Quality of life
Thank you to the voters, folks who worked for my re-election and to my family, who believed in working for the people of Forsyth County. The community is our focus — its quality of life, its health and happiness.
DAVE PLYLER
FORSYTH COUNTY COMMISSIONER
Kernersville
Pilot Mountain fire
I'm sure I'm probably one of 1,000 who wanted our voices heard about the wild fire at Pilot Mountain.
My heart was pounding on Nov. 8 when it was first announced as a controlled burn that was under control. I read in the Journal (“Fire jumps lines,” Nov. 9) that Joseph Shimel, the burn boss and New River State Park superintendent, checked the weather, wind and humidity repeatedly prior to setting the fire and during the burn. I couldn't believe what I was reading. It was a windy day and the humidity was very low. I know they usually issue no-burns on days like that.
This was started by the forestry service. What were they thinking? I actually became angry. Pilot Mountain is our most known and loved natural landmark. Most of us have photographed many beautiful pictures on our way to the mountains, this being the most memorable one. We cherish it and want to take care of it so our children, grandchildren and many generations to come will feel the same way.
I feel better for having unloaded.
BONNIE PASCHAL
Winston-Salem
God is the only one
What has changed since the election? The better question, what has not and will not change since the election? I can answer the second one. This nation and the world needs prayer, and this has never changed throughout history and is true whether the election went your way or not.
Someone said recently, “I’ll not pray for this president,” and I told them that was wrong, we must pray for all our leaders, as God is the only one that can change the thinking or mind of any of them and is the one they will ultimately answer to, as each of us will.
Not only do our churches need to get back to prayer, but our families; it should be a family custom to pray together in hard times and good times, seeing as God ordained both the church and the family.
Now a little different subject: I had the privilege of working the polls at Silver Valley and was so blessed by the number of 18-,19-, and 20-year-old first-time voters I met, and would like to say a special thanks to them and to everyone that voted this year, and a very heartfelt thank-you to all veterans serving now as well as in the past. Jesus the Christ is the only one that could die for our freedom from sin, but many veterans have died for our freedom to vote and live a life of freedom. So thank you, all veterans past, present and future.
DANNY SOLES
Lexington
Don’t forget
Within the span of seven days we’ve elected our leaders, including the president of the United States, and we’ll honor those who make sure our democracy stands. Choice, freedom, speech, education, dissention, disagreements, peace…May we never take them for granted, and may we never forget the cost.
KIM CLARK PHILLIPS
Yadkinville
Hyperbole doesn’t help
Huber Hanes III's guest column (“Stadium proposal is a Hawthorne curve ball,” Oct. 21) regarding the proposed Reynolds High School football stadium on Northwest Boulevard was typical of the hyperbole of the not-in-my-backyard crowd that opposes the stadium. The “Save Hanes Park” signs seen in the area imply that a stadium will destroy the park. This is a ridiculous assertion given that the proposed site contains two gymnasiums and a bus parking lot; it is not a verdant meadow that will now be covered in asphalt.
The assertion that traffic congestion will lead to “disaster” is equally dubious. Traffic does get congested around high-school football stadiums on game nights, but it hasn't been a disaster at Mount Tabor, West Forsyth, or any other high school in close proximity to residential neighborhoods. With a schedule that includes only five home football games a year, that seems a modest imposition on the neighborhood. The stadium will also be available to lacrosse, soccer and field hockey, which all play off-campus now, and crowds for those games are only a few hundred at best. The adjacent Bryson Gym has been home to the basketball team for decades, and crowds for those games are not a problem.
This is simply upgrading an existing athletic facility, not the destruction of the park we all treasure.
JOHN FISHER
Mitt Romney, the Republican Gift that keeps on giving.
ReplyDeleteThank you Haley Barbour for telling it like it is.
DeleteFor the past 4 years all we've heard is that Barack Obama is the "worst president in history." That says a lot about a party that can't even beat the "worst" president in history and in the process lose Senate and House seats.
DeleteNot only Haley Barbour, but NM Gov Susana Martinez, R as well
DeleteAdd Bobby Jindal, Scott Walker, Chris Christie, ad infinitum...
DeleteSee now, that's what I'm talking about. Dave Plyler's a gentleman. Mitt wouldn't get it.
ReplyDeleteMr. Plyler has been a stalwart of the community for a long time.
DeleteIndeed...often the only county commissioner who acts like an adult. At least we're rid of Whisenhunt's fellow weeper Debra Conrad...but who knows where that will lead...we could get somebody even worse...Nathan Tabor???
DeletePlyler is a weak leader. If you ever saw him 'leading' the Board when he was chairman, he was always looking for someone to bail him out of tough decision.
