Orange may be the new black for Fletcher Hartsell

Justice delayed is, well, sadly all too typical of the North Carolina State Board of Elections (SBOE), which also punches above its weight in the justice-denied part.

Nevertheless, the news about State Sen. Fletcher Hartsell, Jr. now facing federal as well as state charges for using his campaign funds as a personal piggy bank is a relief. WRAL reports

State Sen.Fletcher Hartsell, R-Cabarrus, faces charges of mail fraud and money laundering in connection with his campaign spending under a federal indictment handed down Tuesday.

Although Sen. Hartsell's self-dealing was pointed out in news articles (and other places) in January 2012, it took the SBOE until July 2015 to issue findings that this was actually a bad thing. A state indictment FINALLY followed in June of this year, and a federal indictment was issued on Tuesday.

In the meantime, guess who has continued to be a sitting state senator? Good 'ol Fletcher Hartsell, Jr. Not only that, his ethically challenged Republican peers kept him on as a chair, vice-chair, or co-chair of numerous committees, including the Finance Committee (presumably because he was so good with keeping track of finances).

Well, at least they got the "vice" part right.

Gov. McCrory--job destroyer

"Petty" and "thin-skinned" already appeared prominently on Gov. Pat McCrory's resume.

To those, you can now add "job-destroyer."

The Charlotte Observer explains

An employee at a Myers Park gourmet food store was fired after Gov. Pat McCrory’s security detail complained Sunday about a comment the worker made to the governor.

On Sunday afternoon, McCrory was shopping at Reid’s Fine Foods when Drew Swope, a 45-year-old cook, said he asked if he could help McCrory.

After realizing he was speaking with the governor, whom he disagrees with politically, Swope said he told McCrory, “Thanks for nothing,” and walked away.

Swope said the governor was upset at his comment and began “yelling” at him. He said McCrory said he was a customer and shouldn’t be treated that way.

He said the governor and his security team complained to the food store owner, who then fired him.

McCrory administration and NC General Assembly team up to punch $10-$40 million hole in Medicaid budget

They all can't be this incompetent. Can they?

What do you get when you combine the incompetent micro-managers in the North Carolina General Assembly with the incompetent bumblers in the NC Department of Health and Human Services?

A new $10 million to $40 million hole in the state's Medicaid budget.

The News & Observer picks up the story.

In August, the state’s Medicaid director asked the federal government for permission to postpone for three months the process for renewing Medicaid recipients’ coverage.

The federal government gave its approval, but the N.C. General Assembly didn’t. When lawmakers passed the state budget in July, they required the Department of Health and Human Services to get legislative approval for federal waivers.

The story indicates that the cost addressing the waiver that really isn't a waiver is somewhere between $10 million and $40 million.

Expect Human Services Secretary Aldona Wos to be along shortly with some explanation of how this is either President Obama's or former Gov. Bev Perdue's fault.

In the meantime, beginning teachers might not want to spend those promised raises.

NC also dragging its feet on Unemployment Insurance

For seven months, North Carolina has delayed the processing of food assistance cases.

WRAL reports that over the same period the state has also dragged its feet on Unemployment Insurance (UI) claims.

The number of unemployed North Carolina workers who waited longer than three weeks for their initial benefit check increased after a new unemployment insurance law took effect last summer.

The delays in caseload processing are due largely to Republican-enacted changes in the state's UI system.

Besides reducing the amount of benefits, reducing the length of benefits, and imposing an extra week's delay in receiving benefits, Republicans put workers on the hook for any overage mistakes that the state made.

Closer scrutiny of new applications has led to delays in awarding benefits.

As with its problems with Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program processing, the state is violating federal law. For UI, federal law requires that 87 percent of initial claims be paid within three weeks; however, NC has only been averaging 70 to 80 percent.

It doesn't seem that there is much that NC can do right--at least when it comes to its disadvantaged and vulnerable citizens.

Groundhog grade

Not-to-far-fetched news item: Emerging from his burrow on Sunday, Sen. Phil Berger saw his shadow, predicted that there would be six more weeks of third-grade for tens of thousands of North Carolina school children, and immediately crawled back into his burrow.

