Good day and welcome to DKos Asheville. This is the weekly DKos Asheville open thread for Saturday, May 23rd. We try to get together every weekend to share with everyone what we're all up to in Western North Carolina and beyond. We hope this group and others serve to invigorate us locally and regionally here on Daily Kos, building on the sense of community that's grown through our online engagement. DKos Asheville and other local and state groups can give us all a better sense of connection, a better understanding of who we stand with, work with, and share with. We hope this local and wider community can help leverage our orange passion for progressive politics to elect more and better Democrats.
Tip of the week:
1- Find your precinct.
2- Contact the precinct Captain.
3- Ask how you can help.
4- Follow up with what you can and want to do.
5- Feel good, make a difference.
At this website, Buncombe County provides easy one stop shopping to get information about your precinct and district. I'm sure all counties have something similar that provides potential activists a great starting point from which to make connections and get involved. The first screen lists all precincts and when you click on one it shows you the map on the screen below. It's pretty slick, give it try.
Please follow us below the fold. This week's edition is another opportunity to talk about North Carolina politics and discuss what we can do to support each other and build networks.
Our friend Jeff Messer, host of Asheville's local talk radio program on 880 The Revolution, has a nice roundup below of good news for progressives locally and state wide. Jeff has been a great supporter of DKos Asheville and has attended and spoken at several of our meet ups over the last few years. His studio is always open to us if we want to come as guests or call in.
Jeff is apparently only one out of four local progressive talk radio hosts in the nation. One out of four. That is amazing to me and I heartily encourage you to listen, call in, email, Facebook, or Tweet to show him some support. He has a wide internet audience and is in a perfect position to spread Daily Kos awareness.
The Jeff Messer Show airs weekdays from 3:00 to 6:00 PM Eastern and streams through iHeart Media.
5/22/15
So, the past few days have brought some massive news for NC Progressives, and the environment.
First up, we had Duke print full page apology ads over the weekend, after pleading guilty in court over their pollution.
Then they announced that the Asheville coal plant is going to be replaced with a natural gas plant.
And, we got news that the NC GOP and McCrory Administration may not be out of the woods, as the investigation into their manipulations on the behalf of Duke look pretty damned suspect.
And, as of today, Fracking is brought to a screeching halt in NC, thanks to a court order:
Meanwhile, McCrory (not seeing writing on the wall) has made some bold comments about his hopes, dreams and plans for off-shore drilling. What does he want? He wants it CLOSER to the shore!
So, folks, have we had enough of this little GOP having full control of NC project? 2016 is around the corner, and we need to make sure that these clowns are packed back in their ALEC and Koch car and sent on their way with the rest of the circus.
Keep up the work, Moral Monday and NC NAACP folks! Looks like we're seeing some progress!
Our progressive State Senator Terry Van Duyn was in Asheville yesterday. Education is this fine Buncombe County Senator's passion and she expressed it Friday at an Asheville City Schools Foundation event. This coverage is from our great local Arts and Entertainment weekly, The Mountain Express. You can see more about her with more photos here at our January meet up and blog conference.
“The House has passed a budget with a 2 percent across the board increase for teachers, and they will raise starting salaries to $35,000,” Van Duyn said. “That is not anywhere near close to the national average, and we were at the national average before the recession. We need to be there again. Our teachers deserve that.”
She went on to quote a statistic that says only a third of teachers in North Carolina qualify for public assistance. “That’s just not right,” she added.
Van Duyn asserted that the legislators shifted the “tax burden” from the upper class and corporations to the middle- and lower-class in two ways: by flattening the tax brackets and cutting taxes for corporations.“So the Senate side of the North Carolina legislature has made it clear that’s the path that they are determined to take,” she said. “Their endgame is to eliminate the personal income tax. That sounds great, but education is the biggest part of the budget.
“We cannot fund education if we continue to give tax breaks to people who do not need them and are not asking for them,” she continued.
Ashvegas has more news on Asheville's changing energy infrastructure. The coal plant news is worth the read by itself but it also includes a nice rundown on Duke Energy's horrible ash waste pond problem.
Duke Energy officials on Tuesday announced plans to shut down its coal-fired power plant in south Asheville within five years. A new natural gas plant will replace the coal plant. A solar farm will also be a part of the new natural gas plant, they said. The new plant must be built and running before the coal-fired plant is shut down, and that all should happen by about 2020, the officials said.
Thanks for reading, see you in Asheville in September!