June 2, 2018

Civil Rights Groups Sue DMV for Revoking Licenses Over Unpaid Fines

In a federal lawsuit, civil rights groups say the North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles' practice of revoking the driver's licenses of people who cannot pay for traffic tickets is unconstitutional.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the ACLU of North Carolina, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), and the Southern Coalition for Social Justice (SCSJ) filed the suit in U.S. District Court today on behalf of two plaintiffs who have had their licenses revoked.

Forty-three states revoke licenses over unpaid fines and fees, but in North Carolina, that revocation is automatic and indefinite. As a result, about 430,000 North Carolinians have had their licenses revoked because of court debt, according to 2017 DMV numbers. (North Carolina also suspends licenses automatically and indefinitely for failing to appear in court for traffic offenses).

State law requires that licenses be automatically revoked for nonpayment of a traffic ticket forty days after a court judgement is entered, but the law doesn't require a hearing to determine whether the person is capable of paying the fines or fees levied. The groups filing the suit says this violates North Carolinian's Fourteenth Amendment rights to due process and equal protection under the law.

Read more: https://www.indyweek.com/news/archives/2018/05/30/civil-rights-groups-sue-dmv-for-revoking-licenses-over-unpaid-fines

June 2, 2018

Is the General Assembly About to Kill Light Rail in Durham and Orange counties?

The budget adjustment Republicans in the General Assembly crafted behind closed doors, unveiled last night, and are expected to pass by a veto-proof supermajority later this week—for the first time in modern history, without an opportunity for lawmakers to offer amendments, because democracy is for suckers—does a lot of things.

It keeps the tax cuts coming, lowering the personal income-tax rate to 5.25 percent (from 5.499 percent), cutting the corporate tax rate from 3 percent to 2.5 percent, and throwing a ton of incentive money at major new economic projects (cough Apple cough). It includes an average 6.5 percent raise for teachers and a 6.9 percent raise for principals, slightly higher than the earlier budget called for, though not as high as Governor Cooper wanted. It gives every state employee a 2 percent raise and ensures that all state workers make at least $15 an hour. It budgets $60 million for Hurricane Matthew recovery. It reverses cuts to the state’s environmental budget, most likely to deal with the GenX crisis. It digs up $6 million for TROSA to build a new facility in the Triad and $250,000 for something called Cross Trail Outfitters “for purposes of promoting wellness and physical activity for youth seven to 20 years of age.” (On its website, Cross Trail Outfitters puts its mission thusly: “Guiding the next generation to Christ through the outdoors.” OK, then.)

Oh, and the budget also effectively kills light rail dead. Page 179 of the budget document contains the sentence-as-murder-weapon: “Additional Requirement for High-Cost Projects. A light rail project is ineligible for scoring, prioritization, and State funding until a written agreement is provided to the Department establishing that all non-State funding necessary to construct the project has been secured.”

In other words, the N.C. Department of Transportation won’t be allowed to move forward with evaluating the project for state funding until all of the non-state-funding sources are locked down. And there’s the rub: half of the project’s financing—more than $1.2 billion—is supposed to come from the federal government. But the feds are required by law to have secured a 50 percent match from state, local, and other sources before they commit.

Read more: https://www.indyweek.com/news/archives/2018/05/29/is-the-general-assembly-about-to-kill-light-rail

June 2, 2018

How a Blue Devil Statue that Was Raising Hell in Small-Town Mississippi Escaped, After a Brief

PHOTO BY CAITLIN PENNA
John Steele Davis's blue devil statue at Bull City Art & Frame Company


How a Blue Devil Statue that Was Raising Hell in Small-Town Mississippi Escaped, After a Brief Abduction, to Durham


When John Steele Davis got word that the four-hundred-pound blue devil statue he made had been stolen from a park in the small town of Water Valley, Mississippi, he was on the other side of the Mississippi River, visiting friends in the Ozarks. This news was surprising enough, but neither Davis nor anyone else could have guessed that the statue, after becoming the focus of local controversy and intrigue, would end up in Durham, a city he had never visited.

The sixty-two-year-old craftsman, who grew up close to Water Valley, had been a blue-collar worker most of his life. In the early nineties, he decided to adapt the skills he'd learned on the job to become a self-taught artisan in a dizzying array of mediums. He's created furniture made from twisted wood scavenged in the wilderness and banjos with tensioners made from bullet casings and bicycle spokes (renowned North Carolina musician Jimbo Mathus owns one, according to Davis's friend, Billy Stevens). He's currently building himself a haybale home.

