Rep. Heath Shuler releases statement on ACA repeal bill vote

(Mountain Xpress) Washington, DC — Today U.S. Representative Heath Shuler (D-NC) released the following statement following the vote on H.R. 6079, a bill to repeal in full the Affordable Care Act :

“I see today’s vote as a pro-life issue and one of great moral consequence. Do we turn our backs on the 17 million children with pre-existing conditions who were once denied health care coverage but now receive treatment? Should we say ‘tough luck’ to the 6.6 million young adults who now have health care under their parents’ insurance plans but would lose their eligibility under a full repeal? And what of the over 5 million seniors who have saved an average of $650 annually through addressing the ‘donut hole,’ – do we ask them to forego their savings and give it back to the government? Over two million employees now receive health coverage because their small business employer was able to take advantage of tax credits – do we also ask them to return their health care coverage?

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Scranton’s Public Workers Now Paid Minimum Wage

(NPR) The city of Scranton, Pa., sent out paychecks to its employees Friday, like it does every two weeks. But this time the checks were much smaller than usual. Mayor Chris Doherty has reduced everyone’s pay — including his own — to the state’s minimum wage: $7.25 an hour.

Doherty says his city has run out of money.

Scranton has had financial troubles for a couple of decades — the town has been losing population since the end of World War II. But the budget problems became more serious in recent months as the mayor and the city council fought over how to balance the budget.

Doherty wants to raise taxes to fill a $16.8-million gap. The city council wants to take a different approach and borrow money. City council members did not respond to NPR’s requests to discuss the dispute.

“I’m trying to do the best I can with the limited amount of funds that I have,” Doherty says, “I want the employees to get paid. Our people work hard — our police and fire — I just don’t have enough money and I can’t print it in the basement.”

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Low Flying Plane Is On A Mosquito Mission

(CBS Local) Skeeters a problem? Lots of people think so, so Miami-Dade officials are calling in the cavalry;well, actually, the Air Force to kill the biting pests and their breeding grounds. However, the attack may come as a surprise because of how low the spraying planes fly.

The county and the Air Force announced the plans Monday as complaints continue to rise. Recent rainy weather has caused the mosquito population to bloom, something that can cause problems to people headed to cookouts and 4th of fireworks celebrations.

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Not just for military use, drones turn civilian

(CNN) They are now a familiar presence in war zones, but if manufacturers have their way, skies over civilians heads will soon be busy with unmanned vehicles.

Drones are currently a growth industry in the aviation sector, with scores of new companies competing for a slice of the market.

And if they can clear hurdles that currently limit their deployment in friendly air space, pilotless planes of all shapes will be taking to the air on missions to watch over us.

Some of the aircraft — from devices barely bigger than a paper plane to formidable missile-sized systems operated by five-man ground crews — were on display this week at the UK’s Farnborough Airshow.

Although the event, held on alternate years, is one of Europe’s biggest market places for traditional aircraft, a “drone zone” occupies a substantial slice of the exhibition space.

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Mitt Romney ‘deliberately got booed by the NAACP to appeal to white racists’

(Daily Mail) The Romney campaign has been accused of deliberately getting the Republican presidential candidate booed by black people during his NAACP speech to attract votes ‘in certain racist precincts’, by MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell.

Romney was booed for 15 seconds at the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People conference in Houston on Wednesday when he stated he would ‘eliminate’ unnecessary programmes like the Obamacare health reform.

Democrats united in saying that Romney planned to get booed to appeal to his conservative base. But O’Donnell and his guests went a step further by saying that Romney was making a play for white racists.

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Duke Energy investors will pay for CEO’s severance deal

(Charlotte Business Journal) Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers says customers will pay none of the $44.7 million exit package for former Progress Energy CEO Bill Johnson.

All of it will be paid from investor money, he told the N.C. Utilities Commission in response to a question from Commissioner Susan Rabon.

Rogers has been answering questions from a clearly skeptical commission about Johnson’s abrupt departure. He told the commission that the old Duke board lost confidence in Johnson’s ability to lead the combined company during discussions held in executive session — with Rogers not participating — in mid-May.

Rogers insists that no final decision was made until the deal closed July 2. He says that the old Duke board had no authority to take any final action.

But commission members clearly felt misled.

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Commission wants to know why Duke ousted ex-Progress CEO, who was to run merged firm

(Carolina Public Press) He’s shared stages with presidents, testified before Congress and mingled at economic forums in tony Davos, Switzerland. But Jim Rogers’ appearance Tuesday in a basement hearing room in Raleigh may be his most important.

The Duke Energy chief executive will testify under oath about the abrupt resignation of former Progress CEO Bill Johnson shortly after the companies merged last week. His responses to the N.C. Utilities Commission, which had been told Johnson would co-lead the new Duke, could be only the beginning of an investigation if regulators sense a bait-and-switch.

The commission will want to know who made the decision to replace Johnson, why and when it happened and why the panel wasn’t notified before approving the merger June 29, according to a filing by its chairman Monday.

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Petition to block baseball stadium declared invalid

(Star News Online) The Wilmington city clerk on Tuesday declared a petition against a taxpayer-funded baseball stadium insufficient.

The petition, which according to the New Hanover County Board of Elections had the required number of valid signatures, did not include a required affidavit by the petition circulator that states the people who signed it were registered voters at the time of signing, city clerk Penny Spicer-Sidbury said.

