This is not a tough one: the Charlotte Regional Visitor’s Authority functions as the city of Charlotte’s tarted-up party girl. Of course the CRVA spreads scarce tix and good times worth thousands of dollars among the Uptown crowd — and those the Uptown crowd wishes to influence — that is the CRVA’s job.
The CRVA exists to hoist up the illusion of Charlotte as a party-party-party place the better to cover the Uptown crowd’s ass on spending about one billion public dollars on party-party-party funtime infrastructure during the past decade. And since 2008, the CRVA’s activities have expanded to try to fill the void left by the collapse of the Bank of Wachovia serial Ponzi scheme which helped to pump millions in hot checks into the local party-party-party, HushHush.com, 21st century vomitorium that is vapid Uptown crowd culture.
Any dissenters so far? Now for the uncomfortable part.
Like every recent fiscal scandal in local government — with the exception of the FBI’s investigation of the misuse of federal funds by a county DSS contractor which the county kept secret for as long as possible — ask yourself, where are the prosecutors? Where is the local DA? Where is the US Attorney? Here we have gifts worth thousands of dollars jumping back and forth between a publicly funded entity, public employees, and current and former elected officials (some of whom who are now appointed public officials) — and everyone looks the other way. As we have suggested before, this is not an accident.
It is easy to blame the Charlotte city council or the Mecklenburg County Commission, but let’s face it — they are mere figureheads on the local power structure. No, it is the local bar that is responsible for the Wild West nature of Charlotte civic life. There is simply no stomach for dragging all cozy little relationships — some stretching back decades — out into the harsh glare of public accountability to ask, What in the hell is going on here?
The local legal community has defined the status quo as normal. Anything which furthers the Uptown agenda is normal. Anything which opposes the Uptown agenda is abnormal — possibly illegal — and certainly must be silenced via threats and intimidation. Or distraction and misdirection.
Woo-who! Bud Light!
