There are thousands upon thousands of migrant farmworkers in North Carolina throughout the year who maintain and harvest various such as tobacco, sweet potatoes and scores of others. Some of these migrant laborers are in the United States under the H-2A program – a visa program that brings in foreign workers temporarily for agricultural work. Despite the large numbers of H-2A migrant workers, however, there has also been an increase in the hiring of undocumented workers from countries such as Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala.

Tragically, a huge proportion of this workforce – be they H-2A or undocumented farm workers – is being denied basic human rights. The conditions and treatment that migrant farm workers face in labor camps are reminiscent of the institutions of slavery and sharecropping.

A human rights assessment conducted by Oxfam America and the Farm Labor Organizing Committee confirms that there are violations occurring that demand to be addressed immediately. Through labor camp visits and interviews with migrant farm workers, researchers and advocates have uncovered serious concerns related to wages, discrimination, and living and working conditions which have negatively affected the lives of thousands in North Carolina.

Wages paid to laborers are often lower than minimum wage and prohibit farmworkers from meeting basic needs creating high levels of migrant poverty. Long hours of field work in harsh weather conditions along with pesticide and herbicide use and exposure often lead to unaddressed health concerns.

In tobacco fields, for instance, workers often face acute tobacco poisoning due to the lack of proper equipment which causes the absorption of nicotine through the skin.

Acute tobacco poisoning may result in side effects not limited to vomiting, dizziness, coughing and weakness.

Growers often deny breaks or sufficient amounts of clean water which only exacerbates these health issues. Such dangerous working conditions are only made worse by living conditions that feature overcrowding, lack of working toilets and sinks, lack of heat and ventilation, and infestations of insects and rodents.

Unfortunately, when it comes to doing something about such deplorable treatment, discrimination, harassment and fear of deportation make it difficult for farmworkers to fight these issues by themselves. This is one of the main reasons that labor unions have arisen and taken root in so many farming areas in recent decades – to help alleviate that burden.

The Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) a one such union. FLOC has a long and successful history of representing and working with migrant farmworkers to address such concerns – both through direct representation and, when necessary, though the use of boycotts, petitions and round-table discussions. In a key current campaign, FLOC is seeking justice for farm laborers in Reynolds tobacco fields where many human rights violations are taking place.

Ironically, Reynolds has acknowledged that there can be serious problems in the fields…overseas. An official statement released by Reynolds says that: “in many developing countries [facing] significant human rights issues related to working conditions and sanitation , child labor, pesticide and herbicide practices and other issues…the operating companies will continue to seek opportunities for partnering with other concerned parties to improve these conditions.”

As a student organizer in Student Action with Farmworkers who organizes with FLOC, I can testify that this is not just a problem in developing nations but also in the United States. That’s why our organization is calling on those who share the same concerns to help mobilize and support farmworkers through letter writing and demonstrations.

Big businesses such as Reynolds rake in huge annual profits (in the billions of dollars) yet they consistently refuse to address the human rights abuses in tobacco fields that supply them with product. FLOC and its organizers focus on the rights and health of farmworkers and are continually urging Reynolds to change a system that takes away the voice of migrant farmworkers.

In a current petition, student organizers are calling for a meeting with board members of Reynolds to discuss the human rights abuses in North Carolina tobacco fields and labor camps that we witnessed firsthand. This ongoing battle between big business and laborers is far from over and FLOC urges people to join organizations like its own that work for social justice.

Courtney Wilson is a senior at UNC Chapel Hill and an organizer for Student Action with Farmworkers. She is currently working to organize support of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee’s RJ Reynolds campaign.

People of different political stripes frequently argue about the best ways to attack child poverty. More carrots? More sticks? Here’s a fact, however, that’s beyond dispute: Research shows that the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is the one of the most effective tools at our disposal for lifting children out of poverty.

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is a refundable income tax credit for low-income working individuals and families. At the federal level, the EITC was started during the Nixon administration and expanded by Ronald Reagan as a way to reward and encourage work and deemphasize welfare.

Congress originally created the tax credit legislation in 1975, in part to offset the burden of social security payroll taxes. EITC is designed to “make work pay.” It rewards low-wage work by decreasing the taxes that low-wage workers pay on their earnings and by supplementing their wages. The intention is to move a family with a full-time minimum-wage worker above the poverty line, so as to avoid raising children in poverty.

