Fitzsimon File Archive

The state budget crisis has turned into a matter of life and death for more than 200 people in North Carolina living with HIV/AIDS. The state’s AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) that provides lifesaving drugs for people living with the disease is now closed to new applicants.

39.4—percentage of state General Fund budget allocated to public education in 2008-2009 (News & Observer, March 14, 2010)

The poll results that didn’t make the press releases

Conventional political wisdom in Raleigh these days is that this will be a huge Republican year at the polls, that the GOP may take control of the General Assembly and defeat some Democrats in the Congressional delegation.

Children in North Carolina public schools were hit more than 1,400 times last year as a form of discipline according to report presented to lawmakers this week by Action for Children. That doesn’t appear to trouble state education leaders, who don’t even collect the statistics.

There’s a growing consensus in the policy world that the state has a serious problem with graduation rates in universities and communities colleges and that many students are taking far too long to receive a degree.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Vice-President Dr. Genie Komives and lobbyist Mark Fleming both appeared recently before a legislative study committee to oppose legislation that would require insurance companies to cover more comprehensive treatments and therapies for children with autism.

41—percentage of people who say they “favor the health care reform proposals presently being discussed” (Ipsos/McClatchy Poll. Feb. 26-28, 2010)

Wake County School Board Chair Ron Margiotta says that he was “out of line” when he referred to parents expressing their views at Tuesday’s public hearing as animals coming out of their cages.

The exoneration of Greg Taylor last month by the N.C. Innocence Inquiry Commission has prompted calls for an independent review of the State Bureau of Investigation Crime Lab that played a key role in Taylor’s wrongful conviction that sent him to prison for 17 years a for a murder he did not commit.

Not long after the Gang of Five majority on the Wake County School Board voted Tuesday night to end the system’s nationally recognized diversity policy, Board Chair Ron Margiotta told reporters who asked about the resegregation that will result, “We have laws, we have court rulings, we have morality. That’s something that would never be tolerated by anyone on the school board.”

The candidate filing period is over and Republican Party Chair Tom Fetzer and other GOP leaders are touting the party’s full slate of candidates as more evidence that all signs point to big Republican gains in Raleigh and Washington in November.

2—number of days after Wake School Board member Debra Goldman directed members of policy committee to gather data about school assignment for future committee work session that Goldman co-authored a resolution for Tuesday’s agenda to end diversity-based school assignment policy (News & Observer Wake Ed Blog, February 26, 2010)

Conservative Art Pope, the primary funder of organizations like the John Locke Foundation and the Civitas Institute, tells the News & Observer that he doesn’t think it helps the public debate for N.C. Policy Watch to be calling the new members of the Wake County Board of Education racists. Pope has apparently not been reading N.C. Policy Watch very closely.

The new Gang of Five Majority on the Wake County Board of Education determined to resegregate the nationally acclaimed school system turned back into the Gang of Four and a Half Wednesday, once again pausing in its ideological drive to divide the system into rich schools and poor schools.

Candidates for Congress and the General Assembly are now filing to run for office, which means it is also the season of absurd political pledge drives as right-wing groups demand that candidates sign statements promising what they will or won’t do if they are elected.