Today’s This and That
On Monday, the Budget and Tax Center put forward a revenue modernization plan that would effectively address the revenue problem driving North Carolina’s budget shortfall and move the state forward. On Thursday, the new majority entered legislation to hold North Carolina back. The so-called Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR), by limiting growth in revenues to population growth plus inflation, would lead to a sustained and worsening decline in the quality of public structures—public schools, colleges and universities, heath care and mental health services—and harm the state’s long-term economic growth potential.
Special needs kids “too expensive” at conservative activist’s private schools
WUNC radio ran a story earlier this week on one of Art Pope’s main men in the effort to privatize/profitize/re-segregate the public schools, Bob Luddy. Luddy runs a chain of private schools under the name Thales Academy. Ron Margiotta used to sit on the Thales board of directors.
The wacky proposals just keep on coming over at the General Assembly. Sarah Preston of theACLU-NC called our attention to this Senate proposal to criminalize “synthetic cannabinoids” (aka “K2″ “Spice” or synthetic marijuana).
“It is, perhaps, ironic in an age when, across the country, police cameras capture and ticket red-light-runners, and many traffic stops are videotaped from the dashboard of a squad car. “Well, all of a sudden when the shoe is on the other foot, it’s, ‘Wait, wait, there’s an intrusion of the wiretap act,’” says Paul Hetznecker, a Philadelphia civil rights lawyer.
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