Category Archives: Politics: State

Voter ID – Alabama Style

Posted on October 19, 2015 | 2 comments

Vote

Recently had a Facebook conversation with respect to the origination of the right to vote – federal or state.  Fascinating concept and a little disturbing.  I’ve always thought that the right to vote was precious and perhaps cardinal among the rights of citizens protected by governments.  Where ever that right emanates from, I would like to see it made clear that such a right is federally protected.

Anywho – during that conversation, the goings on in Alabama came up.  For those who don’t know, Alabama has passed voter ID laws and was recently allowed to implement them:

MONTGOMERY, Alabama —  Today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision clears the way for Alabama’s new photo voter ID law to be used in the 2014 elections without the need for federal preclearance, state officials said.

Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange and Secretary of State Beth Chapman said they believed the voting requirement, which is scheduled to take effect with the June 2014 primaries, can simply move forward.

“Photo voter ID will the first process that we have gone through under this new ruling,” Chapman said today.

Alabama lawmakers in 2011 approved a law to require Alabamians – beginning with the party primaries in June of 2014 — to show photo identification in order to vote.

Then, in a controversial move, Alabama has closed multiple DMV satellite offices – mostly in black and poor communities:

… Alabama just took a giant step backward.

Take a look at the 10 Alabama counties with the highest percentage of non-white registered voters. That’s Macon, Greene, Sumter, Lowndes, Bullock, Perry, Wilcox, Dallas, Hale, and Montgomery, according to the Alabama Secretary of State’s office. Alabama, thanks to its budgetary insanity and inanity, just opted to close driver license bureaus in eight of them. All but Dallas and Montgomery will be closed.

Closed. In a state in which driver licenses or special photo IDs are a requirement for voting.

Ouch.  First ‘Bama requires an ID to vote, then they close the offices where you can get one.  Direct evidence of a malicious attempt to restrict the vote.

At least in my eyes.

But then I learned this:

Alabama has 44 driver’s license offices throughout the state. It apparently also had 31 satellite offices that were open only part-time and that accounted for less than 5 percent of the driver’s licenses issued each year. Because of the budget passed by the state legislature, Alabama’s state government had to “allocate scarce limited resources in Fiscal Year 2016,” according to a letter sent by Governor Robert Bentley to Representative Terri Sewell, D-Ala. So the state government decided to close these satellite offices.

…

… in addition to being able to use a driver’s license to meet the voter ID requirement, you can get a free voter ID in every single county in the state. In addition to DMV offices, the secretary of state offers free voter IDs in all 67 counties through the local election registrar.

Furthermore, as Governor Bentley points out, those satellite offices being closed are typically “located in the county buildings where the registrars and probate judges’ offices are located.” So individuals who would have used one of the part-time satellite DMV offices to get an ID will be able to simply walk to another office—in the same building—to get the ID they need for voting.

…

Alabama even provides a free birth certificate or marriage license if you need it to get an ID. And if you can’t access a polling place because you are disabled or elderly, you don’t have to have an ID to vote by absentee ballot. Additionally, Alabama will continue to provide “mobile units to register and develop photo identification cards to those who need it throughout the state, and who may find themselves limited by lack of transportation,” according to Governor Bentley.

Finally, none of the critics mention that, in addition to driver’s licenses and the specially issued voter ID cards, you can vote in Alabama also using an ID issued by any state or the federal government—a passport; a local, state, or federal government ID; a student ID issued by any private or public Alabama college; and a military or tribal ID.

What does all of this mean?  Not sure, really.  I’m just not sure.

Literally it means that if you wanna vote at a polling place and don’t have a photo ID, you’ll need to get one.  AND it means that of the choices you have, there is one less in those counties that experienced a DMV closure.  However, it doesn’t restrict a citizen from obtaining a valid ID.  Further, it doesn’t make it any harder, the location is in the same place and furthermore, Voter IDs are free.

In the end, two things are emerging as truth in my mind – Voter ID laws are not “racist” laws and people who claim such are simply blowing their ‘protest’ dog whistle.  Second, the juice may not be worth the squeeze.  At some point, an analysis has to be made – how much time, energy, money and political capital is it worth to expend on this issue?  I’m closer and closer to arriving there.

I may just cry ‘Uncle’.

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Posted in Politics: State, Race

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2010 Election – A Boon to North Carolina Repulicans?

