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November 04, 2010

Just one campus?

Posted by Joseph Coletti at 4:35 PM

UNC President Erskine Bowles told the Board of Governors they might need to close a campus to cut university spending by 20 percent. Look at the system's graduation rates and see if there might be a case to close more than one campus. Six schools graduate less than a fifth of their students after four years. Seven of them fail to graduate half their students in six years. Is this the best use of resources the students or the state?

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Politico: GOP already targeting Shuler, McIntyre in '12

Posted by David N. Bass at 3:20 PM

Newly re-elected Democratic congressmen Heath Shuler and Mike McIntyre already are on the GOP's short list of congressional targets in 2012.

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The Roots of Obama's Rage

Posted by Dr. Karen Y. Palasek at 3:15 PM

What makes Obama tick? In The Roots of Obama's Rage,, Dinesh D'Souza aims to provide a framework for understanding the goals and actions of our current President. I recommend the book, but note that there are significant and differing opinions about the book's central thesis out there, as would certainly be expected. An example is this link to a very critical interview conducted by Jonathan Alter of Newsweek for C-SPAN/BookTV. No matter what you think of the book, Alter does a poor job as critic: he cannot contain himself long enough to listen to the answer to any question posed, and fails to maneuver D'Souza into several obviously planned 'gotcha' moments.

I find D'Souza's thesis compelling, and his research both generous and extensive, but would gladly entertain argument and reasonable debate from a critic who is more coherent and self-controlled than is the senior editor of Newsweek.

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Five words strung together that promise all-out hilarity

Posted by Jon Sanders at 1:27 PM

"The Alvin Greene Comic Book."

Democratic Senate candidate Alvin Greene released a comic book about him created by a supporter after the election was callled for his opponent Tuesday night.
News Channel 7 secured the rights to post the comic, all four pages, online from the creator.

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North Carolina: The strangest beast in all of politics

Posted by Dr. Terry Stoops at 12:51 AM

Max Borders gives a shout-out to Carolina Journal in an op-ed published by the Washington Examiner.

Until November 2, 2010, the N.C. corruption market had been cornered by Democrats who managed never to let the legislature flip--even during the heyday of Jesse Helms. The ends, apparently, justified the means. But 2010 is another era. The question now is: will Democrats take on the white mantel, or continue quid pro quo in bathroom stalls and back rooms in order to regain power? Whatever they do, outlets like the Carolina Journal and the News & Observer (reluctantly) will be there to catch them.

Nice work as usual, Max.

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New CJTV exclusive

Posted by Mitch Kokai at 12:47 AM

The latest Carolina Journal Online exclusive features Anthony Greco's CarolinaJournal.tv report on N.C. House Republican Leader Paul Stam's ideas about how GOP legislators will approach state government's top issues.

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What now for the Tea Party?

Posted by Melissa Mitchell at 11:59 AM

Now that the election results are in and the Republican wave has rolled over the political scene, what is the future of the Tea Party movement? Because many of their chosen candidates did not win election, many pundits will try to indicate that the Tea Party movement is over, but nothing could be further from the truth.

The Tea Party attendees are just resting, but they are not gone. As Dick Armey, a leader in the Tea Party movement, noted in his book, Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto, he does not want a third political party – "he wants to take back the Republican Party."

Tea party attendees will rest and regroup and now become a grass-roots watchdog group. If the Republicans return to the spend-and-tax practices, bailouts, pork projects, and the big-government programs that caused the nation to turn on them, these grass-roots activists will be at their town hall meetings, calling them, and visiting their D.C. offices.

You can bet that they will also be targeting those Democrats who try to prevent a return to an era of lower taxes, less government intrusion, and reduced spending, hopefully, making their political lives a misery.

So do not think that the Tea Party movement is gone or over. After all, the Revolutionary War came after the original Tea Party, not before it.

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New More at Four study: Poor kids benefit

Posted by Dr. Terry Stoops at 11:53 AM

Researchers at the FPG Child Development Institute at the UNC-Chapel Hill just released, "Long-term Effects of the North Carolina More at Four Pre-kindergarten Program: Children's Reading and Math Skills at Third Grade." The study concluded that poor children who participated in More at Four (MAF) had a math and/or reading score that was higher (statistically) than those who did not. The benefits were not as pronounced for students from higher income families.

