Here’s a pretty good indication of the state of the debate about public schools in North Carolina. The Republicans and the right-wing think tanks that craft their talking points are now boasting about their figures that show North Carolina ranks 42nd in the country in per pupil spending and that the Republican budget fired 534 teachers and 1,260 teacher assistants.

Those are their education accomplishments, a budget which slashed $460 million from public schools and fired 2,000 people from classrooms across the state.

Break out the champagne.

It turns out of course that those numbers are misleading and wrong, but even if they were accurate and honest, it’s hard to believe that’s the direction people in North Carolina want public investment in education to go.

The claims about the ranking in per pupil spending come from a new report from the National Education Association, a group the Right routinely demonizes. They are apparently happy to cite their data when they believe it supports their position.

The NEA report shows that North Carolina education funding was cut $200 per student in the budget passed last summer. But according to the report the state’s ranking in per pupil spending actually increased from 47 to 42 because a handful of other states near the bottom of the rankings, like Mississippi and Texas, cut spending even more.

That might be a catchy slogan for the Republicans in their reelection efforts. “We don’t support public schools, but we don’t not support them as much as Mississippi.”

The figures about teachers and teacher assistants losing their jobs are even more misleading. It might be true in actual numbers that 534 teachers and 1,260 teacher assistants were fired, but the number of positions cut is far higher.

Edwin McLenaghan with the N.C. Budget and Tax Center reports there are more 15,000 fewer full-time employees in North Carolina public schools now than three years ago, including 10,872 fewer teachers and teacher assistants combined.

Those numbers do not include the more than 4,000 classroom personnel who are being funded by one-time federal money, funds the Republicans criticized the Democrats for using two years ago.

And as McLenaghan correctly notes, students and their families don’t really care if a teacher or teacher assistant leaves because they are fired or because they retired and were not replaced. The families and the school lose either way.

It is the same for the source of funding. One of the right-wing think tanks published a report a few weeks ago breathlessly claiming that state supported teaching positions actually increased in the Republican budget–a dubious assertion on its face—but neglected to mention the massive budget cuts to local school systems that forced teachers and teachers assistants to be fired.

The Republicans and the right-wing propaganda machines closely aligned with them apparently think it helps them with the public to counter complaints about their education budget by literally bragging that they “only” fired 2,000 people from classrooms across the state.

And remember these are the folks who stood on the House and Senate floor and guaranteed that their budget did not fire a single teacher or teacher assistant.

The bizarre claims come in the wake of House Speaker Thom Tillis admitting that House Majority Leader Paul Stam wants to abolish all public schools and they come amid stories from scores of schools in which classes are larger, teachers don’t have enough supplies, and students are being forced to buy their own textbooks, all thanks to the budget cuts made last summer in Raleigh.

If Republicans actually do care about public education, they have an odd and devastating way of showing it.

Almost two years ago, the new federal legislation that starts to fix our health system, the Affordable Care Act, was passed into law. Health care is such a large and complicated part of our economy that beginning the needed fixes has been almost like watching an oil tanker negotiate a three-point turn in a shipping channel. However, slowly and surely changes are happening for the better.

Just consider the positive results of the law that have already been realized. Already, children under the age of 19 cannot be denied health coverage because of a pre-existing health condition. And 2.5 million young adults under the age of 26 have been able to get insurance through their parent’s health plans – lessening a major burden on young adults looking for good jobs with health coverage in a tough economy. Seniors are getting free screenings and health visits through Medicare as well as substantial discounts on brand-name drug costs.

And people who haven’t been able to get insurance because of serious pre-existing health conditions are now able to buy coverage through North Carolina’s new federal high risk insurance pool, “Inclusive Health.”

In 2014, the changes really start to accelerate. With new tax credits for individuals and small business to purchase insurance, the Affordable Care Act will mean an average of about $2,640 in the pocketbooks for North Carolina families making less than $100,000 a year. This will result from reduced health premiums for those currently insured and new access to a new state health insurance exchange where families and businesses without insurance can shop for coverage at competitive rates. In addition, North Carolina’s Medicaid safety net will be expanded so that really poor people will qualify for Medicaid regardless of whether or not they have dependent children or their age.

