Tomorrow's editorial today:
Commissioners did disservice bowing to misconceptions.
Huntersville town commissioners’ rejection Monday of rezoning for a psychiatric hospital was sadly summed up in the words of one resident. Said Steve Owens: “We need this facility, just not right in my backyard.”
It’s easy to empathize with Owens and other residents of a neighboring subdivision who opposed a Carolinas HealthCare System mental health facility near their homes. The residents noted traffic concerns but focused most comments on their true concern – a fear that mental health patients could harm their children.
Yet as it is with most NIMBY (not in my back yard) fears, these are largely unfounded. They are based on lack of knowledge and persistent stigma and myths about mental illness. Commissioners should not have bowed to such fears. But they did, in a 4-2 vote. Now critically needed services are in limbo.
How badly are those services needed? A 2010 mental health alliance report showed people across the state languishing in hospital emergency rooms for days unable to get treatment. A 2001 state reform that cut the number of state psychiatric hospitals to treat more patients privately spawned the problem. About half of the state-operated hospital beds have closed, but there have not been enough private beds created to meet the needs. Mecklenburg County’s lack of beds has resulted in some patients being held in observation in hospital emergency departments or acute care beds while waiting for placement. Overcrowding at Mecklenburg County’s CMC-Randolph, the county’s behavioral mental health hospital, has been so bad that patients have been sent home without ever getting hospital care.
The Huntersville facility would have been a great help in getting patients needed services in a timelier manner. The facility was to house patients with behavioral issues only, not those with substance abuse or sexual disorders.
The hospital had already gotten the approval of the town planning board in an 8-1 vote and support from the Lake Norman Chamber of Commerce, whose president touted both the economic benefits (155 jobs were expected) and the fact that such facilities have proven to have positive, not detrimental, impact on neighborhoods.
The two commissioners who voted for the rezoning educated themselves by visiting CMC-Randolph in Charlotte. Melinda Bales, who had concerns, said the visit was an eye-opener. “It was very tranquil,” she said of CMC-Randolph, “and not what I was expecting.”
More people should educate themselves about such facilities and about mental illness in general. Mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of. It is a medical condition that needs treatment.
It is also a common malady. One fifth of Americans suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder during any given year. One fifth of school-age children do too.
Sadly, the biggest misconception about the mentally ill continues to be the most persuasive against them – that people with mental illnesses are violent. The vast majority are not. Experts note rightly that the mentally ill are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators.
The mentally ill are not strangers. They are our friends, neighbors and family – and sometimes they are us. An action like Huntersville’s, based on misconceptions and unfounded fears, is a disservice to our communities and everyone in them.
Posted by the Observer editorial board
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Mental health facility fears are unfounded
Tampa: We're proud we're not like Charlotte
In the Sunshine State, Tampa is trashing Charlotte over the lack of sunshine.
Charlotte's secrecy around security for the Democratic National Convention has prompted public officials in Tampa to crow over how much more transparent they're being. And rightly so.
The Republican National Convention will be held there the week before Charlotte's big event. Both cities are receiving $50 million in federal funding for security. Tampa officials are openly debating how to spend their money. In Charlotte, the City Council gave City Manager Curt Walton power to spend security money how he sees fit. And not to tell the public about it.
Charlie Miranda, Tampa's City Council chairman, said Tampa often holds Charlotte up as a "model city," but said he finds nothing worth imitating in this case. Another Tampa council member, Mike Suarez, thanked Tampa Police Chief Jane Castor "for being so open," the Tampa Bay Times reported.
“We’re so different than Charlotte,” Suarez said. “We do appreciate that.”
Those comments came during a two-hour City Council discussion last week over whether to spend $2 million for about 60 security cameras around Tampa's arena. The council there discusses and votes on how to spend the security money. No such conversation will be held in Charlotte, because City Council members washed their hands of the issue. They said they trust Walton to do the right thing.
“This discussion that we’re having is never happening in that city, because they put it (with) the city manager,” Miranda, the council chairman, said. “They hide it away. … There’s no vote taken. There’s no discussion. There’s nothing.”
