Talk about bad timing.

The folks pushing the latest version of a voucher scheme for private schools descended on the General Assembly Tuesday with a crowd of roughly a thousand, mostly students and officials at religious schools.

The schools stand to gain the most from the plan that would allow corporations to receive dollar for dollar tax credits for donations to nonprofits that provide scholarships to private schools.

But the well orchestrated event came the same day as a blistering front page story in the New York Times about the program that currently operates in eight states and as the Times story puts it is a scholarship program that has “been twisted to benefit private schools at the expense of the neediest children.”

It is also a voucher plan, plain and simple, dressed up in a tax credit. House Majority Leader Paul Stam and the anti-public school forces pushing it claim it doesn’t use taxpayer money but it does, by redirecting money that would have gone to the state’s General Fund to private nonprofits that fund primarily religious schools.

Stam’s plan calls for as much as $40 million to be redirected initially. In other states, the amount is more than $200 million.

The Times report found that the redirected public money has expanded the staff of nonprofit groups, attracted star athletes, and spread fundamentalist religious theology like creationism—all with public money that could have gone to traditional public schools.

In some states, lobbyists and lawmakers play a role in who gets the scholarships from the nonprofits. In others, donors are allowed to recommend students to receive scholarships including students who are already enrolled in private or religious schools.

In short, it’s a bad idea, a backdoor voucher plan that robs money from traditional public schools with questionable results for students and little accountability from the groups that handle the money.

One opponent of the program wonders why corporations can’t get the same dollars for dollar tax credit for giving money to their local public school or school system. Good question, but the folks behind this program aren’t interested in helping public schools, they want to dismantle them.

Tuesday’s rally also came less than a week after Sarah Ovaska with NC Policy Watch reported the details of a trip to Florida in March by a group of legislators including House Speaker Thom Tillis that was paid for the principal lobbying group for the voucher scheme, Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina (PEFNC).

The lawmakers and the PEFNC lobbyists on the trip met with proponents of the voucher/tax credit scholarship program in Florida and several lawmakers received campaign contributions from the PAC associated with PEFNC.

The trip appears to violate the state’s ban on gifts from lobbying interests to legislators, though PEFNC and Tillis’ staff claim the trip was allowed under the education exception in the lobbying law.

That’s a pretty loose interpretation of that exception. The facts are undeniable. A lobbying group took lawmakers to Florida with their lobbyists in attendance to sell them on legislation they want passed in the General Assembly.

Less than two months after the trip, after campaign contributions are made, comes the announcement that the legislation creating the voucher/scholarship program will be introduced in the House.

Probably all just a coincidence.

Diverting money from traditional public schools never makes sense, but it is an especially troubling suggestion this year after teachers were fired and classroom funding was slashed by the budget passed by Republicans last summer.

Questions about ethics, evidence of serious problems with the program, and already woefully underfunded public schools.

It adds up to a bad idea at a bad time, and no rally at the General Assembly can change that.

The full House was originally scheduled to give final approval to its version of the state budget this Wednesday, at least according the budget schedule released by legislative leaders a few weeks ago.

That was the plan as late as last week after weeks of secret budget meetings that were confirmed by a right-wing think tank with close ties to Speaker Thom Tillis.

But a funny thing happened on the way to forcing a secretly written state budget through the House. A series of events, including public protests and private complaints about the lack of transparency, have slowed things down in what Republicans hoped would be one of the quickest legislative sessions in recent years.

House and Senate leaders were defending the secret budget process just a few days ago, brushing off criticism by saying they are merely making adjustments to last year’s spending plan, not coming up with a whole new budget.

That’s a strange line of defense from Republicans who routinely complained about the way the Democrats put the budget together when they were in power. And there are big budget issues facing lawmakers this session, primarily in education as $250 million dollars in federal stimulus funding is ending.

The federal money pays for almost 5,000 teachers and losing it would devastate many school systems that are already reeling from the cuts Republicans made last year.

There are many other complicated budget issues, a shortfall in Medicaid, calls to restore cuts to early childhood and preschool programs, and costs associated with a settlement with the federal government over the improper placement of people with a mental illness in rest homes—just to name a few.

