
The City welcomes Carolyn Flowers, the new CEO of the Charlotte Area Transit System.
You took a pay cut when you came here from Los Angeles. And you are making less money than the man you replaced. Welcome to North Carolina and enjoy your stay.

Be on the lookout for this Company!!!!
Grand Discovery, an entity of Millennium Travel and Promotions, invited me to attend a presentation they had regarding timeshares this past spring. I took my wife with me (who is allergic to sales pitches) to attend the presentation. She was already pissed off about going because (she is allergic to sales pitches) it was Friday after work and she was hungry. I thought the presentation was good but my wife was even more pissed off (her sales pitch allergies were acting up). The salesman brought his boss over to help him seal the deal. If he knew who my wife was, he would have realized that was a waste of time. The salesman’s boss made a joke that my wife thought was sexist. I guess it didn’t help that I laughed at the joke too. I guess marriage jokes aren’t for hungry wives with salesmen allergies. After the presentation, we decided that financially this would not be wise for us. We told the salesman that we would have to decline and he looked piss. He didn’t even say goodbye or shake our hands. It’s like being in a strip club without having any bills in your pocket. Eventually the strippers are going to stop asking you if you want a lap dance. I guess you are wondering why I attended a timeshare presentation when I knew I wasn’t going to buy a timeshare. Because they provided an incentive for me to go!!! Just for sitting through the presentation I was suppose to receive –
*2 roundtrip airfares anywhere in the Continental U.S.
*3 days and 2 night’s hotel accommodations for 2 adults.
*$150.00 in Gasoline rebate coupons.
*$30.00 in Dinner certificate good at any Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Smokey Bones or Bahama Breeze.
I thought I was going to leave with what I like to call the “Freeness” (aka Free Stuff). When people go to these presentations they usually end up with a gift. My Frat Brother received a Knife Set from one of these presentations. My parents have a grandfather clock because they attended a presentation. I know knives and a clock don’t sound sexy but roundtrip airline tickets do. But I should have known things were going to go downhill when I didn’t receive some of the “Freeness.” The first thing that was denied to me -
*No Gas coupon or Dinner certificate… : (
I was still holding out hope for the roundtrip airfare because I had it in writing (so I thought). All these cousins I have that are lawyers and I never called them. I should have because things got real shady when I wanted my airline tickets. To make a long story short –
They started making us jump through all these hoops in order to get the tickets. They kept returning our paperwork requesting that we change information. They would wait for months to request alternative documentation from us. And they would turn down all of our selected days. It finally got to where we were on our last possible date. Our last date selected was in April 2010. I didn’t want to wait that long to be turned down with some bogus excuse. So I called the company (one of many numerous phone calls) to talk to their customer service. She gave me some line that they were going to honor the last date. They only gave me 3 dates to choose from and I was down to one.
But I wasn’t the only one that was suspicious about Millennium Travel. The Better Business Bureau of Central Florida gave the company an F on their rating scale. Also the Attorney General’s office of Connecticut has a lawsuit against the company. Apparently they had found a way to weasel out of their own promises. Some folks were losing loot in the scam and the authorities in Connecticut didn’t like that. Others were disappointed in the timeshares they actually paid for. Everybody was getting suckered or screwed.
I swallowed my pride and told Millennium to forgo the last date and to give me my deposit back. After months of dealing with that company, it took them less than a week to give me my money back. I guess they were glad they didn’t have to come up with an excuse for why I couldn’t get my last date. I was glad our deposit was chump change and we didn’t lose major money like other folks. So I’m telling you this story because I want to spread the word. I’m not doing this because I’m disgruntled or attempting to get revenge. Businesses pretending to be legit while harboring ulterior motives need to be put on notice. I have a wife that is smart enough to not let me get to far gone. Other people might not have the same buffers in their lives. Some people actual went on the trips and ended up paying hidden fees. We were fortunate that it never got that far.

Then –
In 2008, Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford was arrested on a 101-count federal indictment on charges of conspiracy, bribery, fraud, money laundering, and filing false tax returns. U.S. District Attorney Alice Martin claims Langford used the bribery money to buy audio equipment and luxury clothing items. These alleged acts took place when Langford was a Jefferson County commissioner. Langford said a day after his indictment “It's not business as usual. It's business more intensified than usual, now that I know what I'm dealing with, I can now turn all of my attention to carrying out my duties as mayor."
Now –
In 2009, Langford was found guilty of taking cash and accepting gifts. He was automatically removed from office and is currently awaiting sentencing. He could possibly face 805 years in prison.


