Eyes on the Prize

An important program note: tomorrow night, Wednesday, July 14 at 9:00PM, UNC TV Channel 25 will show a special edition of American Experience, Eyes on the Prize: Mississippi: Is This America? 1963-1964/Bridge to Freedom 1965. If you have never seen this powerful documentary, make a special point of doing so. Even if you have seen it, take another look. You will probably notice something you didn't notice before.

At 8:00, the lead-in program is Terry Sanford & The New South. The contrast between North Carolina and Mississippi in 1962 could hardly be more stark.

Closed Session Minutes - South Avenue I

A while back, I reported that I now have copies of closed session minutes relating to South Avenue.

Here is the first one:

"Town of Oriental - Board of Commissioners Meeting
August 7, 2007

The Oriental Town Board of Commissioners met on Tuesday August 7, 2007 at 6:00 pm at the Oriental Town Hall. Present were Mayor Styron and Commissioners Bohmert, Herlands, Inger and Venturi.

CLOSED SESSION: Attorney Davis informed the Board that Mr. Henry may offer the Town 30 feet in fee simple, down the middle of the right-of-way of South Avenue. The Board requested the offer in writing and in detail.

MOTION: Commissioner Bohmert made a motion to go out of closed session. Second by Commissioner Inger. Vote 4-0."

Comment: The Board was right to ask for a written, detailed offer. None was ever received, nor was it credible to expect one. The Town had in its possession a copy of Mr. Henry's CAMA permit for an eight-slip marina, using Mr. Henry's own lot and the full sixty-foot width of the Town's right-of-way. One can only wonder if Attorney Davis ever looked at it.

More later.

Meeting Minutes

There seems to be a lot of confusion about what goes into minutes of official meetings of government bodies.

Early this year, when Oriental Town Commissioners reviewed draft minutes, newly-elected Commissioner Jennifer Roe made it quite clear: minutes record what was done, not what was said. This general rule applies no matter what the nature of the body. Otherwise approval of the minutes becomes a reiteration of every argument raised at the previous meeting and so on, ad infinitum.

As for public records, any correspondence concerning the business of a board becomes a public record, including audio and video recordings of public meetings. The custodian of all public records of the County Board of Elections is Lisa Bennett, the Director of Elections.

Since the meeting of the County Board of Elections held March 23, 2010, all minutes have included the following statement: "An audio recording was made of the proceedings. A copy has been provided as a public record to the Director of Elections, who will maintain it in accordance with the Records Retention and Disposition Schedule for County and Municipal Boards of Elections, dated October 7, 2002."

Any citizen who wants a copy of any of these records should contact Lisa Bennett at the County Board of Elections - 745-4821.

First the Facts - Then the Solution

There was some discussion at last Tuesday's meeting of the Oriental Board of Commissioners about the alleged need for a surveyor to determine how much of Mr. Henry's fence at the end of South Avenue needs to come down. As one of the attendees (our son Benjamin) pointed out, the answer is "all of it."

The next day, he showed Mayor Sage the "railroad iron" depicted on Mr. Henry's own survey of the premises that shows clearly that the entire fence along Mr. Henry's lot is in the town right of way. The survey also shows the boundary between the South Avenue right of way and Mr. Henry's lot marked by an iron pipe. Shooting a simple transit line from that point would complete the boundary.

The other side, between the town's right of way and Chris Fulcher's property may be more complicated. Even there, the town should consult the very detailed survey completed in late 2007 at the urging of the Town Attorney, which was never used. That survey may clear up any uncertainty. It shows a pipe found at the very edge of the right of way, though it is not immediately visible at the moment.

Another proposal is that the town may need to work a deal with Mr. Henry to allow the pavement to continue encroaching on Mr. Henry's lot to allow truck access to Chris Fulcher's property south of the avenue.

I don't think so. I checked to see the tuning radius needed to accommodate 18-wheelers. They require an inside radius of 45 feet and an outside radius of 65 feet. Once the fence is out of the way, there is enough room in the originally platted intersection to allow a curve with those dimensions. Let's check it out before doing any deals.

