The World Wide Hound - God Bless America

As we approach the 75,000th unique visitor to the Hickory Hound, I show you the map below of the last 500 people to visit this site. You will see the broad reach of the Hound courtesy of the World Wide Web. Whether you agree or disagree with the message, thanks for visiting.

The World Wide Hound

Messages - August 3, 2012

Just wanted to take a minute and tell ya'll how much I love you and how you enrich my life. In this complicated, busy world we are running around, trying to make a living, straighten out our messed up politics, take care of our people, and trying to build a better tomorrow. I'm good with that, but also don't forget to love each other just as we are and thank God for the people we've had the good fortune to spend our lives with. Peace, love and good health to all. - Harry Hipps



I went and put some flowers on my Grandmother and Grandfather's grave on Tuesday. My grandmother would have been 98 years old this past Monday. She passed away on August 6th last year, one week after her 97th birthday. I didn't get to see her the day she died. That bothered me. It still bothers me. I spent all of those years with her in the same house. I was willing to see it to the end, but wasn't afforded that.

Some of the self absorbed losers in this world will think it was weird living with your grandmother. But, my grandmother was always there for me and I tried to be there for her. Sure, we got on one another's nerves sometimes, but that is what families do.

She always tried to instill in me to be an honorable person and to help people and she sure helped me. Some people say, you need to look out for number one. My grandmother always paid it forward and it is my obligation to do the same. People said that it was nice that I went and put those flowers on Mammaw's grave. I told them it was an obligation. They said it wasn't an obligation, but it was. It was an obligation of love. Miss you Mammaw. I truly hope you have the peace in heaven that we have never been afforded here on earth. - James Thomas Shell

Tent on Union Square finished by Friday - No "Big Top" among the 12 name finalists

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Date: August 2, 2012
Contact: Dana Kaminske
Communications Specialist
828-261-2289
dkaminske@hickorync.gov

The structure on Union Square in downtown Hickory nears completion

HICKORY – The structure on Union Square in downtown Hickory nears completion with the final panels being hung.

The panels began being hung on Wednesday morning, August 1, and should be completed on Friday, August 3. The final touches will be made to the custom-designed structure, such as adding new tables and chairs and testing the lighting with the panels. Lighting and upgraded security cameras have been installed. The last piece to finish the structure will be to name it.

The name for the structure has been narrowed to the top 12 names from 360 submissions by the community. A committee, made up of individuals from various organizations, businesses, and age groups from within the community voted on the final name. The name will be announced, as well as the winner who created the name, at an upcoming grand opening event to be announced soon.

The top 12 names for the structure are:
COMET – (community, outdoor, market, event, tent)
Hickory Station Pavilion
Market Pavilion
Piedmont Pavilion
Randy Ingold Pavillion
The Canopy
The Hickory Pavilion
The Hub – (Hickory's Undiscovered Best)
The Pavilion
The Sails (on the Square)
Union Square Pavilion
Whistle Square

The outdoor furniture is being made by Timmerman Manufacturing, a local furniture company that specializes in wrought iron fabrications. Highly-skilled artisans fabricate each piece of furniture by hand. After each piece is constructed it is carefully inspected and cleaned by removing all of the dirt, grease, and scale. The piece is then etched to provide a superior surface for the paint to adhere. Every item made is painted with an electrostatic painting system that causes paint to flow evenly and uniformly around each piece.

The panels were designed using AutoCAD in conjunction with a fabric design software called MPanel. MPanel allowed the company, Leighweight Manufacturing, to draw the panels in 3D. The software takes the 3D shape and flattens the fabric panel out. It then creates a pattern from those pieces. Panels were cut using a computer cutting machine. The panels were welded together using a high frequency welding machine (RF), which basically melts the layers of fabric together. From start to finish each panel took about 12 hours to complete, this does not include the assembly of the hardware to the panels.

The panels are made of a fabric material that is a high performance coated PVC textile, 702 PVC Coated Fabric, White Translucent, 22oz/sq/yd with a weldable PVDF topcoat, made by a company called Ferrari, using their precontraint technology. This technology has allowed them to get a thicker coating than in more traditional structural textiles. The ultra white coloration allows for very uniform light transmission and blockage of harmful ultra-violet rays. All cable pocketing is re-enforced with a double layer and bracket sections made much thicker for strength with a high heat fabric weld process. The edge cables were galvanized aircraft cable with a clear PVC coating, stainless steel threaded end fittings. The membrane and clamp plates, the metal hardware, were all made from ASTM A572 Gr.50 steel and had a hot dipped galvanized finish. All tensioning hardware is stainless steel. The high tension of the panels is evident in the size and quality of metal components required to attach the panels to the structure.

Sleeping about money leads to having no money!

... And sleeping about the Economy leads to having no economy!

