Jeansboro Day, which was scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 11, has officially been cancelled. The Wrangler pop-up store at 300 S. Elm St. will be open and jeans are great to wear during hurricanes, so there is no reason to change your outfit for the day, but there will be no Jeansboro Day events because of Hurricane Michael.
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Greensboro is not experiencing the economic or population growth of the other larger cities in North Carolina, but there is one area in which Greensboro is number one.
According to the Triad Business Journal, Greensboro appears to have the highest paid mayor in the state. Greensboro Mayor Nancy Vaughan at $29,825 is paid more than Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles at $25,295, more than Raleigh Mayor Nancy McFarlane at $20,000, more than Durham mayor Steve Schewel at $28,162. And over three times more than Winston-Salem Mayor Allen Joines at $8,400.
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Democrats running for the state House and Senate have been highly critical of the Republican legislature for building up a $2 billion rainy day fund. Since we had an incredibly rainy day in Eastern North Carolina, with some areas getting over 30 inches of rain from Hurricane Florence, it appears the Republicans were not so dumb after all.
Even Gov. Roy Cooper, who vetoed the Republican budget, is now recommending that hundreds of millions of dollars be spent to aid farmers whose crops were destroyed by the hurricane.
So because the Republicans wisely put money aside for a rainy day, now North Carolina can spend that money to help North Carolinians who suffered from the hurricane without going into debt.
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Cindy Farmer of Fox 8 has been seen in so many homes in the area for so long that a lot of people consider her family, even though they have never met her. I would imagine that Cindy could win any political race she entered. But she isn’t likely to run for any office. However, her husband, Superior Court Judge Bill Wood, is running to retain his seat, so you can’t vote for Cindy but you could do the next best thing and vote for her husband, Bill Wood, for Superior Court judge.
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I first heard the term “blue moon election” talking to 13th District Congressman Ted Budd, but its evidently going to bandied around a lot between now and Nov. 6. This year is a blue moon election because there are no statewide races on the ballot other than judges and nobody much cares about the judicial races. And this year, there are six constitutional amendments that nobody understands. The Democrats are advising people to vote against all of them, even the ones that Democrats would normally favor, like the one to protect victims rights. It was probably a decision made at the top of the Democratic Party to oppose all of them so as not to confuse voters.
But this year the race for the North Carolina Supreme Court is the biggest race that nobody knows about. Republican Supreme Court Justice Barbara Jackson is running against Anita Earls, who was the head of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, which is about as far left as you can get and still be on the page. Also in the race is Christopher Anglin, who is running as a Republican, but was a Democrat until shortly before filing. It was a smart move by the Democrats. The idea is that with two Republicans in a race nobody knows anything about the Republican vote will be split and Earls will win. It has a good chance of working and the Republicans are kicking themselves, one, for allowing it to happen and, two, for not doing the same thing to Earls. There was no primary so Republicans could have gotten four or five Republicans to change their registration and file to run as Democrats, but they didn’t.
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The Muse and I took a trip west last weekend (more on that later), but we like to dawdle when we travel, which means stopping in out-of-the-way places. I don’t believe we stopped in a single place that would be allowed to stay in business in Greensboro. Presumably in Greensboro we are enforcing the same statewide health and building codes as everywhere else, but in Greensboro we enforce those codes with a vengeance that is not seen in other towns and cities. In other places allowances are apparently made for small businesses and older buildings, but we don’t do that here.
It isn’t likely to change, because that is the corporate culture of our government and has been for as long as I can remember.
