Defending Family
A father´s defense of his daughter when she is being widely criticized is understandable, but we can wish that former Gov. Bob Scott hadn´t ignored facts when he stood up for Meg Scott Phipps.
Phipps, North Carolina´s embattled commissioner of agriculture, is being urged to resign by fellow Democrats, Republicans, newspaper editorial writers and even Democratic Gov. Mike Easley.
It is doubtful that she will take their advice — even though she should.
Phipps is an embarrassment to all who have devoted their lives to public service and to all those who voted for her in 2000.
Two of her top aides have pleaded guilty to various felonies in federal court and have promised to cooperate in a widening investigation of Phipps´ campaign irregularities and a belief by some that money paid to Phipps made a difference in who won lucrative state fair contracts.
U.S. Attorney Frank Whitney said of the Phipps probe, “Public corruption at any level is unacceptable. Public corruption at the highest level, as you have here, is unconscionable.”
By “highest level,” we assume he wasn´t talking about a couple of former assistants to Phipps.
The agriculture commissioner has had several conflicting explanations about how she knows nothing about any misdeeds, but she has refused to say anything recently.
When she beat Bobby McLamb in a primary election in 2000, she then added him to her campaign and wrote to Centura Bank that if they would extend the deadline on a McLamb loan that was due, she and her husband would help him pay it off. The bank granted the extension.
Phipps put McLamb and friend Linda Saunders on the state payroll when she was elected. Phipps asked McLamb to send his loan account numbers to her husband. A month later, Saunders then wrote the first of four checks, totaling $63,879, from the Phipps campaign account to Centura on behalf of McLamb.
Phipps and her aides then raised checks and cash from carnival operators. Some checks paid off campaign loans, some paid off personal Phipps loans, and the cash didn´t seem to get recorded.
On April 1, 2002, Phipps told the News & Observer that she and her husband had helped pay off McLamb´s debt. A day later, a Phipps aide said Phipps actually didn´t do it personally - the money came from her campaign. On April 5, Phipps said neither she nor her campaign did it. By then, she realized the repayment was against the law.
There is much more, but the state Board of Elections heard three days of testimony and fined the Phipps campaign $130,000 for election law violations.
Phipps maintained that hundreds of thousands of dollars flowed in and out of her office without her knowledge. She is either too deceitful or too dumb to be serving in elected office. It would be amazing if Phipps is not indicted by a federal grand jury for her activities.
Her actions have damaged the good reputation of grandfather Kerr Scott and father Bob Scott, both former governors. Her father ignores her actions in defending her, but mars his own reputation when he says only his age and health keep him from running against Easley next year so he “could beat his ass.”
— The Dispatch of Lexington
Is Bigger Better?
The question now for the Atlantic Coast Conference is not how many, but who.
In the sports-world equivalent to a corporate merger, the venerable nine-team collegiate league, whose headquarters is in Greensboro but whose ambitions span the Eastern Seaboard, decided this week to grow by three member schools.
The leading candidates to join are the University of Miami, Syracuse University, Boston College and Virginia Tech.
How big a deal is this? The Virginia legislature and Gov. Mark Warner reportedly have lobbied on behalf of Virginia Tech’s candidacy.
Syracuse, you may recall, is the reigning college basketball champion. Miami is a perennial football power. And Boston College and Virginia Tech have established solid traditions in both sports.
But this move is as much a business decision as anything else.
In an era of conference mergers and realignment, ACC officials see an opportunity to enhance their national profile, their market reach and their television revenue.
Is a bigger ACC a better ACC? That depends on your definition of ‘’better.”
If the conference adds these schools, it will increase its value as a television attraction and, in turn, enhance its ability to negotiate lucrative deals for TV coverage.
Further, the ACC, traditionally known as a basketball conference, would significantly improve its pedigree as a football league.
Finally, by growing, the ACC may actually protect itself from shrinking. Relatively speaking, the ACC is one of the smaller major conferences. The Big East contains 15 schools. The Pac-8 has become the Pac-10. In a mathematical anomaly, even the Big Ten now contains 11 members.
Odds are that if the ACC doesn’t lure attractive schools from other conferences (the four potential newcomers are all members of the Big East), those other conferences would come calling on attractive ACC members. Consider it a preemptive strike.
But as in other walks of life, bigness comes at a cost, including more time spent by athletes on the road instead of in the classroom (somebody still cares about that, we hope).
Also, some ACC purists sniff at the notion of Miami becoming a member. Rightly or wrongly, the school has a lingering reputation as a football factory whose players don’t always make headlines for their good deeds.
From a more parochial perspective, expansion may mean that, over the long term, Greensboro could get less of a good thing. As the league stretches geographically, it may be compelled to hold its basketball tournament in other locales, for instance, Boston’s Fleet Center where the Celtics play.
