Suppose you own an investment portfolio that contains valuable, goods-producing assets, some of which are too costly to buy, or may not even exist in the marketplace. The United States Forest Service [USFS] manages many taxpayer-owned natural assets. Among the best-performing is the Pisgah-Nantahala Forest, the most visited national forest in the nation—seven million people annually. The USFS’s proposed new plan will establish a management agenda for the next two to three decades. Published in March, the proposal set a record for the number of objections. Among the most egregious insults to the forest ecosystem? Logging several old-growth tracts. The Southern Environmental Law Center laments that not only should some of these targeted areas be spared, but also, rather than restoring diverse species and ecological processes, the plan relies on “outdated and heavy-handed logging methods that produce unnatural results.” Our portfolio manager, the USFS, says the methods make “commercial sense.” But the traditional concept of “commercial sense,” like some logging methods, is outdated and clumsy, and needs an overhaul. There’s reason to hope the USFS will thoroughly revisit new evidence about the forests’ economic value before publishing a final draft. A new paper by scientists Jeannine Cavender-Bares and co-authors, including economist Stephen Polasky, both of the University of Minnesota, suggests that trees in the contiguous United States produce “far more valuable services as climate and air quality regulators than they generate as wood products, food crops, and Christmas trees.” The authors estimate the value of five eco-system services generated by forest in the United States at $114 billion annually in 2012. Trees in the pine and oak family provided 42 percent of that. Trees store carbon. This accounts for 51% of net annual value. Trees filter dirty air and mitigate damage to human health—respiratory illnesses and deaths. This tree service represented 37% of the annual net value. The remaining 12% of the net annual value came from “provisioning services,” such as wood products. The authors assessed these forest services to establish a base, as climate change threatens the services they provide, at risk from “pests and pathogens.” Compromises had been worked out among stakeholders during the public comment period. SELC worked with conservation groups in the The Nantahala-Pisgah Forest Partnership, including timber and hunting interests, in recommending some increases in timber harvests to restore “degraded forests, and it paired those increases with strong protections for our healthiest forests.” Those efforts may have protected old growth and rare habitats, to sequester more carbon. The USFS didn’t see it the same way. Common sense as well as $114 billion in services should make the USFS scrap original recommendations, targeted logging areas, and methods. Why not submit a plan to solve 21st century problems? The U.S. Forest Service manages our portfolio. Our resources deserve a thorough analysis to manage the earth's future. Betty Joyce Nash reported for the Hendersonville Times-News and the Greensboro News & Record before moving to Virginia. She writes journalism and fiction from Charlottesville. In 2017, the University of New Mexico Press published Lock & Load: Armed Fiction, a book of short stories she co-edited with a colleague. The stories probe Americans’ complicated relationship to firearms. For more information, see www.bettyjoycenash.com

When state lawmakers return to Raleigh this week, they are expected to introduce a stand-alone elections bill that will have huge consequences for North Carolina voters. That legislation should be their first and most pressing concern. With the election barely more than six months away, time to print ballots, train poll workers, plan logistics and purchase protective gear for poll workers and voters is rapidly running through the hourglass. The first order of business should be to allocate roughly $4.5 million needed to match federal grants totaling $22.5 million available to help cover additional costs of holding an election during a pandemic. The grants include almost $11 million from the CARES Act passed in March and another $11.6 million from the Help America Vote Act passed in December 2019. Depending on the severity of the pandemic in the fall, mail-in absentee voting could increase from less than 5 percent to as much as 40 percent, according to some estimates. The cost of mail-in ballots varies from county to county, according to an investigative report by North Carolina Public Press, but postage, paper and printing will increase election costs, as will masks for poll workers and voters, sanitizing kits and other items to help keep everyone safe. Dr. Anthony Fauci, a leading member of the White House Covid-19 task force, has predicted a resurgence in the fall and North Carolina needs to be prepared. That means lawmakers should do their part to make voting easier while continuing to guard against fraud. North Carolina already does a number of things right. Any registered voter can request an absentee ballot without having to provide an excuse. Voters also have the option of one-stop in-person early voting at specified locations in their county of residence. When it comes to security, North Carolina requires voting machines to have paper ballots, which should be in use in all 100 counties by the November election, making the machines much harder to hack. But voters confined at home without access to a computer could find it challenging to access a State Absentee Ballot Request Form, which is available on the Board of Elections website and must be filled out to request a mail-in ballot. Many states allow voters to request a mail-in ballot by phone, and while that would cost more in staff time, it could be done safely by requiring the same information the written form requests. North Carolina is also one of only a handful of states that require either two witnesses or a notary public to certify an absentee ballot. Most North Carolinians live in homes with no more than two adults, meaning most sequestered at home won’t have more than one available witness, and those who live alone won’t have any. Eighty percent of states don’t have any witness requirements, and North Carolina should join them. None of the five states that send every registered voter a vote-at-home ballot (Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah and Washington) require witness or notary signatures on returned ballots. Colorado’s system is often held up as a national model and it is among the states with the highest voter turnout (60 percent vs. 48 percent nationally in the 2018 midterm elections). Colorado relies on maintaining accurate mailing lists and signature verification to insure against fraud and despite its high turnout only .0027 percent of ballots were even suspicious enough to investigate. North Carolina already uses identity verification (address, birthday, last four digits of a Social Security number, driver’s license number, etc.), which an analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice listed as one of the most effective ways states can prevent mail-in ballot fraud. Others were barcodes on ballots, mail barcodes that allow tracking through the U.S. mail so voters and elections officials can tell whether ballots were delivered, secure drop-off locations and drop boxes, and post-election audits. As for the incidence of fraud, despite claims by President Trump that people cheat when they use mail-in ballots, the overwhelming evidence is that they don’t. And a huge plus for mail-in ballots is they can’t be hacked. It should be noted Trump votes by mail himself. In addition to making it easier to vote by mail, lawmakers also need to ensure the Board of Elections has the resources to hire and train enough poll workers to increase, rather than reduce, the number of polling stations. Poll workers tend to be older and many who have manned polls in the past may be reluctant to risk contracting Covid-19 and spreading it to other family members. But more poll workers, not fewer, will be needed to insure enough polling locations so long lines like those we saw during the Wisconsin primary April 7 don’t force people to choose between getting sick and exercising their most fundamental right. Nothing lawmakers do during the remainder of this short session is more urgent or more consequential than ensuring the integrity of the November election and the ability of voters to cast their ballots without risking their health.

