Art Pope's Got a State Budget for You!

David and/or Dan Soucek and Jonathan Jordan can sit back and relax, because it turns out that Art Pope (through his puppets at the John Locke Foundation) has already written a detailed budget for North Carolina.

Going through it you'll notice some obvious main targets: public education; help for the poor, the weak, the ill; alternative energies; anything dealing with cultural, historical, or environmental enhancements.

The Art Pope Budget recommends zeroing out the NC Arts Council, the NC Symphony, the NC Council for Women, the Human Relations Commission, the Martin Luther King Commission, the Commission on Indian Affairs, and the Youth Involvement Office. Most of these are axed as "advocacy."

Art Pope and his puppets have a HUGE chip on their shoulders about alternative energies, especially wind and solar, so the State Energy Office is a major target, and more specifically the energy research at ASU would be cut from the state budget and transferred to the UNC budget (the message: if energy research is so important, let UNC decide how much to spend on it).

The Pope Budget would end all appropriations for the NC Arboretum and for Public Television.

The Pope Budget would raise the student/teacher ratio in public schools and raise tuition at our community colleges and public universities.

Art Pope and his toadies have plenty of money. And the poor can always beg. It's natural law.