Domestic violence

Carrboro’s power play

By Steve Woodward

We probably should have seen this coming. Amid the steady, predictable demise of misguided policies imposing “diversity, equity and inclusion” on education, large corporations, small businesses, law enforcement and the U.S. military industrial complex, virtue signalers were becoming desperate. They needed to find another hill on which to DIE absent DEI.

If, in fact, DEI is destined to fail in its mission to cripple for-profit entities and elevate individuals into positions of power and influence because of their skin color or gender identity, another destructive path had to be identified.

And now we are learning that it runs through North Carolina. Last week, underwritten by an obscure environmental activism operation with an ominous name (NC WARN, aka, Waste Awareness and Reduction Network), the municipality of Carrboro filed a lawsuit against Charlotte-based Duke Energy, a dominant coal generated electricity provider and natural gas holding company. According to the Duke Energy website the company provides services to 8.4 million customers in Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio and South Carolina, and provides natural gas service to 1.7 million customers across five states.

The complaint filed December 4, 2024, in Orange County (N.C.) superior court “seeks compensation for the damages that it has incurred, and will incur in the future, as the proximate result of Defendant Duke Energy Corporation’s knowing deception campaign concerning the causes and dangers posed by the climate crisis”.

NC WARN’s attorney, Matt Quinn, told The Washington Post that the town has hired consultants to assess the cost of climate-induced damages, and expects it may be up to $60 million.

Good luck covering the consultants’ fees. The suit’s filing is littered with the climate cult’s tired, baseless claims connected by hedgy words such as “may” and “likely”.

Naturally, the petulant mayor of Carrboro, Barbara Foushee, and her band of hysterical municipal “leaders”, many of whom are indoctrinates of the University of North Carolina in nearby Chapel Hill, have completely overlooked the irony of going after Duke Energy for the sin of providing reliable energy to the town, county and state for decades.

Electricity literally lifted Carrboro out of obscurity. It was incorporated in 1911 but did not take on its present name until two years later. In 1913, one Julian Shakespeare Carr, owner of the town’s grist mill, made a generous offer to deliver electricity and expand the mill. At the time, nobody cared that Carr was a well-established white supremacist who supported the Ku Klux Klan, opposed the 15th Amendment that gave black men the right to vote, and bought the News and Observer newspaper to provide a platform to advance his views with the help of editor Josephus Daniels, a fellow, virulent white supremacist.

(Editor’s note: Daniels? Sounds familiar, huh? His grandson, Frank Daniels Jr., was publisher of the N&O for 26 years, retired and subsequently purchased The Pilot of Southern Pines in 1996. Daniels’ ancestors still own the publication to this day, and while they denounce their white supremacist DNA, we wonder what old Josephus would think of their rabid endorsement of a drag queen show in the local theater in 2022).

The Carrboro climate zealots not only are blind to irony but also are lousy at optics. The mayor unveiled the lawsuit by staging a highly rehearsed press event in a well illuminated room with panels of electric lighting in the ceiling and a large flat panel monitor bearing Carrboro’s funky green (of course) town logo. They might have gathered outdoors as a nod to “Mother Earth”. Instead, they flipped on the lights to underscore the implausibility of life without electrical power.

One of the tenets of the lawsuit is that Duke Energy has consistently deceived citizens “into believing that climate science was in dispute, that climate change was not real, that humans were not causing the climate crisis, that climate change did not present an urgent risk to the Earth and public, that fossil fuels were not causing the climate crisis, that fossil fuels were necessary, and other such mistaken beliefs.”

The lawsuit pins all of the looming threats facing the people of Carrboro to one entity, Duke Energy, although it is undisputed that the United States has a much lower, and persistently declining, carbon “footprint” compared to other developed nations, namely China, India and Russia. But the disingenuousness does not end there.

Climate risk data analyst First Street assesses risk factors in municipalities across a spectrum ranging from flooding, fire, wind, air quality and heat. First Street chronicles one major flooding event in Carrboro, in September 2018. Ninety-seven properties were impacted. Overall, reports First Street: “The city of Carrboro has minor risk from flooding. There are 640 properties in Carrboro at risk of flooding over the next 30 years(emphasis added). This represents 11.7% of all properties in Carrboro.”

