FORUM
Pope Francis' advice about equality and
justice, which 2016 hopefuls can use
i BUI
| Turner
i Guest
Columnist
If the world looks like
it's going to hell in a hand
basket, Pope Francis
preaches that the path and
speed there are driven by
the excesses of capitalism.
The 78 year-old Argentina
born-and-bred pontiff, who
worked "among his coun
try's most marginalized cit
izens before becoming
pope two years ago, spoke
out against poverty,
inequality, and official cor
ruption recently while in
Ecuador, Bolivia and
Paraguay.
South America, which
holds 40 percent of the
world's 1.2 billion
Catholics, was an appropri
ate place for His Holiness
to condemn the greed for
money and call for "a glob
al movement against the
new colonialism that is
rooted in an inequitable
world economic order."
Pope Francis will likely
repeat those words when
he visits America - ground
zero for capitalism's
excesses - later this sum
mer when he addresses the
World Meeting of Families
in Philadelphia, and then
carry his message on to
NYC and DC.
Sen. Bernie Sanders
(D-Vermont), a self
described revolutionary
and socialist, sings from
the Pope's songbook on
income equality and is
pushing front-runner
Hillary Clinton on how the
gap between the haves and
have rtots is corrupting
everything and everybody.
Senator Sanders got a
loud ring of cheers from a
crowd of 10,000 in
Wisconsin recently when
he denounced the facts of
income inequality in
America: "58 percent of
new American income
goes to the top 1 percent,
the top 10th of that 1 per
cent have more wealth than
the bottom 90 percent, and
the gap is wider than at any
other point since just
before the Great
Depression."
Pope Francis' concern
for the poor in South
America applies, relatively
speaking, to African
Americans: the typical
black household has just 6
percent of the wealth of the
typical white household.
On average, white house
holds had $111,146 in
wealth holdings in 2011,
compared to $7,113 for
blacks, according to the
U.S. Census Bureau
Survey of Income and
Program Participation.
Pope Francis' perspec
tive on these matters places
him in the center of global
activities. He calls out the
masterminds of capitalism
around the world, whom he
?says are not good stewards
of the environment and are
too greedy to share their
wealth to create the condi
tions for equality, justice
and decent lifestyles for the
poor. He visits Africa -
Uganda and Kenya, where
Catholicism is the fastest
growing religion - in
November, just behind his
trip to the USA.
On the other side of the
Pope's world view is
Republican presidential
hopeful, Jeb!, one of five
Catholics on the crowded
GOP podium, who said
recently, "I don't go to
Mass for economic policy
or for things in politics. I've
got enough people helping
me along the way with
that."
Even if Mr. Bush's way
doesn't consider His
Holiness' advice about the
wickedness that springs
from economic inequality,
it's quite likely that he, like
most, recognizes the lines
written by a modest friar
canonized in the 12th cen
tury from whom the man
born Jorge Mario
Bergoglio took his papal
name: "Lord make me an
instrument of Thy peace"
and the well-known saying
also attributed to St.
Francis of Assisi, "Preach
the Gospel at all times and
when necessary use
words."
Pope Francis' necessary
words, to be repeated again
and again during the 2016
presidential campaign,
which will be in full swing
when he gets here in early
fall, might well be: "It's the
economic inequality, stu
pid!"
Dr. Bill Turner is a
noted educator, writer and
thinker who called
Winston-Salem home for
many years. Reach him at
bill-turner@comcast.net.
William H. Turner ?>
7/19/2015
Clinton
Bush
Pope Francis
Sanders
Warren
Growth of the North Carolina
solar industry is in jeopardy
(Rhone
Resch
1 Guest
Columnist
Earlier
this year,
North
Carolina
became just
the fourth
state in the
nation to top
- 1 .000
megawatts (MW) of installed solar capac
ity, trailing only California, Arizona and
New Jersey as America's solar leaders.
But despite the state's rapid progress, the
looming expiration of the federal invest
ment tax credit (ITC) for solar energy is
creating angst in the marketplace, threat
ening to eliminate good-paying jobs
statewide.
