February 12, 2012
Greensboro is enough of a baseball city, thanks to the popular Grasshoppers, to know that scoring runs requires touching all the bases. What other kind of city is Greensboro? No matter what it wants to make itself, success also requires touching all the b...
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February 11, 2012
Americans whose homes are financially under water need help. Some will get it through a multistate agreement with five large mortgage lenders. For others, though, things could get worse before they get better. Five financial institutions, including Bank o...
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February 10, 2012
John Edwards isn’t running for president. But his presidential campaign organization is still running through money, despite an unpaid debt of $2 million owed to taxpayers. Very little should come as a surprise where the former North Carolina senato...
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February 9, 2012
A formidable company with a growing presence in Greensboro, LF USA, officially celebrated its arrival this week with a brightly colored procession of dancers dressed as lions throwing lettuce. The ceremony was rooted in a Chinese tradition that signifies...
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February 8, 2012
Guilford County commissioners don’t have to back away from a video ban during the public comment period of their meetings. They just need to make it fair and consistent.Conservatives for Guilford County raised the stakes by turning to the American C...
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February 7, 2012
In a casual display of brute force, a big, yellow-and-black excavator recently tore an old, metal-and-brick building to shreds. Like the clenched fingers of a giant's hand, the machine's jagged claw would grab wood beams, steel girders and fat chunks of c...
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February 5, 2012
Greensboro’s economy isn’t in robust health, but maybe it’s taking the right medicine. That seems to be the diagnosis of the 2012 State of the City Report produced for the Greensboro Partnership by Keith G. Debbage, a professor of urban...
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February 4, 2012
While Democratic politicians across North Carolina are declaring themselves in or out of the race for governor, Sen. Kay Hagan said Friday she never gave it a thought. She’s focused on doing the job she’s got. Hagan would be a formidable candi...
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February 3, 2012
The Greensboro and state branches of the NAACP filed a lawsuit Thursday in U.S. District Court against a mangled Guilford County redistricting law that tramples the basic rights of tens of thousands of local voters. Good for them. "We hoped that sani...
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February 2, 2012
Few people in Greensboro knew last year that City Manager Rashad Young was being recruited to Alexandria, Va., until the deal was just about done. And the public in Greensboro might not know who will replace Young until the new manager is introduced in Ma...
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Jesse Jackson is right. In response to the face-off in Arizona between President Obama and Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer last week, Jackson said, "Even George Wallace did not put his finger in Dr. King's face." And it's true; he didn't. Similarly......
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February 1, 2012
Suspected racial profiling by police is such a big concern in Fayetteville that its City Council voted recently to put a moratorium on “consent searches” while the issue is studied. Nothing like that is happening in Greensboro. Instead, police...
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Like a lot of people, I attended the funeral on Monday of Bill Snider, 91, the former Greensboro Record and Daily News editor and editorial page editor who was a friend, a mentor, a scholar and a consummate journalist. It was neither a surprise nor an acc...
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January 31, 2012
Danny Hembree is no "gentleman of leisure." He's a convicted murderer sentenced to death, and he will never draw another breath as a free man. Hembree used that term in an insulting, infuriating letter he sent to the Gaston Gazette. "Is the...
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January 30, 2012
Saving Summit It was good to see Summit House possibly stirring back to life last week after being buried unwisely in July by legislative budget cuts. Law enforcement officials, clergy, elected officials, business leaders and community volunteers met to c...
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January 29, 2012
Trader Joe’s.Plans for a new shopping center in west Greensboro boast the additional cachet of those two words.The wildly popular specialty grocery chain, which specializes in organic and gourmet foods (Belgian butter waffle cookies, anyone?) may co...
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January 28, 2012
To see what downtown Greensboro boosters have in mind for an entertainment venue, it's only necessary to look about 55 miles east. The Durham Performing Arts Center, or DPAC, has been a hit. The winner of architectural awards and other accolades, the city...
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January 27, 2012
Gov. Bev Perdue faced a very tough fight to win re-election this year. So she won’t try. That doesn’t sound like the Democratic governor who vetoed 16 bills in 2011 and seemed to take pride in defying the Republican-led legislature. Only a wee...
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January 26, 2012
If it were an ad in the personals, it might sound something like this: “School seeks committed relationship with principal. “Must be a strong leader with vision, patience and the ability to foster teamwork and high standards. “Above all...
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January 25, 2012
City Councilwoman Trudy Wade stood at the short end of an 8-1 vote last week. One of her colleagues even suggested she ought to give up her seat because of her opinion. But she wasn't wrong. Wade defended an exceptional policy designed to prevent closed-d...
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January 24, 2012
Guilford County won't be running a license plate office anytime soon. Commissioners emphatically rejected that idea last week. The proposal by County Manager Brenda Jones Fox and Tax Director Ben Chavis never had a chance. Most license tag offices are run...
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January 22, 2012
Tom Ross’ job title officially reads, “president of the University of North Carolina.” But these days he might feel more like a juggler riding a unicycle on a tightrope. While wearing a blindfold. In a stiff wind. Ross, the Greensboro n...
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January 21, 2012
With all the sparring between Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue and Republican legislative leaders, few people may have noticed a quiet but bitter exchange between lesser-known officials. State Auditor Beth Wood issued a critical report Jan. 10 about implementat...
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January 20, 2012
When a politician promises a “temporary” tax increase, it’s hard to take seriously anything else she says. Gov. Bev Perdue created that problem for herself this week when she called for a temporary sales-tax increase to raise money for s...
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January 18, 2012
An armed gang walking through a neighborhood would alarm most people -- unless the gang members were dressed in police uniforms. So seeing 40 cops one evening last week might have been reassuring for residents of Greensboro's Ardmore Park area, which has...
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