The June jobs numbers are out and they are not good, even though economists expected a big bounce back from May’s dismal report.Non-farm payroll rose 18K. Nationwide, the unemployment rate is now 9.2%Via Marketwatch: WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The U.S. economy added jobs at a slower pace in June than in May, suggesting that the sudden […]
Kirk Ross
Bio: Kirk Ross is a freelance columnist for INDY Week and founded the online news and feature publication The Carolina Mercury. He lives in Chapel Hill.Link: http://www.exileonjonesstreet.comEmail: [email protected]: http://twitter.com/ExJS
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Redistricting plan fallout continues
The congressional redistricting maps released last week continue to reshape predictions for the U.S. House. The Cook Political Report just announced a shift for NC races in an update to its House predictions. (chart here subscription required beyond that)Said Cook editor David Wasserman: The GOP plans to pack Democrats into just three of the state’s […]
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A nation not created by saints
A few July 4th thoughts on the founding of this country and the danger in deifying the individuals behind it and recasting the revolution as a religious crusade. Read another comment this morning alluding to the “divine” origins of this nation. There’s always been a politician or theologian or two or twenty trying to raise […]
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The Great Undoing: Burning the bridge to the 21st century
The curtain seems close to falling on Act 1 of the 2011 session of the General Assembly, also known as The Great Undoing. “Great” as in widespread. Throughout government, this session has shuttered programs, altered missions, rearranged agency departments and jettisoned thousands of state workers. “Undoing” because what’s been done through the budget and other […]
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N.C. House budget cuts are jeopardizing our environment
Early in this legislative session, environmental advocates warned that the new Republican majority was prepared to go much further than expected in putting its mark on state environmental policy. The state’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources was in the crosshairs, they said, and would be stripped of everything but its regulatory functions, and then […]
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How about a raffle to pay for Google incentives?
Hey, guess what? Our lottery sucks and isn’t bringing in nearly what’s been promised all these years. Lottery officials promised to make it not suck soon byI’m not making this upholding a raffle. This angers me not because it seems kinda amateur for a highly paid professional gambling outfit to hold a raffle, but because […]
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Fundamentalists fight mandatory HPV vaccine
North Carolina is considering adding several more vaccinations to the list of what the state will pay for to inoculate poor and indigent children. On the list is a vaccination against HPVHuman Papillomaviruswhich causes most cervical cancer. That’s OK, says the N.C. Family Policy Council, a fundamentalist group that has argued against universal HPV vaccinations. […]
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Tangled up in rules
A few thousand wary eyes are peeled for what’s in the set of changes to the operating rules of the N.C. House now under consideration. The promise, in theory, is a more open environment where bills no longer get tangled up in the Rules Committee and each has a review on the merits in an […]
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A 21st-century apology for a 19th-century wrong
History now has two additional paragraphsor perhaps footnotesto add to the awful, bloody chapter on the Wilmington Race Riots of 1898. Last December, The News & Observer and the Charlotte Observer published an apology along with a special report on the riots that included an examination of the papers’ role in the conspiracy and incitements […]
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Meanwhile in our nation’s capital
It has been difficult to sort out the new Congress without a scorecard, but if anything was noticeable in the first week or so, it was the splitting of what had been a solid GOP bloc. The best evidence of that in the state GOP delegation came on a vote to raise the federal minimum […]