Since the Observer wrote about Charlotte's secrecy, the city has been more forthcoming. But it still redacts a lot of information from contracts it makes available. And the City Council is still comfortable with all the power in Walton's hands.
Tampa hasn't been fully open, either, and some balance between transparency and security is obviously needed. But in Tampa, they rightly strive to be transparent while in Charlotte, officials strive to keep secret all that they can.
Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn said in the Tampa Bay Times: "Much to the chagrin of the Secret Service, we have been very transparent. I understand they have their job, but I also have my job and (the police chief) has her job, and our job is to make sure our citizens know what we're doing and why we're doing it to the extent possible."
Why is that too much for Charlotte citizens to ask?
-- Taylor Batten
GOP rebukes Obama on Charlotte visit
Charlotte -- or Mount Holly, to be precise -- will get its 15 minutes in the spotlight tomorrow when President Obama comes to town. Obama will speak about the economy at the Daimler Trucks North America plant in the Gaston County town. The plant announced recently it would be hiring back some workers who had earlier been laid off.
Obama will use the plant to argue that his administration has been creating jobs. It might be a tough sell in Gaston County, where the unemployment rate was 10.9 percent in December.
The president's appearance underscores the importance of North Carolina to his reelection hopes. Obama won the state by just 14,000 votes in 2008, and the state is considered a toss-up again. Expect Obama to make a number of campaign appearances in North Carolina before and after he is renominated at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte in September.
The Republican Party couldn't let Obama go unchallenged in his appearance here Wednesday. The GOP sent the Observer an op-ed to coincide with the president's trip. In it, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus argues that the economy is worse on almost every measure because of Obama.
Among other things, Priebus says, Obama has driven up the national debt. "That debt threatens government solvency, our children’s future, and our economic stability," Priebus writes. "Yet President Obama, despite his promises to cut the deficit in half, has made the problem worse."
To read the rest of Priebus' op-ed, click here.
Republican: A speech can't heal the economy
By Reince Priebus
Special to the Observer
President Obama drops into North Carolina for a speech on the economy today. But while a presidential visit can be an exciting event for any state, presidential speeches cannot heal the broken economy. Nor can they cover up the president’s record of failures: high unemployment, a failed stimulus, onerous regulations, Obamacare, higher gas prices, record debt, and more.
Over three years since President Obama took office, families in North Carolina are still hurting. Unemployment remains unacceptably high, despite Obama’s massive $833 billion stimulus.
Worse still, his policies have made life harder for Americans. With excessive regulations, he has made it more difficult for job creators to do business. In turn, they are less able to hire unemployed workers. With Obamacare, he placed burdensome and costly mandates on large and small businesses alike, further weakening the economy.
When President Obama took office, the average price of a gallon of regular gas was $1.84. Today, it’s over $3.75—and climbing. Americans are paying the price for Obama’s failure to tackle the cost of energy over the last three years. If he had produced an energy policy as promised, our situation might be very different.
Americans are tightening their belts in this difficult economy, but Democrats have been on a reckless spending spree with taxpayer money. Their record spending has produced annual budget deficits in excess of one trillion dollars and accelerated the growth of the massive national debt, which now totals over $15.5 trillion. That debt threatens government solvency, our children’s future, and our economic stability. Yet President Obama, despite his promises to cut the deficit in half, has made the problem worse.
Our current path is unsustainable, but the president offers North Carolina no solutions—only speeches. And voters are ready for a new direction.
North Carolina Democrats know this. They know they are headed toward defeat in November thanks to the unpopularity of their policies. For proof, look no further than Gov. Bev Perdue, who has decided not to run for reelection.
In 2008, she was swept into office on President Obama’s coattails. But after the president’s time in the White House and her time in the governor’s mansion, North Carolina is undeniably worse off. Many desperate Democrats claim otherwise, but if the economy were truly doing better, why wouldn’t she run for reelection as she once planned?
President Obama’s record is defined by failed policies, broken promises, and wrong priorities. Thankfully, North Carolina voters will have a chance to change course in November. They can cast their votes for Republicans, who stand for economic opportunity, free markets, and fiscal responsibility.
