When it comes to public infrastructure, Wilson, North Carolina, has long been ahead of the curve. In the early 1900s, when electricity providers couldn’t be bothered to extend service to rural areas, Wilson’s leaders invested in a city-owned utility so that residents could enjoy lights and power equivalent to what the folks in the big […]
David Hudnall
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Long Shots: Republican T. Greg Doucette Holds Views Indistinguishable from Those of a Black Lives Matter Protester
T. Greg Doucette is exhausting to follow on Twitter. He’ll clog up your feed with retweets, quotes of tweets, and, several times a week, topical tweetstorms spanning dozens of tweetstwo dozen or more an hour when he gets worked up. If you’re interested in the gory intestines of the criminal justice system, though, Doucette is […]
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Long Shots: Durham Activist Lamont Lilly Runs for Veep on the World Workers Party Ticket
It was Saturday afternoon, September 24, four days after police shot and killed forty-three-year-old Keith Lamont Scott, and three days after Justin Carr, twenty-six, was shot and killed while protesting Scott’s death. In downtown Charlotte, helicopters circled overhead. National Guard soldiers in camo gear stood watch near the entrances of tall buildings in the emptied-out […]
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The Morning Roundup: Clinton Surrogates Hit the Triangle, HB 2 Hits Charlotte (Again), and Google Fiber Hits the Road
Good morning, everyone. Your news: 1. Clinton surrogates in the Triangle. Elizabeth Warren headlined a rally at Meredith College in Raleigh last night. (Deborah Ross and Dan Blue also spoke.) From the N&O: During the rally, Warren called Trump a “bully,” “a small, insecure money-grubber” and “a selfish little sleazeball.” “I’ve got news for Donald […]
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Two Former Chapel Hill Mayors Weigh in on American Legion Property
The spicy question of what will happen to the American Legion property in Chapel Hill—one of the last large tracts of undeveloped land in the town—continues to heat up. In the last week, two former Chapel Hill mayors—Kevin Foy and Rosemary Waldorf—have written letters to current Mayor Pam Hemminger and the Town Council urging the […]
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The Morning Roundup: Mike Pence in Hillsborough, Another Cooper-McCrory Debate, and Koch Activity in North Carolina
Hello, friends. Your Wednesday news: 1. McCrory and Cooper debate again. The News & Observerreports that things got a bit “testy”: One of the testiest exchanges came when Cooper claimed McCrory is under an FBI investigation for helping a contributor. “As attorney general you should resign immediately for saying that,” McCrory shot back, staring at […]
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Why Are Governments Giving Huge Tech Companies Millions of Dollars?
All your Instagram photos, Netflix streams, eBay accountsbasically everything you do onlineremains easily accessible to you because of massive data centers around the country that store all that information. Over the last decade, state and local governments have come to view these facilities as a chance to resuscitate economies starving for jobs in an increasingly […]
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Here’s Renee Ellmers Getting Owned by Jake Tapper About Trump’s Sexual Harassment Allegations
North Carolina Representative Renee Ellmers, a human woman, appeared on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday to go to bat for Donald Trump. It did not go well: If you don’t feel like watching the video, what happens is: Ellmers says the nine sexual allegations (there could be more by the time you read […]
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Chapel Hill Is Probably Getting a Wegmans, Becoming a ‘Foodie Place’
Good news for the “Bring Wegmans to the NC Triangle Area – Please” Facebook group: the grocery retailer announced yesterday that it intends to open a new store in Chapel Hill in the next few years. The spot it has selected is on U.S. 15-501, just east of the Wendy’s—you know the Wendy’s—on a piece […]
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The Morning Roundup: McCrory vs. Cooper, Round Two
Good morning, fine citizens. Your daily news: 1. Hurricane Matthew death toll up to eighteen in N.C. It’s a very bad situation in the eastern part of the state. Eighteen deaths have been attributed to the storm, and about 190,000 are still without power. Flooding has ravaged towns. From the News & Observer: The flooding […]