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The Bottom Line from NC Newsline
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Contenuto fornito da NC Newsline. Tutti i contenuti dei podcast, inclusi episodi, grafica e descrizioni dei podcast, vengono caricati e forniti direttamente da NC Newsline o dal partner della piattaforma podcast. Se ritieni che qualcuno stia utilizzando la tua opera protetta da copyright senza la tua autorizzazione, puoi seguire la procedura descritta qui https://it.player.fm/legal.
Every weekday, NC Newsline editor and veteran North Carolina policy observer Rob Schofield offers a 60-second take on the key policy issues that impact North Carolinians.
…
continue reading
100 episodi
Segna tutti come (non) riprodotti ...
Manage series 16409
Contenuto fornito da NC Newsline. Tutti i contenuti dei podcast, inclusi episodi, grafica e descrizioni dei podcast, vengono caricati e forniti direttamente da NC Newsline o dal partner della piattaforma podcast. Se ritieni che qualcuno stia utilizzando la tua opera protetta da copyright senza la tua autorizzazione, puoi seguire la procedura descritta qui https://it.player.fm/legal.
Every weekday, NC Newsline editor and veteran North Carolina policy observer Rob Schofield offers a 60-second take on the key policy issues that impact North Carolinians.
…
continue reading
100 episodi
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The Bottom Line from NC Newsline
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Photo: Eva Marie Uzcategui/Getty Images) President-elect Trump’s nominee for Health and Human Services Secretary – Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. – is an interesting fellow who’s sometimes espoused good ideas. Though he often contradicts himself, Kennedy has generally defended reproductive freedom and has long blasted giant food and chemical corporations for endangering public health. But as thousands of physicians across the country — including more than 400 here in North Carolina – pointed out in an open letter to senators this week, Kennedy is also a delusional conspiracy theorist. Not only does he spread dangerous misinformation on many topics – most notably on the value of vaccinations against disease – he’s also bizarrely pledged to dismantle much of the nation’s vitally important public health infrastructure. The bottom line: As the letter notes: quote “This appointment is a slap in the face to every health care professional who has spent their lives working to protect patients from preventable illness and death.” Senator Thom Tillis, who sits on a committee charged with reviewing Kennedy’s nomination, should heed the physicians’ plea and vote to oppose it. For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.…
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The Bottom Line from NC Newsline
North Carolina continues to expand charter schools. Image: AdobeStock It’s been almost 30 years since North Carolina started allowing charter schools, and as the actions of the state Charter Schools Review Board showed again this week, that experiment has been a wasteful failure. When they were first established, supporters assured us charters would be “incubators of innovation” that would, because of looser regulations and the genius of competition, lift up all public schools. How’s that working out? The state now has more than 200 charters that enroll roughly 8% of students and while some charters – mostly those that attract smart kids from well-off families – are great, as we learned when the review board renewed several charters this week for schools with weak performances and poor grades, it’s a distinct minority. Meanwhile, after three decades, the promised boost to traditional schools remains as illusory as ever. The bottom line: Competition from charters isn’t and was never the recipe for lifting public schools. What’s needed is adequate funding and for the last three decades, all charters have done is help to disguise this hard truth. For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.…
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The Bottom Line from NC Newsline
A person uses a garden hose in an effort to save a neighboring home from catching fire during the Eaton Fire on Jan. 8, 2025, in Altadena, California. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images) Like a three-pack-a-day smoker who blames their chronic cough on everything but their addiction, President-elect Donald Trump continues to embrace an absurd and criminally irresponsible brand of denialism on the subject of climate change. This hard truth was exposed yet again by the latest horrific California brushfires. As the news outlet Cal Matters reported, California has 78 more annual “fire days” — when conditions are ripe for fires to spark — than 50 years ago. The chief cause: climate change that has spurred repeated droughts, more lightning and windstorms and created an epidemic of dead trees. Amazingly, however, even as California was burning and just a few months after Hurricane Helene devastated western North Carolina, Trump was pledging to expand our nation’s use of fossil fuels and torpedo efforts to grow sustainable energy. The bottom line: Climate change – and its impacts on everything from human health to immigration to the economy — is the existential policy issue of our times. And the politicians who deny this fact willfully endanger us all. For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.…
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The Bottom Line from NC Newsline
Gov. Josh Stein (right) inspects a trailer on a recent visit to western North Carolina. (Photo courtesy of the governor's office.) In many important areas, North Carolina’s new governor, Josh Stein, is wisely following in the footprints of his predecessor, Roy Cooper. In critical areas like public education, environmental protection, and reproductive freedom, Cooper was a champion of just and common sense policies. One area, however, in which the new administration can make needed improvements is in the delivery of aid to people impacted by natural disasters. NCORR – the state’s office of Recovery and Resiliency — has long been plagued by big bureaucratic problems that created absurd delays and quality control foul-ups in repairing and rebuilding the homes of Hurricane Florence and Matthew survivors. And by all indications, Stein is determined not to let this happen again. He’s made Hurricane Helene recovery his top priority and named a new, high-powered team to oversee it. The bottom line: Not all of the responsibility here lies with the governor’s office; the legislature needs to dramatically up its game too. But for now, Gov. Stein’s new hurricane recovery effort has gotten off to a very promising start. For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.…
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The Bottom Line from NC Newsline
1 Activists to read the names of 60,000-plus voters GOP candidate would disqualify at Tuesday event 1:05
A mobile billboard circles the legislative building on January 8, 2025 highlighting Jefferson Griffin’s attempt to throw out thousands of ballots in the state Supreme Court race. (Photo by Christine Zhu) North Carolina is in the national news again and, as with past embarrassments like the infamous bathroom bill and efforts to ban talk of sea-level rise, it’s not a flattering story. This time, it’s Republican state Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin’s effort to retroactively throw out 60,000-plus ballots cast by registered voters in the 2024 election. Griffin claims that voters whose records don’t include a Social Security number or driver’s license number should have been ineligible to vote – even though all were registered (many for decades) and had to show a photo ID to vote. The claim is so farfetched that a Republican Supreme Court Justice called it quote “almost certainly meritless.” Unfortunately, Griffin isn’t giving up, so tomorrow, Tuesday, advocates opposed to the scheme will gather across from the state Legislative Building in Raleigh to publicly read the names of all 60,000-plus challenged voters. The bottom line: The event is scheduled to run from six am to eleven pm and will be live streamed on YouTube . North Carolinians who believe in democracy should check it out. For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.…
Image: https://www.betterballotnc.org/ North Carolina elections have been shown to be fair, efficient and honest, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t always room for improvement. And one important change our state would do well to take a second look at is ranked choice voting – a system in which voters rank candidates in their order of preference. This assures that candidates can’t win with only a small minority of the vote – right now in North Carolina primaries, the threshold is just 30 percent; and it does away with runoff elections, which are expensive to conduct and usually attract a minuscule voter turnout. North Carolina had a brief experiment with ranked choice voting almost 20 years ago, but it was abandoned after a few bumps arose in implementation and that’s too bad. Since then, numerous jurisdictions have clarified and finetuned how it works, and it’s become increasingly popular. The bottom line: Experience shows that ranked choice voting helps assure that all winners have majority support and that candidates appeal to more than just their base. And in our divided times, those would be welcome electoral changes indeed. For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.…
Demonstrators marched in front of the governor's mansion asking the governor to commute the death sentences of those on death row. (Photo: NC Newsline/Kel Lyons) There are a lot of reasons that the death penalty is almost never imposed anymore. As a growing cadre of experts has demonstrated, the death penalty is hugely and uniquely expensive to apply and doesn’t deter crime –indeed, there’s compelling evidence it spurs more of it. What’s more and more importantly, stacks of evidence now confirm the death penalty has long been applied unjustly. Not only is it mostly reserved for cases involving defendants who are poor and of color and victims who are white, there are many cases in which the horror of innocent people being sentenced to death has occurred. It’s for these reasons and many others that most of the world and half of U.S. states have now abolished the death penalty and that President Joe Biden and former Gov. Roy Cooper should be congratulated for their recent actions to convert several death penalty sentences to life in prison. The bottom line: The death penalty is fast becoming an obsolete relic. North Carolina would do well to make this official by removing it from its statute books. For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.…
