Cabarrus Cheap Seats

Update (August 23, 2007): The “Wordpress Blogger’s Blog” (Lorelle on Wordpress) gave a challenge this week to give the story as to where a blog came from it’s original start.  I guess I was 2 1/2 months early.
This past week, this blog turned two. That makes me a seasoned veteran in the world of blogging. That’s either because blogging is so new or bloggers are silly people who give up easily.

At any rate, here are the top five posts I’m most proud of:

5. May 25, 2007: Friday Five: COPs for NCRC = Stupid Idea. This one is cool because it has the greatest number of comments (18) since I’ve moved over here to the cabarruscheapseats.com. There are four people in the fray right now - you should join it.

4. November 18, 2006: Harrisburg No-Show Fiasco. It was an OK post; but it’s my best bit of Photoshop artistry yet (it’s the image at the top of this page). By the way, funny thing: I wound some serving with Steve Sciascia on the Cabarrus County Parks and Recreation Board. He got a kick out of the image.

3. Tossup between June 25, 2005: Proposal for a New Caucus System: Cabarrus Idol and August 22, 2005: Politics in an Odd-Numbered Year XVI: The Musical. There are days when I get up and try to throw something up on the blog. And there are times that I’ve struggled to get through a post. Then there are times when I truly feel inspired. In the Proposal for a New Caucus System: Cabarrus Idol, I heard a news story about more NC residents being able to identify Carrie Underwood than most elected officials in NC - it spawned a new idea for a caucus system. In Politics in an Odd-Numbered Year XVI: The Musical I try to explain to then-Kannapolis City Council Candidate Harold Smith that a particular road project is under the direction of NCDOT, and not the City of Kannapolis. There was a sign that I’m sure he saw and in trying to simplify it…I turned to the Village People.

2. January 21, 2006: The Smoking Gun. Two days before my 28th birthday, I got a present from the County. An e-mail disproving what Harold and his friends were using to try to discredit Republican Commissioner Joni Juba.

Many readers probably remember the so-called “Juba Scandal”. The scandal went a little something like this: Commissioner Coy Privette and a number of other people were accusing Republican Commissioner Joni Juba of manipulating the selection committee of a construction management firm for the jail for her own gain. On my old blog (tbotalks.blogspot.com), numerous comments sprouted up from what looked like many different people. The media was all over this and published several stories. The Jail Trail folks jumped on this like white trash on Velveeta. Harold Smith was pushing it something fierce.

Then, one day, everything just stopped. The papers quit reporting it and people stopped talking about it. It seemed like it disappeared for no reason.

However, old Cheapseats readers will probably remember that I spent plenty of time deconstructing this: there wasn’t enough evidence to correlate the rhetoric of the people pushing this, the Institute of Government had already weighed in favor of Juba’s decision, and that behavior on the part of Coy and Harold seemed to been orchestrated by a third-party with a financial interest. Before I got to this point, this so-called scandal was unraveling under its own weight. However, there was the issue of Turner getting the contract and Juba having served on the committee. This article proves that Juba did not push the committee to Turner; but they had come to the conclusion on their own.

It was then that the press wouldn’t touch this story. Most everyone who’d been screaming about it at the County Commission meetings dropped it.
I never got a moment like when Dan Rather was nailed by conservative bloggers and he had to apologize to everyone. The papers did not retract their previous stories; because they wrote the story in a vague enough fashion as to cast suspicion upon Juba; but they didn’t have the guts (or evidence) to make the accusation. Coy Privette never apologized for basically orchestrating the botched character assassination of a fellow commissioner. A person of honor would have owned up to their mistake; but anyone familiar with Reverend Privette would no better than to expect that.

Oh, one last thing: the whole thing was orchestrated by Coy, Harold, and a poor, pathetic, mentally disturbed soul who posted hundreds of comments on my old site under various different aliases. I figured that out and booted the person off of my site.

What’s sad is that I had to do all of the research that the local media should have done instead of just reprinting the lies of the aforementioned cabal. However, I do feel a sense of accomplishment that had the privilege of defending a decent and capable public servant like Joni Juba against the type of people who turn the public off to politics.

1. May 29, 2005: Politics in An Odd-Numbered Year. According to Google Analytics, half of the people who visit this site over the next week will have been doing it for the first time; but dozens of you regularly read. It would have been hard to imagine on that first post that I would have met so many people, had this stuff forwarded through people’s e-mail boxes, and got to meet so many of you.

As was the case in 2005, I’m still shocked everyday when people read my stuff; and I appreciate the time that y’all take out of your schedule to read what one of your neighbors has to say.

Thanks for a great two years. See y’all Monday.