The EITC is the largest poverty-reduction program in the U.S. The Census Bureau found that the EITC lifted 5.4 million above the poverty line in 2010. When using the new alternative poverty measure, that number climbs to 6.25 million nationally. Furthermore, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) reports that in 2009, the poverty rate among children would have been nearly one-third higher without the EITC (3.3 million of the 6.6 million people lifted out of poverty in 2009 were children). The EITC lifts more children out of poverty than any other single program or category of programs.

During the first year of the North Carolina EITC, more than 800,000 North Carolinians claimed the EITC, putting a critical $59 million back in the pockets of low-wage workers. The average state EITC value is $113. That figure may not seem like much to some of us. However, $113 may represent a week of food, a car payment to get to work, or school supplies and lunches for a child.

Nearly half of all North Carolina children (46 percent) now live in low-income families. In 2009, an estimated 500,000 of our children lived in families earning less than the federal poverty level ($22,050 for a family of four). Between 2007 and 2009 the number of North Carolina children living in poverty increased 18 percent—no doubt the result of the state losing more than 300,000 jobs. Perhaps the most telling fact of our children’s eroding economic security is the rapid growth in the number of children living in extreme poverty-(half the federal poverty level for a family of four or roughly $11,000 annually). The North Carolina numbers are shocking. Today, one of every ten children in North Carolina lives in extreme poverty.

Children who experience economic hardship and excessive adversities encounter what researchers call “toxic stress” that disrupts brain circuits, damages the architecture of developing brains and weakens the foundation for future learning, health and earnings potential. The consequences of economic deprivation during childhood linger into adulthood, often making it difficult to escape poverty.

Friday, January 27, 2012 was EITC Awareness Day. It was an important opportunity for those who care about our children to lift up and celebrate this critical and effective program – especially given that no other tool helps families so much, feeds money back into the economy and lifts children out of poverty.

Let’s hope, however, that, this year, it was just the beginning. In these tough economic times in which effective tools with broad-based, bipartisan support are so illusive, we would do well to celebrate the EITC all year long.

Barbara Bradley is the President and CEO of Action for Children North Carolina.

In North Carolina, our constitution promises that exercises of government power will be limited to those “instituted solely for the good of the whole.” This is a solemn moral covenant as well as a legal obligation.

Too often, we fail to live up to these ideals. We allow widespread poverty to exist, especially in our communities of color, through inattention or through unwise policy.

Here, in North Carolina, almost 18 percent of us – nearly one in five — live below the federal poverty standard. Even that poverty standard is stingy, at $22,000 per year for a family of four. Imagine raising a family of four on less than that. How would you feed them, let alone help one or more realize the dream of a college education?

Poverty is North Carolina’s scourge, and the disease does not strike our people or our regions uniformly. Four out of ten Black and Hispanic and Native American kids grow up in poverty. Think about that: Four out of ten minority children living in poverty in the midst of the richest nation on earth. As if any theory of justice or virtue could explain the exclusion of innocent children from the American dream!

This is not a new problem. An array of eastern North Carolina counties has suffered from chronic and persistent high poverty, economic exclusion and underinvestment.

We cannot let North Carolina have mere islands of prosperity surrounded by a sea of poverty and inequity. That’s why our organizations and allies are participating in the “Truth and Hope Tour of Poverty in North Carolina,” a state-wide tour of rural counties and inner city neighborhoods where North Carolinians have struggled to find work, decent housing, transportation, and sufficient food for their families.

Counties visited on the first of three legs of the tour — Beaufort, Edgecombe, Halifax, Hertford, Washington, Pasquotank – experience rates and conditions of poverty dramatically exceeding those of most of the state.

In these counties, between one-third and one-half of all persons of color live below the federal poverty standard. To look at the face of poverty forces us to see the impact of racial disparity, regressive tax policy, the lack of targeted investments in infrastructure, education, job creation and a host of other challenges.

How can we let these communities remain in the economic shadows? To do so undermines our values of equal dignity, and opportunity, and justice.

It also wastes vital human capital. Imagine the potential contributions people in these communities might make to our state, country and world if only they could escape the trap of destitution. Are we missing out on the next great engineers, doctors, and scientists by failing to provide a path out of poverty and into education? To effectively exclude whole communities from access to opportunity benefits no one in North Carolina.

