Why you should march in Raleigh on Saturday, February 11

It’s a debate that progressives like to have amongst themselves sometimes: Are things better today (in North Carolina or in the country at-large) than they were, say, 25 years ago?

The negatives are easy enough to identify: Persistent poverty and the exploding gap between rich and everyone else; our wounded and suffering natural environment; the explosive growth in commercialism and greed and the concomitant decline in our faith in all things public; and the unabashed corporate takeover of our elections system.

And yet, positives do abound: Our slow but steady progress in breaking down some of the walls of discrimination and exclusion – be they based on race, nationality, sex, sexual orientation or disability; hopeful signs that our ill-fated infatuation with prisons and executions and the “war on drugs” is finally abating; painstaking progress on healthcare; and, of course, the end of the war in Iraq.

At the heart of all progress

Whichever side you come down on in this debate, however, one thing is patently clear: None of the bad things will get better and none of the good things will continue to advance unless average people of all stripes – lots of them – get off their duffs and speak out loudly, clearly and frequently. This means talking openly and honestly with friends and family members, voting, supporting causes and candidates for office that reflect one’s values, writing letters to the editor, calling into radio talk shows, commenting on online news stories and blogs and, yes – at least occasionally – stepping outside with other likeminded people to march for justice.

This last activity, in particular, can be scary for some people. In today’s computerized and digitized world, many people find it difficult to abandon the safety, anonymity and convenience of communicating electronically. For those who take the leap and overcome their fears and inertia, however, the experience can often be enormously positive, eye-opening and empowering.

If you have any doubts about this last proposition, you owe it to yourself to come to downtown Raleigh next Saturday February 11 to participate in the sixth annual HK on J march and rally. There simply is no better or more important multi-issue, multi-racial, and multi-generational event of its kind in North Carolina. It’s a great opportunity to learn, to share, to meet people and to have an impact on the state policy debate. If you come, you will be better off for having done so.

Still not convinced?

Of course, for some people, the warm feelings that come from doing one’s duty and being a part of a large movement are not enough. These people sometimes need a little something extra to spur them to action. Frequently, that little something is anger – as in “That’s it! I’m not going to stand by and let these people get away with this stuff any longer!!”

For these people, we present the following list of reminders of what elected state leaders have been doing and saying over the past year:

Reminder #1 – Thom “Divide and Conquer” Tillis – The following is a direct quote from the Speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives. He said it out loud at a public meeting last fall.

“What we have to do is find a way to divide and conquer the people who are on assistance. We have to show respect for that woman who has cerebral palsy and had no choice in her condition that needs help and we should help. And we need to get those folks to look down at these people who choose to get into a condition that makes them dependent on the government.”

You can watch the video of this amazingly cynical and offensive moment by clicking here.

Reminder #2 – The “back to the 1970’s” state budget – Though the 2011 North Carolina legislative session was clearly the worst in decades on several fronts, the disastrous budget was the crowning “achievement.” At a moment in time in which circumstances and public opinion demanded cooperation to craft a budget that would preserve decades of painstaking progress in education, environmental protection, social services, criminal justice and dozens of other areas, legislative leaders opted instead for a radically reactionary slash and burn approach. As a result, state spending on essential public structures and systems (as a share of total state income) has fallen to the lowest level since the Nixon era. It was a fateful decision, the negative effects of which will be felt for years to come.

Reminder #3 – The marriage discrimination amendment and the people behind it – Think for a moment about the hate and cynicism that went into the decision to place Amendment One on the May ballot. At one point, one of the chief sponsors – the Number Three man in the state House of Representatives (a man who now wants to be Lt. Governor) – held a press conference in the General Assembly in which he invited speakers to the podium to opine that homosexuality violates “biological rules” ordained by the Almighty. We are not making this up. The amendment sent to the ballot would not just ban same sex marriage; it would ban the extension of benefits to same sex partners and even jeopardize domestic violence protections for people not living in traditional, heterosexual marriages.

Reminder #4 – The “midnight madness” legislative sessions – Where were you at 1:00 a.m. on Thursday January 5? How about at the same hour last June 15?  Hopefully, you were snug in your bed. Unfortunately, that’s not where the members of the General Assembly were. They were in session passing the aforementioned budget and settling a political score with the N.C. Association of Educators in votes highlighted by little-to-no notice and/or limited debate.  Mind you, this was the work of the same legislative leaders who came to power promising a new era “openness and transparency.”

Reminder # 5 – The effort to repeal the Racial Justice Act – Who would make the repeal of a law with such a name (a modest little law that merely attempts to assure that no one is executed in our state as a result of racial bias in his or her criminal trial) a top priority?  And who would attempt to justify such action by manufacturing the excuse that the law might “turn murderers loose” even though the law specifies that the only possible outcome for murderers found to have been discriminated against is life in prison without possibility of parole?

Reminder #6 – The survival of our natural environment – As part of his unending “official announcement” that he is running for Governor this week, the former mayor of Charlotte told at least one interviewer this week that his first major initiative upon taking office would be to pursue a “drill baby drill” approach to oil and gas exploration in our state. By this, he meant opening our precious and fragile outer banks to exploitation of the kind used in the Gulf of Mexico and promoting the potentially disastrous (and currently banned) practice of fracking.

Reminder #7 – The preceding reminders amount to just a small sampling of what has been taking place in our state over the past year. The list of regressive, greed-based and backwards-looking actions and proposals is very long and includes school vouchers, voter suppression, the assault on reproductive freedom, the expansion of concealed weapons and many, many others.

Going forward

Put simply, the time to stand up and be counted has arrived. Click here for more details on how you can be one of the “Historic Thousands on Jones Street” on February 11. See you next week.

The right’s misleading spin on public education

Sometimes you have to hand it to conservative North Carolina political leaders and their adjunct staffs in the right-wing propaganda shops for their truly shameless audacity. Who else could attempt to spin a shortsighted, ideologically-driven, widely unpopular and mean-spirited policy decision to intentionally fire thousands of educators at a time in which K-12 schools were already struggling mightily (a move, mind you, that was completely unnecessary absent the conservative decision to slash taxes in the midst of a budget crisis) as having “taken positive steps for education over the past year”?

Amazing as such a claim is those are the exact words of state House Speaker Thom Tillis this past weekend in a Charlotte Observer editorial.

Here is the relevant paragraph:

“The legislature has taken positive steps for education over the past year. Despite inheriting a $3 billion structural deficit from the governor’s last budget, we passed a balanced budget that actually resulted in an increase in the number of state-funded teaching positions. And we did it without raising taxes.”

But, of course, as is frequently the case, these days, Tillis’ spin was not really his own; it was just a repackaged version of talking points developed a few days earlier by Tillis’ pals at the J.W. Pope-Civitas Institute.

