It started with an experiment. Hospital emergency rooms in Wilson County were overwhelmed with patients who didn’t need to be there, but they didn’t have a doctor, so they hadn’t been getting preventive care. Long, sad story short: Lack of proper care leads to crisis leads to ambulance leads tobest caseexpensive hospitalization. Expensive, and paid […]
Bob Geary
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This isn’t the Summer of Trump, it’s the Summer of Bernie
It’s a packed house in Columbia, South Carolina, 2,000 clammy people in a hall better suited for half that number, with another 700 in an overflow room. They’ve come to hear Bernie Sanders rip the billionaires and Wall Street. He doesn’t disappoint. “The American people understand that corporate greed, this never-ending greed of wanting more […]
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The Chamber has an epiphany: We need better teachers
The kids will be off to school next weekthe ones attending traditional-calendar public schools, anyway. See if you agree with the following propositions, gleaned from a recent North Carolina Conference on Education: • Schools should train students to think and address real problems, not just regurgitate facts. • True problem-solving requires a thoughtful assessment of […]
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Aldona Wos’ disastrous tenure as DHHS secretary is finally over
History will record that Aldona Wos, a Greensboro physician, socialite and Republican fundraiser, was secretary of the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services for two years and seven months. She bade a tearful farewell to the job last week, expressing satisfaction that the “improvement process” she talked about so incessantlyto the point that you’d […]
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Pat McCrory’s refusal to expand Medicaid is a moral failure
Let’s pretend we have a governora Republican, let’s say. He’s trying to decide what to do about Medicaid expansion. It’s a crucial issue he knows he’s dodged for far too long. Let’s also pretend that he understands why it’s important. Pretending, I presume, is what dozens of health-care advocates were doing at the State Capitol […]
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Bidding adieu to anti-death penalty activist Steve Dear
When Steve Dear announced his departure as executive director of People of Faith Against the Death Penalty, he posted it with Thomas Merton’s “Letter to a Young Activist,” from 1966. It begins: “Do not depend on the hope of results.” Don’t depend on results, or even the hope of results? I was dimly aware of […]
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Why Raleigh should go slow on density
Raleigh, following an adolescence of sprawl, aspires to be an urban adult, a full-grown metro with—everyone say it together now—density! Ah, density. Is anyone against it? People living closer to their work, closer to each other, getting out of their cars and walking on sidewalks: “The lure of the urban lifestyle,” Columbia University’s Kate Ascher […]
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Republicans fail to pass a budget, go on vacation, will figure out a way to screw schools soon enough
It’s the middle of summer, and we should have a state budget by now, but we don’t. In fact, the Republicans who control the General Assembly, having failed to enact a budget by the start of the fiscal year July 1, took last week off and headed for the hills and the beaches. No worries, […]
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It’s time to rise up against voter suppression by Republicans
March for Voting Rights What: Mass Moral Monday March Where: Corpening Plaza, Winston-Salem When: Monday, July 13, 5 p.m. More: Press conference, 8 a.m., U.S. District Courthouse; teach-ins 10 a.m.–4 p.m., Goler Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church. Buses leave from various locations including Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill; www.july13marchforvotingrights.org Initially, the Framers of the Constitution left it […]
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Liberalism: The new moral majority
In 1980, I covered the Republican National Convention for a New Jersey newspaper. Ronald Reagan won the presidential nomination. What I remember vividly is something else: The emergence of the Moral Majority. And Detroit. I remember how decrepit the once-great city of Detroit looked as we rode in from the hotel where the New Jersey […]