Most Americans are not with the radical, conservative  extremists; that group’s current power and influence is hugely disproportionate to its actual support in the public. In North Carolina’s capital county, this reality was evidenced last fall in the school board elections. Pollster Tom Jensen also made this fact clear in his presentation at yesterday’s Crucial Conversation luncheon as well.

Another classic example can be seen in the North Carolina General Assembly, where the public’s unfocused “no on all incumbents” vote in 2010 allowed a group of far right ideologues to seize control and attempt to take the state down a road most voters don’t support. As Chris Fitzsimon noted at yesterday’s luncheon, voters didn’t like the way things were going in the state, but they sure as heck didn’t vote to defund and privatize public education or to do any of the other extreme items on the far right agenda that the legislature spent its time on in 2011.

In other words: Perk up people. The public isn’t for these crazy right-wing policies. Remember this as you approach the 2012 political year. 

U.S. Senator Kay Hagan is joining the growing outcry over Susan G. Komen for the Cure’s decision to end its grants to Planned Parenthood to fund breast exams.

Hagan issued the following statement Friday morning:

“I am deeply disappointed that Susan G. Komen for the Cure has pulled grant funding for preventive care, screenings, mammograms and education at Planned Parenthood clinics around the country.

More than 25,000 North Carolinians depend on Planned Parenthood for health and education services including breast health care that saves lives and saves families.

The women who depend on this care don’t deserve to be caught in the crossfire of politically motivated attacks. Unfortunately, most of us know at least one person whose life has been affected by breast cancer. We need to use every tool in the toolbox to fight this terrible disease.

I urge Susan G. Komen for the Cure to reconsider this decision for the sake of women’s health in North Carolina and around the country.”

Hagan along with more than two dozen U.S. Senators have urged the Komen charity to put women’s health before partisan politics.

Komen founder Nancy Brinker has insisted that the organization’s decision had nothing to do with abortion or politics.

While the line may sound good in a room full of potential volunteers and donors, Public Policy Polling director Tom Jensen says it may in fact signal a misstep by the Republican gubernatorial candidate.

Jensen notes that in “buddying himself up to” a conservative legislature with a 16% approval rating, McCrory may be creating more potential trouble for himself in the fall.

Jensen says while the former Charlotte mayor currently enjoys a lead over any of his potential Democratic opponents, 57% of voters polled said they were less likely to support McCrory knowing that he supported the Republican-led budget plan, which resulted in deep cuts to public education.

Pollster Tom Jensen runs down the latest poll numbers in North Carolina’s gubernatorial contest and the presidential race this weekend on News & Views with Chris Fitzsimon. For a preview of his radio interview, click below:

Click here to view the embedded video.

“In taking up this new conservative line, Romney and others are trashing an important part of Reagan’s legacy and a significant bipartisan innovation over the past few decades. The idea of supporting and rewarding work and responsibility met up with the recognition that people need supports—health care, child care, income security—in order to take full advantage of opportunities after they leave the ranks of the ‘very poor’….

Romney deserves mockery for his clumsy language. He deserves to be called out for the fact that he wouldn’t actually “repair” the safety net. But we should also recognize that there is an underlying vision to his mangled words, and that that vision marks a dramatic break from the conservative tradition. It’s also far out of step with what people need in order to participate in the modern American economy.”

 

According to Raleigh’s News & Observer, McCrory intends to make Pete Townshend’s primal scream against 20th Century militaristic neo-fascism, “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” his campaign theme song. This is just wrong. This is like George Will’s infamous and ignorant attempt to praise Bruce Spingsteen for “Born in the U.S.A.” It would be like Sarah Palin touting Green Day’s “American Idiot”: amazingly oblivious and absurdly ironic.

Interestingly, this is not the first time McCrory has tried this. During his last campaign for Guv, he showed up at a surreal Americans for the Prosperous rally in Raleigh and banged on the drums while AFP chief shouter Dallas Woodhouse screamed ”We will rock you.” As I noted at the time, it’s pretty darned bizarre to have a right-wing, homophobic crowd attempting to rock to the beat of a song made famous by the band Queen and its extravagantly gay front man, the late great Freddie Mercury (who died of AIDS).

Of course, the ultimate irony in all of this is that McCrory attempting to use a song in support of a campaign that is based on his complete embrace of a an extreme, right-wing General Assembly. Mind you, this is the same General Assembly that was elected only because of voter frustration in 2010 and not because voters actually support the extremist agenda it ended up pursuing. In fact, polls show that voters now reject the General Assebly’s extreme agenda and have good measure of “buyer’s remorse.’

In other words, if “Won’t Get Fooled Again” has any real applicability in the 2012 election, it’s quite possible it won’t be in the way that McCrory has in mind.   