Here is the relevant excerpt from the Pope-Civitas article:

“Preliminary public school personnel data from the Department of Public Instruction shows that the number of state-supported public education personnel increased by 4,720 over the previous year.

The data stands in stark contrast to Gov. Beverly Perdue’s claims Republican state budget cuts have resulted in larger class sizes, and the loss of thousands of teacher and teacher assistant positions.”

Got that? The conservatives didn’t harm the public schools! Look: they increased the number of state-funded teachers!

Wow! Who knew? How in the heck did they pull off such a feat? And why are critics criticizing such heroic efforts?

Well, here’s how and why: The supposed “feat” is illusory – a creative bit of rhetorical hocus-pocus designed to confuse listeners who are not paying close attention.

Beyond the talking points

Look a little closer at the claim: “The conservative budget increased the number of state-funded teachers.”

While technically true – the conservative budget did shift some dollars from other underfunded state programs to this line item – it’s also true that the modest gains in state-funded teachers were more than offset by losses in federally-funded and locally-funded teachers – two cuts that conservatives led the charge to bring about. Indeed, many of the “local” cuts were really the result of “discretionary” cuts mandated by the legislature!

The end result is that, according to the most recent data,North Carolinahas almost 5,000 fewer K-12 personnel (teachers, principals, teacher assistants, etc…) this year than last. Had conservatives merely left taxes as they were – or even cut them less than they did – all of these cuts could have certainly been avoided.

By any rational measure, as a result of the conservative budget, things in North Carolina’s already badly-underfunded K-12 system are stretched thinner than they were last year. If you don’t think so, visit any public school system in the state – especially in one of our poorer, more rural areas and ask.

But what about the Governor?

Conservatives have claimed that Governor Perdue – who presided over previous education cuts during the first two years of her administration – is playing politics by criticizing them and proposing to restore some sales tax revenue that was lost of a result of the 2011 conservative tax cuts.

Here, however, is why this doesn’t hold water:

When Governor Perdue came into office in 2009, the national economy (and. thus, state revenues) were both in a 200 m.p.h. freefall – the worst since the Great Depression. Nonetheless, despite this dire and essentially unprecedented situation, Perdue and the Democratic General Assembly acted to: 1) renew temporary taxes that had been scheduled to expire and 2) draw down as much federal aid as possible.

The result was that damage was minimized. Rather than the truly draconian measures taken in other states like shortening the school year and closing vast numbers of schools,North Carolinamuddled along more or less intact. Cuts were painful – especially the first year – but not nearly as disastrous as they would have been if Perdue had heeded the conservative, HerbertHoover-like advice to do nothing.

Of course, many thoughtful people would have liked to have seen Perdue and the Democratically-controlled General Assembly do even more, but at least both did act. They took strong, intentional action to minimize harm.

Now, flash forward to 2011. With the economy finally beginning a gradual turnaround, revenues were still severely depressed but not falling like 2009. It was an obvious time to recover lost ground. Nonetheless, because of conservative obstructionism inWashington, any hope for additional federal stimulus assistance had been dashed. Thus, even with an end to the economic freefall, the need for state income was desperate if leaders were going to replace the expiring federal stimulus dollars.

So what did conservative legislative leaders do when confronted with this crisis? The answer, of course, is that they cut taxes and took state spending back to the levels of the early 1970’s.  At a point in time in which their services were more important than ever, thousands of education professionals (not to mention thousands of additional important public employees working in dozens of other critical areas) were let go – all so State residents could receive a tax cut that most of them have not noticed and thought was unnecessary (with the notable exception of the many wealthy individuals and corporations – whose accountants knew quite well what they were receiving).

Duplicity

So who’s “playing politics” in all of this? Obviously, at some level that’s what all politicians do. But here’s the top reason the various claims of conservatives ring especially hollow and duplicitous:

To the Tea Party base, Speaker Tillis and his allies brag about slashing government and their plans to privatize public education – i.e. what they’ve actually done or commenced.

In polite company, however, the Republicans’ tune changes. That’s when, realizing as they do that most voters don’t go along with their extreme, far right ideology, the spin and word parsing about increasing the number of “state funded” teachers begins. Sadly, this is a familiar pattern to anyone who’s watched the debate onJones Street over the last year.

In the end, it’s hard to know what’s worse:  the damage conservatives are inflicting on the state or their two-faced refusal to stand up and publicly admit what they’re really doing.

The Governor opts for common sense over political correctness

There have been plenty of times through the years in which progressives have had reason to question or find fault with Bev Perdue. Typically, this unease has been the result of the her penchant – either as a state legislator, Lt. Governor, or chief executive – for cozying up to good ol’ boy and girl business interests and keeping progressive causes at arm’s length. An open letter that appeared in this space at the start of her current term went on at some length on the subject.

Right now, however, is not one of those times.

As the Governor fast approaches the make or break months that will determine the future (and the length) of her governorship, Perdue has made a critical choice about who she is, what she stands for and how she will be remembered.

The choice, of course, was the one announced Tuesday about state tax policy. Here’s how she put it:

“Education has always been part of the fabric of who we are as a people in North Carolina and it’s the key to our future. We must stop the deep and unnecessary cuts that are going on in North Carolina’s schools. That’s why I’m for temporarily restoring three-quarters of the one-cent sales tax that the Republican-controlled General Assembly eliminated and for dedicating those funds to North Carolina schools.

I have cut spending to eliminate waste and make government more efficient. But we cannot allow the legislature’s extreme education cuts to continue. As the North Carolina Association of School Administrators pointed out, North Carolina has fallen to 49^th in the nation in per-pupil funding. The legislature’s budget has hurt education at all levels – from pre-k all the way through higher education – and has led to higher class sizes and the loss of thousands of teacher and teaching assistant positions. And their budget forces even more teacher layoffs next year — we must act to prevent these additional cuts.

Our children’s future is so important that today, I want to let you know that when I present my budget this spring, I will once again call on the Republican-controlled General Assembly to temporarily restore three-quarters of the one-cent sales tax as a vital step to funding our schools. Also, in the days ahead I will be speaking with you about other budgetary matters that affect North Carolina families.

Education is the key to our children’s future and to North Carolina’s economic future. Investing in education is central to our ability to attract new jobs and businesses to our state. We owe it to our children and our state to stop these cuts and make education a priority again – a fraction of a penny for progress.”

A courageous stand

Perdue’s statement was obviously not an easy one to make. Having lost a fight over the issue of taxes with the General Assembly last summer, it would have been easy for the Governor to simply drop the subject and move on — especially during an election year in which such a statement was sure to provoke every imaginable form of name-calling demagoguery and hyper-partisan punditry from her opponents.

Seriously, how many politicians in modern America have made an across-the-board bump in taxes – even one as modest of the Governor contemplates – a defining plank in his or her re-election campaign? The number has to me microscopic.

