Separate schools for "those" children

This week's victory by the resegregationists in the Wake County School Board elections is all but certain to dismantle much of the success the school system achieved by using economic status as part of the criteria for school assignment.  Unless something changes dramatically, the system that prides itself on having no bad schools is likely to have many of them, schools that will have a hard time attracting the best teachers and administrators.

Supporters of overturning the economic diversity policy bristle at being called resegregationists, preferring instead to be considered advocates for neighborhood schools. But their plan would undeniably resegregate the Wake County system, sending the community back to the 1950s before the U.S. Supreme Court said tat separate but equal was unconstitutional.

One of the people who commented on the election on WRAL.com summed things up pretty well, saying "I chose (and am fortunate enough) to live in the suburbs in an upscale neighborhood. I don't want my kids to go to school with the inner city poor and I'm not apologizing for saying that. Those children belong with their own."

He wants his kids and their friends to have their own schools and wants "those" children to have theirs, to stay with their own kind.  It sounds eerily familiar. Calling him a resegregationist might be too kind.

Packing heat at the high school

The insanity of the gun debate continues. WECT in Wilmington reports that South Carolina now allows guns on school campuses if they are in an attended or locked car. So anybody who wants to bring a gun to school can simply drive into the parking lot or up to the football stadium with a loaded handgun in the glove compartment, as long as they stand by their car.

That's more than a little disconcerting, even to some gun owners. One told WECT that "schools aren't really the place for weapons."  

You'd think there would be consensus on that, but lately gun laws aren't really the place for sanity, much less common sense.

Waste more money faster

The North Carolina Exploitation Lottery this week began selling a $20 instant scratch-off ticket for the $200 Million Extravaganza Game. Experts say that high-priced instant tickets are more likely to lead to gambling problems than other lottery games.

One Texas legislator called the tickets the crack cocaine of lotteries, which must make the folks at the North Carolina lottery awfully proud.  A lottery industry executive says "it's all about delivering gambling excitement."  

North Carolina has all the gambling excitement we can stand, as the state tries harder and harder to convince people to waste their money on lottery tickets that many citizens can't really afford to buy.

A pumpkin festival to remember

Folks in Western North Carolina upset about plans for a Fibrowatt poultry manure incinerator in Elkin received a rude reminder recently about who thinks they own the town. It happened during Elkin's annual Pumpkin Festival.

The Elkin Tribune reports that members of Citizens Alliance for a Clean, Healthy Economy, the group opposed to the incinerator, were given permission by a downtown business owner to pass out fact sheets in front of his store during the festival.

That didn't sit too well with the local chamber of commerce leaders, who had the police order the activists to leave the festival and remove badges they were wearing that identified their group.  One of the activists said that the head of the chamber told them they were anti-business and controversial.

Goodness knows we can't have that on the public streets.

Town officials are looking into the matter. As part of their research, they might want to check out the first amendment to the constitution that protects speech, whether the local business leaders like it or not.