Carolina Politics Online

North Carolina’s big win Tuesday in the federal “Race to the Top” competition will bring up to $400 million to the state and an era of new approaches to public education.

The state’s education community cheered the announcement by U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan that North Carolina was among 10 winners in the latest round of coveted grants to spur classroom innovation. The others were the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio and Rhode Island.

In its proposal seeking the $400 million over four years, North Carolina aimed to raise student test scores, boost high school graduation rates and better prepare students for careers and college work.

The News and Observer

Congratulations to North Carolina for seeing educational improvements.  There is certainly nothing wrong with that.  What I don’t understand however, is if the state is so successful in improving education, what the heck do they need another $400 million in Federal tax dollars thrown in their direction for?  Obviously, they have demonstrated they can realize improvements in educational performance without suckling even more cash from the government tit.

The State of North Carolina spends an average of $122,478 per student from the time they enter Kindergarten until they graduate from high school.  You break that down over 13 years and it’s a cost of $9,422 per student per year.  That’s a lot of money.  Are you telling me that $9400 isn’t more than adequate to properly educate someone’s child for nine months out of the year?

The three main components are: money to recruit and retain quality teachers and administrators; a turnaround plan for low-performing schools, and handheld devices that would allow teachers to continuously track students’ progress.

The average high school teacher in Mecklenburg County earns a salary of $74,654 a year which includes the cost of benefits.  That’s pretty nice for a job that gives you most of the summer off.  How much more money is needed to retain quality teachers?

When I was a kid my teachers taught us with a textbook, a chalk board, a Xerox machine, and an occasional VHS cassette.  Hell, going all the way back to my grammar school days we didn’t even have VHS players available.  I remember watching film strips and some of my teachers running off assignment worksheets on ditto machines, the fumes of which could supposedly make them high.  Now, I am not opposed to investing in modern technology like computers and Internet, but do teachers honestly need to have a “hand-held device” to monitor performance?  Excess is fine when you can afford it, but a nation with a national debt over $13 trillion can’t afford anything.

And then of course this brings me back to the old Constitutional argument I have brought up many times noting that the Federal government is not Constitutionally permitted to even be involved in education.  Nowhere in the document does it grant them that authority.  Therefore, all of these education mandates like No Child Left Behind and all of these grant dollars shouldn’t even be allowed to happen in the first place.

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“For the last eight years, we’ve spent our time talking about vouchers when we should be talking about how to improve public education,” Sheheen said. “Enough is enough, and I’m standing today for public education.”

Sheheen’s Wednesday news conference at Columbia’s Hand Middle School had the feel of an event just weeks, not months, from Election Day. State Republican Party staffers held signs asking Sheheen’s positions on a national health care law and illegal immigration, while Sheheen staffers boxed out a Haley camera crew attempting to record the event.

Sheheen said he would end teacher pay cuts and reduce class sizes. But South Carolina could face as much as a $1 billion budget shortfall next year and Sheheen did not say how schools could pay for programs to achieve those goals. Sheheen said he would not raise taxes to fund education.

The State

Studies have shown that there is no correlation between smaller class sizes and improvement in public education.  Furthermore, how would Sheheen accomplish this while at the same time suggesting he would not raise taxes to fund this, which quite honestly, I don’t necessarily believe.

I am ambivalent when it comes to vouchers.  It’s a better system than we have today, but it’s not the best.  What I have always found ironic is how Democrats almost routinely oppose vouchers or almost any form of school choice when it’s typically poor, minority children who benefit the most from their use.  Doesn’t the Democratic Party claim to be the best friend of the poor and racial minorities in this country?  It seems to me that when it comes to the masses being properly educated, they care more about the campaign donations coming from the NEA who oppose any education reform that doesn’t put more tax dollars into their coffers.

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Six of nine members – board Chair Eric Davis and members Kaye McGarry, Tim Morgan, Joe White, Trent Merchant and Rhonda Lennon – said Tuesday their top priority is keeping kids close to home, with neighborhoods and school-feeder patterns united when possible.

The other three – Vice Chair Tom Tate, Richard McElrath and Joyce Waddell – said their top priority is balancing school poverty. But that came in third in overall rankings, behind neighborhood schools and keeping assignments stable and predictable. Effective use of buildings and buses was last on the list of four.

McElrath argued that students consigned to mostly black schools in impoverished neighborhoods face bleak academic prospects.

“The people who have always been at the bottom are still going to be at the bottom,” said McElrath. The vote signals that “the standard for CMS is segregation, and if you value diversity you can go to a magnet…if you’re lucky.”

Charlotte Observer

I am really sick and tired of poverty pimps like Richard McElrath claiming segregation and racism every time they don’t get their way.  Is anybody forced to move into the neighborhood they live in?  Were they told they had to live there?  No, so there is no segregation and people like McElrath have stripped the word of any meaning it once had because they throw it around like candy.

Neighborhood schools make sense.  A kid should be able to go to the school closest to his home, with his friends, with people he knows from his community and where it will be easier for his parents to be involved.  It’s plain, simple logic.

McElrath’s argument is that the schools in poor areas suck.  Well clean them up then!!  Isn’t that his job as a member of the Mecklenburg County school board?  What the hell is he sitting in that position for if he is going to ignore the disease causing the symptoms?  Get the trouble makers out of the school, the kids who keep causing trouble, dealing the drugs, doing the fighting, kick them out forever!  Expel them permanently!  What is so hard about this?  No amount of busing and reassigning kids to schools all over the county are going to become a substitute for poor parenting, Mr. McElrath, and that is what it comes down to.

These school board members moan and complain about these under performing schools but they rarely take any action to remove the students that are hindering the learning of all the others there.  Would they put up with that kind of behavior in their workplace?  Of course not, so why is it acceptable for our kids to have to deal with it?

