Schools do not need more resource officers, armed guards or for that matter armed teachers. Schools need to become adept at gathering information, sharing intelligence and, most importantly, making sense of what they learn. In Uvalde, Texas we’ve learned far too well that good guys—many good guys—with guns can’t always stop a bad guy with a gun. In Florida, Nikolas Cruz is on trial for his life after killing 17 people at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018.
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Original Commentary
PW investigation raises important questions about holding billions of dollars in cash In a way, there’s something almost quaint about the investment strategy that North Carolina’s conservative Republican treasurer, Dale Folwell, pursues for the massive pension funds he oversees for the state’s public employees and retirees.
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A faddish phrase on the right is something called “the administrative state,” which refers to the federal workforce deputized by Congress to craft and enforce rules over the environment, banking, health care, product safety, mass communications, the power grid, etc. A recent profile of the Claremont Institute — which has the unenviable task of stitching together an intellectual fig leaf for Trumpism — noted that scholars there view our nation’s bureaucrats as a “fourth branch,” effectively overturning the Constitution.
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“We don’t have any teacher applicants for our vacancies,” said two superintendents from rural North Carolina public school districts. Think about that. If they do not find qualified replacements or come up with alternative solutions, students will arrive on the first day of school Aug. 29 in classrooms without teachers.
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As you’ve no doubt noticed, our state, nation and planet are experiencing yet another summer of record heat and intense storms. As scientists have been explaining and predicting for decades, climate change resulting from carbon-pollution-driven global warming is altering weather patterns and spurring big and deeply problematic changes in the Earth’s environment.
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What a lot of complaining I hear about gas prices. I’ve done some myself. I also see a lot of blaming, especially of President Joe Biden. “It’s all his fault.” Hmm, could Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have just a little bit to do with the latest surge in prices at our gasoline pumps? Oil is a dense fuel, moved around with relative ease across the globe.
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There is a bit of mythology that sometimes creeps into the way longtime supporters of North Carolina’s public education system describe the halcyon days of the late 20th Century under the leadership of former Gov. Jim Hunt and Democratic legislators like former House Speaker Dan Blue and former Senate President Pro Tem Marc Basnight.
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The views of the universe are gifts of perspective So much of our collective experience as a country these days involves division and strife, but this week we rediscovered our capacity for unity and awe, occasioned by a picture. Last Monday, NASA released the first image from the James Webb Space Telescope, a “deep field” photo that captures hundreds of galaxies, each containing roughly 100 million stars...
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One supposes that it’s at least conceivable there could be merit to the idea of moving the headquarters of the 17-campus UNC System from the place it’s always been – Chapel Hill – to the state capital in Raleigh. Maybe. But here’s another obvious fact about such an ambitious plan: ramming it through without debate and without consulting the system’s Board of Governors would be a brazen and indefensible act.
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And a case from North Carolina threatens to topple American democracy It’s pretty hard not to take it personally when the highest court in the land erases your humanity. Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has rolled back a woman’s right to choose whether to have an abortion, the power of the state reaches right through us, deciding what happens inside our bodies. What we think and feel doesn’t matter. It doesn’t get more personal than that.
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North Carolina has a new budget for the state fiscal year that began July 1. At the very end of the 10-day period allotted to him by the state constitution, Gov. Roy Cooper affixed his signature to a 193-page bill drafted mostly behind closed doors by Republican legislative leaders that amends the two-year budget enacted last year. Cooper’s decision to sign the measure was, one supposes, an act he viewed as an exercise in political pragmatism.
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