While above "news item" is fake, the prospect of a "Groundhog Grade" for NC third-graders and their families is all too real--and very much due to the ill-conceived meddling of Sen. Phil ("Punxsutawney Phil") Berger.

A while back, Punxsutawney Phil and his tea-party colleagues muscled through an education "reform" plan that requires third-graders to pass new reading proficiency tests. To give students the best chance of passing, most school districts are adopting a "portfolio" approach that subjects the students to 36 assessments.

Students who don't pass will be required to attend reading "camps" over the summer.

Those who don't attend the camps or fail the tests after the camps will get to do third grade over--and possibly over again.

Testing for the students is beginning and will continue for 12 weeks. It's hard to imagine much learning going on in the classrooms with students having to sit for the assessments and teachers having to conduct them.

It is estimated that somewhere between 37,000 and 75,000 students will fall short of the mark and be sent to the camps.

An analysis by the NC Department of Public Instruction  estimated that at least $18.3 million would be needed to fund the camps if 37,000 students failed the tests. However, in their wisdom, Punxsutawney Phil and his colleagues (who appear to have failed third-grade math) only allocated $15.5 million, leaving local school districts to pick up the rest of their tab.

It also looks like 37,000 is an optimistic figure--last year, more than 50,000 students (about half of all third graders) were short of proficiency.

Under-funded schools during the regular year; a long, drawn-out testing regime that interferes with learning; and woefully under-funded remedial programs are all a recipe for disaster.

If you inflicted this on NC families, you'd be crawling back into your burrow too.

"He’s a little nothing of a man”

So says, Janie Withers, the president of Paws-Ability after her meeting with NC state Sen. Bill Rabon.

Sen. Rabon begs to differ

I’m going to tell you one more time. Let me back up. Let me blow my own horn. I have been there for three years. I’m in the top five . . . The best shot you folks ever have you are talking to!

Did he mention that he was Chairman of the Finance Committee?

I am chairman of finance. Do you know what the Senate is going to say? You better vote for it because you won't get a bill out of short session. None of my bills will pass. If I am supporting it, so we pass it.

Arrogant? To borrow from another well-known Republican, "you betcha." But arrogance is to be expected from a man who begins a meeting with constituents explaining

I have legislative immunity. Means if I hear it or see it, it's a lie. I don't have to admit it.

To arrogant, you can also add condescending, antagonistic, and profane--or as Ms. Withers has more succinctly put it, "a little nothing."

Benefits from NC pre-school programs

A new peer-reviewed study by Duke researchers in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management shows that North Carolina's Smart Start and More at Four (now the NC Pre-Kindergarten) pre-school programs substantially improve third-graders' reading and math test scores.

The researchers linked third-graders' scores on standardized Spring reading and math tests to the counties where those third-graders were pre-schoolers. They then calculated county averages of the per-child spending on the Smart Start and More at Four programs for the years that each child was growing up.

The researchers focused on the years when both programs were being ramped up and found that spending on both programs was significantly and substantially positively associated with math and reading scores. The results held even in complex multivariate models that also accounted for the children's personal and family characteristics, county-specific effects, and time-effects.

The research is important in establishing the effectiveness of both programs. In particular, it shows that both programs have impacts that reach several years into elementary school.

However, it also shows the consequences of recent actions by Republican General Assemblies to slash these programs. In 2011, permanent state funding for Smart Start was cut by one-fifth, and one-time budget cuts along with state cuts to local governments reduced spending further. That same 2011 budget also sharply cut the NCPK program. Although Gov. Perdue replaced some of those funds through temporary allocations, that relief was not maintained in the 2013-5 budget.

The consequences will appear later this decade when the current cohort of pre-schoolers reach third grade with weaker reading and math skills.

And as that noted educational authority, Speaker Thom Tillis, has pointed out, "Students who can read at grade level by the end of third grade are four times more likely to graduate than those who cannot." 

So the decade that follows isn't looking so good either.