Posted on April 7, 2014 | 1 comment

Republican vs Democrat

Prior to 2010 North Carolina was a strange state – reliably democrat in state politics and mostly republican in Presidential elections.

But then 2010:

WASHINGTON — The 2012 election should have been a good one for Democrats running for Congress in North Carolina.

They received a total of 2.2 million votes — about 81,000 more than their Republican opponents. But when those votes were divvied up among the state’s 13 House districts, Democrats came up short. Way short.

Republicans won nine seats and Democrats only four.

How did Republicans pull off this unlikely feat? State lawmakers set the stage when they redrew the boundaries of congressional districts following the 2010 Census.

Before redistricting, North Carolina’s congressional delegation was closely divided. Democrats held seven seats and Republicans held six. In any given election, three or four races could be competitive.

Amazing.

But is there a reason?

But the 2010 election was historic for Republicans in North Carolina, and the ramifications are still being felt. In 2010, Republicans won control of North Carolina’s entire state legislature for the first time since 1870, giving them control of the redistricting process.

North Carolina still had a Democratic governor, Beverly Perdue. But in North Carolina, the governor has no say over the congressional map. The entire process is controlled by the legislature.

To be sure the maps would e different after more than 140 years in the dark – but did the republicans go too far?

 

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Posted in Politics: North Carolina, Politics: State

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Teacher Pay In North Carolina

Posted on March 19, 2014 | Leave a comment

Corporate Competition

I need to stipulate three things: 1.  I used to be a senior high math teacher 2.  I work in corporate America in a highly competitive environment 3.  I am payed more than both the national average and mean Okay, teacher pay, here in NC it’s pretty bad:

Under the current state base pay scale, a teacher who started in the system with no experience would take 16 years to reach a $40,000 salary. North Carolina school teachers have only seen one one raise since 2008, which was 1.2 percent.

Like I said, pretty bad.  And we need to improve it. But let’s think about why.  Do we wanna pay teachers more because we only love them and think they deserve more pay?  No, at least not me.  I wanna pay teachers more because by creating the incentive to be a teacher, you attract better teachers. And why do we want better teachers?

The work of Bill Sanders, formerly at the University of Tennessee’s Value-Added Research and Assessment Center, has been pivotal in reasserting the importance of the individual teacher on student learning.4  One aspect of his research has been the additive or cumulative effect of teacher effectiveness on student achievement. Over a multi-year period, Sanders focused on what happened to students whose teachers produced high achievement versus those whose teachers produced low achievement results. He discovered that when children, beginning in 3rd grade, were placed with three high-performing teachers in a row, they scored on average at the 96th percentile on Tennessee’s statewide mathematics assessment at the end of 5th grade. When children with comparable achievement histories starting in 3rd grade were placed with three low-performing teachers in a row, their average score on the same mathematics assessment was at the 44th percentile,5  an enormous 52-percentile point difference for children who presumably had comparable abilities and skills.

And how good are we at measuring teacher effectiveness?  Well, consider this:

The vast majority of school districts in the U.S. presently use teacher evaluation systems that result in nearly all teachers receiving uniformly high ratings.  For instance, a recent study by The New Teacher Project of twelve districts in four states revealed that more than 99 percent of teachers in districts using binary ratings were rated satisfactory whereas 94 percent received one of the top two ratings in districts using a broader range of ratings.[i]  As Secretary of Education Arne Duncan put it, “Today in our country, 99 percent of our teachers are above average.”

Ridiculous.

We have no useful or meaningful way of evaluating a teacher’s effectiveness.  And that has to change.  We not only need to identify the best teachers and reward them appropriately, we need to identify poor teachers and remove them from our schools. And we have to go further. We need to pay more for the teachers teaching subjects we value more.  For instance – there is no reason that an elementary music teacher or a physical education teacher.

Further, raises and bonuses need to be assigned proportionately – the better the teacher the higher the raise.  And bonus. Some say that this will create a corrosive culture and pit teacher against teacher.  I dispute this theory and point to corporate America as my example. As I mentioned above, I live in corporate America and am compensated relatively well.

