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City Council member Robbie Perkins remains firm in his support of the city buying property from notorious landlord Bill Agapion.

Perkins said Agapion, who is infamous for buying and neglecting property, had been approached before by private developers to sell the land in the Cedar Street community and had rebuffed them.

If the city doesn't intercede, Perkins says, the "window of opportunity" could close.

Interest rates and other conditions are favorable for developers, he says, but that can and will change in time.

Meanwhile, Perkins, who will step down this month from the council, also says he fully expects two major downtown developments -- the Wachovia tower and Bellemeade Village -- to happen with city assistance.

When he leaves his council seat -- for which he decided not to seek re-election -- Perkins says he will become involved in Heart of the Triad initiative to assemble land near the airport for regional economic development.

And he still is considering a run for mayor at some point, but not against Yvonne Johnson, who he considers a "dear friend."

Johnson has said she will run for mayor in 2007.

A colleague seems absolutely assured that I'd like the newest Harry Potter movie, if only I'd give it a chance.

OK, I told her, but it won't be in a theater. I'll wait till Netflix has it.

Gannett News Service columnist DeWayne Wickham, who also heads the Advanced Journalism Studies Institute at N.C. A&T, wonders whatever happened that bin Laden guy.

He writes in his Dec. 3 column:

"In making a case for keeping American troops in Iraq for an indeterminate length of time, Sen. Joe Lieberman has stretched the truth beyond the breaking point.

"The conflict in Iraq, Lieberman wrote in a recent Wall Street Journal commentary, ''is a war between 27 million and 10,000; 27 million Iraqis who want to live lives of freedom, opportunity and prosperity'' and roughly 10,000 insurgents.

"That's a pretty lopsided fight. But while the estimates of the number of insurgents range from 10,000 to 15,000, it hardly follows that the rest of that country's population is aligned against them. If that were the case, the Iraqi people, backed up as they have been for more than two years by the world's mightiest military, would have long ago snuffed out the insurgency.

Lieberman's assessment is a painfully simplistic analysis of that country's civil war and also deflects attention from the all-out effort we ought to be waging to find Osama bin Laden.

Remember him? It was, after all, bin Laden - not Saddam Hussein - who ordered the deadly Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on this country. But like President Bush, Lieberman seems to have lost sight of this haunting truth. Instead he clings to the false imagery of Iraq as the bulwark against a repeat of that awful day."

To read the rest of the column, click here.

Vernon Robinson gently sifted through a box of model airplane parts, cradling tiny plastic and metal pieces in his palms, then pinching them between his fingers with the tender care of a jeweler.

Among the teeny triumphs he pointed out was a miniature pilot's seat shaped and molded from a scrap piece of a soda can.

Another was an instrument panel for a World War II fighter, its gauges hand-inserted into pinhead-sized holes he punched into a sheet of plastic.

And yet another a wire antenna on another model fashioned from a strand of one his daughter's hair.

Once completed, every model features a signature splash of red paint on its tail, in homage to the Tuskegee airmen, the heroic black pilots of World War II whose bomber escorts bore that distinction
Robinson's father was a Tuskegee airman, his mother a Democrat. But he loved her anyway.

As Robinson sorted through those pieces of little airplanes at his suburban Winston-Salem home one recent Saturday morning, he also sorted through the pieces of his political career.

Anointed a rising star in the Republican Party by The Wall Street Journal and adopted as a protege by GOP stalwart Jack Kemp, Robinson seemed destined for the national stage. Now here he was, having just lost a City Council election to a relatively unknown newcomer in Winston-Salem.

County Commissioner Billy Yow, a well driller by trade, seems to be digging in following Democrat Carolyn Coleman's electon as chairwoman of the commissoners by an unusual coalition of Republicans and Democrats.

Yow tells News & Record staff writer Nate DeGraff that his fellow Republicans, Steve Arnold, Linda Shaw and Trudy Wade, "sold out" by supporting Coleman.

"History was made last night," Yow told Nate Friday, "when the board went more liberal than they ever did before."

Say again, Billy?

I don't doubt for a moment that Arnold, who became vice chairman out of the deal, is as conservative as ever.

If anything, the Republicans may have strengthened their voice on the board, sharing leadership and getting concessions from the Democrats for some board and commission appointments. By not simply sitting by and pouting while the 6-5 Democratic majority steamrolled one decision after another, the Republicans may have increased their leverage, at least a little.

And that's better than simply being there to oppose anything and everything the Democrats do.

The commissioners realistically are going to differ on some issues. But as we have noted before, most of the issues the board routinely tackles -- waste disposal, school funding, jail overcrowding, economic development and the like -- have nothing to do with partisan philosophy, which tends to diverge more on social and cultural issues.

The dynamic of "Majority rules, minority makes life as miserable as it can for the majority," is shopworn, childish and not in any voter's best interest.

