John, real quick, this is going to be a long one. So before I get too far into it: today is our final end-of-month deadline before the primary, and we’re hoping to raise another $5,000 before midnight tonight. That will give us the boost we need heading into the weekend to finish out strong.
Now that’s out of the way, let’s get down to brass tacks: have you ever wondered why today is February 29th?
It may not surprise you to know that answering that question requires going all the way back to the Romans, whose calendar formed the basis for our own. Thousands of years ago, when Rome was just a small city, they came up with a twelve-month calendar that tried to strike a balance between tracking the annual cycle of the Sun and the monthly phases of the Moon.
There was just one problem: the calendar only came out to 355 days long. Of course, when you’re only operating on the scale of a city, solving that issue is easy. Every so often, whenever their calendar got out of alignment, the Roman priests would add an extra month, called “intercalaris”, to restore balance—and they stuck it in after February, because originally, February was the last month of the year.
(Thinking too hard about the Romans gives me a headache sometimes.)
For a while, that system worked—but as Rome’s territory grew and became more unstable, it became harder and harder to keep up with. Eventually, by the middle of the first century BCE, the Roman calendar got totally and irreparably out of whack, and it became clear that if Rome was going to be a proper country, they needed a proper, standardized calendar.
Enter Julius Caesar, who decided in 46 BCE as the head priest in Rome that it was time to end the calendar madness. He gathered together the brightest minds of the day, who calculated out that the year is actually 365.25 days long. Their solution? Add ten more days to the year, distributed across the different months, and then have one leap day every four years (still tacked onto the end of February), on a predictable schedule so that everyone could keep track.
They had to add three extra months to the year 46 BCE to get back on track, but for over a thousand years, the new system worked great.
There was just one snag: the year is not 365.25 days long. It is, in fact, a little more like (but still not exactly) 365.2425 days long. You might not think that a tiny difference like that would matter much, and at first, you’d be right. It didn’t seem to. But when we’re talking on the scale of centuries, even a tiny difference—.0075 days a year—can add up in a big way.
By the 13th century, the day the calendar said that the Spring equinox ought to be on was already as much as seven or eight days out of alignment with reality. So, just like Julius Caesar before him, the head priest in Rome—by this point, we called him “the Pope”—gathered the brightest minds of the day and told them to come up with a solution. The result? Our modern Gregorian calendar, where century years—years divisible by one-hundred—are not leap years, unless they are also divisible by four-hundred, which is why 2000 was a leap year, but 2100 won’t be.
(Speaking of the year 2000, thank God we have computers to keep track of all this stuff for us now.)
Because here’s the thing—even the tiniest of changes can snowball into major problems. Even our modern calendar is very slightly off from reality, and in a few thousand years, we may need to course correct again. It reminds me of the way the GOP operates when they’re in power (bear with me here): short-sighted changes that seem easy in the now because their consequences don’t come home to roost for years to come.
Like here in NC. When I got to the legislature, interest rates were low, we had strong reserves of cash, and times were good. The GOP’s response? Cut taxes. Slash revenues. Spend the cash instead of using credit. On paper, it may not have looked like it made a huge difference at the time, but today we’re hurtling toward the edge of a fiscal cliff. We can’t pay our state employees well enough to keep positions filled, we can’t fund necessary infrastructure projects our communities need, and our cash reserves are drying up.
Well, like Julius Caesar and Pope Gregory before us, it may be time to put an end to that madness before we get completely out of sync. Fortunately, changing our government is a little easier than changing our calendar—all you have to do is show up and vote.
And today is our final end-of-month deadline before the primary. It's not a campaign finance reporting deadline, just an internal one, but even so, it still matters.
Hitting our benchmarks during these final few days will determine what kind of election day presence we can have—our last chance to get our message out before folks vote.
And with my opponent on the attack like I mentioned yesterday, we’re going to need the resources not only to spread our own message, but to combat his misinformation and negativity as well.
John, that’s why I’d love to raise another $5,000 before midnight tonight—we don't have much time left, but that'll give us the boost we need to take control of the narrative and head into election day on our terms. It's now or never if we want to be sure we’ll come out on top in this primary, so can I count you in to contribute whatever you can afford today?