Did y'all see what happened yesterday morning when the Bot systems took over Wall Street?

Flood of Errant Trades Is a Black Eye for Wall Street - New York Times - NATHANIEL POPPER - August 1, 2012 - An automated stock trading program suddenly flooded the market with millions of trades Wednesday morning, spreading turmoil across Wall Street and drawing renewed attention to the fragility and instability of the nation’s stock markets.....             While the broad stock indexes quickly recovered and ended the day slightly down, it was the latest black eye for the financial markets. The runaway trading suggests that regulators have not been able to keep up with electronic programs that increasingly dominate the supercharged market and have helped undermine investor confidence in stocks.....                  Traders on Wednesday said that a rogue algorithm repeatedly bought and sold millions of shares of companies like RadioShack, Best Buy, Bank of America and American Airlines, sending trading volume surging. While the trading firm involved blamed a “technology issue,” the company and regulators were still trying to understand what went wrong.


Terminator or the Dark Knight Rises?


Latest Market Glitch Shows 'Trading Out of Control' - CNBC - Jeff Cox - August 1, 2012 - Wednesday morning's stock snafu had a familiar ring to it — mysterious volume in trades that simply could not have been made by a human comes surging out of nowhere, causing brief but acute market mayhem.....                   By now, many players on trading floors have gotten used to the disruptions that can come from the highly automated new world of high-frequency trading. But that doesn't mean they like it.....                      "This algorithmic trading is kind of out of control," Phil Silverman, managing partner at Kingsview Capital, said as officials at the New York Stock Exchange tried to make sense of what happened. "It seriously hurts investor confidence."

The Fed will print up more Monopoly Money once they decide who they want for President. Actually, I think they have already chosen.

Fed Holds Off on New Steps to Stimulate US Economy - Reuters through CNBC - August 1, 2012 - The Federal Reserve on Wednesday said the U.S. economic recovery had lost momentum so far this year, but stopped short of offering new monetary stimulus even as it signaled further bond buys could be in store.....                         Fed officials described the economy as having "decelerated somewhat,'' and reiterated their disappointment with the slow pace of progress in bringing down the nation's 8.2 percent jobless rate........                     The central bank, which disappointed market expectations by not extending further into the future its guidance for low rates until late 2014, nevertheless showed it was prepared to do more to support an ailing economy.


Who does the Fed answer to?



75% Of Americans Believe The Fed Should Be Audited – Why It Won’t Happen - Gold and Silver Blog - July 30, 2012 - Most Americans under 30 have a strange sense of unease that something is very wrong with the way things are going in America. If you are 60 or older and can remember with nostalgia how life in America was prior to the days of blatant and corrupt crony capitalism, you know for sure we are heading in a very wrong direction at an accelerating pace.                    I can remember the days when the average worker could support his family without putting his wife to work, without having to give up on having children, without having to worry about banks going under, without having to worry about an implosion of the financial system and without the expectation that the government would provide handouts to solve every little one of life's problems.                  Gradually, it has begun to dawn on the average American of all ages that the Federal Reserve may be at the heart of the nation's financial problems. Much has been written about this, but two graphs sum up the situation quite nicely. Since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, the value of the dollar has declined to a fraction of what it was once worth and since the abandonment of the gold standard, government debt has reached levels that are no longer sustainable without further debasement of the paper dollar. The American public is beginning to connect the dots.

And then there is our Petroleum based Economy


Gas Prices Post Rare, Steep Rise in July - Wall Street Journal - July 31, 2012 - If it seems like the price of gasoline is rising quickly and at an odd time of year, that is because it is true. The average price of a gallon of regular gas in the U.S. rose 5.1% or 17 cents to $3.50 per gallon today according to auto and travel group AAA.             This marks the first monthly increase since March and the largest July increase in at least a dozen years. The average price of gas in July was $3.42 a gallon. This was the third-highest average price for July ever recorded. AAA began keeping the fuel-price data in 2000.....                             National average gas prices rose for 26 days in July after hitting a low for the summer of about $3.33 a gallon on July 2.

And the LIBOR scandal

US senator asks NY Fed for more answers about Libor scandal - Reuters - August 2, 2012 - A U.S. senator on Wednesday asked the New York Federal Reserve to explain further the actions it took to address possible manipulation by big banks of the Libor benchmark interest rate.                  Democrat Sherrod Brown, who sits on the Senate committee that oversees the Fed, questioned Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's assertions that he had no authority to address rigging problems with the key inter-bank lending rate.                       In light of the Fed's past claims to strong expertise and authority to oversee the largest U.S. banks, "it is difficult to accept the argument that the Fed has no authority to address this problem," Brown said in a letter Wednesday to the New York Fed's president and director of bank supervision.                          The Fed oversees large banks, including the U.S. branches of foreign banks such as Barclays Plc, which paid a record fine to settle charges that it manipulated the London Interbank Offered Rate. (Libor scandal: Barclays executive Jerry del Missier given £8.75m pay-off - The Telegraph of London - Alistair Osborne - July 31, 2012)


Now back to sleep my children

Sometimes Going Back is Going Forward -- Let's Fix This!!!