It is important to hear these voices that are so often excluded from our public discourse. We mean, through this modest effort, to illuminate and highlight these barriers, these moral and social transgressions. We want to do so not simply through data, and statistics, and documents and reports but through the words and voices and protestations and hopes of those most directly affected.

Through this effort, we hope to put a face on North Carolina’s biggest actual problem, our greatest policy failure: the marginalization, exclusion and effective invisibility of so many of our fellow Tar Heels.

We hope that citizens from across the state will join us and enlist in the battle. Perhaps then we can truly say that our public power is dedicated “solely to the good of the whole.”

Rev. Dr. William Barber II is president of the NC State NAACP. Gene Nichol is the director of the UNC Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity. Melinda Lawrence is executive director of the NC Justice Center.

One of the bills that became law during the 2011 session of the North Carolina General Assembly is called the “Founding Principles Act.” The new law changes, expands (and presumably, seeks to improve) how the state education system deals with “civic literacy.”

It’s too bad state lawmakers didn’t somehow make themselves subject to this law.

When the leaders of the General Assembly held a hastily-convened midnight session to override Gov. Bev Perdue’s veto of a bill that stopped members of the North Carolina Association of Educators from having dues taken out of their paychecks, they acted completely against this nation’s founding principles. Indeed, they acted with no principles at all.

If people learn everything they need to know in Kindergarten, then surely North Carolina’s House of Representatives could have learned from the preamble of the Founding Principles law. It states “the survival of the republic requires that our nation’s children, the future guardians of its heritage and participants in its governance, have a clear understanding of the Founding Philosophy and the Founding Principles of government for a free people.”

Unfortunately, it is awfully hard for even public officials to participate in a government they are elected to serve if they are in the hospital or sick and exhausted from a long day in the legislative building as happened during the midnight session. They probably believed that the Founders wanted a government based on transparency, not votes that take place in the middle of the night.

In order to graduate high school, students are required to receive a passing grade in “American History I – The Founding Principles.” Unfortunately, the General Assembly does not appear to recognize that passing legislation without notice in the middle of the night is not at all what the Founders had in mind.

American History I’s curriculum must include information about “[i]ndividual rights as set forth in the Bill of Rights.” Perhaps the Legislature should have audited the course. They would not have had to get past the First Amendment to see that the government cannot abridge freedom of association. Arguably, the General Assembly violated NCAE’s right to associate by taking their opportunity to check off a box while other groups still enjoy that right.

The Legislature would not have to leave the First Amendment to see that the government cannot keep people from their freedom of speech. The reason the majority party targeted NCAE is because of their speech and conduct against some of the policies of the Republican majority.

The Act specifically states that schools can display documents based on religion. If a school does display a religious document, they must display a “prominent sign quoting the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.” It is more than ironic that this is the same legislature that voted to take away the First Amendment rights of people who work in the very buildings where the language will be prominently displayed.

Another part of the American History I course is the “[s]tructure of government, separation of powers with checks and balances.” The founders created a government that promoted transparency with checks and balances. Checks and balances like an executive veto which would prevent the legislature from doing something harmful to even a minority population of the state like the governor did when she vetoed Senate Bill 727. Checks and balances like a judiciary that grants restraining orders when the legislative or executive branch is out of control like a court did to prevent the dues check off law from taking effect.

Civic lessons should be required for students. Young people should understand how to be responsible citizens. Adults owe it to them to be caretakers of this democracy and this republic. Unfortunately, the adults in the General Assembly provided a poor example of how government should work. With any luck, however, most young people did not see it. They probably went to bed at a decent hour.

Christopher Hill is the Director of the North Carolina Justice Center’s Education and Law Project.

The North Carolina Racial Justice Act (RJA) is all about the relationship between our present and our history. The early history of our state was marred by the adoption of slavery with a clear institutionalized message race made a difference and a legal system formalizing the disparate treatment of African Americans and whites through the “Black Codes.”

Those laws provided different punishments for crimes based on the race of the defendant and the victim. Other laws, intensely hostile to African Americans, remained on the books until well into the last century and their cultural counterparts have never fully been eradicated.

It is in this context RJA was enacted in 2009.

