Mr. DeLay Arrives on the Midnight Train

It’s depressing that our lame duck commissioners, Emerson, Outz, and Morgan, have chosen to bring Texas Republican politics to our County. Morgan must have figured out his nifty plan even prior to his decisive defeat in the primary back in the spring, since he had two years to work on it. (Not that this is a surprise really—Bunky was a Republican before he switched parties purely as a tactic.) His defeat was fair and square, just like the Connecticut Primary just past. And just like Mr. Leiberman, Bunky and cohort have a fall back plan. In fact, their plan is even slicker than Joe Leiberman running this fall as an oxymoronic “independent Democrat.”

According to the Independent Weekly (why not according to the Chatham News; well, that’s another story I guess), our lame duck county commissioners have voted to redraw district lines in such a way as to pit two elected commissioners, Mr. Barnes, and Mr. Lucier, against each other in 2008, while at the same time the same redrawing allows Mr. Morgan to run yet again from a new, presumably safer district, two years sooner than would have otherwise been the case. It’s unfortunate that the two non-lame-duck members voting against this blatantly self-serving proposal didn’t do what the fine Democratic legislators of Texas did a few years back—remove themselves to New Mexico so as to remove the possibility of a quorum. DeLay tactics deserve delay tactics dontcha know. It’s unfortunate that Messrs. Cross and Barnes were unwilling to stoop to such games. Perhaps they felt—correctly of course—that such tactics were not what they were elected to engage in.

There is another aspect to this maneuver. As well as redrawing districts—with zero input from the northeast area of Chatham where more than half the population of the county now reside—the lame ducks have also put on the ballot in November a referendum to change commissioner election in subsequent elections starting in 2008 to district by district. In other words, Morgan, Emerson, and Outz will not have to face county-wide voters next time they run. And this even though all three were at some point in the past elected county-wide, and were most recently un-elected county-wide. What’s not working?

Get the drift? Here’s the obvious, self-serving goal of these lame-ducksters. Let’s make us some safe districts and get our power back. A majority of voters in our county don’t think we did a good job, so next time we won’t let a majority of voters vote. That’s the plan, Stan. (And why the News and Observer, in an editorial on Monday, Aug. 29, on this obvious sleight of hand, was unwilling to actually characterize it as such, but simply mused about how, possibly, the lame ducks were playing slick, I’m confounded to guess. What does it take to call a spade a spade over on McDowell Street? Has that old red rooster they used run on special occasions ended up in the pot?)

Ok, thanks a bunch, Bunky. You’re one hell of a politician. You the Hammah! Single-handedly, you’re dragging a nice, basically rural, friendly county-wide community into the unnecessary divisiveness that is demolishing our national politics. Chatham County surely has a unity, a singleness of purpose, and at the least a sense of community strong enough to work together, north, south, east and west, town and countryside, black, white, and Hispanic. It’s not us again’ thems over thar. We must not allow Bunky and his ilk—including Siler City’s jesfolks AM radio editorial voice—to create divisions in the good will of our county which are otherwise nonexistent. We share a landfill, for heavens sake, not to mention the air and water. We share an area code, a school system, a big four-lane east-west highway. We will all suffer if this County returns to district-only voting for commissioner. The only beneficiaries will be Mr. Morgan, his followers, and whatever large outside business interests pull their strings. Maybe they should rename Siler City “Deadwood.”

One of the great losses, by the way, will be the erosion of electability of minority candidates such as the popular Carl Thompson. County-wise it is clear that racial bigotry no longer holds sway—thus Mr. Thompson’s recent primary victory. But in a district-only vote there is a much smaller pool of voters, and there is no black majority district. This means that tactics such as single-shot voting are nullified, and it may well be that old racial prejudices will re-emerge with decisive results. If that’s not an argument for voting against this district-only plan, I don’t know what is. It’s one of the reasons Chatham County did away with district-only voting in the first place, by the way. (And the N&O editorial got this aspect of the plan backassward.)

