Durham is much in the news. The oldline family newspaper was sold recently, under financial duress, to a chain. The Raleigh daily decides to damn Durham with faint praise by publishing a Sunday feature stating that the Bull City's reputation-as gang-infested, crime-ridden and corrupt-is not actually as true as people perceive. And now the new World Almanac for 2005 has separated Raleigh from Durham (and Chapel Hill) in its listing of Metropolitan Statistical Areas-in effect undoing the work of many to create the urban critical mass we call the Research Triangle.
Yet the Triangle Transit Authority is attempting to run a rail line between Raleigh and Durham as if the two cities like each other. They don't, mainly because certain citizens in Durham have been running a guerrilla campaign against Triangle unity. Organized around a "Durham First" thrust that manifests itself in anti-Raleigh propaganda, Durham's Convention and Visitor's Bureau has employees with the specific job description to communicate with any entity that mentions Raleigh above Durham. Airline pilots, publications, broadcast media and government agencies receive a call if they dare to refer to the airport as simply Raleigh, or forget that most of the facilities at Research Triangle Park are in Durham County. (See December 2000 Metro, "Reyn Bowman Embraces a New Vision for the Triangle.")
Civic leaders throw up their hands when referring to Durham's intractable attitude about regional unity, whether land planning, road development, culture or business recruitment. As the Triangle gains international status, petulant people in one of its constituent parts are running a campaign to undo the hard work by many to create metropolitan critical mass for the Triangle. As a player in that concept with the first Triangle-wide media-Spectator, Triangle Business Journal and now Metro Magazine, I find it appalling that Durham's leaders, mostly in defiance of public feeling in the Bull City, desire to abandon the urbanity and sophistication of the Triangle concept, in effect balkanizing us back into a collection of Mayberries.
THE TTA SCANDAL
But that is not nearly as appalling as the continued development of rail transit in the face of Durham's notorious resentment of Raleigh. I have been screaming and yelling about the nonsense behind the argument for rail transit since 1982 when radical activists first began forcing the idea. Back then there was not one scintilla of factual basis for wasting time and money on the concept. Today, as evidenced by a chilling report from federal transportation officials, there is little justification now, in 2005. Rail proponents were mostly environmental radicals using junk science to force people out of their automobiles to save the earth- with the added dimension of creating a central apparat to re-direct development and control the movements of the masses. Rail transit activists and shadow environmental groups have been holding up road projects in their zeal to create gridlock to force their goal on the people. The current widening of I-40 near RTP was 10 years behind schedule directly due to a handful of eco-nuts. As I wrote, rail mass transit was born of sin, the political sort.
And sure enough, it is clear that rail proponents must prove that road congestion will hamper movement to gain federal funds. So despite their best efforts, according to the latest report from federal planners, the rail activists have actually failed. Yet they are undaunted. The more the facts militate against their case, the more fiercely they embrace it. It's "free money" they cry to area leaders, so we must move on, failing to divulge that this money to build the system is a drop in the ocean compared to the future burden on area citizens. But worse, the rail plan is a naked maneuver to change our pattern of development in Raleigh, a city of neighborhoods that consistently ranks as one of the best places to live in the world.
Rail will scar the city and cost its citizens their economic security. The fact is that the only line TTA could force through, due to earlier failures to crisscross the region with tracks, goes to Durham. What we are actually talking about, based on the reality that Durham desires to go its own way and disassociate itself from Raleigh and Triangle unity, is inter-city rail, a different proposition all together, and one that I steadfastly think is a good thing for the region and the nation. Fast trains connecting major cities, such as the TGV in France, is a plan we need as airline travel becomes a strain. A fast train to the coast or mountains; to DC and New York; to Chicago and the West Coast; to Atlanta and points south, yes. To Durham: I'd rather drive.
NOTES FROM LA-LA LAND
MICHAEL CRICHTON has them hopping with his new book that dismantles the environmental movement. State of Fear is fiction, but fiction with footnotes and the story is gripping enough to engage readers so they can learn the truth: Global Warming is a sham, as are most of the ancillary fabricated fears cooked up by a crowd of fringe fanatics who count on the stupidity and mutual beliefs of our politicized mass media who disseminate any press release that spreads fear about global warming without bothering to check the facts.
NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO naturally gave a huge hunk of airtime to a book by a California professor who studied ancient Mayans, the history of Iceland and Easter Island, claiming that bad environmental policies brought down their cultures. This is fanciful at best, but the thrust of the book Collapse is a confident warning that the United States will fail in 50 years if we don't learn from these past societies by ceasing industrial growth, not cutting trees, preserving our water and generally relapsing into a pre-historic culture before it's too late. Recently, he received airtime and was taken seriously. Seen much on Crichton's book anywhere in the media?
DAN RATHER is at least disgraced. He avoided the humiliation of being fired with his crew at CBS over the faked George Bush National Guard papers and will "retire" in March. Yet it was Rather who proclaimed himself "managing editor" of the CBS Evening News, a position that mandates that he take responsibility for the program's content. Add coward to his dismal legacy of hatchet jobs and slanted news coverage. Funny that Daniel Schor, the old CBS hand and admitted Leftist, avoided mentioning the CBS verdicts on his laughable regular Sunday editorial on NPR. Maybe someone is examining his stint as a broadcast journalist.
A 36-LANE HIGHWAY is receiving serious attention in Texas. These giant autobahns would carry trucks, cars, trains and pipelines in separate "lanes" and undo the inefficiency of trucks and cars fighting it out for survival on today's highways.
REAGAN'S REVOLUTION by Craig Shirley, the new book receiving good reviews for laying out the nuts and bolts of the presidency of The Great Communicator, mentions prominently the role of Raleighites Jesse Helms and lawyer Tom Ellis. Ellis (profiled in the January 2002 issue of Metro) is famous for engineering the rise of former US Senator Helms. It is little known that he is also given credit for Ronald Reagan's rise to the presidency in the 1980 race. Ellis insisted that Reagan not give up in the 1976 primary race- after a series of defeats caused his advisors to insist he pull out-but to run in the North Carolina presidential primary. Reagan won and the rest is history. Says Robert Novak, reviewing Shirley's book: "Had it not been for this North Carolina upset, Reagan would have dropped out of the 1976 race and never been seen in 1980." Thank you Tom Ellis.
NORTH KOREANS are dramatically shorter due to near starvation under the lunatic regime that has lingered since the Korean War as a sickening reminder of the catastrophe of communism. Can we forgive our academics and political activists who defended the Soviet Union, Mao, North Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge?
GEORGE BUSH'S inaugural address finally laid out the truth. America has been a world power since World War II, whether we like it or not. We occupied Europe and enforced the disarmament of Germany, while keeping the Soviets behind the Iron Curtain. We occupied and paci- fied Japan and guaranteed security for Asia. We stood off the Russians in the Cold War and won. As children of dissidents who broke away from an empire in the 1770s, we are naturally resistant to admitting that we are now the world power with responsibilities thrust upon us to keep the planet safe and its people free. The rest of the world should be grateful that we are a benevolent empire and listen to what George Bush has to say. That goes for Americans too.