Hey, it is August, I’ll go easy on you guys. In no particular order:

  • Great, great bit of investigative journalism on weird land speculation in WNC, Jackson County to be specific. Involving a guy who previous did time for mortgage fraud. Story from the St. Pete Times (!!) of course. MNI was all tied up in poultry plants evidently.
  • The Charlotte Business Journal — aka The Rent Seekers Weekly — updates us on the publicly subsidized development schemes of Daniel Levine and Afshin Ghazi. All Levine needs is a $30m. tax increment financing plan for a parking deck and associated development in First Ward. Ghazi is still flogging the $200m. EpiCenter, despite legal setbacks and the still unexplained need to hit up the city of Charlotte for $550K in May. Meanwhile, Ghazi is looking into amending the state building code in order to clear up the lines of ownership in the project. Keep watch on this one.
  • Name that language. Pat McCrory in Ashe County, “I would become more visible in the economical spectrum.” Is Pat running for governor or Time Lord? And the rest of what he said didn’t make much more sense either. “Reintroduce vocational training in our technical and community colleges” — they already do that, and fairly well.
  • A Wake County high school teacher attempts to tangle with the John Locke Foundation, winds up not exactly proving the intended point.
  • Analysts like Wachovia’s Man of Steel after their first up-close session with the new CEO. Shares rally as a result. Do you ever get the feeling Wall St. is just one giant middle school cafeteria? “Oooh, Bob was so cute today! Who did you sit with?”
  • Oh, and former voice of the Panthers Bill Rosinski related today on WFNZ that the syndicator and producer of his radio show that went dark back in November never bothered to call him to tell him what was going on. That is cheap.

That’s all I got.