Red Clay Citizen

Marriage Rally In Raleigh

Advocates for allowing voters decide whether or not to amend North Carolina's constitution to define marriage as being between one man and one woman met in Raleigh at the legislature.  Though the crowd was smaller than a similar rally last year, supporters of the amendment still turned out a large crowd despite the awful weather.  Capitol Police estimated the crowd to be between 3,000 and 4,000 people.

A coalition of conservative and religious groups (including the Civitas Institute) have been bringing new attention to the effort through the group NC4Marriage.

Bills calling for the amendment to be voted on this fall have been filed in both houses.  The House version has 66 sponsors, a bipartisan majority.  The Senate version is also sponsored by a bipartisan group of
lawmakers but has already been assigned to the Senate Ways & Means committee that hasn't met since 2001.  This committee is also know as "bill prison" where the leadership send bills to die.

Despite the legislative roadblocks, protecting marriage is widely supported by voters of both parties and races.  The latest Civitas Poll found that 76% of North Carolina's voters want to protect marriage.

Civitas Poll: Expectations High for Perdue

A new poll released today by Civitas Institute reveals that voters in North Carolina are guardedly optimistic about Gov. Bev Perdue’s job performance in office so far and the expectations she has set out for the future.

According to 600 sampled voters, when asked how they would rate Perdue’s performance as Governor, so far 47 percent of them said they approved of her job performance, while only 8 percent said they disapproved. However, 45 percent of said voters have not yet formed an opinion.

“With a 6 to 1 approve-disapprove ratio early in her term, voters’ optimism towards Gov. Perdue’s term is apparent,” said Francis De Luca, executive director of the Civitas Institute. “However, with nearly half of voters not yet forming an opinion on her job performance, it shows many voters remain guarded in their enthusiasm.”

When asked which issue they think Gov. Perdue will be most successful at accomplishing during her term, 27 percent said they believe it will be improving the economy and creating jobs, 19 percent said improving education, while 10 percent said improving roads and highways.

Fifty-nine percent of voters said tackling the economy and unemployment should be Gov. Perdue’s highest priority in office. No other volunteered response garnered double-digit support.

Full release here.

Al Gore is Losing

As much of North Carolina sits under a Winter Storm Watch for the threat of snow tomorrow, a new poll released today by Rasmussen Reports shows more and more Americans think global warming is caused more by long term planetary trends than by human activity.

According to its poll, 44% think it's planetary causes while 41% think it's human activity.

While these numbers are fairly close (and inside the margin of error) it does show a decided trend towards the public becoming more and more skeptical of the man-made global warming alarmist rhetoric of the left fringe.

In July 2006, 46% of voters said global warming is caused primarily by human activities, while 35% said it is due to long-term planetary trends.

In April of last year, 47% of Americans blamed human activity versus 34% who viewed long-term planetary trends as the culprit. But the numbers have been moving in the direction of planetary trends since then.

So in less than one year we've had a 16 point shift in public sentiment away from hysteria and towards common sense.  A couple more years like this and maybe we can make Al Gore even more irrelevant.

Tony Rand -- Champion of the Free Market?

Earlier today, the General Assembly's Joint Study Committee on Automobile Insurance Modernization met to consider a proposal to change the way every North Carolinian purchases auto insurance.  Currently, those of us who have clean driving records pay a surcharge of 2.7% to fund a risk pool of those who make insurance claims.  Thus, us safe drivers are subsidizing bad drivers to the tune of $139 million this year.  (In some years, it's more, some years it's less).

Sen. Tony Rand as chairman of the committee asked if that was fair for safe drivers to pay higher rates for auto insurance and shouldn't we just let everyone be judged on their relative risk?  "Everybody should pay their own way. I should pay mine and not subsidize everybody else.  We should have some relative expectation that you (bad drivers) pay some fair share of the pool." 
Basically, his proposal would take one giant step towards deregulating and dramatically increasing competition in the auto insurance market.  (Some government insurance actuary stood up and argued that increased competition would increase rates -- I haven't figured that one out yet.)

Naturally, Insurance Commissioner Jim Long was opposed to the proposal. 

Will this proposal have legs when the General Assembly reconvenes in a few weeks?  I don't know, but it's one we'll sure be watching. 

And if we can apply free market economics to auto insurance, can't we also apply it to other insurance markets -- health, homeowners, etc.?

Taxpayer-Funded Lobbying for New Taxes?

AFP is pretty upset, as they should be.

Reverse supplanting of funds?

The more you read these budget bills, the more little golden nuggets you can find.

Included in the Senate budget is $37.5 million in recurring funds for "class size reduction" to maintain the 18:1 student/teacher ratio in grades K-3.

But wait, I thought the North Carolina "Education" Lottery was supposed to cover that cost.  Apparently, since all of us didn't buy enough lottery tickets, the Senate decided we should be on the hook for the money anyway.

Now, we can debate studies about whether class size reduction has any effect on student performance, (I tend to think it is more of a jobs program for the Teachers' Union), but everyone should be in agreement now that the lottery funding formula absolutely must be changed.

This is what happens when the lottery - a non-recurring, variable source of income - is used to pay for recurring expenses (teachers' salaries and students).  When too few people play the lottery, the rest of us get stuck with the bill.