Category Archives: north carolina

All Posts, budget, economy, medicaid, north carolina, poverty

MEDICAID AND MANAGEMENT INCOMPETENCE

“What are the most important decisions that you have made in your work?” Ask that question of executives who have been successful in leading complex organizations and a clear majority will give an answer that has to do with choosing the rest of the leadership team. That is a lesson which Governor Pat McCrory is learning in the school of hard knocks while North Carolina taxpayers fund his tuition bills.

Shortly after Dr. Aldona Wos was named Secretary of Health and Human Services for the state, I pointed out that her principal qualification appeared to be the success that she and her husband had in raising money for Governor McCrory’s and President George W. Bush’s election campaigns. In a column at the time, I described her as “…a physician who has not been involved full-time in health policy or medical practice for many years…President Bush rewarded Dr. Wos by appointing her as Ambassador to Estonia. Likewise, the Governor made her DHHS Secretary and she hired a young McCrory campaign staffer, Matthew McKillip, as the Chief Policy Officer of DHHS. At age 24, he has no previous health service education or experience but he has worked for a right wing think tank and now he is leading health policy development for the state.” She proceeded to select others for the DHHS team including Ricky Diaz, a McCrory campaign staffer hired as the top public information officer. He was forced to resign after lying to the press about violations of medical record confidentiality laws.

Wos picked Carol Steckel, another conservative ideologue but one with substantial experience in Louisiana, to re-organize the Medicaid program. Steckel resigned after only eight months. Dr. Laura Gerald resigned as the State Health Director as did Dr. Rebecca King, the state’s top dentist, citing differences with Wos and the administration. Wos and the Governor publicly misinterpreted the findings of the North Carolina Auditor to create the appearance of extraordinarily high administrative costs in the Medicaid program. They used that interpretation to support their goal of privatizing Medicaid. Protests by the auditor and health professionals later demonstrated that the state’s administrative costs are actually quite moderate.

Wos changed the application and enrollment procedures for Food Stamp assistance and her new process takes months for many low income families. It is so bad that the federal government has warned the state that funding for administrative costs will be withheld if improvement is not made promptly. She implemented a new computer system for making Medicaid payments to physicians and other health care providers despite credible warnings that it was not workable, resulting in payment slowdowns that have jeopardized the financial survival of health care providers (doctors, hospitals, therapists and others) who depend heavily on Medicaid.

She is promoting an idea for addressing our troubled state mental health system by merging several quasi-governmental regional agencies into a smaller number without addressing the underlying issues about how and by whom services are delivered to living, breathing patients. Thinking that this administrative re-shuffling will improve mental health services is a bit like preventing the sinking of the Titanic by rearranging its deck chairs. It may appear that something is being done but the ship is still headed for the bottom of the ocean.

The biggest problem in this case is not with Dr. Wos. The major problem is with a Governor who has “rewarded” (punished might be a more apt description) political allies by putting them in highly responsible leadership positions for which they are unprepared. In this case the Governor chose someone who ideologically agrees with him but lacks necessary experience then he offered encouragement as she put other unqualified people in key roles. More recently he has failed to take action as a series of high level staff resigned. The debilitation of DHHS began with the appointment of unqualified personnel and that has demoralized more capable members of the department’s team.

DHHS is by far the largest and most expensive department of state government – comparable in fact to the Titanic. A ship so large cannot turn on a dime and ours is clearly in peril. Unless the Governor acts soon, DHHS will take many thousands of mentally ill and low income North Carolinians down along with some of our health care providers. It remains unclear whether Governor McCrory and Secretary Wos will go down with the ship.

All Posts, budget, economy, justice, north carolina, poverty, public education

PUBLIC POLICIES AFFECT OUR INCOMES

Nine of the ten US States with the highest median household incomes voted for a liberal in the last presidential election. The only outlier among the high income states was Alaska. At the other end of the income scale, nine of the ten US States with the lowest median household incomes voted for a conservative. The only outlier was New Mexico. The same tendency is apparent when all states are considered. 80% of the states with household incomes above the US median voted for President Obama. 67% of states with incomes below the US median voted for Mr. Romney. For convenience I’ll go with the conventional names and call the more liberal states “blue” and the more conservative states “red”.

