is doing, and they believe that the nation is headed in the wrong direction. Bush's net job approval in the survey is 36% to 64%, and only 22% of voters believe the country is on the right track, compared to 68% who believe it is off on the wrong track.

Goll-EEE ... we haven't seen numbers like that previously in North Carolina, have we?

ADDENDUM: The Guv is quoted in today's N&O, taken from the Charlie Rose show, that he wouldn't like the U.S. Senate because he wouldn't be in charge. I'm better "in executive positions," The Guv said.

Look up the word "martinet" in the dictionary, and you just might encounter The Guv's picture.

THE INDOCTRINATOR IS ... OUT

Much more about this suspended social studies teacher in Raleigh is bound to tumble into the media spotlight in the weeks to come, so it's premature to call out the hounds against him, but it does appear self-evident that he considered his diploma to teach teenagers as a license to proselytize for his particular brand of Christianity.

Mr. Escamilla, the teacher now on paid leave, ushered a Christian evangelist into his classes on Feb. 15th who proceeded to denounce Islam and hand out brochures to the teenagers: "Jesus not Muhammad, Part I," and "Do Not Marry a Muslim Man, Part I." (By implication, it's Part 2 that's inevitably drawn my curiosity.)

In one of those classes sat a girl whose father is a Muslim.

Now other students who've graduated from Enloe High are starting to come forward and talk about Mr. Escamilla's activities over the past 18 years.

Former Enloe students say Escamilla has never made a secret of his Christian beliefs.

"He's always been a very controversial guy at Enloe," said Jaime Zea, 18, who graduated last year and said he bears no grudge against Escamilla. "He's an opinionated teacher, and he's always pushing the envelope." ...

Wei-Chun Wang, who took an Advanced Placement European history class with Escamilla in 2004, said the teacher brought in a creationist without offering a guest visitor on evolution.

Students who took the same class in 2000 said Escamilla showed the movie version of "Left Behind," a popular apocalyptic Christian fiction series that tells of the Rapture in which Christ lifts his followers to heaven before Jesus' eventual return.

Andrea Schrag said that after she graduated in 2000, Escamilla mailed her a copy of "The Case for Christ," a book by popular Christian evangelist Lee Strobel.

"He knew I was Jewish," said Schrag, now a lawyer in Raleigh. "I was outspoken about that."

Maybe Escamilla was a good teacher. The fact that there's not been more hue & cry against him prior to this might be evidence that he was a good teacher, and there are some ex-students cited in this article who say he was fair.

Whether he was and is a good teacher, the evidence quoted above seems to suggest that he was and is also a jerk. Being a jerk doesn't disqualify one from being a teacher (and we WON'T delve too deeply into THAT), but violating the Constitution of the United States MIGHT. We wouldn't want our kids sitting in his classroom, mainly because such proselytizing could permanently turn a good kid against valuable religion ... any more than we'd want our kids sitting in a classroom run by an obnoxious atheist.

A SIGN OF THE TIMES

This valuable article in the Asheville Citizen-Times will give you insight into the loss of farms in western North Carolina ... a depressing and perhaps irreversible trend that bodes ill for all of us. North Carolina has lost more than 6,000 farms and 300,000 acres of farmland since 2002, according to our state's Secretary of Agriculture.

Midwestern corporate farming is a big player in depressing beef cattle prices, which is making life for small-scale mountain cattle farmers mostly untenable.

That's one thing. An even bigger factor is soaring land values, which makes it easier to sell out to subdivision developers than hang in as a farmer barely scraping by. "We tend to grow houses now," said the Haywood County extension agent.