The money is left over from the federal Help America Vote Act that was passed after the election debacle in Florida in 2000 in which the courts had to decide who was president, George W. Bush or Al Gore.

However, the General Assembly effectively froze the money by cutting the state Board of Elections budget. Federal guidelines require North Carolina to come up with approximately $664,000 in matching funds in order to get the $4 million released. The state cannot spend the $4 million on anything other than elections, so if the money is not used it must be surrendered to the federal government..

A letter pleading with the General Assembly to appropriate the $664,000 so the state can claim the $4 million was sent to legislative leaders from 85 members of local boards of elections.

In part, the letter stated, We expect a large voter turnout, especially in the fall, and many counties will be holding elections with new district lines, split precincts, and other changes that complicate voter education and administration.

In addition, many counties face very tight budgets and need assistance to provide adequate Early Voting facilities to relieve the pressure of long lines on Election Day. According to the State Board of Elections, the HAVA Title II funds can be used for (a) poll worker training and technical support, (b) licenses, maintenance and testing of voting equipment, and (c) support for additional Early Voting sites.

As board of elections members from across the state, we urge you to find a way to release the HAVA funds.

Thats the rub: Finding a way to come up with the $664,000 to get the federal money. The legislature cut many programs in coping with a budget shortfall that has plagued North Carolina for several years. Without new revenue or skimming from other funding areas in the state budget, the money might not be available.

Lawmakers are reluctant to engage in more budget reductions. A means of obtaining the necessary revenue would need to be in place before committing to an expenditure the General Assembly deliberately omitted from the budget. State officials and legislators knew of the HAVA dilemma, and freezing the money was preferable to giving it back to Washington.

Now, elections officials are pressing for the funds, saying many local boards need more money to conduct elections in accordance with the law. Some predict a Florida-style mess in November if the federal money isnt distributed this year.

So far, NC Rep. Thom Tillis, speaker of the House, and NC Sen. Phil Berger, Senate president pro-tem, have had little to say about the issue. Lawmakers will be back in Raleigh next week, but no legislative action of any kind is anticipated. The brief return is to prepare for the formal session that convenes in April.

In the meantime, elections officials say some counties will be strapped to conduct legal elections. They contend that the counties themselves will have to come up with funding to appropriately operated elections and maintain voting machines. Statewide, voting machine maintenance is a $3.2 million expenditure by itself, officials say.

So, North Carolina has a General Assembly committed to cutting government spending to balance the state budget, and elections officials contending proper elections cant be conducted without another $664,000 to obtain release of the federal money.

The quality and legality of North Carolinas elections must not be compromised. The legislature should address the issue and make a case for getting the money or explain why it cant.

Who signed the letter?

Signatories to the letter asking for release of the HAVA money include:

–Karl W. Lenz, Alexander County Board of Elections

–Trossie Wall Jr., David Campbell and Eugenie B. Fein, Burke County Board of Elections

–Fred R. Piercy, Don Hamby and Houston Groome, Caldwell County Board of Elections

–Barry R. Cheney and Karen Hoyle, Catawba County Board of Elections

–Bobby D. Richardson, Charles E. Cook and Suanne Sellers, Lincoln County Board of Elections

Pawngo.com was given a citation from the city for commercial dumping.

Todd Hills, CEO of the company, said in a statement to the Boston Globe that he thought Boston fans might at least get a laugh out of it. He added the company respects Welker and the Patriots.

Welker led the NFL with 122 receptions this year, but his season was marred when he dropped a crucial pass with four minutes left in Sunday nights loss to the New York Giants. The Pats lost the Super Bowl, 21-17.

Whenever South Korea asks the media to attend a photo op showing its soldiers running through the snow or firing some tanks or landing on a beach, a few days of critical statements and stories will soon follow from North Korea’s state media.

Twice a year, in the late winter and late summer, the US and South Korea hold major training exercises in South Korea. And the same pattern follows in Pyongyang’s propaganda machine.

On Friday, the joint United Nations Command, Combined Forces Command and US Forces Korea formally announced the upcoming Foal Eagle and Key Resolve exercises.

Foal Eagle is a series of training exercises involving about 11,000 US troops with tens of thousands of South Koreans at different bases around the South during the months of March and April. Key Resolve is a two-week exercise in early March that gives practice to troops and commanders involved in logistics, communications and planning.

Right on schedule, North Korea’s Korea Central News Agency on Saturday issued a commentary calling Key Resolve “unpardonable grave military provocation.”

“It is as clear as noonday that the exercises will deteriorate the critical inter-Korean relations and drive the tension of the Korean Peninsula to the brink of war,” KCNA said.

Rodung Shinmun, the North’s biggest newspaper, jumped into the fray on Monday and added what has become an obligatory shot at South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.

“The prevailing situation indicates that a war may break out any moment on the Korean Peninsula due to the reckless war hysteria kicked up by the Lee Myung Bak group of traitors in league with foreign forces,” the newspaper said.

One difference in the North’s criticism is that KCNA also invoked the recent death of Kim Jong Il, saying the exercises are “more intolerable” when North Koreans “are still mourning over the great loss to the nation.”

Some North Korea watchers and politicians in South Korea who advocate more engagement with Pyongyang had suggested that South Korea and the US postpone or downsize the exercises due as a gesture of good will to Kim Jong Eun after Kim Jong Il’s death. There are no signs that was seriously considered, however.

In instances where your display is frozen or blank, or if your system is not accepting input from keyboards, being able to remotely log in and at least run a shutdown command to avoid a hard reset is a beneficial option to have.