The Covid-19 pandemic highlights long-standing social ills, but it also offers an opportunity for government to experiment with actions to correct some of the dynamics that undermine our social structure and threaten our stability as a nation. Widening income, wealth, education and health care disparities contribute to political polarization, but so far there’s little evidence the political will exists to improve conditions that keep some in society down while enriching others. The influx of Covid-19 stimulus money offers North Carolina an opportunity to address some of these problems. Failure to face them now imposes future fiscal and social costs on everyone. The pandemic exposes historical social dynamics, according to Jay Pearson of the Sanford Public Policy School at Duke. He researches structural inequality and its influence on health determinants. The dynamics “are playing out exactly the way those of us studying it have been arguing they would for the last 40 years.” The most at risk include African Americans, Latinx, essential workers, the elderly and people without enough food. This partial Covid-19 worry list demonstrates the crisis at hand: an expected rebound in Covid deaths, post-lockdown; a drop in U.S. spending: and a 14.7 percent unemployment rate. Frontline, essential workers, earning low wages in person-to-person high-contact jobs, sometimes without sick pay, are among the most vulnerable. Some are even penalized for calling in sick. They face a choice between working, and exposing family to a deadly virus, or not working and going without pay. Either could be life-threatening. North Carolina could implement public policies that benefit these high-risk workers—janitors, bus drivers, cashiers, and more. Such policies could not only lift the consistently marginalized, but also save taxpayers money down the road. For example, when meat packing firms refuse to pay, and may even penalize workers for sick time, it could be argued that this amounts to a business subsidy for a behavior that endangers others. Such practices cost taxpayers, even absent a pandemic, through lower productivityand higher healthcare costs. Besides helping workers, requiring companies to offer paid sick time, as a number of states do, could go far in preventing the spread of Covid-19 as the state’s economy reopens. Another option would be to make better use of existing social assistance. Unemployment insurance and Medicaid are designed to support the jobless and uninsured, but North Carolina’s programs have draconian eligibility standards. Almost 11 percent of North Carolinians have no health insurance, the tenth highest rate in the nation. That threatens the health and finances of the uninsured, who may forgo preventive care and accrue medical debt. Only adults who are elderly, blind, pregnant, or living with the certified-disabled or dependent children are eligible for Medicaid. Even uninsured parents of children who are covered often can’t qualify: the adult threshold is $8,004 of annual income for a family of three, less than half that of the poverty line. Fewer than 10 percent of unemployed workers receive unemployment benefits, ranking North Carolina fiftieth among all states; the average unemployment check is $277 per week, with an average span of 8.7 weeks, next-to-last in the nation. In terms of lives saved (‘human capital’ in econ-speak), improving conditions that perpetuate social ills is not only doing good, it saves money. Every dollar spent on air pollution control, for instance, generates $30 in benefits, largely in healthcare and worker productivity, owing to fewer respiratory ailments, especially among children and old people. The 1.6 billion in Covid-19 relief allocated by the N.C. legislature, in federal CARES funds, allowed for expanded SNAP (food voucher) benefits for the poor. The money has also added to unemployment benefits. But the legislators failed to expand Medicaid eligibility nor did they revise North Carolina’s barriers to unemployment benefits. These trillions of pandemic dollars could address structural changes in health infrastructure and employment. That could include living wages and paid sick leave that would benefit all North Carolinians. “People are calling it a stimulus check—it’s a legitimate response to a social service need,” Duke’s Jay Pearson says. “I’m not sure the funds coming from the [federal government] are going to have an impact on the populations bearing the brunt.” That would be the shame of the pandemic: that we not only lose valuable lives, but fail to reclaim those who are endangered all the time, through chronic poverty and lack of opportunity.

