Haywood County Schools Facilities - LOCAL ISSUE

 Local education facilities have been in the news in recent months here in Haywood County. First, there is the construction underway for the new Shining Rock Classical Academy near Lake Junaluska, which will cost in the neighborhood of $15 million. And there is the recent report of the Board of Education discussing facilities needs for our public schools. 

The public school effort kicked off a few weeks ago with a brainstorming session by the Board of Education. Among the things reported on the wish list:

- A shared vocational high school, where students would be transported from their traditional schools for part of the day. This would be a new facility.

- Swapping the current middle school and high school campuses. The current Waynesville Middle School campus would house Tuscola HS, the current Tuscola campus would house Waynesville Middle School, the current Canton Middle School campus would house Pisgah HS, and the current Pisgah HS campus would house Canton Middle School.

- Artificial turf for the football field at Bethel Middle School.

- Reopening Central Elementary School in Waynesville.

- Enlargement of weight training rooms at Pisgah and Tuscola High Schools.

The current public school facilities are woefully aged. The newest elementary school, Bethel Elementary, is nearing 20 years old. The next newest, Clyde Elementary and Hazelwood Elementary, are 25 years old plus. Tuscola and Pisgah High Schools were occupied as new facilities in the mid-1960s. Canton and Waynesville Middle School campuses have buildings that are nearly a century old, and Bethel Middle houses fewer than 300 students.

My thoughts:

1. It is time to consolidate the high schools into one comprehensive high school in a brand new facility. Get over the cross-county rivalry and come together. That will probably cost $75-100 million. That would include the vocational/tech/STEM components, in one place.

2. Move the middle schools to the current high school campuses, and consolidate Bethel Middle into the other two schools. 

3. Build a new elementary school to replace the current Junaluska Elementary School, and make it large enough to accommodate students who might otherwise go to the reopened Central facility.

4. Tear down the current Canton Middle and Waynesville Middle campuses, and sell the properties for development.

Two Weeks In - the Biden Presidency

Two weeks into the presidency of Joe Biden, and already the nation is in a discernable cooling off period after four years of daily pot-stirring by the former tweeter-in-chief. There has been a collective exhale with a return to normalcy.

- Daily press briefings by White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki hearken to the fictional West Wing's C.J. Cregge, with honest answers, wit, and humor.

- Biden's nominees for high office, many of them already sworn in now, are a collection of experienced experts in their fields.

- In his White House meeting with ten US Senators this week concerning the COVID-19 relief package, President Biden participated cordially, and respectfully stood his ground on the size and scope of the bill.

- In a sweeping number of executive actions, President Biden has attempted to restore humanity to the power of government to affect the lives of the vulnerable.

After 10 p.m. Eastern time last night, President and Dr. Biden visited the Capitol to pay respects to Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, killed in the line of duty during the January 6 attempted coup d'état. There were no speeches, no exchanges with reporters, no tweets. Just the President and First Lady, saluting and giving the signs of their own Roman Catholic faith, in respect and humility.

Refreshing, indeed.

Political Division in America

My political leanings are no secret, so no one who knows me should be surprised that I am excited to see noon on Wednesday, January 20.With that said, this inauguration will be like no other in American history, with perhaps the notable exception of Abraham Lincoln's inauguration on March 4, 1861. From the Wikipedia entry for Lincoln's first inauguration: 

On Inauguration Day, Lincoln's procession to the Capitol was surrounded by heavily armed cavalry and infantry, providing an unprecedented amount of protection for the President-elect as the nation stood on the brink of war. During the 16 weeks between Lincoln's victory in the 1860 presidential election and Inauguration Day, seven slave states had declared their secession from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America.

This week, some 25,000 National Guard soldiers, plus no doubt the entire alphabet soup of Federal and District of Columbia law enforcement, will be deployed to safeguard the Capitol and the new President and Vice President.

Those who have studied beyond the 11th-grade high school American History class full of platitudes and thinly-veiled jingoism understand that political division has characterized our public discourse from the very beginning. We lump our Founding Fathers and those we call the Framers of the Constitution into a monolithic group, oblivious to the deep ideological differences and personal rivalries that drove many of the decisions they made. Many considered Patrick Henry ("give me liberty or give me death") a kook, Thomas Paine (author of Common Sense) a whacko, and Alexander Hamilton devoid of principle other than advancing his own ambition. The personal animosity between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams is well documented, as is their eventual reconciliation. But the fact that George Washington himself was not universally idolized among those early politicians is not as widely known.

In his excellent biography of Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, historian Stephen Fried recounts a letter from former President John Adams to Dr. Rush, his old friend from the heady days of Philadelphia in 1776. Adams writes in February, 1805:

Is virtue the principle of our Government? Is honor? Or is ambition and avarice adulation, baseness, covetousness, the thirst of riches, indifference concerning the means of rising and enriching, the contempt of principle, the Spirit of party and of faction, the motive and the principle that governs? These are Serious and dangerous questions; but serious men ought not to flinch from dangerous questions.

Two centuries later, the questions raised by Adams deserve our attention again, as they do in every generation. 

Rethinking Corporatism

The reaction of internet platforms like Twitter and Facebook to the events of January 6, 2021 has drawn lots of pushback from the right wing. Many have voiced concern over the First Amendment implications. But others have a more nuanced criticism that acknowledges that the companies' content-based bans don't have a First Amendment problem.