Reading down the list of states by income, it is clear that the leaders are blue states with moderate to liberal policies at the state level. In general they are the states which spend more on social safety net programs and public education. They also tend toward the moderate or liberal part of the spectrum on social issues like same sex marriage, abortion, and immigration reform.

Reading up from the bottom of the list of states by income, you will find red states that spend less on social safety net programs and public education. And they tend toward the conservative end of the spectrum on same sex marriage, abortion and immigration reform.

How can these patterns be explained and what can be learned from them? Here are some ideas. By focusing their resources on assuring good public education and access to health care for everyone, including those with low incomes, the blue states develop strong work forces that attract good paying jobs. Some will argue that many jobs have moved to the low-tax environments in the red states and there may be some truth in that. It should be noted that many businesses that talk about such relocations are not only seeking low taxes. They are seeking low wages. If there has been movement of jobs to red states, it appears to have perpetuated their low wage environment rather than improving it.

The relatively liberal social policies of the blue states seem open to more people regardless of sexual orientation or immigration status; and some people looking for such openness also have the economic and intellectual means to start businesses that create economic growth. They gravitate to places where their lifestyles and freedom are respected – bringing economic growth that benefits everyone. If my thinking is wrong, then how would one explain that blue state residents clearly have higher incomes?

It is our tradition to be a nation with regional cultural differences and that will certainly continue. And it has also been our tradition to learn from each other’s successes and failures. In 1789 North Carolina created the first State operated university. Other states saw how well the idea worked and copied it. Cincinnati created the first paid fire department in the US in 1853. The idea succeeded and was copied across the nation. Today hardly anyone thinks of public universities or fire departments as liberal or conservative ideas.   They are simply accepted as ideas that work well and that contribute to the success of everyone in the community.

It is time once again to look across state lines and see which public policies are producing the best results. Blue states are leading the nation in median income, educational attainment, and life expectancy. Red states are leading in poverty-related problems including divorce, adolescent pregnancy, and shorter life expectancy. Low funding of education and safety net programs are not producing good results. Restrictions on the personal freedoms to control one’s own body and to marry the person of one’s own choice do not contribute to the success of a state or its citizens.

It’s time to look carefully at what works and what doesn’t and then move ahead with public policies that enhance personal freedom and encourage success. With that attitude and all of our other advantages, North Carolina can become the economic envy of the nation. Two things are required if we are to achieve that. First, we must pay attention to the management and effectiveness of our public policies – stop tearing down public institutions and government and begin making them more creative and efficient. Second, we must study what works (whether a “liberal” or “conservative” idea) and adopt the public policies that lead to success.

There is no question about our ability or our resources. We can be as great as we choose to be. The important questions are about our willingness to abandon hard line ideologies in favor of doing the things that produce the results that we want. Those choices will be made by voters. Without the willingness to adopt successful public policies we can be thankful for our friends in Mississippi. They will assure that we don’t finish last.

All Posts, justice, north carolina, public education, religion

WHY NOT THE BEST EDUCATION?

My initial reaction to the recent performance of the Randolph County Board of Education was disbelief. They seem to want what is best for students and for the schools but how did people with good intentions make such a mess? There are, perhaps two underlying problems. One is that a majority of Board Members became so confident that they know what is good and right that they felt justified in imposing their personal values on students and faculty. The other is that a majority have become so complacent in accepting “how things are” that they are not attending to “how things could be”. There can be a happy ending to this story when the whole education team is working together toward a shared vision of excellence. First, here is a review of recent problems.

One Board Member defied the US Supreme Court, the Constitution and the advice of the Board’s legal counsel by offering sectarian prayer over the public address system prior to high school football games.  That created a distraction from the School System’s responsibilities rather than advancing the cause of excellence in education. It does matter that some fans don’t want to be forced to hear his prayer in order to see a football game at a public school. Perhaps with good intentions, he imposed his beliefs and values on everyone in attendance and put the School System in a very difficult position.

In a separate matter, one parent complained about a book (The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison) on a suggested reading list given to her 12th grade son. The school system staff followed their established policy; inviting the parent to specify her concerns, then convening two teams of professional educators to reconsider the appropriateness of the book.   Both teams affirmed that the book should remain in school libraries and on the recommended reading list. It had been carefully selected for sound reasons.