Busy first year for Gov. McCrory's DHHS

It's easy to lose track of all the skeevy, incompetent, and harmful things that Gov. McCrory's Department of Health and Human Services has done over the last year.

Don't worry though, WRAL has compiled a handy summary.

As you slowly shake your head at this sorry record, remember that the problems are all the fault of [insert as needed: former Gov. Perdue, current President Obama, naysayers, liberal naysayers, the liberal media, liberals generally, damnable computers, even more damnable statistics, county agencies, federal agencies].

NC Unemployment Insurance cuts hurting job growth

This past July, North Carolina's Unemployment Insurance (UI) program got leaner and a whole lot meaner when Governor McCrory and the Republican legislature cut both the number of weeks of state-funded compensation and the maximum benefit for workers. These cuts, in turn, led the federal government to cancel extended UI benefits for 70,000 long-term jobless people in the state.

Republicans claimed that the cuts would be a dose of tough medicine, spurring the jobless to accept work and leading to employment growth.

However, the cuts had the opposite effect--job growth, which was already anemic in the state, has actually slowed.

Moving the wrong direction in NC
June-November Job Growth before UI slashed	1.50%
June-November Job Growth after UI slashed	1.35%

Figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate that the number of non-farm jobs in NC increased 1.35 percent from June 2013 (the month before UI was slashed) to November 2013 (the latest month available).

Over the same months in 2012, when the more generous UI state and federal systems were in place, the number of non-farm jobs increased by 1.50 percent.

Nationally, job growth from June to November was faster in 2013 than in 2012, so NC's slowdown bucks the national trend.

Why did job growth slow? Although the elimination of UI for NC's long-term unemployed may have spurred a few desperate people to take jobs, it took money out of the pockets of many, many more. This reduced the demand for goods below what it would have otherwise been and thereby lowering the demand for labor.

The policy not only punished down-on-their-luck workers (eligibility for UI requires a history of work) but also punished businesses and other potential workers across the state.

Leaner, meaner, and dumber.

Gov. McCrory Targets the poor

Gov. Pat McCrory promised he would run North Carolina's state government more like a business. It's just too bad that the business he picked was Target.

WRAL reports

A computer programming error led to almost 49,000 children statewide receiving someone else's Medicaid card last week, the state Department of Health and Human Services said Monday.

... DHHS has notified the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services of the breach of federal health care privacy regulations and will formally notify affected individuals, Terrell said. People also will receive statements of health care services provided using their Medicaid ID number so they can know whether the number has been misused, she said.

The huge violation of privacy follows a familiar and disturbing pattern for the McCrory administration.

As with several of the administration's other blunders, including the disastrous roll-out of food stamp eligibility software which delayed processing of much needed food assistance and flooded the state's food banks and its changes to the state Unemployment Insurance system which cost long-term unemployed North Carolinians their federal extended joblessness benefits, the latest foul-up harms the state's most disadvantaged and vulnerable citizens.

In another part of the pattern, the Governor weaselly cast blame on everyone but his own administration. This time he blamed the prior administrations, even though his hand-picked administrator has been responsible for the administration for nearly a year, and even President Obama.

Conservative social policy emphasizes personal responsibility, at least for the poor. It's long past time for Gov. McCrory to take responsibility for his own administration and his own mistreatment of the poor.

Failing NC's children

Republican-led budget slashing is crippling North Carolina's public schools and setting the stage for an entire generation to fail.

WRAL reports

Almost 17,200 additional students packed into North Carolina schools this year while the number of teachers dropped, according to new payroll data, leading to what some say are larger class sizes that inhibit learning.

The article goes on to point out that the total number of public school teachers fell by 60. The losses would have been about 10 times that level if local school districts hadn't paid for replacement teachers out of their own funds. Overall, the number of state-funded teachers fell by 589.

Not only have teacher positions been cut, but the legislature has allowed the rising cost-of-living to erode teacher salaries. Just a few years ago, NC teacher salaries were near the average for the country. Now, average salaries are lower than almost every state.

The predictable result is that more teachers are racing for the exits. The WRAL article indicates that about one out of every seven NC teachers left their jobs last year, which was up from an already high one out of nine leaving two years ago. The losses include high proportions of experienced teachers. Many of the teachers are taking jobs in other states.

