Uncontacted Indians

I think stories like this are fascinating.

Brazilian authorities found yet another tribe of Indians within their country’s borders who have apparently never had contact with the outside world. It just seems so unbelievable that people exist in 2008 who don’t realize that they live in a place called Brazil. The idea of Brazil, or South America, or even other continents are completely foreign to them, the way the rest of the universe is foreign to us. These are people who fired arrows at an airplane. They’ve never heard of the T-Model Ford, much less an airplane, or the internet, or much of anything else.

Make sure to look at the pictures in the article, they’re pretty fascinating.

Cops, drugs, youtube, and blogs

So I’ve been a neglectful blogger in the past week or so. I apologize for that.

Many of you have probably seen the article I wrote for today’s paper about video of a drug bust by Lee County sheriff’s deputies and federal agents which somehow ended up on youtube. This is a story that many people in Lee County have been aware of for a while now. I was only able to begin officially reporting on it last night though, because a motion filed by one of the defendants’ attorney for the first time mentions the existence of the video in a public way.

So, upon finding out that there was a public document which mentioned the video (since removed from the internet), I returned to work at 7:30 p.m. yesterday to get the story in. WRAL, I’d discovered, was also looking into it, and I’ll usually do anything in my power to avoid getting beat on a story by a TV station that’s based 40 miles from Sanford.

Anyway, I had to tell my superiors to make room for the story because by that time the front page was pretty much almost done. So I was working with a limited amount of space, and when that happens, lots of details get left on the cutting room floor. This is a story with plenty of details, and while I had to make some tough decisions last night about what should and shouldn’t go in my story, this whole blog phenomenon really takes some of the pain out of those decisions. So here is at least one more very important piece to the story you may have read this morning:

There is a temptation to look at this story as the Lee County Sheriff’s Department vs. The Sanford Police Department. That would be a mistake. Yes, Sanford Police Chief Ronnie Yarborough and Lee County Sheriff Tracy Carter certainly both made statements that contradict one another. That was an important part of the story, because one of the biggest questions in this narrative is “why were there Sanford Police officers at the scene of a drug bust in an unincorporated part of Lee County in the first place?”

But both men also made statements to me that, unfortunately, I couldn’t include. Yarborough, who claims his men were asked by sheriff’s officials to be on the scene in a support capacity, said “I can’t say what type of mix-up in communications may have caused this type of thing to happen.” Carter told me that “a mistake was made, and it’s been dealt with. We need to move forward with this.”

Nobody who pays attention disputes that relations aren’t perfect between the two departments, but to cast this situation as an outgrowth of those conditions is probably not fair. Leaders in both offices have said mistakes are what led to the situation. I think that’s important.

In other news, I’ve discovered through the grapevine that a couple more of my friends have jumped into this blogging business:

*Jay is a friend of mine dating back about 10 years. We graduated together from Lee Senior in 1998 before attending our first year of college together at ECU, where even then we had some pretty spirited conservative/liberal debates. Jay’s blog is mostly about politics.

*Lindsay is another friend of mine whose blog I discovered a couple of days ago. I met Lindsay through my friend Ross, who she’s about to marry. Her blog makes me hungry.

Check both of them out!

Just so there’s no confusion…

I’ve written some stories this election cycle about one group or another allegedly trying to confuse voters when it comes to taxes. There are a couple of different tax issues here in Sanford/Lee County that have met with opposition from certain quarters, so I understand that there’s some passionate argument about these things and a perception that the other side isn’t playing fair.

Everyone, of course, denies that they’re trying to confuse people, but I saw something today that tells me otherwise. The “Repeal Business Tax Now” signs that refer to the city of Sanford business privilege license tax were absolutely littered about every single polling place I visited or passed by today.

The business privilege license tax, if you’ll recall, was voted into effect last year by the Sanford City Council and, after a contentious 2007 municipal election in which it figured prominently, came before the council again last month during a failed repeal effort.

It was during this repeal effort that Jon Owens and I co-wrote a story about these “Repeal Business Tax Now” signs and the possibility of them confusing voters about the local option sales tax increase that’s on today’s ballot. The signs, like the anti-business tax campaign itself, are the work of Americans for Prosperity, a national anti-tax group with a Lee County chapter. The focus of the story Jon and I wrote was trying to figure out why AFP would use candidate-style yard signs to talk about the business tax, as it wasn’t on any ballot and can only be repealed by a majority vote of the Sanford City Council.

Of course, AFP representatives said the yard signs were a way of mobilizing the business community’s opposition to the business tax, and that’s a valid argument. The AFP folks also said that they thought voters wouldn’t be confused by the signs.

Fast forward a couple of weeks, after the defeat of the business tax repeal, and you’ve got AFP running a campaign in opposition to the sales tax increase. Which is their prerogative. There are “vote no to a sales tax increase” signs everywhere you look, and I honestly feel like I have to commend their ability to put together a political campaign of that magnitude in just a couple of weeks.

But if AFP really didn’t mean to confuse voters about the two taxes, there wouldn’t have been 10 “Repeal Business Tax Now” signs at Southern Lee when I rode by today. There wouldn’t have been the same number at the American Legion. There wouldn’t be any of them anywhere, because the fate of the business tax (for now, anyway) has been decided. And it’s not on any of the ballots Lee County voters will be filling out today.

The fact is, people don’t like to pay taxes. I believe that AFP hauled their anti-business tax signs out for Election Day because, like it or not, there are always a significant number of voters who don’t do the research, and, honestly, their campaign against the sales tax increase has picked up a lot less traction than their campaign against the business tax did (I covered events for both campaigns).

A criticism of the effort to pass the sales tax increase is that it wasn’t put together early enough. I’d say the same of the AFP campaign to defeat it. If AFP wanted to make a case against the sales tax increase, they should have started earlier and not relied on a shell game of revolving taxes to get people to vote their way.

While I love politics, I’ll be glad when election season calms down for a few weeks after today. It’s all enough to make you get just a little cynical.