North Carolina Now; North Carolina Now Episode from 11/30/1994

Or D. Tonight North Carolina's most famous Twitter. Good evening everyone I'm wondering Kate Spade and I'm here in the heart to have you with us this evening.

Last night the House of Representatives voted on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Well tonight we will talk with Congressman Cass Ballenger of the 10th District via satellite from Washington D.C. And he'll talk with us about his vote yesterday on the Get treaty and how he thinks get will affect our state's businesses and our workers. That's right and we'll introduce you to North Carolina now as low fat cooking expert Don Mauer who will cook up a delicious healthy meal for the holidays. But first we'll have the second part of Billy Barnes story on eating and trying the original Siamese twins who lived for many years right here in North Carolina. You know this is really interesting. Last night we presented the first half of the intriguing tale of these two famous 19th century North Carolinians. Now here is Billy Barnes with the rest of their amazing story. The original Siamese twins joined forever by a five inch cord of flesh. They were teenagers when they were taken from Bangkok to the United States where they were exhibited in a thousand cities and towns.

Then at age 28 They settled in western North Carolina. The twins married and ran prosperous farms and fathered 21 children. But the civil war ruined them financially and at the age of 57 they reluctantly returned to show business their final tour took the twins to England Germany and Russia. But they were all in for a real money problems ailing health and a lifetime of togetherness took their toll. Ang and Chang quarreled in victory and no wonder. Imagine a life in which you never had a single moment of solitude. Every time you need to take a walk eat a snack read a book drive into town or go to the bathroom. You have to negotiate the move with someone and then take that someone with you. Ang and Chang decided they wanted to be separated. They consulted with eminent surgeons in Europe and America but none of these physicians was willing to risk his reputation by causing the death of the world famous Siamese twins

on a transatlantic steamer bound for New York City. Chang suffered a stroke. They hurried home to their families but Chang's health continued to fail. On a cold night in January 1874 as the twins lay in this bed. Chang died and anger followed soon thereafter and autopsy by a group of eminent Philadelphia physicians found that Chang had died of stroke and ng had simply been frightened to death. These two mysterious people lie in a giant coffin in this cemetery at White Plains Baptist Church. Their wives insisted that the doctors not sever the cord during autopsy and so they are buried here forever together in death as in life. To date there have been well over a thousand descendants of Ang and Chang Bunker where my daddy told me when they were coming here they were stow away and they pushed two banks together to find sleep and that was

where they got their name bunker was asked to balance its route to get there and they said what are we gonna do with all the bunkers. I think they're nice but this is not my that it don't make a grandson George Ashby was president of the Union Pacific Railroad in the 1940s. Ten Yuri's a great granddaughter is director of the Mount Airy Arts Council. Great Grandson Milton Haynes is manager and part owner of Valentine's cafeteria long a Raleigh landmark of good eating the artifacts of the twins lives together have been passed down through the generations. A specially built chair for to a prized hunting rifle. The old travel diary in the North Carolina collection and the ANG Bunker family Bible theirs was not an easy life to the world as they were a weird natural phenomenon. But to their neighbors in Surrey County they were a bright hardworking churchgoing payor who

made their own way in the world with seldom a complaint. There is a story of courage and perseverance. They lived and died by an old admonition. What God has joined together let no man put asunder. And we'd like to thank the North Carolina collection that you and C. Chapel Hill's Wilson library but their assistance with the story and a special thanks to the dozens of Eng and Chang descendants whose cooperation was so vital to producers Billy Barnes and Erika stark in bringing you this story. Well eating healthy during the holidays is always a challenge. Now we know that health professionals say we should cut down on fat but hey it's the holidays. That's right. Food columnist and TV personality Don Mauer knows that you can eat lean and love it. He lost 100 pounds using his own low fat recipes and he's kept it off for four years now.

Dimes in the now kitchen with a delicious low fat recipe for the holidays. It's for skillet brownies. When I weighed over 300 pounds. I love chocolate brownies. Big time. More than four years ago I lost more than 100 pounds and I've kept the weight off by controlling the fat in the foods that I eat. I couldn't give up brownies forever though. So I created a special brownie with less than 2 grams of fat preserving and less than 10 percent of the calories coming from fat. I may have reduced the fat but the flavor of my brownies remains rich and chocolate. Let me show you how I make my North Carolina skillet brownies. Now the first thing that you're going to do is take the wrecking your oven down to the bottom third set your oven to 350 and while the ants preheating you get out your 12 inch iron skillet just like this one I've had this one for 20 years. Spray it with a little bit of vegetable oil spray just a little bit. You want to do it lightly use one of those brownies to release when you're done set that aside. Next thing you're going to do is chop the nuts now when I made brownies brownies brownies without pecans in him my brownies used to have one cup of pecans. I've cut it down to three tablespoons that's what I've got in this little mini shop.