Two things are striking about the video captured by then Asheville Police Officer Chris Hickman’s body camera when he and an officer-in-training stopped Johnnie Rush for jaywalking near McCormick field in Asheville in the early morning hours of Aug. 25, 2017. The first is that their concern for his safety should have been the officers’ primary motivation for asking him to use the crosswalk, but there’s no indication in the video they conveyed any such concern to Rush. This was a jaywalking incident, not an armed robbery. Jaywalking is a crime because it endangers the life of the pedestrian who is doing it. It also risks upending the life of a motorist unlucky enough to come along and hit said pedestrian and risks causing related traffic accidents when a driver attempts to avoid the person in the highway. But without a doubt the pedestrian, who stands to be killed or seriously injured, has the most to lose. Yet nothing in the officers’ attitude implied they stopped Rush to protect him. Rush believed, as he said in the video that the officers were just harassing him when he was tired and trying to get home from a 13-hour shift at work. He undoubtedly knew that scores of people jaywalk in that area at times of heavier traffic during baseball games. The second thing that’s striking is how quickly, and without any threat on Rush’s part, the encounter escalated into a brutal beating. Rush was Tasered twice and Hickman used his fists to repeatedly beat him in the head after Rush was subdued and on the ground. The Asheville Citizen-Times published the video in late February after an unknown source turned it over to a reporter. Those who enforce the law represent one of the most important institutions in a civil society. Those who have visited or lived in countries without effective law enforcement know what it’s like to live in walled compounds, to find a guard with a shotgun at the entrance of a paint store or a bank or to take your life in your hands when you drive on a highway where the aggressive and fearless dictate the rules of the road. The presence of well-trained, dedicated law enforcement officers keeps us safe from that in America. For most white Americans, the presence of a law enforcement officer provides a sense of security. But if you are African American or Latino in America, that sense of security is compromised. Studies have shown that your chance of encountering officers ready to assume you have or are about to break the law is significantly greater than for white Americans. A 2015 analysis of five years of police data by The New York Times found that in Greensboro, North Carolina, police officers used their discretion to search black drivers or their cars twice as often as white motorists, even though they found drugs or weapons significantly more often when the drivers were white. “Officers were more likely to stop black drivers for no discernible reason,” according to The New York Times story about the analysis. “And they were more likely to use force if the driver was black, even when they did not encounter physical resistance.” The Greensboro police chief initially disputed the story, but when interviewed by the Greensboro News and Record a day after the story broke, he said, “The numbers, we believe at this point, are accurate.” The New York Times chose North Carolina for the analysis because it is among the states that monitor traffic stops most intensely. The Times reported that similar racial disparities were found across North Carolina and in seven other states with extensive data on traffic stops and searches. Other studies and analyses conducted throughout the country have consistently shown racial bias on the part of law enforcement. Confidence in public institutions is what makes civil society work. It’s what forestalls chaos. When members of a community become more fearful of those empowered to enforce the law than they are of those who break it, the prospects for civil unrest are greatly enhanced. But, if you are black, how can you watch the video of Johnnie Rush being beaten and not be frightened and outraged? We ask a lot of police officers, but the most important thing we ask of them is to keep us safe. How can we trust them to do that when we don’t feel safe from them? What kind of rage would compel an officer to severely beat a man guilty of nothing more than mouthing off and jaywalking? Law enforcement officers do a job that is dangerous, physically demanding, underpaid and that sometimes requires them to make snap judgments on which their lives or the lives of others depend. As is the case with other maligned professions, most are hard-working and conscientious. But one thing seems certain, the answer to why Johnnie Rush was brutally beaten isn’t just one rogue officer. It’s a systemic problem and solving it demands that law enforcement agencies become much more proactive in rooting out racist practices and behaviors. Everyone’s security depends on building law enforcement agencies that are as diverse as the communities they serve, where there is a culture of respect for all, and where the safety of all citizens is paramount

An important component of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) expanded Medicaid eligibility so low-income people living in households at 138 percent of the federal poverty level could get health care coverage. However, the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that states could not be forced to expand Medicaid programs. Eighteen states decided not to expand, citing difficulty predicting and affording the costs. Federal funding covered 100 percent of the costs until 2016, with a reduction to 90 percent by 2020. North Carolina’s Republican legislature passed a bill in 2013 that outright banned the expansion. The state has a history of moving slowly on Medicaid, being one of the last states to adopt it, in 1970, four years after the funding became available. Most North Carolinians who have health insurance are covered by a private plan, either under an employer or marketplace exchange. Other coverage comes from Medicaid, Medicare, and military and veteran benefits. Yet 11 percent of the population remains uninsured. Out of the 10.1 million North Carolina residents, 31 percent are low income (less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level), according to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF). Eighteen percent of the population is covered under Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). While children and their parents/caregivers make up most of the enrollees, most of the funding goes to the disabled and the elderly. Some 69 percent of Medicaid in North Carolina pays for acute and long-term care. Click here for details of who is covered under Medicaid in North Carolina and how the funding is spent. If North Carolina were to expand Medicaid, 208,000 more low income people who have no other option for coverage could receive health care coverage, with a positive result for the state as a whole. A KFF review of 202 studies of the impact of Medicaid expansion published between 2014 and February 2018 found: Significant gains in coverage and reductions in uninsured rates, particularly among low-income and vulnerable individuals. Greater access to care, use of services. Positive relationship to affordability of care and financial security. Mixed results on capacity for providers to meet the need for services. Participants said their health had improved following the expansion. (Long-term studies will be needed to evaluate this.) Initial Medicaid enrollment growth and state and federal spending exceeded initial projections in many states. While state spending from state funds didn’t increase, that is expected to change as the federal share for the expansion drops to 90 percent through 2020. Reduced uncompensated care costs for hospitals and clinics and positive or neutral effects on employment and the labor market. Disproportionately positive impact in rural areas But were states like North Carolina that initially rejected Medicaid out of fear that costs would be difficult to predict and potentially overwhelm their budgets correct? A report from the Brookings Institution found that even as the federal contribution drops to 90 percent, state “costs are likely to remain modest, despite increased enrollment.” Over the next decade North Carolina stands to lose $36.1 billion by not participating in Medicaid expansion. In addition to providing basic health care, Medicaid funding could be used for targeted items such as funding substance abuse treatment in the fight against the opioid epidemic, tobacco cessation education and treatment and more. When Gov. Roy Cooper campaigned in 2016 on a platform to expand Medicaid, he said that he was “appalled by North Carolina’s failure to expand Medicaid to its neediest residents, especially when our tax dollars are already going to pay for it in other states.” Once he took office, Cooper was determined to expand Medicaid through executive action. He said the 2013 law banning Medicaid expansion violates the governor’s “core executive authority” to accept federal funding and protect the public’s health. The expansion remains in limbo following a challenge by lawmakers. However, as a result of the November elections for state House and Senate seats, Republicans no longer hold a supermajority under which they can overrule any gubernatorial veto. While Republicans still hold a majority of seats, the 2019-20 General Assembly is undoubtedly expected to be more moderate and potentially more receptive to expanding Medicaid access. Virginia (General Assembly bill) and Idaho, Utah and Nebraska (ballot initiatives) have recently reconsidered their positions on Medicaid expansion and determined that providing low income individuals with access to health care is a good thing for their states. North Carolina should join them.