Reportedly, some Republicans weren’t very happy about being locked out of the budget process and differences have arisen between the House and Senate, primarily over the education reform proposal from Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger that calls for funding a merit pay plan for teachers and more investments in support to help children in the early grades learn to read.

House leaders have said publicly that they are not interested in taking up Berger’s plan this summer, preferring to consider his reform proposals in the 2013 session.

Tuesday afternoon a pro-voucher education group rallied outside the General Assembly in support of a misguided plan that House leaders will introduce soon to give tax credits to corporations who provide scholarships for students to attend private schools. That proposal is not part of Berger’s plan.

Several House budget subcommittees did meet Tuesday morning to go over their wish lists, but the budget chairs didn’t even seem to know how much money they have to work with. That doesn’t sound like a budget process that will be over soon—and that’s good news.

It gives lawmakers the chance to think twice about last year’s cuts and to consider proposals by Governor Bev Perdue and public interest groups to raise additional revenue to provide more funding for education and human services.

Together NC released a poll Tuesday showing that the majority of voters support new revenue, including a penny increase in the state sales tax, closing corporate tax loopholes, and asking the wealthy to do more. That deserves a committee meeting or two.

It all adds up to an unexpected ray of hope in this summer legislative session.

The budget is clearly off the fast track. Now let’s hope it veers back toward sanity and away from the dangerous direction it headed last summer.

2—number of years until hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” will be allowed in North Carolina under legislation introduced in the General Assembly by Sen. Bob Rucho (“Fracking bill advances in N.C. legislature,” Raleigh News & Observer, May 17, 2012)

5—days since the State of Vermont banned fracking within its borders (“Vermont Fracking Ban: Green Mountain State Is First In U.S. To Restrict Gas Drilling Technique,” Associated Press, May 16, 20120

387—average of number of jobs per year projected to be created by fracking in North Carolina (N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources Oil and Gas Study, April 2012)

4,800—number of jobs cut from public schools in North Carolina by the budget passed by the General Assembly in 2011 (Statistical Profile, Public Schools of North Carolina, 2011-2012 School Year)

3 million—minimum number of gallons of water projected to be used per well in fracking in North Carolina (N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources Oil and Gas Study, April 2012)

300—minimum number of chemical compounds identified by the industry as chemicals that have been used in fracturing fluid, including diesel fuel (Ibid)

6—minimum number of chemical additives included in any single fracturing fluid (Ibid)

10—number of years since the price of natural gas has been as a low as its current price (“Economic realities make rush to legalize fracking a waste of time,” Will Morgan, Progressive Voices, April 26, 2012)

30—percentage decrease in the number of rigs drilling for natural gas in the U.S. since October (Ibid)

59,000—number of acres in the Sanford sub-basin in North Carolina where state geologists predict there might be natural gas (Ibid)

60 million—number of acres in the Marcellus Shale basin in the Northeast (Ibid)

5—number of days since Sen. Rucho said that his legislation to allow fracking would ensure that regulations and enforcement would protect public safety (“Fracking bill advances in N.C. legislature,” Raleigh News & Observer, May 17, 2012)

76 million—amount in dollars that the 2011 budget slashed funding for the natural and economic resources budget (House Bill 200, 2011 Appropriations Act)

42—percentage of North Carolinians whose drinking water is supplied by ground water potentially affected by fracking (“Fracking in North Carolina could carry extra risks,” Raleigh News & Observer, May 21, 2012)

75—percentage of residents of Moore County, one of the areas targeted for fracking, whose drinking water is supplied by groundwater (Ibid)

31—percentage of North Carolina voters who believe that lawmakers should legalize fracking in North Carolina now (Carolina Issues Poll, May 2012)

63—percentage of North Carolina voters who believe that lawmakers should wait for more health and safety studies before making a decision about fracking (Ibid)

The embattled Speaker

It is getting close to the time when many people who refer to House Speaker Thom Tillis will call him the “embattled Speaker of the House.”

Tillis came under fire this week for giving severance pay to two staff members who resigned after their affairs with lobbyists came to light.  Tillis defended the payment of public money to the two former staffers by claiming they had worked for free during the period before he was elected House Speaker in 2011.

That’s not likely to quell the controversy that has some other House leaders hanging up on reporters who are seeking a comment and has other Republican legislators openly making jokes ridiculing Tillis’ office.