The criminal justice system operates with law enforcement officers, prosecutors, judges and juries exercising discretion over a host of decisions made during the course of a case. Because of this broad discretion, significant opportunities exist for an individual’s prejudice, informed by his cultural lens, conscious or unconscious, to affect the ultimate outcome of a case. At every stage of the process African American suspects have too often been treated differently. This should come as no surprise—it simply reflects the complex social mechanisms of class and race particularly prevalent in North Carolina through much of the last century.

So how does the RJA apply? The law addresses the question of how discrimination is proved. There are generally two ways: first, with direct evidence that, in its words, establishes the decision-maker was prejudiced. In North Carolina cases, words by a juror suggesting “blacks value life less than whites” powerfully suggest racial animus substantially affected those decisions.

But, today discrimination is often not that overt. It is more subtle—yet we cannot deny its existence. So, a second route of establishing discrimination is through the use of statistical evidence to prove or disprove racial animus drove a decision.

Why statistical evidence? Because each statistic represents a human decision. These are objective facts quantifying very subjective human behavior. The RJA recognizes this and allows courts to look at those facts.

Where there is a true disparate impact suggesting race played a substantial factor in the decision to seek the death penalty, select a jury, or impose the death sentence, RJA demands a legitimate non-discriminatory explanation exist for what occurred.

A defendant bears a heavy burden to prove discrimination, but in the rare case that burden is met, a life sentence without parole will be imposed in lieu of a death sentence. Defendants may file frivolous cases– and they should be quickly dismissed for what they are –but the fact many cases may be meritless hardly justifies refusing to consider those that are not. We are better than that as a civilized people.

Statistical evidence is used in this manner, on a daily basis in courts throughout this country, to determine civil law issues of discrimination. If it is acceptable to do so in those settings, it is impossible to see how the same evidence is invalid in a criminal case where a life is at stake.

Years ago, I represented a client in a civil rights case who was falsely convicted of a rape he did not commit. He was black; his accuser white. His jury was all white with black prospective jurors struck from the jury pool as was–too often–customary practice in the early 1980’s in parts of this state. His defense was supported by four alibi witnesses—(including a base chaplain), but not believed. He proclaimed his innocence loudly, but nobody listened. Strong exculpatory evidence was hidden by police (white) from prosecutors. He stayed in prison for eight years for a crime DNA evidence later proved he did not commit.

This case was a classic example of errors permeating cross-racial eyewitness identification. And, my client was hardly alone. North Carolina has released nearly a dozen men from prison with life or death sentences for crimes they did not commit.

The RJA, in combination with many other criminal justice reforms, like the Actual Innocence Commission, is part of a modern and accountable criminal justice system designed, not to perpetuate error, but correct it.

Many honorable steps to eradicate the influence of discrimination have been achieved, but as the late Supreme Court Justice Brennan wrote in years ago in the case of McClesky v Kemp, “We remain imprisoned by the past as long as we continue to deny its influence on the present.”

The RJA will, once and for all, if allowed to complete its mission, determine whether race played a substantial role in the outcome of any case where a defendant sits on death row and will, as important, deter such from ever happening again. The time delay for these executions until that decision is made and the cost of doing so dim in comparison to the moral, spiritual and human cost of not doing so. We can go a long way toward restoring full confidence in our criminal justice system for us all if we simply allow the law to complete its task. Nothing in life is settled until settled right. Let’s keep this important law.

Rick Glazier is a lawyer, law professor and state representative from Cumberland County.

One of the most important things to distinguish North Carolina from many of its southern neighbors over the past half-century has been a robust and relatively consistent commitment to public investments in education, health, and safe communities.

The new state budget, passed by the General Assembly despite Governor Perdue’s veto, represents a major departure from recent historical precedent.

New data from the N.C. Budget and Tax Center demonstrates that, by any reasonable measure, state funding for core services like education, health and human services, public safety, and other general government services is historically low.

For nearly four decades, state funding for core, so-called “General Fund” services like public schools, community colleges, universities, mental and physical health, and public safety typically hovered between 6 and 6.5 percent of the combined total of all North Carolina residents’ annual incomes.

Yet state funding for those core services – as a share of North Carolina residents’ incomes – is projected to reach an unprecedented 40-year low over the next two years. In the fiscal year that begins next July, state funding for core services is projected to be more than 15 percent lower than the average of the prior four decades.

