Good day and welcome to DKos Asheville. This is the weekly DKos Asheville open thread for Saturday November 13th. We try to get together every weekend to share with everyone what we're all up to in Western North Carolina and beyond. We hope this group serves to invigorate us locally and regionally here on Daily Kos, building on the sense of community that's grown through our online engagement. DKos Asheville can give us all a better sense of connection, a better understanding of who we stand with, work with, and share with. We hope this community can help leverage our orange passion for progressive politics to elect more and better Democrats.
Asheville and all of Western North Carolina are wonderful places to visit. We have a powerful progressive presence, both cultural and political, and for the most part everyone is really nice. And the views are breathtaking. If you've never been here, we promise you'll love it.
As regular readers know, our next meet-up is scheduled for Saturday October 4th. Jump over the Squiggle of Local Power for more.
DKos Asheville Meet-up
Where: The Cantina at Historic Biltmore Village in Asheville.
10 Biltmore Plaza, Asheville, NC 28803 (828) 505-7682
When: Saturday, October 4th at 1:00 pm
What: A Kossack meet-up with food, fun and discussion. We will be thirty one days away from the election on Tuesday, November 4th. Please bring your ideas on how we can motivate voters and do our parts to help win these elections.
What to bring: A hungry tummy ready for great Tex-Mex on us, smiles, stories and ideas for GETTING OUT THE VOTE.
RSVPs:
1. randallt
2. davehouck
3. Joieau
4. Lamont Cranston
5. DawnN
6. SteelerGrrl
7. SteelerGuy
8. swhelden
9. Ottery Scribe
10. Burns Lass
11. Family guest
12. smiley7
13. people power granny
14. Gordon20024
MAYBEES:
1. Munchkn
Please kosmail me to be added to the list and drop by today's Connect! Unite! Act! for stories about other meet-ups across the nation. Get inspired, let's win these elections!
Here are a few local items I thought you might enjoy.
POLITICS
Courtesy of Tom Sullivan from our great local progressive blog, Scrutiny Hooligans.
It seems Tom Tillis is having a little trouble with his Wingers over funding for a toll highway project that includes paying tolls to the Spanish company for decades. Interesting stuff and well worth the read.
WidenI77’s presentation above details many of the unknowns in the contract, raising concerns about cost and privacy as well as the fact that paying tolls to a foreign vendor for 50 years siphons vast sums of money out of the local economy. The tea party, libertarians, and GOP activists are increasingly unhappy about the prospect. So much so that it seems Tillis and his lieutenants are having to fan out to defend the deal before angry constituents. - See more at: http://scrutinyhooligans.us/...
Tom is a fine writer, activist and just a great guy. He blogs at
Scru Hoo,
Crooks and Liars and
Blue NC, so do yourself a favor and read him regularly. From the same article, the following is a fine example of the villainous crowd we are up against here in Western North Carolina.
After the town hall, Rep. Bill Brawley, R-Mecklenburg, got an earful from Republican and independent attendees about corruption they suspect in the highway deal he’s backed along with Tillis. Ashevillians will remember Brawley as one of Moffitt’s allies on the legislative study to look into transferring the Asheville Water System to a regional authority. He was in the posse Moffitt brought with him to face angry parents at a May education rally at Roberson High School in Buncombe County. Brawley, Moffitt, and Nathan Ramsey, R-Buncombe, co-sponsored the bill to wrest control of Charlotte-Douglas airport from the city of Charlotte. - See more at: http://scrutinyhooligans.us/...
ALEC, ALEC, ALEC...........
BEER
from
Ashevegas.
Some folks might be lulled into a false sense that Sierra Nevada Brewing’s new East Coast brewery in Mills River just south of Asheville is already open. After all, Sierra Nevada has been brewing there for months, and it held a big summer beer party and hosted some 5,000 beer drinkers at the site.
But the new Sierra Nevada facility is far from finished. It is massive (I like to call it an amusement park of beer) and there are many details to attend to. Here’s more from a recent Sierra Nevada blog post:
Asheville is Beer City USA and we have an amazing industry building around that fame and fortune. New giant and small breweries and tap rooms are opening all the time. Here's a new beauty with a unique twist, beer by the ounce.
Here’s a sneak peek at Pour Taproom, a new craft beer bar that will allow visitors to sample beer by the ounce. With 44 taps (including one for water and a couple for non-alcoholic brews such as root beer; there’s wine on tap, too), owner Nate Tomforde is hoping Pour will draw beer aficionados to his 800 Haywood Road location in West Asheville.
If you want to keep being the greatest beer city in America, you have to create a steady supply of professionals locally. That's exactly what our local colleges are helping to build, a reliable pipeline of talent.
Local Colleges launch brewing schools.........
Asheville sits in the middle of this craft beer boom. With over a dozen breweries operating within the city limits and close to twenty in WNC, our city is the East Coast hub for craft beer. Every season hosts another local brewery opening, and major players Sierra Nevada, New Belgium and Oskar Blues have made the area home, creating hundreds of beer related jobs in the process.
This fall, South College will join AB-Tech and Blue Ridge Community College in offering a degree program for those interested in careers in the booming beer industry here in Asheville. Classes will start in early October and offer flexible scheduling so that students with other obligations should be able to complete their degrees in a reasonable amount of time. Upon successful completion, students will receive an Associates of of Applied Science degree in Business with a focus on brewing. Being a nationally accredited college, South College is able to offer financial aid to students who qualify. Perhaps even more exciting is a plan to make the beer program courses available to those who aren’t pursuing a two year degree.
Thanks for stopping by, I hope you have a great weekend and we hope to see you on
October 4th! if you need help getting to the event, please don't hesitate to ask what we can do for you.