Political correctness

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?

Walk in light

By Steve Woodward

Which is more frustrating? The sense we are getting that Duke Energy thinks power grid security should be turned over to government solutions? Or, that the Raleigh drag queens who infiltrated Southern Pines on December 3 are doubling down, promising to perform here in Moore County frequently next year?

Take your pick. As a practical matter, I guess I’d rather have lights shining on the continued decline of American culture. In which case, confidence that proactive measures will be identified and implemented to secure electric stations, close to home and nationwide, deserves priority over delusional dragsters and their rainbow protest mobs.

What is whistling down the alleys is word that law enforcement at all levels, while undeterred from trying to find the source of attacks on two Moore County sub-stations, are left holding a bag full of firearm shell casings and little else. (Some have surmised that the perps must have been less than sophisticated terror merchants for having failed to collect their shell casing. But does anyone really believe that Antifa- trained ninjas walk around with registered firearms? The casings are about as useful as discarded granola bar wrappers).

Meanwhile, local and state elected officials are said to be underwhelmed by Duke Energy’s upper management and support staff. Apparently, the Dukies feel comfortable restoring power but are less than inclined to restore confidence. Duke certainly dares not complain that security is unaffordable. In November, Duke announced it would be selling its commercial renewable energy assets for $4 billion — only five percent of its operations.

Duke Energy on December 1 bragged about giving away $1 million in social justice and racial equity grants to 40 organizations across North Carolina. Yet another investment that does everything but keep the lights on.

Rep. Richard Hudson, who soon will be sworn in as the NC-9 U.S. congressman (and will once again represent Moore County after a two-year break), is right to suggest that the federal government is long overdue in launching a nationwide initiative to protect America’s antiquated power infrastructure. But it’s hard to believe it’s going to happen in a nation that can’t/won’t secure it’s Southern border, and has willfully farmed out all of it’s manufacturing, textiles, prescriptions drugs and energy producing equipment to China.

Yet we are learning that the attack on Moore’s grid was not as random or isolated as first believed As reported by Wired.com, ”Duke Energy, reported gunfire at another facility, a hydroelectric power plant in South Carolina. And combined with two more incidents of hands-on sabotage of U.S. power facilities that occurred in Oregon and Washington in October and November, the vulnerability of the U.S. grid to old-fashioned physical harm has begun to seem like a serious threat.”

Meanwhile, Triangle-area drag “celebrity” Naomi Dix says she, too, is worried about attacks on power: on the power of LGBTQ deviants to attack the moral fabric of small-town communities. During a December 8 forum in Durham, Dix said that suspicions that the Moore power outage targeted her cast’s performance at The Sunrise Theater inspires her to bring additional shows here in 2023.

While Dix claims that drag shows are under attack — in Southern Pines the “attackers” read scriptures and prayed for the community at large — these so-called threats do not seem to be much of a deterrent to the hijacking of more and more community events. A December 10 “Christmas parade” in Shallotte, N.C., reports independent journalist A.P. Dillon, was interrupted by a leotard clad dance team led by a transgender coach who donned gay apparel that was merely a thong.

In Taylor, Texas, 35 miles northeast of Austin, Taylor Pride hoodwinked Christmas parade organizers when registering for a spot in the 2021 event. “The Taylor Area Ministerial Alliance … naively thought a group calling itself Taylor Pride was simply proud to be from Taylor,” wrote Taylor resident and political science professor Kevin Stuart in a December 9, 2022, op-ed for The Wall Street Journal.

So what happened this year? A new parade was created by a woke city management staff, acting without Taylor’s city council’s input. The 2022 parade ”ran right behind the traditional parade on December 3. It featured even more drag performers than last year, including one called Sedonya Face.“

Stuart concludes, “civic and cultural battles are sure to become more frequent and more intense” as social norms dissolve. “For those who simply want to work, worship God and raise their families in peace, this news is unwelcome.”

When darkness visits our towns we have no choice but to walk in the light.

On the tee, hypocrisy

By Steve Woodward

Let me get this straight. The United States sends billions of dollars to the human rights wasteland of Saudi Arabia to import its oil, but an American professional golfer is disgraced after expressing an interest in leveraging the Saudi economy by way of a proposed Super League featuring the world’s elite golfers?

American golf legend Phil Mickelson is being canceled as if he had been caught on video beating his wife and abusing the family pet because he suggested a certain attraction to this as yet still conceptual Saudi league, and amid his reasonable dissatisfaction with the lords of the PGA Tour. Why the indignation? Because Mickelson also acknowledged that the Saudis routinely violate human rights and murder innocent people.