In other words, no savvy, experienced and moderate-to-conservative politician – a bill that Perdue clearly fills – is going to take such a stand casually. The only reason to do it is if things have simply gotten so bad in the public systems and structures over which one presides that no other choice exists.

That clearly is what has happened in this case. Nothing would have made a career elected official like Bev Perdue happier than if she had been able to stand up and announce that state revenues had fully rebounded on their own as a result of the slowly recovering national economy and that, therefore, no new revenues would be necessary in order for the state to meet its basic responsibilities in 2012-13.

Unfortunately, that little fantasy simply hasn’t come to fruition. The hard truth is that due to the lackluster federal stimulus efforts (which have been made markedly worse by conservative obstructionism) North Carolina’s economic progress is likely to be painfully gradual for the next few years.

Put simply, she faced a stark choice, give up and go along with the reactionary (but politically expedient) plans of the privatizers on Right-wing Avenue, thereby blessing the state’s plunge to 49^th in education spending or, get up, take a stand and say “hell no!”

It is to the Governor’s great and everlasting credit that, when confronted with this dilemma, she chose the latter option.

Not a perfect proposal

Though the Governor deserves great credit for her principled stand, neither her tactics nor the specifics of her proposal are perfect. As Chris Fitzsimon noted yesterday, there are things she could have done better. Relying on the sales tax alone is a longstanding mistake that Democrats have repeatedly made. The tax contributes to the state’s generally regressive tax system and is increasingly narrow and obsolete in our modern economy.

The Governor’s sales pitch was also imperfect. As Chris noted:

“You might expect Perdue to come forward with her plan to raise revenue for education after a highly visible, intentional and carefully planned campaign to draw more public attention to the damage the cuts have done to classrooms across the state.

Tuesday’s announcement did come after her appearance at a public school, but she could have spent several more days building up to it by highlighting the problems in great detail, featuring students, teachers, and families who are affected and reminding people that the Republican budget dropped North Carolina to 49th in the country in education funding.”

Still, for all of these flaws, you have to hand it to Perdue for standing up and being counted.

At a time in the world in which ultra-right corporate money has tilted the political landscape so far right that Ronald Reagan’s policies would be widely considered (and portrayed in the media) as “socialist,” any high official who willingly and proudly stands up the conservative political correctness police deserves to be roundly and heartily congratulated.

Thank you, Governor Perdue.

Legislative committees become platforms for far right ideologues

Most people are familiar with the fact that the North Carolina General Assembly has been returning to Raleigh for a seemingly endless series of “special sessions” to deal with the last minute whims of conservative legislative leaders. Fewer people, however, are aware that right-wing legislative wheels have continued to turn during the periods in which the lawmakers have been officially adjourned.

Lawmakers have, of course, always returned to Raleigh during legislative downtimes to convene study committees charged with digging into issues more thoroughly than time permits during the regular legislative sessions.

This year, however, the study committee process is notably different.

Rather than dealing mostly with sober and wonkish discussions of technical issues, conservative lawmakers have decided to turn several study committees into platforms from which ideologues employed by right-wing “think tanks” can promote extreme proposals for eviscerating government itself.

Last week, as we reported on The Progressive Pulse, leaders of the once staid and sober Revenue Laws Study Committee turned the panel into a virtual three-ring circus that featured a lengthy philosophical lecture from a Washington-based corporate lobbyist and a grandstanding and cynical interrogation of a state official. Justice Center Senior Counsel Harry Payne has more on the latter offensive sideshow in this opinion piece in today’s edition of Raleigh’s News & Observer.

A platform for the fringe   

Yesterday, conservative lawmakers took another foray out onto the fringe. The setting was a study group known as the House Select Committee on Public-Private Partnerships.

The concept of the “public-private partnership” or “P-3” as the speakers at yesterday’s meeting frequently referred to it, is not necessarily a problematic or controversial. In many ways, the P-3 is just another way of handling and modernizing that time-honored but often-flawed institution known as the government contract.

As the final speaker at yesterday’s event – a consultant from one of the giant law/lobbying/consulting firms that dominate the political scene in so many state capitals – made clear, the P-3 is frequently just a way for government to obtain efficient and cost-effective private sector assistance in constructing essential public infrastructure. By making private contractors “partners” and giving them a stake in the outcome of, say, the construction of a highway, the public can reap real benefits.

Unfortunately, mere efficiency and effectiveness in the development of public structures and systems weren’t all the first two speakers at yesterday’s meeting had principally in mind. Both of these men – the “Director of Government Reform” at the Koch-Brothers-funded Reason Foundation and the “Director of Fiscal Policy Studies” at the Locke Foundation – came not just to praise P-3’s, but to attempt to bury government.

In a series of moments that would have undoubtedly warmed the hearts of the Kochs, Art Pope and their other extremist patrons, both men trumpeted P-3’s as a means of privatizing core public structures and services. Whether they were championing private prisons, privately-owned highways or even museums, both sought to advance the notion that publicly-owned and controlled structures and services are inherently inefficient.

One of the most telling points of the meeting occurred when the Reason Foundation speaker touted the experiment being pursued by a wealthy Atlanta suburb that has essentially outsourced or privatized a huge proportion of what people have normally come to think of as core public services.

In the Reason/Locke/Koch/Pope vision of society, this is the Holy Grail: a world in which public structures and systems as we have come to know them would, literally, not exist. Instead, government would function as a skeleton operation in which a small handful of public employees would spend most of their time contracting with private corporations and/or selling off public assets.

According to the Locke staffer, North Carolina should sell off billions in public assets – everything from open land to parking facilities to prisons to the state aquariums so that they can be transformed into profit-making entities. “Beneficiaries of waste,” he said, are the only opponents of such an approach.

Meanwhile, back in the real world…

The only problem with this vision, of course, is that it is an absurd fantasy on several levels. As humans have learned through centuries of trial and error (from the feudal era and before right up to the modern day criminal syndicalism of post-Soviet Russia), a world in which core public structures and services are privatized and controlled by a handful of wealthy oligarchs (or corporations) is no model for a just and healthy society.

It is instead a way to assure that democratic controls will be minimal and that opportunity will be controlled and meted out by the rich and powerful. It is, in short, a gussied up version of the plantation model of society – something that, given the obsession of so many on the right wing with telling and retelling the stories of old white men in wigs and knickers, may not be so surprising.

Perhaps even more importantly, it is a cynical model in which everything is commoditized; a vision of society in which wealth and profit and personal aggrandizement are the sole objectives and in which things like the common good, shared sacrifice and the simple and wholesome psychological benefits of public spaces and institutions that belong to everyone and to no one are casually tossed aside. It is, as is always the case with modern far right, a world in which “the market” is treated as a deity to be worshiped rather than as what it is: a powerful tool created by and for humans.