Congress has been roundly criticized for its lack of ability to pass legislation. Yet it now has a golden opportunity to pass a commonsense bipartisan bill to help address the challenges family caregivers face. Last week the U.S. Senate unanimously passed the Recognize, Assist, Include, Support and Engage, (RAISE) Family Caregivers Act (S. 1028). The thrust of the measure is to develop a coordinated strategy to support family caregivers that would engage the private and public sectors. The Senate version of the RAISE Family Caregivers Act was sponsored by Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine and Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis. and Reps. Gregg Harper, R-Miss. and Kathy Castor, D-Fla. sponsored the bill (H.R. 3759) in the House. The importance of the 40 million Americans who help care for loved ones – and the moral and fiscal importance of supporting them – cannot be underestimated. Nor can the importance of enacting the RAISE Family Caregivers Act. Aging in place at home is a far less expensive alternative than a nursing home. In many cases that’s only made possible by family caregiver help with bathing, dressing, transportation, meals, and more, along with vital medical tasks from managing medications to giving injections and providing wound care. The moral imperative of caring for a loved one is obvious. The hard dollar value of such care often isn’t. It’s estimated that the value of unpaid care provided by this silent army of family caregivers is $470 billion a year. By way of comparison, that roughly equals the annual sales of IBM, Hewlett Packard, Apple and Microsoft in 2013-2014. Combined. The equation here is simple: If that $470 billion in care didn’t exist, either the care wouldn’t exist or the taxpayers could be picking up the tab to provide it. A look at America’s demographics show a level of urgency on this issue that might escape most Americans. On one hand we’re aging as a nation, with 10,000 baby boomers turning 65 every day (with up to 90 percent of that cohort dealing with one or more chronic health conditions). The fastest growing segment of the population is Americans 85 and older; that’s the segment most at risk for multiple and interacting health problems requiring higher levels of care. On the flip side, we’re running low on family caregivers. In 2010 there were 7.2 potential family caregivers for every American 80 and older. That’s expected to drop to 4 to 1 in by 2030 and 3 to 1 by 2050. Caregivers are going to need more help. They already need more help. Caring for a loved one is the right thing to do, and it’s rewarding, but it often comes at a cost to the caregiver including through elevated levels of stress and health problems of their own, particularly a greater incidence of chronic conditions like depression, cancer and heart disease. Here’s how the RAISE Family Caregivers Act will help: It calls for bringing together private and public sector voices to recommend action steps via an advisory council formed under the bill. The council would include veterans, family caregivers, social service and health providers and employers, among others. It would help identify actions already being taken or that ought to be taken to recognize and support family caregivers, related to: • Promoting greater adoption of person-and family-centered care in all health and other settings, with the person and the family caregiver (as appropriate) at the center of care teams; • Assessment and service planning (including care transitions and coordination) involving care recipients and family caregivers; • Information, education, training supports, referral, and care coordination; • Respite options; • Financial security and workplace issues. The unanimous, bipartisan support in the Senate sends a strong message to the House, where the legislation is pending in the House Education and the Workforce Committee, chaired by Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C. Another North Carolinian, former Sen. Elizabeth Dole, said “The unanimous Senate vote sends a clear and strong signal that supporting caregivers is an urgent national priority, especially as we experience the effects of an aging population, better understand the unique needs of our wounded warriors, and recognize the drastic personal, financial, and health challenges of caregiving. (The Senate) vote signals that help is on the way, and that the work caregivers do day in and day out for their loved ones is critically important. “Now it’s time for the House of Representatives to act, and I call on them to pass this legislation before the end of the year. “The Elizabeth Dole Foundation is proud to have joined with more than 60 national organizations in supporting this important legislation.” This is a nonpartisan issue that affects families across the country. And it’s a legislative accomplishment waiting to happen. The sooner, the better.

