Tag Archives: North Carolina General Assembly

The Numbers Don’t Add Up To The Proposed Bill

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The “Let Them Spawn” bill (HB-483) will be coming up for a vote in the North Carolina Senate shortly. The bill has already passed the North Carolina House. The bill would drastically limit the amount of fish commercial fishermen would be allowed to catch. The bill is aimed at limiting commercial fishermen. It does not take into account the fact that recreational fishermen catch many more fish than commercial fishermen. I was truly surprised at the numbers–they can be found in The County Compass week of June 27-July 3 Issue.

These are the numbers:

So what is this about?

The article concludes:

The undeniable facts and truth when it comes to fishing are that on any given year, recreational anglers catch overwhelming numbers of fish. They typically catch MORE poundage on many of the shared species that both recreational and commercial fishermen target. No one complains about this typically from the commercial side because they believe they have their right to fish. This, however, is not the case you typically – or ever – hear from the recreational fishermen and their special interest groups – the CCA and NC Wildlife Federation.

These groups have one agenda and one agenda only. To lobby your legislators and preach that commercial interests cause ALL damage to any fish stock. How aggravating it must be to most legislators to hear the same story over and over again, and see these druids preach their bile when anyone with any aptitude can look at numbers such as these presented in the chart and know they are spouting falsehoods.

I reference it in this biblical way because I believe that the legislators who drink in this poison and continuously attempt to introduce bills against commercial fishermen are akin to Jim Jones and his cult following. They are indeed directed, and I’m sure if probed deep enough, well-funded by special interest groups including the aforementioned. Extremely fluent and wealthy in backing by small conclaves of radicals that absolutely hate anything to do with commercial fishing but are well funded enough to keep pushing their agendas forward.

I will tell the average citizen, consumer, and your legislative elected officials that represent you: DON’T DRINK THE KOOL-AID!

Learn the facts, know your constituents, and get to know the people that bring you Quality North Carolina seafood. Only through interaction with all of these hard working people will you ever come to understand that everyone has a right to fish either for recreation, or to provide for their families.

Another article in the County Compass explains that the passage of HB-483 would create some health issues for those who consume seafood in North Carolina. We are not ‘seafood independent.’ Imported seafood accounts for over 90% of seafood consumed by Americans. Imported shrimp accounts for 90% to 94% of the shrimp that Americans consume.

The article explains:

Imported seafood is largely grown in aquaculture ponds where veterinary drug use is necessary to prevent mortality and maximize yields. These drugs include the widespread use of antibiotics and other illegal veterinary drugs some of which are known carcinogens.

Imported seafood is not a good thing for Americans to be eating. Please contact your North Carolina Senator and tell him to vote against this bill. Information on how to contact your Senator can be found at the North Carolina General Assembly web page.

There Is No Resemblance Between The Hype And The Truth

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The North Carolina legislation passed a bill on March 23 called HB2. The media has gone totally bonkers every since–yelling discrimination, bigotry, and all the other things they traditionally yell. I haven’t heard much in the media about the danger bathrooms open to whatever sex you choose to assume on a given day pose to women and children. I need to mention here that the danger does not come from transgendered people–it comes from nefarious people posing as transgenders. The media also overlooked the fact that the spokesmen for the group sponsoring the legislation that HB2 overturned was a registered sex offender. I am sure that is simply an incredible coincidence. The spokesman was removed after his criminal record was exposed.

On Wednesday, World Net Daily posted an article that clarifies the issues involved.

Here are some excerpts from the article:

Widely known now as House Bill 2, or HB 2, the legislation was approved 82-26 in the North Carolina General Assembly. State senators approved it 32-0, although 11 Democrats decided not to vote and another six lawmakers were absent. Republican Gov. Pat McCrory signed the bill on March 25.

Lt. Gov. Forest said the city of Charlotte left lawmakers no choice but to act.

“This isn’t something the General Assembly brought up. The city council in Charlotte brought this up, against legal counsel’s advice and against the advice of a lot of folks. They went beyond their constitutional authority and tried to create a public accommodation law in the city of Charlotte,” Forest told WND and Radio America.

He continued, “That is expressly a responsibility of the state. The city of Charlotte and municipalities don’t have the legal authority, based on our constitution, to establish public accommodation law.”

In addition to overstepping its legal authority, Forest said the Charlotte council pursued a very troubling policy.

“The Charlotte ordinance said that the business community had to to comply with this ordinance,” Forest explained. “They said it was sex discrimination to have men’s room and women’s room labels on your doors.”

When state officials started hearing from sexual assault victims, the effort to reverse the Charlotte ordinance picked up far more steam.

