One line in a recent post on the News & Observer’s Wake Ed Blog ought to wake up anybody who isn’t already worried about what the new majority on the Wake County Board of Education has planned.
The post announces that Called2Action, which it describes as a [...]
Here’s the lead of a recent story in USA Today that pretty much sums our priorities these days.
Amid pay freezes for many employees and proposed tuition increases, the University of Texas on Monday made Mack Brown by far the highest paid coach in college football history.
The raise takes [...]
It has never been easy keeping up with all the lunacies of the right, but during the health care debate it has become downright impossible.
One of the Republican talking points about the latest health care reform proposal is that it slashes Medicare benefits. It’s not true of [...]
The News & Observer reports this morning on the letter that Wake County School Board Chair Ron Margiotta sent to magnet principals assuring them that the new board has no plans to abolish the magnet program.
As Rob noted yesterday on the Pulse, the fears of magnet supporters are hardly unjustified. [...]
The nation’s big banks and financial institutions, the ones we bailed out with our money, are busier than ever making sure that Congress doesn’t pass any regulations to crack down on their greedy and irresponsible behavior.
Check out the latest Newsweek for the most recent report. The [...]
Here is a number that the members of the legislative oversight committee on mental health and developmental disabilities might to want review at their meeting this week.
More than half the people who leave state mental hospitals are not contacted at all in the crucial first week after their [...]
President Obama is now considering new moves to create jobs, so expect the naysayers on the right to demand again that government stay out of their holy market(and let people suffer).
They said the same thing about the stimulus package passed earlier this year. But the Center on [...]
Here is some reading for the new members of the Wake County Board of Education who ignored the democratic process in their first meeting this week in their rush to dismantle the economic diversity policy used in student assignment.
The Washington Monthly features the Wake County schools [...]
In case you missed it, a Monday New York Times story makes it clear that we are still a long way from the post-racial society that many want to believe is already here.
The story cited the latest numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that the unemployment rate [...]
It was just a matter of time. The massive test prep industry has reached into child care centers and playgrounds as parents in New York are now enrolling their three-and-four-year olds in boot camp tutoring sessions to help them do better on the tests used to decide [...]
The UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees recently voted to raise undergraduate tuition for in-state students by 5.2 percent next year and fees by 5.5 percent.
The increase comes in the middle of the worst recession in 75 years. Families are struggling to pay the bills and keep their houses. [...]
You knew it was only a matter of time.
After claiming that President Obama’s health care reform would kill our grandmothers, devastate Medicare and turn the United States into Lenin’s Soviet Union, reform opponents now say that the plan is also a ploy to take away everybody’s guns.
House Minority Leader Paul Stam believes that political parties exist to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars to candidates to skirt the $4,000 limit on contributions from individuals and PACs.
Stam made the comments in a weekend story in the Asheville Citizen-Times about the prospects for further [...]
Governor Beverly Perdue seems to be trying to have it both ways on the provisions in the State Health Plan that subject state employees to random mouth swabs to verify they are not smoking and charging workers more if their weight is deemed out of line.
Here are a few of the buttons you can click on the website of the North Carolina Exploitation Lottery.
“Rick Flair Wooooooo! Scratch-off Game: More fun than a figure-four leglock”
“Don’t miss your chance to play poker with the pros.”
“Carolina Cash 5; Is today your day?”
“Jingle Ol’ bucks:Perfect [...]
Forbes has the details of a new study by the United Health Foundation ranking the states on the health of their populations. Vermont tops the list.
Eight of the ten lowest-ranking states are in the South. North Carolina comes in at 37.
Crooks and Liars points [...]
A recent post on the Political Animal, the blog of the Washington Monthly, cites a story in the Boston Review that explains just how horribly the Bush Administration treated many veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The story is long, but well worth the time to [...]
The folks at the News & Observer covering Wake County schools apparently don’t have access to their own publication’s archives.
Monday’s front page story about the possible end of magnet schools quotes Ron Margiotta, who is likely to be elected the new board chair, saying that he [...]
One tiresome refrain from corporate lobbyists and the folks on Right Wing Avenue is that the state’s corporate tax rate and overall tax structure are so out of line with other states that it makes it extremely difficult to convince businesses to come here.
They like to cite the lower corporate tax rates [...]
