The thing Republicans hate most about government, is the size of it. Like they often say every chance they get, their main goal is to “get government out of our lives,” and to “reduce the size of government” blah blah blah!
Here’s another example of Republicans getting government “out of our lives.”
Beginning on January 1st, the government of North Carolina, which, as it turns out happens to be the “small government” people of the Republican party, implemented a law demanding that doctors send them – the government – an ultrasound of all aborted fetuses they perform for women over 16 weeks of pregnancy.
The new law also requires that doctors state how they determined “probable gestational age” of the fetus and provide their measurements to support their claim, notes The New York Times. The state does not allow abortions after 20 weeks except in cases of medical emergencies.
“It should also act as a deterrent to the doctors themselves from lying about gestational age,” Tami L. Fitzgerald, the executive director of the North Carolina Values Coalition, told the newspaper.
“The state has made a public policy decision that babies after 20 weeks have a right to live,” Fitzgerald added. “So this law is about protecting the rights of those unborn babies.”
The mother of one of the students Camden County High School in North Carolina contacted authority and reported what her child heard from teacher, Ms Cynthia Ramsey.
According to the information the student told her mother, the teacher was discussing her ‘bucket list,’ and told the class that if she only had 10 days left to live, “she would kill all black people.”
“I was completely shocked,” the mother, Kimberly Ashcraft said in an interview with WAVY TV. “I asked her again, ‘Are you sure that was what you heard?’ I could not have imagined a teacher saying that.”
The teacher Cynthia Ramsey was briefly suspended without pay but has since been back in the classroom, “teaching.”
According to the superintendent Melvin Hawkins, an investigation is being conducted, the results of which would be kept secret because “this is a personnel issue, and it is confidential until resolved.”
“I was very disappointed to hear that she was back in the classroom so soon,” Ashcraft said.
A local Sheriff told the TV station that other students heard and confirmed the events as relayed by the mother. The Sheriff also stated that he has turned over all evidence to the District Attorney’s office and the fate of the teacher will be decided by that office.
At one point in our short history, voting was a right. A right people fought and died for. But thanks to Republicans and their massive voter suppression drives, encouraging people to vote these days is now seen as a crime, a crime that landedTy Turner behind bars on Monday.
The stars of North Carolina’s Moral Mondays movement took the stage on Labor Day at Charlotte’s Marshall Park to condemn the state’s record on voter suppression and racial profiling, and urge the community to organize and turn out at the polls this November. Just a few hundred feet away, police cuffed and arrested local LGBT activist and former State Senate candidate Ty Turner as he was putting voting rights information on parked cars.
“They said they would charge me for distributing literature,” Turner told ThinkProgress when he was released a few hours later. “I asked [the policeman] for the ordinance number [being violated], because they can’t put handcuffs on you if they cannot tell you why they’re detaining you. I said, ‘Show me where it’s illegal to do this.’ But he would not do it. The officer got mad and grabbed me. Then he told me that I was resisting arrest!”
I know, I know: Money is the answer, plain and simple. School districts don’t want to pay teachers for advanced degrees and right wing politicians don’t want public schools to begin with, so it makes sense that Texas and North Carolina are both in the forefront of starving their states of effective teachers in an effort to…well, I’m not sure.
The debate over whether teachers who earn advanced degrees and credits that allow them to earn more money on the salary scale are actually better teachers than those who don’t, or are better themselves than if they had just stuck with their Bachelor’s degree credits, is becoming louder and more intense. As any teacher can tell you, though, there really is no debate. Teachers who continue their educations, broaden themselves or even go in a new educational direction tend to be more effective. There is no question that teachers should be encouraged (required?) to take courses in content or pedagogy.
So why the screed? Because a few states, most notably Texas and North Carolina, have decided that paying teachers more for advanced degrees doesn’t necessarily lead to high student test scores. And they might be right, but that’s exactly what’s wrong with the current push for test scores to evaluate teachers. Earning a higher degree makes the teacher more knowledgeable and exposes them to more effective teaching methods. Students are then exposed to a greater variety of teaching methods and more expansive content. That’s the point of an education. Equating the tests with teacher effectiveness is a terrible idea whose time, unfortunately, has come.
Even worse is the fact that public leaders continue to say that we need the best and brightest college graduates to become teachers (as if we don’t have a significant majority of them in classrooms right now). What the best and brightest know, and being one of them allows me to represent their argument, is that educating yourself is the best practice any teacher can follow. The best and brightest also know that motivating people to push themselves should be recognized monetarily. Isn’t that what law firms, banks and other corporations do?
The best and brightest are not swayed by specious arguments from elected officials who are not, in most cases, the best and brightest. For proof, consider the reaction in North Carolina:
In April, the Wake County Public School System – the largest in North Carolina with about 150,000 students – said more than 600 teachers had left since the beginning of the school year, an increase of 41 percent over the same period the year before.
One district official blamed a lack of a significant pay raises in recent years, along with the phasing out of tenure and extra pay for advanced degrees. Human Resources Superintendent Doug Thilman called the figures “alarming” but “not surprising.”
Not surprising? If your best teachers are leaving the schools, why continue the policy? And who, might I ask, is taking the place of these best and brightest? People with no interest in getting advanced degrees? These are not the best people to have in your classrooms. This is the kind of lazy thinking that will rule the country if conservatives are elected to the Senate and the White House.
Something to seriously think about this fall and for 2016.
Clay Aiken’s Democratic opponent, 71 years old Keith Crisco, died on Monday after sustaining injuries from a fall in his home.
“I am stunned and deeply saddened by Keith Crisco’s death,” Aiken said. “Keith came from humble beginnings. No matter how high he rose – to Harvard, to the White House and to the Governor’s Cabinet – he never forgot where he came from. He was a gentleman, a good and honorable man and an extraordinary public servant.”
Aiken said May 12 that he is suspending all campaign activities to “pray for his family and friends.”
According to Brad Crone, a North Carolina Democratic strategist, Crisco was planning to concede May 13. While the state board of elections has acknowledged Crisco’s death, Aiken has not been certified the winner.
Aiken held a slim lead for the Democratic nomination, with an unofficial tally of 11,649 votes, or 40.8%. Keith Crisco was in second place with 11,277 votes, or 39.5%. In North Carolina, a candidate needs to get more than 40% of the vote to avoid a runoff election.
Maybe I got this wrong. But I always thought that the reason anyone went into politics is to help their constituents. To make policies that would help them, not hurt them. Today’s Republicans however, keep suggesting that my way of thinking is wrong. Apparently the main focus of today’s politician is to hurt people.
Take this ad for example. It’s an ad by North Carolina State House Speaker, Republican Thom Tillis, who is also running for the US Senate. Listen, as Tillis brags about taking health care away from the people of North Carolina, as he ask them to support his Senate run.
A North Carolina man was billed $80,000 for an 18-hour hospital stay last summer after being bitten by a snake – and almost all of the bill was for anti-venom.
Eric Furguson, 54, of Mooresville, was shocked when he received the massive bill from Lake Norman Regional Medical Center attributing more than $81,000 of the cost to a four-vial dose of anti-venom.
He told the Charlotte Observer he was able to find the same anti-venom online at prices ranging from $750 to 12,000 per vial, a staggering difference for which they demanded an explanation.
Mr Ferguson’s health insurance through Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina reduced the total bill from Lake Norman Regional Medical Center to just over $20,000, of which he paid a deductible of about $5,400 – but his wife worried about the cost of being uninsured.
‘What if it was someone that didn’t have the resources to research and didn’t have insurance?’ Wife Laura Ferguson wondered aloud to the paper. ‘What is fair and equitable here?’
When reached by the Observer, the hospital released a statement saying it rarely charges list prices.‘We are required to give Medicare one level of discount from list price, Medicaid another, and private insurers negotiate for still others,’ said the statement.
‘If we did not start with the list prices we have, we would not end up with enough revenue to remain in operation… Our costs for providing uncompensated care are partially covered by higher bills for other patients.
‘In some cases, Lake Norman Regional’s charge is considerably higher than other local hospitals,’ the statement continued, explaining that discounts of about 62 to 65 percent are offered to patients without insurance, according to the Observer.
A lawsuit was filed in 2010 by doctors at Lake Norman and another local hospital accusing the medical facilities of offering kickbacks to doctors who could provide unnecessary treatment.
Parent company Health Management Associates denied the allegations, but declined further comment.
Charity groups in Raleigh, North Carolina are criticizing local police over what they call a sudden enforcement of a local ordinance prohibiting them from feeding the homeless.
“The police are caught up in a system,” Rev. Hugh Hollowell told WRAL-TV on Sunday. “The police work for the mayor and the City Council, who is ultimately responsible to the developers who spend lots and lots of money to revitalize downtown.”
Hollowell attracted attention to the police’s activities on Saturday after his group, Love Wins Ministries, was barred from its weekly food distribution at a local park, Moore Square, for the first time in six years.
“No representative from the Raleigh Police Department was willing to tell us which ordinance we were breaking, or why, after six years and countless friendly and cooperative encounters with the Department, they are now preventing us from feeding hungry people,” Hollowell wrote on the group’s website. “When I asked the officer why, he said that he was not going to debate me. ‘I am just telling you what is. Now you pass out that food, you will go to jail.’”
Another charitable group, Human Beans Together, told WRAL it was also forced out of the park. When it relocated to a nearby parking lot to continue, police also stepped in before the owner arrived and allowed them to remain on the premises while they negotiate a long-term solution.
This is not the real Harlem Shake. We’ve detailed what the real one looks like here already. But as long as these people keep making these videos, well, we’ll thing about showing their video.
This is North Carolina’s basketball team’s version.
In the state of North Carolina, the voters chose to go in a different direction. For the past 20-years, a Democrat had been the sitting Governor of North Carolina, but all that changed on one election night in November, 2012. The new Governor, Pat McCrory, a former Mayor of Charlotte NC., was elected as the first Republican governor since Gov. Jim Martin who served from 1985 -1993.
Since Gov. McCrory’s inauguration in January this year and his State of the State Address this month, he has already made sweeping legislative moves and overturns that directly affect thousands of North Carolinians right where it hurts most – their finances. According to Gary Anderson of the Associated Press, McCrory signed the bill making these changes in his state’s Capitol building office. The media wasn’t invited to the signing, but several of the legislators (All Republicans) who quickly shepherded the bill through the General Assembly in the first two weeks of this year’s work session, were there. (Why so Secretive?)
The bill includes an unemployment plan that repays $2.5 billion owed the federal government for jobless benefits paid since the Great Recession, by cutting maximum weekly jobless payments from $535 to $350 on new claims beginning July 1. And the maximum number of weeks for state benefits goes from 26 weeks to 12 to 20 weeks, depending on the state unemployment rate. But what’s not mentioned is that Gov. McCrory gave a $13,000 raise to his Cabinet secretaries while making these cuts.
The bill also raises state unemployment taxes, partially through the elimination of a zero-percent rate that about 30,000 businesses have received. Federal taxes will continue to rise by $21 per employee per year until the debt is repaid and a 20-percent state surcharge will continue a little while longer.
“As one of the first laws under his tenure, these cruel cuts will forever mar any legacy that Gov. McCrory hopes to leave behind,” said MaryBe McMillan with the state AFL-CIO. “Only bullies kick people while they are down. Shame on our governor and our legislature for turning their backs on unemployed workers.”
Shameful indeed.
When President Obama even mentions a minimum wage increase or the super rich paying a little more in taxes or healthcare for every American, the Republicans cringe, squirm and call it bad economics. But a Republican Governor and Republican led House comes into power, kicks the little man while he’s down and this is considered Good Policy?
One leader, led by the North Carolina Chamber, who backed the overhaul – Chamber CEO Lew Ebert – acknowledged in an interview that it was “tough medicine” for both businesses and workers, but that it would insure the system wouldn’t be in such bad shape again. (Hey Ebert, what about those who aren’t working?)
“We’re sending a strong signal. We’re getting our house in order,” he said.
Riiiigghhtttt. By destroying the little man who’s struggling to make ends meet, keep a roof over his and his family’s head, put food on the table, pay for college tuitions, buy groceries, pay a mortgage, make a car payment, etc. All of this on $350 a week? Yep, that’s a Strong Signal alright. A signal signifying what Democrats have always thought about Republicans and was confirmed by the great Mitt Romney. Does 47% ring a bell?
What are these people thinking, or are they even thinking? The same Mitt Romney who is promising to cut jobs if he becomes president is leading in North Carolina.
PPP’s newest North Carolina poll finds Mitt Romney leading Barack Obama 48-46. It’s a small lead but still significant in that it’s the first time we’ve found Romney ahead in our monthly polling of the state since October.
Romney’s gained 7 points on Obama in North Carolina since April, when the President led by a 49-44 margin. Since then Romney’s erased what was a 51-38 lead for Obama with independents and taken a 42-41 lead with that voting group. He’s also increased his share of the Democratic vote from 15% to 20%, suggesting he’s convincing some more conservative voters within the party to cross over.
Voters in the state have significantly warmed up to Romney in the couple of months since he sewed up the Republican nomination. 41% of voters have a favorable opinion of him to 46% with a negative one. Those numbers still aren’t great but they represent a 24 point improvement on the margin from April when Romney was at a -29 spread (29/58).
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