The City Council primary election, the fight over the A-B Tech sales tax, candidate cash, Occupy Asheville demonstrations, Oktoberfest and our Best Of rankings. It’s been a busy week here in Asheville, readers, what’s on your mind?
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Sorry for the re-post from another thread, but here goes:
Mark Cates is definitely running a stealth candidacy. He is a highly partisan, extreme right-wing guy, but he is running on the ‘green economy’ and being ‘non-partisan’, because he thinks that’s how one gets elected in Asheville. His stated goal in that op-ed to the Asheville Daily Planet makes it clear that he adheres to “Tea Party values” and that he considers a stint on City Council to be a stepping stone to carrying the Tea Party agenda to a statewide or even national level.
His Tea Party writings, the fact that the local Tea Party is whipping up volunteers & contributions for him, the fact that his campaign co-directors are Chair and Vice-Chair of the Buncombe Young Republicans, the fact that the week after announcing his run for City Council, he donated $100 to Tim Moffitt’s campaign, all of these things speak for themselves.
And I think it’s a legitimate question to ask about his campaign director, Fritz Chaleff, who left a Congressman’s DC staff and $65,000 a year to come work for an unknown City Council candidate in WNC. We know the Art Pope empire is flooding the state with millions in unregulated monies – Tim Moffitt got over $100,000 in 2010.
Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean the right wing ISN’T pumping millions into seizing this state, and playing extremely dirty in the process. Mark Cates has aligned himself with this movement, and I will join others in working to keep him off our City Council, no matter how “green” he pretends to be.
BTW, this Pope money story was not news to Blue NC. They were citing the 2.2 million dollar figure and the 22 races all the way back in Oct. 27, 2010, and trying to get people to boycott Pope stores.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRPNwDzaDAM
Barry:
Your paranoia is un-balanced. You should be just as concerned that the Liberal Progressive Left is doing all of the same stuff.
Look – here we are, once again “the public” getting all twisted into the knots that the big money on bith sides want….Fear of the other side.
Want to affect real change? Tell both sides NO THANKS.
They – the Dem. and Repubs. all drink and play golf together, and employ the same or comparable tactics to scare us into choosing one or the other “side”.
SO – what about the American side?
Wonder what our country could be like if Jefferson had his way and convinced the founding fathers to outlaw any political parties……
Neither side is all right – and neither side is all wrong. Problem is – the forces they employ to create division among us are greater than those the use for unity of us.
T
Then why is Mr. Pope hiding all of his affiliations?
You think because I don’t rail here against Obama, Bev Perdue, or any local Dems, that I don’t see problems in the Democrats? I suspect you know that I do.
But there are dramatic differences in what the corrupt left and the corrupt right want to achieve, and so I pick a side.
Are the NC Dems perfect? NO. But so far, they’ve mostly resisted opening up our state to frakking. The Republicans want to throw the doors open. The Dems mostly protect voting rights for vulnerable populations (you say it’s because they vote the way the Dems want? So be it). The Republicans seek to curb voting rights for minorities, college students, the poor, the elderly, because it will help them win elections. I say that is bad for ALL North Carolinians, not just the Dems in Raleigh, so I pick a side. On many issues, there is a move afoot to change our state in ways that I think are very bad, like cutting education funding, or relaxing environmental rules, or shifting more of the tax burden onto the middle class. All of these changes and more are originating with the Republican party, and so I pick a side.
It’s of note to me that recently there seems to be an uptick in the “both parties are broken, so relax your partisan attitude” rhetoric, at a time when the extremely well funded, extremely partisan right is making a big play to change the facts on the ground in this state for the next century. Now’s not the time to sing Koombaya, now’s the time to saddle up.
After 140 years of democrats ruling the state do you really object to a republican? Aren’t you the party of diversity? Or is that only if they are diverse according to your approval?
A political Sunday.
Barry you remain obsessed about what you can’t understand. You should strive to use clear glass more often and not the rose colored that you view the progressives or the smoked glass in which you view the conservatives. You may sound eloquent in your missives, unfortunately I have met you and was not impressed. You are neither ready for or part of the mainstream.
I am not impressed by people who make personally disparaging comments anonymously. There’s a word that starts with ‘C’…
You don’t have anything substantive to say? I accept your surrender…