Moved
I've moved my writing efforts for the time to jeffreysykes.wordpress.com
Come visit if you are interested.
I've moved my writing efforts for the time to jeffreysykes.wordpress.com
Come visit if you are interested.
Here is a song I was lucky enough to have an online friend, Bill Davies, play piano on. It's a slow, moody song about being separated from my loved one, mixed in with some lyrics about current events.
Still working on those singing lessons.
Donations gladly accepted.
One can only shake his head at this:
"Reidsville ? Reidsville High School was recognized being recognized for their football team on a state level.
The RHS football team and coach Jim Teague was named "FootballCapital of NC" by the General Assembly in Raleigh, NC. The vote came in at an unanimous 118-0.
Reidsville High School has won more State Championships than any other high school in the state. They hold a total of 16 State Championships.
WFMY News 2"
Somebody needs to get Chelsi's back.
Jesse's done it again. I'll be waiting patiently for your outrage and condemnation. Not.
County Manager Tom Robinson says building regional support for the Rockingham County equestrian center is what made the difference in receiving money this year from the General Assembly.
That and a sharp eye from state Rep. Nelson Cole.
The legislature approved $2.4 million to be spent on the Horse Park of the South, the name for a long sought equestrian center slated to be built near the intersection of U.S. 29 and Barnes Street in Reidsville.
Robinson said that the county is pursuing several grant and funding paths at various levels.
With eight to $10 million in hand, Robinson believes the project will become a reality.
"If we can get to that level (of funding) I feel very confident this will happen," he said.
According to GNR's insightful Raleigh reporter, Mark Binker, the budget deal reached this week includes $2.4 million in borrowing to get Rockingham County's equestrian center moving forward again.
According to the county's business plan for the center, $3.25 million is in hand for construction costs. This new money will put the county about half-way to the $10 million estimated cost of building the center.
The business plan looks very solid and anticipates a net surplus of revenue generated by the center after three years.
County Manager Tom Robinson has listed this project as one of three critical to the local economy. Robinson has told me that if local leaders could get the horse park and the NC 68 connector projects completed, he believed the county could "stand on its own" in terms of other economic development projects.
I personally believe the equestrian center is a vital point in amplifying the culture of creativity many small business owners have kick started in Eden, Reidsville and the county.
Pursuing the NC 68 connector could kick start a large trend in heavy industrial development in the western half of the county, to provide needed political balance in securing local unanimity on the equestrian center.
This looks like good news.
This reminds me of this. The former. The latter. Related.
Hat tip, Bubba.
In "The Paradox of Tarheel Politics", veteran reporter Rob Christensen, of the Raleigh News and Observer, provides a stellar addition to the pantheon of North Carolina political works.
This book is a must read for any politician, journalist, activist, observer or just plain interested party. Christensen deserves a medal for making the subject matter approachable to the layman. As an historical work, the book ranks among the most active and engaging stories in recent memory.
Perhaps a testament to the editors Christensen has had in his career, the prose is engaging and full of energy. There is hardly a weak spot in the entire book. Whether the reader is on vacation with hours on end or a casual nighttime bookworm reading a few pages a night, "The Paradox of Tarheel Politics" is sure to capture and hold their attention.
In this essay, I hope to capture the spirit of Christensen's work while at the same time examining and providing my own interpretations viewed from my personal foundation of conservative, post Reagan-era Republicanism.
I suppose Christensen's main thesis could be summed up, as has been stated in professional reviews, by saying that North Carolina political history in the 20th Century was a dichotomy of one party domination, based on the twin pillars of violence, bigotry and malice toward the aspirations of the state's black citizens and a dedication to otherwise "progressive" policies vis a vis business and education.
As one who grew up in post-integration North Carolina, I find it disgraceful that the state's Democratic Party owes its 110 years of unfettered dominance of the state's political machine to an 1898 white supremacy campaign executed on horseback with torchlight and gunfire.
The book begins with an examination of the 1898 campaign on the part of Democrats to take the power of state back from a duly elected coalition of Fusionist, Republicans and blacks with voting rights. There is no need for me to recount here the terrorist campaign carried out across the eastern and southern portion of the state. That sad chapter of the state's history rests squarely upon the shoulders of the state's Democratic Party.
