Jon Lowder

Just Capitol (Words)

Don't have the patience to follow the goings-on on Capitol Hill?  Wouldn't be caught dead watching C-Span?  Well, here's the simplest way in the world to know what the hot button issue of the day is, and it will take you all of 5 seconds to use.  It's CapitolWords, a site that scans the Congressional Record and tallies up all the words used the previous day and then provides the one word used the most.  Today it's "oil".  Cool thing is it goes all the way back to 2000 so you can see the words that were hottest for the last eight years.

These are the words for the 13 session days of June reported so far:
energy, energy, energy, energy, energy, bush, energy, oil, energy, caribbean, tax, health, oil.  Nine out of thirteen are either energy or oil.  Go figure.

Hat tip to bookofjoe for the lead.

Random Stop?

Just drove home from a birthday party near Pittsboro, NC. As we were driving north on NC-87 we encountered a road block being manned by sheriff's deputies and state troopers about 14 miles south of I-40. They were checking everyone's IDs and either letting them through or pulling them to the shoulder. I thought maybe it was a DUI checkpoint or an effort to nab people whose inspection stickers were expired, but then I noticed that all the cars being pulled over had Hispanic passengers. They also barely looked at my ID before wishing me a nice day and I could swear the deputy never looked at my windshield.

Now I'm wondering if we were in one of the counties mentioned in Sen. Dole's campaign ad that features sheriff's praising her for securing funding from a federal program that enables local law enforcement to identify illegal immigrants in their jails and have them deported. I'm not sure, but I don't think the program allows locals to act like ICE agents and go out and find illegals, rather they are to use it to ID illegals who have already commited a crime.  Well, other than immigrating illegally.

My gut tells me we were seeing an NC version of an immigration sweep and the road block was a pretense to find illegals committing a crime. Me thinks a lot of those cars are going to be found to have broken tail lights or some such thing.

Of course it could just have been a coincidence that all the folks who were pulled over when we passed by were Hispanic. Or that all the Hispanics had some kind of problem with a license, or title, or tags, or stickers or something. And yes there could be some other explanation, but my gut tells me it was a roadblock specifically set up for illegals

Oh, and don't get me wrong. I have no problem with deporting illegal immigrants (don't get me started on our screwy immigration system though), but I don't know if this type of activity would be an appropriate use of the federal funding. Please do correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the Feds are pretty territorial about immigration enforcement. I'm thinking they wouldn't be too happy if they found out that local sheriffs were proactively pursuing illegals

Behold the Power of Email

A couple of days ago I wrote about an email I'd received concerning the decision by the county to eliminate all but one position at the Tanglewood Tennis Center.  Well, lots of other people received that same email and forwarded it to others, and many in that larger universe of people decided to let the powers that be know that they thought it a bad decision.  That resulted in the following email hitting my inbox last night:

Hi Everyone~

 

Thank you just seems so small in comparison to the overwelming outcry of support that you have given to keep our Tanglewood Community Tennis Center Family intact and running as usual! I just received a phone call from Mr. Sanders-Pratt (Assistant County Manager) that they are going to leave me in my current position at Tanglewood Community Tennis Center! All of the programs that you know, love and support will continue through the season with the State Combo Tournament in November!

 

I have heard through grapevines that some are planning to attend Monday Night's Commissioner Meeting. You all have gone to such major lengths for us and I am so thankful to you all for that to be unnecessary now!

 

All of this could not have been acheived without this "Tennis Community Family"! Gordon and I cannot thank you enough! It has just been so overwelming and amazing to see so many people that came together as one big tennis team to win this match!

 

I do not know how far all of these emails have reached. I am sending this to the same ones that I sent to before in hopes that you will contact those that you have to help spread this great news!

 

Again, Gordon and I cannot believe the overwelming support everyone has shown for us! We will never forget all the friends we truely have in all of the tennis community!

 

~Gordon, Angie, Samantha and Ryan~

Looks like the lights will stay on for at least the near future.

Personally I don't think it was the "noise" alone that caused the county folks to reconsider their decision.  It might have enlightened them to the fact that more people use the tennis facilities than they thought, but that alone wouldn't have done it.  After all, there are lots of public courts in Forsyth County that require no full time staff and are available to all players.  I'm thinking that having multiple people point out the potential revenue lost from events like the BMW Combo is what tipped the scales and helped them realize that cutting a couple of positions would cost more than it would save.

Budget Cuts Hit Tanglewood

Those of you who live here in Forsyth County, NC probably have heard that the board of commissioners asked those working in the government to make cuts in order to keep from having to raise taxes.  Of course they claim that they're doing this in our tough economic times because it just ain't right to ask struggling citizens to pay more taxes, but if you believe that I have some swampland in Florida to sell you.  Whatever.  The cuts have to be made somewhere and at Tanglewood at least one of the cuts they are making is in the department that manages the tennis facility, pool and Mallard Lake.  Here's text from an email sent to the community of tennis players by one of the folks affected by the cuts:

Hi Everyone~

 

     First of all, let me start by saying how much all of you all have meant to Gordon and I at Tanglewood Community Tennis Center! I have been here for 16 years, Gordon 17 and Ryan 3 years. We have had the privilege to meet so many incredible people. Thank you for such an amazing experience! You all have taught me so much about myself including my strengths, my weaknesses and have helped me to gain the confidence I need to move forward from here. I will treasure this experience and the friendships I have made forever! It is with a heavy heart and much sadness that it looks like I will be leaving you all at Tanglewood Community Tennis Center.

 

     With that being said, I am not leaving Tanglewood Tennis by my own will. Tanglewood Community Tennis Center as you know it will no longer exist. I was told today that my job and Ryan's job is being eliminated as of June 30th. I have been offered a library position within the County as a way to not totally be out of a job. At this point I am considering all options and trying to move forward from here. This is especially hard for us with our budget numbers being better than ever. Our department, Tennis and Mallard Lake (Pool comes separate), is up a record 34% with the next highest being golf at 7%. We have also lowered expenses by $20,000.00. If we had been doing bad financially or had made some big mistakes along the road, then this elimination would not be as devastating as it is to us now. The County just said that it was due to budget cuts.

 

     So what does this mean for you? There are many things still to be sorted out since this all came to us today. You all have supported this facility all through the years and helped to make it the success that it is - thank you for that! We will still try to provide the services that you have come to love and expect but we will have to be creative with that considering we only will have one full time staff member and no part-time or seasonal help. With only Gordon left to manage on his own: tennis, pool and lake, the scope of our leagues, programs, tournaments and special events will more than likely no longer exist or will only be able to be offered on a limited basis. We are so sorry for this for you all have supported and grown these programs for so long. We are who we are because of you! We will finish up this session of the men's and women's league but will no longer be offering any new ones until we see what the realm of possibility will be.

 

     As for the USTA Mixed and Combo leagues, we will still have the USTA Mixed kick-off on June 13-15th weekend, but this will more than likely be our last "hoo-rah"! Matches will more than likely be played at Hanes Park and Visions. It appears we will not have the staff to cater for it at Tanglewood.

 

    We were suppose to have the BMW State Combo Tournament here again for a record 4th year! However, with the loss of my position at Tanglewood, at this point, I do not see how this will be possible. There was a good possibility of being awarded this tournament for even more years, but that doesn't seem likely now either. This tournament brings in 2000 players with $2 to $3 million being brought in to our community over one weekend through hotels, restaurants, etc. Thank you to all those who volunteered to make this event such a success for our community!

 

     In closing, Gordon, Ryan and myself THANK YOU for your support, friendships and believing in us as a team all these years. Gordon will still be at Tanglewood Community Tennis Center to try and carry on as best he can! We have put too much of our hearts, lives and total commitment into this facility to see it fail now! We are not asking you to do anything further, but if you wish to express your supporting thoughts, experiences and hopes that this decision can be reconsidered, below are contact email addresses for County Commissioners and phone numbers for the County Manager and the Assistant County Manager who are over us and ultimately made this unfortunate decision:

Well, the second to last paragraph is one that ought to interest folks.  Although the vast majority of folks in Forsyth don't play tennis we all have the opportunity to enjoy the park facilities.  The fact that Tanglewood is able to draw people from outside the community to spend money that in turn helps subsidize the park system we enjoy should be celebrated, not put in jeopardy.  Just as the wine festival last weekend drew 20,000 people to the park, the tennis tournaments that Tanglewood hosts draws  thousands of participants throughout the year, and they spend money while they're here.  Kind of crazy, huh?

