The one gun control measure we can all agree on

The gun control debate is in full force following the Newtown, Conn., massacre. But there is one restriction on which we can all agree.

Deep in Wednesday's Observer was a notable comment that we need to amplify. Ken Rinkor is the vice president of Tactical Arms Manufacturer Inc. in Huntersville. The family-owned company makes AR-15s, the kind of semi-automatic rifle Adam Lanza used in Newtown. Rinkor worries that his company could go out of business if assault rifles are outlawed.

Yet Rinkor supports a ban on sales to the public of high-capacity ammunition magazines. Lanza used large-capacity magazines to fire multiple rounds without having to reload.

"Frankly, I think there's no need for anybody to have such ... magazines, 20 or 30 rounds. It makes no sense at all to have that large of a magazine, even for personal protection," Rinkor told the Observer.

Doesn't that just about settle it? It's a common-sense step. And if one of the nation's biggest defenders of the AR-15 rifle says high-capacity magazines should be banned, who is to argue with him?

One other note on the gun control debate: How lame is it that one of North Carolina's U.S. senators, Republican Richard Burr, won't make any comment about it? The Observer interviewed members of the N.C. congressional delegation about how to respond to the Newtown tragedy. Republicans Richard Hudson, Robert Pittenger, Renee Ellmers and Patrick McHenry weighed in, as did U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan, a Democrat. Burr did not respond to a request for comment. North Carolinians are used to Burr being less than visible, but is it asking too much for him to tell his constituents his thoughts on one of the most horrifying tragedies in U.S. history?

Taylor Batten

Earth to Tea Party, come in Tea Party

As Democrats and Republicans come closer to a last-minute deal on the fiscal cliff, the voices from La-La Land intrude to remind Republicans that no compromise is acceptable.

Theteaparty.net, which bills itself as the nation's largest tea party advocacy group, sent out a press release today vowing to "primary" -- yes, they use it as a verb -- any Republican who supports House Speaker John Boehner's "Plan B" legislation. That bill would raise taxes on people making more than $1 million a year. The Club for Growth and the lobbying arm of the Heritage Foundation have also come out against "Plan B."

"Not one dime in new taxes, not one nickel in new spending, and for the love of God and the future of our country, not one red cent in new debt," blustered spokesman Bob Adams. "What's at stake here is nothing less than the future of the Republican party as a viable conservative political force."

Adams and spokesman Niger Innis say they'll try to dethrone Boehner and recruit candidates to run against any Republican who votes for Boehner's plan.

We don't want to give these folks any more credit than they deserve and it's entirely possible that congressional Republicans will ignore them and their silly petitions. They should, since Adams and Innis appear to be living in another world. They missed that tax rates are going up for everyone on Jan. 1 absent a deal. Boehner's plan to raise taxes only on those making more than $1 million a year prevents tax hikes on more than 99 percent of America. Besides, the Boehner plan is going nowhere; there's no indication President Obama and Democrats will agree to the $1 million threshold.

The tea party, which cost Republicans control of the Senate, continues to marginalize itself.

Taylor Batten

The NRA re-enters the debate

After four days of near silence on the Newtown shootings, the National Rifle Association announced moments ago it will have a news conference Friday "to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again."

The full statement: 

The National Rifle Association of America is made up of four million moms and dads, sons and daughters – and we were shocked, saddened and heartbroken by the news of the horrific and senseless murders in Newtown.

Out of respect for the families, and as a matter of common decency, we have given time for mourning, prayer and a full investigation of the facts before commenting.

The NRA is prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again.

The NRA is planning to hold a major news conference in the Washington, DC area on Friday, December 21.

Details will be released to the media at the appropriate time.

The timing allows for passions to calm and funerals to finish, which helps prevent the NRA's words from appearing side-by-side with the grief from Newtown. But the announcement of a "major" news conference is an acknowledgment that the NRA needed to catch up to the gun debate, that Newtown is having a greater impact on the country - and therefore Washington - than previous mass killings. 

Peter St. Onge

Fair, balanced, and quiet on guns

We try to steer clear of media critiques here at O-pinion; our readers are more than capable of sorting out which news outlets serve them best. But New York Magazine had a fascinating item Monday on an interesting divide between News Corp. boss Rupert Murdoch, who has taken to Twitter to call for stricter gun control, and his television network, which apparently was trying its very best not to talk about it.