I supported McElrath in his election against his predecessor because she was a radical loon and he seemed to be more sensible, but his comments are disappointing.

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Tree.com, an online lending and real estate company, is the parent company of LendingTree, which matches consumers to lenders of various types of loans. A nonprofit arm launched in April, The LendingTree Foundation, provides low-income families and individuals with a mentor to help them resolve financial difficulties.

“It’s for people who…just need the coaching to overcome the financial problems they’ve faced,” said Nicole Hall, a LendingTree spokeswoman.

LendingTree also created a website this spring, AboutFinancialLiteracy.com. It offers tools, such as loan calculators and loan coaches, to help consumers with their finances.

Hagan was onsite to learn about the programs. She spoke of starting financial literacy education early in her home, teaching her children the importance of budgeting and borrowing at a young age.

Charlotte Observer

The State of North Carolina should require that every student have a course in financial literacy as a graduation requirement.  Instead of wasting students’ academic time with worthless literature requirements that have no practical value in the working world, they should learn how to manage money and responsibly manage debt when it is necessary to take it on.  It’s good that Hagan supports financial literacy initiatives, but it would also be nice if she practiced it as well.  She did, after all, cast a vote in favor of the current Congressional budget which will have a deficit of $1.5 trillion by the end of the year.

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RALEIGH, N.C. – Protesters and police scuffled Tuesday at a school board meeting in North Carolina over claims that a new busing system would resegregate schools, roiling racial tensions reminiscent of the 1960s.

Nineteen people were arrested, including the head of state NAACP chapter who was banned from the meeting after a trespassing arrest at a June school board gathering.

The AP

The “arrestees” include Reverend Jelly-Belly.

“We know that our cause is right,” the Rev. William Barber said shortly before police put plastic handcuffs on his wrists before the meeting started.

You can watch the gathering here.  It was more like a parade of self-loathing, attention seeking “victims” and aging hippie liberal douches trying to relive their glory years.

“Hey, hey, ho, ho, resegregation has got to go,” some protesters chanted.

Oh, how original.

At a morning rally that drew 1,000 people, speakers quoted Martin Luther King Jr., remembered the days of segregated water fountains and likened the current situation to the landmark Brown v. Board of Education battle.

And what they fail to mention is that a good chunk of those 1,000 people were from out of town, so who gives a crap?

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The issue of school diversity in North Carolina has gotten increased attention in the past few months.

Civil rights activists have alleged that resegregation is occurring in schools in Wayne and New Hanover counties. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board, which abandoned busing for diversity in 2002, is now reconsidering what role diversity should have in student assignments.

Last month, Perdue told the state’s legislative black caucus that North Carolina is in a “war” over resegregation. A spokesman said Perdue will sign into law the bill creating the study commission.

“Gov. Perdue firmly believes that children are better prepared when the community inside their school resembles the one outside,” said Mark Johnson, a spokesman for Perdue. “When they meet and make friends with people from different economic backgrounds, they learn that everybody doesn’t have the same experiences in life.”

But it’s the fight in Wake County that has drawn the most attention, both locally and nationally.

The News and Observer

Ah yes, Governor Bev Perdue, never missing an opportunity to latch onto deceptive identity politics.  As is typical of the aristocracy in Raleigh, the governor, like her imperial guard in the state assembly, thinks she knows what’s better for your children than you do.  Remember the rule of thumb of the ruling class in Raleigh:

You = Fumbling Neanderthal

State Lawmakers = Wise, Enigmatic Sages

They need to help you raise your children because if you do it all by yourself without the intervention of government your children may grow up to be polluted with your personal morals and values.

One of the last acts of the Democrat-controlled General Assembly was to create a legislative study commission charged with seeing whether diversity helps public schools and whether the state should help it along by changing the way schools are funded.

But supporters of the Republican school board majority in Wake County see the new drive as an attempt to bash the elimination of longstanding diversity efforts in the state’s largest school district.

State Democrats have used the Wake school controversy to mobilize their supporters. They insist the commission will conduct an honest study of the issue.

Claude Pope, chairman of the Wake County Republican Party, questioned how fair the commission will be considering that the 15 members will be appointed by Gov. Bev Perdue, state House Speaker Joe Hackney of Orange County and state Senate Leader Marc Basnight of Dare County. All three are Democrats.

Well that sure sounds like an “honest” study to me.  A 15 member committee appointed by three members of the same political party with the same agenda in mind.  No, there is no potential for bias there.  How silly for Mr. Pope to be concerned.

I am glad to see the Wake County School Board majority hold firm to their campaign promises and dismantle this antiquated, ill-functioning system.  All too often when the radical left erupts over something they don’t like, the moderates and the conservatives cave to them and run away with their tail between their legs.  The radical left has used the same playbook for decades:  kick, scream, and cry racism until they get what they want.  This time they may have come up against an impenetrable wall.

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RALEIGH — Wake County school board members who discarded the system’s mandated diversity policy face the specter early this week of large-scale protests and civil disobedience, possible mass arrests and broadening resistance from religious and social-justice groups.

Opponents of the move to neighborhood schools plan to hold a mass march in downtown Raleigh on Tuesday, followed by a protest that could disrupt that afternoon’s school board meeting. At the same time, the Northern Wake Republican Club has called for “164 solid conservative people” to attend the meeting “to counter the NAACP’s rally.”

Opponents of the board, boosted by recent endorsements by African-American denominations and the national NAACP, are casting their opposition to changes in Wake Schools as a moral imperative and a replay of the 1960s civil rights movement’s role in integrating schools.

The News and Observer

More hypocrisy and ignorance from the NAACP.  Community based schools make it easier for students to get to school and for parents to be involved.  It’s pure absurdity to bus kids to a school 15 miles away in the name of “diversity” and it’s gross negligence to use children as political pawns to push a failed social agenda.  Furthermore, why is it that people only view diversity as being racial?  There is more to diversity than the tint of someone’s skin.  There is socioeconomic diversity and religious diversity.  There are many factors that make up a diverse society.