Filing for candidates seeking office across North Carolina begins Feb. 12. As far as certainty regarding the 2018 elections in the Tar Heel state goes, that’s about it. Seriously. As we rolled into February there were uncertainties regarding: Congressional district lines As it stands now, North Carolina could see its fourth straight election conducted with congressional district maps federal courts say are unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court paused a federal court ruling against those maps to consider partisan gerrymandering cases from Wisconsin and Maryland. A decision on the legality of gerrymandering is expected in June, long after congressional campaigns would have set sail. The high court has been hesitant to step in on partisan gerrymandering in the past, but hasn’t had to deal with maps as blatantly gerrymandered as the ones being turned out now, thanks to powerful computing technology. In North Carolina, registration runs Democrat, Unaffiliated and Republican, in that order. Yet the state’s maps have seen 10 of 13 congressional districts go to Republicans. GOP state Rep. David Lewis of Harnett County, in a defense of the map, said “electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats.” He also said the GOP holds 10 of 13 seats only because they couldn’t come up with a map guaranteeing them 11. State legislative lines A federal three-judge panel in 2017 decided state legislative district maps were racially biased and ordered them redrawn. In January, the redrawn maps were also thrown out, and the court used a map drawn by an outside expert to produce new maps. GOP lawmakers asked the Supreme Court for an emergency stay. As the filing deadline approaches, any number of hopefuls are uncertain of what district they could run for. If the matter stays tied up in court, it’s entirely conceivable maps deemed illegal could be used in this year’s election for state house races. State courts The Republican majorities elected in 2010 have been very busy on this front ever since. Public financing of campaigns has been eliminated; non-partisan races are now partisan. Shortly after Gov. Roy Cooper was elected in 2016 and two Republican judges neared retirement (as governor, Cooper had the power to name their replacements), the size of the appellate court was cut by three seats. Judicial tinkering has gone into high gear recently. A law was passed making every judicial race in the state partisan. All judicial primaries for 2018 were cancelled. Proposals have been floated to cut the length of judicial terms, to redraw judicial lines in a manner that would force sitting Democratic judges to run against one another and to replace elections with a legislature-controlled appointment process. On Jan. 31, U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles issued an order restoring primaries for statewide judicial offices. If that stands, it will prevent the possibility of a cluttered ballot and prevent the possibility of a judge being elected with a mere 30 percent of the vote. With the General Assembly still considering redrawing judicial lines for lower courts, the ruling doesn’t apply to district and superior court judgeships. Election boards This is one that has flown under the radar of most people, but it’s important. Following Cooper’s election, the General Assembly passed S.L. 2017-6, which merged the state’s ethics and elections board into the Bipartisan State Board of Elections and Ethics. It changed the makeup of county election boards. Previously, the party of the governor held the majority of the three-member county boards. S.L. 2017-6 changed the composition of the boards to an even number of Democrats and Republicans. In the current partisan environment that makes a recipe for gridlock in many counties. Cooper sued, and over the seven months of the suit county boards were left at three members with GOP majorities. In late January, the N.C. Supreme Court overturned S.L. 2017-6. No timeline for naming new boards was included in the ruling. The case will be back in the hands of a three-judge panel that is expected to determine the impact of the ruling, likely by mid-February. We may look back at those seven months as critical ones. Actions not addressed by an empty state board include replacing aging voting machines and making sure software that went haywire in 2016 has been decertified. (That software, by the way, was targeted by Russian hackers across the country in 2016). North Carolina’s 2018 elections are surely built on shifting sands, and those shifts could continue with the back-and-forth of court rulings and challenges and a state legislature that seems to have endless … creativity, shall we say … when it comes to rigging the game in one party’s favor. Voters will need to stay tuned to an unprecedented degree.

As summer vacation for students nears an end, now is a good time to take a look at the state of K-12 schools in North Carolina, given the significant changes legislated over much of this decade by the Republican-led legislature. One notable is the change in control of the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) along with a number of other moves that are changing the face of public education in North Carolina. The overriding question the public has to ask is: Will legislative and administrative changes by State Superintendent Mark Johnson result in smaller class sizes, higher reading and math scores, graduation rates, and recruitment and retention of teachers? Give the Republicans credit; they have made a strong effort to improve public schools since they took control of the legislature. Remember, elections have consequences. At the end of the day every person in the state covets better schools. Better schools result in students being better prepared for college, careers and assuming the role of being responsible and informed citizens. Our democracy is predicated on having educated people who can lead the next generation. Johnson has put in place a web-based infrastructure for school and district performance accountability by providing access to a Report Card for the general public. The report card is comprehensive and covers a wide range of areas, including overall school and district performance, end of grade performance in math and reading, readiness of students, teacher qualifications, teacher turnover and much more. The Republicans have been strong advocates for preparing students to join the workforce. The report card site also offers a student readiness indicator for students who are interested in a technical education. The transparency of school performance is to be commended. Another significant change is the reporting relationship between the local district superintendents, DPI board and the state superintendent. Johnson informed DPI leaders that their reporting relationship had changed and they now report to him, the state superintendent, and not the State Board of Education. Johnson cited the N.C. Supreme Court ruling that upheld Session Law 2016-126, that gives the authority to direct education in the State to the State Superintendent. With the state superintendent’s new power and the lifting of the cap on the number of charter schools in the state, it is important for parents and legislators to watch the growth of state-funded charter schools. Charter schools are not fully accountable to many of the educational regulations that public schools must follow. Charter school enrollment now exceeds 100,000 and continues to grow. We can expect this trend to continue with taxpayer funding being tapped to allow families to send their children to alternative schools, which are