The Board of Education voted to overrule its teachers, librarians and administrators by not only removing the book from the reading list but removing it from school libraries. It won the national book award and is considered an American classic by most scholars but board members explained imposing their views on students, professional educators, and the executive team by describing the book as “filth” and “…of no literary value…”.

The 12th graders who received the reading list would within a few months be deemed sufficiently mature to join the armed forces, go away to college, sign contracts and vote. Great literature can help them think through their own values before they are faced with the immediacy of important life questions. A majority of the Board of Education, much like their colleague who imposed his religious views on everyone attending football games, enforced their personal views of a book and thereby deprived students of an opportunity to think for themselves about American culture and literature.

The Board’s responsibility is to create an educational system which enables students to study, think, and come to their own conclusions. Instead, they appear to prefer indoctrinating students with their own beliefs and values. After local and international outcries over their action, the Board reversed themselves but offered minimal explanation and no apology to staff or students. Despite clear recommendations provided to the Board by the review teams, one Board member blamed the staff for not providing adequate advice. Why would English teachers and librarians want to work for a Board which does not trust them to choose books?

Robert Kennedy, paraphrasing George Bernard Shaw, said “There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?” We need that attitude among our Board of Education. The Board’s role is to establish broad vision, strategies and policies; to select the executive leadership; and to support them in their work. The Board should distinguish their responsibilities from those of the staff by leading on issues such as, “What policies and governance practices are followed in nations that have the best educational outcomes?” “Which of those ideas would work well here?” “What resources are needed and how will we provide them?” “How will we prepare students for lifelong learning and coming to their own conclusions about the important issues of their lives?” “Why will the best teachers want to practice their profession in our school district?”

We should not be satisfied with what we have done in the past – not because it was bad; but because we need to do better.  Our target should be public education as good as the best in the world because that is what our children deserve and because anything less will eventually produce a second class nation.   Rather than school prayer or their opinions of individual books, we should hear from our Board of Education about their plan for excellence including educational strategies, projected human and financial resource requirements, recruitment, retention, nationally competitive salaries, facilities, a budget sufficient to provide classroom supplies (so teachers don’t have to purchase their own) and even the option of year-round school for students who are aiming for the stars. If the Boards and the public give our school systems the encouragement and support that they need and deserve, we will be thrilled with the great results that our students achieve.

All Posts, budget, economy, justice, medicaid, north carolina, poverty

ESSE QUAM VIDERI

The Latin phrase that heads this column is the North Carolina state motto, adopted from the Roman philosopher and political theorist Cicero. It means “To be rather than to seem”. It is a fine motto; inspiring integrity and openness in government. In The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli taught the reverse saying, “It is not essential, then, that a Prince should have all the good qualities which I have enumerated above, but it is most essential that he should seem to have them.” Machiavelli was coaching a prince who would soon become a ruler and he wanted his pupil to understand that it is not necessary or even advisable to always behave with integrity. All that is necessary is to SEEM trustworthy.

Proponents of North Carolina’s voter ID law understood Machiavelli’s lesson well. They would have us believe that the purpose of the law is to protect the value of every citizen’s vote by eliminating voter fraud; but they never produced evidence that fraud has affected the outcome of a North Carolina election (or that fraud exits). If they had proof, they would publish it. The leaders of the Voter ID movement only need for fraud to SEEM real so they can SEEM to be protecting the rights of voters while they selectively reduce the rights of targeted groups.

Their decisions regarding which IDs are acceptable for voting discriminate against minorities, the poor and the young. A state issued driver’s license was accepted but a state issued college ID was not. A federal military ID is ok but a Food Stamp ID is not – selectively targeting the poor and the young. The photo ID requirement, which sounds nondiscriminatory, will be discriminatory in practice. The proportion of black voters in the last election who lacked a driver’s license is more than double the proportion for white voters. Those problems demonstrate that the bill is not what it seems to be. Supporters of the new law argue that the state will provide a free ID to anyone who doesn’t have one, conveniently failing to notice that poor folks generally don’t have the certified original birth certificate, passport, or alternatives needed to get the free ID. Nor do they have time and transportation for trips to license offices to complete the application process. As Machiavelli pointed out, the sponsors don’t need to BE non-discriminatory as long as they can SEEM non-discriminatory.