There’s more:

This year 11.3% of properties in Carrboro have risk of flooding. In 30 years 11.6% of properties in Carrboro will have risk of flooding, First Street projects.
“Dangerously hot days and heatwaves may occur more often,” First Street acknowledges. Yet, the projections do not exactly strike end-of-the-world fear in a normal person who knows better than to run a marathon in 100-plus degrees.
Thirty years ago, Carrboro experienced 11 “dangerously” hot days (100+), compared to 23 such extreme days in 2024. Based on its projection model, First Street sees a possibility that Carrboro will contend with 41 sweltering days in 2054. Assuming this is accurate, Carrboro’s extreme heat days might increase at a rate of 0.6 days per year. Or not. (Across the ages, climate “changes” in both directions but that’s not a fact the climate cultists acknowledge).

Mayor Foushee was asked by a WRAL TV reporter about the timing of the lawsuit targeting Duke Energy.

“Why not now?” said the town’s first black woman mayor (photo nearby). “The opportunity presented itself. … When you talk about righting wrongs, or facing injustices, someone has to step out and give it voice and take action.”

Based on Carrboro’s crime data, one is left to ponder as to whether the mayor is using climate as a diversion from more pressing issues. According to NeighborhoodScout.com, the crime rate in Carrboro is considerably higher than the national average across all communities in America from the largest to the smallest. The chance of becoming a victim of either violent or property crime in Carrboro is 1 in 50. Based on FBI crime data, Carrboro is not one of the safest communities in America. Relative to North Carolina, Carrboro has a crime rate that is higher than 66% of the state’s cities and towns of all sizes.

Perhaps Carrboro’s esteemed leaders are counting on the town’s propensity toward violence to further engage Duke Energy in the battle to save the planet. Who knows what a combination of fear mongering and climate religiosity might accomplish?

A former television meteorologist in San Francisco, Brian Sussman, elaborates on this frequent confluence in a new book, “Climate Cult” (PostHill Press, May 2024)

Sussman was run out of the weather forecasting profession because he challenged “global warming” as long ago as 1996. Sussman’s book presents a road map toward exposing and defeating the war on life, liberty and property waged by the climate tyrants.

“The premise of climate change has become similar to a system of ecclesiastic belief, based on pseudo-facts and science, while manifesting traditional religious elements of guilt, revelation, repentance, devotion, and duty. … Leaders of the cult preach dreams of a new world, a pristine environment, a calmed climate, a manageable population, and universal salvation through sustainable development, which, in turn, will expunge the world of social injustice and inequity.

“This cult has its own prophets and evangelists dedicated to converting the masses through the cataclysmic messaging of fear. … Guilt is repressed through acknowledgment of (indulgence)and the subsequent pursuit of a frugal existence and reduced carbon footprint; these are all paths of self-righteousness and outward virtue.”

Duke Energy pledges carbon-zero emissions from electrical power generation by 2050. But what if the cultists decide that’s not soon enough? What if a well-educated graduate with multiple degrees from UNC-Chapel Hill or Duke University decides that Duke Energy executives have evaded responsibility for killing the planet for far too long? What if Carrboro’s lawsuit advances through the court system and stalls?

That person wouldn’t think of making the ultimate sacrifice, would he? That person would never contemplate shooting a Duke Energy executive in cold blood on a city street, would he?

Stay safe, Mr. Columbus

By Steve Woodward

The next time you walk past a statue honoring a historic figure, you might consider uttering a phrase now very much in vogue: Stay safe. Seems an odd thing to say to one as courageous as Christopher Columbus but, suddenly, statues are almost as endangered as city storefronts and American flags. Portraits and plaques, you’re next.

Destroying private property and erasing American history are part of Antifa’s far left, two-pronged assault strategy, with plenty of backup from Democrat mayors, governors and their fellow radicals in Congress. A mob in Birmingham, Ala., was struggling to tear down a Confederate Soldiers and Sailors monument when none other than the city’s Democrat mayor showed up to help them finish the job.

Meanwhile, how about the corporate virtue signaling? Perhaps the day soon will come when all of the images on grocery store packaging will be masked, just in case someone decides the Keebler elves are offensive to short people. Will Col. Sanders be transitioning to gray or beige suits? Or maybe the solution is East German-era generic shelf stocking. There will be an aisle on which every box is labeled RICE; another where your choices are SYRUP or SYRUP.