Pundit Charles Lane of the Washington Post lays out the alternate case in his January 11 opinion piece. He writes: "Private companies or not, Facebook, Twitter and the rest face exactly the same problems a governmental agency would face in establishing consistent, principled — and universally accepted — criteria for what to allow and what to forbid." Mr. Lane basically says that because we have allowed these companies to become so big and so important, we must apply the free speech standards to them as if they were the government.

Except that Mr. Lane and others want to have their cake and eat it, too. They want the government to exempt corporations and other business entities from civil rights laws, as in the case of the bakery's free exercise of religion in refusing to bake a cake for a gay wedding. They applaud the craft supplies retail chain's free exercise of religion in denying its employees health care coverage that is mandated by the government. And they profit greatly when corporations and other business entities exercise their free speech rights through huge campaign contributions.

But what about the individual's right to speak? Well, first, the free speech right doesn't come with a guarantee of a platform. Just as there are other bakeries, there are other internet platforms for communication or "social media." That said, laws that apply to public accommodations (like bakeries) guarantee individuals in specific protected classes access to those public accommodations. Insurrectionists, seditionists, and inciters of violence are not protected classes, and that criminal speech is not protected speech.

When we endow the corporation with freedom of speech (long before Citizens United), or the free exercise of religion (Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. or Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd.), or the power to confiscate property (Kelo, or look up compulsory pooling) we strengthened the bond between the economic power of commerce and the police power of the state, against the rights of natural persons. When these corporate behemoths become so big as to stifle competition, maybe it's time for some Teddy Roosevelt-style trust busting, IMHO.

January 6, 2021

The images from Capitol Hill on January 6 are seared in my memory, the same way the images of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in flames, and little John-John Kennedy saluting his father's casket, are burned into my brain.

- A wooden gallows, complete with a noose, on the Capitol grounds, apparently prepared to execute Vice President Mike Pence.

- The confederate flag paraded through the Rotunda, where Abraham Lincoln, JFK, and John Lewis, among many other American patriots, lay in state.

- A black Capitol Police officer holding the door open as these thugs, who had ransacked and desecrated the seat of the government of the United States, exited freely, rather than in handcuffs.

- Black, white, Latinx, Asian, and Native American custodians, and a Korean-American Member of Congress Rep. Andy Kim (D-NJ), cleaning up the trash left by white supremacists.

- Security agents with guns drawn at the main door to the chamber of the House of Representatives, where Presidents enter to report on the State of the Union, providing cover so that the people's elected representatives can be evacuated to safety.

And the reports continue to flood in about those who instigated and cheered on the violent coup attempt.

- My very own Member of Congress, Rep. Madison Cawthorn, on that stage at the Ellipse earlier that morning, encouraging the crowd to stand and fight.

- The Attorney General of Alabama, Steve Marshall, head of the Rule of Law Defense Fund, a dark money PAC that stems from the Republican Attorneys' General Association. The RLDF issued a call to action in DC on January 6, including marching to the Capitol, via robocalls.

Sadly, none of this instigation or incitement to engage in a violent insurrection against the government of the United States of America was done in secret. Which causes one to wonder why weren't the nation's defenses ready?

Two Days After

On January 6, 2021, a day that many Christians celebrate as the Feast of the Epiphany, a violent coup attempt happened when an armed mob stormed the Capitol in Washington. There will be lots written and said about that by many people smarter than I. So I will talk about a few other items in the news.

The COVID-19 pandemic is raging, as state governments try to figure out the logistics mess created by Operation Warp Speed. The 4-star Army General who heads the Federal distribution effort has been inexplicably silent since a 60 Minutes interview several weeks ago. Yesterday (January 7), The Atlantic's COVID-19 Tracking Project reported 4,033 Americans died from COVID-19, and so far in the first 7 days of 2021, over 19,000 Americans have died from the disease.

President-elect Joe Biden continues apace with rounding out his top leadership team, yesterday announcing that Merrick Garland will serve as his Attorney General. To a person, every Biden nominee for every post so far has impeccable credentials, and in total demonstrates his commitment to a diversity that reflects American diversity. Yet sniping continues from special interest groups whose darling picks didn't end up in the positions they knew better about. The articles with "Joe should do" or "Joe should have picked" would fill a library.

An assistant football coach at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga was fired this week because of a tweet he posted that attacked political superstar Stacey Abrams' appearance. Some are defending the coach, saying he was fired unfairly. Well, a couple of things apply. First, discrimination in employment statutes protect people for who they are (skin color, religion, sexual orientation, age), not what they say or do. Besides, the protected class does not include stupidity or misogyny. Secondly, these folks don't understand the right wing corporatist concepts of "right to work" or "employment at will," which are holy writ in many Southern states. Another criticism of the firing questions why Stacey Abrams should be in some kind of hands-off class. Well, I think the coach should be fired if he says that about my wife or my daughter, who are not political celebrities. 

Finally, publisher Simon & Schuster announced they are withdrawing a deal to publish a forthcoming book by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR). Senator Cotton blasted the news on twitter, claiming a first amendment right to be published and accusing the publisher of censorship. Many aspiring authors across the nation are now repackaging their rejected manuscripts for resubmission, confident that the Constitution requires the publisher to publish the material. 

Enjoy your weekend!