It's no coincidence that North Carolina
is ranked No. 1 in the entire South in
installed solar capacity. Effective public
policies, like the state's investment tax
credit, renewable energy portfolio stan
dards (RPS) and the federal ITC, are pay
ing huge dividends for the state's econo
my, creating thousands of new jobs and
generating hundreds of millions of dollars
a year in economic activity.
Powered by a booming utility-scale
market. North Carolina added 58 MW of
new solar capacity in the first quarter of
this year, bringing its statewide total to
1,011 MW - enough to power nearly
110,000 homes. Most impressively, the 58
MW added represents a robust 66 percent
increase over the same quarter last year.
The report went on to point out that
North Carolina had increases in Q1 across
all solar sectors, with installed residential
and commercial system prices dropping
12 percent in the last year - and down
nearly 50 percent since 2010. All totaled,
$95 million was invested in North
Carolina in the first quarter in new solar
installations - and $747 million since the
beginning of 2014.
A lot of this economic activity is a
direct result of the federal investment tax
credit. Consider what's occurred since it
was enacted in 2006:
? 150,000 new solar jobs have been
added across America.
?Enough new solar has come online
to power 4 million homes.
?More than $66 billion has been
invested in new solar installations.
?And one-third of all new electricity
added to the U.S. grid last year came
from solar.
North Carolina has benefitted greatly
from this ramped-up activity, with thou
sands of new jobs being created statewide.
To put North Carolina's remarkable
progress in some context, the 1,011 MW
of solar installed in the state today is twice
as much as the entire coun
try had in 2004!
Currently, there are 177
solar companies at work
throughout the value chain
in North Carolina, employ
ing more than 5,600 people.
What's more, from an envi
ronmental perspective,
solar installations in North
Carolina are helping to off
set more than 1 million met
ric tons of harmful carbon
emissions, which is the
equivalent of removing
200,000 cars off the state's
roads and highways.
As it stands now, the 30
percent federal ITC will
expire at the end of 2016,
threatening to derail the rapid progress
solar energy is making across North
Carolina. By contrast, competing energy
sources, such as fossil fuels, have had
preferential treatment in the U.S. tax code
for up to 100 years, while solar has had the
federal ITC as an incentive for private
investment for less than 10.
As an industry, we're strongly urging
North Carolina's Congressional delegation
to support extending the ITC for at least
five years. By then, many analysts are pre
dicting, solar will reach grid parity in most
electricity markets, helping to create a
level playing field among energy produc
Ron Rogers illustration for the Chronicle
ers,
which will benefit consumers, the U.S.
economy and our environment. That's a
win-win in anyone's book.
Rhone Resch is president and CEO of
the Solar Energy Industries Association,
the national trade organization for
America's solar energy industry. During
his 10-yeartenure at SEIA, solar ha$
experienced record-breaking growth,
becoming one of the fastest-growing
industries in the United States with more
than 8,000 companies and more than
174,000 employees.
Veto the 'Historical Artifact and Patriotism Act,' Governor McCrory
William J.
Barber
Guest
Columnist
This afternoon
[Tuesday, July 21], the
North Carolina House of
Representatives voted to
pass the "Historical
Artifact and Patriotism
Act." which makes it virtu
ally impossible for local
communities to move
Confederate monuments.
The measure, which came
out of the House Homeland
Security Committee, was
fast-tracked to Gov.
McCrory's desk to be
signed.
The NC NAACP and
Forward Together Moral
Movement call on Gov.
McCrory to veto this bill.
The Rev. Dr. William J.
Barber II has issued the fol
lowing statement on their
behalf:
Rushing to protect
monuments of the
Confederacy rather than
readily protecting the citi
zens of our state is extreme
and wrongheaded. The
urgency with which the
majority of our state repre
sentatives raced to protect
Confederate monuments is
appalling and shameful,
given that hundreds of
thousands of North
Carolinians live without
health insurance due to the
General Assembly and
Governor's refusal to
expand Medicaid; given
that thousands of North
Carolinians need a living
wage, that teachers need
job security, that public
schools need adequate
funding, that our environ
ment needs adequate pro
tections.
