Animal welfare issues dog Wilson County

This column was published in the Wilson Times Aug. 24, 2019.

What’s the most long-lasting, persistent local issue in Wilson County over the past 30 or 40 years? A lot has happened since I moved to Wilson in 1980. The city has grown, new businesses and industries have arrived, elected officials have all turned over (not a single City Council or County Board member from 1980 has continued in office today), tourism has become important to the local economy, “Acid Park” has moved and changed its name to the Vollis Simpson Whirligig Park, downtown has declined and revived.

But you can argue that the greatest, most-long-lasting issue before Wilson County these past nearly 40 years has been dogs. Years after the county Sheriff’s Office took over animal control responsibilities and county commissioners agreed to set aside money for a new animal shelter and began licensing dogs, the debate over a new shelter rages on. Animal advocates feel they had been misled about the county’s intentions and now are skeptical that the new shelter will ever be built or built in the “right” place. Recent agreements give hope that this four-decade debate might finally be settled.

As I have gone through file folders of clippings from my years at The Wilson Daily Times, I have come across two columns about the dog issue from 2004. The first column references an incident sometime before 1983 in the newspaper’s old office at 117 S. Goldsboro St. Two teenage girls, who had just discovered that dogs taken to the county shelter were euthanized if not claimed or adopted, came by and wanted me to start a campaign to reverse this policy. According to my recollections in the 2004 column, I asked them what they propose doing with the unwanted dogs. “We’ll take care of them,” they told me. I pointed out that within a few years, they would be caring for thousands of dogs — too big a task even for idealistic teenagers.

Earlier in 2004, I had written a column about the dog issue, pointing out the large number of letters to the editor about dogs that year as the county considered a spay-neuter policy at the shelter and discussed replacing the severely inadequate animal shelter. Animal advocates organized behind the local Humane Society, For the Love of Dogs and other groups.

Animal welfare was arguably the hottest issue in Wilson County 1980-2004, I wrote, bigger even than the “Couches on Porches” law that landed our fair city on the front page of the New York Times (beneath a byline by Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Bragg). If you’re not familiar with the COP matter, it involved a city ordinance aimed at beautifying the city by forbidding the use of couches and upholstered chairs on front porches, where they are exposed to weather and rot. Bragg reported the matter as a racial or class issue, although African-Americans on City Council voted for the ban, which was later compromised.

Only an issue as emotional as animal welfare could have topped Couches on Porches. People care deeply about their animal companions, and I understand that emotion. My wife and I are caretakers for our second rescued dog, who wants nothing more than to have food and water, a little affection, and a daily walk (now!). He is old, feeble, unable to climb stairs, blind in at least one eye, nearly deaf, and the sweetest, happiest and least demanding member of our family.

A dog’s welfare matters deeply to everyone who has played with, cuddled with or simply enjoyed the company of a four-legged friend. No wonder animal welfare has been such a hot issue for so long.

'News Deserts' harm society, threaten democracy

This column was published in the Wilson Times Aug. 17, 2019.

The American public has taken little notice of the collapse of a great American industry, one that helped British colonists win the American Revolution and American families to follow the battles of the Civil War, when nearly every family had someone — a son, a brother, a father, a cousin, in jeopardy. This industry went on to inform the American public about events in far-away battles of World War I and World War II, as well as Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf and Iraq.

Newspapers, so important in the minds of the Founding Fathers that they made freedom of the press a topic of the First Amendment to the Constitution, have faced a crisis of loss of revenue as advertising migrated from print to digital. Twenty years after the “dot com” explosion, many newspapers now face extinction.

The New York Times earlier this month published a thorough report on the terrible toll of disappearing newspapers in locations as varied as large cities (New Orleans and Denver are examples) to small towns such as Warrroad, Minn., where the weekly Pioneer recently printed its last edition. At the University of North Carolina School of Media and Journalism, Professor Penelope Muse Abernathy has published a study on “news deserts” — places where there is no source of local news because of the closing of small newspapers.

