Ned Doyle: Environmentalism is good economics

(Mountain Xpress) Local environmental activist and radio host Ned Doyle spoke at a recent Green Drinks gathering at Posana Cafe in downtown Asheville, touting the economic benefits of sustainable development.

Building a more sustainable economy is vital to the long term success of conserving and protecting our natural resources and quality of life, Doyle said June 27. He urged attendees to make economic arguments to help win over skeptics of environmental action.

“A big percentage of the population doesn’t care about morals. They look at money,” he maintained. “There is money in green technology, protecting the forest for tourism. Nurturing our quality of life raises home values.”

Read the rest HERE!

Roll-your-own cigarette stores going up in smoke

(Chicago Sun Times) For smokers who bargained on roll-your-own cigarette stores for cheap smokes, it looks like those days are numbered.

On Friday, President Barack Obama is expected to sign into law a federal highway bill with a section that redefines tobacco manufacturers to include any business with a roll-your-own cigarette machine and taxes those products at the same rate as packaged smokes.

The move comes a month after Illinois increased taxes on such roll-your-own machine-made cigarettes.

Marcia Smith, 47, of Lake County, decided after the state tax increase that she should move her Smokes & Such tobacco shops in Skokie and Gurnee to Wisconsin, where taxes on rolled cigarettes are lower.

If Obama signs the law, she said she’ll shut her doors.

Read the rest HERE!

New law regulates funeral industry

(Star News Online) A local lawmaker in one of her final acts before leaving the General Assembly introduced legislation in this year’s short session that prohibits people convicted of certain felonies from conducting funeral and transport services.

State Rep. Carolyn Justice’s bill passed late Tuesday. Justice, who served 10 years in the state House, chose not to seek re-election this year. The Pender County Republican’s legislation bans the N.C. Board of Funeral Service from issuing or renewing a license to anyone “convicted of a sexual offense against a minor.” It won’t become law until Gov. Beverly Perdue signs it.

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Topless rally returning to downtown Asheville

(Greenville Online) Bared female breasts will make a second annual appearance in downtown Asheville in late August, reprising a rally that generated huge crowds — and criticism — last year.

The website Gotopless.org lists Asheville as one of nine American cities that will have a Go Topless rally on Aug. 26, which it notes is Women’s Equality Day.

The times and exact location of the event differ on website and on the city of Asheville’s events permitting site. The city’s calendar says the event is permitted for 10 a.m.-3 p.m. in Pritchard Park, while gotopless.org says the rally will be at 1 p.m. in Pack Square.

Last August, organizers held a topless rally in Pack Square that drew dozens of breast-baring women, as well as an even larger crowd of raucous onlookers.

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Fewer workers crossing border create farm labor shortage

(Raleigh News Observer) On more than 10,000 acres of drained swampland in western New York, Maureen Torrey’s family farm grows an assortment of vegetables in the dark, nutrient-rich soil known as “Elba muck.” Like other farms in the area, Torrey Farms of Elba, N.Y., depends on seasonal labor, mainly undocumented field hands from Mexico, to pick, package and ship its cabbage, cucumbers, squash, green beans and onions throughout the nation.

With the peak harvest season at hand, Torrey’s concerns about a labor shortage are growing. A crackdown on illegal immigration, more job opportunities in Mexico and rising fees charged by smugglers are reducing the number of workers who cross the U.S. border illegally each year to help make up more than 60 percent of U.S. farmworkers.

The American Farm Bureau Federation projects $5 billion to $9 billion in annual produce-industry losses because of the labor shortages, which have become commonplace for farmers such as Torrey, who said there were 10 applicants for every job five years ago.

“In the last year that wasn’t the case,” she said. “We hired anybody that showed up for field work. It’ll be interesting to see how many people we have knocking on the door this year.”

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Newer cars won’t need emissions inspections

(Raleigh News Observer) Before they left town Tuesday, House legislators put the finishing touches on a few bills.

Among them was House bill 585, which ends required emissions checks for cars from the three most recent model years and older cars with less than 70,000 miles on the odometer.

The bill proved controversial with both Rep. Nelson Dollar, a Raleigh Republican, and Rep. Joe Hackney, a Democrat from Chapel Hill, raising concerns.

“I am concerned about automobiles that are not having their emissions checks in areas where we have emissions concerns, here in the Triangle, the Triad and Charlotte,” he said.

Hackney, in one of his final debates, said the 70,000-mile threshold was too high. “If it exempted car models from the last two years, I might have voted differently,” he said.

But Rep. Edgar Starnes, a Republican from Hickory, said that newer cars met various pollution emissions standards, making inspections on them unneeded. He also said he didn’t think the bill would significantly affect businesses that do such inspections.

Also passed in the last hours was Senate bill 847, a technical corrections bill. Among the measures it approved.

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General Assembly Authorizes Commissioners To Raise Room Tax & Earmarks The Increase For FR Playhouse

(WHKP) In the closing hours of the North Carolina General Assembly’s “short” session this year, legislators gave Henderson County commissioners the authority to raise the occupancy tax on local motel, hotel, and inn rooms…and, if the commissioners vote to raise the tax, the legislation earmarked the proceeds from that increase for the Flat Rock Playhouse. One report says that could be as much as $700,000.

The Hendersonville Times-News reports Tuesday…a bill authorizing Henderson County to boost its accommodations tax to 6 percent passed the state Senate late Monday night and the House Tuesday morning, state Sen. Tom Apodaca said.

The Henderson County Board of Commissioners voted in May to ask legislators to give them the authority to increase the room tax from 5 percent to 6 percent so the extra money could be directed to Flat Rock Playhouse.

Read the rest HERE!

