Last week was our Best of the Triangle issue, in which our readers chose their favorites in more than 330 categories.
Marc Howlett did the math: “When reading the ‘Guide to Everything Awesome,’ I counted thirty-five alcohol-related award categories. Thirty-five! You know what’s not awesome? Alcoholism and substance abuse. I know many people can consume beer, wine, and liquor in a healthy manner. However, for some of us, alcohol is a life-destroying force. I encourage you all to consider that tireless cheerleading of alcohol consumption is more societally complicated than, say, encouraging folks to visit the Duke Lemur Center.”
Last week, Thomasi McDonald wrote about the Durham City Council rejecting a request for more police officers.
“The decision is a counter-intuitive, wrong-headed mistake,” responds Hugh Giblin. “This decision is not based on reality, but outsiders second-guessing the decision of the police chief. It’s not made on the facts, but reflects the animus of African Americans, the homeless, and LGBTQ people against the police due to police treatment of them in the past.”
In late May, we reported that Orange County Commissioner Mark Marcoplos wanted to increase property taxes to pay for projects aimed at mitigating climate change; commissioners have since done so.
“Here is a novel concept,” writes Michael Cunningham. “How about identifying exactly what projects require funding from county funds, do a cost analysis, project the costs in short-, mid-, and long-term figures, include benefit/risk analysis, identify the appropriate department(s) to manage all this, and have each department write it into their budget request for the upcoming fiscal year(s), and then start talking about increasing taxes if absolutely necessary, or redirecting existing funds?”
As Republican lawmakers were recently trying to override Governor Cooper’s veto of a bill that would force doctors to provide medical care to “abortion survivors”—and amid a slew of other anti-choice legislation throughout the country—Debbie Matthews wrote about her own abortion in 1983.
“There have long been laws against infanticide, as there should be,” Kathryn Welch writes of the General Assembly’s effort, which failed. “This whole thing was launched as the extremist dominionists latched onto an out-of-context clip of a politician who, as a pediatric neurologist, had to deal with catastrophic neonatal cases. It was about infants dying of natural causes when newborns were born terminally ill. The issue had to do with whether to take extraordinary means to ‘prolong life,’ which in those circumstances had a zero chance of reversing things. Fanatics figured they could con Americans into believing this conversation was about infanticide, and applied to all newborns/live births. Obviously, as infanticide has long been against the law, that is a lie. But this bill is masked as an anti-infanticide bill, to ride outrage all the way to creating new intrusions into women’s lives. The line in the sand has long ago been crossed. Get these men out of office at the next available election. Even they do not really believe their own lies. They are fanning false outrage to control us even more.”
Finally, from the INDY’s Department of Corrections (and Clarifications): McDonald’s story on the Durham City Council wrongly suggested that Mayor Steve Schewel voted for the eighteen extra officers; he did not, though he voted for a compromise of nine new officers. That story also misstated the amount spent on an eviction-diversion program, $350,000.
And in response to Charlotte Wray’s June 5 story about an alleged racially charged incident at Orange High School, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office pointed out that the school never asked the OSCO to investigate. Also, a paragraph summarizing school board member Will Atherton’s views on the board’s recent reorganization failed to attribute those views to media reports or state that Atherton could not be reached for comment.
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