Says writer Gabriel Sherman:

According to sources, David Clark, the executive producer in charge of Fox’s weekend coverage, gave producers instructions not to talk about gun-control policy on air. "This network is not going there,” Clark wrote one producer on Saturday night, according to a source with knowledge of the exchange. The directive created a rift inside the network.  

A few folks didn't get the memo to shush, including FOX News Sunday host Chris Wallace, who talked about the issue on his program with guests. Murdoch, too, felt compelled to say something. “Terrible news today. When will politicians find courage to ban automatic weapons?" he tweeted over the weekend. But at the network, Clark's weekend dictate seemed to have ruled.

The divide shows the raw, powerful impact Newtown initially is having on the gun control debate. It's possible, as Sherman diplomatically speculates, that FOX was trying to keep its coverage focused on the human tragedy until after the victims were buried. (A courtesy the network didn't apply to the September deaths of four U.S. officials in Libya.) It's also possible that FOX honchos, like so many quiet gun advocates right now, preferred not to entertain a debate on guns with passions so hot against them right now. (The NRA has gone "on lockdown," Politico reports.)

But a news organization is obligated to report on the big news of the day, not what its heart thinks the news should be. Each day, media outlets try to sift through all that's happening and make those choices - and each of us sometimes gets it wrong. But willfully denying your viewers coverage of the debate everyone was having? Even the boss knew better.

Update: According to Politico's Dylan Byers, Murdoch's other outlet on the gun issue might be the New York Post, where the editorial board opines today that weapon technology has rendered the Second Amendment "obsolete." 

Peter St. Onge   

N.C. great for business? Yes, really

Gov. Pat McCrory, busy introducing key administration members today, probably didn't hear the good news/bad news about North Carolina this morning: Forbes magazine ranked the Tar Heel State the fourth-best in the country to do business, based on factors including business costs, labor supply and growth prospects.

What's the bad news? The ranking doesn't fit with McCrory's narrative that our state's brand is tarnished in the eyes of businesses who might think of locating here. That was a constant theme of the McCrory campaign in 2012, and he summarily dismissed several business rankings that had N.C. in the top 10.

McCrory says businesses are turned off by high taxes and overregulation in North Carolina. Forbes has a different take, ranking our state as second best in Business Costs and third best in Regulatory Environment. How did Forbes reach these numbers? Through legitimate research, not anecdotal gloom and doom.

For the Business Cost rankings, Forbes incorporated Moody's Analytics cost of doing business index, which includes labor, energy and taxes, and factored in the new state tax index from the Tax Foundation that looks at the tax burden on businesses across different industries. 

For regulatory environment, Forbes says it looked in part at the regulatory component of the Freedom in the 50 States report from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, which "considers labor regulations, health insurance coverage mandates, occupational licensing, the tort system, right-to-work laws and more." 

In other words, this wasn't taking a poll of business owners and calling it a day. 

We think our new governor has some good ideas about taking an efficiency-minded look at regulations, and like him, we think tax reform for individuals and businesses is long overdue. But McCrory and legislators shouldn't approach each of those tasks with the notion that North Carolina is a terrible place to do business. That's fiction. 

Peter St. Onge

No, the overhead baggage bin is NOT full

Flying is hard. Harder than ever, maybe. There are longer, more invasive security checks. There's the 3 oz. rule. The fees. Add to that the uncertainty of winter weather, and you might begin wondering if a really long Skype to Grandma might be sufficient for the holidays this year.

(No, Grandma, we don't really wonder that.)

Now, US Airways has added one more peeve to the pile: The Empty Overhead Bin. In an effort to streamline the boarding process on fuller flights, the airline is telling some passengers they must check carry-on bags and leave them in the jet way because the overhead bins are full. But when passengers arrive at their seat, they find overhead bins with plenty of room, even after everyone has boarded.

Travelers are seething, quietly and not so quietly. Some are filling the friendly skies with frustrated tweets. Some are offering helpful, detailed suggestions on how US Airways can end the Empty Overhead Bin annoyance. A member of the O-pinion family, who's experienced EOB a few times this year, watched once as a woman snapped pictures of the empty bins and angrily posted them on Facebook.