The impact of these news deserts is important. Without a local news source, the outcome of the high school football game goes unreported. The team’s conference standing is not provided to local fans. The heroics of high school athletes go unrecorded. No impartial reporter covers city council or county commissioner meetings. Local government budgets are not examined in the way newspapers have examined them in the past, living up to their “watchdog” role. Ignorance of local crimes could lead to dangerous complacence when residents have no newspaper to report on crime, criminals and courts. Without a local newspaper, fewer residents will attend public hearings, concerts, plays and other events because they had not heard about it. Local charities will have more difficulty keeping donors aware of community needs without a newspaper to fill its role as town crier/messenger.

In the last 15 years, the New York Times reports, 2,100 local newspapers, comprising a fourth of all newsrooms, have closed or merged with a competing paper. It’s not just the newspapers that folded that are creating these news deserts. Some venerable, usually family-owned, newspapers have been sold to investors, such as hedge funds, with no experience in journalism and no interest in news. They see little newspapers as overlooked, potential cash cows. By laying off most of the news staff, consolidating printing and layout work and squeezing the financial life out of these papers, the new owners sometimes succeed in turning a profit, but readers still lose their community pride, connection to local events and common interests.

The centuries-old relationship between newspapers and the public has been threatened not only by changing business strategies but also by changes in the minds of potential subscribers. Fewer people read, and shortened attention spans trained by television and social media limit in-depth reading. A 12-year-old quoted in the New York Times story said, “most (potential readers) probably moved to social media by now. Most kids don’t even pick up a newspaper in their life.”

The public is looking elsewhere for information, but “elsewhere” has no assurance of truthfulness or disinterest. Little of what appears on a Facebook feed or elsewhere on the Internet has been vetted for truthfulness and accuracy, and mendacious individuals and groups have used this lack of accountability to sow hatred, violence, discontent and disinformation.

At the beginning of the Great Recession, when the federal government was bailing out the auto industry, banks and investment houses, I suggested the federal government should offer a tax deduction to households that subscribe to a local newspaper, perhaps $50 to $100 a year. Such a deduction, with no direct outlay by the government, could have saved hundreds of newspapers, large and small, and given them a chance to reconfigure their business model to get on sounder financial ground. No one embraced my ploy, so newspapers continue to struggle and drown.

We have already begun to see the long-term impact of the loss of newspapers. Public interest in elections and government policies is waning. Simple knowledge about politics (Can you name your state’s two senators? Who is your congressman? Your state’s lieutenant governor?) is in sharp decline. Young people know nothing about current legislation but know all about “American Idol” and “The Bachelorette.”

The Founding Fathers guaranteed freedom of the press for a reason. Voters must have solid information in order to make wise decisions in the voting booth. When that information is unavailable, democracy fails.

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Sometimes a debate is not really a debate

This column was published by the Wilson Times Aug. 10, 2019,

I watched all four episodes of a program called the Democratic Presidential Candidates Debate held in the past two months. I lost sleep I will never recover and came away with a few impressions of the people who want to replace President Donald Trump.

The greater impression, however, was that this entire series was over-blown, poorly presented and not particularly helpful to voters. Although these debates were promoted as a chance for voters to “meet the candidates,” in their presentation, the debates aimed more at entertaining voters than enlightening them. Nowhere was this more evident than in the “introduction” of the ten candidates to be presented in the last two episodes, which were presented by CNN. The network had each of the 10 candidates each night enter the stage from behind a curtain, as if they were competing in the Miss America Pageant. The candidates got to smile and wave at the audience, who cheered while precious minutes of the program’s two hours were wasted.

The debate monitors tried to limit the candidates to one-minute responses to sometimes complex questions and invited other candidates to critique the responses from other candidates. It seemed obvious the monitors tried to foment controversy among the candidates, creating TV-perfect excitement. The monitors also seemed to have their favorites among the candidates and called on the same candidates over and over while other candidates were largely ignored. The network seemed to want the loudest, most persistent, most extreme candidates on camera.

Although both networks airing the debates (CNN and NBC) were rewarded with controversies, provocative statements and personal attacks live on-stage, the script did not benefit typical voters, nor did it meet the definition of a debate as a “formal discussion on a particular topic …” Usually, a debate is between two individuals or two teams, one taking the affirmative and the other the negative side of a resolution. With 10 individuals on stage and the monitors tossing out questions that are aimed at creating controversy and division, rather than understanding, there is no formal debate.

Americans have been intrigued with presidential debates since the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates, the first ever aired live on television. Kennedy is credited with winning that one-on-one debate, but Nixon didn’t lose by much in a showdown determined as much by style and “optics” as by policy and debating points.

