If a media story is page one, above-the-fold introducing a development project, then shouldn’t the demise also be page one, above-the-fold? Not so in Progressive Chapelboro, where the boosterism never stops and all the glass is rose-colored.

In early 2007, local media announced the arrival of the UNC Innovation Center (IC) with great fanfare. It was to be the first construction on the Carolina North campus off MLK/ Blvd.Airport Drive. It was a feature story in the Triangle Business Journal.

By 11 September 2007, the News and Observer was floating stories that the town of Chapel Hill was “dragging its heels” on the IC plans.

By 28 November 2007, UNC had a public showing of the IC plans.

By 24 July 2008, UNC trustees rejected the IC design as not being “exciting enough”.

By 23 November 2008, the IC developer, Alexandria Real Estate, had put the IC plans on hold.

By 29 January 2009, the town of Chapel Hill approved a special use permit for the IC. That’s right. The approval came after the suspension was announced.

By 3 October 2010, the media announced what the smart money already knew, the IC was dead on arrival, except it never arrived.

Did the local media give the IC death the same prominence as news as the IC conception. No. It was buried inside, below-the-fold on the Chapel Hill News.

Did the local media ask UNC for an accounting? How much UNC time and money was spent on the ill-fated IC? No, no questions were asked.

Did the local media ask the town of Chapel Hill for an accounting? How much town staff time and money was spent on the ill-fated IC after the project was suspended? No, no questions were asked.

Of course, the media also fail to question Carolina North executive director Mr. Jack Evans on the astonishing numbers put forward for the new law school at Carolina North.

UNC wants to spend $95,000,000 for a 275,000 square foot palace. That’s over $345.00 per square foot. That’s $135,000 per law student. No that's not newsworthy enough to ask questions, right?

Silence is golden.

With the Carrboro governance board's (the Boa) pals’ residential and commercial real estate development plans in the proverbial toilet, the Boa must find new ways to snake into and meddle in other people’s affairs, all the while displaying the heights of their social enlightenment.

To wit, the Boa recently passed another don't-ask-us-to-pay-for-it town resolution changing someone else's behavior and not their own. UNC was asked to switch from burning coal to using natural gas. The resolution came from the presentation of a petition containing all of 25 signatures. In Carrboro, the “quality” of a petition signature was more important than the quantity. Witness how petitions having hundreds and hundreds of signatures are blithely ignored for they don't have enough quality.

What makes for quality? How about being a pal of a Boa member. If so, then you don’t need many signatures. If you are a development pal of the Boa members (as is Mr. Giles Blunden, working real estate development partner with Carrboro Mayor Mark Chilton), all the better. Say 25 signatures will do nicely.

Mr. Blunden accuses UNC of “polluting the air and threatening the health of its neighbors and the wider community.” How? The emission of 320,000 metric tons of plant food (CO2) into the atmosphere by UNC is unacceptable. (Pulpsters note that is not all of UNC's plant food, just the part produced by burning coal.)

Apparently, Mr. Blunden will be happy if only about 200,000 metric tons of plant food is emitted (plus those pesky tons emitted by non-coal fossil fuels). That’s about the amount that would be emitted if UNC switches all of its coal fuel to natural gas. Mr. Blunden provides no evidence as to why 320,000 metric tons is threatening, but 200,000 tons is not.

If Mr. Blunden and his Veridia development pal, Mr. Chilton, raise the global warming flag, then they’ll have to again ignore scientific realities. Why? Sulfate aerosols formed from burning coal actually lower atmospheric temperatures compared to just burning natural gas. Oops.

But then, Mr. Blunden conveniently ignores that his estimates of plant food savings are based on older, inefficient combustion models. That’s right! The numbers touted by those wishing to pass gas over coal for power generation are based on 1995 AP-42 numbers from the EPA. For the record, a 2000 report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, entitled “Carbon Dioxide Emissions from the Generation of Electric Power in the United States”, estimates CO2 emissions not from actual empirical measurements at U.S. power plants, but from the reported amount and types of fuel consumed. The CO2 emissions are then calculated from estimates based on the EPA AP-42 tables.

Why does this matter? Unlike natural gas (NG), coal is a far more complex fuel to burn. One of the reasons that UNC get more plant food from burning coal instead of NG is that it’s more efficient to get an equal amount of heat energy (BTUs) from combusting NG than coal. In other words, you have to oxidize more carbon into CO2 with coal to get the same amount of BTUs that you can with NG.

However, if you burn coal more efficiently with more complex combustion technologies, then the plant food gap between NG and coal narrows. That’s why how you burn coal makes a difference. On the scale of existing efficiencies, UNC is about in the middle. Older coal burning plants operate at about 27% efficiency (producing about 1200 gCO2/kwh). The latest state of the art plants operate at about 45% efficiency (producing about 750 gCO2/kwh) or about 46% less plant food. The UNC co-generation plant operates at about 35% efficiency. (That's excluding the co-generation waste heat recovery.) Which means it’s about halfway between state of the art and the global average, or producing plant food at about 900 gCO2/kwh.

The reality is that UNC probably doesn’t produce nearly 320,000 metric tons of CO2 annually from its coal burning. That calculation is not based on the reality of 35% combustion efficiency, but on an older average efficiency set forth in the Fifth Edition EPA AP-42 numbers. Never fear, one should never let facts get in the way of ideology.

As to UNC threatening Mr. Blunden’s health, thank goodness the Boa ignored the Crawford Brown Report dealing with public health risks. Boa members might have mistakenly been exposed to scientific methodology. Again, one should never let facts get in the way of ideology. How progressive!

The inability of Morehead Scholar Haley Koch to understand that free speech means hearing and allowing unliked speech has been revealed in an orgy of self-congratulation. The old saying is that “the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree”. In this case, it’s the parental tree of selective intolerance.

As commented on earlier in the Pulp, Ms. Koch displays the boorish manners of the self-congratulatory elite. One must never impinge on her ability to speak whatever flits into her consciousness. However, she can impinge on your right to free speech anytime she likes. It’s the privilege of one who has suffered the societal onslaught of “gender binary oppression”.

As recognized by the Pulp, Ms. Koch participated in the extraordinary life of progressive performance theater by depriving former Representative Tom Tancredo of his right to speak at a scheduled university event.

Days later, Ms. Koch suffered the indignity of being arrested on the UNC campus for disturbing the peace, a “performance award”, of sorts, from UNC Campus Police for her participation in disrupting Mr. Tancredo’s scheduled speech. Apparently, when you have Ms. Koch's privileged background, any arrest should be telephoned to your representative in advance and should not require your actual presence in dealing with your inferiors.

Ms. Koch went to court on 1 June 2009 to seek postponement of her criminal hearing. The court awarded her 14 September 2009.

UNC wanted the nightmare display of the dark heart of the beast, progressive intolerance, to go away. So Orange County Assistant Attorney Jeff Nieman offered Ms. Koch “deferred prosecution”. (See NCGS § 143B 262.4.) If she kept her nose clean for six months, paid a $200 fine, and performed some community service, then she would have been done. Even Chancellor Holden Thorp allegedly called Ms. Koch, trying to persuade her to “take one for the team”.

Ms. Koch isn’t interested. “I feel really strongly that the charges should be dismissed,” See a video of her outlandish charge of UNC being ”a culture of white supremacy”. That should have been reason enough for Chancellor Thorp to cave, call Ms. Koch, and apologize to her for not being smart enough to see the light. The victim here is Ms. Koch, not Mr. Tancredo. It's all about her extraordinary life, made possible by the Morehead-Cain Foundation.

Her parents are equally impressed with their daughter's right to stifle any free speech of which they don't also approve. In an apparent conflation of his daughters's narcissism with 1960s civil rights freedom riders, Father Chris Koch, opines, ”There is an honored tradition of [peaceful protest] in America. That's the only way progress has been made. … I guess I'm partly responsible for Haley being here.” Mother Susan Koch further enables by saying, “”[Haley] was raised in a home where hate dialogue wasn't allowable. When someone else speaks it in your presence, then you have to speak up.”

Apparently, the concept of free speech involving undesired speech wasn’t taught in the Koch household. If one only utters righteous speech, then free speech is irrelevant. Any speech of which you don't approve is hate, and thus, needn't be addressed.

Showing utter disdain for anyone having the right to hold a contrary view. Ms. Koch wishes to force Chancellor Thorp to disband the group that invited Mr. Tancredo, Youth For Western Civilization (YFWC). According to Ms. Koch, allowing speech that anyone entering this country illegally might not like would fuel violence. The non-violent record of YFWC is irrelevant to her Morehead Scholar “geniousity”. The possibility that someone, somewhere, sometime may do something “bad”, just the possibility is reason enough to stifle free speech.

Displaying her vast fondness for totalitarian speech control concepts, Ms. Koch informs the misguided that, ”[a] culture of hate breeds a culture of violence. This isn't about people just saying things. This is about people who hope to perpetrate violence.” For Ms. Koch, even discussing the right of a nation to control its borders and to control immigration is seeking to do violence. (See N&O Koch Righteousness Story.)

In most of North Carolina, state employees are holding on to their job at any cost. Times are tough. Private jobs are being shed, not added. That attitude would be particularly true for a land use planner being paid about $74,000 a year.