Or think about it this way: with county-wide voting, every commissioner cares about your vote to some extent. With district-only voting, four out of five commissioners may not care at all about your vote. Which odds do you like better? Ask the folks out in the Siler City Extra-territorial Jurisdiction who just got a quarry dropped on them by the Siler City Town Board they didn’t elect and can’t vote against next time.

November is our last opportunity to vote countywide for commissioners, should this referendum pass. The solution is obvious. Vote the damn thing down, decisively, for the pernicious, divisive monkey-wrench it really is. And be real sure that Mr. Morgan hasn’t managed to word the referendum in such a way that you have to vote yes to say no. I haven’t seen the actual wording of the statement, but I’ll guarantee Mr. Morgan and his advisors are calculating which way to write it up so as to cause the most confusion, and the most favorable outcome to themselves. Like Woody Guthrie said, “some will rob you with a six gun, some with a fountain pen.”

--Bill Hicks, Albright Township, Chatham Co.
[photo from www.lib.unc.edu/ncc/pcoll/01chatham/chatham.html ]

A Fatal Loss of Jo-mentum

There will of course be all you care to read on the meaning of Joe Leiberman’s primary loss yesterday in Connecticut. Here’s my two cents: The Democratic Party is showing some signs of recovery.

As someone remarked (I can’t keep all the remarkers straight), it’s not the “Democrat Party” as the Republicans keep trying to assert, it’s the Democratic Party, a party that is named for a process. There’s a lot to that statement, including the observation that if you pound some sort of falsehood into people’s heads long enough, they start acting as though it was true. In fact, at its best, the Democratic Party does stand for process, for change, for development. And the Republicans do stand pretty much for stasis. That, after all, is the conservative way: just don’t mess with it.

That is why in the Connecticut Primary just past, it was the entrenched, the established, the incumbent, who rallied round Joe Lieberman. Established power tends to become conservative. Joe himself exemplifies the tendency—not accepting his own party’s rejection of him in a democratic primary election, he immediately announced he would run as an “independent.” Which in real terms means he has switched parties, because there are only two parties in U.S. politics, like it or not, and the Democratic Party has chosen Ned Lamont as their candidate for Senate in a democratic primary. Incumbency thus trumps party.

This is also why so many pundits are rallying around Lieberman. Things are good for pundits. Cokie, for example, has a nice gig on ABC Sunday, as well as a place commenting any time she likes on NPR. Why rock the boat. She has good, personal reasons to toss out the old “Oh gawd, it’s the McGovern crowd again,” jive. If the world remains as cynical and static as it’s been since Reagan, Cokie will be able to say pretty much the same cynical, static things she’s been making a good living on since she was just a smart kid with a primo political family behind her. It’s like bad teachers and old lesson plans. The first few years you have to think, but it gets easier, and then you can spend the evenings watching TV like everyone else.

But what happened in Connecticut was, actual voters came out and said, “we’re fed up with this shit, it’s time for a real change.” That is, for a change the voters were not manipulated. Partly that was because Lieberman, unlike Rove/Cheney/Bush, probably didn’t have his whole soul into the fear game. In the Connecticut Primary, Lieberman didn’t run full tilt on his war platform, or his right-wing Supreme Court Justice support platform, or his vote for Alberto Gonzales, the man who brought us Abu Ghraib, platform. Perhaps this was because mostly Democrats actually were the voting block in the primary. That was a real problem for Joe. Statistical vote-ratings aside, he had become a Republican. (As NOW told Jane Hamsher, “we don’t count cloture votes.” So much for statistics.)