During the legislative session, the Supreme Court terminated one of the protections of the 1965 voting rights act. Afterward Republicans moved quickly to supplement the Voter ID Bill with schemes that target the poor, the young, minorities, and college students. Believing that the Federal Government could no longer interfere with discriminatory laws and practices, they cut the early voting period in half, making it harder for those who depend on their churches or civic groups to provide transportation to the polls. They made it illegal for those who will soon turn 18 to pre-register as voters. They banned registering and voting on the same day, making it harder for unregistered citizens to vote. The targeted populations, of course, are ones that traditionally tend to vote for other parties.

Republican majorities on some local Boards of Election are adding their own means of disenfranchising their targets. In Elizabeth City, the Republican dominated elections board has denied students at historically black Elizabeth City State University the opportunity to run for elected office. The new Republican chairman of the Forsyth County Elections Board has proposed closing the early voting location at historically black Winston Salem State University. At Appalachian State University in Boone, not only will the on-campus polling place be eliminated, there will be over 9300 voters assigned to the new polling place which has only 35 parking spaces. There are no sidewalks between the campus and the polling place, just a dirt path along a highway.

Over recent decades, North Carolina has made huge strides in voter participation, moving from 47th in the nation in 1990 to 11th in 2012. During that period, we made it easier to vote through measures like same day registration and early voting. Now the same Republicans who cut taxes for the wealthy then failed to support public education, Medicaid expansion and unemployment benefits have implemented a voter ID law which will make it harder for those they have harmed to vote them out of office. Their new law is much more than an ID law. It will have the effect of discouraging voting, especially among minorities, the poor and the young.

On the Seal of the United States is the slogan “E Pluribus Unum” – out of many, one. It is a principle which has helped our nation become great.   By disenfranchising many voters the new North Carolina law makes a mockery of both “E Pluribus Unum” and the state motto.   A reversed motto, “Videri quam esse” – to SEEM rather than to BE better fits the law’s supporters but it does not fit the proud and free traditions of our state and our nation.

http://www.npr.org/2013/08/16/212664895/in-rural-n-c-new-voter-id-law-awakens-some-old-fears lack of voter fraud evidence

Bush administration 5 year study turns up no evidence of fraud: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/washington/12fraud.html?_r=2&

Annual nc voter turnout http://www.ncsbe.gov/content.aspx?ID=70

Early voting and campus voting: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/08/19/3120626/county-elections-boards-in-nc.html

http://www.thenation.com/blog/175837/north-carolina-republicans-escalate-attack-student-voting#

http://www.journalnow.com/news/state_region/article_1bedcab6-0acc-11e3-9d20-001a4bcf6878.html

All Posts, budget, deficit, economy, justice, medicaid, north carolina, poverty, public education

NORTH CAROLINA REPUBLICAN CHECKBOOK

If you want to know what is important to people just read their checkbooks and credit card bills. They are far more enlightening than press releases or diaries. The same is true of political parties. After about seven months of total Republican control, the values of that party’s leaders have become apparent in their tax reform law and their budget.

They eliminated the tax on estates of over $5 million so that the wealthiest North Carolinians will no longer pay it when tens of millions of dollars are passed from one generation to the next; and they reformed the income and corporate taxes so that those with the highest incomes will pay less than in the past. They are sure that they reduced the State’s revenue but they are not sure by how much. Good government requires matching tax revenue with necessary spending.

After reducing the state’s income they announced that they did not have enough money to budget a salary increase for teachers. Our teacher salaries were already extremely low and may well be the lowest in the nation after another year with no adjustment. Most state employees were treated little better. Republican leaders did not consider the state’s financial obligations and the needs of our schools before they cut taxes. That is not good government.

Probably the most troubled department in State Government is the Department of Health and Human Services which is responsible for Medicaid, all of our mental health services, and many other programs. To lead this critical area, the Governor picked Dr. Aldona Wos, a physician who has not been involved full-time in health policy or medical practice for many years. She is very wealthy and has been among the largest fund raisers for former President George W. Bush and for Governor McCrory in both of his campaigns for governor. President Bush rewarded Dr. Wos by appointing her as Ambassador to Estonia. Likewise, the Governor made her DHHS Secretary and she hired a young McCrory campaign staffer, Matthew McKillip, as the Chief Policy Officer of DHHS. At age 24, he has no previous health service education or experience but he has worked for a right wing think tank and now he is leading health policy development for the state.

After only a few months on the job, he has received a 35% salary increase. That is just one example of large raises for campaign supporters while there is nothing left over for teachers or other public employees. How might those other employees feel about this?

Republican leaders said that the state does not have enough money to maintain the unemployment compensation program so they cut the maximum monthly benefit by 35% and cut the maximum length of benefits from 26 weeks to 20. As a result of the change, we lost eligibility for over $700 million in federal funds intended for North Carolina’s unemployed workers while our unemployment rate remains one of the highest in the nation.

Then they turned down the Medicaid expansion which would have been totally paid by the federal government for the first 3 years and would have been over 90% federally funded thereafter. That expansion would have covered most of our low-income working people at federal expense. Through 2019 it would have brought $15 billion federal dollars to the state and created 25,000 new jobs (mostly in the private sector). That would have helped mightily with our unemployment problem. Our middle class and poor will have to pay the federal taxes to fund the expansion but we won’t get the health care or the jobs.

The inescapable conclusion is that the Governor and legislative leaders think it is more important to cut taxes for the wealthy than it is to provide health care for low income workers and fair salaries to teachers. You can read their values in the state’s checkbook. This is particularly sad, because these are not the values of most North Carolinians; and many Republicans also disapprove. Some must be wondering how their party got away from them. In retrospect, the answer seems to be that a few very wealthy people not only bought the election with incredible amounts of spending; they also bought the soul of a once proud political party. It’s quite a set of values: Take care of your wealthy donors and reduce their taxes then pay for it by denying fair wages to teachers and other public employees and by cutting back on the public education and health services which would help the poor improve their earning power. They may preach family values but support for families is not written in their checkbook.

After doing such things, the only sure way to stay in office is to prevent those who disagree and those you have harmed from voting. That is a subject for another day.

All Posts, deficit, economy, justice, north carolina, poverty, public education

WORK AND MINIMUM WAGE

A few days ago I came across what seemed like just one more preposterous claim littering our political landscape: that Australia has a minimum wage exceeding $15 American dollars per hour and an unemployment rate of about 5%. The stunning thing is that when I checked this one out I found that it is true. For me, that raised the questions, “How did they do that?” and “Could we do it too?” This column is about some of the answers that I found.

Australia’s achievement is not unique. There are 9 substantial nations with minimum wages higher than ours: Australia, France, Belgium, New Zealand, Ireland, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Canada, and Japan. Five of the nine have lower unemployment rates than the United States. They did not achieve this by running up their national debt. Of the nine, only Japan has a ratio of debt to GDP higher than the US. All the rest have less debt in proportion to their economic output. And although each of the nations is unique, they all have a stronger social safety net for human services than the US.

In my search for answers, I found that how they did it was not particularly relevant. They each found their own ways. The thing that distinguishes them is that they chose to do it. We have not made that commitment.

If we’re missing something, what is it? The surprising answer to that question may be that we are lacking Christian social values. When that thought occurred to me, I re-read Pope John Paul II’s “Encyclical on Work” which was published in 1981. While reading it, I recalled that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis while leading a campaign for economic justice. His concern about income inequality shaped his message that work must be respected with a fair and living wage. He famously said, “On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life’s roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

Returning to the Encyclical I read that, “Work is a good thing for man-a good thing for his humanity-because through work man not only transforms nature, adapting it to his own needs, but he also achieves fulfillment as a human being and indeed, in a sense, becomes ‘more a human being’. … The key problem of social ethics in this case is that of just remuneration for work done. … Just remuneration for the work of an adult who is responsible for a family means remuneration which will suffice for establishing and properly maintaining a family and for providing security for its future.” He goes on to argue that the work of one adult should be sufficient to support a family and that society will suffer if children get inadequate nurture because both parents are working. Regarding the unemployed he added, “The obligation to provide unemployment benefits, that is to say, the duty to make suitable grants indispensable for the subsistence of unemployed workers and their families, is a duty springing from the fundamental principle of the moral order in this sphere, namely the principle of the common use of goods or, to put it in another and still simpler way, the right to life and subsistence.”

