Carl Fox starts with the observation that 9 out of 10 people sitting in his court audience are young African-American males.
“What are we doing wrong that is causing so many males to end up in court and what can we do to fix the situation?”
Tag Archives: Government
Here comes the judge: The Forum – Baddour’s Question
What is the most important thing, if elected, you’ll accomplish over the next 8 years?
Adam Stein talks about how he can only serve about 1/3rd of a term (about 2 years).
Here comes the judge: The Forum – Question #2
What role should political parties play in judge elections?
Here comes the judge: The Forum – Question #1
Importance of community? Your role in the community?
Here comes the judge: The Forum – Openings
Oct. 16th’s UNC Young Democrat Superior Court 15B forum. Candidate openings.
In an effort to clean up the original post and make the page load faster, here’s a playlist version.
Here comes the Judge: The Forum
[UPDATE:] All videos have been uploaded to youTube and are available here.
Tonight, four candidates for Superior Court faced off before 24 folks that appeared to be students (grad or otherwise) and, including myself, two older folk.
Our cup runneth over. Every one of the candidates this evening was quite impressive.
While our choices can be narrowed on externalities, like Adam Stein’s preplanned obsolescence, the character, tenor, experience of these candidates came through…
[UPDATE:]
Posting videos on youTube as I process them. This is my first attempt to film an inside event. I ran into a few problems: dying batteries, filled memory cards, mystery heads popping up, bottle woman, standing candidates, Mr. Tongue clicker, etc.
I apologize to the candidates for clipping various speeches (like Carl’s opening statement which starts late due to a camera glitch). My next effort should be PRO quality ;-).
[UPDATE:]
Moved videos to separate posts to improve page loading times.
- Candidate opening statements.
- Question 1: Importance of community?
- Question 2: What roles should political parties play in judge elections?
- Judge Baddour’s question: What is the most important thing you will accomplish in the next 8 years?
- Mr. Stein’s question: What is your experience?
- Judge Fox’s question: What are we doing wrong that is causing so many [African-American] males to end up in court and what can we do to fix the situation?
- Judge Anderson’s question: How can the current system for selecting our judges (by election) be modified to better serve the public?
The forum wrapped without an opportunity for the folks in the audience to ask a question or two. That said, I appreciated the moderator’s giving the candidates enough time to fully answer.
All in all, a good forum.
I’m using a wonderful open source software (OSS) tool VirtualDub to edit the raw AVI files from my Canon S3 and convert them to YouTube (or is it GooTube) friendly 320×240 MPEG-4 XVids.
Here comes the judge, and the judge and the judge and the potential judge
I know, short notice of tonight’s (Wed. Oct. 11th, 2006) forum for Superior Court 15B candidates. The forum is sponsored by UNC’s Young Dems.
From Matt Liles OrangePoltics notice:
The Orange County Young Democrats will hold a forum with all four candidates for Superior Court on Wednesday, Oct 11th at 7pm in Room 4085 of the UNC School of Law.
Directions to the Law School are available at www.law.unc.edu. Parking is available in the lot adjacent to the law school after 5pm and additional parking is also available in the School of Government lot.
The candidates are:
- Judge Allen Baddour – current sitting judge (and a candidate I strongly endorse for November)
- Judge Charles Anderson – who I endorsed in the primary.
- Judge Carl Fox
- Attorney Adam Stein
I hope a few issues come up this evening:
- Mr. Stein’s inability to serve all but a fraction of a term (covered here and here by Duncan Murrell).
- Practical ideas for streamlining the court process (and maybe whack some of the costs out).
- Restoring some humanity to the justice system.
- The incredible amount of monies raised for this race (Stein is on track to beat $100K mark) and the distorting influence that has on future races.
Carl Fox, everyone tells me, has a lock. It certainly looks that way when you he spent the least, $26K, and raised the least, $28K, but was the top vote getter in the primary. That means a 3-way race among Baddour, Anderson and Stein.
Adam Stein has a quite respectable background, a solid list of endorsements, but when I talk to his supporters it always seems like they’re awarding a sinecure for a life of solid and praiseworthy work rather than enlisting someone with a strong vision for the courts future and the wherewithal to carry out the tasks before them.
This is an eight year job. Stein’s problem of a predictably foreshortened career on the bench should be addressed.
I’ve learned a bit about the work of a Superior Court district 15B judge over the last year. It is a tough job.
Our courts system is being battered, unfortunately, by rising demands. Hopefully this evening we’ll hear some innovative, practical ideas for addressing foreseeable stresses on our local court system.
