The New York Times has an interesting story this morning from Durham about the importance of the Earned Income Tax Credit as an anti-poverty program.

House Speaker Thom Tillis and the rest of the folks at the House Republican Caucus must be pretty confident these days, judging by the Caucus website.

The first thing you see on the site is a giant font is the statement “A FEATURE GRAPHIC.”  Click on the “Promises Made, Promises Kept” tab and it says “this is an example page,” with the following in italics.

Hi there! I’m a bike messenger by day, aspiring actor by night, and this is my blog. I live in Los Angeles, have a great dog named Jack, and I like piña coladas. (And gettin’ caught in the rain.)

Maybe it is a code that only Dallas Woodhouse understands.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Pat McCrory is doing all he can on the campaign trail not to veer away from his carefully scripted talking points and the media is generally letting him get away with it.

McCrory appeared at the Craven County GOP convention Saturday night and the coverage in the New Bern Sun Journal focused mainly on the tired slogans McCrory usually offers.

But the reporter did ask McCrory about the controversial move by the General Assembly to raise tolls on ferries that are an important part of the transportation system along the coast. Gov. Bev Perdue has refused to raise the tolls, infuriating Republican legislative leaders.

McCrory, not surprisingly refused to take a position, but then sort of took one anyway, getting caught up in his own rhetoric.

After his speech, McCrory was asked about his view on the ferry toll controversy. He didn’t offer a position, instead saying DOT’s use of state and federal money needs to be scrutinized.

“Before we institute any new fees, whether it be toll roads or ferry tolls, I need to do a total examination on exactly how DOT money is being spent,” he said. “It would inappropriate for me to determine that I need to get more money from one group of people before I determine are we spending the existing money the right way. And do we have efficiencies in place that can be implemented prior to asking for more money?”

Before we institute any new tolls?  The General Assembly already instituted new tolls, or tried to anyway. That must mean McCrory believes that lawmakers acted irresponsibly.

Diane Ravitch sums up the current state of the education debate perfectly in her latest piece in the New York Review of Books, a blistering critique of U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

We will someday view this era as one in which the nation turned its back on its public schools, its children, and its educators. We will wonder why so many journalists and policymakers rejected the nation’s obligation to support public education as a social responsibility and accepted the unrealistic, unsustainable promises of entrepreneurs and billionaires. And we will, with sorrow and regret, think of this as an era when an obsession with testing and data obliterated any concept or definition of good education. Some perhaps may recall this as a time when the nation forgot that education has a greater purpose than preparing our children to compete in the global economy.