Who runs the U.S.? We’ve always known that money and politics go hand in hand, but these days that seems to be truer than ever. Do what you want at the voting booth, but it’s Wall Street bankers and corporate bigwigs who pull the strings that make our politicians move this way or that way.

When I read about Wicked Weed Brewing getting bought by AB InBev (formerly Budweiser) — one of the world’s largest brewing conglomerates — my instinct was to be incensed at the decision.

For years, this newspaper has been a very vocal advocate of the homegrown, buy local movement whose roots reach deep into these mountains. As late as the 1950s there were pockets of Appalachia where people still grew, raised, hunted and made a great deal of what they needed to survive. Nowhere else in this country is the resolve to be independent from governmental authority and corporate marketers worn so easily and proudly by so many.

At some point in the future, here’s something you might never hear again: “I was born in Franklin.”

Look no further than this Macon County town if you want stare right in the face of the agonizing state of the health care crisis in this country. Due strictly to bottom-line concerns, officials who run Angel Medical Center say come July the hospital will no longer deliver babies. Too expensive, too much of a losing proposition.

“The ONLY thing is, we don’t have to go all the way to Adam’s Creek,” my wife Lori said. We had just shut down the motor after passing the last marker leading out of Broad Creek and into the Pamlico Sound. The sails were up and closely hauled as we headed into a 10-knot wind.

Sorry Haywood County citizens and others in the western part of the state, the most grassroots and local ballots you cast just don’t matter. But you should be fine with that, because surely you realize that those men and women whom you voted on to your county board and school board, they just aren’t as smart and astute as your state legislators. From on high atop their lofty perches in Raleigh, Reps. Michele Presnell and Mike Clampitt know what is best. 

So shut up, get in line behind these wise leaders, and we’ll make Haywood County and the rest of west great again.

North Carolina and its citizens are better off with HB2’s repeal. It’s a giant step forward, and despite criticism from the right and the left, I am glad we have at least moved the ball closer to the endzone.

HB2 was an embarrassment, a bad joke whose punchlines kept North Carolina in the crosshairs of pundits and comedians. The bill was morally wrong.

Where’s Mark?

As in Rep. Mark Meadows, our Republican congressman who reportedly represents the rural and economically challenged residents of mountainous Western North Carolina? Where is he, literally, after his prominent role in the healthcare drama that played out last week in our nation’s capital (otherwise known as the swamp).

Well, if you pay attention to his press office and watch night-time cable news (I’m guilty of both), you’ll find that he’s spent the weeks leading up to the momentous healthcare vote last Friday making the rounds of the various talk shows. Meadows was seemingly basking in the limelight provided by his leadership of the Freedom Caucus, the renegade GOP faction that foiled the President Trump and Rep. Paul Ryan healthcare initiative that was to replace Obamacare.

It was July or August of 1999, best I remember, and the Swain County Commissioners at that time were meeting in a cramped boardroom in the Administration Building. I’m not sure if anyone from a newspaper other than The Smoky Mountain Times covered these meetings, but we had published the first issue of our upstart newspaper in June of that year. As its only reporter at that time, I was finally getting around to one of Swain’s meetings.

I was a little out of sorts as I wandered in unannounced. I found an empty chair against the wall that was so close you could have touched the commissioners. They all greeted me as I told them who I was and what I was there for.

Since it is, after all, the Haywood County School Board, I can only hope they’ve learned a lesson.

Last week it was announced that a settlement has been agreed upon in the lawsuit filed by Waynesville attorney Mark Melrose against the school board for the way it closed Central Elementary School. The settlement mandated that neither party discuss the particulars, but here’s part of the 57-word statement that was released:

The school board “does not admit it violated the law or its own policies, but agrees it would have been preferable if circumstances had permitted to have provided more advanced public notice of its intention to vote on January 11, 2016, to study the possible closure of Central Elementary School.”

He’s a respected member of the community, a physician, and we ran into each other unexpectedly. 

“I really have to say I like your opinion pieces. I think we’re on different sides as far as politics, but I like what you say about civil discourse and talking to each other. Besides, for me, politics is way down here,” he said, holding his hand down close to his knee, palm downward. “There are so many other more important things in life.”