A Measure of Transparency in Local Government
Mark Peters, one of the founders of Orange County political forum SqueezeThePulp and a school-focused activist, created this report card to publicly track local governments fulfillment of their stated goal of greater online efforts to promote e-democracy .
Mark’s site, OrangeRecordings, serves as a clearinghouse for podCasts of school board, council, board of alderman and other public meetings. The archival value of audio recordings and the ability for “time shifting” concerned citizens to “listen in” on proceedings should spur any elected body interested in greater transparency to deploy them.
Unfortunately, while Carrboro leads the way with a %90 rating, Chapel Hill has laid a big fat goose egg (%0).
Chapel Hill’s Town Council is still dragging their feet on using the simplest of technologies to draw citizens into the governance process. Quite unfortunate.
Great work Mark.
Pork-o-polis? Federal largesse in NC District 4
Wonder what federal monies wend their ways back to North Carolina? To local District 4?
The new online database of federal transactions, FedSpending.org, is now open for business.
A collaboration between the Office of Management & Budget (OMB), Zephyr Teachout’s Sunlight Foundation and the conservative OMB Watch, the idea is to promote greater access for persnickety citizens like CitizenWill.
The Sunlight Foundation covers our Dollarocracy.
Let’s turn first to the subject of government contracts and grants. The new database, compiled and put on the web by OMB Watch at fedspending.org, covers all federal contracts and grants issued between the years 2000 and 2005. Just how much money are we talking about here? More than $12 trillion in taxpayer money – that’s trillion with a T, not billion with a B. Not even Bill Gates has that kind of money (though naturally his company did get its share of the pie).
You can search through the millions of records by recipient name, by government agency – even by congressional district. And once you’ve zeroed in on a particular contractor, you can see at a glance which goods and services they provided to the government, and what proportion of the contracts they won were through full and open competition versus no-bid awards.
Here’s District 4 2000-2005 federal contracts.
Sample:
| Parent Company Name | Contractor Name(s) | Total Amount (for this search) |
| RESEARCH TRIANGLE INSTITUTE | RESEARCH TRIANGLE INSTITUTE; RESEARCH TRIANGLE INSTITUTE IN; RTI; SCI APPLIC INTERNATL CORP.; RESEARCH TRIANGLE INSTITUTE (DUNS 004868105); RESEARCH TRIANGLE INSTITUTE I | $186,718,197 |
| DUKE UNIVERSITY | DUKE UNIVERSITY; DUKE UNIV; DUKE UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER; OTA DAVID; DUKE UNIVERSITY (6541); DUKE UNIVERSITY CHPRE; DUKE UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CTR.; TSI MASON LABORATORIES; DUKE UNIVERSITY (0000) | $40,865,839 |
| UNIV OF NORTH CAROLINA SYSTEM | UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA A; UNIVERSITY NC AT CHAPEL HILL; UNIVERSITY NC AT WILMINGTON; UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL; UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL (1393); OFFICE OF SP | $15,158,037 |
| RHO, INC. | RHO FEDERAL SYSTEMS DIVISION | $13,486,940 |
| MCKESSON CORPORATION | MCKESSON HBOC INCORPORATED; MCKESSON CORPORATION; MC KESSON HBOC, INC; Mckesson Pharmaceutical; MCKESSON CORPORATION (7296); MCKESSON CORPORATION DELAWARE; MCKESSON AUTOMATION SYSTEMS IN; MCKESSON MED | $9,920,196 |
| CONSTELLA GROUP, INC | ANALYTICAL SCIENCES INC; CONSTELLA GROUP, LLC; UNITED INFORMATION SYSTEMS, IN; CONSTELLA GROUP LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY; CONSTELLO GROUP, INC. FORMERLY; SSC LARGE BUSINESS-NORTH CAROL; GYMR, LLC.; CO | $9,299,292 |
| PARADIGM GENETICS, INC. | ICORIA INCORPORATED; PARADIGM GENETICS, INC | $6,883,656 |
| CODA RESEARCH INC | CODA RESEARCH INC.; CODA, INC. | $6,041,000 |
| DUKE ENERGY CORP. | DUKE ENERGY CORPORATION; AMERESCOSOLUTIONS, INC; DUKE ENERGY CORPROATION; Ameresco Solutions, Inc.; DUKE SOLUTIONS INC | $5,234,898 |
| HEWLETT-PACKARD CO. | HEWLETT PACKARD COMPANY (3067); HEWLETT-PACKARD COMPANY; HEWLETT PACKARD COMPANY (1436); COMPAQ COMPUTER CORPORATION; COMPAQ FEDERAL LLC; DIGITAL EQUIPMENT CORPORATION; COMPUSA INC; AGILENT TECHNOLOGI | $4,451,695 |
| ALION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY | ALION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY; ALION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY C; Alion Science & Techn.; IIT RESEARCH INSTITUTE | $4,079,767 |
