Madison Taylor

I was talking to someone almost young enough to be my grandson the other day about the stunning news that the federal government now has the capabilities to pry into the private lives of average Americans far greater than even the most deranged tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorist could conjure up in a fever dream following a night of eating welsh rarebit washed down with root beer, scotch, and two hours of Fox News or MSNBC — with a an “X-Files” marathon chaser on Syfy.

I get a headache just thinking about it.

Anyway, he wondered why such an important story about the NSA’s secret access to the computers and telephones of millions of Americans was broken by journalists in another country — in this case The Guardian in London — rather than say, by the New York Times. After all, the young man I was speaking to is a budding reporter who spent time here at the Times-News writing a story or two as a student before going out into the world and getting himself a paying gig while it still exists.

“It’s always about sources,” I told him. “If the (Department of Justice) is impounding phone and other records and harassing news reporters in the U.S., where else can whistleblowers go?”

He accepted that assessment without apparent concern.

A day or two later I thought again about what I told this young reporter, a vanishing breed at a time when print journalism jobs are drier than a Nevada butte and the government has suddenly decided that press freedom was a once quaint idea that no longer matters. I did so as NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden tries to avoid U.S. authorities in Hong Kong. I pondered this while people on flip-flopping sides of the political spectrum are alternately calling Snowden a “traitor” or a “hero” for leaking the information, something critics say harms national security without citing exactly why.

In truth, Snowden is neither of those things. He’s merely someone who pointed out something that looked very wrong based on long-held American principles. He’s a guy who decided to do the right thing.

And now he’s in trouble for it.

THERE HAS been a lot of talk over the last few years about the First Amendment of the Constitution. That’s the one guaranteeing freedom of speech, the press and religion. It seems pretty clear to me but it’s obvious that people remain more mixed up than oatmeal cookie dough about it. They love the First Amendment when it’s convenient but jettison it pretty quickly when the going gets tough — which almost always happens. Freedom ain’t easy, or else every nation would do it.

Folks debate the Second Amendment a lot as well. It, too, seems clear — like it or not. People want to fiddle with it, though, because they argue that times change and the need for guns in every home ended in the last century. They also contend that the right to bear arms doesn’t mean a Howitzer should be available for legal purchase at the corner gun store.

Then there’s the Fourth Amendment. It doesn’t get talked about much because most think a lawyer is required to understand it.

But they’re wrong. It, too, is pretty clear to everyone except attorneys for the government.

Here’s what it says.

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Hmmmm.

The Fourth Amendment was created to protect U.S. citizens from the intimidating power of government and its law enforcement agencies. So what then to make of DNA testing or mining Internet activity with a surveillance mechanism? The PRISM Internet program allows the government to grab data secretly via companies like Facebook, Verizon and Google, giving it unfettered access to the emails, video chats and pictures of millions of customers.

I’m not a lawyer, but I’m relatively sure this is pretty far out of bounds unless the government is pursuing individuals on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

THIS IS WHERE we are as a nation: The United States has become a country where a free press can’t operate effectively for fear of government intervention or punishment should it cross certain unseen and largely arbitrary boundaries. It has become a country where people are potentially monitored by federal law enforcement even if they’ve done nothing wrong. It has turned into a country where those who point out potential government malfeasance find themselves on the lam. We have, it seems, become a nation so leery of terrorist attacks, random violence and our own neighbors that it has become more convenient to chuck the freedoms we once cherished above all else in return for the mirage of security.

The scariest part? Most aren’t worried one bit about it. In the social media world privacy is cheaper than a box of balloons. There are bigger issues to worry about, apparently.

Which brings me back to the young reporter I mentioned earlier. A day or two after our initial conversation, he messaged me. He was still talking about the NSA and its ability to probably read the online conversation we were having keystroke by keystroke. A stand for freedom was required, he said.

So he asked Verizon for a discount.

Every now and then I turn to some random thoughts to fill out a Sunday column. This was one of those weeks. It’s not exactly a Jackson Pollock, more paint by numbers . . .