Kudos to Shaw, Arnold and Wade for behaving like adults.

Yes, that's me you may have seen tooling around in a gleaming new SUV.

No, it isn't mine. It's a loaner. My car is being repaired.

No, nobody's run into me again, and no, I haven't run into anyone. My alternator died.

Yes, the SUV is sleek and roomy and has heated leather seats and headlights that swivel to follow the path of the road.

Yes, it rides as smoothly as a car.

But no, I haven't changed my mind about SUVs. I still see them as wasteful, gas-gulping indulgences with twice as much room as I typically need.

However, yes, I could change my mind if manufacturers make them more energy-efficient and take fuller advantage of hybrid technology.

And no, I won't change my mind until then, even if they make SUV's that wash themselves and take out the trash and walk the dog.

Air marshals fatally shot a man who claimed (falsely, it turns out) to have a bomb in his backpack at Miami International Airport.

Any definitive judgments at this point are premature. We don't know all the details.

But in a day and age of shoe bombers and suicide bombers and humans who are capable of killing coldly and indiscriminately, any person who claims to have a bomb and then refuses to surrender to authoriites leaves them little choice.

At this point, it appears to be a tragedy, yes. But a nearly impossible one to avoid.

What if the man had been telling the truth amd the marshals hesitated?

We'd be second-guessing their slow reactionas, I'd wager.

As local real estate pillager Bill Agapion attempts to squeeze $1.65 million (well above its market value) from the city in a crass maneuver to exploit the Cedar Street neighborhood, I got to wondering: How does this man sleep at night?

Does he do anything for a reason other than making more money?

How much more money does he need?

Would it do him any harm to do at least one selfless thing in his life with all the property and big bucks he hoards?

How would he like to be remembered when he's gone?

If there is such a thing as karma he's running up one helluva bill (no pun intended).

My colleague, Doug Clark, blogged the other day about Ann Coulter, freedom of speech and, in a flashback to his days as an undergrad at Carolina, the erstwhile Pied Piper of the KKK, David Duke.

Doug laments that a group of protesting students prevented Duke from speaking in 1974 at UNC's Memorial Hall. I was one of them.

Here is my account of that night, reprinted from a column I wrote in 2002:

NOW AND THEN: On doubting Thomas and dissing Duke

In the spring of my sophomore year, David Duke, Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, coolly approached the podium in Memorial Hall at UNC Chapel Hill.

He was a handsome, charismatic man, in much the same way that John Edwards is today -- dapper in a three-piece suit and impeccably groomed. It was as if the Klan suddenly had discovered Madison Avenue.

A sustained chorus of raucous jeers erupted from a group of mostly African American protesters. As he began to speak, the jeers grew louder, among them a familiar refrain, "Go to hell, Duke."

When the sound technician increased the volume on Duke's microphone, the hecklers followed suit.

I should know. I was one of them.

As it turned out, Duke did have his say that night, but not in Memorial Hall. After several vain attempts to outshout his critics, Duke retreated to a room in the Morehead Planetarium, where he addressed a smaller, more cordial audience. There, he likened black people to chimpanzees, assailed affirmative action and repeated his intentions to recruit on campus for the KKK.

The incident reverberated around the state and the country. Had we infringed on Duke's right to free speech? Had we squelched the free exchange of ideas on, of all places, a college campus, where healthy debate especially should thrive?

Flash forward to the spring of 2002. Five black professors in the UNC School of Law announced that they would boycott a campus appearance by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. In a written statement they explained that Thomas "is not just another Supreme Court justice with whom we disagree. Since Justice Thomas's appointment to the Court, replacing Justice Thurgood Marshall, he has provided the critical fifth vote in a number of decisions that have set back the quest for racial equality and social justice in this country."

Editorialists railed at the irony that in a school that fosters intellectual debate, faculty would pass up that opportunity on the basis that they disagree with an individual.

These two events made me think about then and now, and whether a common thread connects them over the span of nearly three decades.

As someone whose profession is opinions and whose mission is, in large part, to provide a forum for diverse views, I have wondered over the years if I did the right thing back in 1974.

I wondered about it then, too.

President Bush has cultivated an image as a rock-solid, straight-shooting, plain-spoken, no-BS kind of guy. Some people actually buy it, too.

Yet that would presume courage, conviction and the willingness to face dissenting points of view. At least it would presume the gumption occasionally to speak to the public. No, I mean the real public, not hand-picked audiences against carefully orchestrated backdrops.

But Bush again preached to the choir this week when he spoke at a plant in Kernersville. Other stops on his Soft-Touch Tour have included frequent visits to the Heritage Foundation, where Bush almost is considered royalty. And to military troops, who are compelled to be respectful (in one case in Iraq, soldiers' questions were scripted).

