Horoscope

I just discovered the web page for the Onion's horoscope.

My favorite is the horoscope for Aries. Too bad I missed being Aries by a day.

Left Behind

I gather from reading Doonesbury [should that be renamed "Doomsbury?"] that sometime tomorrow the rapture is supposed to happen. If I have the right idea, the faithful are supposed to be whisked away to paradise while the rest of us stay here.

I gather that two novelists, Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, have written sixteen best-selling novels on this theme.

I have just one question.

Where did they put their money?

Election Rigging, Texas Style

In case you had any doubt that the nationwide Republican effort to pass restrictive voter ID laws is intended to obstruct voting by Democrats, take a look at this article in the Dallas Observer web site. And watch the You Tube video.

Debbie Georgatos, running for Chair of the Dallas County, TX Republican Party, makes it clear that the purpose of voter ID is to "prevent Dallas County from becoming a super-blue-hole," drawing an analogy to the black holes in space and implying that the only reason Democrats win is voter fraud.

By the way, I voted in Dallas County in 1992. The system in use then was vastly better than the one in use in Florida in 2000. Fraud is not a problem. Not in Dallas County nor anywhere else in Texas; not in North Carolina either or anywhere else in the United States.

Which doesn't mean there is no rigging of elections. One means of election rigging is selective voter suppression, which is what voter ID is all about. Another way is to redraw election districts in favor of the party with the pen. That is going on in North Carolina as we speak. Both parties do it. It is perfectly legal, so long as the new districts comply with US and North Carolina Supreme Court decisions and Department of Justice requirements. Another technique is to harass and intimidate voters and election officials.

If you want to steal an election, though, the least likely approach is to have individual voters impersonate some legally registered voter. Not only is it a felony if you get caught, it can't possibly be done on a scale great enough to affect an election. Voter suppression has a much greater chance of success. Republican movers and shakers know this. Voter ID is an expensive, disruptive effort to suppress votes.

Pamlico County Education Budget

At last night's meeting of the Pamlico County Board of Commissioners, Dr. Coon, Superintendent of Education, presented a report on next year's budget.

The report was not only grim, but also uncertain. The bottom line is that the county's education budget for the coming year will be down to what it was in 2005. There will be layoffs. Some programs will be terminated. Class sizes will increase and many teacher's aides will be laid off. For the fourth year in a row, teacher salaries will decrease. On top of that, teacher take-home pay will be reduced $2800 to $3200 for health insurance deductions. Other staffing positions will be eliminated.

There is no way these reductions can help but reduce the quality of education in the county.

The new North Carolina state legislature has decided to reduce funding for education at all levels well beyond the governor's recommendation.

Even so, the situation need not be so dire if the US Congress would reestablish the stimulus program, and this time set it at a sufficiently high level to do some good. Not that the ARRA stimulus didn't create jobs and prevent others from being lost - it just wasn't big enough to create adequate demand to counter the effects of the Great Recession. And monetary policy can't help, since the short term interest rate is at the zero bound. Can't go lower.

What is really going on here? Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, calls attention to a study by two Dartmouth economists and explains:

"This is hugely important for macro-policy debates because it suggests that more stimulus would provide a further boost to the economy and reduction in unemployment. This means that the only reason that we are sitting here with 25 million people unemployed and underemployed is that the politicians in Washington are too intimidated by the Wall Street deficit hawks.

The deficit hawks have used their enormous political power and control over the media to shut down any further discussion of stimulus. They have managed to completely dominate public debate with their brand of flat-earth economics. They are using the crisis that was created through their greed and incompetence to reduce hugely valued public benefits, like Social Security and Medicare. And, now they are using the crisis that they have created for state and local governments to destroy public sector unions.

This looks really awful because it is. Our nations' leaders are deliberately inflicting enormous pain on tens of millions of people to advance their political agenda. This new study helps to prove this fact."

The leaders he is referring to are overwhelmingly Republicans in Congress and in state legislatures and governors' mansions.

Where Do All These Bills Come From?

The newly elected North Carolina legislature has pursued a frantic pace of new legislation.

Some observers have charged that the new legislators have no idea what the effect of their proposed legislation will be. That may be true.

Normally, anyone taking a new job spends a little time getting to know the ropes. Not these legislators.

So where are all the bills coming from? Did you ever hear of ALEC? That is, the American Legislative Exchange Council. You thought you elected your local candidate to the state House of Representatives and the state Senate? Actually, you elected ALEC.

How do I know? I have been following the bills introduced in the legislature, and I have looked at the ALEC web site. Here is a link to ALEC's model legislation. Just read ALEC's models and compare them to the bills introduced by the new legislators. Most of them are ALEC bills.

So who is ALEC? The nationwide voice of corporate interests seeking to get their way through uniform acts by all of the state legislatures. Their aims have nothing to do with North Carolina. Do they have the public interest at heart? Not Likely.

Here is a good backgrounder.

Brown v. Board of Education

Fifty-seven years ago today, a unanimous Supreme Court of the United States ruled that "separate but equal" schools are inherently unequal and violate the equal protection of the laws provided by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Let us celebrate.

Freedom Riders Documentary

The documentary on the 1961 freedom riders shown last night on public television revealed to the current generation the heroism of an earlier generation who fought to make this a better country for all Americans.

The documentary also showed the level of organized violence by the Klan and others, in collusion with law enforcement officials in Alabama and Mississippi. It took intervention by the federal government to protect citizens against state governments in the south in those days.

Governor Patterson of Alabama and Governor Barnett of Mississippi, like Arkansas Governor Faubus before them, paid no attention to decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The justification of "states' rights" was nothing more than a defense of the right of states to oppress a significant percentage of their own citizens and to deny them the rights of all Americans. It was a deplorable time in our national history. North Carolina under Governor Terry Sanford was, by comparison to Alabama and Mississippi, an outpost of freedom.

Let us never forget.

Remember Gary Hart and the Seven Dwarfs?

In 1988, there was an open primary for presidential nomination in both parties.

Among democrats, the leading candidate at the outset was Gary Hart of Colorado, pursued by seven other democrats. The press began calling the field "Gary Hart and the Seven Dwarfs," the implication being that the other candidates were lightweights

Who were the other candidates? Bruce Babbitt, former governor of Arizona and eventually Secretary of the Interior under President Clinton; Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, currently Vice President of the United States; former Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts; Reverend Jesse Jackson of South Carolina (and Chicago); Senator Al Gore of Tennessee, later Vice President under President Clinton and winner of the popular vote in 2000; Representative Dick Gephardt of Missouri; Senator Paul Simon of Illinois. Not a very lightweight field, after all.

Now we have the Republican field for 2011. Three more putative candidates withdrew over the weekend. So far, it looks like there may not be seven contenders for the Republican nomination this year.

Pundits keep seeking an explanation. I hope they succeed.