You can’t start over.
If nothing doesn’t change,
is not making a move moving?
Whatever failures I have known, whatever errors I have committed,
whatever follies I have witnessed…
have been the consequence of action without thought.
Bernard Baruch
American financier, and presidential advisor
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored
Aldous Huxley
Talking points to rebut criticism of hotel
Members of the Undoing Racism Group White Caucus decided to write letters to the News & Record and submit columns for its Counterpoint feature at a joint caucus meeting last night. An e-mail on the group’s listserv…says that “it was suggested at the joint caucus meeting that Deena Hayes would circulate letters and counterpoints to others for vetting and suggestions.”
Jordan Green
Yes Weekly, January 28, 2010
Follow the money
Deep Throat
Watergate whistleblower
The world consumes two barrels of oil for every barrel discovered.
…is this something you should be worried about?
Advertisement
Via The Oil Drum
The flapping of a single butterfly’s wing today produces a tiny change…
…so, in a month’s time,
a tornado that would have devastated the Indonesian coast
doesn’t happen,
or maybe one that wasn’t going to happen
does.
Ian Stewart
The Mathematics of Chaos
City plans to raise water rates: Three-year hikes intended to offset cost of Jordan Lake Rules
Burlington water consumers should prepare to see their water bills go up this year.
And next year. And probably the year after that, too.
Now that the city knows it’s going to have to pay at least $22.5 million to upgrade its two water treatment plants to conform to the state’s new water laws, city leaders have started planning incremental increases to pay for them.
…Burlington’s water treatment plants are being equipped to remove more nutrients from wastewater before it’s released into the Haw River and flows into Jordan Lake, as part of the Jordan Lake Rules that were passed by the state Legislature last year. The legislation affects cities in the Haw River basin and the New Hope River basin in the Triangle.
The city raised water and sewer rates 5 percent last year to cover rising costs of energy and chemicals used to treat water.
The Jordan Lake Rules weren’t part of that increase.
Burlington is teaming with the city of High Point this year to purchase water treatment chemicals…
The city of Greensboro is contracted to buy at least two million gallons per day.
Michael D. Abernethy
Times-News, Burlington, N.C. January 24, 2010
Jordan Lake rules could cost Triad
Newly adopted state environmental regulations could cost taxpayers in Guilford County and throughout the Triad tens of millions of dollars over the next decade…
The rules are designed to curb the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus flowing from Greensboro and other points north and west of Jordan Lake, which is between Pittsboro and Apex.
…Greensboro alone will have to complete $70 million in upgrades to its sewage treatment plants to comply with the new regulations…
…Phosphorus and nitrogen, naturally occurring chemicals, are useful in fertilizers that help crops and lawns grow. But too much of them are flowing into the lake, causing blooms of algae that grow unchecked and suck the oxygen out of the lake…
The new rules aim to reduce the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus flowing from a number of sources, including farms, sewage plants and lawns outside homes and businesses…
Mark Binker
Greensboro News and Record, November 28, 2008
To live means to experience
through doing, feeling, thinking.
Experience takes place in time,
so time is the ultimate scarce resource we have.
Benjamin Franklin
History is a relentless master.
It has no present, only the past rushing into the future.
To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.
John F. Kennedy
Time is the coin of your life.
It is the only coin you have,
and only you can determine how it will be spent.
Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.
Carl Sandburg
We are all created equally.
What you do or don’t do with time is what creates inequality.
George Hartzman
Recognize that neither technology nor efficiency
can acquire more time for you,
because time is not a thing you have lost.
It is not a thing you ever had. It is what you live in.
You can drift or you can swim, and it will carry you along either way.
James Gleick
When I was a boy of fourteen,
my father was so ignorant
I could hardly stand to have the old man around.
But when I got to be 21,
I was astonished at how much he had
learned in seven years.
Mark Twain (1835 – 1910)
If opponents don’t begin with pieces of the same number and value,
and players can think they’re winning when losing ,
can influencing others’ thoughts enhance results,
and vice versa?
If opponents think you have more influence and power,
do you?
The great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearance
as though they were realities,
and are often more influenced by the things that seem than those that are.
Niccolo Machiavelli
Half the work that is done in this world
is to make things appear what they are not.
Elias Root Beadle
…George Brumback, chairman of the authority…told [Eric Pristell, a Durham lawyer representing the Urban Hotel Group] that his board typically reviews a business plan and documentation of some kind of preliminary commitment from a lender before taking action.
…“I think we’re all struggling with what our role is,” Brumback replied. “What we would like to see is a financial commitment from a lender, because that’s what we normally see.”
He added, “We’re all sort of seeking to make sure we’re not approving something that is financially unfeasible, and it goes to Raleigh and gets crucified and we have been blamed for approving something that was crucified.”
…it’s difficult to tell whether the hotel group was remarkably unprepared or if the process is so new that the terrain is completely unfamiliar to everyone.
…a partner in the Elm Street Center LLC…expressed admiration for Bridget Chisholm, the finance consultant who conceived of the hotel idea.
“To her credit, when this bill passed, she read it,” he said.
Jordan Green
Yes Weekly, January 27, 2010
Once off the cliff, there is still hope if you keep running.
By running ever faster you may not fall.
Wyle E. Coyote
We can ignore reality,
but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.
Ayn Rand
Hotel project can’t move forward without firm financing
A key Guilford County board won’t let a proposed downtown hotel move closer to federal stimulus financing without more information on its viability…
…George Brumback, chairman of the Guilford County bond authority board… said he doesn’t want to see the project “get crucified” by the Local Government Commission. If that commission rejects the hotel project, the allotted bond money sanctioned by Greensboro and Guilford County — $27 million — would revert to the state and not back to Guilford County.
…But representatives of the project at Wednesday’s meeting were reluctant to provide much more information than they already have.
Eric Pristell , a lawyer representing the project…said there was no need for the county bond authority to scrutinize the project…“You’re not an underwriter,” Pristell said to the authority board. “That’s not your role.”
…Mary Nash Rusher, a lawyer representing the authority on the bonds, said…revealing financial backers and proving a project’s viability is a standard the authority uses in most industrial development bond cases.
Rusher said the caution was not unusual given that Guilford could lose any financing set aside for projects that don’t pass muster with the commission.
Joe Killian
Greensboro News and Record, January 25, 2010
Conflict of Interest
The situation that results … when government officials take campaign contributions
from people whose economic interests are affected by government policy-making.
Coming to Terms:
A Money-in-Politics Glossary
Alston accused of threatening mayor, council members over hotel
Members of the Greensboro City Council say Melvin “Skip” Alston threatened them with a recall election if they reconsider federal bond financing for a luxury hotel in which he has a direct financial interest.
…Alston acted as a broker on the hotel deal and Hayes lives with John Greene, a principal in the Urban Hotel Group, which is proposing the hotel.
…Alston has refused to disclose how much money he stands to make from brokering the proposed hotel deal. He denies he Hayes have conflicting interests as they try to represent the concerns of the African American community and move forward a project on which they will both profit.
Amanda Lehmert and her boy toy Joe Killian
Greensboro News and Record, December 22, 2009
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