Going forward

There weren’t a whole of questions or statements from the members of the study committee at yesterday’s meeting. One that stood out, however, was from a conservative Democratic Representative named Bill Owens.

Owens is a member of the small group of conservative Democrats who, to the great frustration of progressives, voted with the GOP to pass this year’s disastrous state budget. He is no liberal. But Owens also voiced skepticism at some of the testimony and confronted the Locke Foundation staffer on his rosy description of prison privatization. Owens explained that North Carolina had already tried this route in recent decades and found it wanting. Owens said that while P-3’s might be helpful in prison construction, turning the essential public function of running prisons into a profit-making enterprise was not the direction our state needs to head.

In the months and years ahead, let’s hope Owens’ skeptical sentiment holds sway amongst lawmakers of all stripes – both when it comes to the use of P-3’s and during the inevitable attempts by the far right to use them as a means of pushing their ultimate goal: selling off our government.

From the looks of things, if the people running the General Assembly get their way, this is a battle that we we’ll have to fight sooner rather than later.

“Truth and Hope Tour” will expose the face of Tar Heel poverty

According to the folks on Right-wing Avenue, there really aren’t many (if any) poor people in North Carolina. You know this rap – it’s the one in which comfortable pontificators in Washington and Raleigh confidently inform us that a family can’t be “poor” if its members have access to luxuries like a bathroom, an oven and a telephone.

Of course, anyone with a pair of eyes and a modicum of common sense knows this is baloney. Laying aside the fact that there are obviously thousands upon thousands of homeless men, women and children who lack even these lavish extravagances, the hard and undeniable truth is that there are hundreds of thousands of people in this state who have a place to get in out of the cold but who still subsist on incomes that are well-below below the pathetically inadequate marker known as the “federal poverty line” (around $22,000 per year for a family of four). A large percentage of these people are children. Many others are working adults.

Think about that number for a minute. Imagine trying to put together a budget in which four people survive on the munificent sum of $424 per week. Mind you, that is an amount at which the federal government says they would not be “poor.”

Now, think about the following, courtesy of the researchers at the N.C. Budget and Tax Center:

• Nearly 1 in 5 North Carolinians lived in poverty in 2010. That is roughly the same percent of the state’s population that was struggling with economic hardship in 1969.
• Approximately 1 in 4 African-Americans and 1 in 3 Latinos lived in poverty.
• Job loss, high unemployment and low earnings combined with underinvestment in the institutions that support opportunity are driving economic hardship in communities across the state. African-Americans, for example, in 2010 had a joblessness rate of 17.4 percent – nearly 7 percentage points above the state average of 10.5 percent for that year.
• High and persistent poverty impacts families and their communities. For children especially, growing up in poverty has lifetime consequences. In North Carolina, 40.2 percent of African American children and 42.6 percent of Latino children lived in poverty.
• Educational achievement suffers in these conditions of economic hardship and underinvestment. For every 5 students in North Carolina who enter high school, four years later only 4 of them graduated. For Latinos the graduation rate after four years is 68.8 percent and for African-American students the graduation rate is 71.5 percent.
• Poverty impacts not only quality of life but also longevity. The average African-American in North Carolina lives 6.5 fewer years than the average white North Carolinian.

The need for myth-busting

Ah, but what about all those amazing freebies that the poor receive? You know: all that fabulous “welfare” swag – things like food stamps and housing and health care subsidies. That’s takes big bite out of the number, right?

Well, actually no, it doesn’t. Sure, public safety net programs are important and do make a crtical difference. But they do not for the most part lift people out of poverty – especially given the inadequacy of the official poverty level itself. A mound of recent Census Bureau analysis confirms this.

No, the cold, hard truth is that no matter how one manipulates the numbers, the ranks of poor people have been swelling dramatically in recent years as a result of the Great Recession.

Of course, some people will never be convinced by the data. Like the bloviating denizens of right-wing radio, the conservative ivory towers and North Carolina’s Republican political leadership, they’ll dredge up anecdotes about low income individuals who have made poor choices with respect to their education or their jobs or their personal relationships (as if people of means never followed such paths). Then they’ll claim that most low income people are secretly raking in all kinds of under-the-table income that isn’t reflected in the statistics (though they never really explain where it comes from) or dishonestly signing their children up for exciting perks like reduced price school lunches.

These myths can, of course, be readily dispelled in most communities by a simple trip to a struggling neighborhood, social service office, women’s shelter or urban house of worship. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons (fear, sloth, the presence of ideological blinders) most people will not make these trips.

The Truth and Hope Tour

This week in a sincere effort to respond to the stubborn and widespread unwillingness in our society to confront and see the poverty all around us, advocates at the state NAACP, the UNC Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity and the N.C. Justice Center announced a new effort to shine a bright light on the issue. They’re calling it the “Truth and Hope Tour of Poverty in North Carolina.”

Here’s how the Rev. William Barber of the NAACP described the objective of the effort (which will begin this week with series of “listening sessions” in poor communities of the state’s impoverished northeast, followed by a bus tour of some of the same areas later in the month):

“We want to shine the light of truth on the conditions of poverty and despair in North Carolina. We have faith there are leaders in our government, our media, our churches, and our schools who believe in the North Carolina Constitution’s clear mandate that our ‘Government is instituted solely for the good of the whole.’ When our leaders act on that belief, a tidal wave of hope can come right behind the tornadoes of economic despair, creating a powerful new wave of economic and spiritual investment in Eastern North Carolina.”

Professor Gene Nichol, head of the UNC Poverty Center, put it this way:

“The scourge of poverty in North Carolina is both our largest policy challenge and our greatest sin against constitutional principle. We seek to shine a light through this tour on the huge gap between our words and our deeds.”

In short, Barber, Nichol and their allies have decided to call the bluff of right-wing ideologues; to confront the widespread myth making and denial that afflicts our public debate by forcing North Carolinians to look at and see the reality that surrounds them.

Forty-plus years ago, Senator Robert Kennedy drew a great deal of public attention and promoted several important policy changes by dragging a segment of the news  media of his time on a tour of rural poverty in America. It’s clear that modern North Carolina advocates aspire to pull off a similar feat.

It is a welcome and sadly necessary development.

The list of “gifts” bestowed by the 2011 General Assembly is long, sobering and, hopefully, energizing

My colleague Chris Fitzsimon and I have been on the road quite a bit of late, speaking to audiences around the state about North Carolina policy and politics and, in particular, the “gifts” left under the tree by the 2011 General Assembly. The audiences have been groups of thoughtful and engaged citizens: people who care about their state and who generally do their best to keep up with the news.

But if there was a reaction that was most prevalent among the people we’ve spoken to in recent weeks it would have to be this: shock.

