This is an op ed from Rep. C. Malone from Wake County. Rep Malone lays it on the line............. Earlier this year a leaked document offered a statewide contingent of left leaning activists, consultants and media types a strategy to “eviscerate” Republicans at the Legislature. You can find elements of this program throughout the statewide media. Considering this group NCBLUE’s misinformation campaign that some of the media are party too. I think it best to try and set the record straight for those of you who aren’t aware. Let’s start with the truth about Voter ID. We had one of the loosest least restrictive laws in the country. The new law is still less restrictive than any of those famously blue New England states which as I’m sure you can guess, never saw a left wing protest! Point by point throughout the law, North Carolina is joining a super majority of states in creating a national norm. On many points we are joining more than ¾ of the states in how we handle this issue. In the case of same day registration, there is only one other state that still allows this practice, ripe with opportunities for fraud. In regards early voting the Democrats included an amendment that mandates that we must allow as many hours of voting as the previous two elections! That means there will not be less early voting opportunity but it will be spread out to more polling places for fewer days. This means that many of us will be able to early vote closer to home. Not once have I read that anywhere. Some claim there is no voter fraud? First, how can we know until we measure it, it is impossible to prove a negative. Let’s go to the video tape! We had a public hearing at our own committee meeting and several people owned up to it. Finally a similar Voter ID law in Georgia led to more minorities voting not less, so the faux hysteria is unwarranted. During the 2011 budget battle our Democrat colleagues and the media howled that we would “decimate” education and “20,000 teachers” would be fired. Instead 3,198 were hired! Now they are at it again claiming 9,000 teachers will go. I checked with Wake County and we aren’t firing any teachers or assistants. Wild allegations are easier to make than honest debate. Republicans have increased spending twice. In this last budget by 5%! It amounts to 362 million more dollars, and for Education as a whole, we are at 56% of the budget. We do have an admittedly poor 45th rating in per student spending that definitely needs improvement. However, according to Department of Public Instruction, if we account for only that which the legislature is responsible for, the ranking jumps to 11th best. We are also 2nd in the Southeast! Bet you never heard that from the mainstream media. Now let’s have an honest discussion about teacher pay. I won’t insult your intelligence by making a big deal of the size of the two pay raises in these last two budgets (teachers will get another 1% raise next year.) However, in fairness that is two more percent than was appropriated by those that protest us. Furthermore, and let’s be clear the raises we did appropriate would have been far larger but for a huge 2.5 billion dollar budget deficit we faced when we took over in 2011 and now a Medicaid debacle of over 500 million in past screw ups that came home to roost during this session. This negatively affected teachers and students as well. The fact that those that protest us weren’t protesting at the Governor’s mansion the last four years is illustrative of why some think politics is broken. In short, in these challenging times we are doing a far better and fairer job than is being misreported by many in the North Carolina media. Finally, we had been stagnating as an economy since 2000, long before the great recession. Unemployment at one point in 2012 was 9.7% and fourth worst in the country. That number is slowly dropping, and the budget and many of our reforms are taking effect. Our strategy of tax breaks for competitive reasons and fewer regulations will spur growth and as a result raise revenues that can benefit our Education goals. Call it what you want but the way those that protest us were handling the economy it was a clear disaster. Now I do not think destroying the economy was purposeful, but rather another act of incompetence and misplaced priorities. That is why people here in House District 35 and all around the state chose a different path in two successive elections. Maybe you didn’t see it on TV or in the paper but you knew when you weren’t being served well.
Posted on: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 20:24:03 +0000
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