
{"id":3555,"date":"2008-10-02T07:52:06","date_gmt":"2008-10-02T15:52:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=3555"},"modified":"2008-10-02T07:52:06","modified_gmt":"2008-10-02T15:52:06","slug":"letter-to-the-editor-airport-to-nowhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2008\/10\/02\/letter-to-the-editor-airport-to-nowhere\/","title":{"rendered":"Letter to the editor: Airport to nowhere"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I am writing with interest about an issue of great concern to citizens in Orange County and parts of Chatham County \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the UNC-proposed Orange County Airport. On the evening of Sept. 28, more than 250 area citizens gathered for a community meeting on this topic, and among this group it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s unanimous that no one wants this \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Airport to Nowhere.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d This issue illustrates how an abuse of power at the local level can lead to the continued drain of federal dollars \u00e2\u20ac\u201c all in the name of special interests and at the expense of good government and property rights.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nThere are a lot of critical issues at stake here. First, the UNC system exists for the purposes of education, not for the operation of an airport. There are certainly special interests and ulterior motives involved in this case \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but the UNC Board of Governors isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t coming clean.<\/p>\n<p>Second, the federal government has no Constitutional justification to allocate money for a local airport and should not be asked to pay for such projects.<\/p>\n<p>Third, we cannot build strong, sustainable local communities if citizens are constantly fighting to protect their property rights against a government that is serving special interests. Using eminent domain and seizing land is a last resort, and should never occur for private special interests.<\/p>\n<p>Rep. Price\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s staff didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get the memo \u00e2\u20ac\u201c America is broke \u00e2\u20ac\u201c so earmarks and projects serving special interests are no longer being funded. Meanwhile, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m proud to see that citizens have formed Orange County Voice and are mobilizing quickly and intensely, as they should \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a shame they are forced to do it in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>As North Carolina\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Fourth District representative in Congress, I would ensure that special interests would not take precedent over private citizens, nor would any federal money go towards funding a state university-run airport.<\/p>\n<p><strong>William (B.J.) Lawson, M.D.<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>Candidate for U.S. Congress, North Carolina\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 4th District<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am writing with interest about an issue of great concern to citizens in Orange County and parts of Chatham County \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the UNC-proposed Orange County Airport. On the evening of Sept. 28, more than 250 area citizens gathered for a community meeting on this topic, and among this group it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s unanimous that no one&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3555\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}