ATLANTA — The onetime name of Gov. Rick Perry’s Texas hunting camp is currently the most famous example of an egregious race-based place name, but it is not the only one. Consider Runaway Negro Creek, which runs near a state park outside Savannah, Ga. The name is printed on nautical charts, but park rangers find it so uncomfortable to use, they try to avoid saying it out loud. It is just one of several hundred places that have the word “Negro” in their names and still exist on government maps and in the local vernacular in dozens of states. They are vestiges of racial attitudes that not that long ago made it acceptable to label a piece of property once leased by Gov. Rick Perry’s family as Niggerhead, an offensive name that had been painted in block letters on a large rock at the entrance to the rural northern Texas hunting camp. The word was once so common it was used as a brand name for everyday items like soap, canned shrimp and tobacco. The New York Times
Submitted 1 years 225 days ago

President Obama told America on Thursday that the economy is sliding backward, that economic frustration is growing nationwide, and that he can’t get Congress to do anything about it by himself. No revelations there, except for the fact that it took Obama so long to articulate what his constituents have known intuitively for a long time now. The big revelation – and the big risk, for Obama – was just how much the president is pinning his economic and political strategy on cultivating a populist pressure campaign for congressional action on job creation. A little more than a year before voters will decide whether he deserves a second term, Obama signaled in a press conference that he’s down to a bank-shot attempt to produce any more assistance from Washington for an economy that could desperately use it. The National Journal
Submitted 1 years 225 days ago

If your company is undergoing a site search in the American South, this digital magazine of the South's best economic development law firms is a valuable asset. Southern Business & Development magazine recently conducted a survey of the region's economic development community and the results of the survey can be found in this digital magazine. Find out which law firms are considered the best in the practice of economic development. Click on the headline above. SB&D
Submitted 1 years 225 days ago

Online retail giant Amazon.com will pick Wilson and Rutherford counties as the sites for permanent facilities in Middle Tennessee, multiple sources have told the Nashville Business Journal. The company plans to have a million-square-foot “sort facility” built in Murfreesboro off Joe B. Jackson Boulevard that could create up to 1,100 jobs and bring a capital investment of $87.5 million. The facility is projected to create $47.6 million in tax revenue from construction and operation over 20 years, according to an analysis presented to the Rutherford Chamber of Commerce. Nashville Business Journal
Submitted 1 years 225 days ago

Access to capital continues to elude technology-based startups in small, rural states like Arkansas. While that may affect quantity, one venture capitalist in Little Rock for the fifth BioVentures Private Equity Roundtable thinks the quality of the state's biomedical startup ventures is improving. "The quantity may not be as high, but the quality is higher pound for pound than in other states," said Christopher Rand of Tristar Ventures in Nashville, Tenn. Arkansas Business
Submitted 1 years 225 days ago

Fox News tracked down Rick Perry in California, where he spoke on camera for the first time about the Washington Post story from Sunday that described a racially offensive word painted at the entry to his family's hunting lease in Throckmorton County. Here's a transcript of the interview: All of us agree that the word that was on that rock was a very offensive rock -- very offensive word. The moment we had to paint over that rock, we did. There were very much and some strong inconsistencies and just infactual information that was in that story. I know for a fact in 1984 that rock was painted over. It was painted over very soon. My family did that; we painted over that rock and it stayed that way. I have no idea where or why people would say they had seen that rock, because that's just not the fact. Dallas Morning News
Submitted 1 years 225 days ago

Now that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has announced he will not seek the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, all of the Republican donors, elected officials, and party activists pining for a savior to jump into the race must face the reality that the field is set. They need to channel Stephen Stills: “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.” No doubt the fundraisers for Mitt Romney and Rick Perry are tying up the phone lines into New York’s financial district, wooing donors who had either been holding out for Christie or had used him as an excuse to remain on the sidelines. The National Journal
Submitted 1 years 225 days ago

The Justice Department asked the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday to stop an Alabama immigration law that allows officials to question people suspected of being in the country illegally, the Associated Press reported. The government's complaint said the Alabama law "is highly likely to expose persons lawfully in the United States, including school children, to new difficulties in routine dealings," the AP reported. The law also permits officials to check the immigration status of children in public schools. The National Journal
Submitted 1 years 225 days ago

Remote mountaintop roadways with tranquil vistas that plummet to valley-tucked creeks filled with silver trout. ... These are the scenes Carolyn Sakowski lives for. The president of John F. Blair publishing is also a traveler - and author. She was raised in Morganton, and wrote "Touring the Western North Carolina Backroads," which the firm published in 1990. It was updated five years later and retooled again this year. The 2011 edition ($19.95) took a year - and 4,000 miles of driving - to update. We asked her to share four driving trips great for fall. Just grab your road map and car keys. Charlotte Observer
Submitted 1 years 225 days ago

Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst said the Linux software company can afford to delay its move into one of Progress Energy's two downtown Raleigh buildings while the utility overhauls its merger plans with Duke Energy. In August Red Hat announced it would shift its headquarters from N.C. State University's Centennial Campus to downtown Raleigh, where Progress plans to exit one of its buildings in conjunction with its merger with Charlotte-based Duke. But a glitch in those merger plans emerged last week when federal regulators sought assurances that the two companies won't manipulate electricity rates in the state. "We certainly understand these things happen," Whitehurst said today during a brief interview. "We are confident that they are going to get the merger done. And so, we'll be patient." Raleigh News & Observer
Submitted 1 years 225 days ago