Apparently you are against business in North Carolina if you want to reduce the influence of big money in municipal elections, allow local school boards to decide when the school year begins, and make people wait to join private clubs that serve alcohol.
Those are some of the [...]
USA Today has an interesting look at the priorities of colleges and universities these days.
Fifty-six football coaches now earn more than $1 million a year, 25 make more than $2 million, and three more than $4 million.
And that may not be the most disturbing part of [...]
Finally an answer to why Wall Street financial companies are getting the swine flu vaccine before most of the rest of the country.
It is the same answer to why Goldman Sachs and several other financial firms that received federal bailout money are paying huge bonuses to [...]
Stories about the fallout from the recent Wake County school board elections continue, but many of them are leaving out vital pieces of information about the new board members.
A Sunday N&O story quoted parents worried that the new majority on the school board will end magnet schools [...]
You might want to think twice before enrolling in an online for-profit college like the University of Phoenix.
A joint investigation by the public radio program Marketplace and ProPublica found that the online university continues to make questionable promises to prospective students and engage in other enrollment practices that prompted [...]
One final but important note about Tuesday’s elections that has largely been ignored by the state’s media.
The voters in Lee County approved a 1/4 cent increase in the county sales tax to renovate Lee County High School. And they did it despite the usual overheated rhetoric [...]
All was hardly gloom and doom for progressives in Tuesday’s election.  Anthony Foxx was elected mayor of Charlotte, the first Democrat to win the job in 22 years and he did it by defeating a protege of Republican Mayor and gubernatorial wannabe Pat McCory.
Democrats gained a seat [...]
The outrage over  Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina’s latest effort to oppose meaningful health care reform is growing.
The Pitt County Board of Commissioners voted Monday to send a letter to Blue Cross to protest the company’s decision to send postage-paid cards to customers addressed to Senator Kay [...]
Here’s some ridiculous rhetoric to start your week from a voice we thankfully haven’t heard much from recently, Pat Roberston.
Roberston was beside himself last week on the 700 Club after President Obama signed the Matthew Shephard Hate Crimes Prevention Act into law.
Apparently, any measure to protect [...]
In a Sanford Herald report about the upcoming sales tax referendum in Lee County, Dallas Woodhouse with Americans for the Prosperous explains that the money his group is spending to fight the tax comes from the national office and that’s why the contributors are not listed.
…we [...]
Swab mania in the workplace continues. North Carolina state employees will be subjected to random mouth swabs at their jobs by the State Health Plan to check on their smoking status.
North Carolina is the only state in the country to use the invasive procedure as an insurance policy enforcement measure.
And now the [...]
Much of the right-wing press jumping to Rush Limbaugh’s defense after the NFL decided not to allow Limbaugh to pursue efforts to buy the St. Lous Rams claim that all the allegations about Limbaugh’s racist comments were unfounded, made up by critics.
In response, the group Fairness and Accuracy [...]
Senate Minority Leader Phil Berger said this week that any overhaul of the state tax system ought to include some arbitrary limits on the state budget, like tying spending to inflation or population growth.
That’s the principle behind the misnamed Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) that is high [...]
The controversy continues about a recent court ruling that requires the state to free 20 inmates convicted of violent crimes and sentenced to life in the early 1970s.
Politicians are scrambling to use the case for political gain, each trying to be more outraged than the next. There is [...]
The Hill newspaper in Washington reports that Democrats plan to attack Senator Richard Burr for his apparent hypocrisy on the federal stimulus package.
Burr appeared in Bethlehem in Alexander County last week to present a $2 million check from the federal government to the local fire department to build a new [...]
The majority of Americans do not want Congress to abandon the public option as part of the final health care reform package.
The latest Washington Post/NBC News poll finds that 57 percent of people support the public option while 40 percent oppose it.
Here is your Monday morning reason to be cynical, courtesy of Glenn Greenwald at Salon.
Greenwald details many of the former employees of Goldman Sachs who now work in the Obama Administration, including last week’s appointment of a company vice-president as the chief operating officer of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s [...]
Wake County Sheriff Donnie Harrison was featured in a story in the L.A. Times this week for his department’s ongoing participation in the federal 287(g) program that allows it to play an aggressive role in enforcing federal immigration laws.
