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Be careful what we wish for

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Tuesday, 15 October 2024

Written by Margaret Dickson

In early September 1996, the Dickson’s home in Haymount was battered by Hurricane Fran, leaving an enormous tree branch across our front yard. Every other house on our one-block street suffered a tree crashing through their roofs, making terrifying sounds that residents heard from their basement shelters. Our next-door neighbors had two trees, one in the front and one in the back. The house behind ours was severed into two parts. Blessedly the mother and young daughter inside survived, physically unharmed. Power was out for days, making the post-storm heat and humidity almost unbearable.
Hurricane Fran tore through Fayetteville and much of eastern and central North Carolina, leaving both devastation and carnage in her wake. Our state suffered 26 fatalities, making Fran the deadliest and most expensive natural disaster in North Carolina history at that time. Like other major hurricanes including Hazel in October 1954, Fran became the benchmark by which other storms were measured.
Until, that is, Hurricane Helene, which dropped 40 trillion gallons of rain across the Southeast. If all that water had fallen in North Carolina, the entire state would have been under 3 ½ feet of water, according to Ed Clark of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Water Center.
At this writing, much of western North Carolina had no power or cell phone coverage. Clean water was in short supply as were food, shelter, and gasoline in some places. Schools and roads were closed with few openings in sight. Family and friends were still searching for loved ones, and rescue operations were morphing into recovery efforts. Helene’s death toll was approaching 230 people, with about half of them in North Carolina. It was still rising, with officials acknowledging that some victims may never be found and some of those who are found will never be identified.
Helene is a new and terrifying benchmark.
Mother Nature has her own agenda that we mere humans do not know or even pretend to understand. None of us anticipated the power of Helene or the massive amounts of water she expended in western North Carolina. Helene is being described as a once-in-a-lifetime storm, an event with Biblical scope, over which we had no control.
That said, experts are saying there are measures we could have taken that might have mitigated Helene’s destruction and devastating death toll, measures we should now prioritize.
Both scientists and common sense tell us that storms are getting stronger and more frequent, with Helene being the most recent example. Hindsight is often 20/20 but there is little doubt now that we are seeing the results of human-caused climate change, which probably cannot be stopped but perhaps can be slowed down by limiting our use of fossil fuels. This should not be a political issue, because both Democrats and Republicans want to survive.
In addition, over the last 15 years, the North Carolina General Assembly has bowed to development and constructions interests, rejecting building requirements in western counties with construction on slopes at risk of landslides. The legislature also lengthened the timetable required for building code updates and allowed more paving of green spaces, increasing flood risks.
There is no way to assess Helene’s aftermath had measures aimed at climate change and commercial development been in place, but it is a fact that, in part, we are reaping what we have sewn. Helene can and should be our signal to take new paths in the coming years.
As Anita Crowder told the Washington Post at the remains of her father’s house in Swannanoa about the turning point of this moment.
“Two different eras. Things will be totally different.”

Kamala Harris is hiding in plain sight

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Tuesday, 08 October 2024

Written by Mary Zahran

Unlike Joe Biden, who actually hid in his basement during the 2020 presidential race, Kamala Harris, the recently anointed Democratic presidential candidate, has found a way to appear in public while hiding who she really is and what her policies will be if she wins the 2024 election.
It wasn’t very long ago that Harris was considered so weak and inept in her role as vice president that many Americans believed Biden would never have to worry about being impeached and removed from office.
Biden’s debate with Donald Trump on June 27 changed all of that. A handful of Democratic leaders, fearful that Biden’s poor performance and obvious cognitive decline posed a threat to every Democrat running for office, made the unprecedented decision to remove him as their presidential candidate and name someone else. But who could they possibly get on such short notice?
Say hello to the new and improved Kamala Harris, who—in the blink of an eye—went from being a bungling spewer of word salads to a woman with all the virtues of Joan of Arc and all the political savvy of Margaret Thatcher. The world of politics truly is a wonderland.
The wonderland Kamala Harris lives in was constructed not only by her party but also by the mainstream media, both of which are carefully protecting her from the public and from any journalists who might ask her to explain in detail what her policies are and how she will implement them. Consequently, she has not had to answer any questions about the economy or immigration, topics that voters consider to be the most important issues.
Harris did not have her first public interview until August 29th—forty days after announcing her intention to run on July 21st—when she sat down with CNN’s Dana Bash. Her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, was with her and answered questions. During this interview, filled with platitudes about her vision of the future, she did not offer any specifics about how she would handle the border or work to improve the economy.
Her ability to dodge any serious follow-up questions about her weak answers was made possible by a “journalist” who didn’t ask those questions. Journalists like Dana Bash come in handy when you need a place to hide.
If having one journalist willing to hide you is good, having two is even better. Such was the case on September 10th, when Harris and Trump debated each other. ABC’s David Muir and Linsey Davis served as moderators whose bias against Trump was on full display.
While Trump passed up several opportunities to call out Harris on many of her false statements about his handling of the economy and the border during his administration, the moderators never failed to call him out when they thought he was making false statements about her failure to control the border or her policies on abortion. They never questioned any accusations she made about Trump.
Harris will likely remain a mystery until the election is over. She is in hiding, not physically but politically, because she has a lot to hide. She has no intention of closing the border or permitting fracking any more than she wants to create a thriving economy and prosperity for all Americans.
If you want to see the real Harris, go online and find some videos of her when she was running for the presidency in 2019 touting all her progressive policies or when she was busy in the summer of 2020 raising bail money for criminals—including violent ones—to get out of jail after they had been arrested for rioting. Surprisingly, the only person honest enough to reveal her true intentions is Bernie Sanders, who recently asserted that she is “doing what she thinks is right in order to win the election.”
Kamala Harris was anointed as the Democratic presidential candidate behind closed doors, and the real Kamala Harris plans to stay behind those doors until the election is over.

