Writing by the light of homemade chicken fat candles, technology illiterate, neo-Luddite eco-cultist, and Carrboro Alderman Sammy Slade warns humanity about the danger of allowing Duke Energy to buy Progress Energy.

“As you may know, if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, phasing out ALL coal by 2030 is a necessity. To be without more choice and dependent on a company that is of the top emitters of CO2 on the planet sets the context and provides the perspective that makes the urgency - for some serious action - even more alarming than it already is for us as elected officials in North Carolina! We need to seriously re-consider our priorities if we are to achieve what we are supposed to do as governments. Having all of our policemen and firemen ring their alarms and sirens non-stop for five years would not announce the emergency enough.”

What? Really?

None other than the bastion of Modern Progressivism, the New York Times, reports that the merger will allow the new CEO Rogers to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Also, the larger company will have better credit and more leverage to tackle larger capital intensive projects, like improved and more efficient transmission, carbon capture and storage, and new nuclear power plants.

Oh well, why bother with facts, when you can indulge in promoting your eco-cultist “Carbon Dioxide at 350 PPM” faith as public policy?

One can only imagine Mr. Slade’s ancestors complaining about how global warming was melting the mile-high ice over Manhattan some 14,000 years ago and changing the tundra-like climate of where North Carolina now exists. But wait, no human lived in North America until after the Laurentian ice sheet melted!

Facts sure are pesky.

More than enough has already been written regarding the senseless tragedy in Arizona. A mentally unbalanced, paranoid schizoprenic shot U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords and many innocent bystanders. One of the downsides of the instant communication age is that everyone can provide an opinion about anything. You now can know when that goofball from high school you couldn’t stand goes to bed in real time and what he or she is having pass through their brain in a stream of consciousness.

However, the Pulp couldn’t pass up letting Carrboro Mayor Mark Chilton further reveal his true nature. Apparently, Mr. Chilton couldn’t resist dropping an F-Bomb over the Giffords tragedy. “Shooter, you probably think you did this for your country, but like Timothy McVeigh you are America’s worst enemy. You don’t deserve the kind of civilized trial and punishment that you will end up with. F*** you.”

Ater a few days to engage in sober reflection, if so desired or capable, Mr. Chilton stood by his choice of words. ”I don't think there's anything wrong with expressing my gut reaction to such a turn of events. I think Loughner ought to get a fair trial like anybody, but that's different from what he deserves.” (See The Chapel Hill News F-bomb Apologia.) Curious words from a mayor who doesn't believe that those offending his mayoral actions of self interest deserve a fair trial.

Truly it’s Progressivism at its finest. Sadly, Mr. Chilton’s attitude comes as no surprise to the Pulp. In Chapelboro, it’s the Progressive way or an F-Bomb assist onto the highway.

One man’s locavore is another man’s predatory outside business. Progressives are all into the locavore movement. You know, it’s better to consume something made locally at a higher price than something made non-locally. But there’s the rub. What does the word “local” mean? Is Raleigh not local because it’s over 30 miles away? Is Charlotte not local because it’s about 200 miles away? Is Danville not local because although it’s closer than Charlotte, it’s in another state, Virginia? (Progressives can't discern the folly and humor in watching them drive to locavore rallies in foreign made cars.)

How about the effect of Progrssive businesses located within ten miles of each other?

White Cross is a rural community located about ten miles west of Carrboro. A recent announcement cited the closing of Harry's, Great Earth Vitamins, Chix on Stix and White Cross Postal Station. Harry’s had a locavore business model. It featured locally grown organic produce along with local hand-made crafts. Maple View Farm, Loco Pops, Vista Wood Bison Ranch, Calico Eggs, Cackalacky, I Love Healthy Chocolate, Suki's Blends, Send Out Cards, Charlie's Soap, Carolina Brewery, Benjamin Winery, Iron Gate Winery and Silk Hope Winery, Rock of Ages Winery and The Bagged Lunch Company all had a presence in the store, just like they do in Carrboro.

You couldn’t get more Progressive than these businesses. Yoga, tai chi, business roundtables were conducted in the community room. Musicians performed outside on the porch.

Why did they go under? Competition. From where? Carrboro! Yes, the Carrboro locavore businesses provided everything that the White Cross locavore businesses provided, plus more selection and at a lower cost.

Free enterprise is a bitch.

The country is in the midst of grappling with massive debt and a crumbling economic base. No better example of how we got into this mess can be found than the announcement of an Energy Efficiency Revolving Loan Fund by Chapelboro.