Speeches cannot grow the economy. But Republican policies can. Lower taxes, efficient government, responsible spending, and a comprehensive energy policy will get our economy moving again.
North Carolina deserves a president who stands up for economic growth, not one who stands in its way. And in just a few months, they will have the chance to elect one—the chance to send a Republican to the White House.
Barbara Bush tells it like it is
It's Super Tuesday and the opinions are flying.
Republicans decide today whether they want to keep dragging out their nomination or get in line behind Mitt Romney and turn their attention to defeating President Obama. We said way back before the South Carolina primary that Republicans would be wise to coalesce around Romney quickly because he was best suited to take on Obama. S.C. voters ignored that advice, backing Gingrich and signaling that nothing was going to be easy for Romney.
Eleven states vote today, but all eyes are on Ohio and Tennessee, where Romney and Rick Santorum are locked in tight races. If Romney wins both, plus others he’s almost assured of winning today, he’ll tighten his hold on the nomination. But if Santorum wins both, this race will likely drag on until at least April 24, when New York and Santorum’s home state of Pennsylvania vote.
No Republican has ever won the presidency without winning Ohio in the general election, and a Romney loss there would spark concerns that he’s weak in that pivotal state. Pundits are slicing and dicing the numbers of delegates at stake today, but seems to us those matter less at this point than the momentum – and money -- victories provide. Romney will certainly win more delegates than Santorum today, but if Santorum wins Ohio and Tennessee (and Oklahoma), that won’t matter much.
Longtime Republican strategist Ed Rollins says the drawn out nomination process has damaged both Romney and the Republican Party. Indeed, a new Washington Post/ABC News poll shows large swaths of the American public view all four remaining Republican candidates unfavorably, including, crucially, independent voters.
But Michael Gerson, a Washington Post columnist and former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, says Obama has weaknesses and the general election will be a battle. Gerson’s conservative colleague at the Post, George Will, is not so sure.
Frank Bruni of The New York Times says that as fortune-tellers, the media and political analysts stink. They underestimated how the most conservative branch of the Republican party would refuse to embrace Romney. The Times’ Joe Nocera says he’s rooting for Santorum to win the nomination, so that he’ll get trounced in the fall, so that Republicans will finally accept that they need to move to the center.
An afterthought: Newt Gingrich could linger. He'll almost certainly win Georgia today, and Alabama and Mississippi vote a week from today. Win those and he could ride his Southern strategy into April or May.
-- Taylor Batten
Monday, March 5, 2012
It's not too late to get revaluation right
Tomorrow's editorial tonight:
Assessor Alexander right to slow things down at Lake Norman
Revaluation always riles taxpayers, but Mecklenburg County’s 2011 assessment raised so many questions that the outcome is in limbo more than a year after homeowners started receiving their new values. So we applaud Mecklenburg tax assessor Garrett Alexander for listening, finally, to Cornelius taxpayers and vowing to determine if they were treated fairly. It will, we hope, be a start on restoring faith in the process countywide.
Alexander, to be sure, was in a tough spot with this revaluation. His office was required by law to perform it, but in a turbulent real estate market like Mecklenburg hasn’t seen in modern times. A run-up in values was followed by the real estate crash. There were few comparable sales to use to set values, and foreclosures and other distressed sales were rampant.
That all led to almost 42,000 residential appeals – an all-time high. Confusion about how the values were set and complaints about poor communication from Alexander’s office also seem to be at an all-time high.
Amid that backdrop, Alexander met with Cornelius residents and public officials Friday to hear concerns about how their properties were valued and how their appeals have been handled. Monday, Alexander said his staff would review the valuations for the Lake Norman area and he would seek to postpone the area’s appeals hearings while that was done – something Cornelius leaders requested in January.
Alexander was right to slow things down. Cornelius residents pointed to a variety of inconsistencies, some of which they are expected to detail at tonight’s county commissioners meeting. But homeowners in other parts of the county believe their tax values were inflated, too.
