Fitzsimon File

Don’t count on the state misleading poor people into buying lottery tickets just yet. Lottery proponents have done a good job convincing most media folks that the lottery is likely to pass this year. But why?

Here are the reasons most often presented. Every state that surrounds North Carolina has the lottery, the state has a budget shortfall, and the lottery is a key part of Governor’s Easley agenda.

Just a few years ago the lottery came up for a vote in the House and lost by a huge margin, 69-51. House members knew then that every state was going to have the lottery. All but Tennessee had started theirs and Tennessee’s was a foregone conclusion.

The Governor was pushing just as hard and the state had a huge budget shortfall. And yet 69 members of the House voted against the lottery. Many of them are still in the House. The lottery may pass this session, it may not, but don’t be fooled by the false momentum its supporters are trying to create.

What in the world did John Edwards do? Must be something pretty bad to elicit the kind of venom spewed his way this week by George Leef, the head of the Pope Center for High Education. Leef is not too happy that the law school at UNC-Chapel Hill has hired Edwards to run the Center for Work, Policy, and Opportunity.

Some other folks have reacted sarcastically to Edwards’ new job, but Leef takes the criticism to an extraordinary level in his latest column. Before he recommends a book on poverty to Edwards, he throws this in, “On the off chance that John Edwards is really interested in policies that will help reduce poverty and give people greater opportunity to improve their circumstances…”

On the off chance? So Leef is sure that Edwards is not interested in reducing poverty. Leef also blasts Edwards for his support as a Senator for raising the minimum wage, the earned income tax credit, matching savings accounts for low-income families, and horror of horrors, “providing incentives for teachers to teach in low-income schools.” Pretty outrageous don’t you think, trying to get good teachers in poor schools?

Reading Leef’s attack makes you wonder if the next line will ask if Edwards is now or ever has been the member of the Communist Party?” I guess we’d have to ask it of Ronald Reagan too, for his support of the earned income tax credit, and of dozens of prominent Republicans who support many of the same ideas.

The Pope Center’s philosophical brother in arms against the government group, the John Locke Foundation, had another interesting idea for state lawmakers in a news story about a proposal to increase the pay of state legislators.

The proposal would raise lawmakers’ pay to the princely sum of $25,000 a year from the roughly $13,000 they are now paid. The Locke Foundation’s Roy Cordato says that not only is the pay raise a bad idea, but legislators should give themselves a pay cut.

That would work to make it more affordable for average North Carolinians to serve in the General Assembly don’t you think, to pay them even less. Come to think of it, why do we pay them at all? Those jobs could be privatized, with lobbying interests paying legislators’ salaries. Smoother operation that way, and smaller government of course.

More immigrant bashing. North Carolina Congressman Walter Jones is the latest politician to make absurd comments about the state’s immigrant population. Jones was reacting to President Bush’s immigration proposal when he told his local paper that “illegal immigrants cost America billions of dollars in health care, education and federal incarceration, and that’s money we cannot afford to spend on those who break the law to get here.”

But we are happy when they build our houses, pick our crops, and clean our hotel rooms. Maybe Jones should try to figure out how much undocumented immigrants contribute to the state and country and how much the few services they do get cost the government. That would require actual thinking and why bother when offensive stereotypes and fear-mongering come so quickly to mind?

 Email This Post  Print This Post

This entry was posted on Friday, February 11th, 2005 at 4:20 pm and is filed under Fitzsimon File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.