And his invitation-only speech two years ago at his invitation-only speech at High Point University, which had all the trappings of a pep rally. I managed to get into that one as a credentialed journalist.

Based on his shaky appearance under less controlled conditions at the 2004 Unity conference of minority journalists in Washington, I suspect the president would do better in such cases if he were more practiced at it.

He'd probably benefit from hearing more dissenting opinions in private, too.

"Better call Tyrone," neo-soul princess Erykah Badu once cooed in a sassy put-down of a lowdown boyfriend.

More than eight years after that song, I'm not so sure I can even find anybody named Tyrone.

I certainly can't in my classes at N.C. A&T, where another semester has ended and one of my most trusted barometers of pop culture, the names in my roll book, have taken a sharp turn for the conservative.
By that I mean somewhere in the safe haven between down-home, Southern-fried appellations such as Willie, Tyrone and Bubba and new age confections such as Shaniqua and Lakeisha.

And not a moment too soon. People were starting to name their precious loved ones after trees, colognes and Japanese automobiles. (I don't mean any harm, but any man who names his baby Lexus ought to have to pay a fine and perform at least a day of community service.)

From the "Sign of the Apocalypse" files: CBS is planning a new sitcom starring the Rev. Al Sharpton.

David Jameson announced Monday that he is stepping down as president of the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce effective Jan. 31.

A gregarious Teddy bear of a man with an unbuttoned-at-the-collar sense of humor, Jameson came to a chamber that was in disarray six years ago.

There were financial problems, membership problems and credibility problems.

The chamber is on much more solid footing now.

Jameson rightly said in a press release that he is proud of his accomplishments, among them:

1. the financial turnaround of the organization;
2. the increased emphasis on "small business and public affairs";
3. the increased focus on regionalism;
4. the intitation of the planned "Heart of the Triad" shared-tax-district.

One key to Jameson's effectiveness is his personality. He is down-to-earth, engaging, anything but a stuffed shirt in a business suit.

That said, the still relatively new Greensboro Partnership will change the dynamic of local economic development leadership. That change continued with Jameson's departure.

How the chamber fits into that new landscape will be interesting to see. But I'd expect the scope and nature of the Chamber presidency to change significantly now.

For all the tragedy and pain in his personal life, the late Richard Pryor was a comic genius.

In the coverage of Pryor's death, much of the attention has been focused on the edginess of his humor and his use of the n-word (until he abandoned it late in his career).

Both subjects are fair game. But Pryor's most important legacy is that he was funny and that behind much of his humor were messages that all people could relate to.

Few comics have been able to match his ability to make audiences laugh and think.

From Joe Morgenstern's Wall Street Journal (subscription required) review of the new movie version of "The Producers":

"The Producers" is nightmarish in its febrile way; a head-bangingly primitive version of an overrated Broadway show that grew out of a clumsy 1968 movie with an inflated reputation."

Guess he didn't like it.

There is a slightly tongue-in-cheek reference to County Commissioner Trudy Wade in my upcoming Sunday column.

This is a more serious appeal.

Wade, a Republican, has held off the declared winner of her seat, Democrat John Parks, for more than a year now.

She has spent tens of thousands of dollars challenging the counting of provisional ballots to give Parks the edge in a close race.

In what probably is the only unresolved 2004 political race in the nation, Wade keeps losing legal rounds. And she keeps on fighting --- and paying steep attorney's fees. You have to admire her resolve.

But truly, Trudy, this is getting old. It was getting old eight months ago.

In the latest development in this never-ending courtroom drama, a Superior Court judge declared John Parks the winner.

Wade will appeal to the state Court of Appeals anyway. And even though Parks could take the seat that is rightfully his at the commissioners' Jan. 19 meeting.

Let's be clear, Wade is a good commissioner. She works hard, studies issues and tries to do the right thing. Ironically, if she weren't spendng borrowed time on the board, she wouldn't have been part of a Republican-Democrat coalition that selected Democrat Carolyn Coleman as chairwoman and Republican Steve Arnold as vice chairman.

Some Republicans, inexplicably, have called Wade a traitor for that.

They can grouse if they want but this was a good thing, a healthy precedent for a fractured, frequently petty board. Given the same choice to make, I'm not sure Parks would have displayed the same kind of courage and independence.

In fact, in the News & Record editorial board's estimation, Wade simply is a better choice than Parks. Accordingly, the newspaper endorsed her over Parks -- and others.

Wade can run again and she can win.

But Parks won this one. And Wade lost. And it is past time for her to go.