The tax assessor’s acknowledgement Monday that one part of the county needs to be reviewed suggests that some or all of the rest of the county should be too. That may become a partisan fight, but even Democrat Jennifer Roberts, the former commissioners chairman, agreed on that point in January.
"We need to take into account that other neighborhoods in the county have brought forward individual concerns similar to these," Roberts wrote in an email to commissioners and staff. "If we decide to alter the process in any way for any neighborhood – if it is legal or possible – we need to alter the process for all out of fairness."
While they’re looking at that, commissioners should better explain why the effect of foreclosures was included in some parts of town but not others.
The tax assessor’s office probably did the best it could in setting values in an unstable market. And the Board of Equalization and Review has been working long hours sorting through appeals.
But the values were clearly set indefensibly high for thousands of homeowners. And while Alexander’s office held public meetings leading up to the revaluation, clear explanations for rejecting appeals have been as common lately as eager homebuyers with good credit.
We’ve said before that revaluation, done right, is not about raising taxes. It’s about assigning the tax burden fairly, so you don’t pay taxes on a value that is higher or lower than you deserve. Residents’ faith in that premise has taken a hit, and commissioners and Alexander should do all they can to restore it.
Posted by the Observer editorial board
Political odd coupling, and Tuesday's tight race
The National Journal has an interesting look at U.S. senators, using an assessment of how far apart some states' senators are in ideology and Senate votes on issues. The state with the most divided senators on issues is Iowa, whose "odd couple" of Democrat Tom Harkin and Republican Chuck Grassley have a differential rating of 64.8, according to the Journal's scoring. North Carolina's two senators weren't far behind. Coming in third, Democrat Kay Hagan and Republican Richard Burr had a differential rating of 59.7. Squeezed in between are Wisconsin's Herb Kohl, a Democrat, and Republican Ron Johnson.
Interestingly, fourth on the list is Ohio, a key state in tomorrow's Super Tuesday primary voting. The differential rating between Ohio's two senators, Democrat Sherrod Brown and Republican Rob Portman is 55.7. Front-running Republican presidential contenders Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum are looking to Ohio to boost their campaign hopes this week. But polls are still see-sawing between the two. The most recent released earlier today, the Suffolk University poll, gave the edge to Santorum. Santorum led Romney 37 percent to 33 percent in a poll of likely Ohio voters. Newt Gingrich was third with 16 percent and Ron Paul came in fourth with 8 percent.
Another poll released today showed the slugfest in the GOP contest may be helping President Barack Obama, giving him a boost from a surprising quarter. The new NBC/Wall Street Journal national survey released Monday, showed Obama with a 50 percent to 43 percent advantage over Romney nationally, up from a 47 percent to 44 percent lead in the average of the news organizations' polls during the second half of 2011, just before the voting began in the Republican race. Obama has made his biggest gains among the group that has consistently resisted him the most: white voters without a college education.
In the NBC/WSJ surveys through the second half of 2011, Romney led Obama among those working-class white voters by a commanding 52 percent to 38 percent, according to figures provided by Bill McInturff, a Republican pollster who conducts the survey with Democrat Peter Hart. But in latest survey, Romney's advantage with those voters had shriveled to just five percentage points-48 percent to 43 percent. By comparison, in 2008 non-college white voters backed John McCain over Obama by a resounding 58 percent to 40 percent; Republicans won even more of them (63 percent) in the 2010 Congressional election.
Rick Santorum's recent diatribe against Obama as a "snob" for touting a more educated populace might not be working. Could be many in the working class have aspirations for more learning too for themselves and their children.
Santorum obviously does for his children. On Monday, he was out speaking to a crowd in Miamisburg, Ohio, bemoaning being outspent by Romney and saying he had to draw down on his own savings and money he's putting aside for his children's college educations.
Say what? “We’re living basically spending down our savings," Santorum said. "Not necessarily the best thing to do when you have three kids entering into college the next couple of years.”
Ahem. Do as I say, not as I do, Rick?