The extreme leadership
of our General Assembly
fast-tracked a bill to protect
symbols of the past that
embody division and seces
sion from the Union while
they remain at an immoral
standstill on the critical
issues of our day that
would help the poor and
working poor as well as
address the continuing real
ity of racial disparities and
inequality.
In these perilous days,
it would seem that the
Homeland Security
Committee might be pro
tecting our lives instead of
the Lost Cause. While it
cannot rank with public
safety or public schools as
a priority, communities
should be able to discuss
moving Confederate mon
uments off prominent pub
lic places like courthouse
lawns. These conversations
would do more to advance
historical understanding
than any number of monu
ments to the Confederacy.
Museums, which are able
to explain and contextual
ize exhibits, might well be
the best place for
Confederate statuary.
Government-run shrines to
an army that sought to
overthrow the United
States of America by force
do not make sense. Nor can
they ever represent the
North Carolinians whose
ancestors suffered under
the system of slavery that
the Confederacy left
America to defend.
If we are putting up
Civil War-era monuments,
it would be well to include
a monument to the
enslaved Africans who
buik the South and helped
bring down the
Confederacy - almost
200,000 African
Americans, many of whom
escaped from slavery,
fought for the Union. We
could consider a monument
to Abraham Galloway, for
example, who escaped
from slavery, served as a
Southern spy for the Union,
and after the war helped to
write the North Carolina
Constitution that we still
use.
We might also consider
a monument to the roughly
ten thousand Heroes of
America, better known as
the "Red Strings," a secret
society of white anti
Confederate guerillas
across the state. Hundreds
of thousands of ordinary
white North Carolinians
believed that the Civil War
was "a rich man's war and
a poor man's fight," object
ed to the tyranny of the
Confederacy, which they
have never voted to sup
port, and resented
Confederate conscription
laws that exempted
wealthy white men and
their sons. As the war raged
on. Gov. Zebulon Vance -
who has a monument on
the Capitol lawn -
acknowledged that "the
great popular heart is not
now and never has been in
this war. It was a revolution
of the politicians and not
the people."
Likewise, there ought
to be a monument to the
Fusion Coalition of the
1890s, an interracial politi
cal force that swept every
statewide election, cap
tured the legislature, won
both U.S. Senate seats, and
elected a governor, too.
This Fusion alliance
between mostly black
Republicans and mostly
white Populists was imper
fect, to be sure, but was
also an important experi
ment in interracial democ
racy. They could not be
beaten at the polls, and
their extreme opponents
turned to violence, intima
tion and fraud. The leaders
who overthrew the state
government in the 1898
"white supremacy cam
paign" are represented by
statues on the Capitol
grounds; their Fusionist
adversaries, who are a
much better example for us~"~
today, are largely forgotten.
Public metnorials are
important.
Rep. Marilyn Avila, a
Raleigh Republican, states
of this pro-Confederate
bill: "When you talk about
memorials and remem
>rances, the point of time at
vhich they were erected is
ixtremely relevant. A lot of
hese things were done
ihortly after the War
3etween the States." In
act, virtually none of the
Zonfederate monuments
were constructed until
tearly fifty years after the
war. If the state had tried to
mild Confederate monu
nents shortly after the
Zivil War - "War Between
he States" is the pro
Zonfederate term - there
likely would have been
:ivil conflict.
The real heroes of
North Carolina are the pub
lic school teachers for
whom this legislature has
shown contempt or indif
ference. The real heroes are
those who keep struggling
without living wages or
health care. The General
Assembly would do well to
protect them before they
start protecting their own
"right" to tell communities
what to do with their public
monuments.
Re\\ Dr. William J. Barber
11 President. N.C. NAACP
Working in Raleigh.