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The Bottom Line from NC Newsline
Josh Stein is formally sworn in as North Carolina's next governor. (Photo: Screengrab from PBSNC video stream) Few governors in North Carolina history have been better prepared for the job than our state’s new chief executive, Josh Stein. Not only has Stein spent much of his professional career in elected office, but he was also raised in a family that preached and lived the value of public service and social justice. Now add his demonstrated commitment to hard work and finding common ground and his record of accomplishment, honesty and effective communication, and his prospects for sustained success should be very high. Unfortunately, despite his sterling credentials, Stein faces an enormous potential roadblock in the Republican leadership of our state’s gerrymandered legislature – a group that remains hellbent on treating him like a hostile enemy to be fought and dominated. Fortunately, as with his predecessor Roy Cooper, it’s a task that Stein appears more than up to handling with his even-keeled commitment to truth-telling and popular policies. The bottom line: His challenges are formidable, but Josh Stein has everything it takes to be a successful – even great — governor. All caring and thinking North Carolinians should wish him well. For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.…
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The Bottom Line from NC Newsline
North Carolina's state Supreme Court (Photo: Clayton Henkel) It’s now been nine weeks since the November election and nearly a month since recounts confirmed that incumbent state Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs narrowly defeated her Republican challenger, state Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin. As such, it’s long past time for Griffin to concede and allow the state’s high court to get back to work. Unfortunately, that’s a step he refuses to take. Instead, Griffin has filed a Hail Mary lawsuit in which he argues that the ballots of more than 60,000 North Carolinians – a group that includes voters who’ve been registered and voted for decades (and even several elected officials) – should be disqualified after the fact. It’s a deeply disturbing and downright bizarre legal argument that would disenfranchise thousands of lifelong state residents and one that also says a lot – none of it good — about the kind of Supreme Court justice Griffin would make. The bottom line: Losing an election is painful — especially when it’s close. But by refusing to acknowledge his defeat, Judge Griffin is wrongfully putting self-interest ahead of the common good. For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.…
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The Bottom Line from NC Newsline
Donald Trump supporters clash with police and security forces as people try to storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Brent Stirton/Getty Images) Today — January 6 – marks the anniversary of one of the darkest days in American history. It was four years ago today that a violent mob spurred on by then-President Donald Trump invaded the U.S. Capitol Building in a deadly effort to nullify the results of the 2020 presidential election. The insurrection was an act of criminality that sealed Trump’s place in the history books as an enemy of democracy and the Constitution. Amazingly, however, the combination of misinformation and short voter memories has allowed Trump to mount a political comeback and in two weeks he will return to the White House. And for those who care about truth and the rule of law, Trump’s return, his promised pardons of the insurrectionists and stated plans to take revenge on opponents mark new low points in America’s national story. The bottom line: Donald Trump won the 2024 election, but that doesn’t change history or the need for all Americans to remember his past actions and to be more vigilant than ever in resisting future assaults on constitutional government. For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.…
Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, speaks to attendees during a Sept. 25, 2024, campaign rally in Mint Hill, North Carolina. Trump’s victory in Tuesday’s election could set the stage for wide-ranging changes to policy. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images) Donald Trump’s second administration is poised to soon do a great deal of damage in several important areas. Whether it’s health care, education, the federal courts, reproductive freedom, immigration, foreign policy or the economy, millions of people will suffer needlessly if Trump follows through on all of his campaign promises. That said, when it comes to the damage that will be truly irreparable, no pledge looms darker or more ominous than Trump’s plan to scuttle efforts to combat climate change. As Katharine Hayhoe – a scientist and lead author of the National Climate Assessment under the last Trump administration – put it in a recent interview, quote “the situation is dire… on many fronts [and… it’s] already getting worse.” In other words, there’s absolutely no time to waste. Even a mere four years of backtracking will greatly worsen results for our children and grandchildren. The bottom line: No problem poses a greater threat to the near and long-term wellbeing of Americans than climate change. And no matter what he’s said previously, Trump simply must listen to the experts and act. For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.…