Since 1960, with few exceptions, presidential nominees and even vice-presidential nominees, have debated regularly on television. The 2016 Republican debates and this year’s debates provide an argument that the “presidential debates” are no longer worthwhile. In 2016, Donald Trump bullied his way to the GOP nomination by insulting other candidates and making impossible promises based on his “only I can do this” theme. This year’s 23 Democratic candidates tend to be a blur before voters, who can hardly keep up with the names of two dozen candidates, much less their political policies or opinions.

It’s time to provide a service that is useful for voters. Instead of presenting a beauty contest or hollerin’ contest, the networks should fulfill their obligation to serve the public by providing each candidate a reasonable amount of free 15 to 30 minutes in prime time to present their beliefs and policies to voters. The networks and candidates could select the topics for each segment, and candidates would have to stick to that topic or their pre-recorded presentation would be shortened. Corporations could “sponsor” debates on an all-or-none basis but would not be able to run commercials.

Would voters tune in to watch one candidate lay out his/her vision for America with no opportunity for belittling or backstabbing? I hope that as large a percentage of American adults would watch these programs as watched the last episode of “Friends,” but that may be asking too much.

Amendment to repair Constitution is in Congress!

This post was published by The Wilson Times on Aug. 3, 2019.

My July 20 column about constitutional amendments stirred up a response I had not expected. I did receive several favorable comments or suggested expansions from local readers about my suggestion for a constitutional amendment making it clear that corporations and associations are not people and are not entitled to the civil rights guaranteed by the Constitution. A series of Supreme Court decisions from the 19^th century all the way to the recent Citizens United decision had made corporations the same as people, insofar as legal protections are concerned.

My suggestion was one of several collected by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation after the foundation’s CEO asked for suggestions from readers of amendments that should be included in the Constitution.

What I didn’t expect was an email from Greg Coleridge, outreach director at the Move to Amend Coalition. MTA Coalition (movetoamend.org) had basically the same idea, reducing the power of wealthy commercial operations by not allowing corporations to claim the rights owed to individuals.

Move To Amend has already managed to get a proposed amendment (Joint House Resolution 48) introduced into the U.S. House. It is called The We the People Amendment. Section One of the proposed amendment states simply: “Artificial entities such as corporations do not have constitutional rights.”

Section Two states “Money is not free speech.” Joint House Resolution 48, introduced Feb. 22, 2019, contains additional details (all available at the MTA website), such as “The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of ‘natural persons’ only.” That’s under Section One. In Section Two, the amendment allows federal, state and local governments to regulate campaign contributions, including the candidate’s own contributions. It also requires that contributions to federal, state and local candidates be “fully disclosed.” Furthermore, spending money to influence elections shall not be construed by the judiciary to be free speech under the First Amendment.

Section Three has only one sentence: “Nothing in this amendment will be construed to abridge freedom of the press.”

This proposed amendment is a more carefully studied and drafted proposal than the concept I suggested to the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. It addresses the corrosive influence of corporations as well as the lopsided influence of large political donations and limitless campaign spending. If passed and ratified, the We The People Amendment would have the greatest impact on electoral politics since the demise of the Whigs and rise of the Republican Party 150 years ago.

Imagine an election in which all candidates are evenly matched in terms of access to campaign spending. Neither wealthy individuals nor wealthy corporations would have an outsized influence in elections. Corporate lobbyists would have no more influence than individual constituents in determining the fate of bills in Congress. Individuals’ right to “petition the government for redress of grievances” would mean something. Large corporations would not be able to shove public citizens aside and get laws passed in their favor.

I find it a little exciting that a constitutional amendment that would correct several problems with the current political scene has actually been introduced in Congress, where hearings could refine any rough spots or potential unintended consequences in the proposed amendment. But then I remember that amendments to the Constitution are inherently difficult to enact with the required two-thirds majority vote in Congress and ratification by three-fourths of the states.

This amendment makes sense. The last amendment to be ratified was the 27th Amendment (limiting congressional pay raises) in 1992. That amendment had foundered unratified for 203 years after clearing Congress until a grassroots effort revived it.

The We The People Amendment deserves a vote in Congress and consideration by the states. It won’t make it into the Constitution without pressure from “we the people.”

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