For several years, John Davis has been saying that the General Assembly is becoming less friendly to business.

Scars fleck my flesh. Many were inflicted by folly, like the now nearly invisible one at the corner of my right eye, etched when I toppled into a toy box as a toddler.

It is an article of faith in Wake County, where I live, that the Triangle’s economic vitality is due in no small measure to its progressive, nationally lauded school system.

Four years ago — when $300 golf rounds, $500 hotel rooms and $2,000 business suits rarely raised an eyebrow — Chris Knott fidgeted in his chair when industry confidants suggested he raise the prices of the shirts, sweaters, trousers and other accouterments in his Peter Millar line of clothing.

With prominence comes privilege, often in the guise of access to powerful people.

In “Up on Cripple Creek,” The Band had another kind of distilled corn in mind — and maybe down the gullet — when it sang of “a drunkard’s dream if I ever did see one.”

Mac Williams admits it grudgingly — after being prodded a few times. Yes, the president of the Alamance County Area Chamber of Commerce concedes, it hurt when Burlington-based Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings decided to put a billing center in Greensboro.

Recession’s gloom might be lifting for some private-sector workers, but the downturn’s doldrums likely will linger at least another year for state employees.

It wasn’t as bad as Peeks Creek, where in 2004 a landslide killed five people, but when mud gushed down the mountain below a Maggie Valley amusement park recently, the disaster potential was greater.

He never hears the sirens or sees the black smoke billowing above the tangled metal.