And one way reform will be kept on track by the law is simple. Starting in 2014, members of Congress will be required to purchase their insurance through their own state’s health exchanges just like individuals and small businesses without current coverage! Right now, members of Congress buy their health coverage by selecting among plans that can’t deny or charge people more because of pre-existing health conditions. In 2014, those protections will be extended to everyone.

And the Affordable Care Act is indeed affordable. Controlling waste, fraud and abuse in health care saves money – already over $4 billion just in the last year. Limiting what insurance companies can spend on “administrative costs” instead of medical care saves money. Delivering our health care more efficiently and effectively saves money. Not depending on our overworked emergency rooms to deliver health care to people who could easily be seen in their family doctor’s office saves money. Every one of these improvements is a part of the Affordable Care Act.

These are just a few of the reasons Congress’s official scorekeeper – the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office – estimated that the Affordable Care Act will actually reduce the federal deficit over the next ten years.

The politics of the moment might call for rash statements that we need to “repeal” the health care law. But by now the effects of repeal are clear: Millions would lose coverage, seniors would pay more, small businesses would get less, and costs would go up for everyone. The Affordable Care Act may be slow, but it is on track and starting to make the changes we all need in a cautious, deliberate way. For those who are already benefiting and those who will benefit over the next few years, the law is just the medicine our health system needs.

Adam Searing is the Director of the North Carolina Health Access Coalition.

It has been just over a year since the Republican majority elected Thom Tillis Speaker of the House, making him the most public face of the first Republican-led General Assembly in North Carolina 140 years.

Tillis began the 2011 General Assembly session promising to focus on creating jobs and touting his business consulting background, leading some in Raleigh to predict a more conservative, but not a radical legislative session.

The predictions were wrong. Tillis has presided over a House that has passed some of the most extreme, far-right social legislation in the country, not to mention the draconian budget cuts to education, human services, and environmental protections.

And Tillis himself has become an issue. His behavior as Speaker and a series of troubling statements he has made in town hall appearances make last year’s hopes for thoughtfully conservative leadership seem hopelessly naïve in retrospect.

Here are ten tales from Tillis’ first year as Speaker. Not the dreadful legislation he engineered—that’s another disturbing list—but his remarks, decisions, and actions that set the tone for the radical legislation that the General Assembly approved and continues to consider. This is by no means an exhaustive list.

1) The divider and conqueror of the poor. Here’s what Tillis told a group of Republicans in Madison County in October.

“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.”

2) The unannounced midnight session. Tillis and his fellow members of the House leadership convened a special session after midnight January 5 to override Gov. Bev Perdue’s veto of legislation that banned teachers from paying their NCAE dues by payroll deduction. The midnight session prompted widespread criticism across the state. Even Republican gubernatorial candidate Pat McCrory has condemned it.

3) Vengeance on an open microphone. Tillis told the Republican House Caucus in June that he was targeting the NCAE because of their opposition to the Republican budget. The microphones in the meeting room were left on and his comments were inadvertently broadcast to the press room on the legislative sound system

4) The double standard for citizens in the Legislative Building. Members of Tillis’ staff called the General Assembly police to disperse a group of peaceful protestors gathered on the second floor of the building before last Thursday’s special session, citing an obscure law that is rarely enforced. Lobbyists were allowed to remain. Video has surfaced showing Tillis addressing Tea Party protestors in exactly the same spot in the building in March of last year.

5) The end of public schools. Tillis admitted in a town hall meeting in Asheboro earlier this month that his top lieutenant, House Majority Leader Paul Stam, wants to eliminate public schools in North Carolina.

