The semantic attack on integration

Am I the only one tired of the term "forced busing" spewed by the public school dismantlers on the Right almost every day?  What does that mean? No one is actually forced to ride a bus, ever. 

Students are assigned to schools every year in every school district in the country.  In most places, if they live a certain distance from their school, bus transportation is provided if students choose to use it. As it should be.

That is true not only in districts where diversity plays a role in student assignment, it's true everywhere.

The dismantlers argue that because students are forced to go to a school other than the one closest to their home, that the busing is somehow coercive. But no school district can send every student to the nearest school.

Even the most diehard opponents of the current Wake County diversity plan admit that. A report from the Wake Education partnership showed the chaos that would result if every single student was assigned to the closest school.

Many schools would be dramatically overcrowded, others would be half full. That means new schools would have to be built and the students who were sent to the new ones might have to travel a little further, which under the rhetoric of the right would mean they would then be subjected to the dreaded forced busing.

And though it may come as a shock to the dismantlers, students in Charlotte ride buses too, even though the system no longer assigns students based on race or economic status. Not every student in Charlotte goes to the school down the street.  Victims of the scourge of forced busing are everywhere it seems.

It makes you wonder if the zealots on the Right think that airports impose forced cabbing on passengers who don't have someone pick them up when they arrive. 

The pro-tax anti-golf cart Left

A couple of things outside North Carolina deserve a mention this week.  One is the case of a conservative Republican candidate for Congress in Georgia refusing to sign the ridiculous pledge never to raise taxes promoted by Grover Norquist of Citizens for Tax Reform.

The candidate, Rob Woodall, is the former chief of staff for a retiring member of Congress and about as conservative on taxes as they come. He is the co-author of a book touting the misleadingly named "Fair Tax."

Woodall is now in a runoff for the Republican nomination for the Congressional seat after leading the field in the first primary. But the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports he is now being branded by Norquist as "outside the Republican mainstream" for not signing the pledge and for what Norquist calls "talking about hiking taxes."

Woodall's response was to point to the example of a $6,500 tax credit for certain golf carts passed in 2009. Woodall calls the tax credit dumb and says it simply increased the deficit and ought to be repealed. But under Norquist's ridiculous definition of tax increases, anyone who supported eliminating the credit would be violating the pledge unless another tax credit of the same value was created.

Norquist says that means Woodall believes the federal government doesn't have enough money. Apparently opposing any tax credit means you favor increasing taxes in Norquist's absurd view of the world.

Maybe that should be a question for candidates in North Carolina. Do you pledge your full support for a tax credit for one and only one specific kind of golf cart? Anyone who does not say yes —then you'll know they are an unrepentant big tax and spender.

The short bike ride to communism

Finally, one of the best quotes of the week comes from the Colorado governor's race about an issue that is always a concern of the Right in North Carolina too—the left-wing commie cycling conspiracy.

Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, a Democratic candidate, is now under attack from Republican candidate Don Maes for his efforts to boost bike riding in Denver.  Maes says Hickenlooper's support of biking is "converting Denver into a United Nations community."

That may be hard to understand and that's the point, according to Maes. The Denver Post reports that Maes described Hickenlooper's efforts to an audience at a recent campaign rally as "very well-disguised" but said they would be exposed. 

Thank goodness for that.  Ferreting out the reds on bikes is a tough job, but somebody has to do it.