Friday, March 1, 2019 -- A round up of opinion, commentary and analysis on: Accused political operative McCrae Dowless released on bond, sex ed would be opt-in instruction under House bill, number of Charlotte murders quadruples year to date, 21 new flu deaths reported in NC, farms concerned about impending return to cold weather and more.
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CAMPAIGN 2018 RERUN & REAL ELECTION FRAUD?
ADAM OWENS: Accused political operative McCrae Dowless released on bond (WRAL-TV reports) -- A day after he was arrested on election fraud-related charges, political operative McCrae Dowless was released from the Wake County jail after a former member of the Bladen County Board of Elections helped bail him out.
BRYAN MIMS: Shooting range owner Stony Rushing taking aim at 9th District seat (WRAL-TV reports) -- When Republican Mark Harris bowed out of the new election state officials ordered in the 9th Congressional District, he also offered his own idea on who should represent the district in the U.S. House – Stony Rushing.
JIM MORRILL: GOP gears up for 9th District special election sprint: ‘I don’t think the list is done’ (Durham-Herald Sun reports) — Stony Rushing is collecting endorsements. Tommy Tucker is forming a staff. And Matthew Ridenhour is building a case. The three are among what could be a flurry of Republicans running or considering campaigns in NC’s special congressional election in the 9th District
GENERAL ASSEMBLY 2019
RICHARD ATKINS: Sex ed would be opt-in, not opt-out instruction under House bill (WRAL-TV reports) -- A proposal sponsored by conservative House members could change the way students receive health and sex education instruction in North Carolina schools. The state requires schools to offer sex education classes, but House Bill 196 would strike a provision requiring school systems to have an opt-out provision for students whose parents don't want their children to get the instruction. Instead, the bill would require schools to obtain parental permission before a child could attend the classes.
GINGER LIVINGSTON: Bill would block changes to state health plan (Greenville Daily Reflector reports) -- Legislators want to use a joint study committee to delay the state treasurer’s efforts to reform the state employee health plan. State Treasurer Dale Folwell said the legislation “locks in a failed and bankrupt system” if it passes. Folwell announced last year he wanted to reduce reimbursement rates to health care providers, saving $300 million for taxpayers and $65 million for plan members annually. The state health plan, starting in 2020, would pay providers a rate based on what Medicare pays with an additional reimbursement that will average 77 percent more than Medicare. Vidant Health officials have actively opposed the plan, saying it would cut its revenues by $40 million, forcing it to curtail services.
THOMAS GOLDSMITH: With little budget leeway, advocates bring growing needs of older NC residents to NCGA (N.C. Health News reports) -- Advocates for older people arrived at the General Assembly bearing a list of needs but also knowing that new funding will be hard to nail down.
MATTHEW BURNS: School bond proposal sets stage for legislative fight (WRAL-TV reports) -- House Speaker Tim Moore and other education leaders in the House unveiled plans to put a $1.9 billion school construction bond proposal before North Carolina voters next year.
LAUREN HORSCH: Goodman Appointed (The Insider reports) -- Gov. Roy Cooper announced that he's appointing Rep. Ken Goodman, D-Richmond, to the Industrial Commission. The appointment is subject to General Assembly confirmation. If appointed, Goodman's term would begin on May 1, 2019. He would have to resign his General Assembly seat. Goodman is one of the more moderate Democrats in the House.
Mental-health study a positive step (Winston-Salem Journal) -- A bill that would allow state officials to study performing mental-health screenings on public school students has begun making its way through state legislative committees. This legislation is a worthwhile step in tackling the problem
ADAM WAGNER: Could NC bill accelerate scooters coming to Wilmington? (Wilmington Star-News reports) — A bill winding its way through the N.C. General Assembly could ultimately result in Wilmington regulating shared electrical scooters that have become popular among users in some cities and caused regulatory headaches in others.
POLICY & POLITICS
Meadows, Tlaib hug after dispute over race in Cohen hearing (AP reports) -- Two lawmakers who clashed bitterly over race hugged it out on the House floor. Reps. Mark Meadows of North Carolina and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan embraced and chatted for almost a minute as the House took its final votes of the week. It was a striking sight after the pair fought during Michael Cohen's hearing a day earlier. There, Meadows tried to rebut Cohen's charge that President Donald Trump is a racist. Behind Meadows stood a longtime Trump family friend, Lynne Patton, who is black. Meadows said Patton would not work for anyone racist.