But Orange County isn’t like most of North Carolina. Here a land use planner can slide from gown to town and back to gown, if the need is there for UNC. The factory university town of “Chapelboro” specializes in having local residents pay for university costs or expenses. From subsidizing free student transportation to lowered municipal water and sewage costs to revitalizing UNC-owned Franklin Street properties, it’s all about feeding the big blue academic smokestacks.

As reported in the Chapel Hill News, Ms. Mary Jane Nirdlinger resigned her $74,000-a-year job at UNC earlier this summer, allegedly without having another job lined up. (There aren’t too many of those jobs lying around on campus at that salary.) In the past few years, she has concentrated on the development of Carolina North and the ancillary public-private development of univeristy housing called Carolina Commons.

Ms. Nirdlinger is most famous among the adjacent Carolina Commons neighborhoods for pulling a bait-and-switch on the public-private D.R. Bryan-UNC partnership. She saw no need to inform neighborhoods about the particulars as to how seven high-end executive homes built individually transformed into a non-publicly bid UNC partnership deal of 19 homes built by D.R. Bryan, and how the land would be sold by UNC. She is remembered for her indignance at neighborhoood informational public meetings for being questioned about her lack of openness.

Now, Pulpsters are supposed to believe that Ms. Nirdlinger decided to cast off from the moorings of a well-paid state planning job with no job in hand, and no intention of landing a job with the town of Chapel Hill. Reportedly, she just happened to be hired by Chapel Hill Town manager Roger Stancil as a “special projects manager” after letting Mr. Stancil know she was leaving her UNC job. According to Mr. Stancil, “I wasn’t recruiting people who work for the university to come work for the town. She was leaving, and I diverted her path.”

Ms. Nirdlinger certainly was in luck. Mr. Stancil was willing to pay her even more than she made at UNC - $78,000 a year. Such managment skills by the town manager, offering someone without a job more taxpayer's money in the midst of the “Great Recession”.

What will Ms. Nirdlinger do? How about laying the regulatory foundation for Carolina North over the next few years while the state waits for the economy to recover before funding the next mega-round of capital investment in UNC? Much work must be done to align town regulations with UNC desires for Carolina North.

With the pressure on the UNC budget, and the high visibility of a UNC planner making $74,000, what better solution than to have the town pay for the planner doing the work needed by UNC? In the words of Ms. Nirdlinger, “I care about what happens in my community, and I care about what happens at the university.”

No word from Mr. Stancil as to why Ms. Nirdlinger needs to be hired in the midst of a commercial and residential building meltdown.

Shame and embarrassment is in the eye of the beholder.

UNC officials were embarrassed by the repression of free speech on the Chapel Hill campus during April 2009 by progressive brand usufructers, the new Students for a Democratic Society. As reported by the Pulp, Morehead Scholar Haley Koch was arrested for her spirited rabble rousing that deprived former Representative Tom Tancredo of his right to speak at a scheduled university event.

However, there’s no shame and embarrassment either for Ms. Koch or her repressive supporters. Using the power of ignorance, fostered by misleading web posts, these supporters have started a campaign to flood local Orange and UNC officials with emails demanding freedom from responsibility.

The impressive sounding International Action Center (IAC) is hosting a petition to drop charges against Ms. Koch and the six non-UNC students who have boorish manners and peevish ethics.

Who’s the IAC, you ask? To ask that question is to reveal your mindless participation in the imperialist, capitalist oppressive regime of America.

The IAC is anonymous group of anarchistic progressives “committed to the building broad-based grassroots coalitions to oppose to U.S. wars abroad while fighting against racism and economic exploitation of workers here at home. With every mobilization or campaign, the IAC strives to draw from the leadership, connect the struggles, and bring together communities of color, women, lesbian, gay, bi and trans people, youth and students, immigrant and workers' organizations in order build a progressive movement for social justice and change.

Ultimately it is our goal to work towards the liberation and freedom of all peoples living in the U.S. and around the world.

IAC defines itself as an 'anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist' organization. We want to see an end of the human suffering caused by living under a system that puts profit before peoples needs. We want to shut down the multi-national corporations and banks based in the U.S., Europe and Japan that extract resources and debt payments from the rest of the world. We want to put a stop to the role of the Pentagon and the CIA play by protecting and expanding this wholescale plunder of these private businesses.”

Some people have way too much time on their hands and no need to provide for a family.

Here’s the IAC petition in all its glory:
TO: Chancellor Holden Thorp, UNC System President Erskine Bowles, UNC Chapel Hill Chief of Police Jeffrey McCracken, UNC Chapel Hill Dean of Students Winston Crisp, Orange County District Attorney Jim Woodall, Chapel Hill Mayor Kevin Foy, members of the media, and others

I am writing to express my full support of the students who protested against Tom Tancredo at UNC Chapel Hill on April 14.

All the charges should be dropped immediately. Protesting and speaking out against hate speech, bigotry, and white supremacy is not a crime. The real criminals are the likes of Tancredo and the YWC, whose racism serves as a call for hatred and violence against a large section of the population, a call that is answered by the likes of the Minutemen and other right-wing groups.

I further demand a full investigation of the actions of the campus police and the violent way that they responded to the protest. I fully support Students and the student protestors’ demand for the immediate creation of a standing student review board to oversee all police conduct on campus and to investigate the police conduct on April 14.

Drop all the charges now!
Stop the intimidation of student protestors!
Investigate and condemn police violence against protestors!
Protesting hate speech is not a crime!
No One is Illegal! Solidarity with all Immigrants!

According to the IAC posting, the real criminal is Mr. Tancredo. “Campus police violently attacked the demonstration with pepper spray and tasers, dragged two women out of Bingham 103 and threw them to the floor in the lobby, which caused an escalation that led to the event being shut down.” (Pulpsters should note the “violence” in the video above.)

“Speaking out against [aka repressing] hate speech and white supremacy is not a crime — the real criminals are Tancredo and the YWC, whose racism serves as a call for hatred and violence against an already vulnerable section of the population. ”

Orange County District Attorney Jim Woodall says, ““I think I've received around 6,000 or 7,000 of those.” Showing his deference to these thoughtful emails he continues, “I deleted over 800 for several days in a row.”

As reported by the Chapel Hill Herald, the heroic email campaign has influenced Mr. Woodall. The effect has been ““Zero. Absolutely zero… For us, that's not what it's about. It's about whether those protesters disregarded the officers' commands on that day.”

Over the past two decades there has been a “sea change” in the administration of for-profit private enterprises. Greater operating efficiencies have been achieved by implementing computerized information technologies and re-designing flattened management structures. The elimination of redundancies and the organizing of similar tasks have produced leaner administrations. The incentives have all been to reduce, not increase, administration expenses.

And then there’s UNC at Chapel Hill. As a tax exempt organization funded by the public, none of the above appears to apply. At UNC, administration IS the growth industry.

Change may be coming. Chancellor Holden Thorp comes from the financial investment arena. His interest in maximizing profit opportunities for the lucky few private investors in coming UNC research spinoffs means that he also has been trained to look at the expense side of the business ledger. His attention has been on the expense ledger of UNC recently.

The Byzantine Labyrinth
One look at the UNC organization chart is probably enough to cause Mr. Thorp to hire a business investment and consulting firm like (Bain & Co.) to look closer at the UNC administrative structure. Luckily, charity begins at home. Mr. Thorp's desire is being satisfied by an “anonymous donor”. (Of course, more attention is spent trying to out the anonymous donor as opposed to understanding the work of Bain.)

Here's the structure Bain found in place at UNC.

Currently there are over 400 departments in the 14 UNC schools and the general administration. Administrative layers are headed towards China, being in some cases ten levels deep. Over 50% of UNC managers manage ONLY between 1 to 3 direct reports.

Apparently, there can never be too much university administration.

The Admin Honeypot
While UNC revenues have grown 32.8% from 2004 to 2008, the student population has only grown about 7.5%. Where has the money gone? You guessed it, “administrative expense” is largely the answer. Over the last five years UNC has added over 1000 full time and part time employees. The majority of hires have been in support staff positions.

In 2004 the administrative expenses per UNC student was about $47,900. That’s right, for each student you spent about $48,000 (minus tuition and fees) keeping them at UNC. No wonder some call UNC the “Public Harvard University”. Incredibly, by 2008 that number had increased to $59,000 per year, a 23% increase in five years. That’s just administrative expenses.

Here’s the breakdown.

The 17,000 plus students of UNC are backed by nearly 12,000 employees.

The Party’s Over???
There’s no crueler moment in collegiate life than when the keg foams. The beer is gone. The kegger party is over. The foam is starting to appear at UNC. With bad economic times, it’s harder to keep the administrative drinking fountain flowing.

Between 2009 and 2012, the student population will grow an additional 7.5%. However, revenues will only grow at 3%. The state “hasn't got the cash”. In order to grow those revenues at even that paltry rate, tuition must be raised about 6% to 8%, per year, or about 18% to 24% in just three years. (That’s happy news for UNC parents.) Without introducing change, overhead is expected to rise about 3% to 5% per year, or about 9% to 15% in that same period.

A cursory look by Bain at the UNC structure reveals the following: 1) insufficient finance control systems; 2) needless redundancy; 3) needless shadow systems; 4) many manual paper based systems; and 5) fragmentation and lack of scale in many operations.

No word on how many administrators will review the report on excessive administration.