Croaker Fest - Oriental Welcomes Visitors

Tomorrow, July 2, 2010, sees the opening of the Croaker Fest, Pamlico County's midsummer celebration, hosted each year in Oriental. It is a community event, prepared and carried out by many civic-minded people, from parade organizers to garbologists.

Oriental residents and businesses welcome the flood of visitors.

Except for a few. Some take the opportunity to block off "their" section of the town's right of way to prevent visitors from parking on "their" grass. Some even install permanent barriers to prevent parking on public property next to their houses.

Apart from the fact that blocking the town right of way is a violation of the law, it is an offense to the kind of neighborly welcome the rest of us try to extend to visitors. Shame on you!

The Great Recession? Or Third Depression?

The great mystery of the great depression of the 1930's was: how could the economy achieve apparent stability at low levels of use of economic resources?

Classical economic theory held that, unfettered by government interference, the market would naturally establish equilibrium at full employment. Periods of reduced economic activity were held to be unstable, leading to a return of stability at full employment.

But from 1929 on, the world economy was stubbornly stable at very low levels of activity. John Maynard Keynes researched the problem with a sense of urgency, publishing his magnum opus, the General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, in 1936. He demonstrated that in times of massive unemployment and economic stagnation, only government spending could get the economy moving again. Under such circumstances, budget deficits were not important. Keynes was unimpressed with arguments that "in the long run" things would get better. "In the long run," he responded, "we'll all be dead." Over the following quarter century, his theories were adopted by nations all over the world, with great success.

Why would countries abandon a set of insights that worked so well? That is the question economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman examines in today's newspaper. Although he doesn't come out and say so, he seems to fear that once again (as in the 1930's) the world economy is in the hands of fools.

If we hope to avoid a third depression and put people back to work, it is not yet time for Congress to worry about deficits.

Dump the Runoff

The June 22 runoff or second primary cost the citizens of North Carolina between four and five million dollars.

Few voters turned out.

The outcome, at least in the statewide democratic party primary would have been the same without the runoff, had we accepted the vote by plurality.

Only eight states, all in the South, hold runoff primaries. In recent years, Kentucky and Florida have abandoned the runoff.

The runoff primary is a relic of an earlier time, when winning the Democratic Party Primary was tantamount to winning election in the states of the "Solid South."

It's time for the NC legislature to join Kentucky and Florida in abandoning the runoff.

General McChrystal and Military Professionalism

In earlier times, there was a close relationship between the military and our elected officials. In fact, ten of the twenty-two US presidents elected in the nineteenth century had been generals. All Republican presidents between the Civil War and 1900 were former Union generals, except for McKinley. He was too young and had only been a major.

Our founders admired the Roman Republic, especially that citizens answered the call to arms, unlike the standing armies of the Empire. They opposed standing armies and extolled the use of militias. That is really what the Second Amendment was about. We would have no redcoats.

Article 17 of the North Carolina Constitution adopted December 18, 1776, made the idea perfectly clear:

"17. That the people have a right to bear arms, for the defense of the State; and as standing armies, in time of peace, are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; and that the military should be kept under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power."

By the late nineteenth century, however, the country was moving away from the militia model and increasingly in the direction of military professionalism. By the time the leading generals and admirals of World War II received their professional training at the US Service Academies, the dominant idea was that a force led by professionals trained in the science of warfare but subordinate to elected and appointed civilian leaders offered the best approach to civilian control. Perhaps the extreme example of such subordination was the case of George C. Marshall, who never voted, even after he was appointed to the position of Secretary of State.

Fortunately, many of our senior military leaders still understand the concept:

“We do not have the right, nor should we ever assume the prerogative, to cast doubt upon the ability or mock the motives of our civilian leaders, elected or appointed,” Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, observed about General McChrystal. “We are and must remain a neutral instrument of the state, accountable to and respectful of those leaders, no matter which party holds sway or which person holds a given office.”

Amen!