This is going to do a great thing. Couple of hops of this. OK and these are chopped. Take a look this is what you want to do you want to chop them finally because you're not doing very many of them you're only doing three tables with them but you want to be chopped this finely. OK the next thing that you're going to do is sift together all the dry ingredients and one of those right ingredients you're going to need one cup all purpose flour not self-rising just straight all purpose flour. You need one half cup of cocoa powder and you're going to need half a teaspoon of salt. Now sift that all together. You caught me. I got my strainer out here while in college and have much money for cooking utensils so I used to use a strainer for both straining and sifting it works like a charm here. You want to sift this together because really what you're doing is combining the ingredients and you want to sift this together twice more after this. OK. Set down on the side. Now the next thing that you're going to do is start to work with the one ingredient in the bottom of my mixing bowl. I've got six egg whites now that's replacing tree whole like there used to be four whole eggs in this six egg whites replace three whole eggs.

I had one whole egg because that you know it's going to add some great flavor and texture to this. Now with this together going to what you want to do is get this nice and light you know with this probably for about 20 seconds. You're going to be some period of this you want to. Lightness of sun because there's nothing to raise us up there's no baking soda or baking powder in this. Those air bubbles are showing that you're breathing air into the air. OK now the next thing that you want to add to this is the sugar and this is two cups of granulated sugar with they have together and you want to see you'll see this is going to dissolve into these egg whites with that one whole egg and it's going to be nice and white. So sister and with their together until the sugar dissolves and it's really whiteness if you can see the color has changed here dramatically. Now the next thing that you're going to add is a half a cup of applesauce and you go a applesauce in my brownies. Well this is replacing a stick of butter. Let's take a butter has almost eight hundred calories in it. And this apple sauce has only

50 calories and it has no fat whatsoever. You need one and a half teaspoons of real vanilla extract stir and with this together just about 10 seconds here take a look at this you can see you just want that apple sauce mixed in there briefly just like that. OK that's perfect. Now add the dry ingredients that's the cocoa powder and the flour and the salt starts stirring that together. It's going to take a minute here not a literal minute but you take a moment here until that starts to go into the solution because it seems like flour and water and this mixture act like oil and water but they don't stir and sift OK you can see what's happening here. This is starting to go from being a powder to looking like chocolate see what's happening. You don't want to over mix this but you do want to make sure that it's evenly moistened. All right that's perfect. Stop right there. Get out your iron skillet. Pour this in.

Great. It looks wonderful. If you want to spread it out to the sides make sure this is nice and even then take your chopped nuts sprinkles all the way around the edge like this nice and evenly you want to make sure everybody gets plenty of pecans because everybody loves becomes I do to pop that into your pretty heated oven for 30 minutes 30 minutes long enough to press the center at the end of 30 minutes if it springs back lightly. It's done that take a look at what you got. This is wonderful. Is this not gorgeous. Now you divide this into 16 pieces and no one will ever feel cheated that they got one sixteenth of this. Isn't this terrific. I got to take a bite of this is great. This is incredible. I can't believe it's so low in fat. You know you really Kim have your cake and eat it too. I got to have another bite of this this is great this

is wonderful. You've got to give this a try to get Don's recipe for skillet brownies send a self-addressed stamped envelope to recipes North Carolina now. Box 1 4 9 0 0 RTP NC 2 7 7 0 9. Dan points out that each serving of his North Carolina skillet brownies has less than two grams of fat and only about a hundred and fifty calories. And he also suggests that for very special occasions you might add a scoop of fat free vanilla yogurt or fat free vanilla ice cream to top off your brownies. You know as there are no Brownies left for us at the very A1. Well coming up Michel Louis has the statewide news summary and a little later I'll speak with Congressman Castle Ballenger via satellite from Washington. Please don't go away now. Good

evening I'm Michel Louis with a review of the events making news around the world Carolina North Carolina congressman Charlie Rose will not be the new minority leader in the U.S. House Rose had hoped to be elected to the post in the new Republican dominated Congress but lost in today's voting to Missouri Congressman Dick Gephardt. Gephardt received 150 votes from his colleagues in the house. Rose received only 58 Gephardt has been serving as House majority leader. Rose had hoped that his having distanced himself from President Clinton would persuade his fellow congressmen to support him over Gephardt who has been fairly closely aligned with the president. North Carolina's 12 member delegation split almost right down the middle as the U.S. House voted to approve the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade get passed