Since it's the season for miracles, quotes I'd love to hear in the coming New Year, if not sooner:

• "Ya know, I've made more money than I know what to do with, and between you, me and the lamppost, not all of it came very honorably. So it's time I gave back to a community from which I've taken so much. So instead of wringing more cash I don't really need from the taxpayers, I've changed my mind. I'm gonna ask for a below-market price for the land the city wants to buy from me in the Cedar Street neighborhood. Heck, they can have it for free and I'll even throw in a million-dollar contribution to the Greensboro Housing Coalition. What am I gonna do when I'm dead and gone, take it with me?"
— Local businessman and landlord Bill Agapion

• "Bill, you've inspired me. St. James Homes should not have become what it is on my watch and I'm gonna do something about it. From here on, half of the revenue from every hot dog I sell goes to a fund for affordable housing."
— County Commissioner and landlord Skip Alston

"I'd like to thank the city for its willingness to be a partner in this project, which will take the number of downtown residents, and the rebirth of downtown, to unprecedented levels. I appreciate their courage, their vision and their belief in downtown Greensboro."
— Roy Carroll III, developer/owner of the newly revived old Wachovia building as shops, offices and residences.

"What he said."
— Developer Steve Jones, who with his brother Jim, is turning their old North State Chevrolet dealership into a mixed-use downtown development called Bellemeade Village, also with city help.

• "Enough is enough. I've fought the good fight. Now it's time to move on. I've been in John Parks' commissioner's seat for more than a year now. I had a point I wanted to make and I made it. Fair is fair and I need to step aside. I've been diligent and hard-working, but the voters have spoken, and I need to respect that."
— County Commissioner Trudy Wade

In the "Will They Ever Learn?" Department, BusinessWeek Online reports that a senior fellow at the Libertarian Cato Institute took brazen liberties with journalism ethics and wrote a number of columns under the think tank's auspices for hire.

Doug Bandow stepped down last week, BusinessWeek reports, "after admitting that he had accepted payments from indicted Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff for writing op-ed articles favorable to the positions of some of Abramoff's clients."

Making matters worse, Bandow also writes a syndicated column for Copley News Service that appears in hundreds of newspapers. He told BusinessWeek Online "that he had accepted money from Abramoff for writing between 12 and 24 articles over a period of years, beginning in the mid '90s."

"It was a lapse of judgment on my part, and I take full responsibility for it," Bandow said in an epic understatement.

You'd think the Armstrong Williams (et al) Pontificate for Pay scandal would have taught Bandow something. Guess not.

Expected (at least in this corner) to take more time to consider its options, the Greensboro City Council chose not to wait.

By a vote of 8-1 Tuesday night, the council killed a proposal in which it would have played the middle man in a real estate deal with a controversial landlord.

After impassioned pleas from affordable housing advocates to dis the deal, the council chose not to pay $1.65 million to Bill Agapion for property in the Cedar Street neighborhood. The council in turn would have sold the land to a private developer at a loss. (It would have recouped its investment over time in increased property tax revenue.)

But the council obviously felt that Agapion's long record as a negligent, unrepentant and -- according to his severest critics -- uncaring landlord outweighed the potential benefits of giving the modest, struggling downtown neighborhood a desperately needed shot in the arm.

Agapion has had repeated run-ins with city inspectors; even the property in question contains apartments that have logged more than 5,000 housing code violations since 1983.

The council's stance is understandable. No one wants to reward Agapion for bad behavior. Yet it leaves the biggest question unanswered: What now?

If the fate of the Cedar Street neighborhood is left strictly to market forces, residents' concerns that affordable housing be a part of the mix is highly unlikely. Developers stand to make more money on higher-end housing.

Or nothing could happen.

Council members pledged to work with residents to study how other cities have made mixed-income housing developments work, but that doesn't mean the effort would translate into something tangible.

Another question asked over and over Tuesday night and still unanswered: Is affordable housing downtown even realistic?

Finally, what is it about the city's housing code enforcement that allows Agapion to thumb his nose at them all the way to the bank?

It's as if Agapion is playing his own personal game of Monopoly with Greensboro real estate and no matter how much the city tries to tighten the rules, he keeps passing "Go" and collecting cash.

The Guilford County school board's decision to walk away from the High Point high school reassignment plan was troubling in more wayas than one.

Beyond stirring doubts about the board's resolve on tough decisions, the change of heart also probably foreshadows a bigger-picture retreat from socio-economic diversity.

That's what "neighborhood schools" will mean in practice.

So we're going boldly where we have been before. Rev up the time machine, folks. Ninety-fifty-four here we come.

In case you missed this notice in the printed newspaper:

CALL FOR COLUMNISTS
The News & Record editorial department is searching for columnists for its new Community Contributors Board. We’re especially interested in finding people from various ethnic backgrounds, ages, professions and political philosophies to write about local issues.

You won't get paid for writing, but you — and your ideas — will get exposure.

Interested? You can apply by sending a letter telling us about yourself, a sample column of no more than 650 words and three column ideas to: opinion@news-record.com or to Columnists, Editorial Dept., 200 E. Market St., Greensboro, N.C. 27401.

The deadline is Jan. 23.