Comment made in the previous article that I want everyone to see and see the response to:

The change in the 1960's was moving away from segregation and towards integration just as old ward style isolationist (kingdoms)elections progressed to the at large elections that we have today. The change took the City in the same direction as most Cities in NC are today-overwhelmingly so. It appears as though this referendum is moving the City back to the 1960 era. Not a good thing. It took a progressive Council and Mayor to make the change in the 1960's. Ok fire away Hound!

To the first anonymous. I am not attacking the messenger. I am "Attacking" (addressing) the message. I'd love to talk with this guy. The only thing I did was mention his name. He called what we are doing radical, thus inferring that we are radicals.

To the second anonymous. I appreciate your reasoning and it does fall in line with the argument made at the time of one man one vote, but the process and logic are very much flawed in my opinion.

We are the only city, our size, in North Carolina that has this Modified At-Large system, which is what the information that the city went and got from the School of Government shows. There are two cities our size that have the pure ward system. The other cities have Pure At-Large systems with no wards in the cities, so Hickory is doing their own thing.

You talk about kingdoms. Is the State of North Carolina a Kingdom? Last time I looked there is no one from South Carolina clamoring that they deserve to vote here and in Virginia and in Wyoming. The pure Ward system is best, in my opinion, because it allows people to deal with the issues in their community/neighborhood. Kingdoms are defined by Monarchy and Kings. We are talking about empowering regular ole people and having their representatives be accountable towards their communities/neighborhood's interests. That doesn't seem all that bad to me. It is grassroots participation at its finest. It keeps it to where a representative looks out for what is best for his community/neighborhood first, while fitting that (and plugging into) the needs of the overall City. That is the way this State and Country works.

DoGood made an excellent point. Elected City Officials claim that they Look at (have looked out for) the welfare of the entire city. This was the argument made back in the 1960s. What are they defining as the entire city? Seems like it is only the very center of Old Hickory.

Where are the big Economic Development and Revitalization projects in Southwest Hickory, Highland, St Stephens, and even Viewmont? Heck, they have allowed the people with degraded and abandoned properties in these areas to have free rein, thus depreciating the value of those properties that are taken care of. What if you bought one of these properties years ago and all of this degradation has subsequently occurred? What have you, as a property owner, done to deserve this fate?

It was stated back in 1967 that the going to an At-Large system would lead to machine politics and I believe it most certainly has. The Mayor talks about Horse trading under a ward system and that is what we have seen under the current At-Large system with the less wealthy wards being held hostage by the wards with more wealth and any monies towards economic development going towards the wealthy interests, while the middle class and poor are ignored. Give and take is going to happen under any system, but when ones neighborhoods are taken into consideration first that is a lot more noble than money interests coming first.

You can read about all of this. We haven't tried to hide anything, but we do provide opinion.


http://thehickoryhound.blogspot.com/2011/11/1967-how-we-got-where-we-are-today.html

http://thehickoryhound.blogspot.com/2011/11/1961-lesson-in-hickorys-history.html

The logic and reasoning of the City Leadership in 1967 of one man/one vote was as wrong then as it is today with the 2012 City Leadership. If I can vote for my ward representative who lives in my community/neighborhood and then 5 people who never step foot in my ward come along and decide they know what is best for me, then we are diluting the voting rights of that ward. We are right back to the system that surrounded segregation all those years ago.

I believe that if you allow the wards to have representation that meets the dynamics (Culture & Socio Economic) of that particular neighborhood/community, then the people of that ward feel better about their representation and governance and they will participate in their governance. And if they don't like their representative and feel that they aren't represented by the individual, then it will be much easier to boot them out.

When all of the Wards are empowered and come forward and work together, plugged in - charged, on the City Council bench, then it will mean the empowerment of every crack, corner, creak, and crevice of this city and you will see revitalization and human energy come back to Hickory.

This City is not doing well folks. Most of us see that. Many of the most don't know what to do. This is what we need to do folks. What happened back in 1967 was a mistake. No name calling or insults are intended or needed. They were misguided. I understand the fears and motivations they had that caused them to go in this direction, but I believe those fears were unfounded... that what happened didn't benefit anyone and that what we can be, can be so much more.

That is the reason why I believe in the Pure Ward Voting System.

You know sometimes having the courage to admit mistakes in logic and reasoning and going back to your foundation, roots and reestablishing your mission is a good thing. Dead end roads don't lead to progress. In this case going back is going forward!