It also didn’t help that Tillis’ first try at justifying the severance pay was to cite Wikipedia, which was quoting employment law from the United Kingdom.

Thursday, Sarah Ovaska with NC Policy Watch reported that Tillis was among a group of legislators that a voucher lobbying group took to Florida in March to build support for vouchers and education tax credits in North Carolina.

The trip may have been a violation of the state’s gift ban law that prohibits lobbyists from giving lawmakers even a cup of coffee. Officials with the group, Parents for Educational Freedom, cite a 2008 opinion from the state ethics commission that a similar trip was allowed under an exception allowed for educational purposes.

It would be interesting to know what the commission would say if it heard the group’s president and registered lobbyist Darrell Allison, boasting on a podcast about the March trip laying the groundwork for voucher legislation.

Tillis also made news during the days before the May 8 vote on the marriage amendment when he admitted that the amendment would be repealed in the next 20 years because the younger generations don’t support it.

Then there are Tillis’ comments about his goal to “divide and conquer” people on public assistance by convincing people with disabilities to look down on people who are poor.

Embattled seems about right.

Commerce study blames tax cuts

Interesting news this week about the state’s $2.4 billion debt to the federal government for unemployment benefits the feds paid when the state ran out of money during the depths of the recession.

The News & Observer reports that a study done for the N.C. Department of Commerce finds that the problem was basically caused by a series of reductions years ago in the unemployment tax that businesses pay.

The North Carolina Chamber wants state lawmakers to pay back the money with a bond issue and by reducing benefits to unemployed workers.

The commerce report says the bond issue is only a short-term solution because the current unemployment rate is not raising enough revenue to pay benefits.

It’s obvious that the debt cannot be repaid and further problems cannot be avoided without employers paying a higher tax. They have received the benefit of the unwise tax cuts for years.  Unemployed workers shouldn’t lose benefits because of unwise tax cuts for businesses.

Republicans for and against federal education money

One of the biggest issues facing the General Assembly is what lawmakers will do about the federal stimulus funding for education that disappears this year. It’s roughly $250 million and it pays for almost 5,000 teachers.

Republicans like Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger have bizarrely criticized Democrats for using the federal money for teaching positions. They apparently wish that local schools systems (LEAs) had been forced to fire 5,000 teachers three years ago.

That’s absurd on many levels because Republicans seemed happy to keep using the federal funds last year when they put the budget together.  Here’s what the conference report from the 2011 budget says.

“LEAs are expected to utilize federal EduJobs availability to minimize reducing position allotments.”

The Republican budget expected local schools to use federal fund to keep as many teachers as they could, but the Republican leader of the Senate doesn’t think federal money should have been used?

In case you missed it

And finally, what do proposals to end state funding for the Consumer Protection Section of the Attorney General’s Office, to abolish the appropriation for the NC Victims Assistance Network, and to slash funding for district attorneys’ office have in common?

Two things. All three of them are recommendations of the House Appropriations Committee on Justice and Public Safety and all three have received very little attention in the media.

In a perfect world, this would be the legislative session where the leaders of the Republican General Assembly would take a break from their extremist agenda of the last 16 months and focus on the state’s actual problems instead of their narrow ideological pursuits.

They’d open up the budget process that has been conducted in secret in the last several weeks, and take an honest look at Governor Bev Perdue’s proposal to raise the sales tax to restore some of the devastating cuts to education they made last year and to replace disappearing federal funding for education that has kept 5,000 teachers in the classroom.

They’d spend some time with the proposal by the coalition Together NC to raise more revenue than Perdue’s sales tax increase by also adding a new tax bracket on millionaires to fund a restoration of the damaging cuts to human services, environmental protections and the criminal justice system. The proposal also calls for an increase in the state Earned Income Tax Credit to offset the regressive nature of the sales tax.

If the stars were aligned, lawmakers would take their time with this budget, their primary task this summer, and stop their attempts to make it harder for people to vote and easier for gas companies to drill .

They would work with Gov Perdue to respond to the federal government’s ruling that the state is improperly warehousing people mental illness in rest homes instead of providing services for them in their communities.

