Here are the five best events going down in Charlotte and the surrounding area today, July 29, 2011 — as selected by the folks at Creative Loafing.
• Sevendust at Amos' Southend
• The Sound of Music at McGlohon Theatre
• The Dysfunctional Figurines at Carolina Actors Studio Theatre
• Positively Radok exhibit at Twenty Two
• Kickoff Party for An Evening With the Stars at Dressler's
The New Bosses, aka GOP majority in the General Assembly, are up to some astonishingly cynical and arrogant tricks. In fact, the current General Assembly session in Raleigh has morphed into something different from a normal exercise in lawmaking.
Charlotteans don’t get much detailed news of how the legislative sausage is made in Raleigh — and frankly much of it is as boring as a watching a fly take a nap — but yesterday’s Sleaze-Factor-10 tactics, and the misplaced passion behind them, should be a concern for everyone in N.C. As Chris Fitzsimon of NC PolicyWatch sums it up in an excellent essay today, “This is clearly an ideological crusade now, not a legislative session.”
I’ll keep this as concise as possible. Yesterday, the N.C. House failed to override Gov. Perdue’s veto of the Voter Photo ID bill, which would make it harder for thousands of seniors and students to vote. Well, Majority Leader Paul “Skip” Stam wouldn’t hear of it. As Fitzsimon reports, Stam “immediately invoked a parliamentary procedure to keep the bill alive for another veto override vote that could happen any time before the General Assembly adjourns its short session next summer.” When Democrats expressed their outrage at this short-circuiting of the normal legislative process, Stam told them, “It’s not settled until it’s settled right.” Here is Fitzsimon again: “That says as much about the arrogance of Stam and the rest of the Republican leadership as anything else that has happened in this reactionary session.”
Now, Stam’s shenanigans are bad enough, but wait, it gets slimier. Under the guidance of House Speaker Thom “Pride of Cornelius” Tillis, the GOP made yet another procedural maneuver to get around the House vote to sustain Perdue’s veto. They moved a series of “local bills” to the Rules Committee, attempting to enact the Voter Photo ID bill on a county-by-county basis. The governor cannot veto local bills. This is an outrageous power grab, since local bills are supposed to deal with truly local matters, and aren’t supposed to be used as a scam to get around N.C.’s constitutional requirements for passing laws. These guys — Stam, Tillis, and their cohorts — have become so brazenly amoral in their running of the legislature, it’s breathtaking.
Cowboys & Aliens - Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford
Crazy, Stupid, Love. - Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling
The Smurfs - Hank Azaria, Neil Patrick Harris
Maybe. Probably. Well, that's what the Europeans think, anyway.
In good news, Charlotte is loaded with green-focused businesses ready to take the "green energy hub" idea and make it a reality. Of course, a lot goes into being a green energy hub — much more than simply producing or supporting green energy production.
Choosing "green" includes choosing products that are sustainably produced, products whose creation will often reuse some sort of waste (think recycling plastic bottles and turning them into T-shirts), use less packaging, require fewer resources to produce, etc. The more we reduce, reuse, recycle, repurpose, the fewer resources — including electricity and enormous amounts of water — required and the more we register our votes for green products and, in turn, green energy.
After all, using less is green, too.
From the EurActiv Network:Customers are becoming more aware of the environmental impact of their lifestyles and the most successful companies will be those who best respond to shoppers' desire to 'buy green', business representatives argued at a conference this week.
Social commentators agreed that low prices would remain central to business success, but insisted that modern consumers demanded more than just good value from their favourite brands.
As fears over climate change mount and Western consumption patterns continue to put a strain on the world's resources, environmentally-conscious citizens are attracted to companies that share their concerns about environmental degradation.
'Products no longer enough'
"Consumers are definitely looking for companies who do the right things. Products are no longer enough," said Tim Mobsby, vice-president for European marketing at Kellogg's.
Shoppers want details of who manufactured a product and what they believe in, and will choose brands that share their own values, he predicted.
Sustainable production is therefore gaining in importance as customers choose brands that reflect their lifestyles and worldview.
"It is going up the agenda in companies, primarily because consumers are getting more concerned," Mobsby said.
However, he cautioned that shoppers were only willing to make sacrifices up to a certain point and that price would continue to be the main driver of purchase decisions.
"Companies need to solve their collective problems simultaneously. You've got to keep the price down. The challenge is identifying consumers' needs and wants, and providing them in a way that's economically viable," the Kellogg's boss said.
Read the rest of this article here.
What in the fuck is going on in the North Carolina General Assembly?
They’re going after environmental legislation, they’re trying to add an anti-LGBT constitutional amendment to our state’s constitution, they’re going after abortion rights and adding archaic hoops for already traumatized women to jump through, and on and on.
Why are they bashing our human rights? Why are they all up in our lives, telling us what to do and allowing laws to be passed that impact our health and right to live as we wish while, out of the other side of their mouths, talking about their disdain for governmental interference?
Meanwhile, polls indicate time and again that Americans support abortion rights, lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender rights, environmental regulations and more.