easily on a two hundred eighty eight to one hundred forty six vote last night. North Carolina's congressmen and women voted 7 to 5 in favor of get five Democrats. Eva Clayton Martin Lancaster Steve Neal David Price and Tim Valentine and two Republicans Cass Ballenger and Alex McMillan voted for the International Trade Agreement. Three Democrats bill Hafner Charlie Rose and Mel Watt along with two Republicans Howard Coble and Charles Taylor opposed it. Supporters of Get believe the treaty will cut terrorists by 38 percent worldwide the equivalent of a 744 billion dollar global tax cut. Opponents argue that it will create more competition for American workers. The Senate votes on get tomorrow. The current options being considered to reform health care in North Carolina carry too high a price tag. That's the conclusion of the state's health planning commission which has been trying to choose between three different options for providing health care coverage to all North Carolinians. The commission's Finance Committee has found that all three options are too

expensive. Those options include employer mandates laws requiring all citizens to carry insurance and a state financed universal coverage program. But even the cheapest of those options employer mandates would cost more than a billion dollars. Instead the commission is now considering starting with smaller steps to cover the estimated 900 20000 North Carolinians who don't have health insurance. The chief recommendation is to expand Medicaid coverage to all pregnant women children teenagers and elderly and disabled people whose incomes are at less than twice the official poverty level. The Finance Committee is expected to provide the cost estimates for this new proposal when the commission meets next month. A new report out today recommends easing the tax burden on North Carolina's working poor. The report titled Working for a living in North Carolina was compiled by the North Carolina budget and tax center. The report recommends that the General Assembly make three changes in the state's tax system which would benefit working families who are at or near the poverty

line. Those recommendations include eliminating the state sales tax on food and non prescription drugs. Implementing a state earned income tax credit for working families and adjusting the standard deduction to be more in line with the cost of living increases increasing the deduction would get more poor working families off the tax rolls. According to the study 27 percent of full time workers in the state have incomes below the federal poverty level. The state's funding mechanism for special education needs to be changed. That's the conclusion of a report to be released tomorrow by a consultant for the state's Department of Public Instruction. The report faults the state's funding system which provides no extra money to a student's school unless that student is found to have a recognized disability according to the report. Many students who simply need remedial work are being labeled as handicapped and placed in special education programs in order to get the remedial help they need. The study also calls for an additional one hundred seventy three million dollars to cover the cost of

educating children with special needs. State schools superintendent Bob Etheridge is requesting another 25 million dollars from the next session of the General Assembly. But he says he's not sure how that request will fare in the new Republican dominated legislature. Today it was clear and sunny across most of the state highs when the 50s and 60s almost everywhere tonight skies will be clear statewide temperatures will fall into the low 20s in the mountains and will be in the mid 20s to low 30s everywhere else. Tomorrow it will be sunny across the entire state although it'll be a bit cooler than today. Highs will be in the mid 50s almost everywhere. Charlotte based First Union Bank is entering into a partnership with a group of black churches to improve economic development and predominantly minority neighborhoods in Durham Raleigh and six other southern cities. This is the first time the Congress of National

Black Churches has formed a partnership with a bank. The group represents eight denominations with 19 million members clergy members and bank managers and each city will need to decide specifically what needs to be done to improve each community economically. Likely projects will include loans to church members or groups for housing programs. Small businesses or commercial development there also may be credit counseling programs aimed at helping church members learn more about personal finance. The other cities in the program are Columbia South Carolina Washington D.C. Richmond Virginia Jacksonville Florida and Atlanta and Savannah Georgia. The stock market was mixed today. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished with a fractional gain to close at thirty seven thirty nine point twenty three issues lead decliners by six to five as 300 million shares were traded. The Standard Poor's 500 index was down one and a half points and the Nasdaq composite index lost over a point. And now for some stocks of North Carolina interest

you. Tonight we'll talk with a Republican congressman from our state who voted for the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. And yesterday's House vote representative Cass Ballenger from North Carolina's 10th District is talking to us via satellite from Washington

D.C. and he'll answer our questions about get and other issues. So happy to have you with us this evening. Oh you're going to be with you again. Well the GATT treaty did pass in the House last night you voted for it. What do you think it's going to do for North Carolina businesses and our workers. Well I'll tell you the truth. We have the lowest tariffs in the world right now which means most anybody that wants to ship goods in to us at the present time can. But at the present time there's a hundred one thousand other nations that have tariff walls that keep our goods from going to them. And so in my considered opinion the vote was to remove the tariffs that are keeping us from shipping goods into India or Bangladesh or or Europe in general. So I would think it would increase. Many of the jobs in North Carolina. Well 10000 very big in your district and there seems to be a bit of confusion a disagreement about whether or not it's actually going to help the textile industry. What's your assessment.

Well what we did is we made an arrangement with the administration that in the future. Well it's first of all in the past they used the thing as to where the cloth was cut as the origination of any import so if it was cut in Hong Kong and then delivered into Red China to be soon it still said it came from Hong Kong. The arrangement with the administration was from now on wherever it's cut and so on is where it will be coming from. So that the rich Johnnies will no longer have the lock on the market that they had and this was almost the absolute necessity as far as the technical people were concerned to be able to say that they were no longer against it. That we got but there were other Republicans in your in the general area who also have big textile business is an area who voted against it so they obviously feel that this isn't a good deal did you try to convince Congressman Taylor in COBOL. Yeah. You know we talk together quite often. And their interest I think was

more in the line of the World Trade Organization and how much control it would have over what goes on in our country. And I think Senator Dole and Congressman Gingrich both had arrangements with the administration to make sure that if it doesn't work we can get out and get out fairly fast so I think we're well protected there. They didn't think the protection was quite good enough. Well the only way they get was able to pass was with votes from both Democrats and Republicans there was an alliance formed. Do you think something like this might be possible in the future perhaps on health care. I would think that's probably one of the good choice I would think that very definitely as long as the administration doesn't try to go for some monstrous health care bill that the majority of us feel that you know I mean incremental changes should be made in our health care plans. Do you think that there will be any major reform in 95 and that is what you mean by Major I think there will be a reform of health care reform bill this year. We are going to try to do anything wild and

wooly the way they did I think there are a whole bunch of things that people would accept like no preexisting conditions and make portable and cut down some of the paperwork and maybe have a little bit of tort reform and that would be it. We leave it alone to see how long we can wait another couple years and see if it needs changing. So moderate change will be the way to form those alliances. That's what that's what I think and that's the way that I think the administration accepts that they can get Republican help as long as we need to stay the moderate let's put it. All right well a recent CBS poll show that Americans view Republicans in a better light than Democrats about 59 to 33 percent. Now do you think that it's going to move Democrats to the center to the right is because of the way voters see them. I would say that it may not move the whole Congress but there are certain members on the Democrat side that kind of vote with us a lot anyhow. And I think that if the president wants to get packages through that he could take some credit for he's going to have to move to the more

moderate or center. And obviously that will make some of his more left leaning friends a little upset. All right we're talking about President Clinton. That same CBS poll that I mentioned see if that Americans had a very negative reaction to the comments that Jesse Helms made last week saying that President Clinton need a bodyguard if you came to our North Carolina. How well do you think our senior senator is going to make the transition from a political naysayer to be a responsible leader and chairman of one of the Senate's most powerful committees. Well it's not all that powerful but it does have a high image. I would say that Senator Helms was living in the days when we were minority and we used to be able to say anything we wanted to and he forgot now that he's in a position of authority and probably you will be a little bit more protective in the words that he uses in the statements that he makes. I've been noted in the past to make some pretty well statements myself but when we were no longer

we were not in a position to make anything occur in the news media didn't care. And I know the news media this time didn't even report that the reporter said he said this in jest. In other words that statement was made with tongue in cheek or a smile on his face but it never got to the national news media that way. Well let's talk a little bit about your future you say. You've been known to make comments but you now serve on the Education Labor and Foreign Relations Committee do you think you're going to stay on that are any plans for anything else. No I actually plan to stay on those two interest you know my wife and I've been building hospitals in Central America for about 25 years. And as a businessman one of the few manufacturers real manufacturers who serves in Congress. I would like to be involved in the Education and Labor atmosphere. All right so well we only have a couple of seconds left here so you of course know what's going on here in North Carolina you served in our legislature

for our many years on both the House and Senate sat in the convent so I know on the future of our North Carolina legislature now that the Republicans have a good control in the house. Yeah I'd like to give them the same advice that they probably give me. We made some promises before we were elected they did too. And I think both of us are going to have to deliver for the American people are going to be discovered disgusted with us and maybe throw us out two years. Well I hope they work hard. Well thank you so much Representative Ballenger for talking with us and I hope you feel better soon. Yes I do too. Thank you. You're welcome. We want to keep in touch with you. So simply call our viewer comment line at 9 1 9 5 4 9 7 8 0 8 or write us at P.O. Box 1 4 9 0 0 RTP NC 2 7 7 0 9. You can fax a message to 9 1 9 5 4 9 7 0 4 3. Or try our Internet address UN

CTV at 8 0 0 0 dot com and please give us a daytime phone number in case we need to follow up. Well join us tomorrow for North Carolina now when our guest will be actor Pat Hingle he played Commissioner Gordon in the Batman movies I'm sure you're going to want to meet him. I can't wait for that. And Kelly McHenry will take us into the world of virtual reality. And Elizabeth Hardy will bring us the heart wrenching story of grandparents who not only lose their children to AIDS but now must take care of the grandchildren who also have the deadly virus. And that's tomorrow night in North Carolina now we'll see you back here at 7:30 tomorrow. But that is all for now Mary Lou her chart and I drink a specially good night you know.