Author

Posted by : Friday, March 7, 2014 2 Comments In Uncategorized

1-7-13-NCPW-CARTOONThis morning’s Winston-Salem Journal lays it out pretty clearly in an editorial on the matter of funding for the University of North Carolina. The paper says it is time for Gov. McCrory to stand up to his budget director and conservative political moneybags, Art Pope (who has launched a new and public effort to forestall needed growth in university spending).

This is from the editorial:

“Pope, who has his own conservative political constituency, has long been a UNC critic. The UNC operations request alone is for 4.6 percent. And while Pope had instructed state agencies to keep increase requests to 2 percent or less, the university’s response must be considered in historical context.

Over the last five years, the UNC operational budget has been cut by hundreds of millions of dollars. UNC officials have found efficiencies to cover some of those lost funds, but they’ve also weakened the education they deliver.

Additionally, students have been hit with big tuition and fee increases while state funding has dropped. All of this in a state where the constitution guarantees a university education that is as close to free as is ‘practicable’…. Read More

Posted by : Thursday, March 6, 2014 3 Comments In Uncategorized

Martin NesbittThere’s truly dreadful news tonight that one of the ablest members of the North Carolina General Assembly, Senator Martin Nesbitt, has died just days after announcing that he was seriously ill. It’s a grave blow to the state and we are all worse off for his passing.

There will be time in the days ahead for tributes to this wonderfully intelligent, caring and good-hearted man, but if you don’t know that much about him and would like to get a feel for who he was, go to the search function on this website and just type in his name. Upon doing so, you’ll find a host of articles in which he was featured — usually as a rare voice of reason in the state’s increasingly troubled policy debates in recent years.

When I did that, I was happy to find this post I wrote back in 2007 soon after this blog was first launched. In addition to featuring the now youthful looking photo of the senator that you see here, the post was a tribute to his willingness to stand up and speak the truth on an unpopular issue. I remember hearing at the time that he’d seen the post and appreciated it, so I offer it again tonight as one small and very fond remembrance:

Martin Nesbitt: Keeping us coming back

Martin Nesbitt: Keeping us coming back Read More

Posted by : Thursday, March 6, 2014 Leave a comment In Uncategorized

Pat McCrory 4Let’s hope Gov. Pat McCrory’s latest statements on teacher pay (namely that he wants a “long-term strategy” that will lead to pay hikes for all teachers in both K-12 and higher education) reflect an attitude and policy shift for the administration rather than just another example of the governor talking out of both sides of his mouth and telling an audience what it wants to hear in measured and backtrackable terms.

It’s got to be one or the other, however, because it certainly isn’t what McCrory and his allies have been fighting for over the last several years. Indeed, it’s one of the biggest and most under-reported scandals of present-day North Carolina politics that the governor and conservative legislative leaders have repeatedly been allowed by a distracted news media to lament the fact that teacher salaries have been essentially frozen for years.

Earth to Governor McCrory, Speaker Tillis and Senate President Berger: Read More

Posted by : Wednesday, March 5, 2014 Leave a comment In Uncategorized

Hog industryCoal ash isn’t the only pollutant wreaking havoc in North Carolina’s waterways these days; the enormous problems posed by industrial hog production are back in the news. As noted in this space last week, there’s a stomach-turning crisis underway as you read this in involving a porcine epidemic diarrhea (PED) virus outbreak in North Carolina.

This morning’s Fayetteville Observer weighs in on the subject with an editorial bearing the marvelously understated headline “Our view: Dead pigs, water may be an unhealthy mix.” As the editorial notes (after describing in grim detail what’s been going on) the recent coal ash disaster caused by lax regulation offers little hope that regulators are taking all necessary steps: Read More

Posted by : Wednesday, March 5, 2014 3 Comments In Uncategorized

Aldona WosAn editorial in this morning’s Winston-Salem Journal pulls few punches in characterizing the latest incident of political cronyism in Gov. Pat McCrory’s embattled Department of Health and Human Services and demanding a full accounting. That incident, of course (as reported and expanded upon here and here earlier this week by N.C. Policy Watch) was the department’s bestowal of $310,000 in pay to a “contractor” whose permanent job just happens to be working for the private company owned by the husband of DHHS Secretary Aldona Wos (and whose main work product during the period in question seems to have been to recommend cutting a number of safety net programs). This is from the editorial:

“The latest manifestation of Wos’ closed-government philosophy arose in news reports about Joe Hauck. Wos hired him as a private consultant and paid $310,000 for 11 months of work. But so far, it’s hard to tell what he did for that money. Read More

12 3 Next

Support Our Work

NC Policy Watch on Twitter

Copyright 2014 | The Progressive Pulse