No word on how much the retirement benefits of over 12,000 employees will cost in the future.

“This is the Morehead-Cain [überscholarship]. Accept it, and create an extraordinary life.”

With hubristic words such as these, is it any wonder that a UNC Morehead Scholar was arrested for “disrupting” a scheduled discussion about illegal immigration on the UNC campus by former Representative Tancredo last week?

On Wednesday 23 April 2009, UNC campus police filed disorderly conduct charges against Ms. Helen Elizabeth Koch. She is charged with being one of the “Banner girls” holding a banner in front of Mr. Tancreado and singing loudly to drown him out. Also known by the upscale moniker “Haley”, she was arrested on campus at about 10:35 a.m., apparently in the middle of another day of classes. (See Daily Tar Heel Koch Arrest Story.)

Profile of Privilege
What are the circumstances of upbringing that lead a Morehead Scholar to hold a banner in front of a scheduled speaker and to drown out that speaker by singing loudly? Who is Ms. Koch?

She’s a child of extreme privilege. She grew up in the impeccably chic Washington D.C. suburb of Cabin John, Maryland. Having too much talent for public school, she attended the Sidwell Friends School, where both President Clinton sent his daughter, and President Obama now sends his two daughters.

Ms. Koch’s parents are both involved in independent film production.

Her father has produced a number of programs of note for “ABC, NBC, HBO, PBS, National Public Radio, The Discovery Channel, Turner Broadcasting, National Geographic Television, American Movie Classics, The Learning Channel, The Travel Channel, and the Hallmark Channel. His productions have been broadcast throughout the world and distributed on home video. He has received six national Emmy awards including the first President’s Award for Superior, Socially Responsible Programming and the George Foster Peabody Award, a Cable ACE, the Environmental Media Award, the Overseas Press Club Edward R. Murrow Award, a Dupont-Columbia University Award, and a George Polk. He was producer and executive producer on Public Television’s series on journalism, Inside Story, hosted by Hodding Carter.”

Ms. Koch’s mother is an award-winning documentary filmmaker. She made “City at Peace”, a 1998 documentary about a musical-theater group for disadvantaged area kids that appeared on HBO. One of her latest projects was to travel for six months to Ireland, Spain, Russia, Afghanistan, Kenya, and North Carolina, following seven homeless players seeking to participate in an international soccer event for the homeless, the 2006 Homeless World Cup in Cape Town, South Africa.

(Pulpsters can be forgiven for asking why someone of Ms. Koch’s extremely privileged background needs the financial benefits of a Morehead Scholarship. If you dare to ask the question, then you'll never understand.)

Upon receiving the beneficence of a Morehead Scholarship in Spring 2005, Ms. Koch demonstrated her extraordinary life by taking a year off BEFORE beginning college. She took a “gap year” in 2005-2006. She apparently volunteered in an orphanage in South Africa, and traveled the African continent. (Pulpsters will note that this service and leisure coincides with her mother attending the Homeless World Cup in Cape Town.)

However, Ms. Koch didn’t stop there. She also spent time traveling to Palestine. According to a pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli group on the UNC campus, Ms. Koch spent “ four months in Palestine, where she became involved in human rights and political activism.” Apparently, she absorbed the current intellectual thinking on free speech for which Palestine is known.

Progressive Achievements
After stopping to grace the UNC campus with her presence, Ms. Koch proceeded to build a solid progressive curriculum vitae.

She joined the Carolina Sweat-Free Coalition.

She joined Solidarity with Palestine through Education and Action at Carolina (SPEAC) and participated in the free-from-hate-speech Palestine Week on the UNC campus. According to Ms. Koch, she wants to “broaden people's understandings of the conflict.”, presumably by speaking without someone placing a banner in front of her face and singing loudly to drown her out.

Ms. Koch also finds the time to be a student leader of UNC-NOW (United With Northside Community Now), a grassroots organization working to preserve the cultural heritage of a predominantly African-American neighborhood in Chapel Hill. Vehemently against the Greenbridge development, she says, “We think Greenbridge should be willing to do anything that it takes. If it takes reopening the [permitting process], then we think that they should be willing to do that.” (See Chapel Hill News Greenbridge Story.) Apparently, Ms. Koch’s hometown of Cabin John lacks a lower socio-economic class to gentrify.

Ms. Koch is an undergraduate Performance Studies major and Sexuality Studies minor, a facilitator of life performance workshops for area youth, a member of Interactive Theatre Carolina (a group that uses performance to promote social justice), She has performed in “Trojan Barbie” and “Gender/Sex/Performance”, part of The Gender Project.

The Gender Project “is a year-long, cross-campus conversation that uses the arts as the foundation to explore questions of gender as identity, in society, and in our daily lives. Though collaborations and events from all parts of campus, the community will explore the issues surrounding gender and identity in our lives through the arts, humanities, politics, law, religion, the media and more.”

Ms. Koch is a member of the Unity Conference Steering Committee, “a team of dedicated, passionate undergraduate and graduate students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.” For the Unity Conference, “The gender binary acts on our bodies even before we are born - “Is it a boy or a girl?” are likely the first words that follow “congratulations” to an expecting family.

The gender binary is one of the most pervasive and insidious forms of oppression in our society. It affects us in the most intimate elements of our lives. In our bedrooms, in our kitchens, in the workplace, on the streets, in bathrooms, and in the places where we need support most - even our schools or in the hospital - the gender binary forces us into individuated static identities.

Our gender identities influence how we feel about our bodies, who we form relationships with and how, and what kinds of expectations people have for our behavior. This is true for folks who identify as straight women or men as well as for folks who identify as queer.”

In keeping with Unity Conference efforts, she has conducted ethnographic research with “queer people in Europe and the Balkans”.

Finally, Ms. Koch has squeezed in time to practice her free speech disruption techniques by being a singer with Voices of Joy, part of the the St. Joseph C.M.E. gospel choir.

Arrest & Award
While UNC was busy handing out an arrest warrant to Ms. Koch with one hand, with the other hand it was presenting her with a prestigious APPLES award. She gained the Undergraduate Excellence Award, having taken five APPLES service learning courses.

In receiving the award, Ms. Koch said, “I realized that it was possible to learn through my service and in my service and with my service. It's not about learning in the classroom and serving in the community. The classroom is everywhere.” (See Daily Tar Heel Koch APPLES Story.).)

“It's An Extraordinary Life”
Ms. Koch has taken to heart the richly imbued Morehead Scholarship creed. “What lies ahead is a lifelong challenge to do more for the world around you than you do for yourself.” Disrupting free speech of others with which you disagree apparently falls within a self-congratulatory mantle of elite privilege.

No word when the upcoming documentary “It’s An Extraordinary Life”, a Koch production, of a Koch film, starring Ms. Koch, will enter a “theatre near you”.

The recent socialist thuggery on the UNC campus, using free speech to “disrupt” (aka oppress) another's free speech is heralded as a shining moment by the UNC chapter of the Students for a “Democratic Society” (SDS). At least the title of this organization suggests a sense of humor and irony, attributes sadly missing up close and personal. (Pulpsters shouldn’t mistake this founded-circa-2006 organization with the 1960s organization of the same name. It’s just brand usufructing by those unwilling to make their own name.)

Campus Safety Made Them Get Violent
Children often blame their parents for their temper tantrums. Part of growing up is learning how to deal with not getting what you want, with accepting true diversity. Part of growing up is accepting responsibility for one’s actions.

UNC SDS leaders apparently haven’t achieved that state of enlightenment yet. According to them, the UNC Chapel Hill Police are responsible for the violence and thuggery of the Tancredo protest. If only the campus police hadn't used ”violence and extreme force” against protesters, then the protest wouldn't have escalated into a confrontation during Tancredo's speech at Bingham Hall. ”All organizations involved in the protest were nonviolent. Rather, it was the violence employed by the Campus Police that created a climate of fear and chaos.”

Mahatma Gandhi would have been proud of such logical legerdemain.

According to the SDS, police dragged two women out of the room where Mr. Tancredo was speaking and threw them to the floor in the lobby. ”Five minutes later and without verbal warning, police started pepper-spraying. Contrary to police reports, the pepper spray was not 'broadcast' into the air; it was sprayed directly at people's faces. We are proud to see that so many people came out to participate in the demonstrations. At the same time, it is regrettable that police violence led to an escalation which prevented many individuals and organizations from expressing their dissent towards Tancredo through speaking at the event.”

On a campus overflowing with videocams and cell phones, the SDS has failed to produce any video backing up their claims.

The campus police beg to differ with the SDS account.

Pepper spray was broadcast towards the sky in order to get students to leave an overcrowded hallway. A taser was triggered over one officer's head and not in anyone's direction as a visual warning. According to the official police report, ”There were no direct exposure of pepper spray by any individuals within the crowd. Orange County EMS was called to the scene to assist with decontamination efforts. Upon arrival no one was in need of assistance.” (See N&O Protest Story.)

Perhaps the best example of the SDS sense of personal responsibility is demonstrated by UNC biochemistry graduate student Ms. Tamara Tal, a founding member of the new SDS. Her track record is interesting. In 2006 she illegally trespassed on the Carr Mill Mall lawn in support of the right of someone to dance with bricks, endangering innocent bystanders. Carrboro Mayor Mark Chilton supported Ms. Tal’s illegality and joined in. She was not arrested. In 2007 she illegally trespassed and occupied U.S. Representative David Price’s office in Durham, North Carolina. Durham’s mayor did not support Ms. Tal. She was arrested.