As I’ve said before, the NAACP is a completely irrelevant organization in 21st century America and they know it and that is why they have to grasp at any straw they can to keep themselves in the public eye.  If the money stop flowing in the Reverend William Barber won’t have the cash to keep stuffing his jelly-belly with cakes and pies all day.

Oh and to the dismay of the NAACP, it seems that they have been exposed for being the racists that they are.  Get a load of this and imagine if whitey had said this about a black farmer. (Update: It’s sounding like Shirley Sherrod’s comments were distorted by Breitbart by only revealing part of her speech and not the rest of her remarks which changes the context of her words quite a bit.  Believe it or not, she is being defended by Glenn Beck. Regardless, it does not change my opinion of the people leading today’s NAACP as they have a long track record of not practicing what they preach, but I do apologize to Shirley Sherrod for falling for propaganda and mischaracterizing her.)

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Green Party gubernatorial candidate Morgan Bruce Reeves says his solution to move South Carolina forward is to double state spending.  Yes, seriously.

“I’m a teamwork man. I’m not some kind of wild guy,” Reeves, 51 and owner of an Irmo land-clearing firm, says of his political philosophy. “I’m the only one with a $40 billion plan. The state budget is $20 billion. I’m going to double the state budget.”

The State

Ummm….. how about no?

Education is the cornerstone of Reeves’ platform, which he would use to switch to a year-round calendar to improve test scores and graduation rates. Reeves would promote new energy sources to allow more money on K-12 spending.

What will more education spending do??  What????  This entire country has thrown more and more money at public education for years and it’s not getting any better; it’s getting worse.  As I have pointed out a hundred times on this Web site, public education spending in the U.S. is already higher than any other country in the world!  What’s it going to take for people to understand that more money is not the solution to fix the pitiful public education system in this state or others?  It’s always their answer.  Throw more money at it, throw more money at it.  Well, when is it finally going to be enough?

Reeves’ plan has a number of holes, experts said. Reeves struggled to account for the $40 billion, jumping from the cost of changing the school calendar and hiring more teachers to using high school-aged students to build ethanol plants and a high-speed magnetic levitation rail system. His plan would rely heavily on state residents and businesses buying stocks or bonds in energy and infrastructure projects, which he said would guarantee 15 percent annual profits. Reeves thinks every citizen would invest at least $100, and the gains would mint many Palmetto State millionaires.

“You can get on this train and go anywhere in South Carolina,” Reeves said. “We’re going to connect all the cities.”

But Reeves’ vision is less clear when it comes to paying for the rail system. Reeves put the cost at $5 million for two miles of track, or roughly $500 million to connect downtown Greenville and Charleston.

The system would be built entirely with South Carolina-made steel, and the state would build its own mills and use existing private mills. Reeves would encourage those mills to hire the unemployed and train youths. The tax revenue from hiring unemployed workers, Reeves said, would pay for the project.

“Take young gang members and show them how to make steel,” he said.

OK, I’ll give the man some credit for attempting to be innovative and thinking outside the box, but let’s be realistic here.  High school students are going to build ethanol plants and a Maglev?  Oh yeah, the Department of Labor is going to have a field day with that one, not to mention that kids are graduating high school these days dumber than a bunch of rocks.  That’s just who I want developing a hazardous chemical plant.  And while a Maglev might be a neat thing to have, what benefit are we going to see from it by connecting the state’s cities together.  It’s not even close to being economically feasible.  It would cost far more than $40 billion to build that kind of infrastructure and the state would get almost no return on the investment.

He would push the federal government to raise the amount of ethanol blended with gasoline to at least 20 percent, if not more. Doing so would lower the cost of fuel to $1.50 per gallon in the state, Reeves claimed.

And the drive the price of food through the roof. Food prices have already risen due to corn crops being used for ethanol production.

Chad Hart, an assistant professor of economics at Iowa State University, said ethanol prices rise and fall with demand and it was unlikely Reeves could guarantee 15 percent annual profits on investments. Hart said there is no established market for sweet potato-based ethanol, though the crop “has good potential.”

“Those sweet potatoes tended to be worth more as fuel,” Hart said. Hart estimates construction costs of at least $2 a gallon of sweet potato ethanol production, or a total cost of $5.3 billion to fully replace the 2.64 billion gallons of fuel sold in South Carolina based on S.C. fuel tax collections. In addition, Hart said vehicle owners would pay at least $300 to $600 to retrofit vehicles to burn fuel that contains more than 10 percent ethanol.

But Reeves is undeterred and thinks South Carolinians will sacrifice for the greater good.

Hahaha.  Oh, Mr. Reeves doesn’t know South Carolina as well as he thinks he does.  I’m sure he could convince a bunch of aging hippie liberal douches in San Francisco that this is a fine idea, but not South Carolina.

While Mr. Reeves is certainly a creative individual, he does not have serious ideas.  Doubling state spending would cripple this state economically and actually investing in these schemes of his would bankrupt us before they even got off the ground.  We’d take California’s place as the nation’s financial laughing-stock.

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RALEIGH — When lawmakers created the lottery in 2005, supporters pledged the state-run gambling enterprise would be additional money for education and not take the place of tax dollars.

Lottery opponents were skeptical of that promise from the beginning, and they say the $19 billion budget the General Assembly approved last week leaves little doubt that lottery revenue will be used to replace lost education money rather than provide new funding for public schools.

“If anybody still had some vestige of hope of the lottery not supplanting, they should be able to let go of that,” said Sen. Phil Berger, an Eden Republican who opposed the lottery’s creation.