On the surface the Fund sounds like a great idea. Let’s loan money at cheap rates to local small businesses and residences so people can increase their energy efficiency. The money won’t cost Chapelboro anything because it comes from the federal government! (Progressives aren’t the sharpest Ginzu knife in the financial knife block. They can’t connect the fact that the federal government taxed locals for that loan money and subtracted a substantial “shipping and handling” fee to return it. No matter, the program feels good.)

A total of about $200,000 is being dispersed. Carrboro got a $55,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy through the Southeastern Energy Alliance. Chapel Hill got about $150,000.

So what are the towns going to do?

In Carrboro, businesses and nonprofits with fewer than 50 employees can apply. A minimum loan of $1,500 at 3 percent interest over 10 years can pay for new upgrades to heating and cooling systems, lighting, insulation, roofs, appliances, water heaters, windows and motors. Businesses must provide one year of utility bills as part of their application. When the work is complete, it will be verified through an on-site inspection and utility bills for the next three years.

Chapel Hill will use the money mostly for residential upgrades. There’s no better way to buy votes!

Now here’s the kicker. The external cost of administering this program will be $53,100. Chapel Hill and Carrboro are paying Clean Energy Solutions Inc. $53,100 to manage the program. That’s 25% of the grant being used to administer the grant. Sustainability in action! Don’t worry, the internal municipal cost of administering the grant won’t be counted.

No word on why local businesses and residences couldn’t have simply been granted tax credits for these same energy efficiency actions. Cost of administration? Nothing.

North Carolina is moving up in the sophistication of its culture within the USA. According to The Daily Beast, North Carolina is now the fifth most corrupt state in the nation.

The state has a number one ranking for fraud, a number two ranking for embezzlement, a number seven ranking for forgery and counterfeiting, a number twenty two ranking for racketeering and extortion, and a number thirty six ranking for public corruption. It’s the combination of rankings that propels the state to its number five post. (The Daily Beast is an American news reporting and opinion website founded and published by Ms. Tina Brown, former editor of “Vanity Fair” and “The New Yorker”, as well as the short-lived “Talk Magazine”.)

Of course, The Daily Beast has little appreciation of the culture of North Carolina. If the editors realized that the tradition of public crusaders against public corruption basically doesn't exist in North Carolina on the local level. A county district attorney and judge are more likely to sweep the criminal error and omissions of their political friends under the political rug than to hold them accountable.

The public understands this tradition. A 2009 Elon University poll of 563 state residents found that 73 percent of respondents think corruption is prevalent among elected officials. According to 65 percent of those polled, elected officials are more concerned for themselves than the best interest of the public, and 67 percent said corruption is becoming more common among North Carolina public officials. More than half of the respondents to the Elon Poll said corruption among North Carolina elected officials is more common today than 10 years ago but most appear to trust North Carolina legislative bodies more than national legislative bodies.

Let’s look just at the bastionof Modern Progressivism in North Carolina, the North Carolina University System, six scandals in seven years. Since 2003, high-level financial indiscretions have been discovered at six UNC campuses. In all cases, they were serious enough to contribute to the resignations of chancellors (although two chancellors had already left).

2003 East Carolina University - A $4.6 million federal grant from the National Library of Medicine was financially mismanaged.

An associate vice chancellor of student housing, Emanuele Amaro embezzled $84,000 and received a suspended sentence.

2004 UNC School of the Arts - The vice chancellor for finance and administration had violated UNC policies in receiving more than $90,000 in consulting and expense payments over 13 years. The controller of the North Carolina School of the Arts Foundation admitted that she had misled auditors about these payment. The vice chancellor made unauthorized transfers of land held by the foundation to a nonprofit corporation he controlled. According to the audit, he “misapplied over $285,000 from the sale of the land.”

The vice chancellor and the dean of the filmmaking school received payments from a nonprofit corporation, the NCSA Unity Development Corp., in violation of UNC regulations.

Money from the N.C. School of the Arts Foundation was diverted to administrators’ discretionary accounts; excessive overtime pay was made with insufficient documentation (for example, $69,112 over 29 months to an employee who earned about $40,000 per year); and the rules of the employee loan program were disregarded. Fayetteville State University

2007 Fayetteville State University - Accounting was chaotic. Cash was understated by $831,825, accounts payable understated by $657,926, and student tuition and fees revenue by $2,224,826. Too many people had access to the entire purchasing and payment process.

2007 N.C. Agricultural & Technical State University - An audit identified $2 million in mismanaged funds. Questionable payments of about $500,000 were made from a program funded by the federal Office of Naval Research. Some were payments for excessive travel expenses for family members of the program manager.