Despite that track record, you are supposed to believe that Ms. Tal and fellow SDSers protested non-violently to disrupt Mr. Tancredo’s right to free speech. According to Ms. Tal, SDS students were sprayed with pepper in the face. (As a chemist, Ms. Tal should know that if this event unfolded as she describes, then the “victims” would have sought EMS aid for the burning pepper spray.) According to Ms. Tal, “Tancredo's security and the cops assaulted two women holding a banner and threw them to the ground outside the room. Shortly after, a window was broken and the Tancredo was escorted out.”

No word on when Ms. Tal will graduate and have to work for a living.

Terrorists As SDS Role Models
You can tell a lot about individuals and groups by whom they admire. The UNC SDS has picked a very distinct role model to get behind, an out-and-out courageous advocate for killing innocent women and children, Mr. Ahmed Sa’adat. He was born in the early 1950s, reportedly in al-Bira, on the West Bank about nine miles north of Jerusalem. In his early teens, he joined the student wing of the Palestine Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the second largest component of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). His ideology was a combination of Marxist-Leninist totalitarianism mixed with pan-Arab nationalism. He became a combination of a math teacher and a supporter of random terror against innocent women and children.

In 1994, he was elected West Bank PFLP leader.

In 2001 he was elected Secretary-General of the PFLP, following the assassination of Abu Ali Mustafa. At his initial press conference, he declared ”our right of return, and our independence, with Jerusalem as the capital.” A committed believer in violence, he stands for the dismantling of the Israeli state. He opposes the Oslo Peace Process. Within months of Mr. Sa’adat attaining supreme leadership, the PFLP assassinated the Israeli Tourism minister, Mr. Rehavam Zeevi.

Not only has the US government declared the PFLP to be a terrorist organization, so has the European Union.

Here are some of the proud accomplishments of the PFLP:
1) Pioneered airplane hijacking in the late 1960s and 1970s.
2) Driven out of Jordan by King Hussein 1970 after blowing up three hijacked airplanes.
3) Teamed up with the Japanese Red Army to murder two dozen unarmed passengers at Lod airport in Israel.
4) Joined with the German Baader-Meinhof Gang in 1976 to hijack an Air France plane from Tel Aviv to Entebbe Kenya.
5) Assassinated the Israeli tourism minister.
6) Killed four and wounded 20 in a Christmas Day 2003 “Achmed-the-terrorist” style bombing.
7) Assisted in the car bombing of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2004.

UNC SDS is participating in an effort to free Mr. Sa’adat, their unique role model for creating a “democratic society”. The SDS wants Mr. Sa’adat released from an Israeli prison without conditions despite his conviction for running a known terrorist organization that has killed innocent people. To the SDS, it's a matter of “justice”, “freedom”, and “human rights”. That’s justice, freedom, and human rights for Mr. Sa’adat, not his victims.

No word when President Obama will open a dialogue with Mr. Sa’adat.

Courageous Parsing, “Disruption” Is Not “Shutting Down” Free Speech
Watching UNC SDS members wallow in privilege while declaring “solidarity” with those oppressed by “White racist supremacist imperialism” is reminiscent of Karl Marx playing the stock market while writing the “Communist Manifesto”.

Now that the heat has been turned up by Chancellor Holden Thorp, the UNC SDS is resorting to intellectual canards. The SDS didn’t want to “shut down” Mr. Tancredo’s speech. They merely wanted to “disrupt” it.

In their post-protest justification, the SDS says, “We would like to clarify that SDS did not participate in the event with the intent to shut it down, but we are not surprised that it happened. Tancredo is a national symbol of hate and racism. Thus, it is no surprise that his attempt to scapegoat immigrants garnered strong opposition. In this time of economic crisis, it is more important than ever to challenge bigoted and racist views. Standing up to his destructive rhetoric has given strength to groups around the country. Immigrants rights organizations [sic] nationwide are applauding the protest of Tancredo at UNC. Carlos Montes, with the Southern California Immigrants Coalition, said, 'I support the students right to protest racist Tom Tancredo. Tancredo has to be confronted and exposed wherever he speaks. The students should be commended for their action'.”

While claiming “disruption”, and not “shutting down” as their goal, the SDS proudly displays this message: “Sisters and Brothers, Every day on multiple occasions here in Southeastern Michigan and throughout this state, nothing less than terrorist raids by ICE and other government agencies end in the cruelest ripping apart of families. Of course these raids against immigrant workers are being carried out nationwide as you know. I am proud of you and your allies at UNC who shut down the racist Tancredo. There is no 'free speech' for racists. I'm in complete solidarity with your actions and if you need anything just let me know. No human being is illegal! Si Se Puede! In unity, solidarity and struggle, Bryan G. Pfeifer ”

Apparently, no SDS member was among the student and faculty mob shouting the mantra, “Shut it down - no racists in our town!”

UNC faculty SDS supporters believe them, why can't you?

In most of North Carolina, if a group of students shut down a speech by an invited campus speaker through the threat of force, there would be little concern for the politics of the speaker and sure condemnation of the protesting provocateurs. But southern Orange is not like the rest of North Carolina.

Here, the Alice-in-Wonderland looking glass alters reality. The invited campus speaker doesn’t have the right to free speech. If the speaker doesn't agree with your view on controlling national borders, then they practice hate speech. The provocateurs aren’t criminals. Force is acceptable if stopping hate speech. The UNC administration is shocked to learn that campus progressives (students and teachers) are intolerant fascists engaged in their own “Kristalltag”. The UNC administration is shocked to learn that instead of promoting free speech, the ivory, ebony, and jade tower of UNC uniformity of thought promotes the rise of intolerant facists.

UNC provocateurs called the speaker (former Colorado Representative Mr. Tom Tancredo) a “racist!” and a “white supremacist piece of shit!” The cheer of “No dialogue with hate!” echoed throughout the classroom in which Mr. Tancredo attempted to deliver his speech. Pulpsters can check out live video of the event for themselves. In a particularly memorable tour de force of progressive logic, protest organizer Mr. Tyler Oakley, a UNC graduate student and Romance Language teaching assistant, said, ”You [Mr. Tancredo] have to respect the right of people [the free speech disrupters] to assemble and collectively speak [disrupt your speech].”

The local media digs deep into the news wastebin to drag out and feature the intolerance in 1963 against communist speech, conveniently downplaying in a sidebar the string of speakers (all tarred as “right wingers”) that have marked the ever-constricting grasp of political correctness that dominates UNC campus speech. (See N & O Tancredo story and UNC free speech sidebar report.) That's called balance, featuring a 40 year old event against the totalitarian left, thereby equating Mr. Tancredo with being from the totalitarian right.

The executive director of the North Carolina ACLU decries the student and teacher incited violence against the campus speaker, while simultaneously comparing the Mr. Tancredo's words to ”racist hate speech”. The thin line between “hate speech” and “hate crimes” is blurred a little more. In the words of Ms. Jennifer Rudinger, former head of the Alaska ACLU and an over $800 Obama presidential campaign contributor who has no idea what words Mr. Tancredo would have said at UNC, “Tancredo has the right to express his views against mass immigration, just as students at N.C. State had the right to paint racist remarks against President Barack Obama on the campus Free Expression Tunnel on Election Day last fall. Censorship is not the answer to hate speech. Hate speech is protected by the Constitution.”

(Query, if Mr. Tancredo is uttering hate speech, and that speech led to the protestors' criminal actions, then is Mr. Tancredo guilty of a “hate crime”?)

In a moment either of divine comedy or complete cluelessness, UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp declared his disappointment that UNC the students didn't uphold ”the university's commitment to free speech and diverse viewpoints.”

Mr. Thorp has reacted in a predictably progressive fashion. He reacts to the embarrassment of the incident and not to how the incident came to be fostered on the UNC campus. ”We didn't get anything[any alumni calls] from anybody happy with the way things went. The fact that it got out of hand is embarrassing.”

Facts presented without context isn’t news. (See N&O Lawsuit Story.)

The local media reports that the privately owned Orange County Rescue Squad is suing Orange County and Emergency Services Director Frank Montes de Oca, claiming discrimination, libel, breach of contract and violation of due process. OCRS is asking for $1,200,000 in damages plus compensation for legal fees and $550,000 of new equipment OCRS purchased in 2008. These damages allegedly have resulted from a July 2008 ban placed on their contracted services by Mr. Montes de Oca. That fact as to a lawsuit is very true, and is very much without context.

Pulpsters want to know the whole story, no matter where it leads. As is often the case in Orange County, the juice flows when the pulp of local life is squeezed. Let’s look deeper as to how the county got sued. After all, it’s your money being consumed by litigation.

Unexplained Termination
In January 2008, Mr. Frank Rojas Montes de Oca, Jr. resigned unexpectedly as the Osceola County, Florida fire chief. In the words of the local Osceola media, “no one has explained exactly why”. An Osceola County spokesperson would only say ”there was a difference of philosophy.”. (See News 13 Story.)

Unexplained Hiring
In April 2008, Orange County hires Mr. Montes de Oca as Director of Emergency Services. His responsibilities include 911 Communications, Emergency Medical Services and the office of the Fire Marshal. (SeeCounty Press Release.)

