Charles Meeker is a watermelon: green on the outside, red on the inside.
The Raleigh mayor has tied up the City with velvet ropes of environmental sensitivity as he pursues the Party line to establish a utopian central plan manned by petty apparatchiks and fellow-traveling white-collar nomenclatura. For example, the trash pick-up plan imposed on the City is a blatant cover-up to protect the astronomical cost of recycling. Meeker stated that citizens "consume" too much, creating too much garbage, a decidedly green and anti-capitalist belief. There are other examples, but the most serious manifestation of his radical doctrine is the horrifying reality that Raleigh is about to be altered permanently with the imposition of rail mass transit. The "city of neighborhoods", what he and his cohorts label "sprawl", is soon to be a model Soviet town.
Now Red Charles is not the commissariat who controls TTA. The transit apparat is neither fish nor fowl, an extra-legal homunculus created by people you probably never heard of who believe they know better than the unwashed masses what is best for the City and the region. Answerable to no local or area elected entity, TTA is a dedicated cadre of environmental do-gooders who want train transit to force citizens out of their gas guzzling polluting automobiles and sprawling suburban neighborhoods to save the planet. To this end, they have worked in the shadows to stop road projects to help create traffic gridlock to justify rail transit. The 10-year delay in widening I-40 at Research Triangle Park, and the 8-year delay in completing the Highway 70 overpass at Clayton, are two instructive examples.
Yet a glance at TV traffic reports indicates smooth conditions on the main arteries, nullifying the requirement of high-volume auto flows to justify rail transit. And during the hot summer days this year, ozone levels were quite low, so forcing cars off the road to prevent pollution is a non-starter. Add to those realities the fact that the TTA plan is actually inter-city rail from Raleigh to Durham. And from inception, the population density does not justify the implementation of rail transit, verifying that the entire concept is driven by political motives - the desire by a few to implement central planning to control where people live and work.
As Raleigh mayor, Red Charles presides over a city previously voted one of the best places to live in America. Yet today, Raleigh roads are nearly impassable and our vaunted quality of life has been sacrificed for the rail transit agenda. The state can be blamed for much of this crisis, but where is our Leader when it comes to raising hell on the front porch of the Legislative Building on behalf of the capital city? He's nowhere to be seen, sadly predictable behavior for a man who was caught attempting to stop the second year funding for the 1-540 Outer Loop in 1992. In 2002 he stated to the public in his mayoral campaign that he was now for the continuation of the Loop. As soon as he gained office, he and fellow-traveling Cary mayor Glen Lang announced their opposition to continuing the project. And did I forget to mention that Red Charles was the lawyer for TTA when he first ran for the Council? Hallmarks of the Left are the ability to lie for the greater cause and display no shame when caught in a contradiction.
Meeker has worked in hand-in hand with rail transit from the beginning, resulting in the desecration of the quality of life in Raleigh. Of course his answer to the road problem is more local taxes in the form of a $60 million transportation improvement bond referendum set for October 11 (coupled with $20 million "affordable housing" bond) that, if passed, will be funded by a two- cent increase in Raleigh's property tax rate.
The problem is, aside from the outrage that we are forced to pony up money from local taxes because the State stole our road funds, much of the bond money is targeted for traffic "calming" projects designed to reduce automobile use by "narrowing" some streets, increasing pedestrian access and adding "roundabouts" on Hillsborough Street. Of the streets listed for widening, not included are Dawson Street, McDowell Street, Person Street, Glenwood Avenue, Oberlin Road and the dozens of other main streets in the central city that now resemble goat paths in central Paraguay.
As costs spiral to build rail transit, Meeker and the TTA soldier on, even in the face of missives from the Feds that the project may not qualify for funding anyway. Instead of regrouping and reconsidering the project, or at least its implementation, TTA continues to act like nothing is wrong by condemning private property and seeking bids for station construction. What makes them so confident they will succeed in altering and impairing the pattern of life in Raleigh?
It's because they are imbued with righteousness empowered by the Federal Highway Authority. Our local leaders have capitulated to the TTA zealots due to the representation that this is "free money" so we can't turn it down. And it's free money due to machinations in the US Congress. Thirty or so years ago the environmental lobby began pushing to siphon off the pool of money from gas tax collections paid at the pump, sent to Washington and redistributed to the states. At first about 2.5% of the total was allocated to assist existing mass transit systems since they all lose money at alarming rates. Today, under intense pressure from greenies, the amount swept off the top for old and new transit has reached an alarming 20% of the $200 billion federal highway budget.