They’d recognize the racial bias that infects our capital punishment system and give up their plans to try to repeal the Racial Justice Act and instead spend time working on the bipartisan consensus developing around programs to help ex-offenders reenter society.

They would come to their senses and rethink the agreement to allow live dealer gambling at the Cherokee casino in return for a share of the profits, further tying the level of funding for public schools to how much people gamble, a disturbing practice that began with the predatory state lottery.

And they would step in and stop the transfer of public school dollars to out of state for-profit virtual charter school companies set to begin this fall and instead find a way to restore funding for programs like NCPreK and Smart Start that give at-risk kids a better chance to succeed.

If this were indeed that perfect world, lawmakers would reinstate important and popular programs they abolished last year like the N.C. Teaching Fellows and the state drugs courts.

They certainly would rethink their assault on women’s privacy and reproductive rights.

If lawmakers were guided by facts and compassion, they would creatively address the state’s debt to the federal government for unemployment insurance without cutting benefits to workers or making broad generalizations from sketchy claims about fraud.

They would abandon the insane idea of allowing loaded guns in bars or allowing finance companies to jack up the interest rates on emergency loans to members of the military and struggling families.

There’s more that would happen in a perfect world this summer at the General Assembly if reason and responsibility prevailed over right-wing ideology, but all that would be a good start.

The chances of it actually happening—less than the proverbial snowball’s.

But a guy can dream.

A largely unreported decision made last Tuesday could have a dramatic impact on public education in North Carolina as soon as this fall, diverting millions of dollars from local school systems to a shady out-of-state corporation and opening the door to the next stage of dismantling traditional public schools.

The ruling by Administrative Law Judge Beecher Gray paves the way for a non-profit run by the company K-12 Inc. to open an online charter school in North Carolina in August that’s expected to enroll as many 1,750 students and collect $18 million of funding from traditional public schools with little accountability over how the money is spent.

And that’s just the beginning. K-12 and similar for-profit virtual charter school companies are expanding in states across the county with aggressive marketing campaigns, emboldened by weaker charter school laws passed by conservative state legislatures.

Sarah Ovaska with NC Policy Watch reports that Judge Gray ruled last week that the State Board of Education acted improperly by not considering an application for a charter that K-12, Inc. submitted in February through its nonprofit NC Learns.

Gray ‘s ruling didn’t just order the board to consider the application, it seemed to actually grant the charter to NC Learns to open this fall, much to the delight of its lawyer, Republican state Senator Fletcher Hartsell from Cabarrus County.

Hartsell was instrumental in convincing his local board of education to partner with K-12 and in return the Cabarrus County school system will receive a small percentage of the funding that the company receives for each student.

The state board is expected to appeal the judge’s ruling in Superior Court and the General Assembly could always change the law to stop the profit-making off of North Carolina students, but don’t count on that.

Hartsell is a powerful senator and K-12 employs a battalion of well-connected lobbyists with ties to key Democrats and Republicans. The Republican legislature last year not only completely lifted the cap on the number of charter schools, lawmakers included a provision in a budget bill to allow virtual for-profit schools to operate outside the state virtual public school structure.

Gray’s ruling and the push by out of state for-profit companies to run online charter schools is an extraordinarily important story for two reasons, the spotty record of virtual education overall and the questionable practices of K-12, Inc.

An audit of K12’s virtual charter in Colorado found the state paid $800,000 to the company for students who never enrolled or lived out of state. The company faces a lawsuit charging that company officials misled investors and the public about the quality of education it was offering.

If that’s not enough, a news story about the company’s efforts to set up a virtual school for Tennessee reported that K12 outsourced grading of papers to India until publicity about it forced the company to end the practice.

This is the company that is preparing to collect millions of public dollars in North Carolina with little or no accountability for how the money is used.

Other for-profit companies are also watching the case and the law carefully, ready with their own schemes to make money off of public schools.

North Carolina desperately needs a full and open debate about the wisdom of turning public education into an online profit center and somebody needs to take a long hard look at K-12 too.

That debate and investigation better happen quickly. The dismantling of public schools is about to begin. The cash registers are K-12 are warming up.

