Barlow Herget is a commentator and host on SGR Today. He has been a commentator on UNC public radio and an instructor in continuing education at Duke University. Herget was a Nieman Fellow ('70) at Harvard University, has worked for the Daily Press of Paragould, Ark., the Detroit Free Press, and the News & Observer of Raleigh. His articles have appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times and numerous other publications. Have something to say to Barlow? Contact him by email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it  

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The declarations of doom that followed the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the National Health Care Act sound familiar, like Chicken Little’s cries about the sky falling.

A strong dose of history should reduce the fevers.

There were similar Cassandra’s when the Social Security Act was adopted in 1935.  It was the same again when the Medicare Act was approved in 1965.

The American Medical Association said [in 1965] that it was placing an advertisement in 100 newspapers to make its position clear on its opposition to health care reform.  The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons back then urged its 16,500 members to boycott Medicare.

Former President George H. W. Bush, a congressman at the time, ominously called Medicare “socialized medicine” and former Senator Bob Dole bragged in 1996 that he opposed Medicare:  “I was there, fighting the fight, voting against Medicare…because we knew it wouldn’t work in 1965.”

The late President Ronald Reagan warned his listeners in 1961, “…One of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.”

When it came time for these Medicare opponents to live up to their words, they did nothing to repeal the Act.  President Reagan in 1986 even extended government control over medical care when he signed the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act in 1986.  It required hospitals to provide care to anyone who needed emergency treatment regardless of ability to pay.

History shows what happened.  Since 1965, the health of older Americans has improved.  A study from Health Affairs magazine showed life expectancy increased between 1960 and 1998 and the chronically disabled senior population decreased similarly.

And guess what?

Americans like Medicare.  Medicare beneficiaries reported “greater overall satisfaction with their health coverage” and a Kaiser Family Foundation poll in 2009 found 53 percent of Americans strongly supported expanding Medicare coverage to age 55.

Medicare, thankfully, did not confront the constant media opposition by conservative broadcasters and a national network, FOX TV.  The onslaught of negative propaganda will soon follow from super wealthy and uncompromising opponents such as those North Carolinians who gave $100,000 to repeal the Health Care Act just hours after the Court’s affirmation.  They could prevail in November.

But most Americans are prepared to move on, like they did after Medicare.  The country will work out the kinks and in 10 years, no politician as Ronald Reagan showed with Medicare, will risk running against the Act.

So take a deep breath and focus on getting the economy working again. 

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University and college presidents today learn quickly that their jobs include much more than academics.

The biggest fence to climb is money.  If they are not good fundraisers, they’re in trouble.  Former University of Virginia President John Casteen wrote before he retired how much of his time was devoted to grubbing for money.

The biggest pothole, especially for universities with championship caliber sports, is athletics.  UNC-Chapel Hill’s Chancellor Holden Thorp has fallen into such a hole.

There were great expectation for Dr. Thorp, a North Carolinian, an excellent teacher, chemist, and dean and educated first at UNC-Chapel Hill in pursuit of his doctorate.  Whatever encounters he faced in his previous work did not prepare him for the demands and intrigues of university athletics.

When the football program’s scandal first broke in 2010, it appeared to be limited to an unethical assistant coach and several high profile, unthinking players.  More bumps and potholes followed throughout the year.  The chancellor fired Coach Butch Davis in summer, 2011.

During all this time, the University promised a thorough investigation.  The Board of Governors kept its distance, trusting that Chancellor Thorp could manage the football program’s violations.  The attitude by University officials and the public was that the mess was an athletic thing.

That changed as the press, mostly the News & Observer, kept digging.  The media found a more serious danger when the scandal reached into academia, namely the African and Afro-American Studies Department and its chair, Dr. Julius Nyang’oro.  Only a year earlier, Chancellor Thorp had declared full confidence in Dr. Nyang’oro.

The press reported five years of classes that were suspect.  There was evidence that some of the classes never met.  They often were filled almost exclusively with athletes.  The grades earned helped the students’ GPA, thus eligibility to play.

True, they were a very small number of classes and only one professor named, Dr. Nyang’oro.  But the damage was done to the school’s integrity and academic reputation as one of the best public universities in the country.

Dr. Thorp’s repeated assurances that the University’s investigation was thorough and complete has shaken the public’s and Board of Governor’s trust.