At a deeper level of manipulation, we might examine for a moment the original kiss of Bush that started Lieberman on the road to ruin. The resonance to the Judas’ Kiss is surely obvious, and one wonders if Rove prepped George on this opportunity to taint one of the most powerful Democrats in the Senate (at least on paper; after all, Gore was out of politics and Leiberman was the veep nominee in 2000), or if perhaps this is George's political instinct in action--no words, just a perfect moment to nail a potential opponent, the cowboy intuitive quickdraw. Certainly Lieberman had already supported Bush policy at every important turn, and from his point of view the kiss simply annointed: he was in the in- crowd; “he loves me, he loves me.” It was probably only Lieberman's own political instincts which kept him from kissing George back. Certainly Joe displayed, in the coming months, no inclination to reconsider his support for Bush and company, and his cloture vote for Alito cast the final die for many Democrats. Joe had to go. But it's still win/win for Rove in the sense that, at any rate, a potentially formidable opponent is now defanged. If Joe should win in November, it will be as a Republican, not as a Democrat. That's the reality because it's a two-party system we have, and apparently Rove has already sent word to Joe that his counsel is available. Now it’s up to the Democratic Party to keep the ball in their court, to craft deeper victories out of this awakening electorate.

But make no mistake, it’s going to be fear city from now till November. Lamont is a serious wake-up call for Mr. Rove, and he has millions of voters who live in fear 24/7. He also has about 90% of the pundit class at his service—all the Cokies and Broders, not to mention the David Brooks—who are as afraid of being sidelined as irrelevant as they are of any more substantial policy shifts in the government. You will hear every other day about how Democrats like Lamont are going to bring the troops home from Iraq immediately if not sooner, while at the same time they will be fomenting presidential impeachment from the get-go. And of course the Lamonts are going to be fine with Gay Marriage and Euthanasia and Legalized Marijuana. And they might even take back some of those tax cuts to the very well to do who, by virtue of their wealth and status, are the real ruling class of this country. Oh, and Lamont is a turncoat too, since he (just like Joe and most of the others in the Senate) is a “millionaire” not to mention a member of the J.P. Morgan family, don’tcha know.

As far as Rove/Cheney/Bush themselves, well, they have a lot of options. They are already fanning the flames of a wider Middle East War, as are Syria and Iran. By October we may be watching tank battles, air strikes, and missile exchanges all across the Middle East, and we might be looking at $5 gas as well. There will be endless talk of staying the course. Just yesterday I heard a Republican Pollster on NPR say that while Americans view the Iraq War as a disaster and a failure, only one in five Americans want to bring the troops home now. If Rove can translate Lamont’s message into “Bring the Troops Home Now,” Lieberman may yet win in November. Worse, Republicans may manage to maintain control of both houses of Congress. At the moment the Rubber Stamp Congress is at work on a new bill which redefines war crimes in such a way as to excuse Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Just to be on the safe side.

But Rove’s fear, and incumbent fear, has a basis in this truth, just expressed in the Connecticut Primary. The voters up there just woke up and said, “we’ve had a damn-‘nough!” We sure have. We’ve had a stolen election in 2000, another probably stolen one in ’04, a “war of choice” started and continued on false pretenses, a Supreme Court that is likely to erode Roe V. Wade incrementally until nothing is left but a meaningless husk, and perhaps most dangerous of all, a new imperial Presidency, arisen out of the ashes of the Nixon debacle by old Nixonians—Cheney and Rumsfeld, and others—who have blown on those discredited ashes till they burst yet again into flames that threaten the basic legal framework which has held the country together since 1789, the Checks and Balances. George Bush scoffs at Congress and redefines laws at his whim, and his lawyers offer him the justification of the “fact” that “we are at war,” a war on terror.

Well hell, we didn’t need to declare a war on terror, we already had the war on drugs, didn’t we? I know we lost the war on poverty, but whatever. For these people, these “Rethuglicans,” real democracy is too dangerous for America. It’s as outmoded as the quaint Geneva Conventions Mr. Gonzales brushed away when he presented his fine arguments for torture. And he seems to be such a nice man on TV. Just like Mr. Lieberman. Who knows what will happen if someone new actually gets some power, or a voice? Stick with the incumbents.

All I can say is, don’t buy it. Surely enough people are fed up, at this point, to give democracy a chance one more time. There’s a Democratic Party on the ballot. Vote for the process.