TERRY TANG &DEEPTI HAJELA: Many view 'black friend defense' as a tired, hollow argument (AP reports) – Kelly Darden Jr. of Greenville, N.C., and countless other African-Americans have experienced variations of the “black friend defense” — saying that a person can’t be racist because of the color of the company he keeps — for generations. And the trope played out in front of a national TV audience this week as Republican Rep. Mark Meadows, R-NC, defended President Donald Trump against testimony by Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen , who claimed the president is racist. Meadows quickly sent social media into a frenzy when he pointed to Lynne Patton, a black Trump administration staffer, and said Patton never would tolerate working for a racist.
MATTHEW CHOI: Tlaib says lawmakers 'gasped' when Meadows brought up black Trump employee (Politico reports) -- Rep. Rashida Tlaib said Thursday that she and others in the House Oversight Committee room gasped on Wednesday when Rep. Mark Meadows pointed to a black Trump administration official as evidence that President Donald Trump is not racist, condemning Meadows' move as racist. “I think all of us, I mean, even folks at home kind of gasped when that actually happened,” Tlaib (D-Mich.) said on CNN Thursday morning. “I think if we want to talk about race in this country, that was not the way do it.”
PETER MARKS: Cohen hearing wasn’t a hearing at all. It was cheap theatrics. (Washington Post analysis) -- Some of the theatrics were so transparent and tasteless as to be appalling, and indicative, too, of how gullible some in Washington imagine the rest of us to be. This was most clearly in evidence early in the day and during the proceeding’s lowest moment: the jaw-droppingly offensive sight of a white Republican from North Carolina, Rep. Mark Meadows, using a black woman as a prop.
SHERYL GAY STOLBERG: Clash at the Cohen Hearing Reveals the Left’s Racial Divide (New York Times reports) -- As the child of former sharecroppers, Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland is no stranger to blunt conversations about race. But when a fiery freshman Democrat practically accused a conservative Republican of racism on Wednesday, the uneasy truce that Mr. Cummings brokered put him in the center of a raw debate over race and gender in a changing House.
PAUL KANE: Cummings and Meadows have almost nothing in common — except a friendship (Washington Post reports) -- Rep. Mark Meadows made his reputation on Capitol Hill as the guy who sets political fires. Rep. Elijah E. Cummings rose to national fame as a leader trying to put fires out in his hometown. The western North Carolina Republican and the Baltimore Democrat have almost nothing in common, except their service on the House Oversight Committee. Yet the duo have developed a kinship that went under the radar until Wednesday’s hearing with President Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.
KASHANA CAULEY: Mark Meadows and the Victim Card (New York Times column) -- President Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, testified before Congress with evidence that the president had committed campaign finance violations and is of terrible moral character. But it turns out the real victim wasn’t our democracy. It was Mark Meadows, a Republican who represents North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District. Mr. Meadows somehow managed to turn a hearing about whether the president broke the law into a minutes-long temper tantrum. He whined that it was wrong for Representative Rashida Tlaib, Democrat of Michigan, to say that Mr. Meadows’s decision to invite a black woman, Lynne Patton, a Department of Housing and Urban Development official who attended the hearing in her personal capacity, as a prop to show that Mr. Trump couldn’t possibly be racist, was itself a racist act.
MICHELLE GOLDBERG: Republicans’ Race to the Bottom (New York Times column) – Rep. Mark Meadows, R-NC, strenuously objected to Michael Cohen’s description, and came up with what he seemed to think was an airtight rejoinder. Meadows, who is white, had Lynne Patton, an African-American woman and longtime Trump employee now at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, stand behind him, and quoted her saying that she would not work for a racist. Checkmate!
MARK MAREMONT & LESLIE SCISM: N.C. Financier Who Amassed Insurance Firms Diverted $2 Billion Into His Private Empire (Wall Street Journal reports) – The sheer scale of Greg Lindberg’s use of insurance assets to invest in his own businesses has little precedent in recent decades, industry experts say, and exposes hundreds of thousands of policyholders to a potentially risky strategy. He is under investigation by the FBI and state authorities. Lindberg invested premiums from a series of insurance companies into other companies he owns, making such investments at a far higher rate than industry standards meant to protect policyholders from risky investments that could dry up money needed to pay claims. For example, Lindberg moved a company to North Carolina to accomplish this, using the state's looser rules and an agreement with unidentified regulators to boost those investments during Wayne Goodwin's time as state insurance commissioner. These arrangements – funneling insurance premiums through shell companies at a scale with "little precedent in recent decades" – helped Lindberg buy lavish properties, a 214-foot yacht, two jets and the most expensive private home ever bought in Raleigh. Much of that property is now up for sale, including Lindberg's mansions in Raleigh and Durham, and Lindberg is the target of a federal investigation with a grand jury meeting in Charlotte. He's given political donations mostly to Republicans in N.C., particularly the state Republican Party and entities backing Lt. Gov. Dan Forest, but he's a major donor to the state Democratic Party as well.