Posted by Fannie Flono
Tornado warnings, and birth control politics
Before we get to politics, let's talk tornadoes and maybe there's a little politics associated with that too. After an EF2 tornado touched down in northeast Charlotte and southern Cabarrus County early Saturday morning, injuring several including three children who were sucked out of their house in Charlotte's Reedy Creek neighborhood, a lot of people are asking questions about why there was no warning from the National Weather Service.
A warning would have set off weather radios alerting people to take cover and that a tornado was on the ground. Sunday, the NWS admitted its meteorologists did not detect the severity of the storm. Neil Dixon with the National Weather Service said in a phone interview with WCNC, “We're using state of the art equipment the best we can, but unfortunately these events are so brief. Even though it was on the ground for about 3.2 miles, it was traveling at a very rapid rate of speed.”
Trouble is, it was the NWS in Greenville-Spartanburg that didn't see the possible tornado. The NWS in Raleigh did - and issued a warning for Stanly County that a "doppler-indicated tornado" was detected over Mecklenburg County, said meteorologist Eric Thomas of WBTV. The Raleigh NWS is in charge of issuing weather warnings for Stanly County.
On the other hand, the Greenville-Spartanburg NWS is in charge of issuing warnings for Mecklenburg and Cabarrus. Apparently not seeing what Raleigh saw, that office did not issue a warning.
Thomas notes aptly: "One would expect that adjacent NWS offices are coordinating with each other, but it seems hard to believe that was the case here. Even if the two offices didn't communicate prior to the warning, wouldn't alarms go off if a weather office issues a tornado warning by pinpointing a tornado in YOUR zone? How is it that GSP sat on the sideline while Raleigh sent out a bulletin pinpointing a doppler-indicated tornado in their zone? It's one thing to miss a radar signature and therefore miss a tornado. But in this case GSP either missed, or ignored Raleigh's tornado warning and the fact Raleigh has spotted a tornado in GSP's zone.
Something is seriously amiss here. My purpose is not to condemn either NWS office, but instead to raise questions and ask for an explanation."
Some weather experts did say, as the NWS noted, that the tornado happened so quickly that a warning wouldn't have helped much. Still, Thomas asks good questions that deserve serious contemplation. Regardless though a tornado touching down in Charlotte was an eye-opener for many. It spurred some, including me, to get truly prepared for future storms and sent several in search of a weather radio.
Super Tuesday, contraceptives and contraceptives
OK. Super Tuesday for the Republican presidential race is a day away and with pundits saying former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney needs a win in Ohio, the polls show he's in a neck-and-neck race with nemesis former Sen. Rick Santorum.
A new automated poll from Public Policy Polling (PPP), conducted from March 3-4, shows Romney and Santorum in a near tie (with 37 percent and 36 percent respectively) followed by Newt Gingrich (15 percent) and Ron Paul (11 percent).
An NBC News/Marist College live interviewer poll conducted from Feb. 29 to March 3 found a very similarly close result: Santorum (34 percent), Romney (32 percent), Gingrich (15 percent) and Paul (13 percent).
An opt-in internet panel survey conducted by Ipsos/Reuters from March 1-3 finds an exact tie, with Romney and Santorum receiving 32 percent each, followed by Gingrich (17 percent) and Paul (6 percent).
Democrats are distorting the Blunt-Nelson bill that sought to reverse a free contraceptive coverage requirement in the Obama health-care law, said John McCormack of the Weekly Standard: 'The conscience protections in the Blunt-Nelson bill are identical to the protections included in many federal health care laws on the books and even the 1994 Clinton reform that never became law. The bill wouldn’t affect state birth control mandates or federal laws that already require insurers to cover pregnancy, childbirth, mental health, HIV treatments, and other services."
McCormack aslo notes in "The High Price of 'Free' Health Care" that "today, in the United States, the federal government does not force insurers to provide free contraception. Yet contraception is as widely available as it is cheap. Most insurance policies cover it. The federal government gives birth control to the poor through Medicaid. And "if a middle- or upper-income woman happens to be in one of the small number of plans that don’t cover contraception—say, an employee at a college run by Catholic nuns—she can buy birth control pills for as little as $9 per month at Target."