Our audiences knew things were not healthy in Raleigh and that conservative ideologues had seized control and were aggressively pursuing their agenda. But, there’s something about being confronted with a concrete list of “gifts” given to the state in 2011 that frequently overwhelms people. Folks simply hadn’t imagined that things were this bad; that so many elected officials would be willing, indeed anxious, to take the state backwards so far and so fast in so many different areas.

At the end of the meetings, Chris and I almost felt a need to be apologetic for having been the bearers of such disturbing news. Many audience members were extremely distraught. Some, at least initially, even expressed a sense of hopelessness for the future.

And then the anger started to set in.

This was the point at which the feelings of shock and despondency and hopelessness subsided (or at least retreated) and the feeling of resolve (as in “Doggone it, we are not going to stand by and let these turkeys ruin our state!”) started to percolate to the surface; the point at which people started to remember that there’s more to being a citizen-activist than simply writing occasional letters to one’s senators and representative.

This – the point at which people realized that things are not going to change for the better without caring and thoughtful North Carolinians raising a lot of real and sustained heck – was, of course, the best part of the meetings for us. It was the moment at which it was confirmed once more that there’s no better antidote for lousy public policy than an informed and energized citizenry.

Here, therefore, in the interest of advancing that cause on an even broader scale, is a quick review of some of the worst gifts bestowed upon the people of North Carolina by the 2011 General Assembly. May the line at the political “return desk” be a long, growing and increasing surly one in 2012.

The marriage discrimination amendment – Legislators convened a special session this fall to write hate and discrimination into the state constitution with perhaps the most extreme proposal of its kind in the country.

Attempting to repeal the Racial Justice Act – As with the marriage discrimination amendment, lawmakers took the extraordinary step of convening a special session (this one just after Thanksgiving) to repeal the Racial Justice Act – a law that attempts to guarantee a higher level of fairness in the state’s flawed death penalty. The question at this point is whether Governor Perdue’s veto will stand.

Environmental havoc – Lawmakers passed a raft of bills at the request of polluters and other corporate special interests that eviscerated environmental rules and regulatory authority and slashed the resources and mandate of the public employees charged with performing this critical work.

Skewering consumers – It’s hard to imagine what goes through the mind of a lawmaker who is willing to thumb his or her nose at dozens of consumer groups and the U.S military by voting to raise rates on consumer loans marketed by giant, multi-national corporations to as high as 90%, but conservative House members did just that. The bill awaits action in the Senate in 2012.

Privatizing and weakening our public schools – Public schools – now derisively referred to as “government schools” by right-wing lawmakers – were a chief target of the legislature. Funding was slashed and thousands of educators were let go at the same time that public support to privately-controlled charter schools was greatly increased. .

Further demonizing immigrants – Lawmakers passed a new requirement on employers to use the federal Government’s troubled and frequently inaccurate “E-Verify” system and launched a new study group with grand ambitions to mimic the hate-inspired laws in Arizona and Alabama.

Expanding the spread and use of guns – Conservatives pushed through a bill that includes 12 pages worth of new changes to liberalize state firearm laws. Among the most notable provisions: changes to state law that would encourage home and vehicle owners to shoot those who they believe to be intruders and an expansion of the places to which gun owners with “concealed carry” permits may take firearms – including public parks.

Assaulting higher education – Not only did legislators impose enormous cuts on the UNC and community college systems, they took the extraordinarily mean-spirited step of passing multiple bills designed to reduce student access to low cost federal loans.

Punishing workers – During the spring, conservative legislators concocted a month-and-half long crisis in which deserving unemployed workers were denied essential benefits for weeks in order to abet the Republicans’ budget negotiating strategy. Since then, the same lawmakers have been doing everything in their power to limit access to unemployment insurance benefits and to weaken the state agency charged with administering them.

Attacking the privacy rights and reproductive freedom of women – This area was “highlighted” by the offensively mislabeled “Woman’s Right to Know Act” that promotes government interference in the doctor-patient relationship of adult women accessing constitutionally protected health care. A court has already enjoined one part of the new law as well as the establishment of the ridiculous “choose life” license plates.

Suppressing voter participation –In keeping with national conservative strategy to suppress voter turnout in 2012, the so-called “voter ID bill” would require all North Carolina voters to show a piece of government-issued photo identification every time they vote. The bill is a huge waste of money and is, if Governor Perdue’s veto is overridden, sure to suppress voter turnout – especially amongst poor, elderly and minority voters. Another pending proposal would, among other things, repeal same-day voter registration, ban straight-ticket voting, shorten the early-voting period by a week, ban early voting on Sundays, repeal publicly-financed elections for three statewide offices, and create a new type of account for political parties to accept corporate money.

Making a mockery of the legislative process – Despite promises of openness, GOP leaders took secrecy and surprise to new heights with an ongoing series of “special” legislative sessions in which not even rank and file lawmakers were privy to the agendas.

Ruinous tax giveaways – Though marketed as being about “right-sizing” government, the decisions to let temporary taxes expire before the economy had fully rebounded (and to give large new gifts to out-of-state corporations) took overall public investments back to the Nixon years and will set many essential public services back just as far.

Passing the worst budget in decades – This was, of course, the seminal “achievement” of the 2011 legislative session. At a moment in time in which circumstances and public opinion demanded cooperation to craft a budget that would preserve decades of painstaking progress in education, environmental protection, social services, criminal justice and dozens of other areas, legislative leaders opted instead for a radically reactionary slash and burn approach. Cuts to Medicaid will take more than $2 billion out of the state’s economy during the 2012 and 2013 fiscal years. It was a fateful decision, the negative effects of which will be felt years from now.

Let’s hope the architects of this destructive agenda feel the political feedback sooner than that.

Insurance benefits to help the unemployed are under assault again

A year or so back, The New Yorker magazine featured a fabulous cartoon in which a homeowner whose house was ablaze declined the help of firefighters by explaining that, as a libertarian, he did not believe in the kind of public service they were offering.

Most of us are lucky enough never to have to call on the Fire Department to come and extinguish a blaze in our home, but we all “get” the message conveyed by the cartoonist: All sane people are happy to know that firefighters are there if they’re needed and happy to pay the taxes that support them.

This is the essence of a successful social insurance program: Everyone in society chips in a little bit so that everyone will be protected if and when they find themselves in harm’s way. Call the fire department at 2:00 a.m. and firefighters will come – regardless of the size or severity of the fire. And just as importantly, it’s a full service deal; firefighters don’t leave after having doused the fire in only part of the house.

The unemployment fire – still burning

The firefighter analogy is clearly apt in the current debate over unemployment insurance. A couple of years back, jobless Americans across the country found themselves facing an emergency as the Great Recession raged all around them, consuming available jobs. Fortunately, unemployment insurance kicked in for millions of them and helped keep the disaster in check. Millions of families kept their homes, food on the table and the opportunity to get their lives back on track. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of local businesses dependent upon consumer spending stayed afloat as a result of the money those families spent on the necessities of life. In effect, a massive fire was contained and prevented from raging completely out of control.

