On behalf of everyone at The Bascom I’d like to express our deep appreciation to all of the area non-profits that provided decorated Christmas trees for our recent Giving Trees exhibition. During the exhibit, over 3,000 people visited and many made contributions in support of the participating organizations. It was especially gratifying to see families touring the exhibit and children making decisions about where to give their contributions.

The exhibit itself was gorgeous and the tree decorations were spectacularly creative. Every single tree was decorated in a way that perfectly reflected each group’s mission.

Have you sold your soul and don’t even know it? Jim Davis personally told me that Art Pope (the Raleigh multimillionaire) and his family had made only a small contribution of $4000 to his campaign. Davis said he certainly wasn’t going to be influenced or controlled by such a small amount of money. According to the Federal Election commission the Pope family members actually contributed $16,000 directly to Davis campaign. What Davis neglected to mention was that Pope actually spent $265,666 on ads attacking Senator John Snow through his tax-exempt, supposedly non-partisan groups like Civitas Action and Real Jobs.

Concurrent Majority

Lech Walesa, in a commentary on the Occupy Wall Street Movement, said that before a movement sets out to overthrow a system of government, it should know what it wants to put in its place.

Those Occupy people, it seems to me just wanted more of the same, except they wanted to be among the ones receiving the plunder: Guaranteed jobs and guaranteed college education.

It’s midnight; do you know what your legislature is doing?

My grandmother always told me that, “nothing good happens after midnight.” I never quite grasped why until last week. While the vast majority of North Carolinians were sleeping, the radical Republican-controlled legislature was at it again.

With zero notice and disallowing debate for a record 35th time this year, Republicans in the legislature convened at 12:45 a.m. to remove the N.C. Association of Educators ability to have a dues check-off payroll deduction.