And no more choosing between Mattel’s Barbie and Ken. This just in: Ken is Barbie. Woke.

Such crass chuckling will get your house burned to the ground in 2020. But what honest person can deny needing a break from the unrelenting madness sweeping our besieged nation?

It would all be laugh out loud hilarious if it was not so dangerous. Conservative author and former Republican Presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan published in 2011 a book entitled “Suicide of a Superpower: Will American Survive to 2025?” He wrote, “America will be gone” in a few decades. “In its place will arise a country unrecognizable to our parents.”

His question targeting 2025 now appears prophetic. Remember how mainstream media shrieked when, during an earlier round of statue toppling a few years ago, President Donald Trump remarked that monuments to Washington and Jefferson would be next? That will never happen, said these keen cultural observers. Don’t be ridiculous, Orange Man.

Sadly, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson have both gone down with a thud in Portland, Ore. Jefferson soon will disappear in Decatur, Ga., and New York City Hall. A Washington statue in Chicago was vandalized amid calls for its removal. (How about removing the Democrats who preside, week after week, over black versus black violence in the streets?)

Columbus has not been spared. He was torn from a pedestal in St. Paul, Minn. He was beheaded in Boston. And submerged in a lake in Richmond, Va.

The destruction is not limited to the famous. Three plaques honoring confederate soldiers have been removed from the University of Alabama’s campus library. A monument commemorating more than 1,600 confederate soldiers who died in Civil War prisoner camps controlled by the Union army is coming down in Indianapolis.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ordered the removal of portraits of four former Speakers to wrap up her week. The corrupt media will not mention that all four are Democrats who defended slavery. So what took so long, Nance? Howell Cobb of Georgia was born on a plantation and became a raging secessionist. James Orr of South Carolina was a member of a three-person commission sent to Washington in 1861 to negotiate a truce with President James Buchanan to avert civil war. Before they left town, artillery fire was tearing apart Fort Sumter in the Charleston Harbor. The war had begun.

The chapters of American history represented by these many suddenly repulsive monuments and portraits across our land have been in place, in many cases, for a century or more. The rage that suddenly casts them as unbearable and offensive drips with hypocrisy. But if virtually everything is, as the mobs insist, blatantly racist, from Washington, Jefferson, Columbus, Robert E. Lee, and anyone who ever wore a Confederate uniform or raised the Confederacy’s flag, where does it end? The next growing movement is the renaming of every building ever dedicated to honor a person’s memory.

If this folly absolutely must happen to quell vandalism and violence, might we suggest starting with the Russell Senate office building. Richard B. Russell, Jr., was a lifelong Democrat who was Governor of Georgia and a U.S. Senator for nearly four decades. He was twice a candidate for President (1948 and ’52). He opposed civil rights legislation at every turn, and led a Southern boycott of the 1964 Democrat National Convention to protest the signing into law of the Civil Rights Act by President Lyndon Johnson.

If not the Russell building, then what? A suggestion floating around is to name it the Hiram Revels building. Revels, a Republican, was our nation’s first black U.S. Senator (1870), representing Mississippi, although he was born a free man in Fayetteville, N.C. He spent much of his adult life as a minister, following in the footsteps of his father. Revels surely would have applauded the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

He paved the way forward as the Republican Party emerged as the anti-slavery, civil rights party. In fact, the 1964 Act never would have made it to Johnson’s desk without 80 percent-plus support by Republicans in the House and Senate.

Generational hypocrisy

By Steve Woodward

The Left rejects the United States of America as founded.

It would confiscate and ban firearms owned by law abiding citizens. But it does not reject the use of knives, bricks, rocks, flames fueled by chemical agents and spray paint in the hands of lawless citizens.

It is calling for police departments to be defunded by state governments. But it resists calls to defund Planned Parenthood abortion on demand, which annually culls the black population by the tens of thousands.

The Left is fine with killing and wounding law enforcement officers. The Left is unmoved by weekly deaths of young black and Hispanic men who are murdered openly, on the streets, by fellow young black and Hispanic men. The Left ignores white people who are improperly detained by law enforcement, white and black, and, sometimes, killed, deliberately or unintentionally.

