2025, The New Era of White Collar Crime

 A convicted felon in the White House is setting the example for white collar crime.  What is so disconcerting is that it is happening right under our noses.  The Republicans make no bones about what they are doing.  North Carolina must be the pinnacle of corruption in government fleecing the people, because they are uneducated or sheltered.  They lie straight to your face.  I never have liked or respected the NC State Legislature.  That is the main reason I supported Roy Cooper.  I believe our current Governor, Josh Stein, is the right stuff.  I went to the courthouse today to pay my property taxes.  It took two trips, because there was a debit card processing fee.  Since my home was reassessed this year, and its value went up like most everyone, this fee was ridiculous.  I went home and made out a check and took this check back to the tax collector on the fifth floor of the Cumberland County Courthouse.  After two trips it dawned on me the parking lot where we usually park for free was gone.  It was a fenced in dirt lot.  Here is the hypocrisy.  The tax payers paid thirty million dollars to destroy their parking lot.  What kind of logic is this?  That is what it amounts to.  We had a nice paved functional parking lot serving the courthouse.  It was not a luxury.  People that need to conduct necessary business need and used this lot.  Our illustrious elected leaders opted to fleece the tax payers out of thirty million dollars, that is $30,000,000.  For that hefty price they destroyed our parking lot.   We paid them thirty million dollars to destroy city property.  This is an outrage.  It is no different than what our president is doing, destroying America from within.  Our elected leaders are not representing, serving, or helping Americans.  They are attempting to destroy us.  How else can you look at it.  I joked with one of many clerks in the tax collection division.  I asked her how she felt about paying $30,000,000.00 to have their parking lot destroyed.  The mood in the courthouse was depressed and solemn.  When you walk out the front doors, the scene is a dirt lot contained within an ugly chain link fence.   This is what courthouse workers see day in and day out, what amounts to white collar governmental corruption.  While I did support Kirk deViere's decision to nix the plans for a new event center, to the tune of one hundred and fifty million dollars which quickly would escalate to more, I disagreed with this plan.  Yes it would have been nice eye candy, but the Cape Fear Regional Theater is renovating their own theater at the top of Haymount Hill.  This new event center was not going to have a stage, lighting, or sound equipment.  It was going to be a steel shell with an impressive facade.  Fayetteville does have a handful of theaters appropriate for symphony concerts, musical plays, and possibly ballet.  They include the newly renovated Ralph Huff hall at Methodist University, Seabrook Auditorium, the original Crown Theater auditorium, and many historical churches.  Perhaps we didn't need another one, but for this price what purpose would this space serve?  The answer would be concerts for popular music.  The exception was a venue for military bands to perform including the Airmen of Note and the Commodores.  I can guess that acoustics would have been an afterthought.  It was eye candy for downtown and would have ended up the largest homeless shelter in the city.  Looking at the empty dirt lot, the manipulation is effective.  It makes you want an event center to fill that ugly void.  The fact is Fayetteville was okay with the parking lot that was there.  It served a purpose for the people.  The crooks came in, fleeced thirty million dollars, and took off leaving a half built fire station and tennis complex of which the public knew nothing.  There could be no worse city leadership, and this is why we need a new mayor.  Like Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and Kamala Harris, the majority black votes of Fayetteville will not elect a white woman as their leader.  Mitch will be in again, and the poor leadership will continue.  Donald Trump is fleecing the American people on a grand scale filling his family's pockets, and Trickle Down Economics is robbing the American people in full view.  If there is anything America needs it is a coup d'etat to get rid of the new supreme authoritarian leader.  His crony Republicans are complicit in his crimes.  How hard must the economy hit to force people to vote the right way?  We are a third world banana republic, and they make no excuses for what they are doing.  It is ethnic cleansing, oppression, and control.  Never have I ever seen this in America.  I would hope abject poverty may convince people to vote the right way.