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North Carolina Open Thread: Medicare Expansion!?, Partisan schoolboards, State of the State address [1]
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Date: 2023-03-12
The Medicaid expansion celebrations are premature
NC Policy Watch, Rob Schofield, 3/7/2023
North Carolina has witnessed a spate of glowing and upbeat news reports and commentaries in recent days after Republican legislative leaders announced last week that they had reached an agreement to expand the state’s Medicaid program.
Multiple local and national outlets described the state as, after more than a decade of delay, now on the glidepath to providing access to healthcare for 600,000-plus uninsured people of modest income.
Kevin Siers – the gifted and always acerbic editorial cartoonist for the Charlotte Observer – was moved to create a downright heartwarming image in which Senate leader Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore were portrayed as winsome characters from an old “Peanuts” cartoon smiling and shaking hands over a sign that reads “the doctors are finally in.”
Meanwhile, beleaguered healthcare advocates – worn down by years of disheartening defeat and ever-cognizant of the need to avoid getting on the wrong side of powerful politicians with a demonstrated willingness to punish critics and opponents – were quick to claim a long-denied victory, while issuing statements of thanks and praise to GOP leaders.
Even Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper described the agreement as “monumental step.”
Altogether, it was enough to make a body swoon with hope and optimism that light had dawned on a weary world, and that Berger and Moore had, at long last, beaten their frequently destructive political swords into plowshares. All that was left was to make arrangements for a kumbaya signing ceremony.
At the risk, however, of acting the part of the proverbial skunk at the picnic, it must be reported that such gleeful celebrations are almost certainly premature. While it’s understandable that so many people have looked at the Berger-Moore announcement with their hearts, a more thorough examination through unblinking eyes reveals some huge problems with the GOP agreement.
WRAL, 3/7/2023
Gov. Roy Cooper presented the North Carolina legislature with a prescription it must fulfill.
State of the State Address Monday evening in the House Chamber of the State Legislative Building which is celebrating its 60th year of occupancy. Cooper harkened to another milestone of that time – the establishment of the Research Triangle Park – demonstrating “the foresight and resolve to invest in new ideas that have revolutionized our state impacting the generations that followed.” “A responsibility to learn from adversity and make things better,” he said as he opened hisMonday evening in the House Chamber of the State Legislative Building which is celebrating its 60th year of occupancy. Cooper harkened to another milestone of that time – the establishment of the Research Triangle Park – demonstrating “the foresight and resolve to invest in new ideas that have revolutionized our state impacting the generations that followed.”
style and presentation were in keeping with the way Cooper’s governed – pressing for cooperation, conciliation and investment in the future while eschewing confrontation, partisan cheap shots and unproductive lamentations on a false past. Thewere in keeping with the way Cooper’s governed – pressing for cooperation, conciliation and investment in the future while eschewing confrontation, partisan cheap shots and unproductive lamentations on a false past.
Still, he was direct and firm about the agenda North Carolina needs. Cooper wasn’t reserved about letting legislative leaders know what needs to be done and where he believes they are going astray. The 35-minute speech was interrupted 31 times with affirming applause.
In direct contrast to legislative leaders’ declaration that tax cuts were their top priority, Cooper called for investments.
“Progress is never passive,” he reminded the legislators. “You can only make progress when you set ambitious goals.” These times, he said, present “once-in-a-generation opportunities (that) require once-in-a-generation investments.”
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NC Policy Watch, Kyle Ingram, 3/10/2023
One local bill at a time, state lawmakers have nearly tripled the number of partisan school boards across the state over the last decade — often over the objections of school board members themselves.
It’s a move some board members say is turning their school system from a hyperlocal, traditionally apolitical governing board into a contentious microcosm of national political debates.
“Republicans now retain a 5-2 majority of this board, the first time Republicans have held a majority on this board in anyone’s memory,” Jennifer Dacey, a newly-elected school board member in Craven County said after Republicans swept the county’s first partisan board election in decades.
To Carr Ipock, a registered Democrat who has served on the Craven County school board for over 30 years, it sounded more like “This day, the Republicans have taken over the school board and we are here to fix this system,” he said. With the introduction of partisan labels, the 2022 Craven County school board campaign marked a striking departure from precedent. “There was more focus on national agenda items than there was on ‘What can we do to make the school system better?’” Ipock said.
Republican legislators argue that partisan elections help voters make more informed decisions by giving them an idea of a candidates’ philosophy via their party identification. “I don’t really see the harm in it because all you’re really doing is giving those voters more information,” House Speaker Tim Moore said.
More than 1 in 3 school boards now elect their members in partisan elections — 10 years ago, it was 1 in 10. Since achieving majority control in the state legislature in 2010, Republican lawmakers have gradually shifted the makeup of school boards by filing local bills — legislation that affects fewer than 15 counties and does not require approval from the governor.
Daily Kos, Joan McCarter, 3/11/2023
The nation might have just been spared a potentially democracy-killing U.S. Supreme Court ruling. The state of North Carolina, however, isn’t so lucky. The U.S. Supreme Court more or less punted on deciding the congressional redistricting case Moore v. Harper last week, asking for an additional briefing in the case now that the North Carolina Supreme Court has determined to rehear it.
That’s the case in which North Carolina Republicans were trying to get the U.S. Supreme Court to elevate the kooky “independent state legislature” theory, which posits that state legislatures are the ultimate authority in all elections issues. At the time the Supreme Court had decided it would hear this nonsense, four Republican-appointed justices—Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh—had indicated that they thought it was a fine idea.
That was despite it having no basis in constitutional history, having been debunked by none other than James Madison when it first reared its head in a falsified document created in 1818 by a South Carolinian named Charles Pinckney. Pinckney might have been the George Santos of his time, trying to pass himself off as the actual writer of the Constitution with a few elaborations here and there, like this one.
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