Cost/Benefit for the Better Educated

 

I always have my doubts about hot-news social science research ("Being liberal extends your life!"), but this research below seems solidly based in math (econ) and matches the impression I've had after some 64 years of inhabiting various college and university campuses and hanging at numerous coffee pots to hear the gossip. So for what it's worth: 

The Postsecondary Education & Economics Research Center at American University, using research from the Yale Tobin Center for Economic Policy "found that graduate degrees in medicine, law and pharmacy generally have the highest return on investment. By contrast, degrees in popular fields such as social work, psychology, and curriculum and instruction may actually have a zero to negative return after factoring in the full cost." (WashPost)

Yikes. 

 

The Man Who Shut Down Early Voting at Western Carolina

 

Bill Thompson, presiding

 

 

Bill Thompson, the new Republican chair of the Jackson County Board of Elections, has managed to establish an early reputation as a nasty piece of work. But isn't that the way Phil Berger and Tim Moore intended election administration to go in North Carolina? They changed the law, put themselves in charge of elections, and just naturally attracted the meanest and most partisan people to make things as difficult as possible.

As chair of the Jackson BOE, it was Thompson who led the nasty move of killing an early voting site at Western Carolina University. “ By law, we could have just one site in Jackson County,” Thompson warned, ignoring evidence that the WCU early voting site was the most used in the county. “One site is required for every 30,000 voters. We've got four, that's plenty.”

Two complaints were lodged with the NC State BOE against Bill Thompson for his conduct in a Cullowee precinct polling place during the March primary. A voter, seconded by two other witnesses, and an actual poll worker both filed complaints on the second day of early voting, saying Thompson came into the polling site talking trash about Muslims and saying that both Germany and France were ruined now because of the Muslim invasion, and that he especially didn't trust Germans. The poll worker who heard all this was born in Germany and he summed up the grief  brief against Bill Thompson, that "he exposed deep and unfounded disgust against Muslims and their faith as well as any non-European culture.”

Bill Thompson's not the first bigot to chair a board of elections, but still....

The NC BOE on March 25th (last Wednesday) held an initial review to determine whether the complaints against Thompson "presented sufficient evidence of misconduct or a violation of election-related duties." The board voted 4-1 that the threshold had not been met. One Democrat voted with the Republican majority, though she lectured Thompson: "We're cautioned not to bring politics into the polling place, and discussions of politics. At least one of those instances cited in the complaints is arguably a political commentary, or brings in issues that really have no place in a polling place.” But she agreed to let him off the hook.

Republican SBOE member Stacy "Four" Eggers did give Thompson a highly decorous, because indirect dressing-down:

"Mr. Chairman, I think it is worth cautioning the chair [Thompson] as to his discussions, choice of words and what he chooses to discuss at the polling place. I know that Miss [Angela] Hawkins [another Jackson Co. board member] and I both have spent a lot of time in county precincts, and generally the discussion is limited to the weather, or perhaps your favorite sports team or something innocuous like that.

“Although the comments were not appropriate for the discussion in the area, they still, in my mind, don't show a violation of Chapter 163.” 

I suspect this may not be the last dressing-down that Bill Thompson will be needing.

 

Cornyn Shoots the Moon in Texas

 

Holy mackerel! I just saw this commercial attacking Ken Paxton, paid for by a proud Senator John Cornyn. Talk about a frontal assault! That's how mean and personal the Republican Senate primary run-off has gotten in Texas between the bland Senator Cornyn and the poisonous Attorney General Ken Paxton. Cornyn, not so bland after all. He's had to go very negative after Trump failed to endorse him, which according to the entire world of political punditry, Trump promised he would do -- to save Texas from born-again James Talarico, because most Texas Republican operatives think Paxton's baggage is as deadly as a suppressed sulfur fart. The very heavy ethical baggage that Cornyn has just aired in this minute commercial.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let Us Sit Upon the Ground and Tell Sad Stories of the Death of Kings

 

Politicians abhor a vacuum as much as nature does, and the sudden concession of NC Senate President Phil Berger late yesterday afternoon has created one of the biggest vacuums in North Carolina history. Berger had ultimate power over every bill that made it through to a vote, every appointment to every important post that the General Assembly controls, every ambition of every fellow Republican senator who wanted to rise. Berger was the undisputed king, and perhaps no one will celebrate his absence more than some of his own allies.

The resentment of putative allies got a surprise airing yesterday in the New York Times, when reporter Eduardo Medina outed Sen. Thom Tillis for secretly lobbying wealthy Republican donors against Berger. On a Zoom call last month, well before the primary, Thom Tillis was clear that Berger had to go because he's too power-hungry, too authoritarian, too dismissive of any idea not his own, and too already fat with campaign cash.