The next 60-plus years of state history is devoid of mention of Republican leadership. Each and every election is examined in light of the Democratic Primary. As one who was born into a Piedmont Republican family, I find it hard to imagine the mindset I encounter here in Rockingham County, where many of my conservative, yet still Democratic, friends tell me "I registered as a Democratic in 1960-whatever, because my daddy told me that if I wanted to vote in the primary I had to be a Democrat."
This evidence of one-party domination is anathema to the spirit of the founding fathers, who wanted to prevent one party domination be creating a system that forced working coalitions in order to abnegate the power of demagoguery. Yet in North Carolina, likely as well in many other southern states, that is exactly what the post 1877, Jim Crow-era Democratic Party gave us. Let us not also forget that the Democratic Party pre-1860 dragged this region straight into the Civil War because of its obstinate dedication to an economy based on slave labor.
But I digress.
From 1900-1960, most Democratic primaries boiled down to a "conservative" (meaning segregationist) candidate against a liberal candidate who may have wanted to give more state money to black schools, or allowed for more lenient literacy tests for blacks to register to vote. The 1898 campaign was followed quickly by a disenfranchisement vote that in essence stripped all blacks in North Carolina of the right to vote.
This period of Democratic control is highlighted by several interesting characters, who drive the story along in conjunction with the building tension the reader knows is coming to a head in the 1960s and the civil rights movement.
Among them briefly are Governor's Aycock and Gardner, who to their credit did champion an increased state funding for black schoolchildren. Aycock was elected on the heels of the 1898 campaign and began the century long tradition of Democratic governors using education as their springboard to populism, despite being controlled by machine politics in the pocket of the state's business interest.
Gardner later, in 1927 wrestled the Democratic machine away from eastern dominance, and established the Shelby Dynasty, which led the state through the Great Depression. Gardner and company's pro-business, anti-union policies, helped smooth the leftist conflicts of that era and laid the groundwork for the state's economic rise to become the Dixie Dynamo of the 1960s.
This included Gov. Ehringhaus's push for rural electrification.
It is also during this time that Sen. Josiah Bailey served in the US Senate. Bailey, to me, is one of the foremost characters of this time. Inspired by his scholarly gaze as pictured in the book, I have begun reading a political biography of Bailey and hope to have more to say at a later date. He was most known for opposing many of FDR's mid-to-late New Deal program's and as author of the Conservative Manifesto.
During the late 1930s and 1940s, the state seemed to chug along with the onset of World War II and the rise of the Greatest Generation of Americans dedicated to self-sacrifice and heroism in order to win the war and overcome the economic challenges of the time.
The end of WWII and the election of 1948 marks the rise of W. Kerr Scott, the coming Senate election of 1950 and the rise of the two men who would dominate the second half of the century in North Carolina politics: Terry Sanford and Jesse Helms.
Throughout "The Paradox of Tarheel Politics", author Rob Christensen brings these characters to life as if they were still dominating today's headlines.
I hope to pick up this review and cross-over into a more personal narrative in the coming days.
I hope the rest of the state one day gets to know Sen. Phil Berger the way I have. Bright, kind, gentle, exact, but also strong, tough and a great strategist. Berger has been very patient with me, since I first called him to voice a concern I had about state government, to recent brief conversations at local political events. He is always willing to share insights and explain what goes into his actions at the legislature.
I've thought his leadership in the general assembly has been stellar. Republicans across the state would do well to look to Berger as one of the cornerstones to build a conservative legislature upon.
Take this quote for example, on the Democrat's budget, created in secret, closed door meetings, and dumped on the legislature with just hours to digest. The plan calls for more than $800 million in new debt.
AP:
*"Good gracious," said Senate Minority Leader Phil Berger, a Rockingham County Republican. "I am just concerned about the level of debt -- just about a billion dollars in debt."
Berger said that much borrowing should require voters' approval, instead of letting lawmakers make the call when they vote on the $21.3 billion spending plan next week.
"If we are going to tie down the taxpayers' future, in terms of paying down the debt, we really ought to let them have a say," he said."*
