And today's appointees are: Alito and…

Maybe JohnK can organize the effort to restore the Poll Tax in NC.

David B.,

If you'll re-read my posting and then your response to me, you might take note who uses the harsher language to assess anyone's character.

Your own posting reveals that you, too, were unsure of the truth ("thanks for clarifying," you write).

My reading of Ruby is that she is extraordinarily principled. I never had the slightest belief her endorsement was influenced by past interactions with Empowerment. Not to mention, I never considered she pulled strings to get the loan in the first place. Your attack on me, David, relies on your reading of insinuation of this, that, or the other. I relayed a "concern" expressed elsewhere, and that's the language I used. Since this blog is a sort of journalism, my "concern" was that past favorable transactions between candidates and journalists went unmentioned.

The problem with David's response, and with many of this county's vanguard officials and commentators, is that you squelch tough questions with that kind of attack. You got your answer from Ruby, David, but you left it to someone else to ask the question and then to endure your response. It's not the first time that sort of thing has happened. (Prediction: Mark K. finds my tone here "off-putting," for at least the third time.) That is utterly stifling to many, and unnecessarily personal.

Another interesting thing, David, is that you corrected Ruby and proved my subsidy point, in the same breath as lashing out at me.

Ruby, I'm mortified that the second allegation was so wrong, even though it wasn't mine to start with. That someone like David Beck, and surely others this side of the aisle, could wonder about its veracity, speaks to the force the story had taken.

I'm sorry that my revisiting this has taken its toll. The two different points are very distinct from each other. I still think the first one was quite reasonable; I'm sorry you took it as an insinuation of impropriety in getting the loan, when it was instead (to me at least) a question of transparency in journalism. The second question was based on specific circumstantial evidence (as opposed to no evidence) stated elsewhere. You've disproved it. Like I said, if even a David Beck wasn't sure, I think it's helpful to yourself to have cleared that up.

Ruby, I remain very thankful that you run this site as openly as you do. Occasionally I have a real bone to pick with you, most especially over an unsubstantiated charge against me in 2004. Often our local views clash, and I think that's the right word. But you offer an extraordinary service, and you let differing opinions have their moments in the sun, even dominating a thread as I did some time ago on annexation. Thanks.

Jeff

Well Jeff, why did you put the post out there anyway? Why didn't you just ask Ruby personally? That seems the more appropriate course of action than putting it on a public website, which by its very nature invites insinuation on a question like that. Saying you "relied on a concern expressed elsewhere" and then raising the question in a public forum is the classic way to get rumors into circulation. I'll take you at your word that you just sought clarification, but that isn't the way it came across to me, esp. on the heels of the posts about whether some threads were being deleted. And I'm not speaking for Ruby (and have never met her) but judging by Ruby's response I don't think that's the way she read it either. But the internet can squelch rumors as well as create them. Hopefully that is the case here. I still think a lot of your public stances do a lot of implying that there is some sort of nefarious invisible hand that runs Carrboro and that invisible hand is some clique. And I just think that's a load of bull.

Also, I don't think that it's "squelching debate" to call people out for their manner of debate as well as the substance of it, though it certainly risks getting too personal and perhaps should be done in private emails. And I'm sure my tone can be annoying to a lot of people too. Katrina's Anne Richards story about public officials losing the right to hate peope rings true. And though I'm not a public official, I do want to specifically apologize to Sharon Cook for an interaction we had at the December board meeting. But, Jeff, to my read anyway, a number of your posts insinuated that Ruby was selectively deleting and then asked about her house purchase rumor. For some reason I tend to stand up when I think someone is being unfairly attacked, whether it be Ruby or David Price. Call it a genetic defect.