Today, as the end of 2011 approaches, we are finally seeing some indications that the fire is retreating. Though still at absurd levels, unemployment seems, finally, to be subsiding somewhat. Housing prices may have reached their nadir. Corporate health seems to be rebounding. In short, though things are still very volatile and fragile, there is reason to believe that we are turning an economic corner. But, of course, as doing little more than opening the paper or turning on the news will quickly remind us, times remain extremely tough.

So, what would congressional conservatives propose we do in response? Why, cut off unemployment benefits, of course.

Like an officious bureaucrat who decides to call off a firefighter crew that’s only three-fourths of the way through extinguishing a house fire, conservatives have decided to let the fire burn itself out and trust that it will not reignite or spread; They are opposing President Obama’s effort to extend emergency unemployment benefits to Americans still struggling with ongoing effects of the Great Recession.

The need for more water

As several economists and policy analysts have noted, this approach is a recipe for disaster. The experts at the National Employment Law Project put it this way in a recent report:

“Federally?funded unemployment insurance has provided a lifeline during this record period of high unemployment, both to the nation’s hardest hit workers and to the strugglingU.S.economy. In the past three years, more than 17 million unemployed Americans have applied for and received federally?funded unemployment benefits, contributing nearly $180 billion in hard cash to those communities struggling with severe unemployment….

Unless Congress acts by the end of December, nearly two million unemployed Americans will see their unemployment insurance benefits cut off in just one month after the program expires. Millions more will run out of state benefits without a federal back?up plan—breaking a compact with states and workers that has been in place for every economic downturn over the past 50 years. For the long?term unemployed, there has been no recovery, but federal unemployment benefits have made survival possible.”

As the table on the final page of the report shows, in North Carolina, nearly 70,000 families would lose their benefits as a very unhappy New Year’s gift.

But even laying aside the matter of the direct human carnage that would result from expiration of benefits, there are several hard-headed reasons to support extension.

Analyst Mike Konczai of the Roosevelt Institute lists eight in this well-sourced post that’s chock full of links and charts at New Deal 2.0. Here are some key excerpts:

“Even considering the cost, unemployment benefits are a [great] deal. Extending unemployment benefits would cost around $44 billion for one year. (Source: CBO.)…That extension would allow people who exhaust their regular unemployment compensation during calendar year 2012 to receive up to 53 weeks of EUC, and would make it easier for states to provide up to an additional 20 weeks of benefits under EB (depending on the states’ laws and unemployment rates).” Given that interest rates are so low, and real interest rates are even negative, this is a great value.

Without an extension, GDP will decline. The loss of not having that $44 billion pumped into the economy would cause at least a 0.3 percent decline in GDP in 2012.

Given spending multipliers, this will have a ripple effect. Because of a government spending multiplier, that 0.3 percent decline is more like 0.5 percent, with a subsequent, significant impact on jobs. Since we are in a liquidity trap, where monetary policy is made significantly more difficult by a zero lower bound, then there’s a multiplier to government spending. Unemployment benefits in particular have a good bang-for-the-buck effect.

This is about more than just GDP; it’s about keeping people afloat. The stakes go beyond economic aggregates. Unemployment insurance has kept 3.2 million people out of poverty in 2010. This includes nearly a million children. That’s a lot of jobs gained and a lot of misery avoided, with or without a multiplier!

The potential increase in unemployment from extending benefits is small. Previous credible estimates of the effects of unemployment insurance in this recession have shown that they ‘increased the overall unemployment rate 0.4 to 0.8 percentage points,’ a point where it is still a great tradeoff.”

In other words…

The unemployment fire is still burning very hot in a number of places in the United States and North Carolina is one of them. Now that we’re finally starting to establish a perimeter around the blaze, the last thing that’s needed is to shut down one of our key firefighting tools. Even libertarians ought to understand that we’re better off battling this together rather than leaving every fire victim to fend for him or herself.

Whichever one you use, it’s about exclusion and discrimination

One of the big challenges for caring and thoughtful North Carolinians in light of the General Assembly’s decision to place a constitutional amendment on next May’s primary ballot that purports to “define marriage” is: What in the heck should the proposal be called?

Especially in light of the powerful messages that can be conveyed in just a few words, “naming rights” are likely to be extremely important in shaping the amendment’s reception by voters. How can one convey the extent of the havoc the amendment would wreak in a pithy phrase or moniker? Should advocates get specific or keep it generic?

With any luck, a name will emerge in the coming days that is accurate (and maybe even effective in informing the public). For now, however, it might prove useful to examine some of the promising options as well as one name that ought to be rejected at all costs.

Don’t call it…

The marriage amendment – This is an easy one to slip into (we’ve been guilty here at NC Policy Watch), but it definitely falls short – both in terms of accuracy and effectiveness. First of all, the proposed amendment does much, much more than impact marriage. As constitutional scholar, Professor Maxine Eichner of the UNC School of Law informed the audience at yesterday’s NC Policy Watch Crucial Conversation luncheon, the proposed amendment would be one of the most far reaching in the nation.

By saying that a heterosexual marriage is the “only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State,” the proposal goes well beyond marriage and would create all sorts of problems in other areas – many of which seem likely to trouble even the opponents of same-sex “marriage.”

As Professor Eichner noted, the amendment could jeopardize current state domestic violence protections for unmarried couples and child custody rights of domestic partners (even if they are heterosexual). The amendment would also pretty clearly prevent the state from adopting other protections for unmarried couples in the future that fall well short of marriage, including: the right to family hospital visitation privileges, the right to make medical decisions if a partner is incapacitated, the right for domestic partners to make funeral and burial arrangements for one another, the right to inherit when a partner dies without a will, and the right to be named guardian or conservator if one partner becomes incapacitated.

In addition to being woefully inaccurate, the name “marriage amendment” is also bad politics. It gives people the impression that they’re voting “for” or “against” marriage, when in fact, a “for” vote acts to limit marriage and assure that millions of North Carolinians now and in the future will have no hope of ever enjoying even a civil union or any other watered down version of marriage rights.

Names that would be accurate

The marriage discrimination amendment – This one’s pretty obvious. By permanently limiting the definition of marriage in North Carolina, the amendment singles out a segment of the population and etches in stone its second-class status.

As Evan Wolfson, President and Founder of the national advocacy group Freedom to Marry said in his remarkably eloquent speech this week at the same Crucial Conversation event (please click here to watch the entire 20 minutes):

“These people here in North Carolina, these committed and loving gay couples who are building a life here, who are contributing to the community, will be massively, severely, punitively and cruelly harmed by the passage of this amendment. This amendment would deny them for all time the freedom to marry here in the state they call home. It would also deny them any other measure of protection, large or small, that the state can provide to families – particularly in tough economic times like these.