So I can only imagine the ambitions right now surging through the Berger troops still in the Senate, the ones who could not rise because Berger stood in the way. The rivalries will now show themselves in the Raleigh Thunderdome. And all the while the in-fighting goes on and consumes the Republican ecology, the date of the mid-term reckoning with voters advances apace. Who knows? Voters appear quite irritated with abusers of power, and perhaps all the GOP's corrupt gerrymandering may not be shield enough against the wrath to come.

Meanwhile, Sam Page can take his seat in January as a new back-bencher -- he may need two seats to accommodate that ridiculous chapeau. He'll soon learn that his vote has been pre-programmed by higher ups (and probably doesn't matter anyway, if the Republican super-majority holds. Ha!). What High Sheriff Sam Page doesn't know about being low-man in a new pecking order might possibly be a harsh and disappointing education.

 

Kings of Gambling Mean To Own North Carolina

 

 

The gambling industry has a two-prong strategy for taking North Carolina: First, the push stage-managed by the Phil Berger clan to put a physical gambling casino in Rockingham County (and ultimately in three other rural counties). The money trail in that mis-fire went back to The Cordish Company, a developer of "gaming destinations."

The second hustle is all about online gambling. The leading player looking for favors is the corporate entity known as DraftKings, a huge online gambling industry leader with a very eerie website that put me in mind of actually being inside a windowless but gleaming casino, slowly losing my wits. DraftKings' parent is DK Crown Holdings Inc., "a leading digital sports entertainment provider." They recently turned up in an investigative piece into a key race for the NC Senate, sticking their thumb on the scale to oust incumbent Republican Sen. Chris Measmer in NCS 34 and put in Republican Kevin Crutchfield (who was recently a one-term member of the NC House). Crutchfield won the primary even after news came out that DK Crown Holdings Inc. was behind big donations to super-PACS that opened a ridiculous frontal assault on the character of Chris Measmer (ridiculous because they attacked him as a RINO when he's in actuality pretty MAGAfied). (Measmer was already trailing heavy personal baggage, which I described back in February.)

Crutchfield

 

The anti-Measmer attack ads were funded by an entity called the American Conservative Fund. According to the excellent investigative reporting of Nora O'Neill, "the Federal Election Commission filings show American Conservative Fund is funded entirely by another political group called Win for America, which is entirely funded by DK Crown Holdings, Inc."

They wanted Chris Measmer to lose his seat bad, which means they wanted Kevin Crutchfield bad and are counting on him for ... what? That question alone ought to set Kevin Crutchfield up for knocking down in November by Democrat April Cook. I wrote about her back in February and was taken with her prospects. She's now been endorsed by Carolina Forward. She can beat Crutchfield, who's now dragging his own weary baggage.

Anyway, why such financial interest in little ole North Carolina by various fronts in the gambling biz? (And I do wonder what other General Assembly races featured big gambling money.) In the case of DraftKings, its very popular and I suspect amazingly lucrative SportsBook only very recently became legal (March of '24) after the passage of H 347, which legalized sports betting specifically but not "casino" action -- slots, roulette, and other live-dealer games, which according to DraftKings' website they're very into. Online casino betting -- still banned in North Carolina, but the General Assembly already opened that door a crack and invited DraftKings in.

 

Splitsville in the Democratic Party?

 

Wesley Knott

 

 

The dyspepsia in the Democratic Party is generational. I see the rising tide of younger, sharper, more confrontational candidates as the yeast producing the gas that makes the dough rise, and my sympathies are almost entirely with them. I was pretty yeasty myself in my youth and had Bobby Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy to inspire me (not that McCarthy was any spring chicken by then, but he didn't think like an old man).

So I'm fairly philosophical about the kerfuffle that's erupted in the Wake County Democratic Party over the party chair's open and public endorsement of the insurgent Nida Allam, the 32-year-old Durham County Commissioner, over the "safer" incumbent Congresswoman Valerie Foushee. Endorsements in party primaries are supposed to be off-limits for party officers, and some county parties adhere rigidly to that hands-off principle (like the Watauga County Democratic Party, sometimes to its actual detriment). What party officers are not supposed to indulge in, individual rank-and-file Democrats can. Any Democrat can advocate for whomever they favor, loudly and obnoxiously if necessary.

But here's the thing: that principle of non-interference by our party leaders is already in tatters. The Governor himself made very public endorsements in more than one primary for General Assembly seats (and his candidates all won), while the state party chair cut off campaign resources for several NC House members who had voted with Republicans on veto overrides (and all those candidates lost). So I'm almost amused to see a petition arise in Wake County to eject Wesley Knott from his position as party chair, because he endorsed Nida Allam over Valerie Foushee in the 4th Congressional District primary. When asked about his coloring outside the lines, Knott, a 29-year-old who just became party chair last year, articulated the generational judgment of Foushee, the 70-year-old political veteran with municipal, county, and General Assembly elected positions behind her and a history of taking AIPAC money (the Israeli lobby). Knott called Foushee “risk-averse,” a “carefully-calculated” friend of the status quo who has failed to inspire voters. 