Among his most vocal critics — after Mickelson’s remarks were released by the author of a forthcoming Mickelson biography — was Rory McIlroy of Ireland, a PGA Tour veteran who resides in the U.S. McIlory lashed out at his fellow competitor’s supposed nonchalance about Saudi authorities who routinely kill gay people as exposing Mickelson as “naive, selfish, egotistical and ignorant.” That about covers the character assassination spectrum.

Undoubtedly, negative reactions by McIlory and other players emboldened sponsors to drop Mickelson as if he had been exposing himself to children on a playground. KPMG. Callaway. Workday. See ya, Phil.

But who has called out McIlroy’s blatant hypocrisy? No one, apparently. In January McIlroy finished third in the Dubai Desert Classic in the United Arab Emirates, taking home north of $500,000 (excluding a hefty appearance fee, no doubt). It’s a wonder he was even willing to show up. Human Rights Watch identifies the UAE as a serial human rights abuser. The UAE has a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to criticizing government officials. Homosexuality is a crime punishable by death. Against this backdrop, tour professionals nonetheless typically include a stop at the Dubai Classic on their annual schedules.

Within the ladies’ ranks, LPGAers frequently play in the annual Shanghai Classic in China, a nation ruled under the iron fist of the Chinese Communist Party. The tournament was cancelled the past two years due to health concerns in a country where the Wuhan Virus was unleashed out of a lab that exists under the guise of research. In recent weeks, Beijing played host to the Olympic Winter Games, which went on without a hint of protest by American sponsors and TV rights holder NBC. Everyone who seeks to profit from turning their backs to China’s brutality toward dissidents and rural slaves seems to rationalize the tenuous relationships with ease.

In China’s Xinjiang province, an estimated one million Turkic Muslims are detained in interment camps. This genocide has been ongoing since 2014.

Meanwhile, how many PGA Tour millionaires strut around wearing Nike golf attire and shoes made in China in partnership with a ruthless authoritarian government that manufactures the iconic “swoosh”-branded garb using what amounts to slave labor?

It bears repeating that Nike athletes are paid millions of dollars to wear the brand before stepping foot on a golf course, or a basketball or tennis court. On the PGA Tour alone, there are numerous top players who are not perplexed by the Nike-China conundrum. Tiger Woods, of course, was Nike’s first golf star. But today, the roster includes elite players such as Brooks Koepka, Tony Finau, Francisco Molinari and Jason Day.

Oh, and Rory “The Pious” McIlroy. A few years ago he signed a 10-year Nike contract that will pay out around $200 million.

Adorable pawns

Unmasking the failure of public education

By Steve Woodward

Parents have begun to accept that their kids can’t breathe in school. Turns out there are a lot of things they can’t do.

They can’t read. They can’t add and subtract. They can’t stop thinking about sex. They can’t reason. They can’t wait for Thanksgiving Day to be over.

In a world turned upside down, educators demand (pretend) that students will be absolutely safe but are not concerned, apparently, that they know absolutely nothing. The dirty little secret has been unmasked. School performance across Moore County for 2020-21, an academic year sacrificed at the hands of hysterical lockdowns, unreliable “virtual” learning and cancellations of everything, went from lackluster to alarming. Thank God, administrators say, consoling themselves, there were fewer runny noses and scraped knees.

The problem, laments longtime Board of Education member Ed Dennison, is that parts of Moore County are occupied by too many “disadvantaged families”. And how does the Moore County school system show it’s compassion? Let us count the ways.

It allocates tens of millions of dollars drawn from a bond referendum to build Taj Mahal schools in Aberdeen, Pinehurst and Southern Pines for the same reason dogs lick their privates — because it can.

(Case in point, courtesy of fiscally focused board member David Hensley, who reported via Facebook last September: The Moore County Board of Education spent $37,875 per student building the new Aberdeen Elementary School. Contrast that with The Academy of Moore County, a charter school and Moore County’s only “A” rated school, (which) spent only $8,333 per student to build (its) new school. Phrased another way, the Moore County Board of Education spent almost FIVE TIMES building a new school (more) than what the county’s only “A” rated school spent.)

(Another Hensley Facebook nugget from last June: At $47,500 per student seat, Pinehurst Elementary is, by far, the most expensive elementary school ever built in the state of North Carolina. Had the previous Board of Education spent the state average of $26,278.43 per student seat for new public school elementary school construction, Moore County could have FIVE new, 800-seat elementary schools, not three.)