That petition, called a citizen initiated ordinance, had to go before the council and either be passed or put on the ballot. The city recently questioned the validity of 165 signatures of the nearly 3,000. Sidbury also had issues with a stipulation in the code that required ages to be included with the signatures. She said some had birth dates, some had ages, and some had neither.

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Keever sidesteps Obama endorsement

(Blogs2 Citizen Times) Democratic 10th District congressional candidate Patsy Keever today sidestepped a question on whether she would endorse President Obama though she did say she would vote for him.

“I am a Democrat, and I will vote for President Obama, but I’m not willing to hand him, or any president, my vote in Congress,” she said in a statement provided by her campaign. “I will stand with the people of my district and cast votes that are best for them.”

Keever said she would attend the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, if invited.

The question asked of her campaign was not one about Obama’s policies, but whether she would endorse him as a candidate.

Keever’s campaign is the only one that did not answer the question with a clear yes-or-no type response.

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Parents defend putting children to work on farms

(Blue Ridge Now) As he watched his 10-year-old son ease a tractor across a soybean field, Dennis Mosbacher acknowledged the risks of farming.

But Mosbacher said the U.S. Labor Department was misguided in its attempts to protect children from farm accidents and he’s relieved the agency dropped its plans this spring and has promised not to take up the matter again.

“You can’t make a rule to stop every accident,” Mosbacher said after his son Jacob hopped off the 40-year-old, 60-horsepower tractor at their farm near the tiny southern Illinois town of Fults. “There’s always a risk in life, no matter what you do.”

Labor Department officials don’t deny that, but they note that children performing farm work are four times more likely to be killed than those employed in all other industries combined.

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Hidden Government Scanners Will Instantly Know Everything About You From 164 Feet Away

(Gizmodo) Within the next year or two, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will instantly know everything about your body, clothes, and luggage with a new laser-based molecular scanner fired from 164 feet (50 meters) away. From traces of drugs or gun powder on your clothes to what you had for breakfast to the adrenaline level in your body—agents will be able to get any information they want without even touching you.

And without you knowing it.

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WNC cries foul over air pollution payments going down East

(Smoky Mountain News) Western North Carolina for now has dodged concerns that it was getting short shrift in a legal settlement intended to compensate the region for air pollution blowing in from dirty coal plants operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority in neighboring states.

In a federal lawsuit waged and won by the state of North Carolina against TVA, the utility was not only ordered to install modern pollution controls on its dirtiest plants, but it also had to pay out $11.2 million to go toward projects that address air quality in North Carolina. The settlement stipulated that Western North Carolina, which feels the brunt of the pollution wafting in, would be first in line for the money.

Only $4.5 million has been paid out so far, with the rest to come in later payments.

That first $4.5 million, however, was slated to head downstate instead of to WNC in the original version of the state budget passed recently by the General Assembly.

Of the $4.5 million, the budget specified that $2.24 million would go to N.C. Biofuels in Oxford and the other $2.24 million to the N.C. Department of Agriculture for to-be-determined projects.

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NC schools get choice between minimum days, hours

(Raleigh News Observer) North Carolina’s 1.5 million public school students could sit in classrooms for longer but fewer days in a new twist to the long-running debate between improving education and protecting summer vacation as the tourism industry wants.

Changes adopted by the General Assembly in the final hours of the two-year legislative session that ended Tuesday would give the state’s 115 school districts the ability to set yearly schedules that meet for 185 classroom days or 1,025 hours beginning in 2013. Schools previously had to meet minimums of both the number of hours and the number of days. Nearly every school district was allowed to postpone expanding the 180-day academic year until 2013-14 after complaints that lawmakers didn’t provide the money needed to run buses or heat classrooms.

The either-or option means that school districts operating 6 1/2-hour school days could wrap up future years after 158 days, said Leanne Winner of the North Carolina School Boards Association, which opposed the changes.

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Bill gives commissioners control of health department, DSS

(Wilmington Star-News) Pender County’s health department and department of social services may be impacted by a new state law, House Bill 438, recently signed by Gov. Beverly Perdue, which gives county commissioners across the state the chance to have more control and oversight over the two agencies.

Commissioners Chairman George Brown says potential changes the law offers would be beneficial to Pender and other counties.

“Ever since I heard about it, I thought it was a great idea,” said Brown, who has traveled to Raleigh to lobby for the bill. “This is something that the taxpayers of the county expect from the commissioners – that they have oversight of all of their departments.”

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Lawmakers, Perdue make claims to bipartisanship

(Rocky Mount Telegram) Whose definition of bipartisanship will North Carolina voters believe as they decide in November whether the Legislature should remain in Republican hands after a contentious two-year session?

This year’s General Assembly’s budget-adjustment term ended this past week after GOP leaders persuaded a handful of Democrats to help override three vetoes by Democratic Gov. Beverly Perdue, including the budget bill for the second year in a row.

According to Perdue and fellow Democrats, bipartisanship means Republicans should have worked with the governor to give her $100 million she sought for the $20.2 billion spending plan so more public education cuts could be restored. Republican lawmakers didn’t accept her suggestions.

The governor “tried repeatedly to reach a bipartisan compromise to invest additional resources in North Carolina schools, but Republican leaders chose confrontation over compromise,” Perdue press secretary Chris Mackey said Friday.

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