often becoming more racially and economically segregated. No one can fault a parent for seeking the best education possible for their children in their neighborhood. However, policymakers need to ensure that the growth of charter and private schools does not diminish the educational opportunities for children who are less fortunate and live in rural and urban areas, which rely more heavily on traditional public education. The continued growth of charter schools will potentially lead to more separation and unequal education opportunities for children. The 2018-19 DPI budget is $9.60 billion dollars. Notable budget adjustments include an average 3.3 percent teacher pay raise, with raises for almost every step and an increase and bonuses of $385 for 25 years of service. Click here for more detailed budget information. Compensation for teachers and the importance of having committed and well-compensated teachers is an important component of a successful educational system. The state deserves some credit for increasing teacher pay by an average of 20 percent since 2013-14. However, keep in mind North Carolina’s legislature did not legislate the compensation increases willingly. Teachers pressured legislators, similar to the political pressure that took place in West Virginia, Oklahoma and Arizona. Despite the pay increases, North Carolina teacher pay is ranked an abysmal 43rd in the nation at $47,941 and below the national average of $58,353, according to the National Education Association and US Census. North Carolina ranks 9th in the nation in terms of student population with 2 million children aged 5 to 17, which speaks to the critical importance of fair educational opportunities for all children. The legislative requirements to lower K-3 class size to 17 students per class within three years is laudable, and the fact that legislators have earmarked $61 million for art and PE teachers demonstrates a commitment to executing the smaller classroom policy. Many systems were looking at the prospect of eliminating those positions in order to find dollars to meet the smaller class size mandate. Funding needs to be a priority to ensure classroom space is made available and teachers are recruited and competitively compensated to fulfill this worthy and timely educational policy. The next few years will position North Carolina to move up the rankings for educational achievement and teacher pay. Not doing so would be a doing a disservice to the teachers and students of the state.

Many Americans, both Republican and Democrats, agree on one thing. The Russia investigation should be allowed to be completed. As we concern ourselves with a president who attacks our institutions as he seeks to satisfy his base, we need someone to trust and give us an unbiased analysis of what happened with the Russians. That person is Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller. America’s democracy is being challenged by partisan politics that are designed to maintain a white superiority in our fast-changing, ethnically diverse nation. The 2016 election was not about voters feeling economic deprivation. It was about their cultural fears that their status was at risk as a result of the changing racial demographic trends of the nation, according to a study published by PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences). America is projected to be a “minority-majority” nation by the year 2044, according to numerous demographers. This cultural shift contributed to Donald Trump’s election as president. Trump and other Republican elected officials are using this racial and cultural anxiety to their advantage and to the detriment of the nation — a nation of immigrants. A quick look at recent history illustrates the fierce dismantling of democratic processes and fair government in our country. North Carolina is considered a political microcosm of the country’s hyper-partisan politics and growing mistrust among political parties, according to Duke law professor Jedediah Purdy. When you examine the political warfare in North Carolina, the list of issues the state has faced, including Republican racially motivated voter suppression, voter ID laws, gerrymandering of voter districts, and the push to end Sunday and same-day voting, has resulted in Republicans holding supermajorities in both the N.C. House and Senate. Progressive pastor and former North Carolina NAACP President William Barber says “systemic racism” in restricting voter participation is a threat to our democracy. Barber goes on to say that 22 states passed voter suppression laws since 2016. Moreover, the political maneuvers to restrict the authority of newly elected Governor Roy Cooper with regard to his responsibilities as governor of North Carolina are also meant to keep power with the Republicans. Trump has demonstrated authoritarian tendencies by attacking America’s institutions, including the media, the courts, the justice system and anyone that he sees as a threat to his authority. Trump has demonstrated that he will not tell the truth and is embolden by a weak Congress that refuses to execute their responsibility to hold the executive branch accountable. The president has refused to acknowledge the Russians impacted our elections and continues to call the investigation of the Russian tactics a “witch hunt.” He fired FBI director James Comey and on national television admitted that he fired him because of the Russian investigation. Trump’s actions and those of his elected supporters should give American’s pause. U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, closed off the House Russia investigation without allowing a minority dissent report, and U.S.. Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), is pushing attention away from the Russian investigation and calling for an investigation into the FBI in an attempt to distract from the issue. These activities and many more, including the president’s infatuation with dictators and strongmen, call for an evaluation of the direction of the nation. Trumps supportive comments of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and Chinese President Xi Jinping, who has positioned himself as president for life, demonstrate his infatuation with dictators. Trump was quoted by CNN as saying, “And look, he (Jinping) was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot some day.” Another example: Trump called Putin, America’s chief opponent, to congratulate him on his re-election, drawing bruising criticism from members of his own party, including a leading senator who scorned the election as a “sham.” The nation needs Mueller, an American icon, a man who has served the nation as a decorated soldier. He served as the sixth director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 2001 to 2013. A Republican, President George W. Bush, appointed him. President Barack Obama gave his original ten-year term a two-year extension, making him the longest-serving FBI director since J. Edgar Hoover. He is our best hope to help our country find out how the Russians attacked our electoral process and what we need to do to prevent it from happening again. We also need a Congress that lives up to its constitutional responsibilities as an equal branch government. Enablers such as Rep. Nunes and Rep. Meadows should be voted out of office. Our president is challenging America’s democracy and Congress is not holding him accountable, while he continues to attack our institutions of government and our sense of checks and balances. America needs Mueller to complete his work and to provide answers to the role Russia had, if any, in the president’s campaign.