With a new downtown Charlotte arena already nipping at its heels for the ACC’s attention, Greensboro could see the tournament less frequently in the future.
From a purely sentimental standpoint, the ACC’s relative smallness has been one of its charms. Now, the league seems more and more removed from its modest beginnings 50 years ago and from the warm, gauzy memories of televised basketball sponsored by a homegrown insurance company that beckoned us to “Sail with the Pilot, all the way.”
For better and for worse, “all the way” today in the ACC is a lot farther than it used to be.
— The News & Record
of Greensboro
Feeding Workers
Hunger happens mainly in places like Africa, or so diet-conscious Americans might prefer to think. Many of us take a can of food for admission to the State Fair in the fall and send a bag of canned goods with mail carriers in the spring, but in between, we get on with our lives. And try not to eat too much.
It’s almost unimaginable, then, that there could be hunger in our own community. Yet that’s the troubling news from researchers who found that nearly half the 102 Latino farmworkers they interviewed in Wake, Harnett, Johnston, Sampson and Duplin counties couldn’t afford enough food for their families. The very people counted on to harvest food can’t count on feeding their own children what they need.
Why farmworkers’ families would be hungry in this bountiful place is a complex problem that is as simple as low wages. Ninety percent of the nation’s farmworkers are Hispanic. Half, according to federal estimates, are illegal immigrants with minimal earning power in an advanced economy. The money they can make in farm fields won’t cover rent, electricity, transportation and food. They must choose.
On days when even farms can’t offer work, hunger happens. The researchers, with Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, recommend improving food assistance programs, especially for immigrants without access to government social services. That seems only fair. Even if people are here illegally, do we expect them to be hungry while they do work that benefits the rest of us?
To their credit, the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle of Raleigh already salvages thousands of pounds of perishable food for the Episcopal Farmworker Ministry, which distributes items without questioning immigration status. But supplies are quickly exhausted. More food must be collected and distributed where it’s needed. The Food Bank of North
Carolina proved capable of distributing 18 million pounds of food after Hurricane Floyd. With greater community support and farmers to provide the key communication link, more emergency food could reach farmworkers’ families. Resolve is what’s needed most.
— The News & Observer
of Raleigh
Raise Tobacco Tax
Lawmakers’ refusal to hike cigarette tax is irresponsible
Nearly half a century ago the N.C. General Assembly had the good sense to help create and fund the Research Triangle Park and launch the vast research organization known as the Research Triangle Institute.
Now members of the 2003 General Assembly should have the good sense to pay attention to a new study by Research Triangle Institute International, as it’s now known, that could solve much of the state’s current budget shortfall and lead to healthier citizens as well. Among other things, the study (available online at www.rti.org) found that:
• States that significantly raise cigarette excise taxes enjoy positive revenue growth even though smoking levels decline.
• States that don’t raise tobacco taxes lose tax revenue over time because of inflation and normal declines in smoking rates.
• Increased cigarette taxes reduce smoking levels, especially among the young.
• Twenty-six states have raised their cigarette tax rates since the beginning of 2002, and the average state cigarette tax rate is now 68.3 cents per pack. North Carolina’s rate, third lowest in the nation, is 5 cents per pack unchanged since 1991.
Given that the General Assembly faces a $400 million shortfall in balancing the 2003-04 budget, a cigarette tax increase should be on everyone’s agenda. A 50-cent increase would bring in about $273 million, and leave the N.C. tax rate at 55 cents per pack — well below the national average.
Many lawmakers have declined to even consider a cigarette tax — some because they promised not to raise taxes, and some because they don’t believe in raising the cigarette tax. But the state has already chopped many state agencies and programs to the bone — the court system is notoriously underfunded, for example. More revenue is needed, now.
Some lawmakers have proposed an increase in “sin” taxes, such as wine and beer, coupled with a modest cigarette tax hike to meet half the projected shortfall. They should go further, raising the cigarette tax by at least 50 cents. They should also create a state earned-income tax credit to mitigate the regressive nature of the hikes on low-income citizens.
State lawmakers have a responsibility to see that essential state services are provided and human needs are met. Last week, Mecklenburg County commissioners voted 6-2 in favor of a resolution encouraging the legislature to adopt a 75-cent per pack tax increase to help defray the counties’ rising share of Medicaid cost increases. Given that many citizens covered by Medicaid suffer from ailments associated with smoking, such an increase is both reasonable and logical.
What’s clear is that further cuts in the state budget would likely come at the expense of those least able to bear it — children, pregnant women, mental health patients and the elderly. Lawmakers have avoided raising the cigarette tax for 12 years. It’s time to raise it — now when it’s needed most.
— The Charlotte Observer
