This reads like a hodgepodge of danger zones. State government wants to survey all lands in Western North Carolina on the arbitrary assumption that land shifts in the past will provide a useful predictor of future landslides. The information can be put to good uses like increasing costs of title searches, and inspiring local ordinances restricting the use of and devaluing property or requiring citizens to install stormwater abatement measures – but not legally constituting a “taking.”

It gets more confusing when the need to survey gets tied into a need to acquire dollars the state exploits from struggling poor people with hopes of winning the Education Lottery. Currently, the filthy lucre is made available only to non-western counties. The Education Lottery, nonetheless, doesn’t help with the terrible shortage of funding available for universities amidst the provision of in-state-rate community college tuition for illegal immigrants.