Welcome to DKos Asheville. This space appears each weekend to share links to news and opinion from Asheville and Western North Carolina. The floor is open for comment and discussion. Wishing all a good day from this beautiful part of the world.
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Edwards posted the photo on X, writing no words with it.
The problem, as others were quick to point out, is that the image was from when Trump was still in office and therefore has nothing to do with the current U.S. president.
"This is a photo from 2018 when Donald Trump was president," said Josh Schwerin, the communications director for Priorities USA.
Edwards responded to Schwerin, not acknowledging that he was in the wrong. Instead, he posted another purported border photo and wrote, "Satisfied?"
"I'm just here waiting on Community Notes to correct another Republican's lies," one X user wrote.
"From 2018. Guess who was president then? Nice try," another internet user wrote.
National security lawyer Bradley P. Moss also joined in the conversation, saying, "Impressive given that photo is from 2018."
A state inspection just released details specific patient safety issues inside Mission Health, including at least one patient's death related to a lack of services.
The 384-page report includes information from inspections by the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services in November and December of 2023. Those surveys led to a designation of patients being in "immediate jeopardy" at Mission Health.
A letter from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid on Feb. 1, 2024, alerted the hospital that it was violating Medicare conditions of participation and was at risk of losing Medicare funding.
That letter detailed specific shortcomings -- six to be exact. The North Carolina State Survey Agency found the hospital failed to meet conditions regarding the governing body, patients' rights, the Quality Assessment and Performance Improvement Program, as well as nursing, lab and emergency services.
At least three patients died and others were endangered at Mission Hospital in 2022 and 2023 following significant delays and lapses of care in the emergency department and other areas, according to a scathing U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services report obtained Feb. 15 by Asheville Watchdog.
The 384-page document details why CMS placed the hospital in immediate jeopardy, the most serious sanction a hospital can face. It spotlights not only patient deaths and long delays in care but also a lack of available rooms, a lack of governing bodies “responsible for the conduct of the hospital,” and multiple leadership failures.
“The hospital’s leadership failed to ensure a medical provider was responsible for monitoring and ensuring the delivery of care to patients presenting to the emergency department,” the report states.
Hospital leadership also “failed to ensure emergency care and services were provided according to policy” and “failed to ensure adverse events were documented, tracked, trended and analyzed in order to implement preventive actions and identify success of actions taken.”
In an interview with Asheville Watchdog, Chuck Edwards fully committed to dereliction of duty in the HCA debacle. Instead of providing solutions or offering to use the power of his office to make things right for the people of Western North Carolina, he blamed the HCA sale on the “failures of Obamacare.” You can’t make this stuff up.
This is a clear pattern for Chuck Edwards: blame Obama or Biden for all of our problems. Chuck didn’t mention the over 600,000 people in North Carolina who went without health insurance because he and the N.C. GOP delayed Medicaid expansion to try and make the popular Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”) look bad.
He didn’t mention that they let our state lose out on billions of dollars of federal funding that North Carolina taxpayers paid for so they could carry out this political stunt. He didn’t mention that these political games had a terrible effect on the bottom line for many rural hospitals and directly impacted the sale of Mission.
There will be a lot of new faces on local boards, offices, councils and benches. Asheville Vice Mayor Sandra Kilgore is one of several officials who has decided to not seek reelection. Others include Buncombe County Board of Commissioners Chair Brownie Newman and Commissioner Jasmine Beach-Ferrara. District Judges J. Calvin Hill and Andrea Dray are also stepping down.
Early in-person voting begins Thursday, Feb. 15, and runs through Saturday, March, 2. If you have not registered to vote, you may do so through same-day registration at early voting stations. Early voting hours are 8 a.m.-7:30 p.m., Monday-Friday. Saturday hours are 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Early voting on Sunday will only be held Feb. 25, 10 a.m.-3 p.m.
The last day to request an absentee ballot is Tuesday, Feb. 27, at 5 p.m. The absentee return deadline is Tuesday, March 5 at 7:30 p.m. The primary election is Tuesday, March 5.
Responses from candidates for each contested primary election race are available at the pages linked below:
Members of the Buncombe County Board of Education, along with many others in the community, agree there should be some changes to House Bill 66.
“As I talk to people in the community, overwhelmingly what I’m hearing again and again is, 'Why are we doing this?’” Board At-Large Representative Amanda Simpkins said Wednesday, Feb. 14.
That’s a question both sides are asking ahead of Thursday’s public hearing.
The idea behind the new electoral lines is for all districts to be the same size in population. The options, which were presented to the board in December, bring the possibilities of expanding the North Buncombe and Owen districts.
Tension was high at the Feb. 13 Asheville City Council meeting as Council members decided the fate of a plan to install a 24-hour, prefabricated restroom unit outside the Rankin Avenue parking garage. After a somewhat fervent discussion among Council members, the board approved the project, 5-1, with Antanette Mosley opposed.
As previously reported by Xpress, the restroom will be a Portland Loo, a 7-by-10-foot single-stall structure that will provide enough room for a wheelchair, bike or stroller. Capital Projects Director Jade Dundas said the facilities are built to be more resistant to vandalism and easier to clean. The bathroom’s blue interior lighting also makes it difficult for intravenous drug users to find a vein for injection. Additionally, there will be routine after-hours checks by the city’s new parking garage security contractor, Walden Security.
The council approved $183,620 for site enhancements and installation with a contingency amount of $46,724, as well as $170,760 for the restroom itself. The total is $401,104. The restroom will be funded with $650,000 in American Rescue Plan Act dollars, allocated for the project in May 2022.
(DK) The biggest threat to the odious practice of book-banning has always been simple human ingenuity. When Alexander Solzhenitsyn began compiling his experiences—into what later became the Gulag Archipelago, his landmark indictment of the sprawling Soviet labor camp system—he was still a prisoner in that system. To escape detection, he would write those experiences down, scribbling on small scraps of paper, then memorizing the words he’d written, and burn the scraps afterward. This mechanism enabled him to preserve and retain his thoughts in the face of an oppressive regime, terrifying in its ubiquity and efficiency.
Banned in the Soviet Union, his work was initially published clandestinely and passed along to furtive readers—literally one copy at a time—in unbound form, even as it was hailed internationally as a masterpiece. Still, it remained widely unpublished in the Soviet Union until 1989.
America’s modern book-banning aficionados are neither as ubiquitous nor efficient as the KGB, but Republican lawmakers in Florida are apparently intent on indoctrinating an entire generation of young people. By proscribing the availability of certain books that highlight racism and advocate tolerance of sexual identity throughout the state, they have opted for a shotgun approach that places the onus on beleaguered public schools to fulfill their edicts. This serves the dual purpose of imposing their questionable notions of morality on young students while burdening a public school system they clearly despise with pointless, wasteful, and time-consuming busywork.
Thanks for stopping by, wishing all a good weekend.
“Be safe out there.” Lamont Cranston