The consequences of this reduced commitment to state public investments have already started to become clear: fewer teachers and teacher-assistants in the classroom, longer waiting lists for child-care subsidies, higher tuition and fewer classes for university and community college students, and the potential elimination of vital health services for elderly, disabled, and indigent North Carolinians.

By another measure — cost-adjusted, per capita funding — state support is set to fall to a 25-year low. Even this measure, however, dramatically understates the extent to which funding for core state services and investments have failed to keep pace with costs and demand because it excludes the impact of rapidly rising health care costs and growing demand for state-funded services.

While North Carolina’s population grew by less than 20 percent over the last decade, enrollment in public universities grew nearly twice as fast, and the state’s Medicaid caseload and enrollment in community colleges each grew more than three times faster than the state population. And despite falling crime rates, the state’s prison population also grew significantly faster than the overall population over the past decade. Put together, these four fast-growing services comprise roughly two of every five state dollars spent on core public services in the current fiscal year.

Thus, even if per capita state funding had remained constant instead of declining in recent years (and did so in the years ahead), funding would still fall short of the level necessary to sustain the quality and availability of key public services.

In the coming decade and beyond, an aging population, rising health-care costs, and a growing gap between workers’ skills and the demands of the job market are going to put enormous pressure on funding for core services.

Between now and 2030, North Carolina’s elderly population is expected to grow 3.5 times faster than the state’s under-65 population. Therefore, at the same time hundreds of thousands more residents become reliant on state-funded services for the elderly (including Medicaid), a smaller share of the state’s population will be working and paying state income taxes. Health-care costs, too, are projected to continue rising faster than overall inflation, driving up future health-care expenditures even more than the aging of the population.

Even as core services face substantial and growing pressure from an aging population and rising health-care costs, the state cannot afford to stand still on educational attainment and workforce development. North Carolina will need to roughly double the number of residents completing post-secondary degrees or credentials to meet the educational and skill demands of new jobs projected to be created in the state in the years ahead. Closing this growing skills gap – and keeping it closed – will require well-targeted interventions to improve educational attainment and workforce development from early childhood to adulthood.

Of course, efforts to find efficiencies in public programs and target scarce public resources to the most cost-effective solutions must continue be an important part of providing adequate funding for core public services in the years to come. Yet for the state to thrive economically and meet its commitments to seniors and other vulnerable populations, policymakers will need to reverse course and strengthen the state’s financial commitment to vital public services and investments.

Edwin McLenaghan is a Public Policy Analyst that the N.C. Budget and Tax Center. His new report on the drop in state spending on core services can be found at www.ncjustice.org.

As the recent battles over school re-segregation in various North Carolina school districts make clear, the use of race and poverty in school assignment remains a controversial issue. Some parties, including the former conservative school board majority in Wake County, even argued that it was even somehow forbidden.

Fortunately, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and Department of Education (DOE) have recently released new guidelines which add much needed clarity on these matters. The introductory portion of the guidance reaffirms the educational and civic benefits of diversity and the damaging pitfalls of school segregation.

The DOE also issued a regulation permitting schools to use to information about children’s eligibility for the Free and Reduced Lunch Program as a means of determining students’ socioeconomic status for school assignment purposes. In spite of the longstanding use of this data, some doubt was cast on the practice when a program analyst from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) sent an e-mail to Wake County school officials stating that the use such data for student assignment purposes might violate privacy laws. The DOE regulation expressly negates the analyst’s take on the law. The USDA and DOE intend to jointly issue guidance for use by the educational community which will be in line with this new regulation.

The DOE and DOJ’s joint guidance represents both departments’ strongest affirmation of the benefits of diversity in schools to date. The guidelines state that “[r]acially diverse schools provide incalculable educational and civic benefits by promoting cross-racial understanding, breaking down racial and other stereotypes, and eliminating bias and prejudice.”

Conversely, “racially isolated schools often have fewer effective teachers, higher teacher turnover rates, less rigorous curricular resources (e.g., college preparatory courses), and inferior facilities”.

“Racial isolation remains far too common in America’s classrooms today and it is increasing,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a statement. “This denies our children the experiences they will need to succeed in a global economy, where employers, co-workers, and customers will be increasingly diverse.  It also breeds educational inequity, which is inconsistent with America’s core values.”