As the Senate environment committee starts to hold hearings on the climate change bill, we think there's one critical question for the senators: Who are you talking to?
That's not an obvious question, or an (entirely) sardonic one. Legislation is almost always shaped more by leaders and lobbyists rather than the public at large, and given the complexity of the climate bill that's even more true here.
But you can't solve the climate change problem if the public isn't ready to accept some level of change. In the end, this is an argument about how we get the energy to fuel the life Americans want to live. You can't change the energy picture without getting the public to reconsider where our energy comes from and what practical alternatives there are for developing a more climate-friendly mix. If too many Americans believe there's an easy, cost-free answer out there, or conversely, if too many believe that we can't tackle our climate problems without destroying the American way of life, we're not going to get very far.
Right now, too many Americans are heading into this fight unarmed. Four in 10 Americans can't name a fossil fuel, according to Public Agenda's Energy Learning Curve survey. Even more can't name a renewable energy source. It's a fair assumption that most people aren't going to understand the ins and outs of the climate bill.
What's worse is that most don't understand the fundamental challenge here: that the world needs to change the kind of energy we use, even as we need more and more of it. World energy demand is projected to rise 50 percent over the next 20 years, mostly because hundreds of millions of people in China, India and the developing world will be buying cars and living better lives. Production of fossil fuels, particularly oil, is going to have trouble keeping up with that demand anyway. And even if we could meet that demand with fossil fuels, we'd end up with irreversible climate change.
But there is a coalition to be built here, if you talk to the right people in the right way. When our organization, Public Agenda, conducted its Energy Learning Curve survey of Americans, we found they fell naturally into four broad categories: the Anxious (40 percent), the Greens (24 percent), the Disengaged (19 percent) and the Climate Change Doubters (17 percent).
The Greens, as you can imagine, are probably at a 350.org rally right now, the Doubters are still chanting "drill baby drill," and the Disengaged are watching the playoffs instead. The most interesting group -- and the most significant -- are the Anxious. They don't know much about energy issues, but they know enough to be worried. Almost all of this group worries "a lot" about the cost of energy (91 percent); They report higher levels of worry than the other groups on scarcity and on increased worldwide demand for oil. Global warming is a lesser concern, but even here 69 percent say it's real and 54 percent say they worry "a lot" about it.
Most importantly, the Anxious are the largest single group, at 40 percent. They're the "swing voters" of this issue, and you can't build a majority without them.
A lot of environmentalists seem convinced that the key to success is making everyone else as concerned about climate change as they are. That's no help in persuading the Anxious; they're already worried about it and convinced it's real. Making sure there's enough energy to go around, and at a price that people can afford, are even more important to this group.
So what's the takeaway here? There are two key points:
Back to basics: We've been doing a lot of work to educate the public on energy (in fact, we've just written a book on the subject). And one thing we've learned is you can't assume people know the fundamentals. And we're not talking about the science of global warming here. We're talking about the fact that there's a relatively short list of options that can provide the energy we need in the volume we need. Right now, 80 percent of our energy comes from fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas and only 2 percent from wind and solar combined. Given that, we have some practical choices to make here, and in our experience, people are pretty good at making them, if you lay them out and are honest about the pros and cons. Plus, a little information up front can head off a lot of misinformation later on, as the health care reform advocates found out to their dismay.
Speak to people's real concerns. People can approach a problem from entirely different perspectives and still end up at the same place. The Anxious are actually strongly supportive of alternative energy, ranging from ethanol to solar, and they strongly favor conservation over exploration. So do the Greens. But the rationales are different -- Greens favor alternative energy because it's clean; the Anxious favor it because they want to stretch the supply.
The groups who will play a major role at the Senate hearings -- cabinet officers, environmentalists, businesses -- are all critical. But the public matters, too. If we let the concerns of lobbyists and policy experts drive this debate, we'll never build the coalition needed to move forward.
Then, if the lights go out, we'll have no one to blame but ourselves.
Author Bios
Scott Bittle, co-author of Who Turned Out the Lights: Your Guided Tour to the Energy Crisis, is executive editor of PublicAgenda.org, where he has prepared citizen guides on more than twenty major issues including the federal budget deficit, Social Security, and the economy. He is also the website director for Planet Forward, an innovative PBS program designed to bring citizen voices to the energy debate.
Jean Johnson, co-author of Who Turned Out the Lights: Your Guided Tour to the Energy Crisis, is co-founder of PublicAgenda.org, and has written articles and op-eds for USA Today, Education Week, School Board News, Educational Leadership, and the Huffington Post Website.
Last week my co-workers sat around trying to figure out our new medical and dental benefits. Fortunately the Vision benefits weren’t that hard to figure out. I guess when it comes to vision insurance you either need glasses or you don’t. Unless you have been under a rock, you shouldn’t be surprised why medical and dental benefits needed to be scrutinized. I have to be honest and say that the experience was horrendous. I wish I could find a better word to describe it but I can’t. It was as if we were answering questions to a calculus test. Why is understanding health insurance the equivalent to understanding Wall Street derivatives? My head hurt as co-pay, coinsurance, and deductibles danced around in my head. I know we have deductibles in auto and home insurance but why medical? My company told us that they want us to be cognizant of the cost of our health insurance. WTH?? I wonder do businesses in Switzerland say that to their employees?
The conversation on the deficiency in public education is flawed. The politicians and media always talk around the issue and leave out one important element in the equation. The parents!! Everyone talks about these monsters…..er…children but no one talks about the parents. The politicians are scared to talk about them because parents vote. The media doesn’t talk about them because……well the media doesn’t know what to talk about. But it’s obvious what the problem is. I talk to people that teach these chaps and they tell me the same thing. They are teaching future strippers, criminals and baby mama’s. The glaring point of the conversation is when they mention their dealings with the parents. They have to deal with the extremely low PTA attendance to the parent teacher conferences from hell. These kids aren’t just hatching out of alien eggs. They are coming from homes with parents or a parent. These kids belong to some of the worst parents on earth. They don’t discipline or educate their kids. My friend, who is a teacher, told me a parent told her that she should pick her battles with her child. WTH!!! These parents are bartering with their children. What I want to know is who runs the household???


~ Michael Corleone