Opening statements in accused cop killer trial begins

Published on: 7th September, 2010 |

Opening statements were presented in Mecklenburg County district court Tuesday morning in the trial of a man accused of murdering two Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officers three years ago.

Original post:
Opening statements in accused cop killer trial begins

Obama to call for $100 billion business tax credit

Published on: 7th September, 2010 |

Under mounting pressure to intensify his focus on the economy ahead of the midterm elections, President Obama will call for a $100 billion business tax credit this week, using a speech in Cleveland on Wednesday to launch what administration officials said was a new policy push. Barack Obama – Business – United States – Research and development – Tax

See original here:
Obama to call for $100 billion business tax credit

Ross speedily confirmed as President of UNC System, ACORN ties and all

Published on: 30th August, 2010 |

This is the first of a three part series examining the new president of the University of North Carolina Thomas Ross.

At a hastily convened meeting on August 26th, The UNC Board of Governors voted to appoint Thomas Ross as the next President of the more than 200,000 students and more than 30,000 staff of the university system. While relatively unknown by most state residents, Ross is well known by the politically connected, especially those on the left.

A friend to many far-left organizations and a relative novice to higher education, Thomas Ross makes for an unfortunately predictable choice to be the next President of the University of North Carolina System. From a career in law to his seven years as Executive Director of the far-left funding mechanism – Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation – and President of Davidson College for three years, Ross is set to succeed current UNC President Erskine Bowles in January 2011. What is really alarming about the North Carolina Board of Governor’s choice of Ross as the heir apparent is his long history of steering hundreds of thousands in contributions to dubious organizations like ACORN.

During his almost seven years as Executive Director of the left-wing, Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, Ross oversaw massive contributions to an enormous array of far-left liberal activist organizations. He took what was already a politically active foundation, founded by one of North Carolina’s most prominent families, and turned it into an active organizer and funder of the lefts political agenda in North Carolina. All manner of socially left organizations were on the foundation’s dole under Ross’s administration, including the radical and nefarious ACORN organization.

ACORN is an organization of community organizers with a tarnished history of fraud, embezzlement, and conflict of interest. ACORN employees have been tried and convicted of systematic voter registration fraud according to Factcheck.org. There have been reported cases of this kind of fraud in Missouri, Washington, Colorado, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and in 2007, ACORN’s Las Vegas office was even raided by state criminal investigators. In addition to fraud, co-founder Dale Rathke was found to have embezzled nearly $1 million from the so-called "charitable" funds of his organization. ACORN had strong ties to President Obama, and was actively engaged, in conjunction with other groups of identifying and turning out Obama voters in NC and across the nation for the 2008 election.

This infamous organization was heavily funded during Ross’s tenure as Executive Director of Z. Smith Reynolds. From 2004-2006, Ross pumped over $100,000 into ACORN. In 2007 alone, Ross’s last year as executive director, he contributed an additional $150,000 to the ACORN organization, "for general operating support to support and expand its North Carolina ACORN chapters." These gifts were given with the explicit caveat that the money was to be used to foster local branches of this sort of community organizing planting roots in counties across North Carolina including Wake and Mecklenburg. Ross funneled this money via the American Institute for Social Justice, a sister organization that contributed $5.6 million to ACORN’s coffers in 2008. This 2007 contribution helped to develop the infrastructure for a massive get out the vote effort to support Democratic Party efforts in 2008.

ACORN is only one example of the social leftist organizations that Ross heavily funded. Z. Smith Reynolds shelled out anywhere in the neighborhood of $16 million per annum during Ross’s tenure to groups like pro-abortion activists Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America, the American Civil Liberties Union, and homosexual advocacy groups like the Rainbow Youth Coalition (RYC) and the Equality NC Foundation.

Another interesting tidbit was the vocational switcheroo that took place upon Ross’s departure from Z. Smith Reynolds. The woman who succeeded him, Leslie J. Winner, was at the time the Vice-President of the UNC System. Three years later Ross is coincidentally elected as President of the UNC System; an interesting turn of events indeed.

After scrutinizing Ross’s record, it seems clear that the UNC System is positioned to take a decidedly left turn, and the new President’s credentials leaves much to be desired. One can only hope that the implications of his leftist background and being a neophyte to the realm of higher education won’t be passed on to the hundreds of thousands of North Carolinian students he will oversee.

Here is the original post:
Ross speedily confirmed as President of UNC System, ACORN ties and all

Judge tosses death penalty as option in cop killer case

Published on: 25th August, 2010 |

A judge removed the death penalty as a possible punishment in the trial of a man charged in the deaths of two Charlotte police officers.

Go here to see the original:
Judge tosses death penalty as option in cop killer case

Money Misplaced Again

Published on: 21st August, 2010 |

The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) was granted, during the 2010 legislative session, the authority to use $17 million in capital funds to purchase land and construct a railroad underpass leading to nowhere. The system-wide University of North Carolina budget in total for 2010-11 will be $170 million less than two years ago.

Currently, the campus of UNCG is bounded to the south by railroad tracks. The university hopes to expand its reach across those railroad tracks into the Glenwood neighborhood. The new southern boundary for the expanded campus would be West Lee St., which is one block south of the railroad tracks.

The university does own a few small parcels of land south of the railroad tracks in the Glenwood area where it plans to expand, yet none of the property has been developed for university use. Glenwood can currently be accessed from the university using two railroad crossings that are one-half mile apart.

While the expansion of the university may be assumed necessary, the railroad underpass ought to wait for a couple of reasons. First, the dreadful fiscal situation in which the state finds itself suggests that such unnecessary expenditures as a railroad underpass – where two others exist less than one-half mile apart – should be delayed. An item like the railroad underpass might be nice to have, but the costs of purchasing the property and construction do not outweigh the benefits of redirecting the funds to more important budget items such as university faculty retention and limiting tuition increases.

Furthermore, the university does not have the full approval of all Glenwood residents, meaning the issue of eminent domain could arise and a fight for property rights could ensue. Certainly the railroad underpass can wait until UNCG owns the property south of the railroad tracks. As it stands, the railroad underpass would allow students easier access to a neighborhood where there are no dormitories, laboratories or classrooms.

Without owning all of the properties necessary for expansion, how can the university ensure that all of the property owners in the area are willing to sell? According to Mike Byers, assistant vice chancellor for Auxiliary Services, the university and the Glenwood neighborhood have only reached a tentative agreement regarding the expansion. The absence of a formal agreement suggests that the university is nowhere near being assured the expansion will occur. It is a hasty decision to move forward with the $17 million underpass without assurance that expansion will happen. It very well may turn out that the $17 million is a waste.

Of course, wasting money would be nothing new for the General Assembly. This very same legislative body has spent your tax dollars on digging up old pirate ships, building teapot museums and funding cooking schools at private universities. Given the fiscal situation our state is in, the railroad underpass at UNCG should wait until campus expansion is a sure thing. As it stands, the university has $17 million to build an underpass to nowhere.

Dollars appropriated for the purpose of university expansion should have been diverted to a more appropriate use, such as holding down tuition increases, considering the budget gap that the General Assembly faced this year, which led to rather sizeable cuts to the UNC System as a whole.

See more here:
Money Misplaced Again

Next Page »