Wake County is one of eight law enforcement [...]
The latest results of the 4th and eighth grade math tests by the National Assessment of Education Progress are worth a look.
North Carolina students scored above the national average in both grades on the test that conservatives like to use to claim that our schools are failing.
The snapshots [...]
If you are looking for a detailed critque of the health care reform bill that passed the Senate Finance Committee Tuesday, check out the statement from Robert Greenstein, Executive Directorof the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Greenstein calls the Senate bill a vast improvement over [...]
You knew it was just a matter of time. The big insurance companies are now publicly on the warpath against key components of health care reform after months of public assurances that they supported the bulk of Preisdent Obama’s proposals.
The insurance industry released a bogus study this week [...]
It looks like the folks in the Commonwealth of Virginia haven’t been reading much about the scandal surrounding Mary Easley’s 88 percent pay hike from N.C. State in 2005, which brought her annual salary to $170,000.
The Virginian-Pilot reports that the College of William and Mary pays current Republican state Senator [...]
Small businesses and self-employed entrepreneurs in North Carolina spent almost $4 billion on heath care premiums in 2008 and will spend $9 billion a year in 2018Â without comprehensive health care reform, according to Families USA.
The group has developed fact sheets on health care and small [...]
Coming soon to a university near you—the latest efforts in the religious right’s crusade to discredit evolution.
Insider Higher Education reports that the group Living Waters plans to distribute copies of Origin of the Species on 100 college campuses this fall with a special introduction that blasts Darwin [...]
Thirty-five North Carolina state lawmakers are among a group of more than 1,000 state legislators from all 50 states that are asking Congress to pass meaningful health care reform that includes a public option.
The Progressive States Network put the group together that includes 25 members of the North Carolina [...]
Here’s this week’s dose of right-wing insanity, courtesy of Think Progress. It comes from last weekend’s “How to Take Back America Conference” in Washington.
One of the workshops was “How to recognize living under Nazis & Communists,” led by conservative speaker Kitty Werthmann. She listed the ways that [...]
Here’s something about undocumented immigrants that hasn’t been reported very often. They are far less likely to use emergency room services than U.S. citizens.Â
That actually ought be a cause for concern, but also is another example of the distortions in the debate about immigrants and health care reform. [...]
A new report from the group Demos raises questions about our real committment to making sure students from poor and working class families have an opportunity for a postsecondary education.Â
The study finds that the cost of going to college has increased 400 percent in the last 25 years, four [...]
The New York Times reports this morning on the latest strategy of the opponents of meaningful health care reform, the invocation of states rights.
The Times reports that lawmakers in 10 states have introduced constitutional amendments prohibiting the federal government from mandating health insurance coverage.
The American Legislative Exchange Council, the right-wing organization of [...]
A lot of the claims about the problems with health care from the free-market worshippers are based on the “moral hazard” doctrine, that people will receive all kinds of health care they don’t need if they aren’t forced to pay for it–sort of a polite way of saving that [...]
One thing didn’t change much in 2008, one of the most tumultuous economic years since the depression—CEO salaries.
The Corporate Library survey of 2,700 public companies found that median CEO compensation fell .08 percent in 2008. The group points out that
the link between CEO pay and firm [...]
The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has just overhauled their website and it’s worth a look. It includes a detailed breakdown of every state’s gun laws and shows North Carolina has a lot of work to do.
One of the many things missing from the state’s [...]
The move in Congress to respond to the allegations against ACORN could have some interesting consequences.
The folks at the Sunlight Foundation report that the legislation designed to cut off all federal funding of ACORN would ban any group from receiving public money that is under [...]
Congresswoman Sue Myrick gave the GOP’s weekly radio address Saturday and I am still trying to figure it out.
Myrick said that she might not have survived her battle with breast cancer under a ”government-run” health care system, saying her diagnosis was complicated and involved many tests [...]
The growing acceptance of light rail transit systems across the country is driving the right-wing crowd crazy, spawning all sorts of pseudo studies and outrage. They fought fiercely against legislation passed by the General Assembly this summmer to give local governments in North Carolina a way [...]
Here’s a reason not to lose hope in the health care debate when you hear all the absurd claims that patients will lose their choice of doctor and supporters of reform are compared to Hitler. It’s the same things opponents of the Canadian health care system [...]