More students, fewer teachers, worse-paid and more dissatisfied teachers, less-experienced teachers, and cuts in other resources--they're all ingredients for educational failure.

Children get one shot at an effective education, and NC legislators are dooming this generation. Is it any wonder why Republicans are scrambling to dismantle student testing and standards? No sense documenting your own failure.

Job-killing in Raleigh continues

Chalk up another self-inflicted job wound by Gov. McCrory's administration.

The North Carolina Coastal Federation is reporting that the state's Division of Water Resources has just turned down two federal grants totaling $583,000.

Saying they don’t need the money to meet their new mission, state environmental officials recently turned down almost $600,000 in federal grants. The money would have been used to set up a network of sites to begin testing streams in the Piedmont where natural gas production is likely to occur and to establish a long-term planning and monitoring program to protect wetlands.

One grant would have paid state researchers to collect baseline water quality data in the economically depressed central Piedmont region. The other grant would have paid for public employees to plan for and monitor the protection of wetlands.

The grants would have provided valuable outputs, especially given the possibility of natural gas fracking in the central Piedmont and the need to protect sources of water flowing into Jordan Lake. Both grants would have supported the goals of advancing economic development while simultaneously improving the environment.

More prosaically however, both grants would have funded well-paying jobs in a state that needs every job it can get its hands on.

The decisions are also wasteful given that valuable state resources went into the effort to apply for the grants.

But nevermind those considerations. The general economic interest of the state is no match for the narrow special business and political interests of the Governor.

It's little wonder that North Carolina trails the nation in job growth.

NC legislature would give a gun to John Hinckley Jr.

Unbe-f***ing-lievable.

Both houses of the NC legislature have voted to strike the provision that "No individual who has been found not guilty by reason of insanity may petition a court for restoration under this section" from the NC statute regarding the restoration of gun rights (see Section 9 of HB 937).

Under this provision, if John Hinckley Jr. were a NC resident, he could petition to get his gun "rights" restored.

US Airways' contribution$ to the Charlotte airport grab

The sudden and fierce determination of North Carolina Republicans to snatch the seemingly well-functioning Charlotte airport away from the city of Charlotte has been something of a head-scratcher.

However, a detailed story by the Charlotte Observer helps to fill in the background.

In early 2012, an executive with US Airways, the airport’s largest tenant, had a tense meeting with then-City Manager Curt Walton over how much say the airline would have over (Charlotte Aiport Aviation Director Jerry) Orr’s eventual successor.

Planning consultant Michael Gallis, who has worked with Orr, heard about the tensions and raised concerns with Stan Campbell, a former member of the City Council and Airport Advisory Committee. At the same time, developer Johnny Harris was warning of the politicization of the airport by city leaders he saw as “paralyzed” over a dispute about building a streetcar. US Airways forwarded a draft of possible authority legislation to Campbell. In December, Campbell approached Sen. Bob Rucho, a Matthews Republican.

But the prospect of an authority only became public in February, shortly before Rucho filed legislation. He said lawmakers and still-unidentified business leaders thought the city was about to stop managing the airport “wisely.”

Got that? US Airways--an out-of-state corporation--wrote draft legislation to change Charlotte's airport authority. That draft was passed to Sen. Bob Rucho who then submitted legislation to carry out US Airways' bidding.

But draft legislation wasn't US Airways' only contribution to the airport grab (or to Sen. Rucho).

US Airways' political action committee followed up the delivery of the draft legislation in December with a $1,000 contribution to Sen. Rucho and $8,000 in contributions to other North Carolina politicians. Senator Rucho's campaign finance report indicates that his committee received the check on January 30, 2013.

Two weeks later on February 13 (time enough for the check to clear, you never know given the sorry financial state of air carriers), Sen. Rucho filed the authority-change legislation in the Senate. Sen. Tom Apodaca, who was also the recipient of a $1,000 contribution in January, was a co-sponsor on the legislation. Rep. Bill Brawley, who was a primary sponsor of a companion House bill, received $500.