In my community the wages paid to a paramedic working full time and supporting a family qualifies the family for food stamps. Here in North Carolina, that is true for many hard working people in both the public and private sectors. I can only imagine the impossibility of supporting a family in any of our 50 states on a minimum wage job or “temp” employment with no benefits.

The other nations that I listed are providing a safety net for the unemployed and they have decided that anyone who is employed merits a living wage. Those nations have better overall school performance because fewer of their students live in poverty. For the same reason, they all have fewer of their number in prison. Too many of our underpaid and unemployed are unable to participate in our economy by earning or learning or spending. That brings up an important business lesson: It is easier to make a profit if your customers have money to spend.

All of this leads me to believe that the Christian social values taught by Pope John Paul II and Dr. King have merit; and if we adopt them we will find our communities, states and nation to be better and more prosperous places to live. Like the Australians, our choice will be driven by our values.

All Posts, budget, justice, north carolina, public education, taxes

LESSONS ABOUT PUBLIC EDUCATION

We seem to have a consensus that public K-12 education is important and that we want to do better but little agreement beyond that. Presidents Bush and Obama made education reforms key parts of their agendas and now Governor McCrory promises major changes. Public understanding of the issues is meager and our highly partisan atmosphere for legislative discussion is a barrier to good decision making. In this climate, I went looking for the Holy Grail of education: policy answers that would lead to excellence in public education. That search led me to conclude that there is no Holy Grail. There is no one prescription or silver bullet but there are many opportunities for improvement and many possible pathways to excellence.

The most valuable source of information that I found is the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in which 34 developed nations have been cooperating for sixteen years to measure student performance and to identify best practices for improvement. The US is one of the participants and there is a wealth of research at our fingertips. Here is a link to PISA’s work. http://www.oecd.org/pisa/  One PISA research paper “Lessons from PISA for the United States” is the source of most information in this column.

Our performance is about average among developed nations in reading and science but well below average in mathematics. Northeastern states are above average, about like the Netherlands. The Midwest is average, tied with Poland. The Western states perform about like Italy and the Southern states rank lowest, matching Greece. Variability of performance in the US is extreme.

Differences among the nations in spending explain only 9% of the variation in their performance. The US gets sub-par performance while being the number two per-capita spender. We are putting in enough resources to achieve excellence but we may not be putting the resources in the right places. Nor is our mediocre performance explained by a higher than normal proportion of socioeconomically disadvantaged students or students from single parent families. Many of the other nations are similar to us in that regard.

Public school and private school performance are not different. When public and private schools have similar resources and similar socioeconomic mix of students, they produce roughly the same performance.

Here are some attributes that the best performing nations seem to have in common. Teachers are highly respected and have salaries that compare favorably to other top professionals. Best performers allocate resources evenly, based on need.   Because funding is not dependent on the local economy, schools in poor communities get as much money as those in wealthy communities.   Schools and communities with particularly difficult situations may receive additional resources and teachers may be offered additional pay to go there. Only the US, Turkey, and Israel base funding on the local economy.

Best performers use standardized tests to measure performance of students and they use the results to modify curriculum, teaching practices and professional development. They do not use the results punitively against teachers or to de-fund schools.   Most also make test results public and allow families some choice in which schools their children attend. High performing schools expect a lot of their local school principals and grant them the authority to hire, set salaries and remove teachers.

 

I was surprised to see which nations are leaders. Asian and Scandinavian nations, especially Korea and Finland are top performers. Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and Shanghai score particularly high on “resilience” of their economically disadvantaged populations which perform almost as well as the children of the wealthy.

Canada has a remarkable story and it may be the one from which we can learn the most. Not long ago, their situation was much like the US and education reform became a topic of bitter political debate. Since then, they have improved as quickly as any nation and now Canada is near the top of most performance measures. There appear to be several lessons to learn from Canada. The Provincial (State) school board establishes general curriculum standards but teachers and local schools have a lot of flexibility and opportunity for creativity in how to use the curriculum. Ontario, the largest Canadian Province, attracts many of their best and brightest into careers in public education. Admission to teachers colleges is very competitive and almost all Ontario teachers graduated in the top third of their college classes.