Gamblers take a break from the 1,500 slot machines in Caesars Virginia. (Photo: Greg Childress) Yet another gambling casino opened close to North Carolina last month when the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and the corporate giant Caesar’s christened a new facility just across the border in Danville, Virginia. And between it, a pair of tribal casinos in western North Carolina and the explosion of legalized sports gambling in our state, it’s easy to feel as if the cow is now completely out of the barn when it comes to this frequently predatory and destructive pastime. But as experts have repeatedly documented, it’s vitally important that elected leaders not throw in the towel when it comes to controlling this industry. Like recreational drugs, gambling can be harmless entertainment. But for tens of millions of people, gambling is a dangerous and destructive addiction pushed by exploitive and predatory corporations. The bottom line: gambling isn’t going away, but there is much more that elected leaders can and should do to regulate it and to protect consumers and the vulnerable. And making sure our state is not completely overrun by casinos should be near the top of the list. For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.…
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The Bottom Line from NC Newsline
Duke Energy and other utilities, particularly in the South, are pushing to add new natural gas plants like this Florida facility. (Photo by Glen Richard/iStock Images Getty Images) It’s a great tragedy of our time that the global climate change crisis is not something that emerged suddenly or as a surprise. Not only have scientists predicted how it would play out for decades, so too have many of the polluters whose CO2 emissions have done so much to cause it. A powerful new report from the nonprofit Energy and Policy Institute highlights these truths. The report is entitled “Duke Energy Knew” and it explains in sobering detail how by the 1970s, the utilities that comprise today’s Duke Energy Corporation had early warnings about how burning fossil fuels would lead to climate change. And even more disturbingly, the report shows how by the 1990s, Duke utilities began backing disinformation campaigns that denied the science of climate change and promoted opposition to legal limits on greenhouse gas emissions. The bottom line: Duke can’t change the past. But like other polluters, it can act now to address its past sins. One hopes the report leads to just such an outcome. For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.…
Gov. Roy Cooper discusses ongoing efforts to surge resources into Western NC (Pool photo/Paul Barker-Governor's Office) Gov. Roy Cooper’s second four-year term as our state’s chief executive is ending and, by any fair assessment, he’s done a heck of a job. In numerous vitally important areas – education, transportation, economic development, environmental protection – Cooper has, despite the obstruction of legislative leaders — been a stalwart champion of average North Carolinians and the common good. But if there is one area of accomplishment that stands out above all others it’s in the realm of public health, where Cooper’s courageous, science-based approach to the COVID-19 pandemic and his tireless and ultimately successful campaign to expand the state’s Medicaid program have saved and will continue to save, quite literally, thousands of lives. Of course, not everything has been perfect. Cooper’s hurricane recovery office made some big mistakes in responding to Florence and Matthew and one wishes he’d opposed the expansion of sports gambling, but on the whole, he’s been one of our state’s best governors. The bottom line: North Carolina is better off because of Gov. Cooper’s fine service. Gov.-elect Josh Stein has some big shoes to fill. For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.…
Debris and a mobile home are piled up along a tree line in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene on Sept. 29, 2024 in Old Fort, North Carolina. (Photo by Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images) On any list of key governmental functions, natural disaster response is near the top. If public services and structures don’t provide relief and spearhead recovery when disasters strike, communities can literally and permanently fall apart. And tragically, this appears to be happening in parts of western North Carolina in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. Thanks in large part to the slow and woefully inadequate response of state lawmakers, businesses and farms are failing, unemployment and evictions are rising, morale is sinking, and some once vibrant cities and towns are disintegrating as residents simply pack up and leave. Rather than heeding Gov. Cooper’s call for an aggressive, all-hands-on-deck response that would provide a critical financial lifeline to thousands and spur community hope and optimism, Republican legislative leaders are sticking to their usual shortsighted and cheapskate ways. The bottom line: The problems in the west are massive and state government can’t solve them all, but by largely turning its back, the legislature has irresponsibly shirked one of its most basic duties. For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.…
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