Web rants 

This week, in place of the regularly scheduled Citizen Servatius column, CL presents excerpts from Tara's new blog (found at www.taraservatius.com):

No money for roads, Plenty for Goodyear Tire

Posted by Citizen Servatius 8/1/2007

Today, the oh-so-broke state legislature voted to give away $35 million in taxpayer money to Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.

When the state started doling out hundreds of millions of dollars this way years ago, the money initially went to lure businesses here. One problem. Goodyear is already located here. So why give them money?

The blackmail gambit worked like this. Execs at Goodyear, which employs 2,500, claimed they would close the company's Fayetteville plant and take 2,500 jobs elsewhere if the state didn't pony up. Legislators were more than happy to do so.

Goodyear will use the money to modernize its Fayetteville plant, which company officials claim is at risk of closing, state officials say.

Not that Goodyear needs the money. The company's profits are through the roof. Goodyear earned $56 million, or 26 cents per share, for the quarter ended June 30 compared with $2 million, or a penny a share, a year ago, The Associated Press reported.

State legislators call this scheme "job maintenance." They passed a bill today that would fork the money over in $3.5 million installments over 10 years.

Although Goodyear isn't named in the bill, Rep. Rick Glazier, D-Cumberland, told WRAL it is targeted at the company.

This is the same oh-so-broke state government of North Carolina that supposedly doesn't have the money to keep up with road construction. As a result, our urban roads are now the fourth most congested in the United States according to a recent study.

Without major tax increases, tackling our road problems is simply impossible, legislators and the state's major daily newspapers insist. The real problem, I suspect, is that they've blown money on everything under the sun and don't have any left.

Cinday Sheehan Slams Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police, Throws Tantrum

Posted by Citizen Servatius 7/18/2007

It's just so hard to participate in free speech in a country where you can't have those who disagree with you silenced, jailed or killed, peace activist Cindy Sheehan learned on Wednesday. Had this been Venezuela, the country ruled by Sheehan's communist dictator buddy Hugo Chavez -- whose political rivals tend to disappear or wind up dead -- local police would have simply dragged off those who disagreed with her. Sheehan apparently thought that's what Charlotte-Mecklenburg police should do as well.

After Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department officers refused to make those who disagreed with her go away, Sheehan aborted her planned protest at Bryant Park in Charlotte yesterday. Sheehan refused to speak to those who had gathered unless police removed members of the protest group Gathering of Eagles and other veterans who had come to counter her message. Sheehan later issued an angry press release slamming the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department.

"At the School of the Assassins in Columbus, Ga. and in Charlotte, N.C., we ran into similar problems: police presence that seemed to be there to foster violence," Sheehan wrote. "At both places the neo-Nazi, pro-war fascist group 'Gathering of Eagles' came out to mostly try to intimidate us from our mission."

"At Ft. Benning after we complained, the police kept them separate from us, but in Charlotte, the police refused saying that the Eagles had their rights to 'freedom of speech,'" Sheehan continued. "But the Eagles' freedom of speech has included physical threats against me and actual physical force against kids and women. When the Charlotte police were told this, they said that they couldn't keep them apart from our group until the Eagles actually did something. So I chose to stay away from the rally then go and perhaps cause them to hurt someone else because of my presence."

Sorry, Cindy. This ain't Venezuela. (But I'm sure those fleeing that dictatorship to apply for political asylum here could enlighten Sheehan on what it is really like there.)

Sheehan has apparently been spending so much time chumming around in communist dictatorships that she has become confused about how the First Amendment works back home.

"Freedom of speech is one thing, but I don't believe that the First Amendment protects violent speech, especially if it is one of the neocons or their media supporters calling for increased violence in the Middle East," Sheehan wrote in the press release. "Nothing about our movement promotes or calls for violence and it would be swell if the CPD protected everyone's First Amendment rights, not just people whom they agree with."

That's pretty snippy for a woman who didn't even bother to pay the fee beforehand to reserve Bryant Park, but then expected to have it cleared of everyone who wasn't sporting something with a "crucify Bush" slogan on it.

Last January, Sheehan and Chavez came together to slam America after a warm embrace for the cameras.

For more of Tara's blog, visit www.taraservatius.com.