The state of the law regarding the use of race in student assignment has been somewhat up in the air since the Supreme Court’s confusing 2007 ruling in a case involving the Seattle school system and a DOE “guidance” issued the following year. Happily, the most recent jointly issued guidelines negate the 2008 guidance and clarify what school districts may do in light of the Seattle case.

The new directive relies heavily on Justice Kennedy’s concurring opinion in the Seattle case because Kennedy and the four dissenting Justices comprised a majority of the Court on the issue of the use of race in student assignment. These Justices agreed that state and local authorities are not prohibited from considering the racial makeup of schools and adopting general policies to encourage a diverse student body.

According to the guidelines, districts must first try to use “race-neutral” approaches when deciding about student assignment to achieve diversity as well as for drawing school boundary lines. These approaches include using students’ socioeconomic status, parental education levels, the socioeconomic status of neighborhoods, and the composition of an area’s housing including its share of subsidized or rental housing.

If, however, a race-neutral approach would be unworkable to achieve the compelling interest of diversity and/or avoiding racial isolation, a school district may employ generalized race-based approaches but may not make decisions on the basis of any individual student’s race.

For example, schools can draw attendance zones based on the racial composition of particular neighborhoods because students in those neighborhoods would be treated the same regardless of race.

The guidelines give many specific examples of acceptable ways to achieve diversity, including one that specifically applies to the choice-based student assignment policy currently being considered in Wake County. Districts may design school choice programs in a way that achieves diversity or avoids racial isolation using race-neutral factors (such as socioeconomic status) or generalized race-based factors that look at things like the overall racial composition of neighborhoods but do not involve decision-making on the basis of any individual student’s race.

The new federal guidance is vital and extremely promising because: a) it recognizes the value of diversity and the educational and civic problems that accompany racial isolation and b) because it provides clear guidance to school districts that will limit the costly litigation that had arisen around student assignment policies. Local boards of education throughout North Carolina would do well to follow this legal framework closely when adopting student assignment policies and affirm the DOE’s commitment to diversity in order to provide the best possible education for North Carolina’s children.

Matt Ellinwood is a Policy Advocate the North Carolina Justice Center’s Education and Law Project.

The recent spike in attacks on women’s basic reproductive health care, from birth control to cervical cancer immunizations to abortion care, by out-of-touch and extreme politicians is breathtaking in scope and intent.

Take, for example, the issue of birth control as women’s preventive health care.

At a recent hearing before a congressional subcommittee on health, one Republican congressman after another expressed opposition to the recent decision by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to require all new health plans to cover birth control and other basic women’s preventive care services with no co-pays.

Shortly thereafter, Archbishop Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, met with President Obama to press for an expansion of the “refusal clause” of this provision. Apparently, the 271 bishops in the conference want any and all religiously affiliated entities—not just churches, which are currently able by law to opt out of the provision—to be able to deny this basic preventive care to their employees. After the meeting, several news sources cited Dolan’s pleasure, to the astonishment of women’s health and advocacy organizations, at the President’s perceived willingness to compromise.

In fighting to overturn or undermine this important preventive care provision—and one of the most popular benefits of the Affordable Care Act—those opposed to birth control are ignoring the facts.

Birth control use is nearly universal in the United States. Ninety-nine percent of sexually experienced women use birth control at some point in their lives, including 98 percent of sexually experienced Catholic women. And 34 percent of women voters—including yours truly—have struggled with the cost of prescription birth control at some point in their lives.

Sound science, including recommendations by the respected, nonpartisan Institute of Medicine, demonstrates that birth control usage improves maternal and infant health. Birth control allows women to plan their pregnancies, and planned, well-spaced pregnancies are healthier than unplanned or mistimed pregnancies.

In considering a “compromise,” President Obama is ignoring the reality.

Seventy-seven percent of Catholic women voters and 71 percent of all American voters support the requirement that health plans cover birth control without co-pays.

Expanding the existing refusal clause could mean more than one-million people who work at religiously affiliated schools, hospitals, universities and organizations, as well as their dependents, and two-million students who attend religiously affiliated colleges and universities would not be privy to the same basic protection in health coverage that the rest of the country is. All women, no matter where they work or attend college, should have access to birth control.

