One of the nice things about modern Progressivism is the reliable use of the race card to further public policy enlightenment. That card was played at a recent “Good Neighbors” meeting between the InterFaith Council For Social Services of Chapel Hill (IFC) and the Homestead Park Area Neighbors (HPAN) and the ABetterSite folks (ABS).

Pulpsters should remember the back door dealing involving the IFC, then Chapel Hill Mayor Foy, and UNC–Chapel Hill. In order to enhance town and UNC property values in the Chapel Hill business district, UNC offered to lease remote (to the business district) land on Homestead Road to Chapel Hill, which in turn would lease the land to the IFC. Local Progressives approved this back room, private deal because it was their politicians in the smoke filled room. Public discussion and sunshine rules are only necessary when dealing with non-Progressive politicians.

After the Town Council rammed the homeless shelter down the only area in Chapel Hill serving people in need (and not home to ANY of the Council members), it produced a fig leaf to wear. The IFC would have to have “Good Neighbor” planning meetings with the people who were so concerned about the shelter – HPAN and ABS. IFC agreed to have the meetings, but not to be a good neighbor while having those meetings.

At a recent (mid-December 2011) Neighbor Plan Meeting, ABS reviewed sections in IFC’s draft document entitled “Communication”, more appropriately entitled “Miscommunication”. ABS representatives asked IFC to be much more specific and to provide public reporting for issues that may occur at the new facility. According to ABS, “Neighbors said they hope for a well run facility and that monthly reporting would help identify any real concerns or trending problems that could affect nearby neighborhoods and Homestead Park.”

Pulpsters may not remember that in Spring 2011, during the Town SUP process, ABS asked IFC on the record to provide specific monthly reporting to the neighborhoods. In response, IFC wrote that the neighbor plan was the appropriate place for communications.

ABS requested that IFC include the following information as part of a Good Neighbors communications plan:
• Confirm that all clients provided positive identification during the month (valid government-issued photograph identification).
• Confirm that background checks were run on all clients.
• Log where a client in the emergency housing was allowed intake on-premises (against the no “drop-in” rule). This log should also elaborate on whether the client was admitted after the curfew along with some explanation as to why this exception to the intake process was allowed. This reporting is necessary to confirm that IFC is following its “no drop-in” policy.
• Log where a client has left the premises between nightfall and 7:00 a.m. the following morning. This reporting is necessary because IFC stated that they would not permit this to occur and that would only happen about once per year (IFC cannot legally hold anyone against their will). Neighbors have the right to know if future IFC management or volunteers fail to keep this promise that IFC has made.
• Log when law enforcement, fire protection and other emergency personnel have been called to the premises.
• Log when IFC has knowledge of a resident or recent client being charged with a crime that occurred on or off premises.
• Provide an anonymized accounting of residents who are on parole and for what crimes.
• Provide all of the above on a monthly basis as long as the facility is in operation.

Can you guess what IFC did with this request? All of these items are homeless. They are not part of the IFC Good Neighbors communications plan.

It gets better, as reported by the ABS site. At the Good Neighbors meeting one staunch Progressive IFC supporter said he would like a provision in the Plan that would ”insure that no neighbors would burn a cross on the IFC shelter's lawn”. Ah yes, let’s play the race card when all else fails.

When a decidedly non-Progressive neighbor pointed out that language such as “burning a cross” was out of line, the Progressive IFC supporter said it was appropriate and stood by their remarks. Apparently, those seeking to eliminate racism can’t get beyond skin color in judging the reasonableness of someone’s non-racial request for non-race based information. (That's right, no neighbor asked for any racial information on the shelter inhabitants.

Such good neighborly remarks were enhanced by an IFC employee. In the final moments of the meeting that person said, ”When I hear what you people are saying it makes me sick to my stomach.”

Asking for complete and accurate information makes one sick to their stomach, but playing the race card doesn’t. How Progressive!

Seriously, should the Progressive educators that dominate the Chapelboro school system abandon their failed, over-managed, highly expensive, and underachieving (considering the feedstock) system of “enabling” students? There are other alternatives.

Let’s look at the one used in Finland and how it performs, as opposed to the NEA-driven US model.

Finnish children don't start school until they are 7. Elementary school students get 75 minutes of recess a day in Finnish, versus an average of 27 minutes in the US.

They rarely take exams or do homework until they are well into their teens. In fact, the children are not measured at all for the first six years of their education.

There is only one mandatory standardized test in Finland, taken when children are 16.

All children, clever or not, are taught in the same classrooms. 30% of children receive extra help during their first nine years of school. The difference between weakest and smallest students is the smallest in the world. Science classes are capped at 16 students so that they may perform practical experiments every class.

The school system is 100% national government funded, the equivalent of being 100% North Carolina state funded, and not locally funded. Finland spends around 30% less per student than the United States. The average starting salary for a Finnish teacher was $29,000 in 2008, compared with $36,000 in the United States. However, high school teachers with 15 years of experience make 102% of what other college graduates make, compared with 62% in the US. There is no merit pay for teachers.