DeleteMore fantasy life...now Parrot is attending county commissioner's meetings, in between trips to the ABCs and Le Bec-fin...
DeleteThe best leader is a good moderator.
If only Ted Kaplan was back on the board. He's a good guy too.
DeleteTrue...
DeleteTed pulled a Romney...over confidence against the fool Bill Whiteheart...Whiteheart spent a lot of money...
Whiteheart, Witherspoon, Marshall and whoever gets the Conrad seat come up for reelection in 2014. If we can replace Whiteheart or the Conrad seat with a sensible person, maybe we can get back to actually governing.
I suspect Marshall will be stepping down...there are several young Turks champing at the bit to replace him.
LTE #5... Hyperbole doesn't help
ReplyDeleteIt sure doesn't. I graduated from West Forsyth and recently lived just a few blocks from Hanes Park. To compare the residential area on the 4 lanes of Lewisville-Clemmons Road with the residential area around Hawthorne, Northwest Blvd., Glade Street, North Sunset, and West End Blvd., makes as much sense as comparing lightning to a lightning bug.
"I mean we've got to give our political organizational activity a very serious…proctology exam. We need to look everywhere…The first step is don't have sh***y candidates."
ReplyDeleteWhatever else you might say about him, Haley Barbour has always had a wicked sense of humor. This time, he got it completely right.
That last part might be a problem, though. It would mean getting rid of the crazy fundamentalist christians and other lunatics who have attached themselves to the GOP, and I don't know how you'd do that.
Not to mention that the TT Party has vowed to take over the GOP completely before the next election. And the Romneyites are trashing Chris Christie, the only viable mainstream candidate that they have at the moment.
Maybe Limbaugh and Rove and Trump and all the other wackos will move to Costa Rica and take over that beautiful country.
A lot of liberals, in this politically correct world, we now live in think they can parade a woman, or minority, in front of the camera, and the minority representative can say anything they want without being challenge. After all, who wants to be called a bigot, right?
ReplyDeleteWith UN Ambassador Susan Rice, part and parcel of the 'untouchable' crowd, better known as a double minority-black and female, they made a mistake. The 'facts' that she reported on multiple news stations approximately a week after the Benghazi attack, were so grossly inaccurate, she couldn't hide from the heat of her words. Wait a minute, yes she can hide, we haven't seen hide nor hair of her in days or has it been weeks?
Now we seemingly have got 'ol General Petraeus, the former head of the CIA, contradicting both the President and Ambassador Rice. Add in the real time video of the incident, and even the liberal media can't avoid the facts.
The President did accomplish one very big thing though with his lies. He became POTUS.
The R's are fishing for scandals while they should be doing the people's business. No wonder they lost the presidential election, seats in the Senate, and seats in the House of Representatives. I think the R's are still embarrassed by what they did to Secretary of State Colin Powell and the WMD's.
DeleteThey're really flailing.
DeleteI think the T Party may diminish. This election is a mandate for compromise. The No New Taxes chant is weakening. We have a way to go, though, with people like McConnell in the way. More dues need to be paid to live in America. We cannot cut our way out of our situation. That would imperil our security and trash the economy.
DeleteThat we have come this close to the "fiscal cliff" shames both our so-called leaders and us voters.
After reading some of Rush's written absurdities in this forum, you'd think you've heard it all. But now a federal appellate rules that it's unconstitutional not be able to discriminate.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cnn.com/2012/11/15/justice/michigan-affirmative-action-ban/index.html?hpt=hp_bn1
I hope I can get my bumper stickers printed off soon. I've had about enough.
DeleteChris Christie and Randi Weingarten (AFT) were on Morning Joe and were both very amicable about the agreement they concluded for the Newark School district. Concerning Mitt's Gift comment, Christie said: "You cannot expect to be the leader of all the people and be divisive."
ReplyDeleteObama did buy the election, through gifts. But his actions are legal corruption, at least for in this day and age.
DeleteWhat is going to happen to Mitt, he's not going to get elected president?
Bucky, Haley Barbour is on the line and has some advice for you and others who think that way.
DeleteSome have placed part of the blame on Mitt Romney for writing off 47 percent of the electorate as inevitable Obama voters at a closed-door fundraiser last spring—his comment, said Martinez, was "ridiculous"—and then, postelection, saying he lost to Obama in part because the president promised "gifts" to minority voters in return for their support.
Delete"That unfortunately is what sets us back as a party, our comments that are not thought through carefully," said Martinez
LTE #1 - We should be thanking Dave for his many years of service to the community. Too bad that Governor Romney couldn't be as gracious a loser as Dave is a winner.
ReplyDeleteLTE #2 - It does seem that someone screwed up.
LTE #3 - Religious gobbledygook aside, agree on praise for young voters. In NC, 19 year olds turned out in larger numbers than any other age between 20 and 39 and between 71 and 112(!).