Expansion of the refusal clause in this manner would amount to the single most damaging refusal provision around birth control that has ever been implemented. It would create a dangerous precedent that singles out birth control and undermines a fundamental tenet of the Affordable Care Act—that every person in this country deserves a basic standard of health care coverage. Furthermore, such an expansion would set a standard rivaled only by the refusal provision that President George W. Bush put into place near the end of his administration, a regulation that President Obama rescinded.

The fact is millions of women and families will benefit from improved access to affordable birth control. Taking away this important new preventive health benefit—one that is rooted in science and medicine, and favored by health advocates, women’s groups and the vast majority of American voters—is simply unacceptable. And the reality is it’s not only bad policy; it’s bad politics too.

So why would President Obama ever consider such a move? Much has been said about the political calculus of this decision. But what politicians who are opposed to birth control and safe, legal abortion care don’t understand is that my health and reproductive decision-making—and that of my friends, family, neighbors and coworkers—should not be used as a political ploy. Putting women down by disregarding our health, wellbeing and lives is not the stuff good stump speeches are made of, and attacks on women’s health care do nothing to create jobs, reduce the deficit or improve the economy.

It is time for all of us to say, “Enough is enough.” It is unacceptable for politicians to disregard women’s health and lives to score political points. President Obama should reject out-of-step attempts by the GOP, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and other anti-birth control organizations to unfairly deny millions of women access to birth control.

Women are watching, and we won’t let the clock will be rolled back on our health care or the care of those we know and love.

Melissa Reed is the Vice President of Public Policy for Planned Parenthood Health Systems.

It’s doubtful you could find many North Carolinians who would argue that the state suffers from too little congestion, too few potholes, not enough crumbling bridges, or too many construction jobs.

If state leaders follow through on threats to cap the state’s gas tax, however, (an action the state House has approved already) the result will be a bumpier, and more dangerous, ride on North Carolina’s roadways.

North Carolina’s gas tax currently accounts for more than half of state revenues dedicated for transportation projects like repairing bridges, repaving roadways, providing public transit, and constructing highways. Capping the gas tax rate, without replacing the lost revenue, would likely cause costly delays in many of these critical transportation projects in the years ahead.

According to the NC Department of Transportation (NC DOT), more than 5,000 of the state’s 13,000 bridges (almost 4 in 10) are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. The American Society of Civil Engineers recently down-graded North Carolina’s roads from D to D- and estimated that poor road conditions cost North Carolina motorists $1.7 billion annually in additional repairs and operating costs. At the same time, unemployment in the construction industry continues to remain above 13 percent.

Unlike in most states, a portion of North Carolina’s gas tax varies every six months in response to changes in the wholesale price of gasoline. This “variable portion” of the state’s gas tax is equal to 7 percent of the average wholesale price of gasoline, which is levied on top of a flat rate of 17.5 cents per gallon. The rationale for allowing part of the gas tax rate to rise and fall with the price of gas is that much of the cost of road maintenance and construction is linked to the cost of petroleum-based materials, especially asphalt.

For the six months ending January 1, 2012, the two parts of the state gas tax add 35 cents per gallon, placing North Carolina’s gas tax at ninth-highest in the nation. The primary reason for North Carolina’s relatively high gas taxes is not higher-than-average spending on public roads. Data from NC DOT indicate that the opposite is the case: North Carolina recently ranked 48th in the country in spending per lane-mile of paved road.

The reason North Carolina’s gas tax ranks high when spending is relatively low is that, more so than in almost any other state, road construction and maintenance is primarily a state — as opposed to a local — responsibility. On average, states own about one-fifth of all roads within their borders. In comparison, NC DOT owns and maintains more than three-quarters of the state’s roadways. Thus, while North Carolinians (and out-of-state motorists passing through the state) may pay higher-than-average state gas taxes, the higher gas taxes are more than offset by lower property taxes and vehicle sales taxes (i.e. “highway use taxes”).

There are, however, very good reasons to try to improve the gas tax in the near-term. First, the current formula allows for too much volatility in the gas tax rate. On January 1 of next year, the gas tax is set to rise by nearly 4 cents per gallon, representing an increase of about 11 percent over the current rate. Improving the stability of transportation revenues would greatly ease planning and make it easier to ensure that revenues are sufficient to meet planned expenditures.