The article further explains:

Forest said the ordinance only required the person to identify as a member of a particular gender, and to have completed or be in the process of gender reassignment.

He said, despite the protests, HB 2 does a few very simple things, starting with determining who can use which bathrooms.

“What HB 2 did was say that men have to use men’s rooms and women have to use women’s rooms in the state of North Carolina,” Forest said.

At the same time, he said people identifying as transgender benefit, too.

“What this bill did is it created accommodation for people that are transgender, for people that view their gender differently than other folks,” Forest said. “It also provides the opportunity for single-stall unisex bathrooms. Anywhere that you want to place them.”

Forest said, unlike Charlotte, the HB 2 only applies to government buildings and schools. Business owners are free to make their own decisions.

If you own a business in North Carolina, you are free to designate bathrooms in any way you see fit. The article notes that Lt. Gov. Forrest mentioned the possible NBA boycott of North Carolina because of the law. He stated that he found the possible boycott odd because the WNBA  does not allow men to play in their league or enter the locker rooms and the NBA does not open its league or its locker rooms to women.

Common sense needs to prevail here. Note that when the original ordinance was passed in Charlotte, state officials started hearing from sexual assault victims. That statement really tells you all you need to know. Our laws need to protect women and children.

An Exercise In Futility

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On July 16, 2014, the North Carolina General Assembly ratified SB812 (follow link for full text). The bill charges the State Board of Education with the task of conducting a comprehensive review of all English Language Arts and Mathematics standards adopted under G.S.115C 12(9c) and propose modifications to ensure that those standards will improve the students’ level of academic achievement, meet and reflect North Carolina’s priorities, and other goals. The law sets up the Academic Standards Review Commission composed of eleven people who are charged with reviewing  current standards and making recommendations. Unfortunately the way the law is written, the Commission is simply going through the Common Core standards line by line (by hearing a presentation of the Department of Public Instruction [DPI], which supports Common Core). There is no objectivity in the presentation, and there is no factual information at this point that indicates Common Core does anything to raise academic standards.

In May of last year, I wrote an article about the introduction of Common Core in Massachusetts. The article cited a Wall Street Journal article detailing the changes in Massachusetts education during the 1990’s. Education in the state was reformed in 1993, and SAT scores rose for thirteen consecutive years. In 2005 Massachusetts scored best in the nation in all grades and categories on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. They have repeated that performance every time they have taken the test.  Massachusetts is doing very well educationally right now.

On October 1 of this year, I wrote another article about Common Core in Massachusetts. The article was about the Lincoln-Sudbury School Board‘s decision to decline a chance to offer the PARCC (Common Core) to students next spring, sharply criticizing the standardized test that could end up replacing the MCAS in the state.

That article quotes a Massachusetts newspaper article that states:

One board member equated the trial run of the exam as making “guinea pigs” out of students, whom he said wouldn’t see any worthwhile benefit from the dozens of hours they would put into practicing for and taking the test.

Lincoln-Sudbury, like all public high schools in Massachusetts, had a choice to administer the PARCC, short for Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, in ninth and 11th grade later this year. The new test, which was introduced in a small pilot roll-out this past spring, was developed by a consortium of states to closely conform to the new Common Core standards adopted by most schools in the nation.

…Several committee members also bemoaned the PARCC’s potential effect of putting increased emphasis on standardized testing, arguing Lincoln-Sudbury on its own is able to come up with much more effective measures of students’ grasp of learning standards.

No matter how hard the Department of Public Instruction tries to sell it, Common Core is untested. If the Commission is truly concerned about the education of North Carolina students, they will look to other states that have successfully improved the academic achievement levels of their students. I am sure there are many communities in Massachusetts who would be willing and able to help with this task.

Meanwhile, today’s meeting was a biased, self-serving presentation by the Department of Public Instruction–a department that was not interested in changing anything (except possibly the name Common Core). That is unfortunate.

If the parents and grandparents of North Carolina students are truly concerned about their students’ education, they need to get involved very quickly. There will be a meeting next month in which the DPI will do a presentation of the mathematics section of Common Core similar to the one they did today on the English Language Arts section. So far there has been no public examination of any set of standards other than the unproven Common Core standards. If that continues, the students of North Carolina will be the victims of an exercise in futility that accomplished nothing.