Explained Termination
In late June 2008, after two months on the job, Mr. Montes de Oca unilaterally terminates the services of the Orange County Rescue Squad (OCRS) with regards to participating in the county 911 emergency response system. He does so despite a contract between the county and OCRS.

On June 27th he cites a laundry list of safety concerns. He directs county emergency services supervisors to order OCRS members to leave if they showed up at accident scenes and to call the police to enforce their leaving if necessary.

On July 1st, Mr. Montes de Oca issues a “preliminary report" describing “an extensive history of unsafe and unprofessional practices, strange behavior” by OCRS members. (See Chapel Hill News OCRS Story.) OCRS Chief Brian Matthews says OCRS wasn’t afforded the opportunity to respond to Mr. Montes de Oca’s allegations before the order to “stand down”.

County Manager Laura Blackmon feels the need to stand by Mr. Montes de Oca’s decision. Writing for the local media, Ms. Blackmon says that “emergency medical services provided by the county have not changed… I support the decision of Frank Montes de Oca, the emergency services director, who is concerned about the service that was being provided by Orange County Rescue. He and his staff are currently working with Orange County Rescue to ensure they are properly certified and have the necessary operating procedures in place to guarantee the safety of our citizens.”

Unexplained “Last Responders”
In August 2008 disaster strikes Orange County EMS resources. Orange 911 receives 11 service calls on the 18th between 5PM and 7PM. Carrboro High School sophomore running back DeMarcus Powell dislocates his knee with a bulging bone. Capt. Kim Woodward, operations manager for Orange County EMS, says personnel couldn't respond faster than about one hour. Minus the ambulance capacity of the banned OCRS, county EMS personnel are occupied with a two-vehicle accident that injured four people in western Orange County and a subsequent response to the home of Atlas Fraley, where he had died of “unknown causes”.

(In FY 2007-2008 county officials had asked the Commishes to fund 57 medical services employees. Only 51 were funded.)

On August 18th the OCRS ambulance sits idle. According to OCRS Chief Matthews, ”All they would have had to do is request our assistance, and we would have been more than glad to respond. I don't know if it would have made any difference in this case, but there have been times in the past when the county runs out of ambulances that the Orange County Rescue Squad responds.”

Mr. Montes de Oca retorts saying that OCRS wouldn’t have made a difference. ”When the system gets taxed, then it does take a little longer time to get ambulances.” (See Chapel Hill News 911 Story.)

Emergency Bandaging
In September 2008, feeling the heat of public scrutiny on the failure of so many taxpayer supported emergency service groups during August 2008, seven of the county's 12 fire chiefs issue a rare and unusual joint statement in which they unanimously support the OCRS expulsion. The reason? Mutual aid agreements among the departments provided “sufficient back-up”. (That's an amazing statement in view of the events of August 18th).

Unexplained Recusitation
In November 2008, Mr. Montes de Oca reinstated the OCRS into the county's emergency response system for special events, overflow medical calls and search-and-rescue operations on land, but not for vehicle extractions. The county used the unilateral reduction in services to start a “renegotiation of the OCRS $50,000 annual contract with the squad.

In a memorandum to the Commishes Mr. Montes de Oca said the squad is a ”community asset” with narrowly defined functions that However, in 26 pages, not a single reason was given either by Mr. Montes de Ora or by county contractor attorney, Mr. Geoff Gledhill, backing up the “stand down” order. Not a single explanation was given as to what occurred between June 2008 and November 2008 to enable the order to disappear.

Quite a different picture was painted in the memo from the “all’s well” rosy scenario painted during the beginning of summer. “Rather than attempting to find fault, both entities have agreed to move forward. Failure existed at both ends of the responsibility spectrum. However these recent efforts to bring a community asset back in service has illustrated the need for [Orange County Emergency Services] to do a better job of maintaining the fidelity of a system the resembles a quilt of first responder, career and non-career people dedicated to protecting the community.”

Code Blue Contractor Attorney
After three decades of serving as a contractor attorney (i.e., not an county employee, but a fee-for-service independent contractor), Mr. Geoff Gledhill unexpectedly announces in December 2008 that he's no longer going to work for the county, leaving the mystery of the "missing millions" unsolved.

911 Call For Litigation
Apparently moving forward means moving forward on litigation. In Apil 2009, OCRS filed suit against the county and Mr. Montes de Oca, claiming discrimination, libel, breach of contract and violation of due process. The lawsuit filed in Greensboro federal district court demands at least $1,200,000 in damages, plus compensation for legal fees, plus $550,000 for new equipment OCRS purchased in 2008.

No word if the “philosophical differences” regarding Mr. Montes de Oca had to do with his running an emergency management consulting firm on the side while employed by Osceola County.

No word on who will be hired next from the “let go”/retired local municipal employee pile following the tradition of hiring the county EMS director (let go from Ocseola County), the Chapel Hill town manager (let go from Fayetteville), the Chapel Hill finance director (let go from Durham), the Chapel Hill Police Chief (retired from Fayetteville), or the Chapel Hill eonomic development director (let go from Fayetteville).

No word on whether or not retired contractor municipal attorney Gledhill will spend more time at the beach with fellow local contractor town attorney Mr. Michael Brough at their beachside upscale vacation home paid for by “services rendered” for local taxpayers.

Talk of “carbon loading” and “global warming” may be the rage on campus, but UNC Chapel Hill trustees and Chancellor Holden Thorp are warming to creating UNC as a “global brand”.

As budgets at UNC Chapel Hill are being slashed, former investment banker Mr. Thorp announces the desire to create a new tax exempt think tank to be headquartered at Carolina North – the UNC Global Research Institute (GRI). Mr. William Harrison, a 1966 UNC graduate and retired former chairman of $25,000,000,000 (yes, billion) TARP bailout recipient, credit default swap derivative packager JPMorgan Chase has kicked in $1,000,000 to fire up the branding iron.

The GRI plan calls for a core endowment of $5,000,000, $1,000,000 of which would be raised by UNC. Another $8,000,000 is needed to fund four distinguished visiting scholar programs. Another $3,200,000 is needed to fund eight faculty fellowships at $400,000 each. About another $4,000,000 is needed to fund graduate fellowships, undergraduate research assistants and, of course travel and entertainment faculty and student opportunities abroad. Grand total for the startup capital for the GRI is $20,000,000.

In the words of Chancellor Thorp, ”Can we pay for it right this minute? No. It's really an aspirational document and one for us to really support.” Apparently, without a “global brand”, UNC is unable to attract great minds (who will never teach undergraduate students and may not have to teach graduate students) to Chapel Hill. (See Chapel Hill News GRI Story.) Buying prestige for the vanity of administrators costs money.

The inaugural theme of the GRI remains the subject of global research, “Globalization, the economic crisis and the future of North Carolina's economy.”

No word on who will determine success, when UNC has become a “global brand”.

No word on how much TARP bailout bonus money will be used to fund the GRI?

No word on what UNC being a “global brand” has to do with providing a solid collegiate education to North Carolina students at an affordable cost.

The UNC publicity machine scored another triumph. At a media-only event University development officials rolled out plans for Carolina Commons. UNC talked of its concern for affordable housing for employees. The media lapped it up, rewriting the press releases. (See Chapel Hill Herald Story and Chapel Hill News Story.)

The real story was missed.

Never fear. The Pulp will deliver as much as it can of the full story of Carolina Commons over the next few months. It’s an uncommon story of private development interests tied quietly to public university interests. It’s a story of public deceptions. It’s a story of municipal taxes diverted for university benefit. It's a story of municipal taxes diverted for private development benefit. It’s not a story you’ll find in the local media.

Media Embrace
As reported by the local media, Carolina Commons is an affordable housing project north of Homestead Road that will provide affordable housing for junior faculty and staff who want to purchase their own home. All the magic ethereal buzzwords are used - sustainability, affordability, green.

According to Ms. Mary Jane Nirdlinger, purveyor of ever-changing Carolina Common promises for over a year and proud owner of the title “project manager in facilities planning”, UNC will sell the homes at 20% below the market value of similar units in the area. (The only such homes are in Winmore, directly to the south, where the public isn’t buying. The cheapest home in Winmore sells at about $305,000 for 1350 square feet, or about $225 per square foot.)

That’s it. As far as the media is concerned, that’s the whole story.

Follow The Money
No one in the local media asked the obvious question. What about the money?

Anyone with a modicum of private enterprise experience would want to know the financial details. How is UNC paying for this development? Who is providing UNC the development capital? At what cost? Has it been competitively bid? Who is making money off this development?

If you follow the money, then the real story emerges. But first, what is being built.

Physical Reality
So how green is Carolina Commons really?

UNC is building 58 single-family homes, 40 condominiums and 51 rowhouses (about 150 units) on about 15 acres. That’s a density of about 10 houses per acre. Their site for such density is not a flat field surrounded by flat buffer, but alongside Bolin Creek, an environmentally sensitive stream with steep slopes. Such a site reflects the best in UNC green planning. Such a site is the essence of sustainability, affordability, and green.

UNC hides its urban streamside density by referring in its calculations to the bulk acreage of the 63 acre parcel dominated by the Bolin Creek streambed and its slopes. While that acreage isn’t buildable, it’s not a problem. Carrboro rules allow such acreage to be counted as green space. As far as Carrboro and UNC are concerned, building the densest residential projects next to streams is to be encouraged, not deterred. Slap a few rooftop solar panels, add some extra insulation. Shazam, you have a green project.

