McCrory/Pope/Civitas administration

by Chris Fitzsimon, NC Policy Watch and NC SPIN panelist, January 24, 2014.

One of the more interesting news items of the week was the announcement that the Pope Civitas Institute was paying for $20,000 worth of radio ads praising the tax shift passed by state lawmakers last year.

You know you are in trouble when you have to run ads trying to convince people that they are getting a tax cut.

And it is going to be a tough sell, since it’s not true. Most people in North Carolina will pay more in state taxes this year. Almost a million low-wage workers are losing the state Earned Income Tax Credit, middle class families are losing the 529 college savings plan, and small businesses are losing a tax break passed just three years ago.

When you add up all the numbers, the bottom 80 percent of taxpayers on average will pay more in state taxes than they paid last year. People who earn a million dollars will pay roughly $10,000 less.

It’s understandable that the folks on the Right are panicked about the political ramifications of their Robin Hood in reverse scheme but a few radio ads are not going to convince people that they are better off when they know it is simply not true.

One other note about the Civitas ads. It’s interesting that the vast influence of State Budget Director Art Pope is so ingrained in Raleigh’s political culture that the media often neglects to connect the dots any more for their audiences.

The fact that Civitas is funded almost exclusively by Pope is an important part of the story. It is not an independent political group taking a position on the tax cuts. A group bankrolled by the State Budget Director is now running ads praising tax cuts supported by the budget director and Governor Pat McCrory.

Civitas (and the rest of the Pope think tank empire) is now in effect an extension of the McCrory Administration and it seems like the public should be reminded of that when Civitas uses Pope’s money to influence public opinion.

Rhetoric and reality about school privatization

Governor McCrory appeared at a “school choice” rally in Charlotte this week organized by Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina, a group that helped convince the General Assembly to create a voucher scheme to divert public funding to almost completely unaccountable private and religious schools.

McCrory told the crowd that charter schools should be held accountable if they don’t meet the standards the state expects, though the tough rhetoric seems a little empty considering the woeful accountability for many charter schools.

One charter in Winston-Salem, Quality Education Academy, has been under investigation since at least 2010 for questionable financial practices and creating a basketball factory that recruits international players.

The school was the subject of an investigative report last year by Sarah Ovaska with NC Policy Watch. Education officials acknowledged there were serious problems at the school, but that didn’t prevent the State Board of Education from approving another charter school to be run by the CEO of Quality Education Academy.

McCrory also supports the sketchy voucher scheme approved last year by state legislators even though there is virtually no accountability in the program. One religious school in Davidson County that has three students and one teacher and has never been inspected is on the list of schools eligible to receive taxpayer money.

So are many schools that openly discriminate against gay students and use textbooks that claim that dinosaurs and humans co-existed on Earth and that gay people have no more claims to special rights than child molesters or rapists.

Someone needs to ask Governor McCrory why he supports public funding of those schools and how it intersects with the “high standards” he wants all schools to meet.

No explanation for McCrory gaffe on unemployment

And finally, there’s still no explanation for Governor McCrory’s blatantly false claim last week that laid off workers in other states had been moving to North Carolina because of the state’s generous unemployment benefits.

McCrory made the claim in an interview on NC SPIN to justify the draconian cuts to benefits made by the General Assembly last summer in legislation that he enthusiastically signed into law.

But workers from other states who have not worked in North Carolina are not eligible to receive unemployment benefits here. That is true now and it was true last year before benefits were slashed.

McCrory’s spokesperson said McCrory based the absurd statement on “personal stories he’s heard.” That’s an odd justification that raises several other questions. What sort of stories?

Does McCrory not understand the unemployment law that his own administration administers? Is he just repeating some intentionally misleading talking point from folks who supported the cuts in benefits? Or is he basing his rhetoric on vague unconfirmed anecdotes that can’t be true given the law?

McCrory is either not telling the truth or is woefully misinformed. It’s hard to decide which would be worse from the person currently running the state.

- See more at: http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2014/01/24/the-follies-190/#sthash.QV7ZQFhl.dpuf