LTE #4 - OK
LTE #5 - Huber Hanes lives in eastern NC, so his column is hardly a NIMBY complaint. Whether or not the stadium would damage the park in some way, there are other problems:
1. The stadium would remove the Reynolds girl's gym and the Wiley Middle School gym. Where are the Reynolds girls going to go? The existing boy's gym is already overcrowded. And the plans calls for a new Wiley gym incorporated into the stadium. Mixing middle school and high school kids is not a good idea.
2. With many different teams wanting to use the stadium, maintenance of a grass field will be impossible. Artificial turf is ugly and not a suitable surface for soccer and field hockey. Nor is it a safe surface for young athletes to play on because it is much harder than natural turf and increases the severity of many types of injuries.
3. Where will the displaced buses park? The area is already jammed tight every school day.
4. The statement about crowds at the Bryson gym is patently false. Well, it's partly true when Reynolds has a losing basketball team, but when the team is winning parking all around Hanes Park is a mess, and has been since I was playing basketball at RJR decades ago, when most families only had one car.
As mentioned before, $5 million would cover the cost of RJR playing at Bowman Gray Stadium for the next 208 years, by which time the new stadium will have long since become an archaeological site.
Confidence abounds in Obama. Wake/Baptist to lay off approximately 900, and around 18,000 will lose their jobs with Hostess.
ReplyDeleteBut the Democrats think things are hunky-dory.
Note the reason the Hostess people are losing their jobs. Solidarity forever.
ReplyDeleteSolidarnosc!
DeleteNice try. A nice little Romneyism.
DeleteHostess filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, long before any union activity. They have been losing market share steadily for several decades to a glut of better tasting and (marginally) healthier products. There was never any hope for recovery.
Put the blame where it really belongs, on poor management decisions over a long period of time.
They are beyond bankruptcy. They are in a NY court this am filing for liquidation. For all the twinkey problems they've had, the Union overplayed its hand.
DeletePoor management, no doubt, not to mention a buggy whip flagship product. But, you have a company on the brink, so you go on strike. The union shares blame also, and loses thousands of dues-paying members. Maybe the problem is self-correcting.
DeleteSpeaking of the U-words, I see where the NLRB is planning to issue an order requiring businesses that unions seek to organize to furnish the unions with telephone numbers, email addresses, and shift hours of employees. Businesses are already required to furnish addresses, which is a crock in its own right.
If a business were to release such info to any other entity, it would be violation of confidentiality (I was an HR director, well familiar with confidentiality). We hear complaints re the Patriot Act's privacy intrusion. We will hear nothing from the left about this biased intrusion on the part of unions' Obama-appointed TB's.
Way off base. After the first bankruptcy filing a few years ago, the Union accepted pay and benefit cuts to help the company survive. Now management wants a double dip.
DeleteThe fact is that this has been coming for a long time and is all down to incompetent management. Convenient to have a scapegoat and obviously a lot of people will buy it.
This Union could have backed off since they too could see the hand writing on the wall. Poor management....kill off this company in the fashion of Eastern Airlines. Better the union arrange a buyout than just kill it. Let the employees run the biz at least.
DeleteAgree...but I'm not on the scene, so have no idea what sort of factors went into the decisions or what the possibilities were, but apparently the company itself was DOA.
DeleteThe brands, however, are on the market.
BTW, union workers made up only 30% of all Hostess employees. Don't know what that means, either.
So the union declines the alleged double dip and the company goes under, whereas if they had accepted the alleged double dip, it may or may not have gone under, possibly being too along toward DOA.
DeleteBut, your premise as usual is that the union and its members have no culpability. This seems to be a common thread. Unions are responsible for no ill whatever, just as Obama's only shortcoming and failure is to insufficiently castigate his opposition.
No comment re the Obama's NLRB's subversion of privacy on behalf of its masters?
and the bankrupt Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp gets the tab?
DeleteAs I said, i (and that includes you as well) have no idea what the dynamics of the decisions of the company and the union were. There may be good reasons for the way things have panned out…neither you nor I has enough information to decide.
DeleteThe one thing that is known is that the company has filed twice for bankruptcy protection within a ten year period, and that no progress was being made in the second bankruptcy, and that during the first bankruptcy the union agreed to cuts in pay and benefits and that in the second case they did not.
The company's flagship product has become a standing joke about unhealthy food and their newer products have not won significant market share. It may well be that the company pushed the union into strike mode deliberately to provide themselves with a scapegoat. Wouldn't be the first time that happened. Clearly, there are plenty of people willing to jump right on that.
As to the NLRB changes, they went into affect on April 30 and were suspended by court action taken on May 15. So far, no further action has been taken. It may or may not be decided at a later date, but if it is, it will be decided in court.