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Every week I receive dozens of emails touting this statistic, that number or one poll or another.

Dozens.

In fact, it’s almost impossible to sort through it all. So usually I don’t.

I’m not alone. I’d say one in five journalists have neither the time, nor the patience to do so. That’s not a fact, by the way, just a random guess on my part.

So don’t take it to the bank.

Some of our skepticism, though, is because a lot of it comes from one politically tinged organization or another. These organizations usually lean to the right or left. That seems to be how things go these days.

With so much leaning from right to left, I almost need Dramamine on an hourly basis.

Speaking of Dramamine, a poll informed me last week that 54 percent of those surveyed say they have either taken a cruise or had a family member who has taken a cruise. That’s a lot of fruity drinks in cups made of fake coconuts. The miniature umbrella is optional.

Full disclosure: I took a cruise after winning a raffle — something that has never happened before or since.

Full disclosure, Part II: Overall, I liked the cruise better than I thought I would.

Still, I never once saw Gopher or Isaac, “your bartender.” There was a version of Julie, “your cruise director,” only he was a hairy guy whose job involved some form of entertainment loosely identified as singing. He also led the lifeboat drill and made general announcements such as, “There’s a hurricane nearby so we won’t be going to the Bahamas. Sorry.”

At least 45 percent of those polled say they are less likely to take a cruise today after unflattering news reports about fires, engine problems, running aground or tortuous musical revues that have plagued the industry for the past couple of years.

Count me among the 45 percent.

Per the right-leaning John Locke Foundation: Alamance County falls toward the middle of all counties in the state when it comes to tax burden for property owners.

We rank No. 35 among 100.

We’re bookended by counties that fall into the category of highest tax burdens — Orange (No. 6) and Guilford (No. 8). Not good news for some in Mebane and Gibsonville.

By the way, where I lived before moving here in 2007 ranks No. 11, Carteret County. Only there it’s not the tax rate really. The property values are absurd.

On the low end nearby is Caswell County. Its tax burden rates No. 95 in the state.

For the record, none of the counties on the low end would ever be confused with economic powerhouses.

According to the right-leaning Rasmussen Poll, 36 percent of people in America rate their personal finances as good or excellent.
Then how come everybody I know is broke?

Per the left-leaning N.C. Policy Watch, 10 North Carolina lawmakers were flown to Florida last year by a conservative education lobbying group. Since that $8,000 trip, more than 20 school choice bills have cropped up in the N.C. General Assembly.

Nice to see that you get what you pay for in politics — if you’re not a taxpayer.

By the way, Policy Watch also reports that more than $90,000 in out-of-state campaign contributions has been funneled to school choice-friendly legislators.

From here, it looks like the school choice crowd gets off pretty cheap compared to what out-of-state sweepstakes operators are paying state elected officials.

The right-leaning Rasmussen poll finds that 34 percent of people surveyed believe more spending will improve public education in America.

But just 13 percent think taxpayers are getting a good return on their investment in public schools. Sixty-eight percent think tons of money is being wasted.

Another 19 percent aren’t sure what a percent is.

They weren’t in class that day.

Those Rasmussen people report that 60 percent rate the balance in their lives between work, family and friends as good or excellent.
I don’t know a solitary soul who is in that 60 percent category. Not a one.

But 73 percent look forward to work every day. Just 16 percent dread going to their jobs while 11 percent don’t know what work is.

Put me in the 73 percent. I like my work.

But I dread all that Dramamine.

For regular readers of this blog, a highly skipable post. Took some things I’ve written about before and reconfigured them into a print column. Hadn’t wrtten about my diet for print readers as yet.

—-

Two Saturdays ago, I shopped for clothes.

Needless to say, for millions of Americans this isn’t a stop-the-presses kind of event. Few lives stand to be altered as a result. Wars will not be waged nor shots fired. The Obama Administration shouldn’t have reason to monitor my telephone calls over it — which doesn’t mean it won’t do so anyway. And the IRS might get involved but only if I claim the purchase as a deduction because I wear the clothes while editing copy provided by John Hood of the conservative John Locke Foundation.