| LIBERTY ANALYTICAL CORPORATION | LIBERTY ANALYTICAL CORPORATION | $3,613,559 |
| NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIV | NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIV; NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSIT; NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY; NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY (0756); N C STATE UNIVERSITY; ITRE/NC STATE UNIVERSITY; NORTH CAROLINA STATE | $3,401,233 |
| MCNEIL TECHNOLOGIES, INC. | MC NEIL TECHNOLOGIES, INC; MC NEIL TECHNOLOGIES INCORPORATED (5583); MCNEIL TECHNOLOGIES, INC; Research and Evaluation Associates, Inc. | $3,052,046 |
| TRC COMPANIES INC | MARIAH TRC ASSOCIATES INC; TRC ENVIRONMENTAL CORPORATION; LOWNEY ASSOCIATES; TRC MARIAH ASSOCIATES INC. | $2,979,438 |
| RAO ENTERPRISES INC | INTEGRATED LABORATORY SYSTEMS,; ILS | $2,912,453 |
| HEALTH DECISIONS, INC. | HEALTH DECISIONS, INC. | $2,452,978 |
By the way, OMBWatch might disagree with my characterization of their organization.
It does bill itself as “a nonprofit government watchdog organization located in Washington, DC. Our mission is to promote open government, accountability and citizen participation” yet the first squib on their sidebar shouts “Save the Estate Tax! Let your senators know you don’t want them to take the bait–keep the estate tax intact.”
Come on!
Madison: Some Smoozing, No Snoozing.
At least, not much snoozing as participants have reported on local ‘blog OrangePolitics.org.
I appreciate the time and effort Mark Chilton, Gene Pease, Fred Black and Dan Coleman put into real-time reviews.
I hope some of our other “known” blog commenters (Anita, Linda, Aaron, Andrea, Diane ?) get in to the act.
[UPDATE:] Anita and Frances Henderson joined in.
UNC’s Board of Trustee Roger Perry: You’re Insulted?
UNC trustee and local developer Roger Perry said his sense was that UW-Madison officials essentially tell the community that the university’s mission requires it to do a certain project, and then everyone goes to work on preventing negative impacts, without trying to stop the project in general.
He said he’d like to get to that point in Chapel Hill, and that it can be somewhat “insulting” when someone not connected to UNC says they really aren’t convinced the university needs to do what it says it needs to do.
Perry is insulted when someone outside of UNC questions the whys-and-wherefores of campus development?
What the hell? Near quoting from the authoritarianism playbook, Perry says he likes a community that doesn’t question the diktat of the university – a community that just “deals” with the university’s negative impacts.
Perry appears to long for the day when citizens “shut up” and STOP SAYING they aren’t really convinced about what the university needs to do. My guess? It isn’t the citizen taxpayer questioning the “needs” as much as the citizen taxpayer that questions the “hows” that really inflames his ire.
The obvious sub-text is Carolina North.
The fine residents of our community, the hard-working taxpaying citizens of our State, deserve more than the University’s current flimsy assertions of positive financial, economic and social impacts. From a straight business perspective, for the investment demanded of our community and State, the return is hardly clear.
While I believe the University needs to expand, I have been quite clear that the justifications UNC, to-date, have offered up for Carolina North are, at best, fundamentally weak, at worse, downright disingenuous.
Roger Perry and the rest of UNC’s Board of Trustees absolutely must address the glaring absence of any reasonable, documented, calculable return on investment before I, a single North Carolina citizen taxpayer, will be convinced of the soundness of their plans.
Of course, this is the board Carolina North’s designated quarterback Jack Evans claims can’t handle reading a 15 page list of development principles for Carolina North.
What a trip for the Carolina North boys. Perry’s “shut up” is a fine bookend to Moeser’s reaction to “freelance dissent”.
Robert Seymour on Our Community’s Fit, Frail and Fragile
The fit 80+ year-old Robert Seymour has a short WCHL commentary [*MP3] on the Human Services Advisory Council’s 5-year master aging plan to help manage the greying of Orange County. He notes our county already has more than 18,000 residents over 60 years old – a figure sure to explode as the “baby boomers come on-line.”
More from Robert’s commentary [*MP3], tha Aging Advisory Board, the Orange County Human Services Advisory Council and county department on Aging.