Never mind that one won't walk from Carolina Commons to the UNC main campus. Never mind that one won't walk from Carolina Commons to the coming Carolina North campus. It sounds green. That's what's important.

Living Wages Versus Living Equity
Amidst the hoopla of affordable, green housing for UNC employees, lies the reality of the residential real estate fiefdom being created by UNC.

While UNC will sell the 150 or so southeastern Carolina Commons homes to its employees at below-market rates, UNC will not sell the land upon which those homes sit. UNC will retain ownership of those lands, forever. If the home is to remain as affordable housing for UNC employees, then UNC employees must enter into an agreement to sell to another UNC employee. Moreover, according to Ms. Nirdlinger, UNC employees must enter into an agreement to share the market appreciation of their home with UNC when they wish to sell. (Query, what will UNC do with that shared equity appreciation?)

Gone unspoken is another approach.

Why doesn’t UNC pay its employees a living wage that allows them to own a home in Chapelboro? If it’s important for UNC employees to live five miles away from campus, as opposed to fifteen, then why not pay a wage that allows them to enter the private home market? Why create a perpetual housing fiefdom? (Query, how much will the administration of this fiefdom cost?)

The Town/UNC Unspoken Deal
Lost by the local media is the handshake, behind-the-scenes deal between UNC and the town of Carrboro. In order to cut the county out of the Winmore development process in 2003, the Carrboro Boa had to get the Winmore land into town limits.

Mr. Michael Brough, then filling the unusual combination of being Carrboro’s outside attorney and Carrboro’s acting town manager, wanted to help Winmore developers stuff a mixed use village alongside Bolin Creek (which included his longtime friend and acquaintance, Mr. Phil Szostak.) He needed to get UNC to seek voluntary annexation of its Carolina North lands and the Carolina Commons land site in order to allow the Winmore land to be voluntarily annexed. Coincidentally, it allowed the town of Carrboro to involuntarily annex about 400 homes and bag over $500,000 annually in taxes without providing any more services to those involuntarily drug into the town.

UNC complied without offering a reason, even though it had no plans for developing these properties in the immediate future. Unasked by the media, (and unspoken by Mr. Brough, the Boa, or UNC) why would UNC seek such annexation years before building within the Carrboro planning jurisdiction?

The answer became obvious several years later. The town of Carrboro spent over $250,000 to extend a sewer line through the Carolina Commons property as a reward for the voluntary annexation move. That gift from the town to UNC reduced the development costs for UNC. A gift from town taxpayers to UNC.

Political Corner
The most interesting part of the Carolina Commons development from a news perspective is not the 150 or so homes in the southwest corner. Rather it’s the tale of the northeast corner.

Several years ago, Carrboro citizens living adjacent to the northeast corner approached UNC regarding the future of the northeast corner. No less that Mr. Roger Perry, UNC trustee in charge of UNC building plans, told these citizens that UNC intended to build about seven executive homes off a cul de sac at the stubout on Claymore Road. These homes would be high end, designed to attract key employees to UNC. It was a developer’s promise from a UNC trustee, worth the paper it wasn’t written on.

Then the town of Carrboro stepped into the fray. Seeking the highest return in tax dollars, the town $1,000,000 planning department decided to increase the number of homes from seven to seventeen.

Moreover, the town decided to force a road connection (32 foot wide with sidewalks and curb and gutter) between the Colleton Crossing development to the north of Carolina Commons and Claymore Road (20 foot wide, no sidewalks or curb and gutter). As can be seen below, such a connection would cost the town about $1,000,000 to improve that road up to the town’s legal requirements for a sub-collector road.

Curiously, the town planning staff ignored connecting Colleton Crossing to Homestead Road through Camden Lane (32 foot wide with sidewalks and curb and gutter, just like the proposed Colleton Crossing and Carolina Common roads). As can be seen below, such a connection would cost the town nothing and would provide a road connection that met the town’s legal requirements for a sub-collector road.

Why would the town of Carrboro seek to connect to a substandard road that would cost town taxpayers substantial moneys to improve when they could connect to an existing road that was up to standards?

The answer goes unreported by the media.

As described at a meeting between UNC officials, their private advisors, and neighbors surrounding Carolina Commons a few months ago, a political score must be settled at taxpayer expense by connecting to a substandard road. Taxpayer expense and public safety be damned. In the words of Alderman Dan Coleman, he wanted to get back at his political opponents in the Highlands who live off, you guessed it, Claymore Road. Challengers in the last municipal election, they publicly asked Mr. Coleman to resign after he lied to the public about attacking a woman on town property with his vehicle.

Enter The Handpicked Private Developer
Subsequent to the Perry meeting, and prior to the submission of the concept plan to the town of Carrboro, a new player came into the Carolina Commons deal. Enter the private for-profit residential development firm of D.R. Bryan. D.R. Bryan is a privately held for profit enterprise that builds major residential developments. It built Southern Village and Treyburn. It’s building an oversized hotel for Southern Village, as reported in the Pulp.

D. R. Bryan is “advising” UNC on the Carolina Commons development. What's the contractual relationship? No one will say. At the UNC Carolina Commons neighbors meeting the question was asked. However, Ms. Rosemary Waldorf, former Chapel Hill mayor and D.R. Bryan kingpin, declined to answer that question. Based upon their advice, the seventeen homes are no longer to be used to attract key UNC employees. Instead they are being sold on the open market. Mr. Perry's promise to Carolina Commons neighbors is a true developer’s promise.

The Unspoken Web
D.R. Bryan is also a partner in the mega Buckhorn Village development along with East-West Partners. Who heads East-West Partners? None other than… Mr. Perry, UNC trustee in charge of Carolina Commons.

How much is D.R. Bryan being paid by UNC?
Is it providing any capital?
Is it building the homes?
Why is it involved?
Was this “advisory” contract competitively bid?
Who at UNC approved the contract?
Is anyone other than the Pulp paying attention?

No word on why those in the media lamenting the death of printed newspapers can't see the reason why.

“Oh what a tangled web we weave, when we first practice to deceive” - Sir Walter Scott

While a US Airways commercial aviation pilot masterfully glides an engineless jet into the frigid Hudson River with no fatalities, UNC aviation experts glide the AHEC airport home to Carolina North from a “flight to nowhere”, with no fatalities other than the hubris of those claiming a “great victory” over UNC.

For months Orange Progressives made much ado about the “relocation” of the UNC airport from its present Carolina North research park site that it has occupied for decades as the Horace Williams airport. The spark for the airy Pavlovian tinder of Carolina North development was the introduction of an airport authority bill into the North Carolina General Assembly by Orange County Representative Verla Insko et alia. The bill allowed the UNC system to create airport governance boards to finance, build, or operate new airports that would “support the missions of The University of North Carolina, its constituent institutions, or the University of North Carolina Health Care System”. Such an airport authority would be a political subdivision of the State. Orange County Representative Bill Faison later amended the bill to allow such a UNC system airport to be built in just one county.

Pulp readers should note what the bill actually does say and does not say. It does not require the closure of the Horace Williams airport. It does not require the building of any airport. It allows any number of new airports to be built ANYWHERE in the state. It does allow the Horace Williams airport to stay where it is and not fall within this new airport authority.

Local progressives immediately went into an entirely predictable Pavlovian, Chicken Little “sky-is-falling” response. Although the bill was not simply a “Horace Williams relocation” bill, local progressives immediately dredged up a 2005 report by the airport engineering firm Talbert & Bright. Instead of seeing a number of potential sites for potentially relocating the Horace Williams airport, local progressives saw only one site, one near the hamlet of White Cross, just west of Carrboro.

Reading that one of the recommended sites for a relocated Horace Williams airport was in White Cross, former OWASA director, former real estate advertiser columnist, OWASA profiteer (aka local builder), and nearby White Cross resident Mr. Mark Marcoplos predictably went into full conspiracy mode. In the local media he labeled the “airport relocation” process as reckless and claimed the current economic downturn is due to that process. In the local media he blamed UNC's "clumsy machinations" for reassessment appeals by people claiming they will be near an airport when no such airport site has been selected. Just google “marcoplos UNC airport” and one can see the profundity of impressive progressive observations by Mr. Marcoplos offered up at will. Unfortunately, all of those observations are based on an assumption that UNC will relocate the airport to White Cross. While a possibility, there’s a low probability to that event happening, a factor totally ignored by Mr. Marcoplos.

What Mr. Marcoplos failed to say (if he absorbed it at all from reading the Talbert & Bright report) is that while building a new airport would cost around $50,000,000, improving the existing Horace Williams airport as the defining centerpiece of the Carolina North research park would cost only around $6,000,000. Why is this fact important? Because UNC alumni power brokers have all along indicated a preference for keeping the airport where it is. Mr. Marcoplos likes to believe that Chapelboro isn’t a company town, controlled by UNC. (To an Orange Progressive, if you feel that something isn’t true, then it isn’t true.)

