Quote Of The Day: Lies

"A lie is like a cat: you need to stop it before it gets out the door or it’s really hard to catch."

Charles M. Blow, NYTimes

Runoff Primary

No, don't runoff, the primary's not over.

You may not have noticed, but the 2012 primary election to determine the party nominees for the election in November isn't over yet. Yesterday the polls opened at Pamlico County's Board of Elections for voters to cast their ballots in five primary contests in which the outcome has not yet been decided.

The second (or runoff) primary is legally just a continuation of the first primary.

Election day for the second primary is July 17. Primary results will not be official until a week after the second primary, when county boards of elections conduct their canvass of votes. A week after that, the state board holds its canvass. That's when the count becomes official.

We even have one contest in November for which the filing deadline is next week. One seat on Pamlico County's Soil and Water Conservation Board will be on the ballot - a nonpartisan county-wide election. The filing deadline is July 6.

Oh, by the way, North Carolina is one of only eight states (all former members of the Confederacy) with runoff primaries.

Health Care: More Detail

As experts review the 193-page Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act, some of the consequences of the decision are becoming more clear. The majority ruling on Medicaid, for example, could have some truly bizarre consequences.

Here is an article that spells out some of the detailed results.

Health Care

Today's Supreme Court ruling is good news, not only for those many Americans now uninsured, but also for all Americans who might lose a job and consequently health care insurance in the future. And for those employees who have remained in a job they hate just so they can retain health insurance. You all know someone in those categories. There are so many good aspects to the Affordable Care Act that I think Americans (who have been lied to about it) will eventually fight to keep it.

The big effect: Everyone must now get in the pool. No more insuring healthy people and denying coverage for less healthy people or those who become ill.

Fiscal Drag From State And Local Governments

Three economists from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York have recently published an analysis of the drag on the economy caused by reduced expenditures by state and local governments here. They show the state and local sector of our economy, representing about one seventh of the overall US economy, is currently dragging down gross domestic product (GDP) by a significant amount:




To explain why this is so, the economists remind us just what state and local governments do:

"What Do State and Local Governments Do?

State and local governments are a very important part of the U.S. economy. The sector employs nearly 20 million people, accounting for about one in seven U.S. nonfarm jobs and more than the manufacturing and construction sectors combined. Almost three-quarters of these jobs are in local government. Unlike the federal government, whose nondefense spending is largely devoted to transfer payments like social security, state and local governments are direct service providers, with primary responsibility for water, sewer, and transportation infrastructure as well as important public services like education and police and fire protection. The essential nature of these services, as well as the size of the sector relative to the U.S. economy, makes stresses to the sector of particular concern."

That is worth keeping in mind. State and local governments do not cause economic downturns. But they suffer from economic downturns at budget time and without outside help from the federal government, they can only make downturns worse.

The federal government can make them better, but only if those who govern have the vision and wisdom to act.

In a quixotic gesture, economists Paul Krugman and Richard Layard have published a manifesto laying out the essence of this case  for wise and effective action and are asking other economists to sign on. But economists aren't the problem, though many have contributed very bad ideas. Political leaders are the problem. And for some of them (many but not all Republicans) the agenda is precisely to make the economy worse rather than better so they can increase their hold on government at all levels after the next election. And many of their largest contributors don't care about employment, because they benefit from economic contraction.

Health Care

Whatever the Supreme Court has to say about the Affordable Care Act this morning, my order of preference for a health care system would be:

1. Straight socialized medicine - government delivered health care. Like I had for many years in the military;

2. Medicare for everybody or some other single-payer system;

3. ACA or something like it;

4. Our present hodge podge of employer-provided health insurance, which will drive the country broke to the benefit of insurance company executives.

South Avenue: History Lesson

Above is an annotated copy of the plat prepared for the Oriental Bulkhead Improvement Company (OBIC) about 1915. The dotted line shows the eastern and northern boundary of the parcel of land sold to OBIC by L.B. (Lou) Midyette in 1911. Wall Street, South Avenue and Front Street already existed. In a court case in 1908, the Town of Oriental denied ever accepting Front Street as a public street.

The plat dedicated Avenue A, Neuse Front Street West of the dotted line, Avenue B and Main(e) Street. In 1923, The Town of Oriental conveyed Avenue B to adjacent landowners W.E. Northen and W.M. Adams. In September 1927 The Town of Oriental conveyed a strip of land described by metes and bounds (red hatched area) which corresponds to the outline of Neuse Front Street west of Avenue A and Main(e) Street to C.P. Goodwin. Town Board minutes indicate that most of the outlined area was then under water.

Elections Are Expensive

Last week, the North Carolina state legislature removed $664,000 from the state budget for maintaining and improving the state's election system. That $664,000 would have triggered receipt of $4 million from the federal government under the Help America Vote Act (HAVA).

Much of the money would have been shared by the state with counties. The funds are very important for small counties like Pamlico.

But the legislature can't find seven cents per resident to protect elections.