There couldn’t be a more compelling example of the urgency to vote in the upcoming midterm election than President Trump’s recent threats to overturn the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution with an executive order. This is America’s foundational document. A change can only be initiated by two-thirds majorities of Congress or the states and can only take effect after three-fourths of the states have ratified it. There is no path for a president to change the Constitution. Yet this president boldly asserts that he can. The founders anticipated someone like our current president being elected, and built checks on runaway executive power into the Constitution by setting up co-equal branches of government. They never anticipated one of those branches, Congress, would forgo exercising that power. Yet, to date, the Republican-controlled House and Senate have shown little inclination to challenge President Trump. That’s something North Carolina voters need to keep in mind when they select the 13 men and women from this state who will represent us in Congress come Nov. 6. With the Republicans in control of the executive branch, Congress and now the majority on the Supreme Court, there is grave concern that the current president believes and demonstrates he is in control of the entirety of government. Additionally, he attacks the free press calling it the “enemy of the people” and attacks all of his critics and anyone who challenges his authority. He attacks the nation’s historical allies, embraces the authoritarian regime in Russia, tells lies continuously and threatens to end the probe that is investigating him and his presidential campaign. With the control that our 45th president holds over the branches of government that are designed to provide checks and balances, we have the makings of a government where far too much power rests in the hands of one man. A dictatorship is an authoritarian form of government where power rests with one ruler. Today there are at least 24 dictatorships in the world. The United States is not one of them. But the very fact that some now worry that what might once have seemed inconceivable is even remotely possible is alarming in and of itself. Many would argue that a dictatorship cannot happen in America. Author Jim Powell a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute outlines eight points that can lead a nation towards an authoritarian form of government: Bad economic policies and foreign policies can cause crises that have dangerous political consequences. Politicians commonly demand arbitrary power to deal with a national emergency and restore order, even though underlying problems are commonly caused by bad government policies. In hard times, many people are often willing to go along with and support terrible things that would be unthinkable in good times. Those who dismiss the possibility of a dictatorial regime in America need to consider possible developments that could make our circumstances worse and politically more volatile than they are now – like runaway government spending, soaring taxes, more wars, inflation and economic collapse. Aspiring dictators sometimes give away their intentions by their evident desire to destroy opponents. There’s no reliable way to prevent bad or incompetent people from gaining power. A political system with a separation of powers and checks & balances – like the U.S. Constitution – does make it more difficult for one branch of government to dominate the others. Ultimately, liberty can be protected only if people care enough to fight for it, because everywhere governments push for more power, and they never give it up willingly. By this standard, a president who starts tariff wars with China and threatens to undo Constitutional amendments raises alarms. Add to that a Congress whose spending policies increased the deficit by 14 percent in 2017 and there’s real cause for worry. With the pending election, it is imperative that Americans vote and elect candidates who will protect our republic that has long been a beacon of hope and leadership for the world. Elections have consequences and those elected provide the direction for the nation. And yes, every vote counts. Our president has demonstrated that if things are not going his way, it is a conspiracy of the deep state. Examples include the “rigged’’ 2016 election when the polls indicated he would not win the presidency. He did not believe the unemployment numbers during the past administration, arguing that they were fake. When the numbers continued to improve during his administration, they were the best ever. We have had imperfect and untruthful leaders before, but they’ve been held in check by our system of government with its separation of powers. Never in recent history has that system felt more fragile. The election of greater consequence is the 2020 presidential election. If the current president loses the 2020 election, will he accept the results or will he refuse to vacate the office, saying the election was rigged? What as a nation do we do at that time with a president who exerts control over the Congress and the Supreme Court and drives the nation into a perilous constitutional crisis? As the Cato Institute’s Powell pointed out, liberty can only be protected if people care enough to fight for it. Now more than ever, it’s critical to care enough to become informed and vote.

Our nation marked the 50th anniversary of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination on April 4, just days after a group of teenagers from Marjory Stoneman High School in Parkland, Florida, organized hundreds of thousands of people in the March 24 “March for Our Lives” nationwide protests against gun violence. On February 14, a gunman killed 17 people and injured another 17 at Marjory Stoneman. Nikolas Cruz, 19, has been charged. Within 6 weeks, students from Stoneman organized hundreds of thousands of people at more than 800 nationwide protests, including the Washington, DC, march that brought together 800,000. Statewide, thousands marched in Asheville, Raleigh, Wilmington and elsewhere. The “March for Our Lives” movement faces gun control opponents, particularly the National Rifle Association. Conservatives in the news media and social media trolls have ridiculed the massacre survivors. Stoneman student Kyle Kashuv has emerged as an outspoken pro-Second Amendment advocate. But it’s easy to lay out dichotomies, color the nation in black and white along battle lines. That is the work of the nefarious Russian social media bots that spewed hate-filled messages bent on dividing Americans prior to the 2016 elections. They built on the worst in us, and America took the bait. It’s harder to seek and act on opportunities for change by using King’s principles. To make a difference, we don’t have to hate the people with whom we disagree. King describes this and other strategies for nonviolent resistance in his first book, “Stride Toward Freedom.” 1) Resist evil without resorting to violence. 2) Seek the “friendship and understanding” of the opponent, not to humiliate him. 3) Evil itself, not the people committing evil acts, should be opposed. 4) Suffer without retaliation as suffering itself can be redemptive. 