Second, the gas tax is tied to the wrong measure. Instead of linking the gas tax rate, in part, to the average wholesale price of gasoline, the General Assembly could, for example, link the tax rate more directly to transportation construction costs through a formula based on the National Highway Construction Cost Index. Such a change would improve the stability of the gas tax rate while also better aligning the gas tax rate with actual costs faced by NC DOT.

In the long term, particularly as the shift toward more fuel-efficient and hybrid-electric vehicles accelerates, North Carolina will need to move away from relying on the gas tax as the primary means of financing transportation projects.

Instead of putting the state on a path to a sustainable, long-term solution to transportation financing, capping the gas tax would only worsen the large-and-growing gap North Carolina faces between the need for investments in transportation and the available funding to meet those needs.

Edwin McLenaghan is a Policy Analyst at the N.C. Budget and Tax Center

Blaming, maligning, and poking fun at the poor for political gain apparently is back in season. From candidates to commentators, a chorus of conservative voices blames the poor not only for their own dire straits, but also for the problems of the entire country.

Consider Herman Cain (who officially suspended his presidential campaign Saturday) recently said in the Wall Street Journal that, “If you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself!” Strange he would say that, since if his much-hyped 9-9-9 plan were enacted today, the poorest 60% of taxpayers would pay an extra $2,000 while the richest 1% would get a $210,000 break. Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has laughed on the campaign trail that he is “also unemployed.” Somehow, the nearly 20% of American workers who really are unemployed, and don’t have millions sitting in the bank, missed the joke.

And then there is conservative hothead Bill O’Reilly claiming to be shocked that the “so-called poor” have such extravagant luxuries as refrigerators and stoves in their homes. Such “luxuries” have been required by every municipal building code in the country for over two decades and are, along with indoor plumbing, quite literally considered to be the bare minimum for acceptable living conditions.

Aside from being heartless and crass, these statements show the lack of understanding many Americans have of what it means to be poor in our country today. Certainly many of the poor here fare better than in the Third World, but that doesn’t make their poverty any less real or any less devastating. In many ways, it makes their comparable condition that much worse.

The United States, like most countries, tracks and measures poverty for many reasons, including determining access to entitlement programs, and evaluating the effectiveness of programs and other measures designed to reduce it. Unlike other countries, however, the U.S. uses a “poverty line” measure, as opposed to a more comprehensive method of computing poverty. Only England and the U.S. use this poverty measure – every other developed country uses a “relative poverty” measure.

The current official poverty measure was developed in the early 1960s, and only a few minor changes have been implemented since then. This measure determines poverty status by relating family size and composition to pre-tax cash income and establishing different poverty thresholds accordingly. At the time they were developed, the official poverty thresholds represented the cost of a subsistence diet, multiplied by three to allow for expenditures on other goods and services.

The problem with this measure is that vastly underestimates what it means to be living in poverty, because the threshold or “line” is not tied to inflation, the cost of living, or any other index. So as expenses continue to rise, more folks are left further and further behind.

How far behind are people falling? By the outdated, woefully under-inclusive official poverty count, 2.6 million more Americans descended into poverty last year, the largest increase since the U.S. government began keeping statistics back in 1959. It isn’t just the ranks of the “very poor” that are rising. The number of those just considered to be “poor” is rapidly increasing as well. Back in 2000, 11.3% of Americans were living in poverty. Today, 15.2% of are living in poverty.

Concerns about the adequacy of the official measure have increased during the past decade and some changes have been made. The result was the Supple¬mental Poverty Measure (SPM) which the Census Bureau began using alongside the standard federal poverty measure last year.

So, how are Americans faring under this new poverty measure? Not much better. In fact, we’re doing worse.

Using the official poverty measure, 46.6 million people (15.2%) had incomes below the poverty line in 2010, but under the more accurate SMP, poverty is higher, at 49.1 million people (16.0%).

Regardless of how it’s calculated, poverty is very real to those living in it, and it’s growing. Those among us who ignore, dismiss or even find amusement in it, do so at our own peril. Many of us are only a paycheck or two away from financial ruin; whether we wash cars or sell stocks, and we probably have more in common with 16% of the population than we care to admit. However we measure it, we and our elected representatives need to talk more about it and do more about it. Anything less threatens us all. In this persistent economic downturn, the time is now.

Kevin Rogers is the Legislative Director for the nonprofit Action NC.