Email for the NC Democrats

Friends,

The state budget that arrived on Bev Perdue's desk last week is a collection of historic cuts to public schools, health care services, law enforcement personnel, emergency management programs and environmental protections.  

This afternoon, the Governor sent it back to the misguided Republican legislators with her veto.

Read Governor Perdue's veto message. Click here to see the video.

What sounds like a typical political grudge match between Republicans and Democrats really isn't. Republicans claim there is no difference between their budget and the Governor's. But there is. The GOP budget provides half a billion dollars less for education over the next two years.  

Ask any of your neighbors, Republicans or Independents, if they think fewer teachers and larger class sizes are the way to improve our schools? Ask them at what point should we start firing police officers?  Chances are your neighbors see North Carolina much the way you and I do:  North Carolina is a great place worth defending. It is a growing state worth investing in.  It is a state whose citizens believe our public education system is worth a penny.

The Republican leadership has no practical experience with the responsibilities of governing. Historically, their role has been to parrot the sort of radical economic ideologies in vogue at the time; from depression era "do-nothingness" to Reagan-era "trickle-down economics", with little actual impact on the explosive growth of a state that was two generations ago mainly rural farmland and factory towns.  

For the first time in over a century, the Republicans have been in complete control of the budget writing process. 

Budgets are statements of political thought and an instrument used to set forth our most important priorities. Gone from this Republican budget are considerations for the children of families struggling to enter the middle class. Erased is every lesson we have learned about compassion for people suffering from mental illness. Vanished is everything we know works in early childhood education, the conservation of clean air and water, or the reserves we maintain in the event of natural disasters.

The Governor has vetoed this budget because the suffering it causes is entirely unnecessary.  This Republican budget takes us to the absolute bottom of every state in the country in per student funding. The Governor has fought hard to preserve all of these things through the continuation of a three quarters of a cent sales tax we're already paying.  But that price-- the price of living in a modern, educated, competitive, fair state-- was apparently too high for the handful of elected ideologues who wrote the budget for the first time.  They seem to prefer to take their chances that we can scramble back from the bottom of the heap and put the pieces back together again in another generation or two.

North Carolina can’t fail our children and her future.  Call your legislators and urge them to sustain the Governor’s veto.  You can reach the main legislative switchboard at (919) 733-7928 or click here to find your legislator.

David Parker

Chair

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Tillis Attack on Teachers

Why did #NCGOP #ncga House Speaker Tillis attack teachers/NCAE? http://is.gd/R9tTgj Greenville Daily Reflector nails it: http://is.gd/NtvFTr

Since my retirement, I've spent a lot of time trying to help the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina. A society like this just can't afford an uneducated underclass of citizens. -- Charles Kuralt

Republican House Speaker Tom Tillis seems to have mistaken that dissent with a personal affront. First, he threatened retaliation against the NCAE during an inadvertently broadcast GOP caucus meeting on Friday. Then, at the Republican convention, he went further, alleging NCAE members “don't care about kids. They don't care about classrooms. They only care about their jobs and their pensions.”

How farcical. The NCAE represents people who devote their lives to children and who chose to spend their careers in classrooms. Belittling them does not advance the debate nor does pursuing petty retribution help to improve public schools.

Yes the Daily Reflector writer did a very good job on this story. But you have to look at the comments as well,

There is this one commenters that’s either a sockpuppet or die-hard support of Tillis and also he hate teachers as well. I can only guess that he was a teachers pet while in school, maybe the type that always got into trouble.

Submitted by jack1919 on June 9, 2011 - 7:16pm.

Two or three weeks off for Christmas is shared by all workers???

I can tell you about dedicated employees in the garbage trucks, chicken processing plants, salesman, policeman etc that are equally important

Just do your job or find another one

So teachers are not dedicated, MMMM, with those so-called non-dedicated teachers who sir would be an uneducated idiot.

but wait there is even more for this douchebag, but he now also blames editors as well,

Submitted by jack1919 on June 9, 2011 - 4:46pm.

I am sick and tired of all you whiners- Al Clark included

I do care if your grandfather, father, mother, wife or child is/was a teacher

The fact is that you all, including good old Al, education major, are all spoiled and have had too much for too long with very little if any accountability and results.

Interested in the kids, my hat. Interested in your fat paychecks and retirement and 9 month work year.

Attacking the legislature must stop, starting with whining editors...

Not all teacher gets three months off, in fact most only get a full month off, There is a lot of work to do to get ready for the next school year, supplies inventory, schedules, and most teachers if not all, continue there education as well. They have to keep with times as well.

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Disruption with unknown author

From the News and Observer,

I just love it when a news paper print Editorial Opinion, and use the name of Staff Editorial, To me it scream we are to much of a coward to but our name on it.

If the three gay-rights protesters who barged into the state House of Representatives chamber on Thursday thought they were somehow advancing their cause, they were sadly mistaken. Legislators, and the public, understand and even appreciate principled dissent - such as that expressed by a larger group of activists who demonstrated outside the Legislative Building that day - but they don't cotton to outright disruption. So, in addition to getting arrested, the three committed a counterproductive act.

They also escalated a tactic that's been used before in the current legislative session. Twice, protesters in the visitors galleries have interrupted business on the floor. One of those incidents, late last month, led to the arrest of the NAACP's state president. Taking protests to the chamber floor intensifies the potential for confrontation. It vents anger and frustration but otherwise accomplishes nothing.

Really, now I guess all those in your face action from Citizens all across the country did nothing for them. When those three Activist got arrested at the NCGA, they made local, state, and nation, just maybe international news feeds. Since at the Rally there was all most no press coverage at all, unlike the Press Coverage when Return American was on the lawn of the Halifax Mall.

Counter-production, I think not. It got a coward in the N&O press room, to write this editorial after all.

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