This year’s budget does three things that could be interpreted as shifting lottery funds to replace state tax dollars:

• $35 million in unclaimed lottery prize money and excess receipts will be held to help fill a potential $518 million gap if Congress does not provide an anticipated but as-yet unapproved boost to Medicaid funding.
• $63 million has been shifted away from school construction into class-size reduction, a program used to make sure teacher-to-student ratios don’t balloon in lower grades.

News & Record

I’m not opposed to there being a state lottery, but geez, was anybody actually stupid enough to believe the government would actually use it for what they said they would?  Come on, folks.  Fool us once, shame on them, but fool us twice and shame on all y’all!  When has a government program ever stayed on budget or been contained within its original parameters?

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I love when the establishment loses and that’s one of the benefits that came out of this past Tuesday’s run off election in North Carolina’s 21st State Senate District.  Democratic voters in the 21st told the party establishment to piss off when they overwhelmingly supported political newcomer Dr. Eric Mansfield over former Cumberland County Democratic Party Chairwoman Lula Crenshaw.

Dr. Eric Mansfield captured the Democratic Party’s nomination for the 21st District with a convincing win this week, surprising party officials and defeating a partisan heavyweight.

Mansfield, who is 45, acknowledged that he didn’t know what he was doing when he started knocking on doors in the snow in January. One man whom Mansfield met on Seabrook Road gave him a candid assessment.

“He said, ‘You don’t know the neighborhood, you don’t know politics and you don’t know what you’re doing,’ ” Mansfield said.

The man was right, Mansfield said. He said the Cumberland County Senior Democrats club told him the same thing in January.

He took the message as a personal challenge.

“We had a lot of work to do, and we set out to do it,” he said. “We learned a lot.”

In Tuesday’s primary runoff, he defeated Lula Crenshaw, a former county party chairwoman, 62 percent to 38 percent, according to unofficial results.

In the May primary, he led a five-candidate field that included a former five-term city councilman.

The Fayetteville Observer

Dr. Mansfield is an Ears, Nose, and Throat Specialist with a practice in Fayetteville.  He served honorably in the 82nd Airborne Division of the United State Army and he is an active member in his church and community.  As a doctor he supports greater free market competition in health care, tort reform, and Medicaid cost and fraud controls, in order to bring down medical costs so that heath care services will be more affordable to people in the state.  He also recognizes the need for improvement in the education system and the tax structure for small businesses.  He was endorsed by the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce.

While Mansfield will face a Republican opponent in the general election, the 21st is heavily Democratic and it’s highly unlikely Mansfield will be defeated.  I think he’ll make a great state senator for Cumberland County.

Standing up for what is right from kassaye kassaye on Vimeo.

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Oh, glory, glory hallelujah! My prayers have been answered!

Recent readers of this blog know the contempt in which I hold the Rev. Racist Piece-of-Shit. His only skill in life, aside from eating, is sowing schism and spreading discord wherever his obtuse ass makes an appearance.

The evidence is overwhelming that the “diversity” policy has done nothing -nothing- to help low-income and minority students and has arguably hurt them instead. If this carnival barker was really concerned about quality education for black kids, why wasn’t he pulling this shit when test scores and minority graduation rates went down ? Oh, because they went down when his friends and supporters of his beloved diversity policy were in power. But now that he sees a chance to do a little race-baiting and get some power for himself by spreading fear and hate, you can’t keep his fat face out of the news.

Police arrested four civil rights protesters, including state NAACP head Rev. William Barber and author Tim Tyson, after they refused to leave tonight’s Wake County school board meeting. The arrests started about an hour-and-a-half after the biracial group disrupted the meeting, speaking and singing to empty seats when the board recessed, then taking over the elective body’s own seats.

The protest began when Margiotta called a recess of the board and Barber, state leader of the NAACP, objected.

“We’d like to finish the public comment period at this time,” Barber said. “We’ve not had an opportunity to speak.”

Margiotta offered Barber and the others a chance to speak after the recess.

“We’re going to do it now,” Barber said. “We are engaging in nonviolent resistance. We will not release the podium.”

Board members have now come back into session and the leaders are being given a chance to speak. Petty is pastor of Pullen Memorial Baptist Church, a Raleigh church with a long history of activism.

“Who does benefit from your recent decisions?” Petty asked. “Our entire community? Or selected communities where the wealthiest live?”

The N&O

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We have a primary election here in South Carolina on Tuesday with some important choices to make.  We’ll be choosing party nominees for the next gubernatorial race and we’ll be getting at least two new Congressmen this year since Henry Brown (R-SC01) is retiring and Gresham Barrett (R-SC03) is making a failed run for governor.  We may be seeing a bigger turnover than that however.  Bob Inglis (R-SC04) isn’t exactly in the greatest reelection shape and some speculate that he could be forced into a run off by one of his primary challengers.  Add that to a strong challenge by State Senator Mick Mulvaney (R-Indian Land) to Congressman John Spratt (D-SC05) in November and we could potentially be replacing over half of our state’s Congressional delegation come January.

Now I obviously can’t vote in all of these races, but I’m happy to offer my thoughts on many of them and point out who I would vote for if I could.  I make these decisions based on who I think is the best candidate to protect our liberties and freedoms from the tyranny of the powers that be.  And so here we go.

York County Council District 1

I don’t typically weigh in on local races because I don’t have the time to analyze the hundreds of races going on in every county and municipality in the Carolinas, but I am going to weigh in one and that is because it is pretty close to my backyard.  If you live in York County, or more specifically Fort Mill or Tega Cay, then right now you are being represented on the York County Council by one corrupt SOB.  His name is Paul Lindemann.  That shouldn’t be a new name for you.  We talk about him all the time.  Despite the publicity of his malfeasance, he is running for reelection.  If you vote for Paul Lindemann you deserve to be flogged, tasered in your groin, and then buried in the sand up to your neck right near a mound of fire ants with honey drizzled over your head.  Is that descriptive enough?  This man is the living characiture of the stereotypical corrupt politician.  Now you may think that Paul is crazy for running again.  How could he possibly get reelected?  Well he’s got three challengers so his ability to survive in a four way race should not be underestimated.  There are plenty of lambs out there who will go to their slaughter on Tuesday to try and install this man for another two years.  Don’t let that happen.  Give your vote to someone with integrity, honesty, and decency.  That someone is Mr. Kyle Boyd.