6) Admittedly making it harder for people with disabilities to vote. Tillis said at a town hall meeting that he had been willing to compromise on voter ID legislation because people in the disability community brought “legitimate” concerns about the impact of the bill on people with a disability who try to vote. But when the compromise negotiations with Democrats fell apart, Tillis rammed the extreme voter ID bill through the House, ignoring the concerns he admits are real.

7) Boasting about targeting a state agency. Also in his remarks to Madison County Republicans, Tillis gleefully described how Republican Rep. Mitch Gillespie has a target on his window aligned with the building that houses the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

8) Admitting that Republicans let 1,200 jobs go to South Carolina. The House and Senate refused to go along with an industrial recruitment package to lure Continental Tire to build a facility in Southeastern North Carolina that would mean more than 1,200 jobs for the region.

Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger and Tillis implied that lawmakers did not approve the package because Democrats owned the land that the company would use for the plant. Tillis later admitted the land issue had nothing to do with it. The jobs went to South Carolina.

9) Refusing to disavow the extremists in his own party. Tillis has remained silent when members of his own caucus have made offensive remarks or proposed extremist legislation. Tillis said nothing when Rep. Larry Brown made homophobic remarks last year or when Rep. Larry Pittman said in a recent email that doctors who perform abortion services should be executed by public hanging.

10) It’s all the media’s fault. Tillis routinely complains about coverage in the mainstream media, at one point comparing the Charlotte Observer to road kill for its coverage of the midnight session. Dozens of editorial pages across the state, liberal and conservative, also blasted legislative leaders for holding the session.

It has been quite a year. Stay tuned for more.

What last week’s General Assembly evictions say about conservative legislative leaders

There’s been a good deal of controversy in recent days over the decision by officials in House Speaker Thom Tillis’ office to evict a group of quiet and peaceful demonstrators from the second floor of the state Legislative Building last Thursday morning. In case you’ve only heard snippets, here are the facts that I witnessed as a participant in the event:

• At around 11 a.m., a group of 75 to 100 protesters gathered in front of the Legislative Building in a grassy space to the left of the main (south) entrance. The purpose of the event was to protest and call attention to a legislative “special session” that was scheduled for 12:00 noon that day. The groups sponsoring the protest, which included NC Policy Watch, had obtained a permit to use the space. Throughout the event, members of the General Assembly police and House Sergeant-at-arms staff milled around, monitoring the proceedings.
• At around twenty minutes till noon, when the various speakers had concluded their remarks, one of the event organizers, Adam Sotak (pictured above) of Democracy North Carolina, asked the people in attendance to turn in any large signs they were holding, take a piece of ordinary copier paper with a message written on it, and enter the Legislative Building. The destination was to be the second floor of the building where the plan was for folks to silently line the broad corridor that leads from Speaker Thom Tillis’ office to the back door of the House chamber (the door Tillis usually uses to reach the podium). About 50-60 people appeared to take Adam up on his request.
• As demonstrators approached the front door of the Legislative Building, they were confronted by police and sergeants-at-arms who demanded that people surrender their pieces of paper since, it was explained, they would violate the building’s “sign ordinance.” After a minute or two of discussion/debate between some of the demonstrators and the officials, all such signs were wither confiscated or disposed of.
• The people then proceeded to the second floor. For readers unfamiliar with the building layout, the second floor is divided in two, with the House chamber on the west side and the Senate chamber on the east side. Each chamber is surrounded by offices on three sides with a central rotunda area dividing the two chambers in center of the building. To the north and south of each chamber, there are also large, open “quads” around which the various offices are located. Each quad features a great deal of open space with wide corridors lined with couches for visitors and a first to third floor open rotunda-like area that provides views of skylights above and a similar open office space below on the first floor.
• When the protesters arrived at the second floor, they began to silently line the far west corridor of the quad – a hallway/open space roughly 15 feet wide and 60 or 70 feet long that lies between Speaker Tillis’ office and the House chamber.
• Almost immediately after this, police and sergeants-at-arms swooped in and demanded that the demonstrators disperse under the terms of an obscure rule that purports to bar members of the public from the second floor of the Legislative Building who lack prior authorization – a rule that few, if any, people had ever heard of. (One former building employee who worked on the second floor many years ago noted wryly that he’d wished he’d known of the rule back then so that he might have been able to tell some particularly bothersome lobbyists to leave him alone!). You can watch a six-minute video of the drama that ensued and the conversations that Adam Sotak had with various officers by clicking here.
• Eventually, of course, the demonstrators removed from the second floor to the House gallery on the third floor and Tillis was able to walk to the chamber without having to be eyeball any protesters.
• The following day, NC Policy Watch unearthed a video of House Speaker Tillis and his chief of staff chatting amicably with a comparable crowd of Tea Party protesters last March in the very same second floor space.