I earn more than some of my peers and less than others.  I achieve stronger raises than some and less than others; bonuses in the same manner.  And I ave yet to feel a level of resentment that leads to less collaboration or cooperation. In fact, the reverse is true – I see that it increases such traits as fellow co-workers seek to emulate the stronger employee. The pay of our teachers is a disgrace.  But the method by which we determine pay is a direct result of the teacher’s unions and needs to be scrapped for a merit system without tenure.

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Posted in Education, Politics: North Carolina, Politics: State

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North Carolina Unemployment – January 2014

Posted on March 17, 2014 | Leave a comment

North Carolina continues to see positive movement in unemployment numbers:

RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina’s unemployment rate continued improving in January to near the national average, falling to 6.7 percent, the state Commerce Department reported Monday.

The report was the latest to contain mixed messages about how well the state’s economy was shaping up for workers and why. While the report found the number of people employed increased by 17,407 between December and January, another survey found nonfarm payrolls recorded 7,200 fewer jobs.

While like to see the unemployment rate go down, we need to acknowledge that we are fighting serious headwinds as related to that number going down due to discouraged workers leaving the job market.  But there might be reason for a positive outlook there too:

The release of the January data was delayed by about a month as researchers revised and updated previous information, an annual process. The results of the revision indicate that the steady drop in North Carolina’s unemployment rate had less to do than previously thought with discouraged workers quitting their struggle to find jobs and no longer being counted, Brod said.

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Posted in Politics: North Carolina, Politics: State

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Water Crisis In California

Posted on March 3, 2014 | Leave a comment

Drought

Recent rains in California may not really be helping the dry conditions very much – in some cases the flooding may be causing more harm than good.

Anyway, reading some of the coverage, I’m struck by:

The harm caused by the severe drought in California [“California’s lasting drought threatens family farmers,” news, Feb. 10] has been exacerbated by bad policy. For decades, the federal government has heavily subsidized water in the state, particularly for crop irrigation. Artificially low water prices have encouraged overconsumption and planting in dry areas where farming is inefficient and environmentally unsound.

Federal farm subsidies have made these problems worse by boosting demand for irrigation water and encouraging farmers to bring marginal lands into production.

I know that I have a tendency to over simplify complex issues, but … It’s really hard to imagine that making water cheap will lead to over demand of water.

For example, what if this:

Ending farm subsidies while moving toward market pricing of water would help solve recurring water shortages in California and elsewhere in the West.

Would lead to this:

The drought, combined with continued protections for endangered species, has forced farmers to find alternatives. Most farmers have already switched to drip irrigation, which is much more efficient than the flood irrigation technique used when water was plentiful.

More expensive water, forcing farmers to conserve water, wouldn’t solve a drought, to be sure.  But it certainly would allow the existing water to stretch further than it otherwise would.

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Posted in Economics, Politics: National, Politics: State

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Governor Brewer – Veto That Bill! *

Posted on February 26, 2014 | Leave a comment

Jan Brewer

Arizona SB 1062 – Religious Freedom

You have to be living under a rock if you haven’t heard of the bill that passed the state legislator in Arizona.  SB 1062 would allow businesses to refuse services to gay and lesbian customers based on their religious faith.

I think that Governor Brewer should veto this law because it singles out people who might be homosexual in an unfair manner.

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Posted in Liberty, Politics: State, Republicans Can Be Leftists Too, States Behaving Badly

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Union Defeat In Chattanooga

Posted on February 15, 2014 | 12 comments

Union

UAW Suffers Massive Defeat

The UAW is in its death thralls.  Membership is down dramatically and it needs a new source of membership; enter the southern manufacturing states.

Labor leaders say a “yes” vote is critical to the union’s long-term prospects. If successful, this would be the first victory for organized labor inside a foreign automaker’s U.S. operations in the South.

For the UAW to grow, it must make inroads with foreign manufacturers with plants in the United States; most of those operate in the South. A “yes” vote in Chattanooga could provide momentum for organizing at a Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama, a BMW plant in South Carolina and possibly a Nissan plant in Mississippi.

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Posted in Liberty, Lobby/PAC, Politics: National, Politics: State

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North Carolina Unemployment Benefits: Governor

Posted on February 12, 2014 | Leave a comment

Pat McCrory

North Carolina Cuts Unemployment Benefits

About a week ago I posted on North Carolina’s unemployment dilemma:

By itself, the news is good news, heck, even GREAT news.  But it rarely is “by itself”:

Economists say the fast drop in the unemployment rate could be because so many people have become discouraged, are giving up on finding a job and are no longer being counted.