You do the math. There is now a huge pool of money and North Carolina has paid its fair share. Thus the Charlotte and Triangle transit groups do have a point: They are seeking money due us that will go somewhere else unless we grab it for rail transit. The problem is that this "free money" still leaves the community with major costs if the system gets up and running. For now, the Federal money covers 60% of the system cost, with the state pitching in 25% (from money it does not have-there is no allocation to TTA in the current state budget) and the remainder is picked up by the local communities, now coming out of a tax on rental cars.
But this will not cover the future operating costs and deficits of TTA. I predict, should the system actually be built, that we will be given directives to cease using our cars to force ridership, perhaps including a car use tax (as "Red" Ken Livingston, the Marxist Mayor of London has imposed), followed by the mother of all bond referendums to subsidize TTA, making the upcoming October expenditure jingle like pocket change.
There is an answer. Offer support to TTA if it will re-think its current plan of using existing rail right-of-ways to dictate destinations, and redesign the system to go where it will actually be used. The tragic flaw of today's plan is its emphasis on Triangle needs, which means there is a hole in the doughnut where the major population center is supposed to go. Charlotte, for example, has a hub and spoke layout from center city out to the suburbs. If TTA would run from center city Raleigh to locations where people want to go-RBC Center, the airport, RTP, shopping centers-it is worth supporting. We will then take advantage of the "free money" for a useful purpose.
Alas, this train is out of the station. The result will be devastating to our pattern of development and burden the region with intolerable taxation. I am reminded of the Germans inserting Lenin into Russia in a sealed train allowing him take the contamination of Bolshevism into his homeland. The TTA is a sealed train too, an unaccountable and impervious host heading into Raleigh and the Triangle region to spread the virus of central state control. You can't see into it and there is no one who can stop it. The only course left is to contact United States Senators Elizabeth Dole and Richard Burr
and let them know.
Notes from La-la Land
Autopsy photos are now banned to the public by the NC Legislature. House Bill 1543 passed in March and was voted out of the Senate 49-0 in August. Instead of a Lottery, supported by a large majority of Tar Heels, we get a violation of our constitutional rights to have access to public records. Readers will remember that we ran autopsy photos of Kathleen Peterson in our July issue, figuring that this was our only chance if this bill passed. And the move to take away public records from the public was instigated by the family of deceased racecar driver Dale Earnhart. Yet his autopsy files are in Florida, so why the bill in North Carolina? Could it be certain people are fearful that Kathleen Peterson's autopsy photos make it clear she was not beaten to death by a "blow poke" as represented by the prosecution in the case?
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The disconnect between the America so hated in the world media and the America that saved the Russian submariners (with our vilified allies the British), launched the space shuttle -a marvel of accomplishment out of the grasp of the other nations-and nearly single-handedly organized the rescue and aid systems after the Pacific tsunami, is gigantic. It's not the people of the world who allegedly despise America, it's the clique of political activists, terrorists and media who sell the lie.
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The new Red-Black coalition, comprised of an alliance between two disgusting movements, the old secular Left and the new breed of religious Islamic terrorists, held a pow-wow in Cairo recently to denounce America, calling "Bush, Blair, Berlusconi and Anzar terrorists". The International Campaign Against US and Zionist Occupations conclave was presided over by former Algerian president Ben Bella, and attended by fringe elements from our good friends Germany and France.
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Prisoner of technology is the best description of the way I feel after visiting the Bose radio store and discovering that the new models of the company's "wave radio" do not allow the owner to tune the dial manually. Life is hard enough already, herding five remotes to watch TV, suffering through the imposition of "letter-boxing", cringing at the audacity of networks who insert annoying promotions on the screen during programs, watching screenplays implode before my eyes, and sitting in dumbstruck horror at the volume of commercials. The only bright spot is the success of the online video rental phenomenon Netflix. They nearly put the odious Blockbuster under with their system that eliminates late fees, and the entrepreneur who founded it held off an attack by the mammoth Wal-Mart. And Netflix has quality choices, unlike Blockbuster with its astonishing disregard for its customers.
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The Mitrokhin Archive Part Two is due out in late September, The long awaited examination of the original KGB archives, written by Cambridge's Christopher Andrew with former KGB colonel Vasali Mitrokhin, has been delayed while British secret services go over the sensational, formerly secret material. Chris Andrew was the keynote speaker at our first Raleigh International Spy Conference in 2003. Go to www.raleighspyconference.com.