So this buying clothes thing is pretty standard stuff. But in my world, well, it’s huge.

Now usually I avoid shopping for shirts, pants, jackets, socks, underwear, coats and ties like most rational folks do encounters with copperhead snakes, rabid raccoons or elected officials. That’s especially true when it comes to ties. The inventor of ties played a cruel trick on mankind. There is simply no reason for them to exist at all, except to justify the larger closets in modern houses, stabilize silk markets in Asia or provide employment for people who took too many psychoactive drugs in the 1960s and are now holed up in a room somewhere listening to Pink Floyd and creating new designs specifically for ties now around the necks of the most uptight people in corporate America.

Anyway, because I almost never shop for anything, I depend upon the kindness of others to manage my wardrobe. Hello, Christmas! How ya doin’, birthday! Then I wear whatever it is I get until the shirt or pants or sweater in question simply disintegrates into a pile of cotton-blend dust at about wash No. 1,643.

But A couple of weeks ago I put the bullet between my upper and lower molars and marched out to, gasp, a retail store.

I had no other choice.

READERS OF MY blog at www.thetimesnews.com — a number that might reach 17 on a busy day — probably know where I’m headed. In January, I decided to embark on something I called “A New Food and Drink Plan.” Normal people, by the way, would simply say “diet.”

I refused to do so because, well, diets usually work with the regularity of a successful congressional vote. And I wanted to get on a program that would last for the long haul, not just to prep for a trip to the beach. I took on this “New Food and Drink Plan” largely for the reason listed earlier — because I didn’t want to buy new clothes.

Funny how life works out.

So at Christmas, I wore size 36 pants and shirts in the process of speeding past large into XL territory. I weighed 192 pounds.

Enter the Dukan Diet. A physician from France developed this hybrid eating program that’s part South Beach Diet, part Atkins Diet and part common sense. It’s meant not just to cut pounds, but change eating habits toward a healthier lifestyle. It features lots of lean meat — and I stress lean. This is no all-the-bacon-and-hot-dogs- without-bread you can eat artery-clogging fest. It eliminates sugar, starches, carbs . . . at least until the desired weight levels are reached.

It starts with a week of only lean meat, eggs and a daily oat bran pancake. In the next week, I could add some non-starchy vegetables. After I reached a certain level, I could add two slices of whole wheat bread. Then I could have a celebration meal a week. A little while after that, I could add a starchy vegetable here or there. When it’s over, people are supposed to like it so much they don’t go back to eating pepperoni pizza with extra cheese every day.

I have now completed all phases of the Dukan Diet and can say I liked it quite a bit. There is very little measuring (what is 4 ounces of steak anyway?) and clear guidelines. It was easy to follow and relatively simple not to cheat. In the process I gave up a lot of bread (for a little while), pasta, cake, pie, cookies, corn chips, potato chips, pretzels, sugar, potatoes, pizza, burgers and beer.

But that still leaves a lot of stuff to eat and with my spouse’s help, it was tasty stuff: Grilled chicken, fish, shrimp, steak, turkey, vegetables of all kinds and a little pumpkin desert that really helped beat back the sugar craving.

Now, with a few exceptions, I want to eat this way all the time.

OVER THE PAST month or so, people have stopped me on sidewalks, in stores and in the office. They want to know how I dropped so much weight. For the record, Friday morning I weighed 155 pounds — about the size I was on the day I got married in 1997.

“Did you just stop eating?” is the most common question.

The answer: Hardly. I get to eat plenty. The upshot is, I’m making better choices, staying out of the office snack machine, only having a beer on the weekends and not taking that second cookie. I’ve also learned that 2 ounces of spaghetti is plenty, creamed cauliflower is an acceptable substitute for mashed potatoes and that yogurt is an edible food.

So, can I stay on this particular plan?

Hope so, after all I just invested in some new pants at size 32. I intend to wash them a 1,000 times.

Until last week I had never met a state Treasurer before, at least one that wasn’t running for something else and had no interest anymore in talking about actuarial tables, assorted pie charts or why kids can’t seem to make change these days.