This amendment would tie the hands of this generation, the next generation of North Carolinians, their elected representatives, their universities, their businesses and others who seek to provide, through small programs and large, ways in which families can organize themselves, can support themselves, can arrange their economic affairs, can be entwined and involved in the community. This amendment would preclude marriage and all other family protections, large and small, for a group of North Carolina families. And so, first and foremost, this amendment is about those families and the direct injury that would be wreaked by the state on some of our own through the weaponry of the law.”

The anti-marriage amendment – In a strange bit of twisted logic, proponents of the amendment attempt to argue that forever limiting marriage to different sex couples is necessary in order to “protect” marriage from becoming “devalued” and to prevent those couples from becoming less interested in staying in marriages. But as Professor Holning Lau told and showed the Crucial Conversation audience, in addition to being illogical, this argument flies in the face of the facts.

Lau looked at the experience in three states (Washington, Connecticut and Massachusetts) that permit same sex marriage or civil unions and found that the overall marriage rate has either stayed flat or increased. Meanwhile, the divorce rate in these states has either declined or stayed flat. Conversely, in Georgia, South Carolina and Virginia (states with amendments) marriage and divorce rates have experienced negative trends since passage.

The anti-family amendment – Proponents also attempt to argue that heterosexual marriage is necessary for optimal child rearing results. But, again, as Lau also noted, data indicate otherwise. Lau cited research in dozens of peer-reviewed scientific studies that document no disadvantage for children raised in same sex couples in such areas as mental health, social adjustment, school performance, and behavioral problems.

The anti-economic competitiveness amendment – Lau also provided compelling evidence to support the common sense conclusion that adoption of a constitutional amendment would send precisely the wrong message to the creative classes (i.e. the smart and innovative people who create jobs and economic growth in the 21^st Century) at a time in the world in which their presence is desperately needed. That some North Carolinians would want to exclude such people and dissuade them from staying and/or relocating to their state in these economic hard times is beyond amazing.

There are, of course, other names that would be accurate and convey the right message. As noted above, these might include: The anti-civil unions amendment, the domestic violence protection limitation amendment, the limits on hospital visitations amendment, the state control over who you can designate end-of-life decision to amendment, or maybe even the anti-inheritance freedom amendment. Evan Wolfson thinks anti-gay amendment puts things succinctly and accurately.

Reading the political tea leaves

No one knows at this point, of course, which name will end up as the name that the media and the public will latch onto in the weeks and months ahead. Given the general resistance to using “loaded” language in the mainstream news media, it may well be that opponents would simply do well to focus on the use of more generic terms like the marriage limitation amendment or amendment one.

Whichever label ends up rising to the top, however, let’s hope all North Carolinians concerned about promoting freedom and equality and saying “no” to exclusion and discrimination get right to work helping their fellow citizens understand the truth that lies behind it.

She should work with advocates for persons with disabilities; not fight them

As was discussed at length in this space in 2010 and again this past summer, North Carolina has reached an important moment in the decades-old battle to end the warehousing of people with mental illness and other mental disabilities.

Here is a brief refresher on the problem as it stands:

Federal law has long commanded states to deinstitutionalize persons with mental illness; it’s illegal to use federal money to gather up such individuals and lock them away in big hospitals as was the favored practice during the last century. According to the law, persons with mental illness must be provided with services that allow them to live as normal lives as possible in community-based settings.

Not surprisingly, pulling off such a feat is challenging. Mental illness is complicated and every individual and family is different. Resources and housing are scarce– especially in this era of shrinking public budgets.

Unfortunately, rather than tackling the problem head-on in a systematic fashion, the state of North Carolina has generally looked for quick fixes. For some time, the state has housed as many as 8,000 individuals in “adult care homes” or “rest homes.” This industry originally arose to provide a basic place to live for elderly adults of modest income. The facilities are typically of moderate size and located in rural, out-of-the-way places in which land costs are lower. Though the facilities don’t provide much in the way of services, they do give people a place in out of the rain and food to eat. They’re also generally good at getting people to take their medications regularly.

While these facilities can be somewhat less institutional than giant, centralized state hospitals, they clearly fall way short of what federal law requires. By any honest assessment, they are little more than warehouses in which people are “dealt with” – i.e. kept out of sight and mind as virtual inmates.

Where things stand

Thanks to the emergence of a tough and independent advocacy group known as Disability Rights NC and the welcome assistance of the federal government, it’s increasingly clear that North Carolina will simply no longer be permitted to get away with this practice.

In recent months, as a result of a DRNC complaint, federal officials have informed the state that it must, once and for all, move decisively to create a new and positive direction in its treatment of these vulnerable populations. This is from a WRAL.com story in late July:

“Adult care homes are institutional settings that segregate residents from the community and impede residents’ interactions with people who do not have disabilities,” Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez says the letter, dated July 28 and sent to Attorney General Roy Cooper.

Keeping the mentally ill in adult care homes violates the Americans with Disabilities Act, Perez said. The state not only places the mentally ill in such homes, but encourages them financially to stay there instead of going to communities by providing about $550 to those who live in adult care centers, the letter said

As the close of 2011 draws near, the state of North Carolina is faced with simple and straightforward choice: fight the federal government and disability rights advocates in court in an ill-conceived and almost assuredly doomed effort to preserve the flawed status quo OR work with the same parties to move aggressively to create a new and better system of housing and services.

According to reports percolating through state government, Governor Perdue is currently mulling this very question – should she fight or work things out? A decision could come this week.

“Settlement” does not mean “surrender”

Let’s hope fervently that the Governor opts to work with advocates rather than fight them. Making such a choice does not mean that she would be committing the state to some kind of mysterious and ruinously expensive bureaucratic program. To the contrary, there are plenty of examples of how to provide lawful and appropriate housing to the people in question and ample evidence that such a move could save the state money in the long run.

As we noted this past summer:

“Other states (Delaware for example) have entered into step-by-step, court-supervised plans of action to transition away from the practice of warehousing people unlawfully.

Though certainly formidable in its size and scope, North Carolina’s problem is subject to similar treatment. Think about it: If there are roughly 8,000 individuals in need of improved services, that’s less than one for every 1,000 North Carolinians. Times are tight, but North Carolina can clearly do what’s necessary to help 8,000 people.

With a concrete plan and determined action, the state is certainly capable of whittling away at this number – maybe not tomorrow, but certainly within 12 to 24 months. It’s mostly a matter of putting some people in charge of the process and giving them a mandate, the staff and funding to get the job done.

And certainly, no one has to be discharged to ‘the street.’

