From Wikipedia:
"A lie is a false statement to a person or group made by another person or group who knows it is not the whole truth, intentionally.[1] A barefaced (or bald-faced) lie is one that is obviously a lie to those hearing it. A Big Lie is a lie which attempts to trick the victim into believing something major which will likely be contradicted by some information the victim already possesses, or by their common sense. To bluff is to pretend to have a capability or intention one does not actually possess. Bullshit is often used to make the audience believe that one knows far more about the topic by feigning total certainty or making probable predictions. An emergency lie is a strategic lie told when the truth may not be told because, for example, harm to a third party would result. An exaggeration (or hyperbole) occurs when the most fundamental aspects of a statement are true, but only to a limited extent.
A fabrication is a lie told when someone submits a statement as truth without knowing for certain whether or not it actually is true. A half-truth is a deceptive statement that includes some element of truth. The statement might be partly true, the statement may be totally true but only part of the whole truth, or it may employ some deceptive element, such as improper punctuation, or double meaning, especially if the intent is to deceive, evade, blame, or misrepresent the truth. An honest lie (or confabulation) is defined by verbal statements or actions that inaccurately describe history, background, and present situations. Perjury is the act of lying or making verifiably false statements on a material matter under oath or affirmation in a court of law, or in any of various sworn statements in writing. White lies are minor lies which could be considered to be harmless, or even beneficial, in the long term."
Which is it, Mayor Vaughan, lies, fabrications or both?
As I commented on Sherry A. Kelly's Friday, February 14, 2014 Letter To The Editor entitled, Trader Joe’s should get the message.
"I don't think this is really so much about Trader Joe’s as it is about developer influence over local government officials. Trader Joe’s has a history of locating in existing and renovated shopping centers. My guess is that Trader Joe’s management has never been made fully aware of the other options that are available or that the developer in this instance is offering Trader Joe’s a hugely discounted lease in order to anchor his new shopping center. Perhaps some of the existing shopping centers should become more cost competitive before their entire shopping centers become ghost villages. It is, after all, a known fact that the commercial real estate market is collapsing and yet Greensboro's developers refuse to reduce rents."
You see, Greensboro's developers aren't concerned with the collapsing commercial real estate market. They don't need to reduce rents. The developer building the Trader Joe's shopping center at Friendly and Hobbs is from South Carolina. Local developers know that if they get in trouble, they, like Katherine Stern Weaver of the Weaver Foundation and Weaver Reality can always get a city bail out like was done when the City of Greensboro bought the entire Bessemer Shopping Center under the guise of building a new library and putting a new grocery store in the shopping center.
The new library required but 1 corner of the property and years later we've yet to see a grocery store. There's little doubt Ms Weaver's creditors would have gladly worked out an arrangement to sell a corner of the property for a library rather than be stuck with an entire empty shopping center. Also, despite the fact that the city had a rental agent on staff who was collecting monthly rent from the Family Dollar Store which remained under a 25 year lease, no effort was ever made by the city to ever rent the remaining empty units. Those empty units were never once advertised as being available.
As a matter of fact: when the Renaissance Community Co-op was formed by members of the Bessemer Community, some members of the Greensboro City Council conspired with developers in what has now become a well documented attempt to crush the effort. After all, we've still got developers who need bailing out. Council approved a deal to give the Bessemer Shopping Center and $2 Million Dollars to developers.
That is, until Councilman Tony Wilkins used his magic to pull the plug on the deal by actually insisting the developers first make an investment before receiving city funding. Now Skip Alston, one of the developers involved, is claiming discrimination was involved when in fact the neighborhood group he's fighting is very much multiracial.
And there you have yet another kind of incentive in Greensboro-- the kinds of incentives that aren't called incentives but really are-- bail outs to those who are politically connected, the elite Irving Park Country Club elites who have for the last 50 years run this city into the ground. For you see, they know for as long as the City of Greensboro will bail them out they cannot fail.
Knowing that no matter how bad your investments the taxpayers will cover your losses-- what greater incentive could there be?
Ashley Creek Apartments is another such example. Sited in a flood plain it should have never been built in the first place. Over the decades hundreds of residents would be flooded out loosing everything they own while housing codes were overlooked and dangerous black mold made children ill. And then instead of forcing the destruction of the property the new owners are given city funds to fix up buildings that remain in a flood plain.
In other parts of town these flood plains become our neighborhood parks and serve as buffers to keep pollution from entering the ground water. While we're all fixated on the Duke Energy coal ash spill on the nearby Dan River, at Ashley Creek Apartments the City incentivizes ground water pollution.
No, it's not to the same degree of pollution but it is the same sin. It's hardly a wonder my conservative friends beat up on us so, our progressive Greensboro government is a bunch of crooks that makes this liberal writer hang his head in shame. And sadly, even the honest among council show little or no signs of leadership.
How many newcomers to Greensboro will move to Ashley Creek, rent apartments and store their cars and belongings in the units that have since been converted to storage units without any knowledge of the 30 plus years of flooding at what is now called Ashley Creek and will no doubt get a new name every few years because of websites like this? What will these newcomers to Greensboro think of Greensboro city government when they learn their losses could have been prevented but were deliberately ignored for decades by the Greensboro City Council who cares more about the connected elite than the working class? Think of what irreplaceable family heirlooms might be stored there as these newcomers live temporarily at Ashley Creek while shopping for their new homes.
No city council can justify this deliberate rip-off of the public. We now know our leaders are without a doubt, uncaring, callous idiots to continue to allow this to go on. And not 1 job is added.
Please continue reading Incentives In Greensboro: 26: How Is Greensboro Any Different?