The Ontario funding formula provides a block grant to each district based on the number of students plus categorical grants for specific programs such as special education and rural transportation.

PISA research indicates that selectivity in choosing teachers, professional respect, collegiality, and relatively high teacher salaries are key factors in high performing schools. The Ontario Salaries will shock many Americans. Annual salary for a new teacher, depending on specialty and qualifications, will be between $45,709 and $55,404. With ten or more years of service the salary will be between $76,021 and $94,707. An additional 11% of salary goes to the retirement plan and health insurance is fully paid by the employer. Ontario does this while spending less per student per year than the American average. They have no Federal role in education, more local autonomy, more different kinds of schools and more success for less money. I hope our legislators, news media and voters will study Ontario, PISA and other research before making changes to public education.  We need to get these decisions right!

All Posts, justice, north carolina, race

GERRYMANDERING FOR POWER

Imagine living in a nation where one political party manipulates elections so that it can maintain power over a majority of voters who support a different party. Then imagine that they are so bold as to publicly brag about what they did and raise money to strengthen their grip on power. How do we describe nations like that?

Now you can quit imagining because you do live in that nation. You can go to the website of those who organized the plan and carried it out; and you can read it in their own words. The Republican State Leadership Committee spent more than $30 million over a period of more than three years to control redistricting and assure Republican majorities in the House of Representatives and State Legislatures even when the majority of voters chose Democrats. They named the project REDMAP and created a website to keep supporters up to date. Here it is: http://www.redistrictingmajorityproject.com/  The excerpts below are direct quotes that show how brazen Republicans are about what they have done.

“Drawing new district lines in states with the most redistricting activity presented the opportunity to solidify conservative policymaking at the state level and maintain a Republican stronghold in the U.S. House of Representatives for the next decade.”

“REDMAP’s effect on the 2012 election is plain when analyzing the results: Pennsylvanians cast 83,000 more votes for Democratic U.S. House candidates than their Republican opponents, but elected a 13-5 Republican majority to represent them in Washington; Michiganders cast over 240,000 more votes for Democratic congressional candidates than Republicans, but still elected a 9-5 Republican delegation to Congress.”

“Democratic candidates for the U.S. House won 1.1 million more votes than their Republican opponents.  But the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives is a Republican and presides over a 33-seat House Republican majority during the 113th Congress.  How?  One needs to look no farther than four states that voted Democratic on a statewide level in 2012, yet elected a strong Republican delegation to represent them in Congress: Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.”

“Republicans enjoy a 33-seat margin in the U.S. House seated yesterday in the 113th Congress, having endured Democratic successes atop the ticket and over one million more votes cast for Democratic House candidates than Republicans.”

In those remarks, Republicans are bragging about rigging elections. Their strategy worked. Here in North Carolina, Republicans used massive amounts of untraceable dark money to target Democratic candidates for state legislature before the 2010 election. After taking control of both houses of the legislature, they obtained advice based on computer analysis of the voting history of demographic and geographic groups in the state then used that advice to re-design congressional and state legislative districts. Their strategy worked so well that they won 9 of 13 seats in the US House of Representatives while 51% of the votes cast were for Democrats and only 49% for Republicans. They rigged the system so that they could win 69% of the elections with 49% of the votes while Democrats won 31 % of the elections with 51% of the votes. It was no accident. In North Carolina it was a carefully executed plan that was heavily financed by Art Pope and organizations which he has supported. Now Mr. Pope is the chief advisor to the Governor for development of our budget.

The Redmap strategy has a racial component, heavily concentrating African American voters into a small number of districts which the Republicans “sacrificed” in order to assure their own majorities in other districts. Lawsuits about redistricting are pending but much damage is already done. I could write about the ill-advised actions of right wing legislators in the congress and the state legislature but those are decisions which can be overturned.   The greater damage is the loss of public confidence in our elections and our government caused by this willful sabotage of free and fair elections. Abraham Lincoln, our most cherished Republican President said on the battlefield at Gettysburg, “…we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Today, the government of the people is under attack by those who have manipulated elections and overridden the people’s will. Rigging election processes to maintain power subverts the will of the people and overrules the consent of the governed. It is no less subversive and no less treasonous than an act of war.