Previous to its contributions in January, US Airways had not taken an especially big interest in North Carolina elections. In 2012 (an election year), its PAC only reported $1,000 in contributions. Similarly, the PAC appears to have only made $1,000 in contributions in 2011. However, with draft legislation under review by Sen. Rucho, its contributions in a non-election year jumped to $9,000.

The suspect timing and unusually generous size of the contributions strongly suggest a quid pro quo. They also suggest that a criminal investigation may be in order.

NC politicians have taken dim view in recent years toward tenants' rights, but maybe some well-timed contributions from Charlotte airport's largest tenant are changing that.

Gov. McCrory unleashes another "nightmare" on the poor

Gov. McCrory, who has enacted legislation to strip unemployment benefits from more than 70,000 long-term out-of-work North Carolinians and cut earned income tax credit payments for low-income working families, has now unleashed a new "nightmare" on poor families and children--a malfunctioning Medicaid payment system.

The News Observer reports

The state Department of Health and Human Services warned providers to expect a few bumps after the new Medicaid billing system came online July 1. For many, the bumpy weeks have been worse than they imagined, and they have not been told when the frustration will end.

...“This change with NC Tracks has been anything but successful,” said Susan Walsh, office manager at the Purcell Clinic, a pediatric practice in Laurinburg. “They have serious defects . Practices aren’t getting paid, which is very serious for all of us financially.”

Doctors, dentists, pharmacists, in-home care providers and medial equipment companies say the new software system is riddled with problems. Pharmacists cannot get approval to fill some prescriptions for medicine. Companies submit bills only to learn that they’ve vanished into the system. Doctors’ offices do not have at the ready information they need to know which patients they should treat or whether they need to collect copayments – information the old payment system provided.

...NC Tracks is “really a nightmare,” said Beth Bowen, executive director of the N.C. Association for Medical Equipment Services.

“We were expecting glitches,” she said. “We weren’t expecting complete failure of the system here, and that’s what happened.”

The problems were foreseen. In May, the state auditor reported that results from more than one-third of 834 critical system tests were missing. The auditor also reported numerous other problems, including the lack of formal "go/no-go" criteria to determine whether the system would be ready to operate on July 1. The auditor further recommended that "the Department should re-evaluate its current 'Go' decision for July 1, 2013."

No matter, Gov. McCrory unleashed the NC Tracks system anyway.

NC Republicans hurting most to benefit a few

You have to ask yourself, who exactly does North Carolina's Republican legislature represent? They certainly don't represent the majority of NC households, if their grossly misnamed Tax Fairness Act is any guide.

The News & Observer got its hands on an analysis by the the legislature's Fiscal Research Division, which shows that even though the plan will reduce revenues overall, it will nevertheless result in higher taxes for most NC households.

The majority of taxpayers likely would see a tax increase after the plan is fully implemented, according to early long-term projections from legislative fiscal researchers who analyzed the potential legislation – not a tax break as Senate Republican leaders suggested when announcing the plan this week.

A taxpayer with a federal adjusted gross income below $51,000 could pay an average $100 to $200 more in the 2017 tax year. Based on current tax brackets, 2.3 million taxpayers would fit that category, according to the analysis, while 1.8 million taxpayers could expect an average $300 to $3,000 tax cut that year.

Enormous tax cuts for the wealthy few will be financed by higher taxes and slashed protections for the middle- and low-income majority.

Put simply, Sen. Phil Berger and the Republicans have simply stopped caring about who is hurt by their reactionary rampage through Raleigh.

"Southernomics" in NC with a vengeance

Michael Lind at Salon.com provides an insightful summary of the "southern" (read conservative) political economic strategy to disempower workers.

The purpose of the age-old economic development strategy of the Southern states has never been to allow them to compete with other states or countries on the basis of superior innovation or living standards.  Instead, for generations Southern economic policymakers have sought to secure a lucrative second-tier role for the South in the national and world economies, as a supplier of commodities like cotton and oil and gas and a source of cheap labor for footloose corporations.  This strategy of specializing in commodities and cheap labor is intended to enrich the Southern oligarchy.  It doesn’t enrich the majority of Southerners, white, black or brown, but it is not intended to.