So what's going on? We asked US Airways spokewoman Michelle Mohr, who helpfully explained:

US Airways has created a formula based on extensive study that takes into account the aircraft type, number of customers booked on the plane and average number of carry-on bags that our customers bring along to determine at which point during the boarding process we should begin checking bags at the gate.

So as passengers hand over their boarding passes at the gate, the agents begin counting down. There's also supposed to be communication about the overhead bins between those agents and flight attendants on board, Mohr says. "It's not an exact science, but works well in helping our agents know when to check bags," she says.

Mohr says the airline receives few complaints about EOB, but an informal, unscientific O-pinion poll of air travelers shows it's probably more of an issue than the airline thinks. It's also a problem that airlines brought upon themselves by charging fees for checked bags, which in turn encouraged more passengers to stuff belongings into carry-ons that fill those overhead bins. That, of course, led to passengers wandering up and down aisles looking for a whiff of bin space to cram their roll-away, which led to departure delays, which brings us back to that whole air-travel-is-hard thing. 

So understand this: US Airways isn't intentionally trying to irritate its customers with the overhead bin formula. (Although, we should note that it might yield yet another revenue stream - the airline is offering priority early boarding, for a fee.) Our plea, on behalf of all passengers: Keep refining. Free the overhead bin space. Make travel easier. Grandmas everywhere are depending on it.      


Peter St. Onge
 

On school choice, CMS gets a C-

An intriguing new Brookings Institution report on school choice gives Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools a middling grade in its Education Choice and Competition Index for 2012. In the report released Tuesday CMS came in 47th of 107 districts nationwide. That ranking earned CMS a C-.

Coming in at No. 1 was Louisiana's Recovery District, the school district system set up in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina obliterated many of its school districts that had been failing. It is composed of 113 autonomous schools in 14 districts across Louisiana. Given the charter school characteristics of the Recovery District, it's no surprise that it tops this index, and gets the only A. New York  City is second with a B+, followed by Washington, D.C., Minneapolis, Houston, Orleans Parish (in New Orleans), Milwaukee, San Diego, Baltimore City and Dade County (Fla.) rounding out the top 10 and getting either a B or B-.

But there's something striking about that list of top performers. Most of them tend to be laggards academically. On the National Assessment of Education Progress, NAEP, also known as the "nation's report card," several of the school districts lanquish near the bottom in terms of academic performance or progress. And on NAEP, CMS is considered a stand-out for its students' academic progress.
At grade 4, NAEP math scores released this year for Austin, Boston, Charlotte, Hillsborough County (FL), Houston, Jefferson County (KY), Miami-Dade, and San Diego were higher than for large cities nationally. At grade 8, scores for Austin, Boston, Charlotte, Hillsborough County (FL), Houston, and San Diego were higher than the scores for large cities nationally. Only Houston and San Diego made the school choice top 10. Jefferson County and Boston both came in at 41 with a C-; Austin came in at 89 with an F.

But the aim of the school choice list was not to find districts with good school choice options that were also good academically. There are some, to be sure. Wake County comes in 16th. But the authors note explicitly that low scores don't "necessarily mean these are bad districts... they vary in how well they are managed and the performance of their students on achievement tests." The criteria for scoring well on this index places more weight on the availability of choice options than on academic performance. Those options include charter schools, magnets, vouchers, virtual learning and the like. The authors, including senior Brookings fellow Grover Whitehurst, the principal author, who worked in education policy in President George W. Bush's administration, are upfront about their advocacy for school choice. Through this index, they say they want to identify "areas in which policies can be changed to expand choice and competition." "A fundamental rationale for school choice is its effect of creating a vibrant marketplace for better schools," they say. "There is evidence tha it presently does so but its effects are muted by administrative and legislative requiremens that reduce choice and buffer schools from the effects of competition."

Interesting notion. I'm not so sure based on this index that the evidence is clear on that score. But take a look, and do some comparisons with studies that focus on academic achievement and progress, and judge for yourself.