The latest academic revelations prompted the Board on June 14th to conduct its own review of the University’s investigation.  As Board Member Fred Eshelman complained, “A lot of us have been surprised.  We haven’t fully understood what’s going on.”

Apparently, neither has Chancellor Thorp.

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The television advertisements in the presidential campaign are filling North Carolinia’s airtime.  At the end of May, one count reported $10 million has already been spent here.

There are some Romney Super PAC ads that are trying to sell the line that the economy has failed under President Obama.  The cure, of course, is to elect someone else.

Mr. Obama’s Republican opponent, former Gov. Mitt Romney, is campaigning hard on the bad economy.  He can fix it, he says, because he has been a businessman.

He and the Republican Super PACs are like the teenager who shoots both of his parents and then asks the court for mercy because he’s an orphan.

The truth on the economy is that it has made progress since 2009, when Mr. Obama took office.  One of the big reasons for the halt to rising unemployment was Mr. Obama’s economic stimulus.

This is not fiction like the continuing myth that Mr. Obama wasn’t born an American.  One can check the records and see the unemployment figures dropping once the stimulus money began to flow into the economy.  And the government’s loans to General Motors and Chrysler got the automakers back on their wheels, saving thousands of manufacturing jobs.
 
But why hasn’t the economy rebounded faster and with more substance?

It’s because the Republican leadership in Congress decided that it would vote against any of Mr. Obama’s economic recovery efforts.  They shot down one proposal after another and continue to thwart Mr. Obama’s current jobs bill.

Rather than put the country’s interests first, Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell said it bluntly, “the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term President.”

While Democrats had majorities in both the Senate and the House until 2011, Senate Republicans held enough seats to threaten filibusters on recovery legislation.  Republicans control the House now and nothing gets done.

While the American public’s memory sometimes matches that of a flea, many still remember how we got into the ditch.  President Bush and Republican majorities in Congress time and again approved of huge deficits with no attempt to pay for them.  And Mr. Bush’s war in Iraq drained the country’s treasuries.

The Republicans drove the country into the ditch and they have repeatedly stalled the wrecker truck trying to get the country out of the ditch.

Now, they want the American voter to forget all that and put them again in charge of the economy.  The slow economy is all President Obama’s fault.  If you believe that, there’s an orphan who wants your mercy without telling you how his parents died. 

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When I moved to North Carolina in 1973, Republican Governor Jim Holshouser expanded kindergarten, the 13th grade, to all of North Carolina’s public schools.  It’s time that the state starts planning to add grade 14, pre-kindergarten.

Adding a new grade will test convention.  But so did kindergarten.  Most of my generation grew up accepting the decades-long practice of formal school starting at age six.

Science and research over the past 30 years have shown that children’s brains develop quicker and are easily capable of formal learning at earlier than age six.

For example, research finds that brain nerve cells multiply by six times from birth to age two.  The brain neurons for vision are very active at two to four months, peaking at eight months when babies begin noticing the world around them.

Learning language starts very early and exposure to words in a child’s first four years helps strengthen his or her ability to learn later.

Other countries such as Japan start children in school at age three.  Studies also show that stress such as child abuse, poverty, and neglect conversely inhibit brain development in babies.

This research has convinced scientists and doctors such as North Carolina’s nationally recognized pediatrician Olson Huff of Black Mountain that children actively begin to learn by age two and three.  Dr. Huff, chairman of the state’s Smart Start program, believes there should now be a pre-K grade in the state’s public school system.

Pre-K schooling in North Carolina today is a hodge-podge of voluntary state, federal and private programs.  The best known are the former More-at-Four classes for about 40,000, at-risk, poor children; Smart Start and the federal Head Start programs; and numerous private pre-schools.  Many children are enrolled in no programs.

Here is what we know now about pre-kindergarten education.

Numerous studies show that pre-K schooling improves the learning and development of young children, according to the Association for Psychological Science.

These improvements are long-lasting.  Fewer children have to repeat grades.  They have higher graduation rates.  They (and their teachers and parents) enjoy improved social behavior.

Research in North Carolina finds that children attending the former More at Four classes that are part of the state’s school system performed higher than those in private schools.  The evaluation states that “children made substantial gains” in language and literacy skills, math skills and general knowledge.