Red flags

There are, of course, a lot of reasons that last week’s events are extremely disturbing. Any time law enforcement officials interrupt peaceful and quiet protesters and force them to end or alter a demonstration in the seat of government, alarm bells ought to go off. That last week’s law enforcement intervention appears to have been a matter of selective enforcement directed at a group that’s been critical of the people running the General Assembly make matters even more serious.

Even if one assumes that the obscure rule barring people from the second floor is somehow legitimate or constitutional, it certainly can’t be either if it’s never applied except toward those disfavored by the people in power. While no one with any common sense would dispute the right of officials to keep hallways generally clear and/or prevent any unreasonable disruptions of the activities of the General Assembly, there is absolutely no indication that protesters intended to cause either such problem. All they intended to do was bear witness to the special session and make sure Speaker Tillis knew they were watching.

A different kind of General Assembly

So why did Tillis do it? Why did he direct officials to evict the protesters when he could have just as easily walked right past them quietly (perhaps even feigning a cell phone conversation) or – Heaven forbid – stopped to engage them? The answer is obvious. It’s the same reason he made his infamous “divide and conquer” speech, the same reason lawmakers held a midnight session to punish the N.C. Association of Educators and the same reason House leaders shut off debate repeatedly during the 2011 session: Tillis and his team are in over their heads.

Like a lot of political leaders who ascend to power rapidly and without much experience, Tillis, Senate leader Phil Berger and their teams simply don’t have the kind of experience, wisdom or confidence necessary to govern effectively. Lacking much real experience in state government (and, indeed, possessed of an ideological opposition to government generally), they also lack the capacity to assess their opposition, to listen to its spokespeople or to debate and engage with it effectively. Like a petrified monarch afraid of his own illegitimacy, they are fearful, ignorant of history and their critics and prone to overreact to challenges.

The result of this fear and ignorance is palpable. Even as recently as a few years ago, the visible law enforcement in the General Assembly consisted almost exclusively of a small handful of retired gentlemen serving as sergeants-at-arms. Democratic legislative leaders met regularly in all sorts of venues (hallways, committee rooms, offices) with citizen groups – both friendly and hostile. Conservative gun advocates, abortion protesters and property rights crusaders frequently trolled the hallways confronting lawmakers. Had former leaders Joe Hackney or Marc Basnight ever ordered the removal of such groups, you can rest assured that the groups on Right-wing Avenue would have been screaming at jet engine decibels about “jack-booted thugs.”

But, today, things are noticeably different; security officials are everywhere in the General Assembly. Tillis even takes them with him to his out-of-town political speeches, where they command the audiences to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Moments after last week’s eviction, Tillis invited a member of the General Assembly police to help convene the session with an explicitly Christian invocation. It’s as if these people have been integrated into the leadership team itself.

Going forward

So what’s next? Let’s hope Tillis and his team will learn something from their latest P.R. disaster. With any luck, it might cause them to reexamine some of their approaches to governance.

But don’t hold your breath. When so much of the philosophy that guides a political movement is based on fear of change, willful ignorance of the past and a commitment to governance by an exclusive, wealth-based aristocracy, more fiascos like last week’s are almost inevitable.