–Bill Hicks

Photo credit: Gerald Herbert/AP

Economic Secession (Update 2)

Back a few decades people used to talk about how New York City or San Francisco or wherever might as well saw themselves off from these here Uniteds because they just didn’t fit in. It was a kind of Republican sneer, but the image was somehow vivid. I live in the Research Triangle, a kind of amorphous region that definitely includes Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, and, as well, a number of other communities, some inside the imaginary triangle formed by those three major towns, some outside the lines but, well, still in the stadium at least. One way to tell who’s in the Triangle is to look at the Area Code. If it’s 919, you’re probably in. 210 and you’re heading towards Wilmington and the Sand Hills. 336 and you’re in the Piedmont Triad. 252 and you’re Down East.

Back ten years or so Siler City got moved from 919 to 210. There were complaints, and we got our 919 back. What that meant was that the whole of Chatham County, west to east, north to south, all “faced” towards the gravity of the Triangle. Bidness was mostly done in that direction, and folks who were looking to buy a piece of rural land to build a house on—or for a few movers and shakers, a bigger piece of land to build a subdivision on—saw Chatham County as in the ambience.

But the people who have sat on the Town Board of Siler City since before Aunt Bea moved there to retire haven’t paid much attention to all this fooferrah about the Research Triangle. Luther Hodges, who dat? They, or their parents, are after all First Citizens of Siler City, a town that grew up at a crossroads back in the late 1800s, and developed its economy on textiles and furniture making and, when I first moved here in 1978, Chatham Dog Food. Siler City officially didn’t much care about the 919 Area Code. They remembered that dog food plant that burned down in about 1981 and still stunk up the place until after Reagan finally left office. Indeed, there’s still a big vacant block in the middle of downtown.

We all know what happened to textiles. They left NC about the same time Reagan left government for the funny farm. Around here we got big chicken processing plants staffed with thousands of Mexicans, mostly of alleged illegal entry status. (We like our cheap chicken in this heah America.) But the Town Fathers have been fretting about getting some kind of new industry ever since that dog food plant went up in smoke, and they don’t really count a nice winery than came in so close to Siler that they put Siler City in the name of the wine. Maybe it’s the alcohol issue—Chatham was dry when I moved here. Maybe it’s just that wine is too “cultured,” too outside, or just too outside the imagination.

At any rate, next Monday, June 5, Siler City’s commissioners are going to vote Siler City right out of the Research Triangle. They’re going to install a major new business, a heavy industry that generates a lot of noise, dust, and traffic and will be operating for at least 75 years, within earshot of the Siler City post office. This business, ISP Minerals, will probably lower the water table in an already dry part of the county, since quarries are fundamentally big well shafts—that’s why quarries fill up with water. The grinding and blasting will be going on pretty much 24/7, and the dump trucks will number about 300 per day. The plant, which will produce those tiny dyed rocks that are painted onto asphalt roofing shingles, will stand some ten stories high. There will be new rail traffic on that line that runs right through the heart of town. Running a Winery beside such a business will not be possible, and Horizon Cellars of Siler City will close. Probably other heavy industry will arrive, as soon the Siler City area will be a perfect location—each new grinder and polluter will say, “look at ISP, y’all were fine with that.”

There will probably be some new jobs a-comin’ too. There will be some guys running outside heavy equipment, and some other guys running inside heavy equipment. There will be a handful of nice fellows in suits who will go to the Baptist Church or the Methodist Church. There will not be unions, because North Carolina and unions are like oil and water. There will also not be any more of those folks from the Research Triangle who are looking for a nice piece of rural land to live on. Pittsboro will be known as the Edge of RTP. Out here in “deep Chatham,” we’ll be in the foothills, or the edge of the sandhills. I wouldn’t be surprised if we get that 210 Area Code eventually. It doesn’t much matter, and ISP Minerals will surely have an 800 number.

Eventually, the town as a whole is going to notice that plant. I think the blasting and the general roar will be quite audible from the Post Office steps, as will the dust on some days. The audible presence will be most noticeable from the Siler City Country Club, which looks like it abuts the quarry property. Might be some of the Town Board belongs to the Club? Maybe that’ll make for some spirited conversation over the G&Ts five years out.