255 million—amount in dollars of federal funding for education that will disappear after the current school year unless replaced by the General Assembly in the 2012-2013 budget (“Time to Step Up, With federal Recovery Funds Gone, State Lawmakers Just Recommit to Funding Public Education with General Fund Appropriations,” N.C. Budget & Tax Center)

5,000—number of teaching positions that are supported by the federal funding that will be lost unless General Assembly increases General Fund spending for education in 2012-2013 budget to maintain the positions (Ibid)

503 million—amount in discretionary budget cuts to local school systems built into 2012-2013 budget passed by the General Assembly last summer (Report on Continuation, Expansion and Capital Budgets, House Bill 22, N.C. General Assembly 2011 session)

758 million—total amount in dollars of disappearing federal education money and discretionary cuts to local schools in 2012-2013 in the budget passed by the General Assembly last summer (Ibid)

562 million—amount in dollars that Governor Bev Perdue proposes to increase education funding in 2012-2013 in the budget she presented to lawmakers last week that includes a ¾ cent increase in the state sales tax (Recommended Adjustments, 2012-2013 North Carolina State Budget, Office of the Governor)

11,000—total number of education jobs that Gov. Perdue says her budget saves or creates through restoration of budget cuts made last year (Ibid)

1—number of days before Gov. Perdue released her budget that Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger announced at a press conference that he was ruling out any increase in the state sales tax to restore education cuts (“A place to start but there’s more to do,” N.C. Policy Watch, May 10, 2012)

2,000—number of teachers that Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger claims the Republican budget added to classrooms this year (Excellent Public Schools Act: Students First in North Carolina, Senator Phil Berger)

915—total number of teachers actually CUT from schools by the budget passed by the General Assembly in the 2011 session (Statistical Profile, Public Schools of North Carolina, 2011-2012 School Year)

2,915—minimum number by which Sen. Berger’s claim about teaching positions overstates the number of teachers in classrooms this year (Ibid)

2,042—total number of teacher assistants CUT from the schools by the budget passed by the General Assembly in 2011 (Ibid)

4,840—total number of overall school personnel cut from the schools by the budget passed by the General Assembly in 2011 (Ibid)

19,215—minimum number of students, based on class size, who are directly impacted by cuts to classroom personnel in 2011-2012 budget (“Just the Facts, Real Solutions Require Real Facts”, N.C. Budget & Tax Center)

Frills we can’t afford

You can tell a General Assembly session is coming up by the volume of nonsense wafting out from Right Wing Avenue these days.

The folks at the Pope Civitas Institute are ever vigilant in case any Republican might remotely consider supporting raising revenues this year to restore some of the devastating cuts made last summer to public schools, human services, and environmental protections.

Human services took center stage this week as the Civitasers expounded on what they called the frills in the state Medicaid program that are costing taxpayers billions.

The “frills” are services that the state provides as part of Medicaid coverage that are not required by the federal government.

The Civitas article listed some of the frills they are so upset about. They include prescription drugs, mental health services, dental care, prosthetics, and eye exams.

Nothing says frill like lifesaving medication or an artificial limb for someone who loses an arm or leg. Government has no business providing luxuries like that, not in the Civitas world view.

That money would be better spent cutting taxes on the wealthy

Confirmation of secret budget

The Civitasers also recently confirmed one of the worst-kept secrets in Raleigh these days, that Republican budget writers have been meeting in secret for weeks putting together their spending plan for next year.

A recent Civitas post about Gov Bev Perdue’s budget proposal said that “legislative budget writers have already nearly finished their budget. They have been meeting constantly during the interim period.”

Those constant meetings have been behind closed doors. The health and human services budget committee met publicly last week for the first time since the 2011 session adjourned last summer and very little was said about the budget proposal for next year.

If they are ready to roll out their full budget proposal next week, Republicans leaders certainly have been meeting privately, away from the public eye and away from rank and file lawmakers too.

And the folks at Civitas should know. The current chief of staff for House Speaker Thom Tillis is a former Civitaser himself.

Perdue gives lawmakers another chance

Speaking of Perdue’s budget, it is as you read here yesterday a good place to begin the conversation about next year’s public investments in education. It doesn’t do enough for schools or human services and other vital state programs, but it ought to be the place legislators start their debate, if they are going to allow one.

Another way to look at it is that Perdue is giving legislative leaders the chance to correct some of the serious mistakes they made last year when they fired teachers, slashed universities and community colleges, abolished the N.C Teaching Fellows, and made other draconian cuts.