Helene shows value of fiscal restraint

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Tuesday, 15 October 2024

Written by John Hood

The devastation wreaked on North Carolina by Hurricane Helene will take weeks to assess, months to clear out, and years to repair or rebuild. Second only to the value of the lives lost will be the exorbitant fiscal and economic costs of our recovery.
Our state government is reasonably well-prepared to shoulder its share. Our federal government is not.
Last week, the General Assembly authorized an initial $273 million withdrawal from North Carolina’s rainy-day fund to cover initial recovery expenses and changes in elections administration. Gov. Roy Cooper signed the bill.
That’s only the first tranche of state expenditure. Lawmakers will return to the capital more than once before year’s end, then commence regular session in early 2025. They’ll appropriate much more money for various reconstruction efforts, from academic campuses and government offices to highways, bridges, water systems, and other infrastructure.
North Carolina has lots of money set aside. The rainy-day fund itself still contains about $4.5 billion. Other accounts and our unreserved credit balance contain billions more. I don’t mean to minimize the storm’s staggering costs. I’m just pointing out that the General Assembly won’t have to cut other programs, raise taxes, or borrow money to fulfill its responsibilities.
Congress is another story. Over the past couple of decades, presidents and lawmakers of both parties have run massive federal deficits and made exorbitant spending promises that far exceed any reasonable expectation of revenues at economically sustainable tax rates.
In a recent Reason magazine piece, Veronique de Rugy of the Mercatus Center pointed out that the federal debt now exceeds $28 trillion — $2 trillion more than last year and $6 trillion more than when the Biden-Harris team entered the White House.
“This debt stands at 100% of America’s gross domestic product, which, other than a one-year exception at the end of World War II, is the highest ratio we’ve ever had,” she wrote. “Unlike in 1946, today’s debt is only going to grow. Indeed, debt-to-GDP took a nearly 30-year dive to reach 23% in 1974. Today, federal debt is projected — under the rosiest scenarios — to rise to 166% in 30 years.”
In other words, every dollar Congress authorizes and the executive branch distributes for hurricane relief in North Carolina is, in effect, a borrowed dollar. It represents a debt to be paid in the future, not a gift.
Of course, North Carolinians aren’t the only ones who must pay each dollar back (with interest). Decades ago, our politicians essentially nationalized the provision of relief and reconstruction after natural disasters. I don’t think that was wise. States and localities ought to make their own preparations and save their own money to handle future emergencies.
But at this point, I’m not sure how to extricate ourselves from this process. If Congress passed a law next year to slash federal disaster relief and then Kansas gets clobbered by tornados, their taxpayers could reasonably complain that they helped clean up after North Carolina’s disaster and then didn’t get their “turn” at withdrawing funds for their own.
The next best thing, then, is for future Congresses and presidents to take their budgeting responsibilities more seriously. As I’ve pointed out many times, the opportunity to bring federal revenues and expenditures closer to alignment without painful adjustment has long since passed. The gap is too large.
It can’t be substantially closed by eliminating “waste, fraud, and abuse.” Nor can it be substantially closed by “tax hikes on the wealthy.” Contrary to popular misconception, the United States already has one of the most steeply progressive tax codes in the developed world. According to the left-wing Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the bottom quintile of American taxpayers pay an average of 17% of their income in federal, state, and local taxes. The middle quintile pays 26%. The wealthiest 1% pay 35%.
Washington’s fiscal recklessness should be one of the top voting issues this year. Alas, it isn’t. But ignoring the problem won’t make it go away.

Editor’s Note: John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His latest books, Mountain Folk and Forest Folk, combine epic fantasy with early American history (FolkloreCycle.com).

(Photo: Republican lawmakers speak at a news conference introducing the first relief bill for Hurricane Helene. Gov. Roy Cooper signed the bill into law on Oct. 10. Photo courtesy of Chantal Brown, EducationNC)

Letter to the Editor: Time for change! Jackie Warner runs for School Board District 4

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Tuesday, 08 October 2024

Written by Cynthia Lee

I have lived in Cumberland County and I have been a teacher for Cumberland County Public Schools for over 6 years.
As a teacher, my desire is for all students to be able to attend public schools that have a safe environment conducive to learning. This requires change and new ideas. With the election approaching, I decided to reach out to some of the candidates to hear their perspectives for change.
I recently spoke to Jackie Warner, she is the candidate running for School Board in District 4, my school district. I knew that she was the Mayor of Hope Mills for several years but I didn’t know that she used to be a teacher and a principal for Cumberland County Public Schools! As I spoke to Ms. Warner, I realized that she has a lot of insight into the present condition of the public schools and that she has the knowledge needed to help make the changes everyone desires.
Ms. Warner has a passion for students, a passion for parents and she has a passion for teachers! Most importantly, she has a passion to serve our community! I want everyone in district 4 to know that they should vote for Ms. Warner because she is a candidate who cares and who is ready to make a difference.

—Cynthia Lee, Cumberland County Resident