"Risk aversion" cuts succinctly to the point. In the current situation of both the NC General Assembly and the US Congress, where Trump Republicans rule and in NC's case rule almost absolutely, some Democrats become hesitant to advance ideas or initiatives that they know can't win approval (because, math) and they become simultaneously resigned if not outright comfortable sitting on their small seats of advancement and doing nothing to raise hell for policies that make sense and that need public drum-beating. Wesley Knott is a drum-beater.

I wrote about the younger version of Wesley Knott in 2022 when he himself ran a primary against Democratic House incumbent Sarah Crawford in NC House Dist. 66 and came within 140 votes of actually beating her. I was impressed then by the way he put things:

"I’m a mixed-race progressive who grew up in the Deep South. Politics isn’t abstract to me. I didn’t need critical race theory to learn about racism, and I didn’t need a policy analysis to know the importance of Medicaid. So when I talk about policy, it’s from a place of shared experience. I know what’s on the line. That’s why I’m running."

 

To get rid of Wesley Knott, who by other accounts has been an effective ball of fire for the Wake County party, strikes me as a foolish cutting off of one's nose to spit one's face.

 

Keeping Up With the Slow Death of Titan

 

I always learn stuff from Bryan Anderson's reporting, like the basic statutory process for recounting votes in the Berger/Page upset election in NC Senate Dist. 26:

State law and historical precedent calls for a machine recount first. After that, the trailing candidate has 24 hours to request a partial hand recount for a random sample of about 3% of primary day precincts, early voting sites, or both. If the partial hand recount produces results that indicate a different outcome in the race, a full hand recount would be triggered.

 

Yesterday (Wednesday), Berger asked the State Board of Elections (SBOE -- majority Republican) to alter that schedule slightly, to also do a hand recount on any ballots that the machine recount identified as "undervotes" (where voters picked no candidate in the race) or "overvotes" (where voters picked both candidates). Those numbers are already known: 217 undervotes and 3 overvotes out of the 26,000 votes cast in Rockingham and Guilford counties. 

 

Berger wanted yesterday those 220 ballots examined during the machine recount. The SBOE declined Berger's request, perhaps because those three Republican SBOE members are quite aware that the whole state is watching them very closely in this particular instance, on high alert for any finagling. So SBOE Chair Francis DeLuca (as dependably and consistently partisan a conservative as any GOP wet-dream could conjure and put in control of North Carolina elections) sounded like a slightly shocked Aunt Polly about Berger's request: “We follow the law! If it’s in the statute, we follow it. But there was nothing in that request that went by statute.” 

Berger intends ultimately (and mysteriously) to "determine the voter's intent" behind those 220 undervotes and overvotes, and I reckon those assumed intentions end up being at least one of the arguments in the eventual law suit. Berger only needs to find 24 of those under-voters and get them to swear in an affidavit that their votes would have/should have gone to Berger. If I were one of those people, I would play it safe and claim that I was on prescription drugs that day and didn't mean to skip that race and would have voted enthusiastically for Mr. Berger had I not been in a not-unpleasing drug haze). 

 

The machine recount in Rockingham is happening right now at this hour. The machine recount in those precincts of Guilford that are in S 26 happened yesterday, resulted in minus-1 vote from both Berger and Page, so no change in the outcome. All eyes on Rockingham today.

Ain't No Simple Thing To Steal an Election

 

BREAKING NEWS from Laura Leslie: 

North Carolina Senate Leader Phil Berger (R-Rockingham) has called for a recount in his District 26 primary contest against Rockingham Sheriff Sam Page, who holds a narrow lead in official county totals.

According to the final canvasses in Rockingham and Guilford counties last week, with 26,249 votes cast in the race, Page has 23 more votes than Berger, a margin of 0.08%. That’s well within the 1% margin in state law for a losing candidate in a non-statewide race to request a recount....

Because the district covers more than one county, the State Board of Elections has jurisdiction over the recount process, but the actual recounts are still conducted at the county level. The state board sent detailed instructions to Guilford and Rockingham counties on March 14. 

 

I'm not normally (yip!) conspiracy-minded, but in an age when massive theft is on plain view and actually unashamed to be seen in its native garb, if there was a moment for election theft, it would be now rather than later. And don't you wonder what those "detailed instrux" said? 

It's a machine recount, but in both Rockingham and Guilford, there's a paper-trail. Voters fill in a paper ballot that they then feed into a tabulator (Rockingham County uses the DS200 Vote Tabulator). Could the innards of the DS200 be jiggered to flip the election? Dunno, but I bet it would be hard, but totally within the skill set of the people who run elections now and who owe their jobs to Phil Berger. Just sayin'.

But even then, any substantial change in vote totals from the machine recount would trigger a second hand-eye recount, and that's when those paper ballots would presumably furnish the truth.