North Carolinians should be meeting the continual refusal by incumbent Rep. Sue Myrick to debate Congressional candidate Harry Taylor (D) with total disgust. After Taylor asked Myrick for a chance to appear together in late September, Myrick is just now getting around to blaming the economy and her husband’s upcoming spinal surgery for her refusal to “add anything new” to her schedule. Alright, so you’re husband is having a very serious surgery and that is fine and I hope everything goes well for him and he has a speedy recovery, but YOU ARE IN A CAMPAIGN RACE. It’s quite obvious that all Myrick wants to do is make a few appearances and hold her “telephone town meetings”, during which she can say whatever she wants to her listeners and not have to worry about differing opinions, ya know, like Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity. She then waits for Election Day for voters to hop in the booth and see a name they recognize and say to themselves “Well, North Carolina isn’t falling into apocalyptic chaos, and I know Sue Myrick so I’ll vote for her.”

Not that we’re all stupid but people tend to go for incumbents and it’s a fact. The thing is that people deserve to see what Taylor feels strongly about in comparison to what Myrick thinks. Putting an end to the policies that taint our international image, such as the war in Iraq, government wiretapping, U.S. torture tactics and tax cuts for billionaires and big oil.

For those who don’t know who Harry Taylor is or how he just seemed to pop up out of nowhere, he is a political activist from Charlotte who gained national attention when he stood up during a town hall meeting at CPCC and told George W. Bush, over the boos of naysayers, just how ashamed he was of his government, among other things.

\\\<\/param\>\\<\/param\>\\<\/param\>\\<\/embed\>\<\/object\>

I ran into Harry Taylor at CPCC Monday. He was making his rounds, speaking to students as they waited for the anticlimactic Beastie Boys, Santogold and Sheryl Crow appearance in the courtyard of CPCC's Central Campus. Taylor was checking out the scene as he prepared to cross the street and accept an endorsement from Humpy Wheeler. He told me about the first time he confronted Sue Myrick, in true Harry Taylor fashion, at a town hall meeting at Providence Day School during the summer of '03 in which Bush wanted to privatize Social Security. Taylor says he attempted to ask Myrick whether she expected the same man who lied to the world to put us in a war in Iraq to craft an honest Social Security plan. Myrick stopped him in mid-question and said, "We're not here to talk about that," turned her back and walked to the other side of the stage. "That experience made me want to go to talk to Bush. I expected the same thing to happen when I went to tell Bush how I felt. Incredibly, he was gracious enough to say, 'Let him speak,' but Myrick wouldn't let me speak," said Taylor. Now five years later, nothing has changed with Myrick's attitude.