93 percent of Finns graduate from high school,17.5% higher than the US. 43% of Finnish high-school students go to vocational schools. 66% of students go to college, the highest rate in Europe.

Teachers are selected from the top 10% of college graduates. In 2010, 6,600 applicants vied for 660 primary school training slots. All teachers in Finland must have a masters degree, which is fully subsidized. Teachers only spend 4 hours a day in the classroom, and take 2 hours a week for “professional development”. Teachers are given the same status as doctors and lawyers

Finland has the same amount of teachers as New York City, but far fewer students, 600,000 students compared to 1,100,000 for New York. The national curriculum is only broad guidelines.

In an international standardized measurement in 2001, Finnish children came top or very close to the top for science, reading and mathematics. It's consistently come top or very near every time. Despite the differences between Finland and the US, it easily beats countries with a similar demographic. Neighboring Norway, of a similar size and featuring a similar homogeneous culture, follows the US model and achieves similar inferior rankings compared to Finland.

So Chapelboro educators and the UNC education model mill, up for a change? Anyone? Anyone?

For the longest time modern Progressives have warned the non-Progressive unwashed about the power of language. Some words or phrases have been proscribed from socially and politically acceptable speech. For example, the “N” word was wiped from the American vocabulary.

Well, not quite. Progessives were able to suspend logic and make exceptions. If your skin had the right color, then Progressives felt you could still use it. That's right. In a form of verbal reparations, if you were deemed to have sufficient African-American blood in your veins (a truly perverse flip of the old racist miscegenation distinctions), then you could use the “N” word.

Apparently, Progressives have taken the “N” word exception to heart and amplified the coterie of words and phrases that they can use to attack those with whom they disagree. None other than local Chapelboro intolerance expert, Ms. Ruby Sinreich has graciously shown us the hypocrisy and intolerant face of modern Progressivism.

Ms. Sinreich attended a meeting of the Chapel Hill social engineering charade, otherwise known as the Chapel Hill 2020 Our Town Our Vision program. She did not like what she heard. She was apparently appalled that some people, who were neither homosexual, of a dark enough complexion, nor poor enough for her taste, dared to speak their minds. They would like to see a future Chapel Hill that is different from Ms. Sinreich's phantasmagoria. Ms. Sinreich had to share her disgust with the rest of the world through that self-absorption social media mirror, otherwise known as Twitter.

The self-described “progressive activist, local politico, grassroots organizer, network thinker, geek, Buddhist, mom” twitted the following message. “Someday I want to go to a meeting where straight, white affluent men don't have the assumption that their ideas are a gift to the world.”

Wow, it’s okay to bash someone for no other reason than the basis of their sexuality, their skin color, and their material possessions. You just have to have the “right” (or is it wrong) sexuality (heterosexuality), skin color (a lighter shade of pale), and material success (more than Ms. Sinreich) in order to be fair game for Progressive namecalling!

At least Pulpsters can encourage Ms. Sinreich to follow her mental perambulations in one regard. “Human beings are making me incredibly sad lately. I need to go on a long retreat. Or go live under a quiet rock somewhere.”

Please, Ms. Sinreich, go do so. No one is stopping you.

One of the hallmarks of modern Progressivism is the ability to divert one’s own failings and mistakes into acts by the unwashed, non-Progressive others surrounding you. Combine that with the Progressive urban smart growth mantra of saving the greater environment by destroying your local environment (at a profit), and you have serious folly in the making.

Mr. Timothy Toben recently announced his turn towards civil disobedience to “fundamentally alter America’s direction”. Naturally, he is in support of the Occupy movement and its stated purpose to redistribute wealth in America.

What? A wealthy real estate developer is for redistributing wealth? Was he going to redistribute the wealth of his Chapel Hill Greenbridge project? Mr. Toben stood to make a lot of money for a high rise, mixed use building that would have increased the local residential population substantially. There was no mention of the public sharing in the profits from Greenbridge when it was approved. Why now?

Mr. Toben is more inclined to redistribute wealth after having his own wealth redistributed. He and his partners have lost their interest in Greenbridge to the financing bank, Bank of America. Having taken a chance on the wheel of commercial capitalism and lost, Mr. Toben is now for civil disobedience to forever alter that system.

Mr. Toben now openly declares that, “Our culture is destroying our planet. We watch and participate in the slow poisoning of our children, fed a diet of processed food, processed news and processed education. Few children experience the natural world with the kind of intimacy that we and our parents did.”

What? Wasn’t Mr. Toben building a high density building in an urban environment? How was that going to “help children experience the natural world with the kind of intimacy” Mr. Toben enjoys in his tax reduced, Shangri-La country estate outside of town? Is Progessivism about lecturing to people about how their lives should be more natural while forcing them into more unnatural urban environments?