Speaking of academic achievement, check out the new Trends in Mathematics and Science Study released this week that looks at international achievement in math and science. In a breakout of several states in this country, North Carolina makes a good showing in comparison to other countries and the United States as a whole. In 4th grade math, only education systems in Singapore, Korea, Hong Kong, Chinese Taipei and Japan did better. Students in Finland, Northern Ireland and Belgium didn't do mesurably better than N.C. fourth graders. And N.C. students bested a slew of countries including the U.S., Russia, England, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, Spain, Australia and so on. Eighth grade N.C. math students were only bested by korea, Singapore, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, Japan and Massachusetts (in the U.S.). N.C. 8th graders bested Florida, Colorado and Connecticut in the U.S. and several other countries including Finland,England, Italy, Israel, Norway, Chile, etc.

Asian countries still dominate but U.S. students, particularly in N.C. are making gains. See the whole list at the TIMSS site.

Posted by Fannie Flono

'No' to Helms building; thumbs up to McCrory

A new Public Policy Polling survey is good news for incoming Gov. Pat McCrory. He has a high favorability rating among N.C. voters with 53 percent having a favorable opinion of him, and just 25 percent with an unfavorable view. That's a stark contrast to outgoing Gov. Bev Perdue's marks as she exits the governor's mansion. Only 35 percent approve of her job performance while a whopping 52 percent disapprove.

The Republican-controlled legislature has nothing to crow about in that regard. According to this poll, about the same percent - 51 percent of voters - disapprove of its performance. An even lower percent approve - just 15 percent. The rest - 34 percent - aren't sure of its performance. And by party, the voting public gives higher unfavorables to Republicans; 51 percent have an unfavorable view of N.C. Republican lawmakers and 33 percent have a favorable view. Of Democrats in the legislature, 45 percent of voters have an unfavorable view to 38 percent with a favorable of their performance.

The legislature has some work to do to restore public confidence in their work. McCrory's leadership could help in that regard, given the favorability he enjoys going into office even among Democrats - this poll shows 33 percent favorable ratings to 35 percent unfavorables from the Dems. He scores well with independents as well - 50 percent favorable to 31 percent unfavorable. But the poll also shows voters aren't keen on how McCrory's handling his transition. They don't agree with his decision to remain employed at Moore & Van Allen: 51 percent think that McCrory's continued employment at a law firm that lobbies the state represents a conflict of interest to only 31 percent who think it is not. And 54 percent think he should resign his job immediately; 25 percent don't. Even independents have problems with his decision: 51 percent think its a conflict while 36 percent don't, and 54 percent think he should resign immediately and 36 percent don't.

This editorial board didn't see it as a problem during his transition. But clearly, McCrory has to be careful not to start off an image in the public's eye of not caring about what they view as conflicts. He should move quickly in tying up loose ends with his employer, and as soon as possible sever ties and focus on his new job which will be more challenging than he can imagine.

The PPP poll took aim at the naming of a federal building after Jesse Helms controversy, and those surveyed were clear: Only 31 percent of North Carolinians think the Post Office in downtown Raleigh should be renamed after Jesse Helms; 48 percent said no. African Americans were most adamant, with just 14 percent favoring to 61 percent opposed. But even white voters were against it - 44 percent, with just 36 percent in favor. Even among Republicans there's only 44 percent support for it, while 60 percent of Democrats oppose.

What do you think?

Find more poll results at the PPP site.

Mayor: Can't wait to watch the Charlotte Hornets

Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx stopped by the Observer this afternoon to talk with the editorial board about the streetcar and his capital improvement plans. Foxx is clearly frustrated with a City Council that he says has 11 members who know with great certainty what they don't want but includes almost no one who knows what he or she does want. Foxx says he's worried that Charlotte is following "a recipe to become Atlanta" if it doesn't pull off a robust long-term transit plan.

Check back here later tonight for the editorial board's full take on the plan and the debate surrounding it.

In the meantime, a couple other Foxx nuggets:

• He looks forward to people coming uptown to watch "the Charlotte Hornets." The NBA's Bobcats are considering taking back the name that flew to New Orleans with former owner George Shinn.
• Asked to describe his relationship with Gov.-elect, and former Charlotte mayor, Pat McCrory, Foxx said: "Well, I'll send him a Christmas card." Foxx later allowed that he was perhaps not the best envoy to bring Charlotte's biggest concerns to McCrory, but that other leaders in Charlotte are equipped to do that. Will McCrory send Foxx a Christmas card back? "That's a good question," Foxx said.

-- Taylor Batten