Citizens want our government to take care of its people, but then our elected officials — our public servants — ignore us, say no, then suppress the rights of the many in favor of profits for the few. They are effectively telling us that they’re not listening to us and that they don’t care what we want and need.
So, my last question is: What are you going to do about it?
In the event you’d like to call your state representatives and let them know what you think about their actions in the General Assembly, here’s an easy button for you.
If you're a regular visitor to our wonderful website — Clclt.com — you may have noticed that everything looks totally different. Well, your eyes aren't playing tricks on you. We've got a brand-new website.
Boo-ya.
And along with the new look, comes tons of new functionality. For example, our event listings now feature and ass-load of integration, blending in content like reviews, related locations and more. So, please go ahead and look around.
While you're looking around all the newness, you will undoubtedly see several glitches, malfunctions, broken links and missing content. (Hey, it happens.) That said, help us out: If you see any problems, leave a comment (under this post) or e-mail us at backtalk@creativeloafing.com and let us know.
Anyway, thanks for visiting the new digs. Let's hope this transition to a brave new world doesn't involve too many hiccups.
Here are the five best events going down in Charlotte and the surrounding area today, July 27, 2011 — as selected by the folks at Creative Loafing.
• Mamma Mia at Belk Theater
• Steve-O at The Comedy Zone Charlotte
• Shiprocked with Scott Weaver at Snug Harbor
• Patchwork exhibit at Lark & Key Gallery
• The Golden Age of English Art at Mint Museum Randolph
Anyone else remember when Charlotteans were overwhelmingly pro-schools, pro-teachers and pro-education? Im starting to think I imagined that era, thats why Im asking. Todays news features a local headline CMS adding 500 jobs this fall that once upon a time, would have been generally greeted as great news, especially considering that CMS made 320 employee cuts at the end of the last school year. And a good number of people are celebrating the public school systems more-money news, but as always in these weird times, the fact that CMS is hiring more people after making earlier, draconian cuts is the perfect chance to gripe. Thats right, gripe. State Sen. Bob Rucho, R-Grouchville/Matthews, co-chair of the Senate Finance Committee, accused CMS of playing politics by warning of school system layoffs while the GOP was cutting school budget money. County Commissioner Bill James has, for some time, accused the school board of overstating its money woes in order to grab more county dollars.
Read the story linked above and it becomes obvious that the real problem comes from the screwy budget process, in which CMS must estimate how much money it will get from the county and state before those bodies have even made their decisions.
These days, however, right-wing carping is almost to be expected. The sad, and frankly disturbing truth is that American conservatives seem to have evolved over the past few years into a new species plagued by kneejerk anti-education reflexes, and, like it or not, a strong dose of nihilism (think of Tea Party types who want the federal government to default so it will bring the house down "treason," anyone?). When it comes to today's angry right, teachers are the new bad guys, and the value of public education itself is questioned for a classic example, check out this January commentary by national right-wing warhorse Phyllis Schafly arguing believe it or not against promoting college education.
Locally, school board member Trent Merchant apparently reacted to the criticism of CMS' good news with the same kind of are you shitting me? shake of the head I had: "I think we ought to be celebrating, not wondering why we didn't fire more people," Merchant said.
Heres an item that combines three of my favorite things to write about: the Tea Party movement, my lovely home state of South Carolina, and low-rent crooks. It seems that the president of the Grand Strand Tea Party at the S.C. beach, Anthony Trinca, 61, and his son Michael, 23, were arrested yesterday for allegedly selling pirated versions of Photoshop, the Rosetta Stone language programs, and various kinds of Microsoft software. WMBF News in Greenville, S.C., reports that police say the political pirating pair personally copied the software at Anthony Trincas home in Myrtle Beach and sold the stolen materials through Craigslist. They were each released on a $5,000 bond.
To cut to the chase, heres the kind of idiots were dealing with here: the Grand Strand Tea Party website goes ballistic over a supposed terrible, secret government plot to "integrate" the U.S., Mexico and Canada into one humongous country a favorite far-right paranoid fantasy that dates to the 1990s and the NAFTA treaty, and has been disproved and discredited about three zillion times. TalkingPointsMemo also mentions that part of the Grand Strand Tea Party site still clings to birtherism (because clearly, Trinca knows a little something about fakes) by claiming that President Obama's Birth Certificate Faked so bad it had to be done on purpose!" And what do you wanna bet that this sad-ass pair see their actions as rebellious and freedom-loving?
From The Daily Good:
Our current food system is decidedly not awesome: it subsidizes food that makes us sick and makes it difficult to get ahold of anything fresh. But a micro-grant foundation, called Awesome Food, that launched last week is trying to make it better. Starting next month, it intends to give out $1,000 per month to further food awesomeness in the universe. If you get your application in by August 5, you could be the winner of the first round of money.According to the website, the no-strings attached grant could fund a variety of projectseverything from educating the public about DIY farming to creating an ad-hoc eatery in a subway car."
Learn more on The Awesome Foundation for the Arts and Sciences' website. Here's a snippet:
The microgrants are provided by the trustees. Right now, Awesome Food is also taking applications for new trustee slots that may open up. If you are interested, please fill out the application form.
If you decide to apply, best of luck to you. And, we'd love to hear about your proposal.