archived: 20 - 26 Mar, 2005 Back Next
UPDATED: March 22, 2005
BEACHED
North Carolinians voted for Bush. Bush slashes 47% from beach renourishment programs for North Carolina.
The story:
President Bush's proposal to halve federal spending on a beach renourishment program has caused a wave of bipartisan protest from coastal members of Congress, who vow to find money for these projects.
They include two North Carolina congressman-- Democrat Mike McIntyre and Republican Walter Jones.
The White House said the federal government can no longer afford to keep fixing up beaches that need it every few years. Groups such as Taxpayers for Common Sense and environmentalists agreed.
Beach communities, tourism bureaus, and more than 100 coastal senators and representatives said beaches are part of the national infrastructure, just like federally funded ports and interstate highways.
For years, the federal government has paid 65 percent to 75 percent of the cost for beach replenishment, with the work done by the Army Corps of Engineers. – WRAL TV
This is a perfect issue for Democrats to attract small business owners. As the WRAL TV article suggests, thousands of small North Carolina businesses depend on good beaches to attract tourists. Bush is now threatening their livelihood.
The North Carolina Democratic Party should engage this issue strongly.
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MARCH
The demonstration against the war in Fayetteville is proof that public attitudes against the war are indeed changing. The demonstration, marking the second anniversary of the war, attracted about 2,500 to 3,000 marchers by TPJ’s estimation, mostly North Carolinians. Organizers put the number at 4,800. Counter protestors were liberally estimated at 200 by the local press; by TPJ’s estimation they number something less than 100.
News accounts from the demonstration last year pegged the number at 1,000. Organizers were successful in approximately tripling the number this year.
During the height of the Viet Nam war, a rally in Fayetteville drew between 2,000 to 4,000 protestors, equivalent to the march on Saturday.
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Speakers throughout the afternoon made the points against the war that would be expected. Most compelling were those by family members of those who served and died and those still serving in the war theater.
Perhaps the most compelling story was that of Cindy Sheehan:
Cindy Sheehan, a member of Gold Star Families for Peace, traveled from California to honor her son, Casey Austin Sheehan, who was killed two weeks after he got to Iraq.
"I hate this war because it took my son," a teary Sheehan told the crowd. "But I'm happy you guys are here to end this thing."
Like other members of military families against the war, Sheehan said she attends the rallies and protests, in part, because of a sense of duty to her son. She had terse words for President Bush.
"If he believes in this march to democracy, why doesn't he march his daughters over there?" Sheehan said before leaving the stage. – News & Observer
There were others:
Kara Hollingsworth, the wife of soldier serving in Iraq with the 18th Airborne Corps, received a standing ovation when she told the crowd, ''I cannot remain silent ... I can't slap a yellow sticker on my car and call it supporting my troops. It's time for us to bring our troops home.''
Joshua Despain and Hart Viges wore camouflage jackets with 82nd Airborne Division patches. Both men said they served in Iraq and have left the Army. Despain deserted for three months after he returned to Fort Bragg. He said a friend was killed in Iraq and he swore that if he ever made it home, he was going to leave the military.
Viges said he worked for 10 months before he received conscientious objector status. He joined the military after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, but a year in Iraq changed everything for him.
''I got back and it hit me,'' Viges said. He said he could no longer pull a trigger.
''I was a good soldier,'' he said. When he said he could no longer fight, he said, ''they knew I was sincere.'' – Fayetteville Observer
United Peace for Peace and Justice, the principal organizer of the demonstration employed one highly effective technique. Mock coffins draped with American flags, representing American troops killed in Iraq, were carried two by two from the staging area to the rally site.
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The visual impact of the coffins was sobering. At the rally site, the coffins were laid out in ordered rows on a hill next to the stage shaded by grand oak trees. Organizers treated the coffins with the utmost respect, taking great pains to lay the display out with precision.
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Local reporters were impressed by the display as the lead to news coverage began:
A procession of cardboard coffins draped with American flags wound toward Rowan Park on the edge of downtown Fayetteville on Saturday afternoon. – Fayetteville Observer
The News & Observer featured a picture of the coffins as the lead in its coverage. – News & Observer
The press did not cover the fact that throughout the afternoon, protestors spontaneously picked the tiniest purple and yellow North Carolina wildflowers just budding in the park where the rally was held and placed them on top of the coffins. A fitting silent memorial for those who have died.
This demonstration did lack in a great deal of individuality in posters. Most were preprinted with the usual mantras. Two did catch TPJ’s attention:
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And James Gheen crafted a message that drew several comments:
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If there was one central message of the afternoon it was: keep marching until they come home.
FALLING BEHIND
North Carolina public school students have made progress in recent years in national test scores. Yet, North Carolina is losing ground in providing adequate funds for public schools.
North Carolina is near the bottom and losing ground among states in the money it puts into schools, spending $6,635 per student in federal, state and local money in 2003, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report.
The state's ranking dropped from 36th in 2001 to 39th in 2002 and to 40th in 2003 among the 50 states and the District of Columbia, the report released Thursday said.
