Cabarrus Cheap Seats

As usual, I’ve been tinkering with this blog. Blogger just came out with the Beta version with some features and I thought I would give it a spin. Unfortunately, it reset the RSS feed. Here’s the explanation in English: For those of you who subscribe to this blog on a continious basis (meaning you get [...]

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This is in three parts, because of how important this subject is. The quality of our schools, the congestion on our roads, and our tax burden can be traced back to the rate and manner at which growth takes place.
The third of three parts is coming around the bend.
In the last post, we established the [...]

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The challenge in controlling development is as simple as this: the local government has a responsibility to provide entitlements to its citizens and a responsibility to protect property rights.
Simple doesn’t always mean easy.
Rights vs. Entitlements
There are those who believe that rights and entitlements are the same thing; but the difference is significant enough to cause [...]

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Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory’s Blog gets updated only once a month and is inside of his old re-election site. I found out from it not from the popularity of other blogs; but while I was listening to Charlotte Talks on WFAE. So, in standard blog metrics (incoming links, freshness of material, and traffic) - it’s [...]

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You may have noticed that the Cheap Seats has come to a halt. A member of my family had to have emergency open-heart surgery. They are recovering fine; but I’ve not found the time to put anything substantive on the blog. I plan on being back Monday.
In the meantime, I’ve been thinking of the quote [...]

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I can’t help but get the feeling that some recent reports on the local media have portrayed reluctance on the part of the Cabarrus County Board of Commissioners to support the North Carolina Research Campus (NCRC). This may or may not be true for some individuals or factions on the board; but this letter of [...]

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In 1803, Thomas Jefferson made a decision which ran contrary to his ideology and agreed to the Louisiana Purchase - more than doubling the size of the United States, insuring access to a port vital to our national interest, and staving off international conflict.
The decision was anathema to his belief in state’s rights and the [...]

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The Charlotte Observer ran an informative article today on the North Carolina Research Campus and a Board of Commissioners’ meeting on Thursday.
For the first time, Cabarrus County officials plan Thursday to openly discuss the county’s role in the development of the North Carolina Research Campus in Kannapolis. 
Here’s something interesting:
In one message, officials outlined changes to [...]

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This Week’s Tarheel Tavern is up at Billy The Blogging Poet.
Some of the more interesting articles:
- Circadian Rhythms relationship to food
- A Picture That Will Make You Cold Just Looking At It
- A Plan to Build New Orleans
I didn’t include the links - you’ll have to check out This Week’s Tavern for it.

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What I find most interesting about this debate is that the one person leading this charge locally against incentives is someone who benefited greatly from tax incentives: Coy Privette. As a minister, his salary was made possible entirely by the tax-deductible contributions of his parishioners. They paid their taxes, and after the filed their returns [...]

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