Ruby Sinreich's blog

Bit of a no-brainer, really. The Orange County Commissioners voted last week to extend benefits to domestic parters of County employees. According to the Chapel Hill Herald, Commissioner Alice Gordon says they had wanted to do it before but couldn't afford it. The extra charge from the insurance company is gone, so they did it. It's nice to see the trickle-down effect of progressive social policies at big corporations.

Durham, Chapel Hill, and Carrboro already do it, although Durham only offers the benefit to same-sex couples. What about straight cohabitators? Apparently less than 1% of the employees in these municipalities use the domestic partner benefit. The social impact on the community of doing this is an added value. This is an inexpensive way to do something good.

Happy Thanksgiving all!

This may go down as one of the least effective protest tactics ever. The Chapel Hill Herald reports that a group of parents in the county school system (ie: northern Orange County) are calling for a boycott of businesses in Chapel Hill (ie: southern Orange County) to protest the disparity in school funding.

Now I sympathize with their cause, but

1. local businesses have nothing to do with the special district tax on homeowners that raises more money for the southern schools,
2. they pay the same amount to the county - who funds both systems - as any other business in the county, and
3. is anyone going to notice that these 20 people and maybe a few of their friends aren't schlepping down 86 to come shopping here? How often do they shop in Chapel Hill and Carrboro anyway?

Am I missing something? Is there a reason why anyone should care about this? Why are they leaving Carrboro out? (Someone must love Weaver Street Market.) Couldn't they think of a better name than "Rural Orange Boycotts Chapel Hill?"

This is just plain wrong. It's impossible to say whether the minor arson attack at Orange County Commissioner Margaret Brown's house was political or random. The fact that she believes it was intentionally directed at her makes me seriously concerned about the state of political discourse in our community.

"I've been getting a lot of e-mails," she said. "They're very aggressive with a lot of emotion behind them."

The e-mails have been mostly about school merger, Brown said. They have said things like, "You'd better not do this or you'd better think before you do this," Brown said.

Who would think this was an appropriate (or effective) form of expression?

This leads me to two major thoughts about OrangePoltics.org: