A tweak to the zoning ordinance was the final step to closing the deal
Somewhere in Greenville — few know the precise location — dozens of shipping containers could soon appear on the landscape. These containers, known as “modular data-processing centers” — but that are actually cryptomining operations — will be jammed with lightning-fast computers whose blinking lights indicate they are thinking.
The computers are concentrating. They are mining cryptocurrencies, digital money like Bitcoin and Ethereum, by solving complex mathematical puzzles through trillions of guesses. It’s hard work, all this thinking. The computers get hot and must be constantly fanned.
All of this — the computers, the brain power, the fans — requires enormous amounts of electricity. Electricity generated largely by fossil fuels, the drivers of climate change. [Read more…]
2. NC GOP’s judicial impeachment threats are a new low in Trump-like lawlessness (Commentary)
Impeachment. Like the snowflakes that flew last week in many parts of North Carolina, that word has been in the air in the state capital of late – darting here and there in wild and erratic patterns and, ultimately, depositing a kind of icy blanket on state government.
A few weeks back, right-wing politicos were rattling the impeachment saber at Superior Court Judge David Lee because they didn’t like his attempts to enforce the state constitution when it came to the right of schoolchildren in poor counties to a sound basic education.
Now, as you’ve probably heard, Republican legislators are – according to former state GOP executive director and current John Locke Foundation employee Dallas Woodhouse – seriously discussing the idea of impeaching Democratic members of the Supreme Court should it strike down the gerrymandered legislative and congressional maps those same lawmakers enacted late last year.
It’s hard to overstate what a treacherous act this would be.[Read more…]
3. Field notes: Dispatches from the 2022 U.S. Senate election
Walker stays in the race
Mark Walker didn’t just say ‘no’ to high-level entreaties to get out of the Republican Senate primary, he said ‘heck no.’
With a new bus for a backdrop, Walker told the crowd at a rally in Greensboro Thursday night that he was urged to drop out of the race and run for a seat in the U.S. House in a conversation with former President Donald Trump at a meeting at Mar-a-Lago during which Trump offered his endorsement. He also received an offer of campaign appearances with former Vice President Mike Pence if he made the move. [Read more…]
A new report by the North Carolina State Health Plan and the National Academy for State Health Policy found North Carolina nonprofit hospitals billed nearly $150 million to poor patients who should have qualified for charity care.
State Treasurer Dale Folwell joined by a bipartisan group of legislators Wednesday expressed dismay at the lack of accountability in how charity care is awarded.
Under the current system, unless a patient qualifies for charity care, hospitals attempt to collect any outstanding balance. Patients with limited means to pay often find themselves facing the threat of legal action, damage to their credit, or pressure to open medical credit cards that charge interest. [Read more…]
5. New revelations point to additional violations at troubled charter schools
State officials say student records were wrongfully altered at Wake and Bertie County schools by the daughter of the couple who ran them
The management of Three Rivers Academy and Torchlight Academy was a family affair when state monitors found “altered documents” in the schools’ exceptional children programs.
Shawntrice Andrews, the daughter of charter operators Don and Cynthia McQueen, was director of exceptional children (EC) programs at both Three Rivers in Bertie County and Torchlight Academy in Raleigh last June when monitors found changed dates and grades in the state’s electronic data management system.
The McQueens manage both schools through Torchlight Academy Schools, LLC, a for-profit charter management company (EMO). Andrews owns and operates Exceptional Scholars Services LLC. Articles of organization for the business were filed with the Secretary of State on December 22, 2020.[Read more…]
6. Audit: Mayor used confidential information in purchase of town property
The state Auditor’s Office says that the mayor of a coastal town used confidential information to buy town property at a price not available to the public.
Ocean Isle Mayor Debbie Smith purchased land and a former police department building at the appraised value of $460,000 for a real estate company that she co-owns. The town board improperly discussed details of the sale in closed session, the audit says, and the mayor was able to use information that was not public in making her purchase offer. Further, the town board discussed sale of the property in closed session, according to the audit report, a topic that cannot be discussed behind closed doors. [Read more…]
7. State Fair cited for environmental violations related to controversial parking lot
The North Carolina Department of Agriculture has been cited for four water quality violations related to its clear-cutting of 19 acres for a State Fair parking lot, according to environmental documents. The fair operates under the Agriculture Department.
Policy Watch reported last September that State Fair officials had exploited legal loopholes to timber the land at 5900 Chapel Hill Road in Raleigh, which abuts the residential Westover-Mt. Vernon neighborhood.A November 2021 letter addressed to David Smith, deputy agriculture commissioner, from the NC Department of Environmental Quality described how on Oct. 4, inspectors found 10 feet of an unnamed stream had been illegally filled with dirt and rock. [Read more…]
8. States weigh how to shield election officials from threats, harassment
Following the turmoil of the 2020 election, a photo of Washington state Election Director Lori Augino marked with crosshairs, her address, and the words “your days are numbered” was posted on a website alongside photos of numerous other state election officials described as “enemies of the people.”
Washington Secretary of State Kim Wyman said in a press release in December 2020 that she reported the so-called doxxing to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the FBI. But it’s unclear whether the perpetrators were ever identified or if they faced any charges — the secretary of state’s office did not respond to questions about what resulted from the reports. Both Augino and Wyman have since left office.[Read more…]
Before the first snowflakes began to fall last week, meteorologists were advising North Carolinians when the wintry mix would arrive, how severe conditions would be, and how to best prepare for the impeding storm.
Dr. Jonathan Quick, an adjunct professor at the Duke Global Health Institute, envisions a future in which we have a similar system for forecasting the spread of COVID-19 and future variants.
Quick and two of his colleagues at Duke University fielded questions Monday about what it would mean for the COVID-19 pandemic to become endemic. [Read more…]
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