These are extraordinary times in the American experiment with representative democracy. In Washington, a buffoonish would-be despot occupies the highest office of the land and sullies it on an almost minute-by-minute basis in unprecedented fashion. This past Sunday, the editorial board of the New York Times felt obligated to publish a special, full-page editorial...
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Public education in North Carolina has its share of challenges, not the least of which has been the state’s ongoing failure to make sure that school systems in poorer communities receive the financial support they need. But in one major respect, the pattern by which most of our school districts are organized helps them serve all their students, no matter their circumstances.
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Men and women doing the same job over the same time period should be paid equally. But in the United States, women on average don’t earn the equivalent of their male counterparts—forcing them to work longer and harder to earn what white men make doing the same job. The recent attacks on women’s health care, including President Trump’s efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, roll back the no-cost birth control provision, prioritize abstinence-only sex education in the budget, and defund Planned Parenthood create even more barriers to equal pay, ensuring that women won’t reach economic equality anytime soon.
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After decades of propaganda and promises, the effort to privatize public schools in NC continues to fizzle Conservative ideologues may yet succeed in their longstanding effort to raze and remake American public education – what they often derisively refer to as “government schools.” After all, they’ve been at it for decades and show no signs of letting up.
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It was perhaps the N.C. Supreme Court’s finest hour. In 1997, the high court held unanimously that North Carolina public school students are entitled under the state constitution to the “opportunity to receive a sound basic education.” In other words, it’s the state’s responsibility to make sure that all children – even those living in communities dogged by poverty – have a fair chance to learn what they need to learn in order to make their way in the world and become productive citizens.
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Last week, legal experts and families spoke with NC Policy Watch about how state law is not keeping pace with science and the non-traditional family unit.
The American family two generations ago was portrayed as a married heterosexual couple living with their genetic offspring, and family law was promulgated to accommodate those relationships.
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There are a lot of compelling reasons to be deeply concerned about ICE – the federal immigration agency that’s acting more and more like a rogue national police force. From the midnight raids to the lack of due process afforded detained individuals to the downright cruel and inhumane destruction of families...
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If anyone ever really bought into the hoary political myth that all Republicans hate big government spending, deficits and debt and that all Democrats love them, you’d think the presidency of Donald Trump would have laid that idea to rest once and for all. After all, as expert after expert has testified in recent months, future deficits and debt have been mushrooming under Trump.
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