An administrative assistant in the Natural Resources and Environment Design Department made $101,000 in unauthorized payments. That person pled guilty to misusing funds.

The former vice chancellor for information technology and telecommunications misappropriated $87,000 in funds from rebates on computer purchases. He also directed a contract to his executive assistant’s mother.

Revenues of $380,000 from a beverage vending contract were transferred to the chancellor’s discretionary fund and used for purposes such as artwork, travel for the former chancellor’s wife, and foundation or alumni events.

2004 North Carolina Central University - NC Central started operating an unauthorized satellite campus at a church in Lithonia, Georgia. It started with a memorandum of understanding signed by Chancellor James Ammons and the chief operating officer of the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, which was headed by a trustee of NC Central. In 2008 when the scandal broke, neither the University of North Carolina’s president, Mr. Erskine Bowles, nor the Board of Governors knew about the school, although university policy requires approval of any off-campus program.

2008 North Carolina State University - In 2005, through intermediaries, then North Carolina Governor Mike Easley pressured NCSU to hire his wife, Mary Easley, primarily to run a seminar series. She got an 88 percent increase in Easley’s pay on July 1, 2008.

If you wish to report on corruption in North Carolina, there is somewhere you can go. The Foundation for Ethics in Public Service, Inc. owns and operates the ReportPublicCorruption.org website.

In most of North Carolina, the resignation of a proven economic development director who can “deliver the goods” would be a clear loss for the community.

However, Orange County is not like the rest of North Carolina. Here Progressives rule. According to Progressive ideology, all economic development is not equal. Only certain economic development is wanted. An economic director either drinks the Cool-Aid and develops a sense of retail snobbery or they hit the highway. As a result of such applied ideology over the last two decades, the County has dug itself into a hole. Orange County depends on property taxes for 76% of its general fund budget, or operating revenue. About 86% of the property taxes is residential. Compare that to 58% for Durham Conuty and just 49% for Alamance County.

Mr. Bradly Broadwell lasted all of two years. Even in these uncertain economic times of the Great Recession he willingly gave up a local municipal job paying $96,044.

The Pulp forecast troubled waters for Mr. Broadwell unless he drank the juice. In 2008, Mr. Broadwell was quoted as saying ”I don't see populist economics being discussed. I see Ph.D. economics being discussed.” In a university dominated economy those words would only inflame local Progressive officials. He also admitted what the Pulp has been broadcasting, Orange County has a bad reputation for economic development. Mr. Broadwell also supported a new rural airport for Orange County, citing potential spin-off economic development. That project was killed by Progressive apologists like Mr. Marc Marcopolos.

Of course the local stenographers misrepresent the situation. The N&O intimated that the voter rejection in November of a local sales tax proposal may have been the cause of the resignation. Mr. Broadwell would have told the N&O that the passage of the tax would have been another nail in the economic development Orange County coffin. For profit businesses don’t need higher prices induced by higher taxation.

Progressive words of wisdom regarding the resignation can be seen in the brilliance of Commish Bernadette Pelissier, the new chairwoman of the Orange County Board of Commissioners. “He was new, and he might not have understood all the political ramifications.” “Political ramifications”?

Ah yes, retail snobbery at its finest, from a Progressive politician who never created a job or made a payroll in her life.

With the retirement of Mr. James Harris, Carrboro's completely ineffectual economc development director, the Pulp forecasts another smoke-filled room created disaster for economic development in Orange County. Perhaps we can have the “Owasa of economic development” to look for future folly.

It’s that time of year when prognostications are made about the New Year. The Pulp has been making you aware of the breadth and depth of the Great Recession. Local Progressive leaders continue to resist understanding the full implications of the Great Recession on public policy decisions. Why worry about spending more than you take in?

Look at the State of Illinois, home to President Obama. The “Deadbeat State” spends twice what it takes in as revenue. Pulpsters should ask their local Progressive politician, what is going to happen to the tax rate over the next four years? So far, no local Progressive official has given Orange County citizens the “heads up” on the mandatory rise in the tax rate, even if spending is held in check (an unlikely event for Progressive ideology).

Non-Progressives with financial acumen know that property tax changes generally lag housing prices by about three years, due to the timing of assessments. Here’s a chart from the Wall Street Journal charting showing tax receipts against the Case-Shiller housing value index, with a three-year lag.



Essentially, local Progressives used a housing value bubble (albeit milder than in the more frothy housing markets) to hide the true tax rates directly linked to their unsustainable spending. Of course, it’s unsustainable only so as long as you think that most of your income should NOT be spent by Progressive officials as they see fit. As long as there are checks in the checkbook, Progressives belief they can afford it.