Previously, I had met sitting North Carolina secretaries of state, state auditors, attorneys general, insurance commissioners, labor department chiefs and a governor or lieutenant governor or two. In fact, governors tend to get around, unless they’re under investigation.

That changed on Wednesday and I said so as I reached my hand out to Janet Cowell, who was in our conference room at the Times-News.

She stuck out her hand, too, and decided to stay.

That told me a lot right there. It signaled that Cowell, the first woman to hold the job of Treasurer in North Carolina and a Democrat serving her second term in the post, doesn’t scare easily and that she certainly wouldn’t be thrown by a dumb question from a newspaper guy who only learned basic math in order to figure out baseball statistics.

Indeed, there is a good reason people take low-paying jobs in journalism.

Cowell laughed right away when I fired my first question — only slightly in jest.

“So, are we broke?” I asked, with a chuckle, referring to something not all that funny, the state’s sagging coffers.

“I get that question all the time,” Cowell, 44, said, and laughed right with me.

And the short answer? “No, we’re not broke,” she assured us while admitting that the economy is still in limping form, but growing, albeit slowly. Balancing the state’s books is no easy task these days, if it ever was for that matter.

HEAR THE words “state Treasurer” and the mind jumps immediately to economic spreadsheets, green eyeshades, convoluted tax formulas and all that other stuff that sounds like it would be akin to reading a written history of asphalt penned in ancient Greek.

And that’s her background, too. Cowell began working in banking and finance with HSBC and Lehmann Brothers after gaining an MBA at Wharton School of Business. She moved to Raleigh and became a business consultant.

So far, sounds like pretty routine accountant-type stuff.

Then she detoured and became a politician. Cowell has won statewide office twice, served in the state Senate and on the Raleigh City Council.

But now she finds herself  in a job that often calls for advice, not politics. One phrase she used Wednesday was “letting the debate play out.” I figure she does that pretty often as she tries to manage the state’s health care program, which she inherited in 2012 and the state pension plan.

Cowell also advises the N.C. General Assembly on money matters, ways to diversify the state’s revenue stream, or things that seriously jeopardize the state’s bond rating. Protecting the Triple-A rating issued by Standard and Poor is Cowell’s highest priority. North Carolina is one of nine states that still have that lofty standard.

For those unsure, the bond rating is like a basic personal credit rating. It’s most definitely not a gauge of which actor, Sean Connery, Pierce Brosnan or that new guy, whatshisname, is the best Agent 007 in the James Bond movies. I like Connery as Bond, by the way.

“If anything affects the bond rating, I step in,” she said.

Cowell’s first term on the Council of State was with Gov. Bev Perdue at the helm. Today, it’s Gov. Pat McCrory. So far, her role hasn’t changed. Perdue seldom kept counsel with the Council of State, opting instead to seek advice from her cabinet. McCrory has done the same, but that could change over time.

COWELL IS far from the voice of doom, foretelling a terrifying economic future for North Carolina.

“The good news is, we have growth,” she said. “It’s not like we can go on a frenzy or anything. What we have is slow growth. We will still have economic pressures.”

She’s particularly proud of the Triple A bond rating, caused by the state’s low debt and other factors. McCrory’s proposed budget will also increase the “rainy day fund.”

“The governor did that, and it’s good,” she said.

Cowell believes that people are prone to hyperbole about the state budget. “I hear people say North Carolina is just like Greece, but we have a strong foundation in this state.”

She pointed out that the mascot for the Illinois state pension fund is a python squeezing the budget.

“Our mascot is a dancing dollar bill,” she said with a laugh.

As for what’s ahead, Cowell believes the General Assembly is serious about tax reform, that the state has to continue to diversify how it generates revenue and that health care and Medicaid will “be the driver” of nearly all budget debates this year.

While she was in Alamance County, Cowell talked to County Commissioner Linda Massey, County Manager Craig Honeycutt, Graham Mayor Jerry Peterman and Graham City Manager Frankie Maness. She knows local budgets have been impacted by state and federal decisions and has offered to share advice around the state.