The state’s population of working-age adults who are looking for jobs shrank by 111,000 in 2013.

This is, of course, the same phenomenon that nation republicans use to knock Obama.  There the big story is that the national labor force participation rate has plummeted to lows that we haven’t seen in decades.

While the unemployment rate in North Carolina is dropping, there is significant reason to believe that this is due to folks dropping out of the labor force.

Governor McCrory Interview

While the drop in the unemployment rate is largely due to a reduction of folks in the labor force, Governor McCrory has an answer:

While I agree that the rate is subject to the numbers in the work force, the fact that the work force is dropping nationally is important.  I’ll have to go back and dig through the state numbers, but if the labor force participation rate loss didn’t change as a result of the end of benefits, you can’t blame the law.

UI isn’t meant to be a social welfare program – in theory it’s INSURANCE that is meant to carry over an individual for a discreet amount of time.

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Durham Hybrid Failures

Posted on February 11, 2014 | 3 comments

Hybrid Bus

Durham Forced To Retrofit Buses

Back in 2011 the city of Durham added a number of hybrid buses to their fleet hoping that they would save money.

They are converting those vehicles back to gas engines:

Durham, N.C. — Durham officials have found it’s not easy being green.

The city decided this week to convert 10 of its hybrid vehicles – light transit vehicles, or LTVs, that transport people with disabilities – back to gas-fueled engines because of maintenance problems. City buses will continue to have hybrid engines.

Troubles With New Technology

Reading through the article I was hooping that we would see numbers on the results – were the vehicles saving money or not.  If so, how much per month/year.  However, all we got is this:

The savings never panned out, however, as repairs started piling up.

“After about six months, we started having issues with them,” city maintenance manager Scott Mozingo said. “Then, we had issues with parts.”

So, yeah, repairs is a big part of fleet management, however, repairs exist in gas engines as well.  I think the nail in the coffin was elsewhere:

In 2012, the company that outfitted the hybrid vehicles went bankrupt, so Durham could no longer get the parts they needed to make repairs.

“We started parking vehicles as they were breaking down because we didn’t have parts for them,” Mozingo said.

I have to believe that if the technology was viable, the company would not have failed leaving Durham in the lurch.  I know that all new technologies carry risk for early adopters, but the trend in this alternative energy isn’t new or small.

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North Carolina Democrat Party – Disaster

Posted on February 11, 2014 | Leave a comment

Sinking Ship

North Carolina Democrats Fire Executive Director

They like to say that elections have consequences – and here in North Carolina, Obama in 2008 delivered the republicans in 2010.  And THAT meant the republicans redrew districts that the democrats had gerrymandered for better than 100 years.

The result?  Republican majorities in the senate and the house with a republican governor.

But, if elections have consequences then winning elections have reasons.  Or, in this case, losing elections:

Raleigh, N.C. — After less than a year as executive director of the North Carolina Democratic Party, Robert Dempsey was fired Sunday, an attorney for the state party said Sunday night.

“Mr. Dempsey is no longer executive director,” David Harris said, declining to say why other than that the dismissal was a personnel matter.

Dempsey had no comment Sunday night, and state Democratic Party Chairman Randy Voller did not respond to messages seeking comment.

According to multiple sources, some of whom talked to Dempsey, Dempsey said he was informed Sunday that he was being let go.

Local democrats are going nuts:

Dempsey might not be perfect, but he’s the best thing that’s happened to the party since Voller became chair. (I know, I know. That’s not saying much.) Voller’s first months were marked by incompetence and embarrassing revelations. Dempsey began putting the house in order and people began taking North Carolina Democrats seriously again.

…

It was apparently too much for Voller. He needed to reestablish him self as buffoon-in-chief, since, you know, bad news is better than no news. At a time when Democrats should be rallying around their impressive candidates as the filing period opens, they’re focusing on more drama at the Goodwin House. The timing couldn’t be much worse.

…

Voller may just be stupid, politically tone deaf and narcissistic. But what if he’s a Republican plant? It’s hard to imagine someone doing more to harm the credibility of the Democratic Party than Voller. 

I’m just being facetious, but given the damage he’s done, what’s the difference?

It’s like having Matt Millen be the GM of the Green Bay Packers!

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