"It isn't new for us to be a low-spending state," said John Dornan, the director of the Public School Forum of North Carolina, a policy organization in public education. "But a downward trend for three years in a row is not a good sign."
Even though the ranking dropped, the state did spend slightly more per pupil over the period, from $6,368 in 2001 to $6,635 in 2003, the report said.
The bulk of the revenue for North Carolina's public-school systems in 2003 came from the state, which gave nearly $6 billion. Local sources contributed about $3 billion, while the federal government gave nearly $900 million.
In his budget proposal this year, Gov. Mike Easley recommended spending $6.7 billion on public schools, up from $6.2 billion last year. He has argued for a state lottery to bolster school financing. – Winston-Salem Journal
The Raleigh News and Observer editorially makes the point:
there must be no comfort given to those who think schools should just cut back to the bare bones and that "good enough" is good enough.
Consider the comments of an internationally known business leader who lives in the Triangle. Jim Goodnight, co-founder of SAS Institute (the world's largest privately held software company) of Cary, last week underlined the importance of education for those attending the annual meeting of N.C. Citizens for Business and Industry.
"We are still relying on a system that fails to reflect our changing world," Goodnight said. "Obviously, if we're not producing a work force for the 21st century we will not be able to attract the industry we need to compete." Toward that end, Goodnight said schools must have smaller classes and that all students should have computers on their desks. Sharing computers, as many student do now, doesn't reflect the way people operate in the business world, he said.
And schools should make rigorous academic demands on all students, which in Goodnight's view should mean requiring everyone to take a college preparatory course of study. That, he said, would mean that those who didn't go to college right after high school would still be better prepared for the business world.
The SAS chief offered a stark example of why spending on schools is smart even when government faces budget challenges: North Carolina spends over $20,000 a year on prison inmates. Each high school student costs the state about $6,000. Clearly, it wastes both public funds and human potential when students who aren't given the resources they need to succeed at school go badly off the track.
Let us hope that the business leaders who were in Goodnight's audience will bring their clout to bear on government officials when it comes to supporting education, as many have done in the past. Backing the public schools isn't merely an expenditure. It is an investment in the future -- the one belonging to us all. – Raleigh News & Observer
This is a perfect issue for progressive Democrats and a critical issue for North Carolina children today an in the future. Most importantly, it is an issue where progressives can build bridges of support in other political communities.
FROM THE MOUTHS OF CHILDREN
Republican fusion of church and state can happen anywhere – including North Carolina. The story:
A fifth-grader's family is suing the Cumberland County school system because her teacher used a Christian text that preached creationism and encouraged children to proselytize for Jesus.
The suit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Raleigh, says that a teacher at Sunnyside Elementary School in Fayetteville assigned students readings that included the lesson "Scents Make Sense."
"God's word tells us about a kind of odor only Christians have ...," the lesson read. "Christians carry forth the fragrance of Christ wherever they go by the way they live; that is, they remind people of Him.
"Could someone find Christ by the scent trail you are leaving behind you?" -- News & Observer
The importance of this story is not only the fact that a teacher in North Carolina was permitted to incorporate Christian materials into her classroom – the story is important because the child’s parents had to sue the Cumberland County School System to stop the practice. The child’s parents first complained about the use of Christian literature and were told by school officials that the practice would stop. It did not. When the parents brought the issue forward again, the response of local school officials was astounding:
The suit says that when the parents complained to principal Deborah Anderson, she asked, "What's the problem? Don't you and your family go to church?"
Anderson also told the parents she didn't understand their objections, because Ashlee earned perfect scores on the assignments. Anderson then promised that it wouldn't happen again.
In February, it did.
Ashlee came home with a worksheet on which she was marked wrong for answering that "chance" was the reason many animals are colored to match their surroundings. The teacher indicated that the right answer was "God's master design," the suit says.
Harrison said Cumberland schools have a policy, mandated by federal law, that bars teachers from endorsing any religion.
He said that Kristie Griffiths, the teacher, is a visiting faculty member from Australia and did not understand U.S. standards. She bought the text from Christian publisher A Beka Book with her own money, he said.
Harrison said the principal did not take the incident seriously enough and failed to make sure the teacher stopped using the text. He said Anderson sent a memo to all staff asking them to use only board-approved materials but didn't communicate directly with Griffiths. – News & Observer
What the mainstream press is not asking is a far more important question – why any family had to seek the assistance of Federal Court to stop the proselytizing.
The teacher’s principal was obviously as oblivious as to the illegality of the teacher’s conduct as the teacher. But above the principal are a county superintendent and a school board. The article reports nothing at these two levels to either stop or ensure that the proselytizing of 5th graders would not occur again.
Jon Sasser, the Raleigh lawyer who represents the Smith family, said the parents filed suit because they wanted to make sure the practice didn't happen again. . . .
"Ashlee's a fifth-grader, and she realized this was wrong," Sasser said. "This is light years beyond an invocation at a graduation or a moment of silence at a football game. When you're proselytizing fifth-graders, it's way over the top." – Fayetteville Observer
What does it say about our commitment to public education and fundamental constitutional rights that a 5th graders knows better than the leadership of the school system in which she attends?
Last Update: 03/23/2006