Buncombe DA pushes to see failed SBI tests

(Asheville Citizen-Times) District Attorney Ron Moore and a victims’ advocate are pushing for a judge’s order they say would compel state officials to turn over documents showing some crime analysts had failed certification tests.

The State Bureau of Investigation is refusing to turn over the tests despite pressure from local prosecutors such as Moore. He made the motion June 26 in Buncombe County Superior Court, saying the agency’s refusal to provide the information is illegal.

Buncombe County Superior Court Judge Gary M. Gavenus has yet to sign an order on the motion.

About two dozen analysts failed national certification tests that were supposed to reassure the public that laboratory work is performed correctly.

Read the rest HERE!

Fracking bill becomes law amid errant vote

(Raleigh News-Observer) Republicans successfully overrode Gov. Bev Perdue’s veto of a fracking bill during a dramatic vote taken just after 11 p.m. Monday.

But like the legislation itself, the vote to override was controversial.

Rep. Becky Carney, a Democrat from Mecklenburg County who opposes fracking, pushed the wrong button and accidentally voted with Republicans to override the veto. A maneuver by Wake County Republican Paul “Skip” Stam prevented her from changing her vote, giving the GOP a historic one-vote margin of victory.

“It was a huge mistake,” Carney said afterward. “I take full responsibility.”

Democrats denounced Stam’s quick parliamentary maneuver as a dirty trick that resulted in the passage of a landmark energy overhaul that could create a natural gas production industry in the state.

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General Assembly Overrides Vetoes on Budget, Fracking, Racial Justice Act

(Carolina Journal) An override of Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue’s budget veto highlighted a day of votes in which the Republican-controlled General Assembly shot down the governor’s vetoes three times.

The General Assembly on Monday night voted to override Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue’s veto of the state budget bill, clearing the way for adjournment and allowing lawmakers to go home to campaign for the November 2012 general election.

Lawmakers also overrode vetoes on bills that would tighten the Racial Justice Act and set up a framework for fracking to begin in North Carolina.

The $20.2 billion General Fund budget that became law Monday night comprises less than 40 percent of the state’s overall $52 billion budget.

“This is a sound budget which North Carolina needs to move forward,” Rep. Harold Brubaker, R-Randolph, and chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, told his fellow representatives.

Read the rest HERE!

Buncombe DA pushes to see failed SBI tests

(Asheville Citizen-Times) District Attorney Ron Moore and a victims’ advocate are pushing for a judge’s order they say would compel state officials to turn over documents showing some crime analysts had failed certification tests.

The State Bureau of Investigation is refusing to turn over the tests despite pressure from local prosecutors such as Moore. He made the motion June 26 in Buncombe County Superior Court, saying the agency’s refusal to provide the information is illegal.

Buncombe County Superior Court Judge Gary M. Gavenus has yet to sign an order on the motion.

About two dozen analysts failed national certification tests that were supposed to reassure the public that laboratory work is performed correctly.

The agency was criticized two years ago when an auditor who found that hundreds of blood examinations had been incorrectly reported. A review found that the SBI lab’s policies and procedures improperly favored prosecutors.

Read the rest HERE!

Forsyth County schools resegregated, but opinions differ on whether that’s a problem

(Journal Now) Many of Forsyth County’s public schools have resegregated over the last 40 years as national court decisions, and local political ones, favored neighborhood schools over racially and economically balanced ones.

Although schools with many poor students clearly score lower on tests, education experts and community leaders disagree on whether putting students of different demographics together is necessary.

An equity committee assembled by the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Board of Education to study school assignment issues called attention to the shift in reports every year from 1997 through 2001. With little left to say, the committee disbanded.

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Study links physical punishment to later mental disorders

(USA Today) Children who are spanked, hit, or pushed as a means of discipline may be at an increased risk of mental problems in adulthood — from mood and anxiety disorders to drug and alcohol abuse, new research suggests.

Although it is well established that physical and sexual abuse, emotional neglect, and other severe forms of maltreatment in childhood are associated with mental illness, this is one of the first studies to show a link between non-abusive physical punishment and several different types of mental disorders, says epidemiologist Tracie Afifi, lead author of the study in today’s Pediatrics.

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Perdue vetoes bid to start gas fracking in N.C.

(Rocky Mountain Telegram via AP) Governor Bev Perdue vetoed legislation Sunday that would allow a form of shale gas exploration called fracking in North Carolina, saying the measure did too little to protect drinking water, landowners and local governments.

The measure now returns to the General Assembly. The outcome of an override vote as early as Monday is uncertain because there may not be enough votes in the House to meet the required three-fifths majority.

Perdue has expressed tempered support for hydraulic fracturing if the right regulations are in place and it can be done safely to protect drinking water and citizens. She agreed with supporters of fracking that it could help create jobs and lower energy costs.

But the Democratic governor said the Republican-led General Assembly’s legislation fell short.

Read the rest HERE!

Perdue vetoes NC death penalty bias law rollback

(SF Gate via AP) Gov. Beverly Perdue on Thursday vetoed legislation that rolls back a landmark North Carolina law allowing death row inmates to prove their sentence resulted from racial bias.

The Racial Justice Act directs judges to reduce a sentence to life in prison if they find race was a significant factor in a convicted murderer receiving a death sentence or in the composition of jurors hearing a case. Only Kentucky has a similar law.

“As long as I am governor, I will fight to make sure the death penalty stays on the books in North Carolina. But it has to be carried out fairly — free of prejudice,” Perdue said in a statement.

The Republican-controlled Legislature passed the bill by margins that would appear to be enough for an override of the Democratic governor’s veto. Legislative leaders said they would try to push the legislation into law over Perdue’s effort to block it.

Read the rest HERE!