The facts make the case for a pre-K grade.  It’s up to North Carolina’s political leaders to make it happen. 

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For cities and city residents, this short session of the General Assembly has been one knife in the gut after another.

Last year’s session started the bleeding, initiated by blind Tea Party anger at the state’s municipal annexation laws.  The vengeful mood has not abated.

Most cities add land to their boundaries via voluntary annexation.  A builder or developer will ask to be in the city limits and the city routinely approves such growth.  Developers must meet city standards on roads, water and sewer and pay hookup fees for the latter.  They pass along these costs when they sell the homes or offices to buyers.

Forced annexations are part of city growth, and they are never pretty.  Those residents being annexed like the advantages of urban living—jobs, parks, paved streets, fire and police protection.  But they almost never want the annexation because they must then pay city taxes and water and sewer hookup fees.

Under the state’s old annexation laws, municipalities had the power to annex as long as they met the law’s requirements to bring city services to the newly annexed in a timely fashion. 

Residents being annexed had no vote.  There was a reason for that.  They would never approve it.

This process seemed unfair to such residents who turned their anger into Tea Party demands for freedom and the right to vote.  Now, with the Republican controlled legislature, the anti-annexation crowd is taking its revenge on cities.

House Speaker Thom Tillis and Senate President Phil Berger both live in cities.  They know what these anti-city bills will do to the state’s cities, yet, disappointingly, they protest not.

The House adopted a bill that gives residents of proposed annexed areas the right to vote on the move.  None will be approved, thus negating cities’ ability to grow in an orderly fashion.  North Carolina cities soon will look like Swiss cheese pocked with un-annexed holes surrounded by city limits.

People in those areas will be getting a free ride from city taxpayers.  Sort of representation without taxation.

To turn the knife more, the legislature now wants city taxpayers—who paid for their own water and sewer hookups—to pay such utilities for newly annexed residents.

Worse still, Republican legislative leaders want to de-annex parts of Asheville, Fayetteville, Kinston, Marvin, Lexington, Rocky Mount, Southport, Goldsboro and Wilmington.  Goldsboro’s annexation was in 2008 and city taxpayers already have approved a $7 million bond issue to build new water and sewer lines.

Lawyers are going to love this legislation.

When the legislature finishes, it should pass a new bill to give city taxpayers a new title:  Suckers.

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North Carolina coastal business interests denying rising sea levels is like hoping summer won’t be hot.

We’ve had a long spring and temperatures have been moderate, but that’s hardly reason to believe it won’t be 95 degrees in August.

Yet, developers and business people in the state’s 20 coastal counties in a group called NC-20 are pretending that scientific research about rising tides just isn’t true…or not as true as they want.

Predictions always are a gamble just like saying the sun might not rise tomorrow.  But science has shown us why the sun will rise and why it’s not likely the universe will explode this week.

NC-20 doesn’t want to believe the sea level is rising because of money.  The group doesn’t have a theological or scientific agenda.  They simply think that talking about rising seas is bad for business.

And they’re probably right.

But a number of respected scientific studies say the ocean on North Carolina’s coast will rise as little as 15 inches to as much as 39 inches by 2100.  NC-20 thinks 8 inches is about right.

The group has even convinced Republican members of the General Assembly, many of whom don’t believe the science behind global warming, to legislate sea levels.  Now there’s a good trick.

Unfortunately, this disdain for science and willful ignorance of facts apply to a growing list of items that Tea Party activists and conservatives don’t like.

As already mentioned, there’s global warming.

Then there’s the whole sad business of denying the fact that President Obama was born in the United States.  The issue surfaced in North Carolina’s Republican congressional primary elections not to mention carnival barker Donald Trump’s clownish campaign in the GOP presidential primary.  It’s the same with Mr. Obama’s religion.

North Carolina Republican Representative George Cleveland says, “We have nobody in the state of North Carolina living in extreme poverty.”  Maybe he can introduce a bill to make it official and abolish poverty.

House Speaker Thom Tillis says last year’s budget funded every teaching position, and he pretends to be surprised when he hears about teacher layoffs.  Data from the state’s Department of Instruction record the cuts.

The Republicans came to run the General Assembly last year for the first time in over a century.  They had many bones to pick and promises to keep.  They were due mistakes.  But now, they must govern, and wishing away facts and science leads only to more mistakes, bigger ones.