Pulp readers who want to have an understanding of how the Horace Williams airport drama might play out should take the long view on the Carolina North research park development process. (Be sure to focus on the research park aspect of this process.)
First, UNC identified the salutary benefits of wrapping a hegemonic satellite campus extension around the concept of an economic development potential of a university research park (such as North Carolina State’s Centennial Campus).
Second, UNC identified the Horace Williams airport site as a potential site for that UNC research park, which became known as Carolina North.
Third, UNC announced the Carolina North site for a research park.
Fourth, UNC conducted extensive on-site visitations and consultations of other publically owned, bio-medical university research parks such as those at the University of Virginia, and University of Maryland at Baltimore, et alia.
Fifth, UNC announced the potential moving of the Horace Williams airport to the Raleigh area commercial aviation airport (RDU).
Sixth, UNC hired Talbert & Bright to prepare an engineering report that shows the options available.
Seventh, UNC concluded that an RDU move would not serve the needs of the UNC AHEC system in Chapel Hill.
Eighth, UNC legislative supporters (a phrase which includes Representative Insko, a darling of local Orange Progressives) introduced an airport authority bill.
Ninth, local Orange Progressives provide predictable negative response.
Tenth, UNC announces that a modified airport relocation process will ensue taking into account the no White Cross location Orange Progressive feelings.

With the relocation tinder in place and the Pavlovian sparker ready to blather and rail against anything UNC would do to ruin his backyard, the firestorm against locating a new airport was lit and blazed to the skies. Lots of noise was published by the local media. Predictably, the local Orange Progressives declared a “great victory” over UNC. The local media even proclaimed how they “made a difference” in changing the process. They certainly did. They helped UNC get exactly what it wants.

What’s that? What does UNC want? It wants what its important backers have always wanted, to keep the airport where it is and to upgrade it as the crown jewel in the Carolina North research park.

Curiously, the local media has never bothered to find out what UNC found out when it talked to the heads of other university research parks. Other university officials associated with such research parks were amazed to find out that UNC would abandon having a limited use, private, general aviation airport in the middle of a research park. They would love to have such a distinguishing feature available for their research park. What an incredible recruitment tool! Yet, UNC was just giving it away.

So while the Pulp doesn’t have the “smoking turboprop trail” of a filed airport relocation flight plan from Horace Williams to Carolina North, it does have the ability to connect the dots. The Pulp does respect the marionette ability of UNC officials to manipulate the strings of local Orange Progressives so as to set the airport relocation glidepath firmly down at Carolina North.

It's conjecture until the shell is lifted from the table to reveal the location of the pea, but educated prognostication is what life requires to excel. Who better to declare that there is no other site outside Chapelboro for the AHEC airport than those shouting the loudest to close the AHEC airport down? (Remember, RDU is not an option, no matter how much greenhouse gases are emitted by local Orange Progressives.) If there are no Orange County options outside the present location, well that leaves the present location.

Game, set, match.

As Citibank lays off over 50,000 employees, and domestic automakers head into bankruptcy, the local media reports in mid-November 2008 that UNC system leaders are asking for an “austere” budget in CY 2009.

What’s an “austere” budget in the context of an expanding, tax-exempt bureaucracy? Does it involve a decrease? No. An “austere” budget involves a $168,000,000 increase in spending. This increase is characterized by the local media as “austere” because the system leaders wanted more. How much? TWICE that amount. (See the N&O UNC Budget Story.)

Less than one week later, the local media reports that UNC-CH is hiking student tuition next year by 6.5% for in-state undergraduate students. Coupled with a fee increase, next year's student tab (tuition and fees, but not housing and food) is over $4000 annually. (See the N&O UNC Tuition Story.) Clearly, “austerity” is a relative term to junketeers traveling free of charge courtesy of state taxpayers to other university towns to learn how to spend more state taxpayer money. (See Pulp Junketeer Story. )

How can “austerity” be a 6.5% tuition (read revenue) increase and a $168,000,000 funding increase in the face of a deflating economy? Just be an expanding, tax-exempt bureaucracy that’s not subject to explaining an historical continuum of spending increases running at twice the rate of inflation. You’ll understand.

In response to a bonehead statement by Johnston County Sheriff Steve Bizzell about Hispanic immigrant procreation habits, Orange Progressives declare that anyone questioning the role of criminal gangs in Hispanic culture is a racist.

Former Carrboro Alderman, former head of the local ACLU, “Hell” bar owner, and non-profit UNC Center for Civil Rights lawyer Marc Dorosin charges that the characterization of Hispanic immigrants as prone to crime is reminiscent of the marginalization of African Americans during segregation. “That image of the Latino community as being dangerous criminals really foments a backlash. That fear is even more powerful when it's fomented by law enforcement.” UNC law professor Deborah Weissman says, ”Much of the immigration controversy is driven by fear and prejudice.” Irene Godinez, advocacy director for the statewide Hispanic group El Pueblo, places the color card saying, ”Suddenly, if you're brown, you're dehumanized. North Carolina was one of the states that led in the civil rights movement. … It's really shocking and saddening to me to see that now, we're not taking to the streets.”

While raising the thoughtful level of public discourse with cries of racism and prejudice, none of the speakers at a Chapel Hill conference on 19 September 2008 offered the possibility that perception is based on reality. That perception is not the rhetorical exaggeration that all Hispanic immigrants are criminals or dangerous, but the perception that Hispanic immigrant culture contains dangerous seeds of a propensity for including a criminal gang culture.

Noticeably absent from the intellectual discussions at UNC is any reference to the work done in 2005 by the North Carolina Governor’s Crime Commission and the North Carolina Criminal Justice Analysis Center. There's no mention of a thoughtful published report on Hispanic gang activity in the state. The local media provides no context in their reporting as well. (See the N&O Hispanic backlash story.)

Growth in Hispanic gangs
Between 1999 and 2004, gangs in North Carolina grew 68% in size (up to 387 groups with 8517 members). The greatest rate of growth in North Carolina’s youth gang population has occurred within the Hispanic communities, which now have 22.5% of the recognized youth gangs.

Despite the statements of local Orange politicians, gangs are present in southern Orange, as they are in 29.4% of the municipal jurisdictions in North Carolina. Over half of those jurisdictions having Hispanic gangs acknowledge that they have a “significant problem”. On average, Hispanic gangs accounted for about 10% of reported crimes, but in some areas it was up to 50%.

Part of gang activity relates to turf battles and drug market control disputes among gangs. Territoriality or disputes arising from turf related issues accounted for 24.5% of the gang conflicts. Drug related disputes account for 29.6% of gang disputes. Consistent with existing gang literature, these gang related disputes remain typically within the Hispanic community and almost exclusively involve Hispanic gang members.

Source of Gang Member Influx
On average, 73.7% of their gang members migrated into their jurisdictions from either another city in the state, another state or another country. California and Texas were cited as the largest feeder states, followed by Virginia, Georgia, New York and Florida. Mexico and El Salvador were cited as the largest feeder countries, followed by Honduras and Nicaragua.

Gangs in School
Orange County school systems have been noticeably silent about gang activity in schools, despite student acknowledgement of the presence of such gangs even at the elementary school level. Eighty percent of the gang reporting jurisdictions found gangs and gang members in their public school systems.

National Gang Affiliation
Of the 118 Hispanic gangs in North Carolina, 91 were reputed to be nationally affiliated. Some even have connection outside the country. At least 3,420 Hispanic gangmembers were identified of which 276 were female members (8.1%). Surenos, or Sur-13, was the most prevalent gang. Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gangs were reported to exist in at least 18 counties with a minimum number of 430 members being recognized. Vatos Locos gangs also indicates known national ties for 16 of these gangs. Each of the reported Mexican Mafia gangs and five of the 18th Street sets were described as national in scope.

Nationally affiliated Hispanic gangs were described as “somewhat visible, mobile, violent, profit-oriented and involved in drug-related activities.”

Most Dangerous Threat
Gangs residing in the central, or Piedmont, region of the state “may be the most problematic, or have the greatest potential, for becoming more of a threat. These gangs were consistently rated as being more visible, slightly more violent, more profit-oriented and more organized than either the local gangs in the eastern or western portions of the state.”

See Governor’s Hispanic Gang Report.

Now you don’t see gangs. Now you do.

Pulp readers are familiar with the past inability of Chapel Hill politicians and officials to recognize publicly the presence of gangs and gang members in southern Orange. (See Gangs in Southern Orange Stories.) “Facts optional” behavior is acceptable in southern Orange governance, particularly if it's in furtherance of local business interests. Gang presence has not been wanted… until now. Thus, gangs have not been present, despite warnings from outside southern Orange.

Gang presence now serves a governance purpose as a Halloween “devil inside the party” threatening public safety. Thus, gang members in Chapel Hill (at least as Halloween party visitors) now can be acknowledged.

Mayor Foy created the need for a scary bogeyman by declaring in August 2008. “I think the first thing is to make it clear to people that they're not invited. It's a local party. The trend is toward larger and larger crowds; the trend is toward longer and longer nights, and that's a trend that we need to reverse. We want Halloween to be an event that students and people in Chapel Hill can continue to enjoy, but we want to stop it from being regional or statewide.” See Pulp Foy Halloween Story.

In response, Police Chief Brian Curran and Recreation Director Butch Kisiah deliver the gang bogeyman on schedule. ”As the years have gone by we have observed fewer people in costume and more people who come for the sheer spectacle of the crowd. Many people come from out of town. Binge drinking prior to arriving on Franklin Street is common. Included in this crowd, unfortunately, are those who would look to take advantage of this situation in a mean, violent or criminal manner. We have observed over the past several years the addition of criminal street gang members mingling through the crowd.” See Herald Sun Halloween Story.