 

 

Status Update On Common Core In North Carolina

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Representative Larry Pittman is a member of the North Carolina General Assembly. This is his update on the status of Common Core in North Carolina:

Common Core…what really happened. Okay, most of you probably know that I am the one who started the fight against Common Core in the NC House by running a study bill. I actually wanted to go ahead and run a bill that would just get rid of Common Core, plain and simple; but not enough legislators knew enough about it to get on board with that. So I had to settle for a study bill, instead. Of course, since none of my bills were allowed to be heard in committee, they put forward a larger study bill which included establishing a study committee, instead. Michael Speciale and I were allowed to serve on that committee.
The study committee produced a very weak bill, which appeared to be about getting rid of Common Core, but which I felt actually left open the possibility of simply rebranding it. This bill was authored by Sen. Tillman, who had asked early on in the meetings of the committee whether we couldn’t just take the name Common Core out of our statutes and call it something else. I went ahead and voted to report it out of committee, but knew I would have to work to improve on the bill.
Michael Speciale, Bryan Holloway, and I were doing just fine making the bill stronger, when all of a sudden, Craig Horn, who had expressed support for Common Core early on, showed up at one of our meetings with a different version that removed some of the language I had written into the bill. So I submitted another version that added my language back into the bill. As I recall, this happened twice. In all, I submitted four versions of the bill before Craig agreed to leave my language in it.
Before we were through, Craig wrote something like 23 versions of the bill. The final version still had my language in it that would make sure that going back to Common Core and simply rebranding it was not an option. I never said or intended that if a way of doing something that was in Common Core happened to be a good idea we couldn’t use it; but I was urgent about making sure that if we did, we should reword it to avoid copyright violations. My main concern was that whatever we do would end a lot of the foolishness that is in Common Core. I was insistant upon not using assessment sources that were tied to Common Core. I also wanted to make the commission we were creating permanent, with the idea that it would be a watchdog to make sure DPI and the State Board of Education did not pull another fast one on us like Common Core, and that we never get ourselves entangled with further federal control of our education system.
Well, the result of all this work was HB 1061, which passed the House with a strong majority. When SB 812 came over from the Senate, we also got strong support in the House to remove the weak language of that bill and replace it with what was in HB 1061. This, too, passed the House with a strong majority. If we could have gotten the Senate to go along with us, I could assure you that we would be driving a stake through the heart of Common Core in North Carolina.
When the Senate failed to concur with the House version of SB 812, that caused the issue to be sent to a conference committee. As the one who started all of this, you might expect that I would be on that conference committee. However, I was not allowed to serve on it. Michael Speciale was on the committee, and I’m sure that he did his best to contend for what we had done. I appreciate him so much, and he should be commended for his efforts. However, he was outnumbered and outvoted.
The end result is a bill two pages shorter than HB 1061. The lack of those two pages is the result of the Senate insisting on removing everything I had put into it to make clear that continuing with Common Core is not an option. The bill as we finally passed it does repeal Common Core from our statutes, and has the potential to lead to the end of Common Core in our State. In the end, I had to vote to concur because I felt that if we didn’t pass something this year, it would be next to impossible to come back next year and start from scratch. At least with this bill, we do have a basis for coming back later to push for further reforms, if need be. While it does not call for rebranding Common Core, I fear it leaves that option open. So we must be watchful and ready to resist such an outcome.
Finally, considering what was removed from the bill, and considering the fact that Gov. McCrory, a strong advocate of Common Core, has already essentially said that he can sign it because it doesn’t change anything, I do not have a lot of confidence about what will happen. I got this thing started because I heard the cries of parents and children who have been victimized by Common Core. I heard from some teachers who sounded the alarm, also, and was told about many other teachers who were afraid to speak of their opposition to Common Core for fear of losing their jobs. If that is the case, something is really rotten about the whole affair. I fear that, in the end, the voice of wealthy special interests spoke louder than the voice of the people who suffer under the curse of Common Core. While good could come from what we finally passed, I believe the opponents of Common Core should stay on the alert. We haven’t necessarily won yet. There may be more to do.

Please do your homework on Common Core. If you are not a parent with children in school, talk to a parent who has helped their child with Common Core math homework. Aside from being an unconstitutional federal takeover of education, the Common Core includes data mining of children without proper security protection of the information. It also includes questions asked of the children regarding their parents’ religious beliefs and gun ownership. That information is none of the school or the government’s business.

What Happens When Citizens Speak Out

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Last Thursday I posted an article about a public meeting of a joint legislative committee in North Carolina that is studying Common Core (rightwinggranny.com). Today Representative Larry G. Pittman of the North Carolina General Assembly House of Representatives released the following newsletter:

commoncoreletter1commoncoreletter2commoncoreletter3If your state is considering the Common Core standards, take heart. You do have a voice. If the public speaks out against this federal take-over of our education system, Common Core can be stopped.

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