I have met Kyle Boyd.  He is the headmaster at Walnut Grove Christian School and the father of three children.  He identifies himself as a fiscal conservative and pledges to be a leader on tax reform and government transparency.  We will not be reading stories in The Herald of Kyle Boyd getting DUIs or being a party to a domestic violence dispute, or bouncing $10,000 checks to Winthrop University, or not paying contractors for the work they do on his house.  We will not be reading those stories about Kyle Boyd the way we have read them about Paul Lindemann.  This is an opportunity to put an overall good guy into our county government so please don’t screw it up this time.  Vote for Kyle on Tuesday.  It’s really that easy.

South Carolina Congressional District 1

This is the seat currently held by Republican Congressman Henry Brown.  Thankfully, he is retiring this year so we will no longer have to worry about him stealing our tax dollars and redistributing it to his district.  This has become a huge contest.  There are nine Republicans, two Democrats, and four third party candidates running for this seat.  On the Republican side there are many good candidates to pick from and if I lived in that district I would have a difficult time making a decision.  However, kind of like Highlander, in the end there can be only one.  So that being the case, I would again, like in 2008, go with Katherine Jenerette.  She is an accomplished woman and mother.  She has bravely served this country in our armed forces and I think she has the right ideas to take us forward.  Her agenda on lower taxation, lower government spending, and controlled immigration is a positive plan for the nation.  I think she would be a responsible representative for the people of the Grand Strand.

On the Democratic ballot I like Col. Robert Burton.  He recently retired from military service after spending 32 years in the United States Air Force.  Burton has a strong focus on lowering South Carolina’s unemployment rate, one of the highest in the nation, by championing a lower Federal tax rate on small businesses and actively seeking opportunities to bring technology and energy jobs to the state.  He also realizes the need to stick it out in Afghanistan.  It’s been a long and tiring war on our soldiers and there was plenty of mismanagement of the war by our previous administration, but Burton is correct.  We just can’t cut our losses and leave like some in our Congress would like to see.  Burton is a common sense man with common sense ideas.

South Carolina Congressional District 3

This is the far western district of the state bordering Georgia and currently held by Republican Congressman Gresham Barrett.  As I stated before, he is not seeking reelection and instead decided to lose in the gubernatorial race this year.  He voted for the bank bailout, so I’m not too upset about his current political misfortune.  There are six Republicans running to succeed him and the one I like is State Representative Jeff Duncan.  Duncan has a proven record of fiscal responsibility in our state government.  In fact, he is one of the few that can actually make  that claim.  He has received an “A” rating from the South Carolina Club for Growth whose opinions I take very seriously because they don’t just hand out good grades to anyone.  Duncan’s views on reigning in government spending and excessive taxation is precisely the shot in the arm our nation needs.  He is the guy we need to send to D.C.   We do not want to send State Representative Rex Rice.  He not only supported raising the cigarette tax to expand the nanny welfare state in South Carolina, he was a co-sponsor.  Duncan good.  Rice bad.

South Carolina Congressional District 4

I think this goes without saying.  Bob Inglis is in some pretty deep shit and may very well be the next incumbent to get booted in his party primary.  Inglis is facing the hostility of a very conservative electorate in his district who are not all that pleased with the direction the Republican Party has been going in.  He has also taken some heat for voting to reprimand Congressman Joe Wilson (R-SC02) for his infamous “You lie!” outburst to President Obama during this year’s State of the Union address as well as voting against “the Surge” in Iraq in 2007.  Furthermore, the man has hit my boiling point over his insistence on us needing to implement a carbon tax over the fraudulent man made global warming scam.  In my opinion, there is no need to stop the national political bloodletting here in South Carolina.  Give Inglis the boot.

My recommendation is Spartanburg attorney Trey Gowdy.  Gowdy is strong advocate of job creation by lessening Federal restrictions on businesses that make it difficult for them to thrive.  Of course, he is mortified by the irresponsible spending going on in D.C. otherwise I wouldn’t recommend him.  He is also a staunch supporter of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments of the Constitution meaning he is very much opposed to the recent Federal grab of our health care system and their unconstitutional insurance mandate.

South Carolina State Superintendent

This is a race that doesn’t get talked about much but really should.  Public education in this state has a poor reputation and we haven’t seen much improvement.  We just keep getting more of the same and Jim Rex has been no different.  I like Gary Burgess for this seat.  He’s big on school choice and eliminating programs that have not shown any merit.  The main reason we spend so much money on education in this country but do not get the bang for our buck is because the vast majority of the money goes to bureaucracy.  Burgess wants school spending accounted for.  But the real idea that sold me on Burgess is his philosophy on school choice, that the tax dollars should follow the student.  My God, how many times have I written about that very same idea on this Web site?  Make the school districts compete for the students.  With the students comes the money.  It is a winning formula and mark my word if Gary Burgess could accomplish that he would be the most successful state superintendent in this country.

South Carolina Governor

And finally we get down to the big one.  I have a candidate for both the Republican and Democrat parties.  On the Republican side I have been an ardent supporter of State Representative Nikki Haley and despite the calamity that has surrounded her over the past two weeks, I am sticking with Nikki Haley.  Accusations are not proof of guilt.  It was different with Mark Sanford because there was proof of his indiscretions and he came right out and admitted it.  Maybe Nikki Haley has been unfaithful.  I don’t know, but what I do know is that there isn’t a single shred of proof out there to support these accusations.  If there was we’d have seen it by now.  We are innocent until proven guilty in this country.  I believe that of all four Republican candidates Nikki Haley has the best ideas to take our state forward.  She has a record of fighting for transparency in government and against wasteful spending.  Prior to the recession our state budget increased an average of 11% per year for four years and that was with Republicans in control.  You know, the party that claims to be for small government?  Haley has fought against that kind of government growth and I think she can be a real powerhouse in the governor’s mansion.  She has my vote.

