New York City this week outlawed smoking in parks. New York City is World Class. With 1 being not a chance and 10 a sure thing: over/under on whether our World Class uptown lunch bunch pushes for something similar here before the DNC rolls into town. Built-in waiver clause, natch, for Obama and delegates. I […]
Maybe, or maybe Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat, is talking out of both sides of her mouth. From one side, McCaskill is proclaiming bitter disappointment that Charlotte topped St. Louis in the bid to land the 2012 DNC. From the other side, McCaskill is reportedly not only breathing a sigh of relief, but was […]
It’s not clear from this report exactly what prompted Charlotte-Mecklenburg police to launch new “enhanced security measures” for local elected officials, other than some vague reference to recent shootings in Arizona and Florida. How some crazed lunatic opening fire in Arizona and claiming the lives of six people and injuring 13, including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle […]
No shocker here, and officials continue to insist it won’t cost taxpayers a boatload of cash or bring local merchants a ton of headache. We shall see, when any and all paperwork, memorandums of understanding, and agreements between the city and the DNC settle, bringing any possible side deals, subsidies or outright payments from the […]
There is absolutely no reason for Center City Partners chief Michael Smith to be pocketing $346K-plus a year, other than our city council is loaded with gullible toads lacking spine enough to buck the uptown mafia. That they’re apparently willing to sit there and swallow an arrogantly defensive rationale hustled by Smith, that his uptown […]
Opponents of an ambitious renovation planned for Quail Corners shopping center in southeast Charlotte showed up ready for a food fight at Tuesday night’s city council zoning meeting. Crosland development wants to give its 30-year-old shopping center a multi-million-dollar facelift, but the plan hinges on an expansion to include a drive-thru fast-food restaurant that company […]
No, this doesn’t have anything to do with the left smearing Sarah Palin or trying to link the Tea Party to the tragedy in Tucson; this is actual, for-real trash talk – as in garbage. If yours is starting to stack up higher than Al Gore’s carbon footprint, hang in there, help is on the […]
This is definitely not the kind of news that Mayor Anthony Foxx and the uptown crowd clawing desperately to land the DNC in Charlotte want floating around the country. It was strange and disturbing enough when reports first surfaced that Delvonte Tisdale had fallen to his death from an airplane over Boston, after breaching security […]
What happens when city and county governments shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars in lucrative salaries and bonuses to justify luring the supposedly “best and brightest” away from the private sector? Bad things happen. Take three high-profile cases from Charlotte’s entertainment circus as prime examples: the NASCAR Hall of Fame, Bojangles’ Coliseum, and Ovens […]
What could possibly go wrong? I mean aside from having two dysfunctional government entities merged into one with more consolidated power and authority, more and greater reach and scope, and more sprawling bureaucracy with less transparency and efficiency? City/County consolidation, despite professions to the contrary, isn’t about saving taxpayer dollars by shrinking government, at least […]