Speaking of the Obama health-care law, a new poll shows swing-state voters want the law repealed. A newly released USA Today/Gallup poll showed by 53 to 40 percent swing-state voters want Obamacare to be repealed. The poll included registered voters in 12 states: Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire, North Carolina, New Mexico, and Michigan. By a margin of 15 points (53 to 38 percent), registered voters in those state think it was “a bad thing” that President Obama’s signature legislation was passed.
Back to the contraceptive measure, radio personality Rush Limbaugh's rare apology this weekend for comments he made about a young woman testifying to a congressional panel about contraceptive inclusion in health insurance policies left some advertisers wanting. They did not reverse course and return to his advertising fold. Said David Friend of Carbonite, one of those advertisers: “No one with daughters the age of Sandra Fluke, and I have two, could possibly abide the insult and abuse heaped upon this courageous and well-intentioned young lady. Mr. Limbaugh, with his highly personal attacks on Miss Fluke, overstepped any reasonable bounds of decency. Even though Mr. Limbaugh has now issued an apology, we have nonetheless decided to withdraw our advertising from his show. We hope that our action, along with the other advertisers who have already withdrawn their ads, will ultimately contribute to a more civilized public discourse.”
Civilized public discourse? What a novel idea.
Thursday, March 1, 2012
NASCAR has a cheating problem
If Roy Williams were to be caught five times committing significant violations at the University of North Carolina, the NCAA would feel obligated to tell his basketball team they wouldn't be going to the NCAA tournament for a while. When track athletes and cyclists are caught doping, they're stripped of titles and banned from competition.
Punishment in sport is a tricky endeavor - part deterrent for athletes, part salve for fans. Even in sports where cheating is acknowledged as an everybody-does-it reality, punishment gives fans the appearance of integrity, the sense that their sport's field is level because the possibility exists that cheaters will suffer real consequences.
Yet NASCAR, in a puzzling cycle, continues to allow one of its best teams to violate the rules without significant penalty. It's a troubling pattern for a sport that perpetually fights to convince fans outside Charlotte and the South that it's worthy of their investment.
This week, NASCAR suspended and fined Chad Knaus, crew chief of the No. 48 team, and docked driver Jimmie Johnson 25 points for unapproved modifications made to the car's C-posts, contoured sheet metal stretching from the roof to the rear edge of the window openings, the Observer's Jim Utter reports. The No. 48, which was allowed to race in Daytona after the cheating was discovered, also will be allowed to compete in NASCAR's "playoffs" - the Chase for the Sprint Cup.
NASCAR thinks it has found the right seam with its discipline. Knaus gets fined some big bucks - $100,000 - and misses six races. The 25-point penalty nudges Johnson and the No. 48 team to the back of the pack in their chase for the title. So someone gets punished hard, but not really the driver or the team.
Most sports fans sees right through this, of course, especially given the regularity with which Knaus has been nabbed. It's almost impossible now to conclude that the 48 won five NASCAR championships without the benefit of cheating. And while the culture inside and out of NASCAR garages has forever been "it ain't cheatin' if you don't get caught," if it still ain't punished when you do get caught, what are you left with?
I've been in enough NASCAR garages in my previous life as a sportswriter in Alabama to know that some drivers and team officials ask this question, too. They know that some of the fans who joined their sport during NASCAR's surge in the 1990s carried a different expectation of how competition is supposed to work. NASCAR still struggles with this - how to reconcile its devil-may-care charm with the sophistication that audiences outside its base expect.
The simple solution that came from a couple of those garages: Slap a cheating team hard. Let a driver and his team race all season, but ban his team from the "playoff chase," and you'll slow the cheating down. It's what the NCAA has done recently with some top programs and coaches, including Ohio State's Jim Tressel. Major League Baseball, which instituted a tough drug program in the face of a steroid crisis, didn't flinch this year from trying to deliver a 50-game suspension to one of its top stars, Milwaukee's Ryan Braun.
Will those punishments stop cheating in their respective sports? Of course not. But they'll allow fans to at least believe there is integrity in the outcome - that unlike some, their sport is actually sporting.
Peter St. Onge
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