5) Refuse to shoot the opponent; refuse to hate him. 6) Have a “deep faith in the future.” King, only 29 when he wrote “Stride,” had that faith in the future. As in King’s time, the Stoneman Douglas teenagers are building a movement on a shared cry for justice and outrage at a political system that has ignored them. To their credit, they haven’t aligned themselves with a particular political party. Instead, they call for Republicans and Democrats to come together: “We demand morally just leaders to rise up from both parties in order to ensure public safety.” To back that up, like King, they have made voter registration and voting one of the cornerstones of their movement for change. At “March for Our Lives” rallies, volunteers worked the crowds, registering young and old to vote. The students also have sponsored or have planned “Town Hall for Our Lives” with candidates in cities and towns statewide, including Wilmington, Hickory, Greensboro, and Raleigh. While thousands of North Carolina students have walked out of class, marched, and organized to demand tighter gun control laws, Republican legislators are unlikely to respond to the students’ call for change. To the contrary, they are more likely to loosen state gun laws. The “March for Our Lives” movement comes at a time in our state’s history when we have a Republican-held Legislature with a super majority holding enough votes to overrule Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat. But this could change. In past elections, where district lines have been drawn to heavily favor one party, the other party has failed to put forth a candidate. According to an analysis by the News and Observer, the 2016 general election included 73 districts in which just one of the major parties fielded a candidate. Republicans had no candidate in 30 House races and four Senate races; Democrats didn’t have a candidate in 28 House races and 11 Senate races. This year, both parties heavily recruited candidates. Some districts have more than one candidate from a particular party on the ballot. North Carolina holds primary elections May 8. For the first time in recent memory, Democrats and Republicans have filed to run for nearly all 170 state legislative seats. The 13 U.S. representatives from the state have filed for re-election. All of them have at least one opponent. “March for Our Lives” seeks to get younger voters to register and vote. There is tremendous opportunity for this generation to flex their muscles at the polls. This year, millennials will pass baby boomers as the largest generation of Americans eligible to vote, making up 34 percent of the voter-eligible population. Their challenge is to get these voters to the polls: Young voters historically vote at lower rates. But the angst of the young, like King and the Stoneman students, can fuel important social and political change. Now is the time for them, and for the rest of the state and nation, to seize this moment. The students also have hope—that their movement will make a difference. As history has shown, seizing power requires shrewd tactics fueled by passion and the persistence to see the fight through in the long term. These kids have their whole lives. As King wrote, “The universe is on the side of justice.” T

The violent events that transpired in Charlottesville were very disturbing and a terrible sign for our country and the nation. Three people lost their lives. Heather Heyer and Virginia State Troopers H. Jay Cullen and Berke Bates were killed during the hate-filled rally. We like to think that the great majority of Americans don’t exhibit the kind of hate we saw on full display in Charlottesville. We know there is racism and bigotry in our country. We witnessed the vile names former president Barack Obama was called, along with the bigotry towards his wife and children. We witnessed the shootings at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, on the evening of June 17, 2015. During a prayer service, nine people (including the senior pastor, state Sen. Clementa C. Pinckney) were killed by gunman Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old white supremacist. Roof confessed to the shootings in hopes of starting a race war. And now Charlottesville. Three vivid examples of racial hate in our nation. Some have argued there are a small number of people who harbor these types of hate. Some argue that the election of America’s first black president was the tipping point for some who are concerned with losing the country. When we hear people say, “Take our country back,” the question is, take it back from whom? Other Americans? This is a dog-whistle for some that America should continue to be a white-ethnocentric nation. The truth is, the diversity in our nation makes us the most unique nation in the world and has led to America being the greatest nation the world has ever seen. The nation will continue to grow and become even more diverse. All we need do is look at the children being born in this nation. The Public School Review reports: “It has been an ongoing trend for nearly two decades—while the total number of students in American public schools has risen, the percentage of those students who are white has steadily fallen.” According to the Pew Research Center, in 1997, over 63 percent of the 46.1 million U.S. public school students were white. Today, white students comprise just 49.7 percent of the 50 million students enrolled.” This fact may contribute to the hysteria and hate of the alt-right, Nazi, white supremacist and KKK marchers as they shouted, “Jews will not replace us. Blacks will not replace us.” These comments from the marchers indicate an underlying fear that they are losing their position as the majority group in the United States and thus are espousing hate against Jews and blacks. When you evaluate hate groups in the United States, you may be surprised to know they reside in every state in the Union. Led by California’s 79 hate groups, the Southern Poverty Law Center reports there are 917 hate groups in the United States. Surprisingly South Carolina has a low number of 12 and Florida has 63. The growth of hate groups peaked in 2011 at 1,018 and declined by 25% or 234 in 2014; and grew by 133 groups or 17% in 2016. Mind you, these groups represent anti-Muslim, KKK, anti-government and black separatist groups. Hate is hate, regardless of who promotes it. The question is, what can be done about this, given the lack of moral leadership from our elected president and Congress? The answer is, we the people have to step up and hold our lawmakers accountable and replace them if they lack the moral courage to do what is right. We the people have to set the example of loving thy neighbor for our children, for young people and each other to build bridges of respect, while rejecting hate. We must join together with our work colleagues, our churches, our institutions of higher learning, our schools and our neighbors, and fellow countryman. We cannot afford to allow fringe groups to hijack our nation with hate. We have to show each other and the world that we are a nation of immigrants and we continue to be exceptional by resolving our differences in a respectful and collaborative way. We are an exceptional nation, and it is up to us to maintain our exceptionalism.