The claim of invasion of privacy is a joke. It is less invasive than e-verify, not to mention many other legal requirements regarding employee information. Such an order could only be issued once a union vote has been scheduled. The purpose is to provide a level playing field in the election. The employer has unlimited access to employees…it is only fair that the union have some as well.
As to the information required, I can obtain that information about you or anyone else, and a lot more to boot, in less than five minutes. Every time you go online, the same stuff is being broadcast by your browser to the whole web. As explained by the NLRB, the purpose is to save time and cost for all involved.
But I, as an employee do not wish to be badgered, intimidated, spam emailed, repeat phone called, etc., on my own time, thanks the union being handed my info. Let 'em do their own research n their own dime if it's so easy to find me.
DeleteAs for unions, I am absolutely opposed to making it easier for them to organize. I understand they redistribute income, but they redistribute mine by increasing costs, and I am in the 99%, not the 1%, thank you. Then there are the coercion/corruption issues, etc.
But, on a day to day basis, I probably have more contact with union members and officials than anyone else in this blog. Surprise surprise, all contacts are cordial. The union members are my customers, so to speak. The union officials are acting on behalf of their customers, so to speak. As I've said before, people are entitled to select agents to represent them, but FREELY select, without government lobbying (my tax dollars) to have them organized. Thus, I had cordial conversation with an official from a local, making sure that she and her members understood an ineptly worded communication released by their employer to union retirees.
What's good for General Bullmoose...
DeleteDave Plyler has always been a gentleman according to my late Mother who was interviewed by him when he was still in broadcasting. He stays classy.
ReplyDeleteFire on the mountain( run boys run). We have a friend that lives on her family land near the edge of this Park. She was on TV the other night....what status!
ReplyDeleteGod is the only one? Maybe so, but he will have to wait in line behind the dictates of American Caesar. For the moment, we have no God before Gaius.
ReplyDeleteButt Mtns drawing interest in TN.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/2012/11/16/1708333/
http://gosmokies.knoxnews.com/profiles/blogs/two-on-the-cobb
Choice, freedom, speech, education, dissention, disagreements, peace…May we never take them for granted, and may we never forget the cost. I think we may have gone well down the road of for granted. "Equality" is the new State approved word. Forward to equality.......
ReplyDeleteGood afternoon folks!
ReplyDeleteLTE 1: And thank you Mr. Plyler for being a voice of reason and sanity...quite rare in the political scene these days. Mr. Plyler is one R whom I voted wholeheartedly for.
LTE 2: Those in charge of control burns usually know what they are doing. It only takes a minute change in the weather, such as a gust of wind to throw control fires out of kilter. Fortunately, the fire appears to be contained. Glad Ms. Paschal feels better after her venting.
LTE 3: "...and was so blessed by the number of 18-,19-, and 20-year-old first-time voters I met..."-hmm, wonder how many of those were nubile 18-19-20 y.o. females? My niece voted for the first time as well.
LTE 4: Ms. Phillips forgot we are a republic instead of a democracy.
LTE 5: Huber Hanes a NIMBY? LOL!! His family donated the freaking land!! The park is named after his family. There wouldn't be a park to treasure if it weren't for the Hanes family. I can't think of anyone who should have more of a say than Huber Hanes. Btw...how is building an entirely new football stadium "simply upgrading an existing athletic facility"?
After Obama is reelected, CNN finally starts telling the truth.
ReplyDeleteCandy and Rush will have step in and make the story come out the way liberals want it to.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/16/politics/benghazi-hearings/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
As always, Parrot reads headlines because he cannot actually understand anything over a paragraph long.
ReplyDeleteWake Forest Baptist Medical Center's announced firings have nothing to do with the recent election.
1. The firings are based on a year long study to increase efficiency and reduce costs.
2. This is a part of the purpose of Obamacare, to drive down health costs.
3. Half of the announced cuts will be achieved through the elimination of already vacant, temporary and contract positions, plus attrition and retirements.
4. 56.5 of the jobs are at the Lexington affiliate, 52 of which have already been eliminated through increased efficiency, attrition and retirement.
5. A significant factor in the cuts is the drastic reduction of research funding brought about by Congressional cuts in research support of the National Institute of Health and other cuts by private industry.
When people start yammering about cutting the national budget, they have no idea what they are talking about…this is one of the prices of those cuts. The chicken little bunch wants us to think that we are on the brink of worldwide disaster, which simply is not true. Their wolf cries are mostly based on personal greed, particularly in the area of taxes.
We have two choices. We can buy into their fable and settle for becoming a second rate nation, or we can suck it up, raise taxes and get to work rebuilding the number 1 nation.