Asheville leaders OK fund to help with housing down payment (AP reports) -- Leaders in Asheville, a city with a tight housing market, have approved more than $1 million to help teachers, municipal workers and the poorest residents buy homes.
KEN SMITH: Surviving members of Chapel Hill Nine return to town on anniversary of sit-in (WRAL-TV reports) -- A special celebration was held as the town of Chapel Hill honored the Chapel Hill Nine.
NANCY MCLAUGHLIN: Former U.S. attorney general Loretta Lynch says she's always 'carried the lessons of Greensboro' (Greensboro News & Record reports) — Count former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch among those catching snippets of lawyer Michael Cohen’s testimony this week before Congress about his former client, President Donald Trump. Just don’t expect an opinion from the first black woman to serve as the country’s highest-ranking prosecutor, under President Barack Obama.
JOHN MURAWSKI: These NC midwives deliver babies at home illegally. They want legal status (Durham-Herald Sun reports) — Ashley Kopp-Houston was in her 81st hour of labor, too weak to walk on her own, when her midwife insisted it was time to go to the hospital. Kopp-Houston was having her first baby and had wanted a natural home birth: without medications, without doctors, without electronic monitors. But three days into labor, the baby wasn’t making progress, and her midwife was increasingly concerned.
RICHARD STRADLING: NC is a ‘sticky state,’ and other lessons on population growth (Durham-Herald Sun reports) — t’s also a pattern of development that two growing demographics in the region — millennials and retirees — are looking for in a place to live. Those are two of the observations made by demographers and planners who spoke at a forum about the region’s population growth Wednesday night.
MARK PRICE & FRED CLASEN-KELLY: ‘This has to stop.’ Number of Charlotte murders quadruples year to date (Charlotte Observer reports) — In response to a wave of killings rarely seen since the 1990s, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Kerr Putney said Thursday that the department is shifting officers to stem the city’s rate of murders.
EDUCATION
JEREMY BAUER-WOLF: Can Chapel Hill Take a Joke With a Point? (Inside Higher Ed reports) -- A student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill alleges that the institution took down her parody website that lampooned officials' handling of race relations and only restored it after a lawyer and civil rights group intervened. The website, called UNC Anti-Racist Jeopardy, modeled off the game show, asked questions about the university’s history and ties to racism and police and administrators' interactions with activists. For instance, in the category "violence against students," the game asks what was deployed against students at a dance party in August. Answer: pepper spray.
FERREL GUILLORY: Little-remembered veto holds a teacher quality lesson (EdNC column) – More than a decade ago, former Gov. Mike Easley objected to state government permitting the hiring of teachers who passed licensing exams in other states with lower standards than North Carolina. To do so, he argued, in effect would slide North Carolina down toward the lowest state standards. How could North Carolina raise its quality if it accepted teachers from elsewhere without regard to its own standards? He vetoed a bill that would have lowered the standards. And now, as history repeats itself as it is wont to do, the State Board of Education approaches a key decision on upholding quality in the North Carolina teaching corps. The Professional Educator Preparation and Standards Commission has recommended that the state board allow the hiring of out-of-state applicants with three or more years of teaching experience who have met another state’s testing requirements.
KELLY HINCHCLIFFE: Crime, suspensions, dropouts down in NC schools; expulsions, firearm possession up (WRAL-TV reports) -- North Carolina public schools saw a decrease in crime, suspensions, dropouts and corporal punishment last school year and an increase in expulsions, sexual assaults and possession of firearms, according to data posted Thursday on the State Board of Education's website.
N.C. A&T State U. says cheerleaders done for season (AP reports) -- Historically black N.C. A&T State University says its cheerleaders won't perform again during basketball season in light of rape allegations made by a cheer team member.
HEALTH
NATALIE MATTHEWS: 21 new flu deaths reported in NC (WRAL-TV reports) -- According to the latest flu death numbers from the N.C. Division of Public Health, 21 people died from the flu last week.
ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT
Farms concerned about impending return to cold weather (AP reports) -- Farmers in western North Carolina are worried about the current spell of warm and wet weather and an impending return to winter-like temperatures next week.
CATHERINE KOZAK: New Signs Warn of Lake’s Troubled Waters (Coastal Review reports) -- U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service posted new signs this week at Lake Mattamuskeet to warn the public about the harmful algal blooms, another problem associated with the lake’s deteriorating water quality.
… AND MORE
KELLY HINCHCLIFFE: Goodmons to receive Public School Forum of NC's education leadership award (WRAL-TV reports) -- James "Jim" and Barbara Goodmon were named recipients of the 2019 Public School Forum of North Carolina Jay Robinson Education Leadership Award. The Forum established the award in 2000 to recognize leaders who have demonstrated innovative, creative and effective leadership for public education in North Carolina.