The study neglected a very important variable, in my opinion. According to previous evaluations of the program, half of MAF students attend a public preschool and half attend a private/nonprofit preschool. The study did not differentiate between the two settings.

In fact, several contextual factors were left out. How did urban and suburban children perform compared to kids in rural areas? Were there variations in performance based on teacher quality or class size at MAF sites? How did math and reading performance of MAF students compare to similar students in their home district?

The study is a very broad, albeit valuable, examination of More At Four.

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You might be a progressive if...

Posted by Dr. Roy Cordato at 11:25 AM

...you believe that the way to stimulate the economy is:

A) to have the government borrow and spend trillions of dollars, and then

B) to have the the Federal Reserve create hundred of billions of new dollars to buy up a portion of the debt that was created in the process of borrowing those trillions.

Comment: No wonder why Obama reappointed Ben Bernanke. He knew that he had an ally that would enable his real voodoo economic policies.

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Why did the Democrats lose?

Posted by George Leef at 09:21 AM

Not surprisingly, one line is that what they did over the last two years was just too complicated for the typical American to understand. The brilliant, far-seeing politicians talked over the heads of the yokels.

Don Boudreaux offers his rebuttal to that absurd notion:

Editor, USA Today

Dear Editor:

Ross Baker blames yesterday's trouncing of the Democrats to "an enduring
Democratic blunder: talking over the heads of the American people" ("Why the Democrats were hammered," Nov. 3).

Ummm. No.

The "enduring Democratic blunder" (often repeated by the GOP) is to enact
indecipherably complex and intricate statutes aimed at achieving impossible
outcomes. It's the ludicrous convolution of such legislation that is "over the
heads of the American people." And it's over their heads not because the
American people are dumb but because no one - not even the geniuses on the Hill - can possibly absorb the full meaning of the words in the statutes, much less anticipate the millions of unforeseen consequences, large and tiny, that are unleashed by the social engineering for which too many politicians have a fetish.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
George Mason University

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Limbaugh offers congressional Republicans some interesting advice

Posted by Mitch Kokai at 07:10 AM

Before the big GOP gains secured in this week’s elections, Rush Limbaugh shared with Newsweek some ideas for congressional Republicans planning their legislative strategy:

Limbaugh laid out his to-do list, which includes repeal of the health-care law and the financial-regulatory-reform bill; ending the ban on offshore drilling; the reprivatization of General Motors, Chrysler, and the student-loan program; a spike in the heart of cap-and-trade legislation (he regards global warming as a hoax); the elimination of the capital-gains tax; a reduction of the corporate tax rate to 20 percent; and replacement of the progressive income-tax code with a flat or “fair” tax.
Limbaugh is aware that it is very unlikely that there will be enough votes in Congress to achieve any of this. But that isn’t the point. He wants to use the next two years as an educational seminar on what he regards as the evils of Obama-style liberalism. “The mistake the GOP made in 1994 is that they stopped teaching after they won,” he says. What should the GOP do to make its point? “Send Obama a repeal bill every week and make him veto it,” he suggests. “My attitude is, who says we can’t override his vetoes? The Republicans are being sent to Washington to stop the Obama agenda. And it is not just Republicans sending them to D.C. Lots of independents and Democrats are going to vote for Republicans to stop this.”

One wonders what El Rushbo would suggest for the newly minted GOP majority in North Carolina’s General Assembly?

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Samuelson sees through the high-speed rail silliness

Posted by Mitch Kokai at 07:09 AM

Echoing Randal O’Toole’s analysis of the topic, Newsweek’s Robert J. Samuelson offers the following assessment of high-speed rail:

Somehow, it has become fashionable to think that high-speed trains connecting major cities will help “save the planet.” They won’t. They’re a perfect example of wasteful spending masquerading as a respectable social cause. They would further burden already-overburdened governments and drain dollars from worthier programs. …

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What about bad climate science?

Posted by Mitch Kokai at 07:08 AM

There’s something especially funny about Newsweek’s Sharon Begley writing a column urging science educators to do more to help students detect bad science.

Might such enhanced instruction have saved Begley from becoming a climate alarmist?

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New Carolina Journal Online features

Posted by Mitch Kokai at 07:01 AM

The latest Carolina Journal Online exclusive features Kristy Bailey's report on allegations of voter intimidation during this election season.

John Hood's Daily Journal focuses on the two top issues for the new Republican-led General Assembly: the budget and redistricting.

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