The Left rejects school choice for children of impoverished black families, preferring they attend underperforming public schools, from which they are likely to drop out.

The Left decries “systemic racism” in 2020. Before that, it was 1964. 1968. 1992. 2008. 2014. Black Lives Matter. But they only matter, apparently, when a moment in time says they matter. The rest of the time, black lives are shackled by the soft tyranny of low expectations and social justice programs imposed on those lives by, guess who? The Left.

Few civil rights warriors possess stronger truth radar than North Carolina native Clarence Henderson. In 1960, he and other young black men sat down at a white-only lunch counter in Greensboro. They changed the world. Nothing was set on fire. Nobody died. They sat down. Before the end of the decade federal legislation passed to begin the slow unraveling of segregation. The Left is unimpressed. Why did it not happen in the 1600s when slaves arrived on the shores of a future land mass called America? Why did it take so long? Ask Democrats, who defended slavery in the 1860s, and formed the Ku Klux Klan around the same time to oppose Republican Reconstruction-era policies.

“As someone who made an impact during the (’60s) Civil Rights era, I know that strong, peaceful protests can make a difference,” writes Henderson. “We never damaged property or encouraged any type of riotous actions.”

The men who are complicit in the alleged murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis will remain, perhaps forever, a mystery to a majority of Americans because we go about our lives without a trace of contempt toward “people of color”. We worship together. We work together. We volunteer together. What is not mysterious is why one man’s senseless death has sparked violence, property destruction and orchestrated outrage which our streets have not see in more than a half century.

One, it is an election year and the Left despises President Donald Trump. So there is a strong exploitation motive. Two, widespread riots, mostly violent not mostly peaceful, carried out by Antifa and other global threats to civilization, conveniently divert attention from generational black poverty, lawlessness and unemployment.

Observe where the deepest unrest lies. In cities controlled by Democrats and the Left for decades. The worst kind of racism is subtle, and the Left owns it. A friend from college days who has devoted 20+ years serving Los Angeles homeless through a major organization should be angry at the neglect of California’s Democrat establishment which today finds areas overrun by homeless. But instead he laments in an email to donors “decades of generations being denied their basic rights, access to quality education, equal pay and opportunity.” But no mention of Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi, Jerry Brown or other long entrenched Democrats who have been quite content to let the crisis escalate knowing they’d be re-elected for life.

Where are we two weeks into this? The Left is calling for what President Barack Obama promised 12 years ago as the nation’s first president of color, a transformational change. It did not happen under our black president and his black Attorney General, Eric Holder. How will it happen now? Perhaps if we just allow property destruction to go on long enough. On our side of the “aisle”, pathetically, there is pandering. Hollow, boilerplate outrage.

A Republican N.C. congressman who I choose not to embarrass calls for “important and needed conversations regarding race and equality” without saying who is doing the talking. He says we should “learn from one another” and “bridge the divides”. And, the worst cliche of all: “Let’s get to work.”

Here’s an idea. Let’s denounce the Left for cheering our country toward anarchy. Let’s engage more National Guard and U.S. military in the streets to restore order. And let’s stop accepting false narratives. Let’s promote facts and reality in 21st century America.

Writes Hans Bader, a civil rights attorney, in a recent post to CNSNews.com: “Resist calls from prominent Democrats to ‘defund the police.’ Police save many lives in the black community by arresting dangerous people. Black people are much more likely to be killed by an ordinary criminal than by a police officer. Peter Kirsanow, a black civil-rights commissioner, says that in 2015, ‘a cop was 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male was likely to be killed by a cop’.”

In other words, let’s defund the Left, defund Antifa and heavily fund leaders like Clarence Henderson who are not invested in false narratives.

A mentor’s story

By Steve Woodward

We spent a few hours together on weekends for a span of nine months. He was a high school teenager. I was assigned through a local agency to be his mentor. We both were novices — at being mentored and mentoring.

Let’s call him Buddy. Buddy was an atypical “troubled youth”. He was not always in trouble, or always pushing limits, or always back talking. He was, however, mostly neglected like so many teens denied an upbringing within a stable family. When I was introduced to Buddy he was living with an adult sister, who is married and has a child of her own. The arrangement came about after Buddy was involved in a domestic dispute in another state, which left him estranged from his mother and charged with several offenses as a juvenile.