Mr. Toben also argues that “the mainstream environmental movement has failed to slow the industrial juggernaut that puts our planet and the children of all species in peril.” Wasn’t Mr. Toben part of that environmental movement, locally portrayed under the mask of the Orange-Chatham Sierra Club? Didn’t these “environmentalists” applaud Greenbridge? Wasn’t Greenbridge part of the “industrial juggernaut that puts our planet and the children of all species in peril?”

Interestingly, Mr. Toben takes little responsibility for his handling of the Greenbridge construction loan. He got his construction monies in July 2008. Three months later, the financial system tanked. Did he stop construction? No. Had he spent all the money? No. Did he go to the financing bank and ask to restructure the loan until the financial economy straightened out? No. He continued on with Greenbridge, believing in an urban tower of dreams. If they built it, others would come…and buy!

Three years later, with Greenbridge built and few buying, Greenbridge was foreclosed upon by the bank. Luckily for Mr. Toben and his partners, they did not go personally bankrupt. Greenbridge was a separate legal business entity from themselves. Say, isn't that part of the evil harangued by the Occupy movement?

Did Mr. Toben take personal responsibility for making a bad business decision? In his own words, “Two months ago, I went to Washington, D.C., and participated in the 350.org protest of the Keystone XL Pipeline outside the White House. Like others who think that pumping dirty tar sands oil over aquifers and farmland is nuts, I was arrested and taken to the Anacostia jail. It was a small act of civil disobedience, but a long way from my service on President Obama’s National Finance Committee in 2008.”

Maybe Mr. Toben will finally address the real issue behind the resource consumption dilemma facing the world, too many people. Or does that issue remain a taboo for modern Progressives to address? Maybe Mr. Toben will finally address the modern Progressive penchant for increasing America’s population without end, in the hopes that uncontrolled borders and uncontrolled and subsidized reproduction will further political Progressive power. Or does the buying of votes through unsustainable public policies also remain a taboo for modern Progressives to address? Maybe Mr. Toben will address the fact that Progressive developers can be as much “the devil” as the non-Progressive developers and the banks that finance all of them.

Maybe, but then again, maybe not.

In a recent Chapel Hill News guest column, Carrboro Mayor Mark Chilton wraps himself in the khadi (homespun garb) of Gandhi, explains ancient Sanskrit linguistics and expounds his Scot-Irish Satyagraha, non-violent philosophy. Pulpsters can read on and decide for themselves whether or not the 2012 local election campaign season has begun.

Mayor Chilton tells how he was standing on the banks of his capitalist real estate venture, Swepsonville Hydro LLC, to use public waters to enrich his own pockets. (He wants to run a small hydroelectric turbine on property he purchased in Swepsonville, where the Haw River is dammed, and to sell the electrical power generated to Duke Energy. Another example of public resources benefitting the privileged few. Query, how would the Occupy Chapel Hill anarchists view Mr. Chilton’s hydro project?)

He was concerned the standoff at the Yates Garage could result in a “bona fide riot”. So much so, “{I] jumped in my car to head back to town.”

The unfolding events were so worrisome, he “decided to drive straight down to West Franklin Street to witness whatever might unfold between 4:30 and sunset so that I would not have to rely entirely on others' accounts of what happened.” (Curious that he should pick the very time the police would move in to arrest. Must be clairvoyance.)

Did Mr. Chilton speak to the Chapel Hill police chief? He does not say. (But then why did he arrive opposite the Yates Garages just as the arrests unfolded?) Did Mr. Chilton speak to the anarchists? He does not say. (But if he had, there could have been a completely different outcome not involving the use of assault weapons.) What did he do?

“… I went to Tallulah's restaurant to order a cup of hot tea and observe what was happening. I was just inside the restaurant ordering my cup of tea, when shouting on the street drew me and a waiter outside to see what was going on. About two dozen police officers were descending on the building shouting “Get down on the ground! Everyone get down!” I paused on the sidewalk in front of Tallulah's to judge whether it would be safe to move closer.”

Ordered tea? A student of Gandhi ordered tea? Did Gandhi order tea in Gujarat while others organized villagers to improve their living conditions? Did he order tea while others responded to protestor violence in the market town of Chauri Chaura?

Ordered tea? A student of Dr. King ordered tea? Did Dr. King order tea in Albany Georgia while others marched? Did he order tea in Birmingham, Alabama while others flouted segregation laws?

No local Progressive has come forward to ask, Mayor Chilton, why didn’t you call Mayor Kleinschmidt, instead of ordering tea? Why didn’t you find out what was going to happen at the Yates Garage, instead of ordering tea? Why didn’t you talk to the Chapel Hill police chief, instead of ordering tea? Why didn’t you offer to speak to the anarchists and arrange a peaceful arrest, so guns wouldn’t be needed, instead of ordering tea?

Pulpsters should thank Mayor Chilton for presenting the true face of modern local Progressivism. Talk about non-violence, invoke Satyagraha icons, and then do nothing. Let public safety clean up the folly created by Progressive ideology.