Cheryl Caulfield’s Partisan Blind Spots Make Her a Poor Choice for Wake County — When someone mentioned to me that local District 1 school board candidate Cheryl Caulfield had been granted an appearance on the Steve Noble radio show, I was mildly horrified. Noble’s Raleigh area-based, nominally Christian-themed show regularly features the aggressively right-wing political stances of its host, and platforms guests accordingly —…

It seems unfriendly to ask folks for attention to yet another political thing right now, but local elections will always be as important as any, and what’s happening now in Wake County is alarming. A nearly full slate of challengers — some of them quite extremist — is making an…

Attacking Wake with the NCGA GOP’s Tiredest Argument — Senator Harry Brown (R-Onslow) recently took issue with the Wake County School Board and WCPSS in a press release (shared on Twitter by the News and Observer’s K-12 reporter, Keung Hui) blasting the Board for raising taxes while complaining about state education funding. I certainly understand why he’s uncomfortable…

How to Interpret Election-Year Claims on a Hot Subject — With teachers on strike in Oklahoma, a strike in West Virginia only recently ended, tensions continuing to boil in Kentucky, and a strike in Arizona likely as well, teacher pay has been in the news a lot lately. Here in North Carolina, the Highlights of the North Carolina Public School…

What EVERYONE Should Know about K-12 Spending in NC — In this budget season as in any other, there’s a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt swirling around about K-12 spending. Civitas Institute, a conservative think tank specializing in North Carolina state politics, offers a case in point: What the Left Doesn't Want You to Know About K-12 Spending in North Carolina Education establishment apologists use pre-recession highs for comparisons to claim K-12 is underfunded * But they…www.nccivitas.org

Let’s Dispense with This Nonsense — The Civitas Institute, a conservative think tank, recently published an article on the effect of the 2013 North Carolina state tax reforms. Specifically, this article: Lowest-Income Households Pay Smaller Share of State Income Taxes After Reforms North Carolina's 2013 tax reforms, instead of being a "huge windfall" for the rich as the Left claims, in fact resulted…www.nccivitas.org

Folks: the reason why it’s historically been considered unseemly to politicize judicial appointments is that the judges themselves were presumed apolitical. That meant the judge in question was an innocent victim being used as a tool to attack a different political target. In those days that was enough to trigger…

UPDATE 2/7/17: Dear future Earthlings: I know you’re all wondering how one Betsy DeVos came to be the US Secretary of Education, a bewildering — even shocking — development even by the dark standards of the Trumpentimes. Look no further. It’s all here. This transcript is unofficial, which is to…

Some time has passed since the NCGA Special Session 5 debacle, and a lot of explaining has issued forth from the various players. Despite these explanations offering little new information, some formerly fuzzy aspects of the saga have come into crisper focus. Indeed, in some cases the information conspicuously absent…