Looking Back and Forth

The mastermind behind Charlotte’s expensive expansion is retiring.  City Manager Pam Syfert is putting the cap on her office pen, closing a chapter in Charlotte’s history which includes the construction of the Charlotte Bobcats Arena, the incentives behind the NASCAR Hall of Fame, as well as the transportation funding for a transit system. Jeff Taylor gives her two thumbs up … for finding a way to allocate funding for basic needs to unnecessary niceties. And in the surprise of the year, John Edwards has decided to run for the nation’s highest office, effectively retiring from his sojourn as director of the poor at UNC-Chapel Hill. Jon Sanders, still salivating with sarcasm, has a nice description of the fanfare attached to the former Senator’s announcement. Here at home, Mitch Kokai gave a stirring presentation on “Election 2006: What the People Said” to the Wake County GOP Men’s Club. The short of it: let’s mix things up a bit. The change in the political climate wasn’t a ’94-esque revolution, nor was it the antithesis to Bailey’s Conservative Manifesto.