Tourism dollars are a hot topic locally because of county commissioner Ted Kaplan's tiff with the Travel Development Authority (TDA).  I'm wondering how events like the BMW State Combo fit into that picture?  Does the TDA help the park system market their events to the outside world?  If not, is this what Kaplan is talking about when he says he wants to see more TDA funds spent on grants to organizations to be used to promote and host events like this?

This is but a small bit of the picture, one that I'm interested in because of my involvement with local tennis.  Is it the end of the world?  No, not at all.  But it does help us understand what budget cuts mean in the real world.  Maybe keeping taxes frozen at current rates and reducing county services is the right thing to do, but it almost certainly will mean hearing multiple stories like this one. Sure we're each saving some money on taxes, but we will also be losing services.  Most of you won't care about this particular service, but I can almost guarantee that there will be a service cut that you do care about.  That's the road our county leaders chose to take and it's up to us to decide if it's the right one.

Da Banking Bidness

Fec linked to several stories related to potential bank failures in the US. This bit from the US News & World Report really caught my attention:

“It’s our view that regulators are expecting 100 to 200 banks to fail” over the next 12 to 24 months, says Jaret Seiberg, a research analyst for the Stanford Group. Seiberg expects those failures to occur predominantly in states like Ohio, Michigan, California, and Georgia—where the construction lending market, which includes residential real estate, is expected to weaken dramatically…

Washington Mutual lost $1.87 billion in the fourth quarter, hit by mortgage defaults, write-downs and a substantial increase in the amount it set aside for bad loans.

That got me to thinking about the FDIC.  My understanding is that it insures checking and savings accounts up to $100,000 per depositor and up to $250,000 per IRA account, so if these banks fail won't it be on the hook to insure all those accounts?  How much moolah are we talking here?

When I set my fingers to typing this post I was going to ask "How much of the taxpayers money is at risk here?" but upon doing a little reading I discovered that the FDIC is funded by insurance payments from the banking institutions themselves.  So unless something catastrophic happens then taxpayer dollars shouldn't be at risk right?  Something about this sounds spookily familiar.

Oh, yeah.  Right when I was getting out of college and beginning my life in the working world (that would be 1989) there was this little thing called the savings and loan crisis that I didn't really understand, but seemed to have all the real adults spooked.  It happened to coincide with a real estate bust and a fairly decent recession, and it resulted in the birth of this new institution called Resolution Trust CorporationFrom the Wikipedia entry on RTC comes this: that ended up employing lots of people in DC to do something really important: bailing out the S&Ls and the morons who broke them on the shoals of a booming-busting real estate market.

According to Joseph E. Stiglitz in his book, Towards a New Paradigm in Monetary Economics, page 243, the real reason behind the need of this company was to allow the United States government to subsidize the banking sector in a way that wasn't very transparent and therefore avoid the possible resistance. This is supported by the fact that the banks had better information related to the loans than the RTC.

So pardon me if I don't swallow whole the idea that taxpayer dollars may not come to the rescue of the current crop of morons who are breaking their banks on the shoals of the latest booming-busting real estate market.  Somehow the pinstripes always find a way to dump their problems on the denim crowd.

Update: Ed Cone links to an article about the feds getting ready to help out. From the article: The Federal Reserve, struggling to contain a crisis of confidence in credit markets, plans to lend up to $200 billion in exchange for mortgage-backed securities...it will hold auctions of Treasuries in exchange for debt including AAA rated mortgage securities sold by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and by banks.  Ed then says, "I've made some rotten investments in my lifetime, it would be nice if someone would swap me some Treasuries for them. "

That didn't take long.
 

Hemingway Would Have Shot Someone

How would you like your business to be threatened by the actions of a foreign government even though you don't do business there?  That's what has happened to an English travel agent named Steve Marshall living in Spain.  The story's a little complex so let's see if we can break it down:

1. Marshall sells trips to sunny places including Cuba, mostly to Europeans, via lots of different websites that he owns and has run since the late 90s.
2. In October about 80 of his websites stopped working.
3. Some of his websites had been put on a blacklist by the Treasury Department because of the tours he booked to Cuba, including literary themed "Hemingway Tours".
4. His domain registrar, eNom, which is based in the U.S., disabled his sites after being informed that they were on the Treasury blacklist.  They didn't give him a heads up they were doing it either.
5. eNom has refused to release the domains to the travel agent because they were legally obligated to also freeze his assets.
6. All of Marshall's sites were hosted on servers in the Bahamas.
7. He still doesn't have his .com domain names back, but he's slowly been rebuilding his web business using .net domains registered through European based registrars.
8. Weird exception to the domains on the blacklist is the www.cuba-guantanamo.com site that is still up and running.
9. eNom only acted after discovering Marshall's blacklisting from a blog.  In other words it sounds like no one from Treasury bothered to contact eNom to disable the sites.

Here's the quote from the Treasury Department rep about their action:

A Treasury spokesman, John Rankin, referred a caller to a press release issued in December 2004, almost three years before eNom acted. It said Mr. Marshall’s company had helped Americans evade restrictions on travel to Cuba and was “a generator of resources that the Cuban regime uses to oppress its people.” It added that American companies must not only stop doing business with the company but also freeze its assets, meaning that eNom did exactly what it was legally required to do.

Here's Marshall's reply:

Mr. Marshall said he was uninterested in American tourists. “They can’t go anyway,” he said.

All sounds kind of absurd doesn't it?  Read the NYT article and you'll find that there's a few lawyers who think that the government has overstepped its bounds.  Huh, go figure.

What's In Your Congress Critter's Wallet?

I just received an email from Legistorm announcing the availability of a database that shows the personal financial disclosure forms of members of Congress and their staffs.  The purpose is to make it easier for "Joe and Jane Citizen" (that's you and me) to see if our legislators have any conflicts of interest.  Of course I went to the site straight away to see how my personal Congress Critter, Rep. Foxx, and her staff are represented.  A couple of interesting discoveries:

• Rep. Foxx has what appears to be a fairly extensive portfolio that includes lots of companies like Smuckers, Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Verizon, etc.  I'm willing to bet that most members of Congress have similar financial holdings so it would be almost impossible for Senators and Representatives to not work on legislation that directly effects the companies that they have interests in.  I'm hoping that people don't fly off the deep end and start saying that there's a conflict of interest just because someone owns shares in particular companies.  For instance just because Foxx owns shares of Verizon I don't think she should have to recuse herself from anything telecomm related.  On the other hand if Verizon made up 99% of her portfolio and represented all of her nest egg then that would be a different thing.
• The travel expenses for her office reveal a trip made by former staffer Deana Young Funderburk to something called the Humpty Dumpty Institute.  Gotta love the name.  Here's how they describe themselves:
• Young Funderburk worked for Tom Delay before joining Foxx's staff.  Great reference, huh?
• Staffers have to reveal a lot about themselves on these forms.  IRA, pensions, debts, rental incomes, etc.  It's all there and when I looked at it the reality of being a "public servant" really hit home.  Would you want the world to be able to see all of your finances like that?

Jock Sniffing, or, Our Congress at Work

I usually don't like to write about what everyone else is writing about on a regular basis because, you know, there are a lot of people smarter than me to get your current events from.  However, every once in a while I just can't resist.  Now's one of those times.

We've all read or heard about Roger Clemens' appearance on the Hill yesterday.  What I'd like to focus on is the fact that my Congresscritter, Virginia Foxx (R-NC 5) is on the committee that the Rocket testified before and her behavior was chronicled by none other than Boston Globe sports columnist Dan Shaughnessy.  From his column:

There was plenty more jock-sniffing. Representative Danny K. Davis, Democrat of Illinois, told Roger, "It was a pleasure meeting you last week." Representative William Lacy Clay, Democrat of Missouri, asked Roger what uniform he plans to wear into the Hall of Fame. Representative Virginia Foxx, Republican of North Carolina, produced four photographs of Clemens, a progression dating to his Red Sox days, and insisted, "You appear to be the same size."

Good observation, Ginny. That's like saying Michael Jackson's features haven't changed since he posed for the cover of "Thriller."

