Fitzsimon File

Good for Governor Mike Easley for inserting some sanity in the current flap over undocumented students attending North Carolina community colleges. The Pope Civitas Institute started a firestorm this week blasting the decision by community college officials to prohibit individual campuses from denying admission to students based on their immigration status.

Pandering politicians immediately starting screaming about the state subsidizing the education of “illegal aliens” even though the tiny number of undocumented students currently enrolled pay out of state tuition, which is more than the cost to the state of educating them.

Jack Betts of the Charlotte Observer quotes Easley saying Friday that “The people we are talking about were brought here as babies and young children through no fault of their own. They distinguished themselves throughout our K-12 (public school) system. Now, I’m not willing to grind my heel in their faces and slam the door on them.”

Betts further quotes Easley saying that denying illegal immigrants access to community colleges “doesn’t penalize the immigrants, it penalizes this state and innocent children.”

Easley’s compassion and courage is not shared by any of the five candidates in the race to follow him as governor. Democrats Beverly Perdue and Richard Moore joined Republicans Fred Smith, Bill Graham, and Bob Orr in opposing the policy of community college officials to allow the students to continue their education.

It’s not that much of a surprise from the Republicans, pandering to their right-wing Civitasish base. But Perdue and Moore ought to be ashamed of themselves, putting their fear of a campaign issue ahead of what’s right for a small group of high school students across the state.

Political pundits keep writing about how both Democrats are battling for the progressive vote in the May primary. They weren’t battling too hard for it this week by adding their voices to the anti-immigrant sentiment in North Carolina.

Speaking of Moore and Perdue, the sniping between them continues, this time over Perdue’s proposal to set up an independent commission to identify waste in state government. Perdue said the commission would be bipartisan and would make specific recommendations that the General Assembly could only vote for or against, not amend.

Moore’s campaign responded that Perdue had been in the legislature for 20 years and served as one of the Senate budget chairs for several sessions and should have already rooted out the waste in government.

The Perdue spin doctors fired back that Moore was opposing citizens have more input in the budget process. Both campaigns continue to miss the point.

Of course there is waste in government and the governor and legislators ought to do a better job eliminating it. But voters deserve to know specifically what the candidates’ think can be cut, and more importantly where the money would be reinvested.

Affordable housing, child care and mental health would be good places to start, but that would require the candidates to actually address those issues on the campaign trail, and goodness knows we can’t have that.

In case the candidates haven’t decided on where they stand on proposals to make workplaces, restaurants and bars smoke free, a new study out this week from RTI International in Research Triangle Park ought to help them make up their minds.

The study finds that the nation’s Medicaid bill would be almost $10 billion lower in five years if everyone on Medicaid stopped smoking. Smokers costs North Carolina close to $300 million a year.

We know the candidates aren’t too interested in helping undocumented kids who are working hard in public schools go to community college, even if they pay more than the costs of their education.

Wonder how they feel about helping people stop smoking and eliminating the deadly effects of secondhand smoke in public places, where both native North Carolinians and undocumented immigrants congregate?

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This entry was posted on Friday, November 30th, 2007 at 5:51 pm and is filed under Fitzsimon File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.