Town expenditures of $221,000 to subsidize a UNC student street party are complemented by a survey of local businesses indicating that money is lost by businesses during the Halloween event.

No word on whether or not the sighted gang members are just wearing gangster Halloween costumes.

UNC ‘s waterless urinals, symbol of sustainability, turn out to create foul smells.

UNC will substitute ultra-low-flush devices for the odoriferous wonders installed in 2002. Deposits inside the waterless urinals have been blocking the plumbing system at times, leading to foul smells. Apparently other sustainability advocates have been discovering the same thing.

In addition, after installing the toilets, UNC modeled the maintenance costs for the urinals, which require expensive disposable maintenance cartridges. (See Daily Tar Heel Urinal Story.)

Meanwhile, the fact based negative experiences of UNC haven’t deterred the Carrboro Boa from calling for waterless urinals in all commercial construction projects in Carrboro. See Pulp Waterless Toilet Story.

No word on whether or not Alderman Jacquie Gist will take a recycled bike over to the UNC surplus yard to recycle the flushed waterless urinals.

How blind is a blind trust run by an undisclosed trustee, a trust operating in the same field as the trust beneficiary? That's the unanswered question presented by the appointment of UNC CH's newest executive.

UNC recently appointed Mr. Holden Thorp as its new chancellor, highlighting the role that biotech and biomed research will play in converting UNC biotech and biomed research into cold cash for university personnel and members of the financial UNC penumbra. Chancellor Thorp is ready to assist with the opening gambit of UNC's Carolina North research park, the UNC Innovation Center.

Mr. Thorp comes well equipped for the job. He was a partner with his brother, Mr. Clay Thorp, in Hatteras Venture Partners (HVP), an RTP-based venture capital business that supports biotech start-ups. Although when Mr. Thorp took the chancellor job he indicated that he was holding onto the partnership role as well, his brother, Mr. Clay Thorp has seen the appearance of a conflict of interest.

As reported by the Triangle Business News, brother Clay has ended brother Holden's partnership role and placed his brother's HVP equity stake in into a blind trust run by an unnamed trustee.

Brother Clay admits that he and brother Holden still have informal discussions about science and business. In brother Clay's words, “He’s got a lot on his plate. We’ve got a lot on our plate. It was better for him to just have no formal ties.”

No word on whether or not the blind trust will invest in any ventures spinning out of UNC research or use discussion of such research to benefit the trust.

No word on whether or not a double blind trust was considered, where the trustee does not know the identity of the beneficiary.

Ostensibly everything from not asking for new taxes to holding off permanent health care benefits for retired local officeholders has been affected by the poor state of the economy. But you would never know that from the latest political junket leaving southern Orange.

Everybody who is anyone feeding at the local tax trough is going for a three day jaunt to beautiful Ann Arbor, Michigan. Why there? According to the Community Leadership Collaboration, “leaders of the greater Chapel Hill and Carrboro community to learn from the experiences of another successful community and to create and strengthen relationships among participants that will help us successfully address our community’s challenges and opportunities here in Orange County.”

Individual cost for this junket? About $1500 when all is said and done.

In these tough economic times, about 40 people from government are going, for a cost of about $60,000. Local tax exempts receiving funds from those government officials will be there too. About six of them. Don’t forget the development interests, friends of the government officials all. There will be about 20 of them.

Be square if you are not there at taxpayer expense.

No word from the local steno pool on the total cost to local taxpayers.

The star studded list:

How does a landfill gas reclamation project with a normal payback of ten to twenty years turn into one with a 100 year payback? Pulp readers know you just have to entrust it into the loving care and competence of Orange County Commishes and experts at the the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC).

UNC plans to spend about $5,000,000 to install equipment to capture methane at the Eubanks Road landfill. The gas would be piped not five miles away to the main campus, but less than half that distance to the Carolina North campus.

According to published steno notes, the county will receive a presently undisclosed financial compensation for the project. (See Chapel Hill News Story.) In the words of Orange County Solid Waster Gayle Wilson, who led the farcical landfill transfer station location “study” last year, ”Since we didn't bid, we'll never know whether we could have received more or less revenue through a competitive process”.

UNC estimates it will save $1 million in energy costs over 20 years. UNC apparently couldn’t bring itself to declare a 100 year payback for the project. UNC justifies the financially losing project by wrapping itself in a “global warming” blanket. The burning of methane should count in the fuzzy math of carbon offsetting.

Contrast the OC – UNC landfill gas reclamation energy project to one done recently at the University of New Hampshire (UNH).

In 2008, UNH became the first university in the U.S. to use landfill gas as its primary energy source. UNH gets its gas from a privately operated landfill (Waste Management’s Turnkey Recycling and Environmental Enterprise facility in Rochester) twelve miles away.

UNH's landfill gas project cost an estimated $45,000,000 - all internally-funded through borrowing without using student fees or state funding. The project payback is ten years, not 100 years.

See UNH Successful Landfill Gas Project.

UNC is set to buy about 13 acres from Duke Energy at the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Homestead Road, adjacent to the United Church of Chapel Hill.

UNC has selected about 1.5 acres as the site for a new homeless shelter to be leased at $1.00 per year. In turn Chapel Hill will make the site available to the Inter-Faith Council for Social Service (IFC) for the construction and operation of a new homeless shelter.

”Chapel Hill has a long history of caring about the homeless and supporting the Inter-Faith Council,” said Mayor Kevin Foy. ”This in-kind contribution has been a public-private partnership that enables the IFC to help countless numbers of homeless people to get back on their feet.”

No word from Mayor Foy on what UNC plans are for the remaining 10 plus acres of prime real estate.

Universities are supposed to be places of higher learning. So what better place to educate financially naïve students about financial product tie-ins? At UNC Chapel Hill (UNC), it’s hard to get around without a UNC OneCard.

What’s that? The UNC OneCard is a combination ID card and debit card. With a OneCard, a Tar Heel student can check out library books, enter buildings, access food through meal plans, as well as pay for those meal plans, buy school supplies, buy books attend school events, pay parking tickets, even buy a meal at select Franklin Street restaurants. For now, the financial powerhouse behind the OneCard is Wachovia Bank. (See Wachovia.)

How do you get and activate the OneCard? It’s promoted by UNC to every incoming student. Every student has to have a OneCard, it's not an option. Do you have to open a Wachovia account to get a OneCard? See for yourself. (See UNC OneCard.)

More questions can be raised by a captive ID/debit card requirement for students. What’s in it for UNC? Does the OneCard act like other such cards around the country? (In 2007, 127 schools had ID/debit cards, up from about 52 five years earlier.) Does UNC earn money under an exclusive deal with Wachovia every time a student swiped their cards and signs for a purchase. Does UNC earn more money the higher the student balance in the Wachovia accounts? (For example, the University of Minnesota receives a guaranteed $1 million a year, on top of a $2 million signing bonus, under its contract with TCF Financial.)

What’s the sweetener for Wachovia in this OneCard arrangement? How much money does Wachovia make a year in overdraft charges on these student debit accounts? Some banks around the country charge up to $38.00 for every overdraft event, no matter how little the amount of the overdraft. Banks make more money every year from overdraft fees than the amount of money overdrawn. The Center for Responsible Lending found that young adults (ages 18-24) pay more than $3 in fees on average for every $1 overdrawn, compared with nearly $2 in fees paid by other adults. (Yes, it’s yet another local tax-exempt organization, this time based in Durham CRL.)

To those who are concerned about the appropriateness of a debit/ID card, there are the comforting words of Lowell Adkins, executive director of the National Association of Campus Card Users as reported by USA Today. “[I don’t] believe colleges are doing anything ‘inappropriate’ by partnering with banks to issue ID-debit cards… ‘I don't know if we know the definition of what inappropriate is right now.’”

See USA Today Cuomo University Investigation Story.

No word on when Chapelboro governments will make an offer of employment to Mr. Adkins.

No word on when the tax-exempt, student-money-milking financial IPO aka Rainbow Riches will be offered on Wall Street.

UNC-CH during the past eight years has lessened federal revenues considerably by producing $2,380,000,000 in charitable deductions which are now sequestered in income tax-free investments. The Carolina First campaign is the fifth largest in the country. In keeping with overhead rates commonly charged on federal grants, for every $1.00 UNC has received, about 14 cents (14%) will fund student fellowships and about 18 cents (18%) will fund endowed professorships, leaving about 68 cents for unspecified uses.

This news is coupled with a report released 24 January 2008 by the National Association of College and University Business Officers, a tax-exempt higher education funding lobbying group. Over 14 institutions now have endowments worth over $1,000,000,000, bringing the national total to 76. These about $400,000,000,000 in tax-free endowments earned over a 17.2% average return last year. Those schools in the billion dollar endowment club averaged significantly higher returns.

Curiously, higher education institutions are free from rules requiring the annual, ongoing expenditure of a percentage of funds. One US Senate Finance Committee member (Chuck Grassley R-Iowa) has apparently written UNC-CH (as an institution having more than $500,000,000 in endowments) asking for the details of its expenditures from its tax-exempt endowment, in particular those endowment expenditures that provide tuition relief for low and middle income families.