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North Carolina Amendment banning gay marriage

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Let’s try having some thoughtful conversations about the proposal to amend our North Carolina Constitution to ban gay marriage. The current debate does not make much sense to me and I’m trying to understand why anyone wants state government involved. When I try to think it through, I start with the history of marriage. As best I can tell, it exists in some form in every culture and often, but not always, it is solemnized in a religious ceremony. There is monogamous marriage, polygamous marriage, straight, gay and bi… Marriage may be for love or for political alliance or for convenience. It may be arranged by the family or based on the choice of the marriage partners. It can be intended as a lifelong commitment or a temporary arrangement until the kids are grown. If we look across different cultures and different eras, it becomes clear that marriage is not just one kind of arrangement and it evolves over time.  Several years ago a friend who is a Hindu from India was planning to return there to be married to a bride selected by his parents. He had not met her. When I asked him about this custom that was so strange to me, he asked me what the divorce rate is in the US. I don’t recall the number, but it was high. Then my friend asked, “Why should I think that I can do a better job picking a wife than my parents can do?” I prefer doing things my own way, but my friend did have a valid point.

Laws that try to define or govern marriage eventually run afoul of social changes. They become irrelevant or worse, they interfere in the personal freedom of individuals. We have experienced plenty of that within our own nation and our own lifetimes. Many of us can remember when it was illegal for people of different races to marry in some states. That changed gradually then finally our courts recognized inter-racial marriage as a basic civil right which states could not prohibit. Some states recognize “common law marriage”. If a couple live together for some period of time or if they have children together or whatever other criteria are set in the law, they are deemed to have entered an enforceable marriage contract whether they intended to or not.   If they move to a state without such a law, are they still married?

We’re headed for an interesting mess with more government intrusion into the personal values and religious persuasions of individuals. There are religious institutions (including Christian Churches in North Carolina) which perform same sex marriages today. They are going to continue regardless of what is in the constitution. Any attempt to stop them will create a head on collision between the State Constitution and the free practice of religion which most of us value highly. There are established churches in our state which now refuse to fill out the State’s paperwork for marriage licenses. The church performs the marriage and leaves it up to the individuals to decide whether to get a license and officially register the marriage with the State. Some of the folks so married claim married status on their tax returns, cover each other as family under insurance benefits and sign up for social security as husband and wife. They view themselves as married in their own eyes and in the eyes of their God.

Today we have an attempt by evangelical Christians to impose their personal view of marriage on everyone else. They stand in the tradition of their Christian predecessors who successfully banned inter-racial marriage and sexual relationships outside of marriage on biblical grounds. These laws were very serious matters. People were jailed for violating them. Why do we need a constitutional ban on same sex marriage? It won’t make homosexuality go away any more than a ban on blue eyes will make them disappear. I can’t see a benefit in this amendment to justify restricting anyone’s personal freedom.

To my evangelical friends, I pose this question, “What would Jesus do?” I have read the New Testament cover to cover in more than one translation. Assuming it to accurately report what Jesus taught, I find a great deal about how people should treat each other. I cannot find one occasion when he proposed enforcing any of his teaching through civil law. Not once. Never. As best I can tell, the idea never arose in Christianity until the Roman Church became a political power and began to impose its beliefs on others. There is, perhaps, one pertinent statement from Jesus that ought to be considered. The Jews of Jesus’ time had many (sometimes conflicting) religious laws governing daily life. Many religious and political leaders did not approve of Jesus’ teaching and one day he was interrogated publicly about the laws. At one point, a lawyer asked him, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” Jesus replied to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with your all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.” He made it clear that he was teaching values about respect for others; always teaching and never imposing his teaching on anyone else. That is what Jesus did.

I can’t find any justification for the State of North Carolina imposing evangelical values on people who do not share those values. I want to live in a North Carolina which fully respects the rights of every individual to live as he or she sees fit as long as they do not harm others. Live and let live. We are far better off not imposing the values of any religion in our constitution.

 

1/28/2012