Meanwhile, schools in “disadvantaged” north Moore County remain decrepit and in need of innumerable repairs. But even after blowing its wad on south Moore school construction, the school board’s four disciples of Superintendent Bob Grimesey had a chance to do the right thing and take a fiscally sound vote. This could have happened September 22, just last month, when the board decided the time had come, once and for all, to decide what to do with 17 acres formerly occupied by the old Southern Pines Elementary School.

The back and forth on this debate is well known to those who pay attention (never enough, by the way). The board finally voted 4-3 (chair Libby Carter and her three sock puppets) to “sell” the land to a fly-by-night Southern Pines Land Trust for an apprised value of $685,000. The other board members exercised common sense and backed selling the land to a commercial developer at a fair-market price that was projected to come in around $1.5 million .

Never mind that the Land Trust, in collaboration with the Left wing Southern Pines Town Council, stole the land to build a park that will keep west Southern Pines effectively racially segregated. The real gut punch here is the hundreds of thousands of dollars that Moore County schools left on the table to pander to a racially charged cabal without regard for how the additional funds from a private sale would have benefited students across the board. The land belonged to the school system. The board was obligated to sell it to the highest bidder. It betrayed the community.

Carter lamented that she wanted to separate the board from endless forays into the “real estate business” under the false pretense that it is laser-focused on quality education. But that does not square with:

A board that twice has voted 4-3 to force kids to be masked all day in classrooms despite overwhelming bodies of evidence that masks are not effective and more than likely pose a mental health threat. Elementary school children especially are distracted and despairing of their filthy masks.
A board that is hell bent on ramming down the throats of students so-called Social Emotional Learning and Climate surveys to learn as much as possible about their sexual proclivities, gender insecurities and emotional states. Currently, Moore County schools are surveying parents about the implementation of surveys by a third party, Panorama, a data mining operation backed by Tech tyrant Mark Zuckerberg. What could possibly go wrong?
A board on which three members refused to condemn the inclusion of Critical Race Theory in history and social studies curricula. CRT would, for example, condemn Thanksgiving Day as a celebration of the disenfranchisement of native Americans. In other words, “Tell granny you’re sitting out next Thanksgiving.”
A board that has refused in recent years to deny Superintendent Grimesey a contract extension amid a downward spiral in school wide performance numbers.

A local sage wisely observed that the Moore County school performance stats are so categorically disappointing that it is impossible to cherry pick them. But three categories shine light on the big picture staring county educators in the face.

55% of third graders are not reading at grade level across Moore County public schools.
49% of all eighth graders are not proficient in reading. (In other words, they probably can not pronounce “proficient” or tell you what it means).
In grades three through eight, only 46% of students are performing at grade level in math.

The third rail of public education is the teachers themselves. In Moore County, the time seems ripe to re-evaluate both who is teaching our students and why they’re forsaking them. Let’s not repeat the mistake made in allocating new school funding. Let’s spread the blame around.

Dangerous nationalism

By Steve Woodward

The history of disingenuous editorials published by The Pilot‘s editorial board (which can fit in a golf cart) is a long and checkered one. Note we did not elude to a SmartCar.

A recent July 24 screed dismissing the war on hijacking public education — particularly in the realm of American history — seems to have sunk the paper’s editorial standards to new depths. The intensity of wrist-ringing must have a necessitated calling on a team of physical therapists.

“If you’ve fallen behind the ‘radical leftists’ or the ‘racist right wing nuts,’ you’ve left no room for a rational and critically important discussion about race, American history and how it should be taught to our children,” scolds the author.

The editorial addresses a recent 6-1 Moore County school board vote to reject race-based curricula. The Pilot says it’s fine with this outcome because it never quite understood what all the fuss was about. You know, because … racism! It’s systemic. Who doesn’t know that?

In fact, this probably explains why the editorial crescendos with a cautionary note suggesting too much objectivity in the classroom might send this debate back to square one someday. There is, after all, “danger” if the citizenry holds (or, clings to, to quote the unifier Barack Obama) a presumption of American exceptionalism. Can’t be teaching that to kids.

If, however, the board’s policy is “used to sanitize, gag or in any other way hinder teachers from presenting a fair, honest and sober assessment of this nation’s history with race, then we will be one step closer to a dangerous nationalism (emphasis added) and an agenda that cultivates an unnatural exceptionalism (emphasis added).”

In other words, you racist right wing nuts have been given fair warning by the radical leftists, who reside down the middle in the Pilot’s newsroom.