Some people could graduate to smaller, community-based group homes. With the right subsidies and services, (lots of which already exist) many could actually live independently. The key is to develop a mechanism for assuring the individualized care that people require.”

It should be noted further that North Carolina already has mechanisms at its disposal for subsidizing rents in (and even constructing) affordable, community-based homes for people with special needs. The North Carolina Housing Finance Agency, for instance, has a record of great success in this area. There are other such programs and models. It’s just a matter of getting pointed in the right direction and shoving off

Put simply, it boils down to this: Governor Perdue is approaching another important crossroads moment in the history of her administration. With this single decision she can: a) improve the lives of thousands of people by sounding the death knell for decades of failed policy and further establish herself as an innovative and forward-looking political leader or, b) stick her head in the sand and drag out an unnecessary court battle that will put the state of North Carolina at odds with the Obama Administration and on the wrong side of history.

The choice ought to be obvious.

Experience elsewhere indicates that fracking should be kept out of North Carolina

We all know that when humans are desperate, they frequently do a lot of dumb things that they later regret.

Just ask the millions of Americans who’ve been taken to the cleaners by predatory payday lenders. Most of these borrowers knew that they were headed down the wrong path and that a 400% loan would almost certainly make their situation worse.

Still, when a friendly person in a nice suit is massaging your ego and giving you the hard sell about a quick fix for the problems you confront, it can be tough to say “no” – to be disciplined and accept the hard truth that there is probably no near-term, magic solution.

To frack or not to frack?

In many ways, it is precisely the same kind of conundrum that confronts North Carolina on the issue of “fracking” – a controversial and frequently destructive process used by energy companies to extract natural gas from underground rock formations.

Most people paying any attention to the debates over America’s problems with energy and the environmental impacts of extracting and burning fossil fuels “get” the fact that there are no magic solutions to what ails us. As with low income borrowers who find themselves tempted to take out just one more high interest loan, they understand on some level that the real solution lies elsewhere.

Still, when friendly, clean-cut energy industry salesmen weave their tales of “clean” fuels and patriotism (as in the idea that developing domestic natural gas will bring our troops home from overseas), it can be hard to say “no.”

Those looking for confirmation of this reality need look no further than the rolling farmlands of rural Pennsylvania. There, one can find hundreds of farmers and landowners who have made deals to lease their land to energy companies so that it can be “fracked.”

As a pair of those farmers named Carol French and Carolyn Knapp told an audience of 75 at an NC Policy Watch Crucial Conversation last week, however, such deals are frequently a mixed blessing (at best) for the landowner and the communities in which they reside. While some individuals and communities do reap economic benefits, the costs are often extremely high. Indeed, for many, the decision to say “yes” to fracking has been as disastrous as a predatory, 400% payday loan. Rather than providing a solution to the landowner’s needs, the agreement to allow fracking has been a gateway to a ruinous series of events with lasting, destructive impacts.

The sobering details

So what is fracking and what are the problems it gives rise to? Put in very simplistic terms, it boils down to this: There is a lot of natural gas underground that cannot be tapped via a simple vertical well. It’s trapped in rock deposits. So, in order to free it, energy companies drill both vertically and horizontally and then pump vast quantities of a water/chemical mixture underground to free it up and, in effect, flush it out.

Though often very effective in retrieving natural gas, the side effects of fracking can, not surprisingly, be quite significant. Here are some of the problems identified by Knapp, French and others:

• Ground water pollution – Sometimes, the water and chemicals pumped underground leach into adjacent ground water used for human and/or animal consumption. In some places, natural gas itself has found its way into ground water. Negative health effects in some areas have been significant.
• Fresh water depletion – In addition to polluting ground water sources, the fracking process itself requires huge amounts of water just to get started. This can add a real strain to public water systems – especially in drought-prone areas.
• On the ground pollution – The water-chemical mix is usually kept in large, above-ground ponds until it is pumped underground. In Pennsylvania, flooding rains have been known to bring about pond overflows (much like hog lagoon spills here) that, in turn ruin adjacent lands. Lands have also been polluted when the debris from well-drilling process is simply spread out on adjacent fields.
• Noise pollution – Knapp and French explained that the fracking process itself is often an amazingly noisy process that has been known to rattle china off of shelves in nearby buildings, distract farm animals and just generally degrade the quality of life in rural communities.
• Infrastructure pollution – Large scale fracking operations in Pennsylvania have resulted in huge influxes of traffic – often comprised of 18-wheeler trucks running 24 hours-a-day – that have clogged and degraded rural roads to the breaking point. Fracking also requires a significant amount of tree clear-cutting for the location of the operations themselves and the construction of pipelines to carry the gas that’s “harvested.”
• Economic troubles – While fracking has clearly brought in a lot of money to some lucky landowners, experience in Pennsylvania and other places indicates that most have only reaped very modest – if sometimes nonexistent – rewards. This is especially true if landowners do not have access to skilled legal representation when leases are negotiated. Add to this the destructive impact that fracking operations have often brought to rural communities in the form of soaring rents, higher demands for social services and the fact that most of the jobs go to temporary outsiders, and the appeal of fracking grows even weaker.
• Greenhouse gases – Though promoted by many as a “cleaner” fossil fuel, new studies indicate that natural gas may not be much better for the environment than other CO2 producers.
• Other risks include wastewater disposal problems, problems associated with the large amounts of sand used in fracking and even small earthquakes.

The situation in North Carolina

Currently, fracking is illegal in North Carolina and, as Grady McCallie of the North Carolina Conservation Network explained at last week’s event, probably not yet economically viable. Though the state appears to have not insignificant reserves – particularly in a relatively narrow corridor that runs north to south from Granville County through Durham, western Wake, Lee, Moore, Montgomery, Richmond and Anson Counties – North Carolina is almost certainly way down the list of most “frackable” regions in the U.S. Even if lawmakers were to remove the state’s current ban, energy companies seem unlikely to make any major push until gas prices rise substantially above current levels.

Unfortunately, despite the many serious issues with fracking and the questionable economics, many conservative lawmakers (including House Speaker Thom Tillis) appear bent on kowtowing to the “drill baby drill” wing of the far right by removing any legal barriers as quickly as possible. Add to this the fact that many energy companies have already signed a number of North Carolina landowners to lease agreements and there’s ample reason to be concerned that the ills of Pennsylvania and other places could be visited upon North Carolina in the not-too-distant future.

Let’s hope this is not the case. As with 400% payday loans, it’s possible to concoct a scenario in which fracking isn’t a disaster. But it’s very, very difficult.

Let’s hope therefore that lawmakers put the burden on the energy industry – as they’ve done in recent years with predatory lenders – to meet a high standard of proof before enacting any changes in the law in such a potentially damaging area.

Photo credit: Carol French and Carolyn Knapp