On the Democratic ticket I think State Senator Robert Ford is an outstanding choice.  Senator Ford took a brave stand last year going public with his support for school choice so that the parents of the poorer children in this state can get those kids out of these failing schools and get them a better education.  Ford took a lot of flack from his party and fellow legislators over that stance because his party has been in bed with the teachers union for decades and have been preserving the failing status quo in public education in order to keep the donations coming in.  Ford recognized the problem in education and chose to speak out.  I also support Ford because of his push to bring back video poker to South Carolina.  According to Ford’s estimate it could bring in a billion dollars in revenue for the state and create several thousand jobs, but it’s not just that.  I am a grown man and if I want to go to a bar and gamble some of my money on a video poker machine, who in the hell is the State of South Carolina to tell me that I am not allowed to do that?  This is an issue of liberty and I said at the beginning of this post that was the primary goal I was looking for in these candidates.  Robert Ford fits the bill.

So that’s what I’ve got for Tuesday.  Man am I tired after all of that.  Vote wisely and good luck to all of the candidates.

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RALEIGH — The state Senate is expected to consider today a $450 million bond package that would pay for university and college projects, including a new engineering building at N.C. State University.

A key Senate committee approved the bond package Tuesday. Borrowing the money would not require the approval of voters. The state is facing an $800 million revenue shortfall in its operating budget because of the recession. That same recession means that construction costs could be as much as 30 percent cheaper than they would be during normal times.

The News & Observer

Sen. Phil Berger, an Eden Republican and the chamber’s minority leader, said the state may be facing a $3 billion deficit next year because of taxes and federal stimulus dollars that are set to expire. While the projects are worthwhile, another $18 million debt payment now doesn’t make any sense, he said.

“Would you do that in your personal life?” he asked.

Maybe the State of North Carolina just thinks down the road it can declare bankruptcy like people do when they get in over their head.  Bear in mind that the state legislature is also banking on the Feds providing another half a billion in Medicaid welfare handouts to the state as they present the next fiscal year’s budget.  That money isn’t even guaranteed so if the Feds don’t pony up, add another $500 million to the state deficit.

When the recession created a budget shortfall here in South Carolina our state legislature massively slashed the budget.  As a matter of fact, funding was cut to higher education throughout the state.  I’m a graduate student at Winthrop University.  Guess what.  My tuition went up.  We, the students receiving the educative services, had to pick up the financial slack for our own education and that’s exactly the way it should be.  I wasn’t bitching about it.  If UNC needs a new engineering building that bad then let them pay for it!

In a parting note, I can’t let the words of Republican State Senator Richard Stevens go without special fanfare.  I can always county on big government trough feeders like him to make my case for me when I repeatedly point out that the Republicans are no better at containing the size of government than the Democrats are.

“We can’t afford not to invest in our future,” said Sen. Richard Stevens, a Cary Republican.

Thanks again, Dick.

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It’s official- Wake County has done away with the failed, criticized, and parent-unfriendly “diversity” policy and will replace it with a community-based schools approach.

In the interest of bi-partisanship, I now give all our neighborhood liberals an opportunity to mindlessly bitch about “resegragation” in the form of brainless slogans.

Ready… go!

::checks email::
::discovers I’ve won the Irish lotto!::
::returns::

I’m back. Did that make you feel better, liberal readers? That’s nice. I aim to please.

The deeply divided board eliminated diversity as a goal in the assignment policy with a 5-4 vote, making family proximity to schools the priority. The fight about the diversity policy, which depends on the economic status of families, drew national attention as the majority reversed decades of policy.

“It’s terrific for the parents of Wake County,” said Allison Backhouse, a leader of Wake CARES, a parents group that backs the new majority. “We’ve fought for many years to be recognized.”

“Hey hey! Ho ho! Resegregation’s got to go!” about 20 protesters shouted.

The N&O

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We don’t talk enough about the one elected office that has a huge impact on our state’s education system and that is the office of State Superintendent.  There are currently eight candidates vying for their partys’ nominations to compete in November to succeed our current failure, Jim Rex.  There are a lot of issues that need to be addressed in our schools around the state:  administrative waste, mediocre graduation rates, inequitable funding, and a severely antiquated education system.  Hopefully, the next superintendent will be someone willing to tackle these issues and not just preserve the status quo as Mr. Rex has done.

Gary Burgess (R) – I like Burgess’s platform.  He’s big on school choice and eliminating programs that have not shown any merit.  Public education is run much like the government and that’s probably because it is an arm of the government.  Government is full of wasteful initiatives that have not lived up to their worth, but rarely do you ever seen them eliminated because there are too many bureaucrats thriving off the system.  It’s no different in a typical school district either.  The main reason we spend so much money on education in this country but do not get the bang for our buck is because the vast majority of the money goes to bureaucracy.  If Burgess can successfully fight that, he’d be an education hero.

Frank Holleman (D) – Frank Holleman I’m not quite as high on.  He opposes the idea that you, as a parent, ought to have a choice in which school your child attends.  If you live in a poor neighborhood with a school riddled with drugs and crime Holleman doesn’t want to give you the opportunity to take your child out of that failing school.  He says that vouchers and tax credits take money away from the public schools.  Well, if I were an investor, would I continue to put money into a company that continuously loses money?  Of course not, but we do it with public schools every single day and that’s because it’s run by bureaucrats who have a vested interest in preserving the status quo.