Oy.  And then there's this comment from "Glenn Aspaugh" on a post I wrote earlier this week about Rep. Foxx:

Dear Representative Foxx , I would really like to know why Congress feels compelled to waste my taxpayer $$ which by the way are considerable, on delving into allegations of steriods in baseball. If I'm not mistaken Medicare and Medicaide are shortly headed toward bankruptcy ,we're in the middle of a war, and there still has been no real immigration reform. Yet yesterday I see Roger Clemons getting grilled before Congress wasting my tax $$ answering questions about his alleged steriod use. Frankly WHO CARES?? This is a great example of why the American public is sick and tired of Washinton politics and wasteful spending. It would be refreshing to see some REAL problems getting solved for a change. Thank you for your time. Glenn Alspaugh

I'm with you Glenn. Now of course this isn't the first time that Rep. Foxx has been taken to the woodshed for some comments. Here's a classic from last year, after returning from a tour in the summer of '06 to pre-surge Iraq (editorial comments were mine):

The war in Iraq is going well, Iraqi government officials are determined to have a united government, and American soldiers are satisfied with their equipment and their mission, said Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-5th, who visited Iraq yesterday and Sunday...

Foxx and other members of the congressional delegation stayed with troops overnight in a military compound in Baghdad that is one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces and had lunch together yesterday. (Ed. Comment: Sure she got a real good idea of what the situation on the ground looked like from there)...

Yesterday, after Foxx's visit, there were several kidnappings in Baghdad, the latest in a string of sectarian violence that has escalated in recent months.

Foxx said she did not see any evidence of this (Ed. See comment above). but said that the government officials, particularly al-Bolani, are committed to making sure "the terrorists don't create a civil war."...

Ideally, she said, military leaders and government officials told her they hope to have Baghdad "secure" and a "place where people can feel safe" by the end of the year. (Ed. She really bought this?)

There have been reports that American military personnel do not have adequate supplies or that their morale is low. Foxx said that her meetings with soldiers did not support this. She said that at one point she asked the soldiers, while their supervising officers were not within earshot, in hopes to get the most honest answer, and they told her they were fine.

"There was no sense of any problems," she said, "There was no indication of unhappiness." (Ed. Oh come on, in the private sector that would be like a VP going around her CEO to bitch to the Board of Directors.  It ain't gonna happen).

Now after the surge some of these comments don't seem so absurd, but at the time they sure did.  And the fact that she took the anecdotal evidence of speaking to soldiers out of earshot of their C.O.'s as some sort of definitive evidence that morale was good is borrowing directly from the play book of her idol GWB when he said he'd looked into Vladimir Putin's soul and liked what he saw. 

I'm thinking that if you own a used-car lot or are looking to unload some Florida swampland you really want Rep. Foxx to come shopping at your place.

Foxxy Moves in Congress

On January 29 Rep. Foxx, NC-5, introduced the Federal Tax Withholding Act of 2008, otherwise known as "H.R. 5175 To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to repeal the withholding of income and social security taxes."  Hmmm, and interesting proposal from my Representative.  As a small business person I'm thinking "su-weet", but what does this mean?  Since I haven't seen diddly squat about it in the local press I'm going to check ye old webosphere.  Basically I found a short item on Wilkes News and this letter from National Taxpayers Union and that's about it.  There are two reasons that pop to mind why this hasn't garnered a great deal of interest in these parts:

1. It's very new legislation.
2. It doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of getting out of the Ways & Means Committee.

This got me wondering what else my Representative has been up to.  Here's the most recent bills she's sponsored:

• H.Res.929 Commending the Appalachian State University Mountaineers for winning the 2007 National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I Football Championship Subdivision (formerly Division I-AA) title.
• H.Res.769 Congratulating the government and people of Turkey as they celebrate Republic Day, and for other purposes.
• H.R. 248: Robo Calls Off Phones (Robo COP) Act To direct the Federal Trade Commission to revise the regulations regarding the Do-not-call registry to prohibit politically-oriented recorded message telephone calls to telephone numbers listed on that registry.

Below is a sampling of her most recent voting activity (January 08) and doesn't include things like resolutions to congratulate LSU on their national championship in football.  BTW, according to GovTrack Rep. Foxx has only missed 8 of 2,440 votes since she's been in Congress.  You may not agree with her politics, and believe me I often don't, she's showing up to do her job.  Kudos to her for that.  Also, according to the GovTrack Ideometer, which is that image you see to the left, she's about as far right as you can get on the political spectrum:

• Voted 'Aye' on  H.R.5140 Recovery Rebates and Economic Stimulus for the American People Act of 2008 On Agreeing to the Senate Amendment: H R 5140 Recovery Rebates and Economic Stimulus for the American People Act of 2008 
• Voted 'Nay' on H.R.4137 College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007 On Passage: H R 4137 To amend and extend the Higher Education Act of 1965, and for other purposes 
• Voted 'Nay' on H.R.4848 To extend for one year parity in the application of certain limits to mental health benefits, and for other purposes. On Motion to Suspend the Rules and Pass, as Amended: H R 4848 To extend for one year parity in the application of certain limits to mental health benefits, and for other purposes. 
• Voted 'Nay' on  H.R.3963 SCHIP Extension bill Passage, Objections of the President Not Withstanding: H R 3963 Children’s Health Insurance Program Extension and Improvement
• Voted 'Nay' on H.R.3524 HOPE VI Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2007 On Passage: H R 3524 HOPE VI Improvement and Reauthorization Act
• Voted 'Aye' on H.R.4986 National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 On Motion to Suspend the Rules and Pass: H R 4986 National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008
• Voted 'Nay' on H.R.2768 Supplemental Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act of 2007 On Passage: H R 2768 S-MINER Act
• Voted 'Aye' on H.Res.921 Military Reservist and Veteran Small Business Reauthorization and Opportunity Act of 2008 On Motion to Suspend the Rules and Agree: H RES 921 Providing for the concurrence by the House in the Senate amendment to H.R. 4253, with an amendment
• Voted 'Nay' on H.Res.918 Providing for consideration of the bill (H.R. 2768) to establish improved mandatory standards to protect miners during emergencies, and for other purposes. On Ordering the Previous Question: H RES 918 Providing for consideration of H.R. 2768, to establish improved mandatory standards to protect miners during emergencies, and for other purposes

Yep, I've gotta say that I'm not going to often agree with my Representative, but I am glad to see she has one of the best records on the Hill for actually showing up to work.  Obviously since Rep. Foxx has been elected twice to Congress since I've lived here I'm in the minority in terms of political leanings so until that changes I'm going to have to take what I can get, and if that's someone who I disagree with but fulfills her commitment to her constituents then so be it.

That said come November I'm voting for a fellow named Roy Carter.  He may be a Democrat but he's closer to that area on the Ideometer that I reside that's part blue and part red.

Go 30 Miles East and Double Your Chances of Being Murdered?

According to this post on Tony Wilkins' blog the murder rate in Greensboro is twice that of Winston-Salem.  His chart says that Greensboro's per-capita murder rate is 11.4 per 100,000 people and Winston-Salem's is 5.1 per 100,000.  He also compares Greensboro to similar sized cities throughout America and Greensboro doesn't compare too well there either, falling well below Buffalo's outrageous 26.4/100,000 but above Jersey City's 9.2/100,000.

I'm fascinated by the difference between Greensboro and Winston-Salem.  Greensboro is the larger of the two cities, but it's not like it's twice the size of Winston.  And you'd think that two cities only 30 miles apart wouldn't be that different culturally, but what can explain such a large difference in murder rates?  Both cities have their safe and not-so-safe neighborhoods, their pockets of haves and have-nots, their pockets of urban renewal and continued urban blight, so what really is the difference between the two?

Let's play a game and see if the US Census data gives us any clues.  Below are the links to the pages for Winston-Salem and Greensboro.  See if anything jumps out at you that might explain the higher murder rate in Greensboro.  For what it's worth I didn't see anything real obvious so I'm hoping someone will be able to find something, but if there isn't an obvious demographic difference between the cities then what other factors should be explored?  Government? Police departments? Water?

Winston-Salem Census Page

Greensboro Census Page

**Update**  Here's something interesting, especially for those who look at everything through the race prism.  The population breakdowns in the two cities are almost identical:

• White (Greensboro 53.5%, W-S 51.2%)
• Black (Greensboro 36.5%, W-S 36.6%)
• Asian (Greensboro 3.4%, W-S 1.6%)
• Hispanic (Greensboro 7.2%, W-S 12.7%)
• Some other race (Greensboro 3.9%, W-S 9.4%)

So what do these numbers mean?  Maybe it means Greensboro's too white (they have a larger white population than Winston)?  Maybe the so-called immigration problem is actually a good crime deterrent (note the greater number of hispanics in W-S)?   Nah, I'm gonna call B-S on myself, but it is kind of fun to tweak some pre-conceived notions out there.