July 21, 2010

A created job?

Posted by Dr. Roy Cordato at 7:06 PM

I was just wondering if Shirley Sherrod accepts the new position that is being offered to her by the Department of Agriculture if the Obama Administration will count it as a job created or a job saved?

Linkable Entry

Gov Perdue open to legal video poker

Posted by Joseph Coletti at 3:19 PM

Even as she signed the ban on video poker today, Gov. Bev Perdue said she would be okay with the machines if regulated.

Linkable Entry

New Carolina Journal Online exclusives

Posted by Mitch Kokai at 1:04 PM

Be sure to check out two new Carolina Journal Online exclusives.

Anthony Greco's latest CarolinaJournal.tv report focuses on the arrests of protesters at Tuesday's Wake County school board meeting.

Jim Stegall reports highlights from the recent N.C. Alliance for Public Charter Schools conference.

Linkable Entry

Theater of the absurd

Posted by Dr. Michael Sanera at 12:54 AM

WRAL reports here that reusable grocery bags could be hazardous to your health.

Researchers from Arizona and California found E. coli in 12 percent of the bags they tested. One of the co-authors says the study suggests reusable bags pose a "serious risk to public health." 

But wait a minute. Ben Chapman, a food safety assistant professor at NC State, says that if you want to be green, continue to use them.  Just put your meat in plastic bags before you put it in your reusable bag and wash your reusable bags.

Wait a minute. Don't use disposable plastic bags to carry your groceries home, but put your meat in a plastic bag before you put it in your reusable grocery bag?  Don't use a disposable plastic bag but waste water and energy to wash your reusable grocery bag in hot water to kill the E. coli?

Did I mistakenly tuned into an old episode of Twilight Zone or the WRAL news.  Someone explain this to me!!

Linkable Entry

Durham students make substantial gains on state tests

Posted by Dr. Terry Stoops at 12:26 AM

Preliminary Results for Durham Public Schools
(Percentage change in proficiency from 2008-09 to 2009-10 school years.)

Grade 3‐8 Reading Proficiency

All +2.1%
African‐Amer. +4.8%
Hispanic +3.4%
Economically Disadvantaged +6%
Limited English Proficient 0
Students With Disabilities +3.2%

Grade 3‐8 Math Proficiency

All +2.3%
African‐Amer. +4.7%
Hispanic +2.1%
Economically Disadvantaged +5.9%
Limited English Proficient +1.7%
Students With Disabilities +1.5%

EOC [High School] Proficiency by Subgroup

All +11.5%
African American +14.2%
Hispanic +10.7%
Economically Disadvantaged +13.7%
Limited English Proficient +5.2%
Students With Disabilities +10.3%

Linkable Entry

Question??

Posted by Melissa Mitchell at 11:03 AM

Why is it that when Republicans vote in mass against big-government tactics and tax increases, they are called the party of "no," but when the Democrats on the Wake County school board vote "no" on every issue they are lauded for their votes.

Just wondering.

Linkable Entry

U.S. News blows the story three times

Posted by Joseph Coletti at 09:55 AM

The latest issue of U.S. News and World Report focuses on health care, but the authors and editors miss some of important points.

A list of changes that will affect consumers missed two changes that could affect more than 10 million Americans. Beginning January 1, 2011, individuals will not be able use their health savings account (HSA) to purchase many over-the-counter medications unless they first get a certificate of medical necessity. If somebody makes a mistake and purchases something not on the allowed list or does not get the right paperwork, the penalty will double to 20 percent of the cost. These are significant costs that will hamper the one insurance product that has proven capable of improving care at lower cost, but U.S. News ignores them while highlighting expansions of coverage and government subsidies.

An article on hospitals seeking payment from patients highlights a reason for this: "Some $260 billion went to uncompensated medical care between 1999 and 2008." That might sound like a lot of money, but is less than 4% hospital costs and less than 1% of total health care expenditures over the 10-year period.

A bigger problem facing hospitals, insurers, and patients alike is the attitude expressed in a sidebar. A woman faced a $418 facility fee in here $1,133 doctor bill. She fought it, but said, "Everybody's attitude was: What do you have to worry about? You have insurance."

What do we have to worry about with ObamaCare? It's free and doesn't raise taxes, right? Oh, wait, the administration said what about the mandate?

Linkable Entry

Down the road at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools

Posted by Dr. Terry Stoops at 09:23 AM

Great Schools in Wake Coalition press release (May 4, 2010):

One need only look down the road at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools to understand how, with a new assignment model, creating higher poverty schools directly impacts student achievement,’ said Kathleen Brown, an associate professor and chair of the Educational Leadership Area in the UNC School of Education. ‘By eliminating socioeconomic diversity and student achievement as factors in its new student assignment policy,’ continued Brown, ‘the School Board majority is failing to acknowledge the inextricable ties between the way students are assigned and their academic achievement.'"

The results also show CMS's improvements by all groups of students, with noteworthy gains made by black, Hispanic and low-income students. Those students now outperform their peers in Wake County schools, the state's largest school system, which has fewer minority and poor students.

Linkable Entry

Sowell gets a 10 for this column

Posted by George Leef at 08:36 AM

In this column Thomas Sowell takes a look at the way Obama and his defenders continually play the race card in efforts to shield themselves from rational criticism.

Here's my favorite line. Referring to the fact that in 2008 many voters were taken in by Obama's soothing rhetoric and supported him: "Still, it was an honest mistake of the kind that decent people have often made when dealing with people whose agendas are not constrained by decency, but only by what they think they can get away with."

That pretty well sums up the whole Obama presidency.

Linkable Entry

13 of 16 arrested school board protesters from outside Wake County

Posted by Joseph Coletti at 08:35 AM

WRAL has mug shots for the 19 people arrested at yesterday's Wake County school board meeting. The site also provides addresses for 16 of them. Nancy Petty, pastor at Pullen Memorial Baptist Church, lives in Raleigh. William Barber lives in Goldsboro. It is not easy to find where Gregory Moss lives.

Among the others, Wake County residents were significantly underrepresented. The geographical breakdown:

• 4 - Durham (Durham County)
• 2 - Chapel Hill (Orange County)
• 1 - Carrboro (Orange County)
• 1 - Oxford (Granville County)
• 1 - Winston-Salem (Forsyth County)
• 1 - Elizabeth City (Pasquotank County)
• 1 - Goldsboro (Wayne County)
• 1 - Clayton (Johnston County)
• 1 - Whitsett (Guilford County)

And

• 3 - Raleigh (Wake County)

I don't know about the others at the protest, but the arrests don't indicate much home-grown opposition to the school board.

Linkable Entry

Don't believe John Hood? What about Newsweek?

Posted by Mitch Kokai at 08:27 AM

John Hood explained recently how teachers' unions — or "associations," if you prefer — stand in the way of real education reform.

Pat Wingert and Evan Thomas offer another piece of evidence supporting that argument in the latest Newsweek. 

[T]eacher layoffs are coming—perhaps more than 100,000 nationwide. In most states, union contracts or state law requires they be done by seniority, so the newest teachers are pink-slipped, no matter how good they are. “ ‘Last in, first out’ virtually guarantees that all our great, young teachers will be out of a job, and some of the least effective will stay in the classroom,” says Tim Knowles, director of the Urban Education Institute at the University of Chicago.

Linkable Entry

Maybe Alter should read Fineman's column

Posted by Mitch Kokai at 08:22 AM

Jonathan Alter of Newsweek doesn't understand why voters aren't lining up to praise the president.

With Wall Street reform added to health care, President Obama is now two-for-two on his major domestic initiatives. If you include big bills expanding college loans and cracking down on credit-card companies (further strengthened in the new Dodd-Frank financial legislation), he’s four-for-four. Throw in the Recovery Act, which included more public investment than even Franklin Roosevelt managed in his first year, and a half dozen other meaty bills and you’ve got a legislative record that’s already historic. Oh, and Obama (with Ben Bernanke) prevented another Great Depression, then got almost all the bailout money back.

Perhaps if Alter flipped a couple of pages in his own magazine, he'd learn from fellow left-leaning columnist Howard Fineman's more level-headed assessment, which focuses on the response of independent male voters, or "indie men."

The Democrats’ support among this group has fallen to as low as 35 percent in some polls. The reasons are clear. They do not believe that Obama’s actions have produced results—and for these practical voters, nothing else matters. The $787 billion stimulus bill is widely regarded as an expensive, unfocused dud, even when measured against the cautious claims the Obama camp originally made for it. Health-care reform remains, for most voters, a 2,000-page, impenetrable, and largely irrelevant mystery. The BP oil spill has hurt Obama’s ability to fend off GOP charges that he’s ineffective as a leader.

Linkable Entry

Latest dispatches from the campaign trail

Posted by David N. Bass at 08:20 AM

• Politico says that Republican Renee Ellmers has failed to capitalize on Bob Etheridge's "who are you?" incident.


• Marshall and Burr spar over unemployment benefits.


• Republicans eye seven state House seats they think could switch this year.


• Ilario Pantano, Republican candidate in the 7th Congressional District, says that incumbent Democrat Mike McIntyre has been silent too long on Obama’s plan to kill a proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain.

Linkable Entry

Video of Keith Sutton almost getting arrested at school board meeting

Posted by David N. Bass at 08:15 AM

HT: Josh Ellis

Linkable Entry

Barone reads the tea leaves on Iran

Posted by Mitch Kokai at 08:09 AM

Michael Barone's latest column for the Washington Examiner assesses the likelihood of a campaign to disable Iran's nuclear capability. 

[Joe] Klein thinks President Obama is still dead set against bombing Iran. [Walter Russell] Mead is not so sure. He thinks Obama is motivated by a Wilsonian desire for "the construction of a liberal and orderly world." Or "the European Union built up to a global scale." A successful Iranian nuclear program, in Mead's view, would be "the complete, utter and historic destruction" of Obama's long-term goals of a non-nuclear world and a cooperative international order.

This may sound far-fetched. But recall that Woodrow Wilson was re-elected in 1916 on the slogan "He kept us out of war." Then in 1917 he went to war and quickly built the most stringent wartime state -- with private businesses nationalized and political dissenters jailed -- in modern American history. A Wilsonian desire for international order is not inconsistent with aggressive military action. Sometimes the two are compatible.

It would be ironic if the professorial Barack Obama launches a military attack when his supposedly cowboy predecessor George W. Bush declined to do so.

Linkable Entry

In case you missed him ...

Posted by Mitch Kokai at 06:57 AM

Linkable Entry

New Carolina Journal Online features

Posted by Mitch Kokai at 06:56 AM

The latest Carolina Journal Online exclusive features Sarah Okeson's report on Chowan County government's budget woes. 

John Hood's Daily Journal explains why politicians in Raleigh and Washington deserve the blame for North Carolina's traffic congestion.

Linkable Entry

You gotta love this story

Posted by Dr. Roy Cordato at 06:44 AM

This WSJ article reports that in Washington DC the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council of Carpenters (a union) is hiring non-union labor at minimum wage to walk a picket line for them because they can't get their own members to do it. Here's the question I pose them, do they consider the minimum wage a livable wage in the DC area and aren't they exploiting these poor workers simply because they are currently unemployed? And what about benefits? I bet their not even getting health insurance. I think these picket line walkers need to unionize. Where's card-check when you need it?

Linkable Entry

<< Last Entry