Apple makes setting up SSH easy and convenient by just enabling the service in the Sharing system preferences. But even with this ease, sometimes establishing a basic connection with SSH may fail.

There are a number of reasons why an SSH connection may not work properly, especially if you are connecting between two different networks where hardware firewalls and routing might need to be contended with; however, there also might be instances where failures can happen when you have a basic setup of two systems on the same network.

Recently I ran into such a situation, where my
Mac running OS X Lion froze when waking from sleep, showing the log-in prompt but the cursor was locked in place. While the log-in screen was frozen and not accepting input, the system was issuing error sounds in response to key presses, indicating the OS was functioning fine under the frozen screen.

In this situation, though a hard reset would be one course of action, the computer had SSH enabled so using the Terminal command shutdown -r now would have provided a safer and softer restart; however, the connection failed every time claiming an authentication error, even when supplied with proper credentials for an administrative user. In such a situation, people might be a bit perplexed as to why the system could establish a proper connection but not authenticate properly.

LITTLE ROCK — Gov. Mike Beebe’s office said today that funding has been found to restore 15 firefighter jobs at the state Forestry Commission.

Beebe will direct the state Agriculture Department to reallocate $550,000 annually from its budget to the Forestry Commission, according to the governor’s office.

The commission laid off 34 people last month — another two agreed to retire — because of a $4 million shortfall in the agency’s budget. The layoffs included 14 firefighter jobs, raising concerns about the commission’s ability to carry out its mission of protecting and preserving the state’s forests.

Legislators last week recommended restoring 20 jobs at the agency but did not recommend a funding source.

The funding shift announced Wednesday will allow the restoration of 15 firefighter jobs starting Feb. 21, Beebe’s office said. The positions will be in Bradley, Columbia, Conway, Drew, Fulton, Grant, Hempstead, Ouachita Saline, Sevier and Union counties.

House Speaker Robert S. Moore Jr., D-Arkansas City, said he and Rep. Bobby Pierce, D-Sheridan, brought the idea to Beebe after studying the Agriculture Department’s budget. Legislators on both sides of the political aisle have been working diligently to find a funding source, he said.

Moore said that over the past several years the Agriculture Department has ended the fiscal year with an average of $750,000 in excess money that has been turned back to cities and counties.

“Scrutiny of their budget (suggests) that the level of funding will provide sufficient moneys to maintain those positions in the coming fiscal year and in the future,” Moore said.

Beebe has asked lawmakers to provide a $2.7 million supplemental appropriation to get the Forestry Commission through the end of the current fiscal year and pay back federal grant money that the agency improperly borrowed for ongoing expenses. Moore said that appropriation will still be necessary, adding that failing to approve it would lead to additional layoffs.

Sen. Missy Irvin, R-Mountain View, who co-chaired a subcommittee that came up with the recommendation of restoring 20 positions at the agency, said she was pleased with the governor’s response but hoped more could be done.

“I’d like to restore all 20 of those positions as we directed, and there still may be ongoing efforts to fund the remaining positions,” she said.

Moore said restoring 15 firefighter positions is a reasonable response.

“The people I’ve dealt with in leadership in the House and the Senate and the governor feel like this is a reasonable response and a reasonable solution to allow the Forestry Commission to meet its mission and provide the protection for Arkansas citizens that they expect and deserve,” Moore said.

Rep. Bryan King, R-Green Forest, who has been critical of the agency and the Beebe administration over the layoffs, said he was happy that some firefighter jobs would be restored but frustrated that the agency’s financial problems were not addressed sooner.

“This just proves the point that if the governor and (Forestry Commission Director) John Shannon would have come to the Legislature two years ago, we could have avoided all this,” he said.

King said he believes Shannon mismanaged the agency and should be removed.

“I don’t see how he stays in his job today,” he said.

Shannon did not immediately respond this afternoon to a phone message and email seeking comment.

Shannon serves at the pleasure of the governor. Beebe has said, when asked about Shannon’s future at the commission, that he is waiting to see the results of an audit of the agency’s finances.

A report on that audit is scheduled to be released to legislators on Friday.

The details of this newest collaboration are pretty thin at the moment as most of the information is coming from Bret Easton Ellis Twitter account. As you can see below, yesterday the author mentioned how he was hoping to cast porn actor James Deen in either of two male roles for an upcoming indie film hes writing for Schrader to direct. Only a day before, the author mentions Taxi Driver hinting that hes obviously got Schrader on his mind, and with Bait on the way it stands to reason that this next collaboration isnt just wishful thinking on Ellis part. Its also interesting that the writer would be watching the seminal Schrader-penned New York film while crafting his LA noir. And again, a few days before the Taxi Driver tweet, Ellis drops another hint at what to expect and why: hes thinking about James Deen to star. The porn actor has acknowledged all this on his own twitter account, while adding a simple Party in regards to the full frontal naked banging guys and girls.

So, I guess we have two upcoming Bret Easton Ellis/Paul Schrader collaborations to look forward to, even if neither of their (film) work of late has been anywhere near the best of their respective careers. Basically, its too bad neither seminal artist is still making seminal works. The problem with your work being labeled as capturing the zeitgeist means that, well, you are very susceptible to falling out of touch. The times they are a changin and not everyone can keep up, especially those so ingrained in the culture of a previous moment. In fact, its quite a shame that the pair didnt meet in their primes – Schrader making a name for himself from 1975 to 85 by writing Taxi Driver, Obsession and Raging Bull as well as directing Blue Collar, American Gigolo and Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters while Ellis wrote Less Than Zero, Rules of Attraction and American Psycho between 1985 and 91. Are you excited for these two artists working together…twice?