She doesn’t call for all of last year’s cuts to be restored, but she tackles a lot of them. Last fall Tillis admitted that ending the N.C. Teaching Fellows may have been a mistake. Her budget gives him the chance to correct it.

School superintendents, teachers, and parents have all pointed out the damage that last year’s widely unpopular cuts have done to classrooms across North Carolina. Her budget gives legislative leaders a roadmap to rethink those cuts and restore some of the funding that teachers and schools need to do their jobs.

Advocates for children have understandably been shaken by last year’s big reductions to Smart Start and to NC PreK which effectively locked thousands of at-risk kids out of the program that studies show improves academic performance.

Perdue’s budget gives House and Senate leaders a chance to redeem themselves and stop caring more about rigid adherence to an ideological agenda than helping kids.

That’s really what this summer’s budget debate comes down to, a clear choice between ideology and helping families and children.

Does McCrory agree with James?

And finally, now that the far-right has successfully mislead and manipulated the voters into writing broad discrimination in the state constitution, somebody needs to ask a question of Pat McCrory, the Republican candidate for governor who has spent the last year cozying up to the far right and who said he supported the amendment.

Mecklenburg County Commissioner Bill James, a fellow Republican in McCrory’s hometown of Charlotte, is demanding that the county immediately cut off benefits for unmarried partners of county employees, gay and straight, now that the amendment has passed.

Does McCrory agree? Is he also demanding that his home county stop providing health care to employees’ domestic partners at once? The public deserves to know.

Governor Bev Perdue released her budget proposal for the next fiscal year Thursday morning and there are many things to like about it, particularly that it raises new revenue to rehire teachers and restore some of the devastating cuts made to education in the last few years.

There’s plenty more to do however, and if lawmakers had the best interests of North Carolina families in mind, they would expand on Perdue’s proposal by restoring even more of the cuts to education, as well finding more resources for human services, environmental protections, and other vital state services that were also slashed by the Republican budget last year.

But this is an election year and Republicans seem more bound by their rigid right-wing ideology than any common sense approach to address the state’s problems. That means, as Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger made clear this week, that Perdue’s plan to raise the state sales tax by ¾ of a penny is dead on arrival at the General Assembly.

The sales tax is not the perfect revenue source, but given the extent of damage the budget cuts have caused, it’s far better than no new source of revenue.

Berger didn’t say how Republicans would address the dramatic need for more education funding, though he has said in the past that the problems faced by public schools can’t be addressed with more money.

That’s not the way school superintendents see it after being forced to fire teachers and teacher assistants, increase class sizes, rely on out of date textbooks, and slash classroom supplies.

The superintendents want lawmakers to end the $500 million discretionary cut to local schools built into next year’s budget and to replace more than $250 million in federal stimulus money that is ending.

Perdue would fill two-thirds of that $750 million hole. The rest of the sales tax proceeds would go to the university system and community colleges, which also took major hits last year.

The federal public school funding has allowed the state to keep as many as 5,000 teachers in classrooms. Berger astonishingly said using that money for teachers was a mistake since the funding would eventually end.

The stimulus money was designed to help states get through the recession without irreparable harm to public education with the understanding that the states would step up to replace the money with state funding when the stimulus funds ran out.

Berger apparently would have preferred that lawmakers fired the 5,000 teachers two years ago, no matter the impact on public education.

Perdue also calls for a slight increase in funding for health and human services, most of it on Medicaid, but overall her budget does not get North Carolina back to pre-recession levels of public investments even as the state has grown in the last few years.

Look for a more detailed analysis of her budget plan over the next few days, but it is clearly a foundation on which lawmakers can build if they are serious about making important public investments that are crucial to the state’s future.

House leaders say they will have a budget ready for debate next week when the legislative session convenes, making it obvious that it has been written in secret with no public input, much less suggestions from rank and file lawmakers.

Berger defends the secret budget process, saying the Republican spending plan will contain no big surprises. That’s an odd definition of open transparent government, that only surprises deserve public debate and scrutiny.

And it comes from a lawmaker who frequently complained about his lack of access to the budget making process when Democrats controlled the General Assembly.