In 2015, Davis began work on a statue of Uncle Sam, but then he realized that by making a few alterations—a pitchfork and a tail—he could turn it into a blue devil, which is the mascot of Water Valley High School. Davis drew inspiration from stories he'd read when he was in high school, including The Devil and Tom Walker by Washington Irving, which was based on the German legend of Faust.

It's not uncommon for Davis to be inspired by things he's read, says Stevens, a longtime Durham County resident who first met Davis while studying music history in Oxford, Mississippi. Stevens describes Davis as an almost impossible juxtaposition of rural farmworker and worldly intellectual. Although he never graduated from college, Davis is well read and curious.

Read more: https://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/how-a-blue-devil-statue-that-was-raising-hell-in-small-town-mississippi-escaped-after-a-brief-abduction-to-durham/Content?oid=14651827

June 2, 2018

Despite reputation, farmers consider bamboo as cash crop

Bamboo has a reputation: an ever-metastasizing nuisance; a third-world weed; “the poor man’s timber.” But it wasn’t always like this. River cane — one of three bamboo varieties native to the American southeast — once flourished along Carolina riverbeds and across vast, dense acreages known as canebrakes.

“As a part of the colonization of America, European settlers fed their cattle on the giant timber bamboo because it was the most nutritious thing, outcompeting and driving the buffalo away, which was itself part of the effort to eradicate native people, the Cherokee in this region in particular,” farmer Everest Holmes says. Currently a mushroom farmer outside Asheville, he finds himself among a younger generation of farmers seeking to rethink the hows and whys of small-scale agriculture.

“To me, [bamboo] is the epitome of regenerative farming because it lives for so long and is good for the environment, producing three times more oxygen than any other plant,” Holmes says. “You’re getting a timber product, a food source and a potential agro-tourist attraction.”

On May 24, he found himself walking NC A&T State University’s farmland as the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences at A&T co-hosted a free workshop on cultivating bamboo as a cash crop, along with OnlyMoSo USA Corps, a sales and consulting company focused on the creation and maintenance of bamboo plantations. OnlyMoso pitched to around two dozen convening farmers from across the Carolinas and Virginia. Importing bamboo seeds and plants from abroad is illegal in the United States, but private companies filled the resource gap in the decades since the US Department Agriculture’s bamboo program went dark in the early ’70s as the country focused on corn, wheat and soy, and made big shifts in production, moving towards the factory-farm model. David Benfield, a bamboo consultant and co-founder of Brightside Bamboo, the largest bamboo nursery in the Carolinas, attended. He says there are several species highly suitable for commercial farming in North Carolina.

Read more: https://triad-city-beat.com/despite-reputation-farmers-consider-bamboo-cash-crop/

June 2, 2018

12 arrested at NC General Assembly as Poor Peoples Campaign turns focus to militarism

Sandy Irving, a retired statistician at UNC-Chapel Hill, had been warned that she would be placed under arrest if she refused to leave a hallway outside a committee room where members of the state Senate and House were deliberating on the budget. She told the General Assembly police officer she would stay.

Taking stock of Irving’s walker, the officer held off on making the arrest until the police could procure a wheelchair. Irving took advantage of the additional time to keep talking.

“You know, the people in North Carolina need healthcare,” she told the officer. “There’s a lot of veterans that come home from war, and they’re hurt. And they can’t get healthcare because North Carolina has not expanded Medicaid, and people are hurting. And some of you policemen might retire and not be able to afford health insurance. And if Medicaid was expanded, then everybody could have healthcare.

“We don’t like the war economy,” Irving continued. “That is an economic draft that drafts our poor. And when our poor are drafted and they come back and they have healthcare problems, and they can’t get healthcare because North Carolina has not expanded Medicaid. The North Carolina veterans are hurting. They’re committing suicides at enormous rates.”

Read more: https://triad-city-beat.com/12-arrested-at-ncga-poor-peoples-campaign-turns-focus-militarism/

June 2, 2018

Illinois pension buyouts may not bring savings budget claims

CHICAGO (AP) — Illinois' new state budget relies on more than $400 million in savings from a new pension buyout plan that finance experts caution is highly speculative and may not save as much money as lawmakers say.

The budget sailed through the Legislature this week on a bipartisan vote, and Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, who's seeking re-election in November, has said he'll act quickly to sign it. It was a sharp contrast to recent years, when Rauner and majority Democrats deadlocked over a budget and the governor's pro-business priorities, leading to the nation's longest state budget impasse.

The buyout plan is aimed at addressing Illinois' roughly $130 billion unfunded pension liability and the state's ballooning annual contributions to the funds. Protections enshrined in the state constitution have limited lawmakers' options, with the Illinois Supreme Court declaring cuts to benefits unconstitutional.

But the buyouts are voluntary, and there's no way to know for certain how many people will take the state up on the offer.