This year’s Riverfest celebration in downtown Wilmington the first weekend in October will feature something new along with the usual music, crafts, entertainment, and food offered at the annual festival—right-wing politics.
Scheduled to appear on the main stage in Riverfront Park Saturday from 11:00 to 2:00 is [...]
The latest take on why economic diversity in schools is so important comes from Richard Kahlenburg of the Century Foundation at the American Prospect. Kahlenburg, who made presentations to groups in the Triangle earlier this year, argues persuasively that separate really cannot be equal.
Any effort [...]
Here’s a novel thought. Let’s ask the people who know the most about health care and how the health care system actually works every day what they think about reform and providing a public plan for people who want to buy into it.
As NPR reports, that’s [...]
Lost in much of the hubub about the “you lie” outburst of Rep. Joe Wilson during President Obama’s address to Congress last week was that the issue Wilson was losing his cool about, undocumented immigrants receiving health care, has long been settled, except in the irrational bunkers [...]
The former insurance company executive who President Obama quoted in his speech Wednesday night was Wendell Potter, a former top official at Cigna Corp. Obama didn’t mention by Potter by name, but did cite Potter’s testimony before Congress about the industry’s practices, including his statement that
To [...]
If you are wondering about the letter from the late Senator Ted Kennedy that President Obama quoted from in his speech last night, Talking Points Memo has the text. Here’s one paragraph.
There will be struggles - there always have been - and they are already [...]
Here are a couple of paragraphs of the text from the president’s health care reform speech to Congress.
Millions of Americans are just a pink slip away from losing their health insurance and one serious illness away from losing all their savings. Millions more are locked into the [...]
In case you woke up Labor Day hoping that much of the summer was a weird dream and that nobody really was outraged that a president was telling kids to stay in school and that people don’t really think that the Democrats health care reform plan [...]
Ahh, Labor Day weekend, beach trips, hanging out with friends, cookouts, and if you live in Louisiana an incentive to buy a few more handguns.
Today is the beginning of the state’s first “Second Amendment Weekend,” three days in which there is no sales tax on anything that [...]
A conservative Raleigh radio talk show host was bantering on the air Wednesday afternoon with the news anchor who had just ended his report with a story about the federal stimulus package, which the host promptly ridiculed as a waste of money.
A Raleigh right-wing think tanker [...]
In light of the N.C. Supreme Court’s recent ruling that state law unfairly kept a convicted felon from buying a gun, it’s worth remembering a few facts about guns in North Carolina.
Every six days a North Carolina child seventeen or younger is killed by a gun in [...]
More absurd talk this week of “death panels” and claims that Obama’s health care reform proposals would limit your choice of doctors, increase cost for everybody, etc. No surprise there. The zealots have said all that and worse in the last few months.
But the source of [...]
It’s not exactly like we need another reason to be cynical about how Washington really works and how tough it is to have your voice heard unless you are well-heeled or well-connected, but we have one today anyway.
The Sunlight Foundation spotlights a new report by [...]
Whether you are a fan of the SATs or not, the latest test results show frustratingly little progress in closing the achievement gap by race, ethnicity, or family income.
The reading scores of students in families who earn less than $60,000 a year stayed the same last year while [...]
If you think the relationship between state lawmakers and leaders of the university system is a little too cozy, check out what is happening in Virginia.
A powerful Republican member of the House of Delegates who was instrumental in the funding of the Center for Teacher Quality and [...]
Many folks on the Right are outraged that people consider some of their behavior at town hall meetings unacceptable. Apparently, carrying racist signs or pictures of President Obama as Hilter are just understandable parts of the debate.
But what’s even more difficult to understand is the relative [...]
Here’s a poll that the Americans for the Prosperous and the people holding signs comparing Obama to Hilter havent’ talked about much.
People in countries with universal coverage are more satisfied with their health care system than people in countries without it.
The Gallup survey also found [...]
The latest survey from the folks at Public Policy Polling came up with some interesting findings and some results that might make your head explode.
President Obama’s national approval rating actually increased by two percentage points from its May level of 50 percent, while 42 percent [...]
Author and Century Foundation Fellow Richard Kahlenberg has a column at American Prospect that explains once again why diversity is so important in public education, particularly economic diversity.Â
The short answer is that all kids do better in school, which the folks crusading to dismantle the [...]