The few documents about the Republican budget that have circulated call for more cuts across state government, including in human services that are already woefully underfunded after last year’s reductions.

Republican legislative leaders ought to slow down, rethink their obsession with slashing public investments, and open up the budget process for some honest debate about decisions that affect every person in North Carolina.

And they ought to read Gov. Perdue’s plan a little more carefully before dismissing it out of hand. It is a good place to start.

It’s hard not to be bewildered, sorrowful, ashamed, angry, disgusted and more the morning after the passage of the discrimination amendment to North Carolina’s constitution.

It is not shocking that the majority voted to take rights away from a minority. That’s what fearful, manipulated, misinformed majorities may do if given the chance.

Polls showed that the amendment would pass in large part because the vast majority of voters did not understand what the amendment actually would mean, how many lives it would affect, how many laws it would threaten, how many families it would hurt.

Any doubt about that was removed just hours after the vote when right-wing Mecklenburg County Commissioner Bill James demanded to know when his county would cut off benefits to same sex partners of county employees given the amendment’s passage.

What’s unfathomable is that people were given the right to vote on the constitutional rights of others in the first place. Constitutions are written to guarantee rights, not strip them away.

But not in this case, not in this shameful political chapter of North Carolina’s history. House Speaker Thom Tills and Senate President Tem Phil Berger promised when they took over control of the General Assembly last year that would take North Carolina in a different direction.

And they did—backwards.

Their role in Tuesday’s disgraceful outcome should not be minimized. Just a few days before Tuesday’s vote, House Majority Leader Paul Stam admitted that the discrimination amendment was much broader than he had originally planned because he was “overruled” by folks at the Alliance Defense Fund, a national right-wing hate group.

Stam and Tillis and Berger they knew exactly what they were doing. Tillis openly acknowledged that the amendment’s days were numbered because the next generation doesn’t support punishing people for who they love and want to spend their lives with.

Tillis’ comments sparked controversy and outrage but they were basically an admission that this amendment and all the hate and manipulation behind it are the last, pathetic gasps of a backward, out of touch generation of leaders with their distorted views of human rights and family and community.

It is hard not to think of the civil rights movement after Tuesday’s disturbing vote and in light of Tillis’ comments.

It was a long and difficult struggle to end segregation in the schools and it did not happen in a popular vote in Mississippi or Alabama. The courts had to do that.

It was unspeakably difficult to end officially-sanctioned discrimination in housing and the workplace and the voting booth.

A president and Congress did that and only after the blood, sweat, tears and righteous demands of civil rights leaders and the committed soldiers for justice who marched and sang and resisted with them.

The folks who supported punishing and demonizing people on Tuesday may not realize it yet, as they slap each other on the back in celebration clutching the Bibles they perversely misrepresent, but their days in judgment and control of other people’s lives are dwindling.

Tuesday’s vote was a setback for human rights and dignity, but it was also a rallying cry for those with a different vision of what North Carolina should be and how all its people can be honored and respected, not just the ones deemed worthy by craven politicians and misguided preachers.

Same sex couples in North Carolina who loved each other Monday still love each other today. Lesbian parents helping their kids do their homework Monday night will help them tonight too. Gay partners taking care of an aging mother last week will be there at her side this week and next week and the week after that.

Nobody’s going away. And nobody’s giving up the struggle for a different North Carolina either. All people, straight and gay, who reject the fear and the hate and intolerance of those currently in charge of the levers of power are now clear on the challenge ahead.

The hate amendment was a wake-up call that will likely serve as a marker of a new day when historians look back on this shameful vote.

Somebody ought to ask Tillis and Stam to sign one of those pro-amendment signs so we can have a tangible exhibit for a museum to show future generations what happened this week because they will have a hard time comprehending it.

If you are among those baffled and dejected by the Tuesday’s results, don’t spend too much time in your despair. Get your grieving and moping out of the way today.

Tomorrow the fight for basic human rights begins anew, in the courts, in the General Assembly, in the voting booths and in the public square.

It is a fight with an outcome that is inevitable. For not only does the arc of history bend toward justice as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. reminded us, but love and compassion and light will always ultimately triumph over hate and intolerance and darkness.

The question is when that day will come. Let’s make it sooner rather than later.