I never pressed his sister for details. She often repeated that he was a good kid who just ended up in a bad situation.

His father lived hundreds of miles to the south. Buddy rarely spoke about him. Nonetheless, Buddy traveled to visit Dad for a period of time during the mentorship. He had very little to say about the visit when he returned. Buddy had very little to say about anything. He was painfully quiet, acutely shy and, I was told, uneasy around other kids in his high school. In fact, Buddy kept a distance from kids in the school he was attending when I first came onto the scene. It was a school for kids with behavioral issues. The deal was that Buddy would be eligible to transfer to a “normal” public high school if he stayed out of trouble. He was wise enough to know that trouble was one encounter away. So he told me he stayed clear of other kids, went to his sister’s house right after school and spent a lot of time alone in his room. He played video games, listened to music and lifted weights. I did my best detective work to get that much detail out of him.

Eventually, Buddy was transferred. That was progress. I had the impression he was proud of himself. A rye smile was the only confirmation of that. If I could get a smile out of him now and then that, too, was progress. When we first began our Saturday or Sunday interactions, I would try to chat him up. I was lucky to receive a head nod, or “yes” or “no” for my efforts. Finally, I figured out that if I endured long periods of silence Buddy eventually would mumble a question. “Ever been fishin’?” “Do you like motorcycles?” “Do you play video games?”

As time passed, there was no doubt that he enjoyed our get-togethers. His sister always delivered Buddy right on time, and off we’d go. He had a typical teenager appetite for junk food, sweet tea and jumbo soft drinks. He was the most meticulous eater I’ve ever seen, and not one to chit-chat over a meal. During our occasional sit-down meals, Buddy typically ordered chicken and french fries. He would eat all of the fries, one by one, before moving on to the chicken. We made a deal that he would try one new menu item. Eventually, he ate seafood. A dramatic breakthrough.

My mentor role was focused on spending time with Buddy away from school, so I was tasked with finding new things for us to do or see. We visited Fort Bragg, an indoor skydiving facility in Raeford (where Buddy was a willing participant), and a car show in Charlotte at the speedway. We attended a Panthers football game one sunny Sunday, and a Hurricanes hockey game in Raleigh. We went fishing, bike riding around Reservoir Park, and hung out during a fall arts, crafts and food festival. Buddy was doing all of the things I never did as the father of a daughter with a horse.

I never was able to come close to peeling away his emotional shell to understand what was going on inside of his head. I never wanted Buddy to feel he was being interrogated. Occasionally, he would giggle convulsively while we were together. I wondered if this was an expression of joy, or an expression of what he thought about his gray haired, salad eating, sparkling water sipping mentor. Maybe he thought of me as a big dork. No telling. Nonetheless, when our time together came to an end — his charges were dropped and he was green lighted to leave town and move in with his Dad — Buddy strained to look me in the eye as he stammered, “I’m gonna miss you, man.”

I miss Buddy, too. My experience tells me that Americans might consider spending more time mentoring and encouraging neglected teens and less time knee-jerk reacting to gun and other violence perpetrated by emotionally damaged young men. Just think how many Buddys are out there today with no one to talk to who cares about them.

Heaven’s gates in Carthage

Much of political debate is policy debate. Lifelong Republicans go the polls to elect lawmakers who believe in limited federal government, the importance of the institutions of marriage and the family, the sanctity of the Constitution and the rule of law, to name the basic pillars.

But we know all too well that governments and lawmakers can not intervene in every struggle that a citizen or a family will face. Thankfully, Americans are generous and caring. Many work in complete obscurity with faith-based organizations to help those who come to them in desperate need.

One such group are victims of domestic violence, sexual assault and human trafficking, and here in Moore County these victims find support and hope through Friend to Friend, which provides resources to rebuild lives.

A woman taken in by Friend to Friend described arriving at the Carthage-based facility as an experience similar to passing through “the gates of Heaven.”

Connie Lovell recently had a conversation with FTF’s children’s program coordinator, who devotes her days to interacting with the children of women who’ve escaped abuse. Click here to hear her story and more about the mission of Friend to Friend

Community in Action introduces local agencies that offer assistance that builds opportunity. Spots air at 10:20 a.m. Saturdays on 102.5 FM, and at 12:50 p.m. Saturdays on 550 AM.