North Carolina Senator Richard Burr is everywhere these days, gearing up for his bid for reelection next year. But it is far from clear where he stands on health care reform, including the common-sense proposal by President Obama to give consumers the choice of buying into [...]
The latest column by Paul Krugman in the New York Times puts a lot of things in perspective about the current health care debate, including all the absurd claims about the horrors of the systems in countries that have some form of universal care.
Krugman says [...]
In case you haven’t had enough, here are some more dire warnings from Right Wing Avenue about the end of Western civilization as we know it.
The bill opens the door and invites the entrance into the political field of a power so vast, so powerful as [...]
Just when you thought things couldn’t get any more absurd, Congressman Patrick McHenry tells a town hall meeting that he is not sure that President Obama is a U.S. citizen.
This comes on the heels of claims by Congresswoman Virginia Foxx that health care reform will [...]
Here’s part of a response from a member of Congress from North Carolina to a constituent asking for support of the federal Dream Act, a bipartisan proposal to allow undocumented students pay in-state tuition at public universities. Nine states, including Texas already allow kids the chance to [...]
Economist Dean Baker has a link to an NPR story about the Canadian health care system at his blog Beat the Press. And shockingly, it turns out that Canadians don’t leave cancer patients to die, as the folks at Americans for the Prosperous would [...]
It has taken a while, but the ridiculous claims about Obama’s health care reform proposals are finally starting offend mainstream conservatives.
New York Times columnist David Brooks said on Meet the Press this weekend that not only is what Rush Limbaugh’s been saying insane (like that’s [...]
The ongoing PBS series about the history of comedy, Make ‘Em Laugh, is really a history of the United States in the last century.
The latest episode focused on satire and included a segment on Mad Magazine and its spoofs of popular songs of the time that also had [...]
In case you missed it, here’s another item for the list of absurd and dangerous reactions to President Obama’s health care reform proposals.
Texas Governor Rick Perry said recently that he might try to use the state’s rights clause in the constitution to protect the people [...]
The $12 million taxpayer giveway to the ahletic booster clubs at UNC schools is safe for another year, but the fatcats using their money and influence to keep it on the books are already getting ready for next year’s battle.
Citizens for Higher Education, the PAC created [...]
Here a few numbers to consider about the state budget that is likely to pass this week. The funding for Health and Human Services will be $1.01 billion less than in the budget lawmakers passed last summer.
Education overall will receive $256 million less. The funding for [...]
Dome has the details of the latest budget news. Senate Majority Leader Tony Rand and Appropriations Chair Linda Garrou talked with reporters about an hour ago.
Budget writers are waiting on a couple of special provisions and then the printing of the budget will begin. More details about what will [...]
I don’t know about you, but the shrill insanity of much of the opposition to Obama’s health care reform ideas is now almost impossible to listen to. The most common and absurd talking point is some version of  ”government will come between you and your doctor.”
At a [...]
Remember the tax agreement between House and Senate leaders last week that took the most regressive pieces of the original House and Senate proposals, the one-cent increase in the sales tax and the small increases on cigarette and alcohol taxes, while rejecting calls to close major [...]
The latest state rankings of state per-pupil spending in public schools are out from the U.SÂ Census Bureau and North Carolina is 44th, at $7,883.
The Lockeheads don’t seem to care, claiming that money doesn’t matter and citing the fact that D.C schools spend more than North [...]
The vast majority of leaders in health care delivery and policy believe consumers should have a choice of public and private plans, according to the latest Health Care Opinion Leaders Survey from The Commonwealth Fund.
The annual survey polls experts in a wide range of heath care [...]
No need for all this health care debate in Washington and stop worrying about the 50 million people in the country who don’t have health care coverage, 1.5 million of them in North Carolina.
Turns out there’s really no problem at all, according to Congresswoman Virginia [...]
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who appears to be trying to restore his appeal as a possible Republican presidential candidate, is traveling around his state criticizing the federal government for spending too much money—as he is posing for pictures handing out federal Recovery Act checks to local governments.
The people in North Carolina continue to be the focus of all sorts of national attention, and not all of it is good.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is targeting North Carolina and four other states in a new national ad campaign designed to mislead us into opposiing any public [...]