Elizabeth Moffly (R) – Elizabeth Moffly is not a newcomer.  She ran for the office in 2006 and she has a common sense approach to improving education in South Carolina.  One, she wants schools to offer more than just the traditional college preparatory route by also adding vocational education options.  This makes perfect sense.  Ever since the Great Depression schools have been pushing every student into a college academic career following high school, but there are a lot of students who aren’t cut out for college and could make a good living in skilled professions that don’t require it.  As a result a the work force is flooded with college graduates making a Bachelor’s Degree almost worthless today and a lot of students drop out of high school due to a lack of interest in the subject matter.  Give kids these options to do vocational training in school so that they finish school and become productive adults, not slouches working at McDonald’s the rest of their lives and sucking off the public dole.

Brent Nelsen (R) – Brent Nelsen is another candidate big on school choice, particularly charter schools.  Nelsen is a firm believer in parents having the opportunity to send their child to a school outside their district if it offers a better educative opportunity.  He also wants more higher level honors courses to be available to excelling students.  Nelsen believes that more transparency and openness in the way that teachers teach and concerning parental and community involvement are the keys to improving the quality of education in our state.  He is correct.  A lack of parental involvement is the number one reason why our schools are doing so poorly.

Kelly Payne (R) – Like Elizabeth Moffly, Kelly Payne is not satisfied with the one size fits all approach to education.  She feels that schools need to provide educational opportunities for those students not aspiring to higher education.  Furthermore, she has a goal of boosting the literacy rate in the state.  Payne’s biggest focus seems to be on financial accountability and transparency in the school districts.  She believes that there is plenty of money being devoted to our schools, but that too much money is spent on bureaucrats and administrative overhead and not nearly enough is going to the teachers and students in the classroom.

Glenn Price (R) – Glenn Price has been a classroom teacher for over 30 years and has an “outside the box” approach to improving education.  According to Price, student achievement should be measured by the amount of knowledge gained rather than the amount of time spent on a task, even if that takes longer than 12 years.  Unlike several of his Republican colleagues, Price is not a fan of vouchers or tax credits so he won’t win my vote, but I do give him some brownie points for proposing something innovative.

Tom Thompson (D) – Tom Thompson wants to address an issue that doesn’t talked about much, but should and that’s the issue of safety at schools.  Kids who are bullied at school or who attend an inner city school where violence is more common simply aren’t going to perform well.  Thompson sees that as a major barrier and he’s correct.  As adults, we would never tolerate violence or harassment in our office every day when we go to work, yet for some reason we see no problem with our kids having to put up with it at school.  Along those lines, Thompson wants some of the more dilapidated schools in poor areas to be repaired to replaced entirely.  Like some of the other candidates, Thompson is also huge on more parental and community involvement.

Mick Zais (R) – Mick Zais is another advocate of having several routes to graduation.  A one size fits all approach in high school is simply not affective.  Like some of the other candidates he also wants to see every education dollar accounted for by the school districts.  One unique issue brought up by Zais is the restoration of discipline in the classroom.  Student discipline is lacking in the classroom these days and in my opinion, that is a combination of bad parenting and the power of disciplining students having been taken out of the teachers’ hands.

These are your eight candidates, six Republicans and two Democrats.  The primary is on June 8th.  Two of them will move onto the November ballot based on your choice so choose wisely.

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Atlantic hurricanes will be more active than usual this year, N.C. State University researchers said today.

The year should see 15 to 18 named storms in the Atlantic basin, which includes the Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, said Lian Xie and collaborators Montserrat Fuentes and Danny Modlin. An average of nine to 11 named storms a year have formed over the past half-century.

Charlotte Observer

Isn’t this like the fifth year in a row now that meteorologists and climatologists have predicted a more hectic hurricane season than normal?  Every year since Katrina anyway, and every year the season has trotted by like a lamb.  I guess if they just keep repeating the same thing over and over each year eventually it’ll happen and then they’ll be able to add it to their “evidence” of global “warming.”

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I tell ya, the only thing more entertaining then watching the new school board roll back years of failed policies and ineptitude is watching the liberals have a stroke, twitch madly, and piss all over themselves everytime one of the new board members even steps outside.

Today’s liberal toadstool is one Chase Foster, who obviously just came back from the beach. How else can you explain his acting like he’s got sand in his vagina?

Did Wake County school board member John Tedesco break the board’s code of ethics when he made his speech at last week’s Tea Party rally?

Chase Foster, a registered lobbyist for the liberal N.C. Voters for Clean Elections, was the most vocal of the critics at Tuesday’s board meeting. As you may recall, Foster wrote a post for the liberal N.C. Policy Watch’s Progressive Pulse blog based on on a conversation he overhead Tedesco engaged in.

Foster accused Tedesco of compromising the integrity of the board by speaking to “an extremist and sometimes violent political group.”

Foster said Tedesco should be “professionally punished for using this public office to advance your partisan, political career in such a cheap and repellent way.”

“One thing is for sure, Mr. Tedesco,” Foster said. “By speaking to this fringe group, you have outed yourself… as a right-wing extremist who is set on destroying and balkanizing our school system, as a pawn of Bob Luddy and Art Pope’s school privatization agenda, and as a self-aggrandizing, Palin-esque politician seeking fame off the backs and lives of Wake County’s 140,000 students.”

The N&O

Wow. He insulted the Tea Party, the new school board, Sarah Palin, AND Art Pope all in one speech. That’s gonna win him a toaster at some lib-tard raffle party!

As for being a self-aggrandizing fringe extremist seeking fame off the backs of Wake County’s students… well, let’s just say that if that is Tedesco’s career plan, he’s gonna run into a lot of competition.

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Wake County’s board of commissioners will be asked today to take a stand for a desegregated school system.

Commissioner Stan Norwalk put the resolution on the agenda for the board’s 2 p.m. regular meeting at the Wake County Courthouse. In an apparent reference to the county school board’s plans to set up a community-based assignment plan, the resolution warns that high concentrations of low-income students in schools will lead to lower achievement levels.

