Things that Make Noise in the Night, Part X | Eastern North Carolina Now

    The national press is obsessed with gun deaths. These liberals never miss an opportunity to headline a gun death. The most recent usable sets of numbers on drug deaths, automobile deaths and gun deaths is 2009. This information is from internet searches. During that year there were 33,945 deaths by automobile, 48,199 deaths from the illegal use of drugs, and 29,984 deaths from guns. The shocker on guns is there were 17.352 suicides by gun and only 12,632 criminal deaths. This from a nation of 307 million people. There may be as many people trying to make drugs legal as there are trying to make guns illegal. No one is trying to outlaw cars. Go figure.

    Jeremy Adams, one of the three candidates running for the House 6 seat, apparently has failed to file his first quarter of 2012 campaign report which was due on April 30 of this year. The report was not posted on the State Board of Elections web site at the time of this writing (June 12, 2012). Filing irregularities are serious events. Our present governor, Perdue, and last governor Easley have suffered because of purported violations of the election laws. They filed their reports on time. Looks like Jeremy should have spent his time complying with the law instead of working for the liberal Arthur Williams. Rumor has it Governor Easley barely escaped jail so I do not believe Arthur Williams can get Jeremy Adams out of this.
Beaufort County Commissioner Hood Richardson, July, 2004     photo by Stan Deatherage
    Jeremy is a full six weeks late. All candidates are advised by the Board of Elections that the worst thing a candidate can do is to not file at all. They even tell you it is better to file an incomplete report by the deadline than to wait even a few days and file a complete report. Looks like Jeremy Adams has not even attempted to file. The best he can do is to get a fine, which is harsh punishment considering all of these primary campaigns are poor to begin with.

    The economy continues to get worse. Power ball jack pots are growing about half as fast as they were four years ago. The Summer Festival, held last week in Washington, had a much smaller crowd than last year. More and more of us are poorer than we were last year.

    The Beaufort County Gang of Five missed an opportunity to save the tax payers about $500,000 with out increasing the budget. Stan Deatherage and I proposed using $100,000 of the already appropriated money to hire a facilities engineer. The Gang of Five voted "no". The engineer would examine the complex heating, air conditioning, and electrical systems inside our 40 million dollars worth of new school buildings to figure out how to run them efficiently. The estimated savings is $500,000 per year. The engineer will perform other duties to make our schools operate economically. Take a look at the capital budget proposed by the schools and it becomes evident the schools know they have operations problems. I am hopeful the School System will hire an engineer with a four year degree from an approved engineering school who has at least ten years of experience in facilities engineering. I hope they do this in spite of the terrible decision the Gang of Five made. The engineer will make us money. It is disappointing to see Al Klemm and Jay McRoy sit there and pretend to have great experience and business knowledge and then prove they are blowing smoke by voting for inefficiency.