Read more: http://www.roanoke.com/news/nation/wire/illinois-pension-buyouts-may-not-bring-savings-budget-claims/article_fa14ecef-b538-570e-aff0-bd724aa922b6.html

June 2, 2018

Mormons grapple with race decades after ban on black leaders

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The Mormon church on Friday celebrated the 40th anniversary of reversing its ban on black people serving in the lay priesthood, going on missions or getting married in temples, rekindling debate about one of the faith's most sensitive topics.

The number of black Mormons has grown but still only accounts for an estimated 6 percent of 16 million worldwide members. Not one serves in the highest levels of global leadership.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has worked to improve race relations, including calling out white supremacy and launching a new formal alliance with the NAACP, but some black Mormons and scholars say discriminatory opinions linger in some congregations from a ban rooted in a belief that black skin was a curse.

In a 2013 essay , the church disavowed the reasons behind the ban and condemned all racism, saying the prohibition came during an era of great racial divide that influenced early church teachings. Blacks were always allowed to be members, but the nearly century-long ban kept them from participating in many important rituals.

Read more: http://www.roanoke.com/news/nation/wire/mormons-grapple-with-race-decades-after-ban-on-black-leaders/article_7d7f4dc6-1dd0-52a5-8d07-476428477a16.html

June 2, 2018

For Va. House's Democratic freshmen, Medicaid expansion vote is payoff to 2017 campaigns

As votes were still being counted on election night in 2017, then-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe said the blue wave would finally sweep Medicaid expansion through the General Assembly.

When that prediction came true Wednesday night, members of the big Democratic freshman class of 2018 were some of the last people left on the floor of the House of Delegates, savoring the moment and sharing the news on their phones.

“We all ran on it,” said Del. Schuyler VanValkenburg, D-Henrico. “To get that accomplished and then the benefits that come from that, more money for K-12 spending, more money in the rainy day fund. ... It’s pretty amazing.”

They weren’t in the thick of negotiations among the General Assembly’s top budget-writers, but the 15 first-term Democrats who flipped GOP-held seats may be just as responsible for the outcome. As House Appropriations Chairman Chris Jones, R-Suffolk, made his final pitch for the budget Wednesday, he acknowledged that the “more narrowly oriented” chamber helped set the 51-49 GOP majority on a path to Medicaid expansion.

Read more: http://www.richmond.com/news/plus/for-va-house-s-democratic-freshmen-medicaid-expansion-vote-is/article_1aa1f3dd-436b-54be-94aa-26f07beb9299.html

June 2, 2018

Anti-terrorism agencies involved in monitoring protesters of Mountain Valley Pipeline

The distinct sound of a human stepping on a branch woke Minor Terry at 5 a.m. several days after she began a protest of the natural gas pipeline planned to run through her family’s property.

Even the birds on Bent Mountain weren’t awake yet.

She called down from her tree sit to ask who was there. A man responded, “Oh, hi, ma’am. We’re just checking on you.”

Who is we, she asked.

She fumbled for her glasses, found a flashlight and notified her family that stuff was going down. Four Roanoke County police officers were under the tree. It was the morning when contractors for the Mountain Valley Pipeline were to begin cutting trees.

Read more: http://www.richmond.com/news/plus/anti-terrorism-agencies-involved-in-monitoring-protesters-of-mountain-valley/article_2c0ee2e0-a700-5a18-a5c3-cde2e109776f.html

June 2, 2018

State starts planning to replace Central State, as pressures mount on aging Virginia mental hospital

CENTRAL STATE HOSPITAL - Dr. Hughes Melton took heed of a poster in the admissions ward of the maximum-security forensic unit at the heart of this sprawling state hospital outside of Petersburg for Virginians with mental illness.

"A Smooth Sea Never Makes a Skilled Sailor," the poster cautions.

Melton saw plenty of rough waters to navigate in his first visit to Central State since Gov. Ralph Northam appointed him as state commissioner of behavioral health and developmental services.

The hospital, first established in 1870 as the Central Lunatic Asylum for the Colored Insane at a former Confederate hospital in Richmond's East End, is the only maximum-security facility in Virginia for people with mental illness committed to the state's care because of crimes they were accused of committing.

Last year, the state estimated a cost of $169.1 million to construct a single building to replace eight outdated buildings on the campus, not including Hiram W. Davis Medical Center, which sits between Central State and what was the Southside Virginia Training Center for people with intellectual or development disabilities.

Read more: http://www.richmond.com/news/plus/state-starts-planning-to-replace-central-state-as-pressures-mount/article_fc1b8708-d85b-5b40-979f-6796dc7d6eaa.html