But troubling facts still remain.

Here are just a few of the statistics plucked from the 145-page report being submitted to the Joint Legislative Education Oversight Committee.

• One out of every seven North Carolina high school students had a short-term suspension in the 2010-11 school year. The average length suspension was for 6 days.
• Boys were more than two times as likely to be suspended than girls, and black students had disproportionately high rates of suspension, followed by Native Americans.
• Two school districts – Robeson and Columbus – made up 60 percent of the 891 instances of corporal punishment statewide. (Only 17 school districts reported any instances of hitting as a form a discipline). Robeson had 40 percent of the total, and Columbus had  22 percent of instances of corporal punishment. (Most school districts have banned physically hitting children as acceptable forms of classroom punishment, according to a September report by N.C. Action for Children).
• The bulk of physical punishment was metered out in elementary schools, with 3^rd and 4^th grades seeing the most.  White students, followed by Native Americans, received the brunt of the punishment.
• Disabled children were the recipients of corporal punishment in one out of every five instances.
• 15,342 students dropped out of high school last year, a decrease of 9 percent from the year before and part of a four-year decrease in dropout rates.
• Hispanic students had the highest high school dropout rate (4.7 percent of all Hispanic students), followed by black (4.3%), Native American (4.12 %) and multi-racial students (3.14%). White students had a 2.9 percent dropout rate, while 1.4 percent of all Asian high school students dropped out of school.

Want to skim the numbers for yourself? The DPI report is available here.

ACLU Warns NC About General Assembly’s Use of
Sectarian Prayers to Open Meetings

Federal Appeals Court Recently Affirmed that Any Prayers Used in a Government Setting Must be Nonsectarian and Cannot Endorse One Particular Religion Over Others

CONTACT: Mike Meno, Communications Manager, ACLU of North Carolina, 919-834-3466 (office), 919-247-5456 (cell) or mmeno@acluofnc.org

RALEIGH – The American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina Legal Foundation (ACLU-NCLF) today sent a letter to North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper outlining constitutional concerns about the ongoing use of sectarian prayers to open meetings of the North Carolina General Assembly (NCGA). Several legislators and members of the community have contacted the ACLU-NCLF to express concern about the frequent practice of convening sessions of the NCGA with sectarian prayer.

The letter comes after the U.S. Supreme Court announced last month that it would not review a July ruling by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in favor of ACLU-NCLF clients who objected to the frequent use of sectarian prayer by the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners. In that case, Joyner v. Forsyth County Board of Commissioners, the Court ruled that sectarian prayer in a government setting was a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Fourth Circuit has jurisdiction over North Carolina.

“We recommend that you adopt a policy to ensure that the NCGA halts the practice of opening sessions with sectarian invocations,” wrote Katy Parker, Legal Director of the ACLU-NCLF, in today’s letter to Attorney General Cooper. Citing case law, Parker points out in the letter that “the NCGA is still permitted to open its sessions with a prayer, so long as the prayer is nonsectarian.”

In the Joyner decision, Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III wrote that “prayer in government settings carries risks. The proximity of prayer to official government business can create an environment in which the government prefers—or appears to prefer—particular sects or creeds at the expense of others … [L]egislative prayer must strive to be nondenominational so long as that is reasonably possible – it should send a signal of welcome rather than exclusion. It should not reject the tenets of other faiths in favor of just one.”

The ACLU-NCLF letter can be read online at www.acluofnc.org or http://bit.ly/wWzle5.

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Next Friday, in the aftermath of Tillis’ failed efforts to repeal RJA, the newly established House Select Committee on Racial Discrimination in Capital Cases will meet at the Legislative Building in Raleigh to discuss the matter.

Though it has often not been the case with the conservatives running the General Assembly (see, for example, the kangaroo sessions in which the marriage discrimination amendment was rammed through), let’s hope there’s an actual full and fair hearing.

Perhaps if there is, RJA opponents will be able to explain to all of us exactly just what the great harm is that’s resulting from examinations of compelling data like this one.

Tom Jensen, Director of Public Policy Polling will be joining NC Policy Watch’s own Chris Fitzsimon here in Raleigh for Thursday’s Crucial Conversation. Registration is now closed for this fully-booked event, but you can still catch what happens as we bring the event streaming to an internet-capable screen near you. Here’s the link to the video stream on the Policy Watch main website: http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/streaming-video/.

You can also find the stream on our ustream channel.

And don’t forget all our other super awesome videos on the Policy Watch video page.

Please excuse any technical difficulties as we are still seeking out the best set up for this streaming service.

Hope to see you either physically or virtually as we talk with Tom and Chris about the important issues North Carolina will be facing in this upcoming year.

And just for good measure, you can also find the embedded stream below: