September 19, 2009
The next president of Greensboro College faces several monumental tasks: restoring financial stability, improving the aging campus, restoring confidence of faculty and staff, and ensuring the school's survival for years to come. But before the perma...
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September 18, 2009
Elected officials shouldn't gain financially from decisions they make on public issues. That's easy enough to say but more difficult to enforce. One step is disclosure. Greensboro City Council candidates who say they will reveal their personal and f...
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New rules approved by City Council don't ban panhandling, but make doing so lawfully much more difficult in Greensboro, particularly in the downtown area. While more aggressive, annoying soliciting can happen anywhere, downtown eateries and entertai...
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September 17, 2009
Twice this decade, the Greensboro City Council voted to close the White Street Landfill. On Tuesday, the council decided it wanted to talk yet again about the possibility of once again dumping household waste there. The vote prompted a horrified Cou...
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As Gov. Bev Perdue did this year, Gov. Mike Easley faced a financial crisis early in his administration. There was a danger that the state budget would topple out of balance -- an occurrence that the N.C. Constitution says the governor must not let...
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September 16, 2009
Yvonne Johnson and Bill Knight made opening and closing statements and answered 22 questions, all in an hour's time Tuesday afternoon. The League of Women Voters and its moderator, Rebecca Klase, know how to run a candidates' forum. Equal credit goes to M...
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While laudable progress has been made over the last 17 years in reducing the state's child death rate, challenges remain. Nearly everything in the just-released N.C. Child Task Force annual report is upbeat. The 2008 child death rate is the lowest...
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September 15, 2009
Registered sex offenders aren't allowed in schools. Some people seem to think elected officials are just as dangerous. President Barack Obama's televised speech to students last week prompted some Guilford County parents to keep their children home.
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September 14, 2009
Humane society It was more than a little heartening to learn that a waiting list of potential owners stepped forward to adopt Susie, the tough pup who survived being severely burned and left for dead. More than 60 people want to take Susie home, meaning...
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September 13, 2009
President Obama has injected a dose of clarity and urgency into the national health care reform debate. More importantly, in his address last week to a joint session of Congress he reached out to Republicans and conservative Democrats in an effort to find...
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September 12, 2009
In 1964, when Frank Batten Sr. added the Greensboro Daily News and the Greensboro Record to his fledgling media chain, he made it a point to learn this community. So the chairman of what became the Landmark Communications Inc., based in Norfolk, V...
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September 11, 2009
Eight years after the shock and pain of the 9/11 attacks, the United States has not yet put all things right. Osama bin Laden and others in his terrorist organization have eluded capture, most of them likely hiding in mountainous regions of Pakistan beyon...
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Although parents continue to be the primary moral educators of their children, there's still an important role for the public schools to play. In Guilford County, schools Superintendent Maurice "Mo" Green wants to extend the Positive Behavior Su...
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September 10, 2009
If you unplug a video-gaming machine, will it keep on blipping? It sure looks like it in North Carolina. Maybe it's the revenge of Jim Black. If the textile, furniture and tobacco industries were so hard to kill, the state's unemployment rate would be cut...
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It's somehow appropriate that a new company whose specialty is chronic pain relief could bring 228 precious new jobs to Guilford County. The recession began inflicting pain on the Triad before much of the rest of the country felt its sting. Even more appr...
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September 9, 2009
"President Obama has a big megaphone, and he intends to use that megaphone." Those words from Senior White House Adviser David Axelrod, last weekend, set the stage for the president's health care address tonight before a joint session of...
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North Carolina's roster of "emergency" judges has more than met the test lately. Dozens agreed to plug gaps on the Superior and District Court bench -- at no pay. Emergency judges fill in when regular judges take vacations, get sick or ar...
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September 8, 2009
When Joseph Abbitt walked out of a Forsyth County courtroom last week as a free man, he joined six other wrongly convicted state prisoners exonerated by DNA evidence. Nationwide, the total is 241 since more sophisticated testing became available. W...
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It is a parent's prerogative to say so if he or she deems certain material in a public school curriculum inappropriate or objectionable. In fact, it is an obligation. But the mounting furor over a planned speech today by the president of the United...
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September 7, 2009
Did party figure in incident? UNC-Chapel Hill has the reputation of being a great party school. But too much fun isn't necessarily a good thing. The death of student Courtland Smith, fatally wounded by an Archdale police officer after his car was stopped...
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September 6, 2009
Our children are in trouble. Despite significant advances in medicine, nutrition and technology, they are heavier, less active and more susceptible to heart disease, high-blood pressure and diabetes, among other conditions. Nationally, obesity rates...
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September 5, 2009
Mack Trucks' arrival in the Triad is a welcome silver lining in a still-cloudy economic picture. The legendary truck manufacturer on Thursday opened its new world headquarters here, on the same campus with corporate partner Volvo Trucks North Ameri...
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September 4, 2009
Gov. Bev Perdue never demanded that state legislators raise taxes to protect prison cells. No one would have responded to that during recent budget wrangles. Instead, the governor made impassioned pleas for protecting classrooms, providing enough mo...
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Try convincing elderly Americans who are barely squeaking by on Social Security that the cost of living has flat-lined and they don't deserve a raise. Government statistics, however, indicate that, for the first time in 30 years, that's precisely wh...
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September 3, 2009
It's more than a little odd when the state auditor warns -- in bold print -- that a report she's issuing "should not be relied upon for any purpose." Beth Wood used the word "extraordinary," not "odd," to describe her a...
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