Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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Dalton's Choice by JOHN HOOD Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton wants a new job. President Barack Obama wants to keep his current job. The two Democrats have the same challenge, however. In order to win this fall, they have to persuade disaffected voters not to try a new direction in the executive branch. Dalton won his short nomination contest against former Rep. Bob Business event in Raleigh where both McCrory and Dalton made presentations. Setting aside the stylistic differences between the two men, there was a major difference in message. McCrory argued that North Carolina's business climate was weak. Dalton argued that the state's business climate was strong. To support his claim, McCrory pointed to standard measures of economic perfor- Etheridge by raising his statewide name recognition and counting on primary voters to remember Etheridge's "Who Are You" debacle from two years ago. The strategy worked. But then Dalton had to re- tool for the general election against a much-stronger foe, Republican Pat McCrory. He had to choose a new strategy, one designed both to unify the party faithful and to draw swing voters to the cause of keep- ing a Democrat in the governor's mansion. Dalton chose poorly. I was present at a recent National Federation of Independent magazine, not their own lying eyes. It was akin to President Obama saying "the pri- vate sector is doing fine." Furthermore, Dalton's timing couldn't have been worse. Just a few days after his mance. North Carolina has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, for example. By contrast, Dalton supported his claim by noting that Forbes had ranked North Carolina as having the third-best climate for business and the best regulatory environment in the nation. Do you see the problem? He was essentially asking his audience to believe Forbes NFIB speech, which got statewide press coverage, the May employment numbers came out. Our state had the largest monthly job loss in the nation. The data also showed that North Carolina's rate of job growth has continued to lag behind the na- How to Save a Mountain by D.G. MARTIN There were lots of reasons some people in Avery County wanted to stop a rock- mining operation on the beautiful Belview mountainside. *Tracy and her Aunt Ollie, because preliminary blasting operations had cracked the foundation of their house. *Faye Williams, whose home adjoined the mine site, because of the unbearable noise and dust; and *Jay Leutze, a UNC-Chapel Hill law school graduate who had fled urban life to write novels in the peace and quiet of the moun- tains. Now he faced the prospect of constant noise from the mas- sive rock crushing machinery that would be a part of the mine. Not everyone in Avery County opposed the mine, as Jay learned after Tracy and Ollie persuaded him to try to stop the operation. Louise Buchanan, postmistress in nearby Minneapolis, told Jay with pride that it was "going to be the biggest surface mine in western North Carolina. Right here in little old Dog Town!" He learned that Paul Brown, the rock-mine owner, was an in- fluential businessman with many powerful friends. Avery County desperately needed the jobs that the mine would provide. The rock-mining operations would mar one of the most beautiful views hikers experience along the trail. Jay Leutze, a North Carolina author, tells the tale of saving one in N.C. mountain. The story of how Tracy, Ollie, Faye and Jay gathered a host of allies to mount a successful effort to stop the mining operation is told in his book, Stand Up That Mountain: The Battle to Save One Small Community in the Wilderness Along the Appalachian Trail. In the end, the decision that stopped the mine had little or nothing to do with the cracked foundation of Ollie Cox's house, or the noise and dust Faye Williams feared or the disruption of Jay Leutze's peace and quiet. Nor did the decision turn on the jobs and other economic benefits the mine might have brought to Avery County. 16 UCW JUNE 27 - JULY 3, 2012 How and why the opponents of the mine used the Appalachian Trail as the linchpin in their effort to stop the mine is an important part of Leutze's saga. That story, by itself, is reason enough to read Stand Up That Mountain. Leutze takes his readers from the creeks, coves, and court- house of Avery County to the Raleigh offices of state govern- ment bureaucrats. Though these officials are charged with administering state laws objectively and perfectly, they are really human beings, subject to error and misjudgment and the influence of those they like and respect. Leutze's readers also see inside law offices. Leutze lets them hear lawyers size up the legal strengths and weak- nesses of their cases and of the judges who will hear their arguments. Finally, he lets his readers experience, as he did, the agony of defeat and the thrill of victory that come with the clash between vigorous advocates of important but different positions. What turns this important report of a public-policy struggle into a literary mas- terpiece is Leutze's storytelling talent. He introduces characters and tells things about them that make us care. He records their voices and captures the reveal- ing ways people talk: mountain people, lawyers, bureaucrats and judges. He uses those characters to help him tell the story. And he opens himself, writing with pas- sion about things that move him. The critical fact that made it possible to stop the mine concerned the experience that hikers on the Appalachian Trail would have as they passed near by the mining site. With the mountain peace and quiet for which he fought so hard now secure, Leutze can again turn his magnificent talents to writing fiction. The results will surely bring to North Carolinians another out- standing novelist they can be proud to share with the rest of the world. D.G. MARTIN Columnist. COM- MENTS? Editor@upandcomin- gweekly.com. WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM tional average since the start of the Great Recession in 2007. Building Dalton's economic case around a magazine ranking was foolhardy. There are many different rankings of business climates, published by many different organizations. They don't use a common methodology, so the rankings vary wildly. In evaluating state regulatory policy, for ex- ample, some rankings rely on surveys of business executives. Some rely on the existence or absence of specific classes of regulation. Some rely on estimates of compliance costs. North Carolina tends to fare well in regulatory rankings that put a great N.C. Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton highest, 2) Our growth in jobs and income trails the national average, and 3) Forbes magazine says North Carolina has one of the nation's best business climates. Would your conclusion be that North Carolina's economy is doing a lot better the course. They don't want to. Also, this strategy implicitly ties him to current Gov. Beverly Perdue, who happens to be one of the most unpopular governors in the United States. Dalton has been trying to distance himself from Perdue for months. But his economic message makes him sound like an incumbent, not an agent of change. Which means it makes him sound like a loser. JOHN HOOD, Columnist. COM- MENTS? Editor@upandcomin- gweekly.com. than you thought? Of course not. You would conclude that the Forbes ranking isn't very useful as a predictor of economic performance. And you'd be right. Dalton will never beat McCrory by trying to convince North Carolinians to stay deal of weight on our right-to-work law. But we don't fare as well in rankings that focus on other policies such as safety rules or occupational licensing. It turns out that the Forbes ranking of regulatory climate is particularly weird. It is a catchall category that includes such factors as tax incentives, bond ratings and transportation infrastructure. It isn't really a measure of regulatory climate at all. Dalton should stop citing it. More generally, suppose I told you that these statements were all true: 1) North Carolina's unemployment rate is one of the nation's