... The essence of the Southern economic model is not low taxation, but a lack of bargaining power by Southern workers of all races. Bargaining power at the bottom of the income scale is created by tight labor markets; unions; minimum wage laws combined with unemployment insurance; and social insurance, such as Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid.

With the state's centrist to moderately conservative Democrats being replaced by radically conservative Republicans, North Carolina is seeing this strategy played out a vengeance.

The Audacity of Nope

Showing his own profile in discourage, North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory agreed with Republican legislators that the state should not expand its Medicaid program nor run its own health exchange. His feeble excuse is that the state is too feeble.

Gov. Pat McCrory doesn’t think the state is ready to expand Medicaid or ready to run its own health exchanges – two provisions of the Affordable Care Act.

McCrory’s office made the announcement Tuesday morning just hours before the state House is supposed to take up a bill that would bar the state from participating in those two actions. The Senate passed the bill last week.

According to the Governor, NC is not ready for better health and longer lives for hundreds of thousands of its most vulnerable citizens, tens of thousands of jobs, more productive workers, billions in economic output, and billions in savings in hospitals' uncompensated care.

Apparently, the Governor's last few years in the political wilderness have left him tanned, rested, and not ready.

Another job-killing measure from Raleigh

Along with its efforts to opt out of the Medicaid expansion, the Republican-led North Carolina General Assembly seems poised to score another own goal against the state's economy through its ill-considered plan to impose unprecedented, draconian cuts in workers' unemployment insurance benefits. The cuts are intended to speed the repayment of $2.4 billion in unemployment insurance debt that the state incurred during the Great Recession.

The legislation is punitive and removes important protections from NC's workers. But in addition, the legislation will substantially slow the already under-performing economy.

First, the state will forfeit hundreds of millions of dollars in federal extended unemployment benefit payments. Currently, state unemployment funds cover the first 26 weeks of unemployment insurance payments, and federal funds cover an additional 47 weeks in states with unemployment rates above 9 percent. Provisions in the federal program require states to maintain their programs in order to receive the extended benefits--the goal is to keep states from shifting unemployment insurance costs from themselves to the federal government. The upshot of this provision is that if NC cuts its unemployment insurance program, it will lose the federally-funded extended benefits. The loss will be devastating to the long-term unemployed, but it will also affect the broader economy by removing hundreds of millions of dollars.

Second, the state is setting itself up to pay off the unemployment insurance debt faster than it needs to. The early repayment of that debt removes hundreds of millions of additional dollars from the NC economy. The debt needs to be repaid, but by stretching out the payments, the state would push more of the "pain" into future years where hopefully the economy will be performing better and the payments would be easier to make.

The Republicans' plan will hurt vulnerable, struggling households in the state, but it will also hurt the state as a whole.

Medicaid expansion and jobs

"Own goals" in soccer occur when a team kicks the ball into its own net, resulting in a point for the other team. Own goals are usually accidents.

The Republican-led North Carolina General Assembly seems poised to score an own goal against its own economy--on purpose.

Legislation is moving forward in the General Assembly to opt out of the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. The expansion would provide health insurance to people living in households with incomes below 133 percent of the poverty line. The federal government would cover 100 percent of the costs for the first three years and 90 percent of the costs thereafter.

Besides extending coverage to about 400,000 poor NC residents who wouldn't get health insurance otherwise, the expansion would bring in $40 billion on net (about $50 billion in total spending), which would jolt the economy and create jobs.

A new report by Regional Economic Models, Inc. forecasts that the expansion would add nearly 6,000 jobs to the NC economy in the first year of the expansion, as participation in Medicaid starts to grow, and 20,000 to 25,000 jobs in subsequent years, as participation stabilizes at a higher level. A figure showing the predicted job growth appears below.

Figure from REMI report "A Contrast: Modeling the Macroeconomic Impact of 'Medicaid Expansion' in North Carolina.

These are substantial numbers of jobs, especially for an economy that only managed to add 72,000 in total last year.