Day I

Keep the damn lights off! We're taking away your rights in here!

If you ever happen by the Ashe County Courthouse on a Monday around 2 p.m. and see the Commissioners trotting up the stairs to a tiny, dark conference room next to the Register of Deeds Office on the second floor, you might be thinking they're looking for a dark closet where they can play spin the bottle. 

But you'd be wrong. They're assembling to conduct the county's business in the middle of the day while all good taxpayers are slaving away to pay their bills. Commissioners call it the "work session."

These five elected officials will emerge 95 minutes later, go upstairs to the third floor courtroom and then have the "official meeting" where they formally rubber stamp the public's work they've just completed in the conference room.

Case in point: the February 7, 2011 Commissioners work session. This is from the official minutes of that work session, lost in a bullet point list of issues presented by county manager Dan McMillan:

Ashe County Board of Commissioner Minutes

We're certainly not surprised the Commissioners decided to summarily strip women working for the county of their reproductive rights -- these five are Republicans and stripping women of their rights seem to be a popular pastime for GOP-controlled governments everywhere. You can read a good primer here on Rep. Paul "Skippy" Stam, R-Wake, who sent a deceptive letter to all 100 counties to start this latest crusade to crush women's rights.

We'd at least think Commissioners would have the kahunas to place this issue on the public agenda, consider comments from those they supposedly represent, and take a real vote on it in the light of day so we all know where they stand.

But we know where they stand: huddled in the conference room on the second floor with the lights off molesting women's rights. 

Cowards.

A fine time in the land of plenty

No need to tune in to cable news for misery and struggle in Japan.

A new study released today shows nearly 1 in 5 in Ashe have problems just putting food on the table.

The Winston-Salem Journal last weekend highlighted the plight of the hungry in northwest North Carolina --  and there's a lot more people with empty stomachs than anyone wants to admit: 1 in 4 Americans are worried about having enough money to eat.

Shameful.

Just clowing around... on your dime

We were mighty pleased this week to see that state Sen. Dan Soucek finally selected the winner of his Weird Law of the Day contest on Facebook.
Apparently, when the District's freshman senator isn't busy working to disenfranchise the poor and elderly or busting up the public education system, he's been studiously reading an Internet list of stupid laws.
Now that he's all caught up on his reading list, he's moved along to collecting recipes. His request today: favorite chip and salsa recipes.
Eh, what the heck. We'll share a few recipes if it keeps Soucek away from filing more asinine legislation for Art Pope Inc.

People's Revolution complete

The Ashe Tea Drinkers have completed their takeover of the county's Republican Party after what we reckon must have been something akin to a Baptist church splitting earlier this month at the county convention.
Moderates offered a slate of officers which were turned back and forced to withdraw their names hours before delegates convened. The schizm has forced out moderate Republicans who are quietly making known that they'll have no part of the new radical agenda being promoted in their name.
Re-elected "GOP" party chairman John Wheeler, who shares Newt Gingrich's fondness for Chairman Mao quotes, offered a hearty renunciation of the grand ole Republican Party, according to the account in the Ashe Mountain Times:

"Politics is war without blood," Wheeler said. "The Republican establishment wants to control the people at the grassroots. They want foot soldiers who take orders and now there are some people who say, ‘wait a minute, we didn’t sign on to be foot soldiers, we signed on to promote ideas that we believe in. We want candidates that express what we believe in.”

Just last October, Wheeler was singing a tune of unity, declaring Republicans and Tea Drinkers were one in the same.
We suppose taking over the asylum puts things in a different perspective.