In addition, the resolution says parts of Wake County could be prone to “middle class flight” if such low-achieving schools result from the new plan.

News and Observer

“Be it resolved that the City Council of Raleigh and the Wake County Board of Commissioners hereby express their deep concern over any attempt to resegregate Wake’s public schools by either race or socioeconomic status,” the resolution says.

The resolution warns that there will be “significant tax increases” to pay for new schools in crowded areas and for special initiatives to help the high poverty schools.

So we are to believe that Stan Norwalk is suddenly concerned about the possibility of raising taxes?  Yeah, right.  The threat of it is more than likely a load of BS anyway.  Norwalk is playing the fear card to try and scare people away from supporting the school board’s end of forced busing and embracing a traditional community school model so that kids can go to school in their own neighborhood instead of riding a bus for 90 minutes every morning and afternoon to a school 15 miles away in the name of “diversity”.

As pointed out several times in the past, the forced busing program in Wake County has done nothing to improve the education of poor and minority students.  In fact, the test scores have gotten worse since it was implemented.  These are the solid, concrete facts, but facts be damned to cultural Marxists like Stan Norwalk and his far left brethren in Wake County.  This is the problem with people who are married to their ideology.  They barricade themselves behind a false reality to provide themselves some of sort of satisfaction and sense that they have actually achieved some type of accomplishment, but when the real world starts cracking the walls of their sheltered existence they can only lash out with rabble-rousing cries of make believe racism and other incredulous accusations.  Fortunately, this is only a resolution and is not binding by law.

Commissioner Norwalk is a fraud who is more concerned about preserving his failed political policies over what’s best for the children of Wake County.

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I’ve been hearing about this on the radio and the online media and it peaked my curiosity so thought I’d take a look for myself.  The aging hippie liberal douches at Duke University have revised their sexual misconduct policy, likely in the wake of their national embarrassment just a few years ago involving the Duke Lacrosse players non-rape case.  Remember that these are the same aging hippie liberal douches that signed a letter condemning Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty, and David Evans for allegedly raping Crystal Mangum when the boys had merely been accused without any proof or evidence of their guilt and thus aiding in ruining their lives for absolutely no reason.  As you will remember it was later revealed that Mangum lied, the boys were completely innocent, the DA was a fraud, and yet the Duke faculty never apologized.

So they recently have revised their policy to state the following:

Sexual misconduct defined. Sexual misconduct is defined as any physical act of a sexual nature perpetrated against an individual without consent or when an individual is unable to freely give consent. Acts of a sexual nature include, but are not limited to, touching or attempted touching of an unwilling person’s breasts, buttocks, inner thighs, groin, or genitalia, either directly or indirectly; and/or rape, forcible sodomy, or sexual penetration (however slight) of another person’s oral, anal or genital opening with any object. Sexual misconduct also includes sexual exploitation, defined as taking nonconsensual, unjust sexual advantage of another for one’s benefit or the benefit of another party. These acts may or may not be accompanied by the use of coercion, intimidation, or through advantage gained by the use of alcohol or other drugs.

Consent defined. The university’s definition of sexual misconduct mandates that each participant obtains and gives consent in each instance of sexual activity. Consent is an affirmative decision to engage in mutually acceptable sexual activity given by clear actions or words. It is an informed decision made freely and actively by all parties. Relying solely upon non-verbal communication can lead to miscommunication. It is important not to make assumptions; if confusion or ambiguity on the issue of consent arises anytime during the sexual interaction, it is essential that each participant stops and clarifies, verbally, willingness to continue. Students should understand that consent may not be inferred from silence, passivity, or lack of active resistance alone. Furthermore, a current or previous dating or sexual relationship is not sufficient to constitute consent, and consent to one form of sexual activity does not imply consent to other forms of sexual activity. Being intoxicated does not diminish one’s responsibility to obtain consent.

Conduct will be considered “without consent” if no clear consent, verbal or nonverbal, is given. It should be noted that in some situations an individual’s ability to freely consent is taken away by another person or circumstance. Examples include, but are not limited to, when an individual is intoxicated, “high,” scared, physically or psychologically pressured or forced, passed out, intimidated, coerced, mentally or physically impaired, beaten, threatened, isolated, or confined.

So I read this and I am left wondering whether or not the authors have ever had sex in their lives.  The above is so ambiguous that virtually anybody that has sex at Duke can be guilty of sexual misconduct.  The intoxicated part stood out at me as well.  Do these people have any idea how many college students get drunk and then go back to their rooms and fuck?  Being drunk does not necessarily inhibit somebody from making a decisive choice as to whether or not they want to have sex.  I mean, sure, if you’re passed out and your boyfriend goes to town in you that would certainly cross into the red zone, but I don’t see any inference to something that extreme.  They simply say the only requirement to be in violation is to be intoxicated.

FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a group that exists to combat that fascist assault on college campuses committed by the far left faculty and tyrants that run most university regimes today, sent a letter to Duke in protest of this new policy.  Duke states on its Web site that this new policy is based on several fundamental principles, one of which stating, “Real or perceived power differentials between individuals may create an unintentional atmosphere of coercion.”  FIRE has great concern over the definition of “power differentials” and what that exactly means.  Is it an older student having sex with a younger student?  Is an athlete guilty of sexual misconduct because his athlete status could be “intimidating” to a girl he has sex with?  As FIRE rightly points out , “If the university is willing to stipulate that student-on-student sexual encounters can occur in an “unintentional atmosphere of coercion,” it is hard to see how any student with perceived “power” could engage in sexual relations without risking a sexual misconduct charge.”

I’ll be interested to see how long this policy lasts and what will be the outcome of the first incident in which it is tested.  In the mean time, if you’re going to go to Duke University be prepared to develop a really close relationship with your hand.

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