“Kudos to your local folks. They came up to me talking fund balances and water and sewer, which I get off on,” she said. “I love to talk about waste treatment.”

She was joking.

I think.

In the days before the Internet made it possible for people to waste hours communicating with complete strangers about cute photos of cats, newspaper people killed time during the day by browsing stories written by the Associated Press and moved via satellite into our computer system. There were hundreds of news and feature items produced every day, which were then sorted into categories so they would be easy for people to find while producing the newspaper.

Every now and then an item of personal interest would move across what we erroneously called “the wire.” I had been working for the Jacksonville Daily News two weeks short of a year when an AP story from my former home in Burlington made the “state wire” and caught my eye. It was about shootings in a shopping center.  I knew the site well.

One of my Daily News colleagues noted the incident to me and said, “bet you wish you were there to cover it.”

“No,” I said in reply. “Not really.

“Not at all.”

This is the essence of the love and hate affair I sometimes have with the business I chose to enter before I was even out of high school. I am, in turn, energized by breaking news and saddened or repulsed by it. An event like the April 1, 1993 shootings at a Winn-Dixie grocery store in New Market Square shopping center is the kind of thing I dread. A lone gunman terrorizes innocent people in a public place, kills one person and wounds two others before being shot down by a police officer who will then carry a burden for it the rest of his life.

In turn, reporters and photographers converge on the site en masse looking for any scrap of information that can be turned into a story that will paint a complete picture for readers — and historians. The news staff will work for hours to cover every single angle, put the newspaper to bed for the night, then come back again the next day and start all over again. On some occasions, night and day blur a couple of times over.

Yes, reporters, photographers and editors often say covering such stories is what we’re trained to do. But the truth is more fickle.

In reality, no one is trained for it.

“It was a horrible, horrific day. It was pretty unbelievable in the first place, being that it was April 1,” said Susan Shinn, who was working in the Times-News lifestyles department on the day of the Winn-Dixie shootings. Times-News editors sent every single staff member available to cover the story. Susan was part of the team. At the time, she lived about a block from the shopping center on Shadowbrook Drive.

Susan was tasked with a story about how pastors counsel those impacted by such violent events. She started making telephone calls shortly after the incident happened at 2:55 p.m.

A lot of the staff had to be called in to handle the coverage. The Times-News was still an afternoon newspaper back then and many people were off at 2 or 3 p.m.

Police reporter Chris Cary was among them.

“I recall that I had gone home for that day (I worked 7 a.m. -3 p.m.) when I got a call telling me there had been a shooting at Holly Hill Mall. I raced to the mall, drove around the perimeter and, seeing no police cars, went inside and raced from Sears to Belk, locating nothing. I called the paper and was then told the shooting was across the street at Winn-Dixie,” said Chris, who now works for the Guilford County Sheriff’s Office and lives in Gibsonville.

“The front of the store was taped off and there were numerous police and others standing outside. The visual image that sticks with me is John Glenn, the brand-new police chief, comforting a visibly shaken officer who I later learned was the one who had confronted and fatally shot the suspect,” Chris said.

With so many reporters and photographers churning out copy and images, the Times-News produced a special edition — four pages with nothing but coverage of the shooting. It was an intense few hours of work.

“There was not a lot of joking around in the newsroom like there usually was. Just a lot of folks working and getting the reporting done,” Susan said. “These kind of disasters are what reporters are trained for, and, in an odd sense, what we live for. It’s the time you have to write accurately and quickly, but where you also have a chance to really use your craft and shine.”

Susan and Chris both noted the hard work by the Times-News staff that day, into the night and next morning when another newspaper had to be produced by lunchtime. It shows in the outstanding  coverage, including a comprehensive graphic detailing the interior of the store by Elizabeth Landt.

When I look back over what the Times-News staff accomplished that day it’s with a sense of pride and awe. I know many of them well. And I understand what it took out of them to produce that kind of work. In Jacksonville we covered hurricanes and incomprehensible military tragedies. There is a toll, believe me.

I’ll be satisfied to never cover anything like that again.