There are numerous vacancies on the various aging related advisory boards. Please consider getting involved.
- Aging Advisory Board – 3 vacancies
- Human Services Advisory Board – 9 vacancies
Applications for these and other County advisory boards are here.
*MP3 with the kind permission of WCHL 1360AM
Madison Smoozefest: Aaron Nelson’s “Phone Call”
Fred, one of the Madison attendees, over on OrangePolitics said he didn’t like my suggestion, given the organizer’s professed desire to “build relationships” – establish “synergies” amongst the group, that, for a few folks, there was a bit more to the Madison trip than simple learning or altruistic desire.
Chamber of Commerce director and trip sponsor Aaron Nelson pegs it pretty well: “”You get to spend a lot more time with each other,” Nelson said. “And there’s something really important about the shared experience.”
“The second reason is to build relationships among our community leaders,” Nelson added. “The hope is that when you get back, and you have an issue you need help with, you can pick up the phone and call the guy you sat next to on the plane for four hours.”
Once again, as we see from today’s soon to evaporate HeraldSun, the “shared experience” (smoozing) was of driving importance to the organizers of this event.
Now, of course, other attendees have different primary goals: inclusionary zoning, how a university building a research park deals fairly and honestly with neighborhoods, downtown economic development – even panhandling.
Again, we have a great crew attending. I fully expect the time, effort and more than $100,000 spent on this trip to yield benefits for our community.
But let us not pretend that Aaron Nelson’s “phone call” isn’t part of the calculus of the Madison event.
Whether that “phone call” benefits the community, as I imagine one between Mike Collins of Neighborhoods for Responsible Growth (NRG) and UNC’s Chancellor Moeser might, or not, will be measured in time.
Sally, Kirk and Shearon-Harris
Following up on my post Shearon-Harris Offline: Who Tripped Over the Wire?, I’d like to direct your attention to two of our wonderful local ‘bloggers.
Sally Greene has two great posts on the Shearon-Harris nuke plant safety issues and the resulting spin.
First, FAIRWarning
Tonight I went to the briefing in Pittsboro on the Shearon Harris nuclear power plant, its serious and repeated fire safety violations, and the legal action that was taken today by NC WARN, the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, and the Union of Concerned Scientists to seek an emergency enforcement action from the NRC.
Second, today’s absolutely wonderful deconstruction of Progress Energy’s spin, in Shearon Harris: beneath the spin
In response to this week’s events, the community relations manager of Progress Energy was kind enough to write yesterday in an effort to persuade me that the Shearon Harris plant is safe and law-abiding. But I am sorry: this version doesn’t fit the facts. Here is Mr. Clayton’s memo, annotated by Pete MacDowell of NC WARN.
The sharply observant Kirk Ross (Exile, Cape Fear Mercury) follows the money in his post from Exile on Jones Street (why “on”?) titled Duke wants you to pay for a plant they may never build
Duke Energy and Southern are working on a new Nuke project in Cherokee County S.C. No permits have been issued, no construction work on the plant has started. They won’t even submit a request to the NRC for another year at the earliest. In fact, the plan is for the plant not to be online until 2016. Then, there’s the whole idea that a new nuke is really going to happen. Some folks like ‘em. Some folks don’t. Some folks really, really don’t.
Madison Smoozefest or Chapel Hill’s Sleazefest?
Smoozefest or snoozefest, either way this weekend’s (Sept. 24th-26th [correction]) trip to Madison by our local “usual suspects” appears to be more about building relationships at home than abroad.
Most of all, this trip is about building relationships. Not only will participants gain knowledge of what has worked and what has not worked in Madison, but a synergy will be created by our trip attendees working, traveling and discussing issues together.
This trip is not a place for any decisions to be made about our future, but rather a place to make connections and gather valuable information. Learning from the perspectives and ideas of other leaders in the community will help to ensure that our community grows and sustains itself.
Maybe joyous, interesting and possibly rewarding (or not), I hope folks aren’t going expecting to later trade upon the stronger bonds Smoozefest is supposed to engender.
Even as national scenes of “Ney Money Go” spawned by Abramoff’s scandalous behavior continue, the lure of the private/public “business” junket cannot be diminished.
And “business”, local business, forms the continuous sub-text of this jaunt.
The purpose of the Intercity Visit and Leadership Conference is to convene leaders of the Chapel Hill and Carrboro community to learn from the experiences of another successful community and to build relationships among participants that will help us successfully address our community’s challenges and opportunities.
Continue reading Madison Smoozefest or Chapel Hill’s Sleazefest?