Nobody much who’s an adult today will see the end of ISP-Minerals, though most of us will see the spring at Mount Vernon Springs stop, at last, after running for longer, probably, than there was a United States. So remember this day, Monday, June 5. The day Siler City left the Triangle. And don’t blame ISP Minerals either. It was Siler City that cranked up the chain saw and sawed off the limb they were sitting on. –Bill Hicks

[photo from www.swapmeetdave.com/Humor/Workshop/Chainsaw.htm ]

--Bill Hicks

See also:
Part 1 of this topic: Data Mines and Rock Quarries
Part 3 of this topic: Yes Men
From the Chatham Journal Weekly: Will ISP Minerals be a good neighbor?

‘Retha

I was giving a fiddle lesson last night while the big final American Idol show was on, and after my student left I went into the back room and turned on the other TV, which was on the local public network, and there was this old “American Masters” program about the life of Aretha Franklin. Talk about an antidote to the sugar high. Talk about reality based life.

Aretha is so completely the real thing. She wasn’t dreaming of being a “star,” she was a star and simply was searching for the outlet to her audience. There was never a shred of doubt, from when she was just a kid singing in her dad’s church. Everyone knew it too. No one had any doubt. Martin Luther King knew it. When she began to receive awards, in 1967, he came by to give her a kiss on the podium. Ray Charles knew it. He showed up at a gig she was doing at Fillmore West, sitting in the back not to be noticed. She heard he was there and got him up on stage. When she sits down at the piano on her first Atlantic recording session in Muscle Shoals, all the studio professionals knew instantly “there would be no musical troubles at all.” Keith Richards says the same thing twenty years later: “We got her to play piano because she’s so good on the keyboard we knew she’d hold everything together.” Eric Clapton says, “she uses her voice like an instrument, never settling on a note, but climbing up to it, and past, and back below.”

The American Masters show is extremely well done. My only complaint would be that it is just too short. All the musical excerpts, which have to be excerpts just so the show will not go on into the wee hours, could really have been full performances in my book. But then I’m a musician. Aretha, long may you live!

It put the whole Idol thing in such perspective. Poor Taylor, the winner: a charming lad who can get loose enough to sing, but who doesn’t really know what to sing beyond a small range of stylings he’s picked up from people like Elton John, who got them in the first place from Ray Charles and Aretha. Poor Katherine, the runner up: a beautiful voice, a beautiful face, and she can sing “Over the Rainbow,” but she seems to be totally detached from most other lyrics, and also seems to drift away as she sings, thinking some airy thoughts, forgetting that there are words coming out of her mouth. One presumes that she picked “her first single,” “Destiny.” The song killed her last chance of besting Taylor. For that matter, poor Carrie Underwood, who seems to have just one song up her sleeve, and it’s a weird one at that, where the idea seems to be that in a crisis you “give Jesus the wheel.” Gawd, please, no mas, no mas. Take the fuckin’ wheel, take it now, turn into the skid, turn into the skid.

American Idol, this time around, came back to earth I think. It had never left of course. I’m hoping though, that this time the public gets it. It’s a talent show, it’s a random fiddle contest. There’s going to be some people who are better than some others, because it’s grading on the curve. There’s going to be the sick entertainment of the people at the beginning of the adventure who have no earthly clue at all. There’s going to be the sick entertainment of people dreaming big, hoping desperately, and being dashed to earth, Icarus in weekly installments.

But please, can we all keep in mind that there is such a thing as real talent. Talent that doesn’t need a show like this, doesn’t need Simon and Randy and Paula and Fox Network and neon and… where the hell do those audiences come from that they get, with all these people in ecstasy over almost nothing? How do we all forget Aretha. How can we even watch if we didn’t forget, if we really remembered. I’m speaking for myself as well. I watched a lot of this season’s Idol.

Aretha. Forgive me.

--Bill Hicks