Interfraternity Council sponsors cookout for students to meet election candidates
Local and state candidates running for office targeted the UNC Greek community in the final days before the midterm elections.
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Local and state candidates running for office targeted the UNC Greek community in the final days before the midterm elections.
The UNC system’s top administrators are paid less than their colleagues at peer institutions, making them the targets of poaching attempts by rival institutions looking to lure away the universities’ chancellors.
For years, students have believed that graduating from law school guarantees employment.
Although Duke Energy Carolinas canceled construction of a demonstration wind project with UNC last week, wind turbine farms might still be in the state’s future.
While few funding requests from the N.C. General Assembly have been met in the past two years, researchers at UNC-system schools were fortunate.
Both chambers of the N.C. General Assembly are set to reconcile their respective budget proposals as legislators attempt to allocate strained resources among competing interests.The House version of the budget would cut $200 million more than the Senate version.In a meeting Tuesday, the N.C. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Education Appropriations proposed a 3.3 percent cut to funding for the state’s K-12 schools. That’s a larger decrease than those proposed by both Gov. Bev Perdue and the N.C. Senate.
Walk into Brian Forrest’s primary health care practice in Apex, and you’ll pay only $49 for a checkup.Prices for most medical services are clearly displayed in his office, similar to a menu at a restaurant.Forrest is one of a growing number of doctors around the country who operates on a cash-only basis.His practice, Access Heathcare, does not accept insurance of any kind, although his privately insured patients are free to file on their own. He said his business model is advantageous for both the insured as well as the uninsured.“Sometimes you’ll look out in the waiting room, and you’ll have a homeless guy from Carrboro,” he said. “Sitting right next to him will be a millionaire.”Since Forrest saves money by keeping administrative costs to a minimum, he can charge his patients lower fees and spend more time with them, he said.Forrest said he noticed years ago that uninsured patients pay more for medical care, since they don’t have access to the discounted prices negotiated by insurance companies.He founded his practice nine years ago to change that fact.“It’s what everyone’s asking for in health care: reduced costs and better quality,” he said.In the midst of a national health care debate and an approaching midterm election where Republican challengers are contesting the president’s health care reform act, Forrest said his model is the future of primary care.While he said he supported some elements in the reform — such as banning insurance companies from discriminating against patients with pre-existing conditions — many of the reforms would make practicing medicine too expensive for physicians.“We need health care reform badly,” he said. “We have for some years.”But as the bureaucratic tape thickens, he said, more and more doctors are considering refusing government insurance, such as the Medicare and Medicaid programs.Still others are closing their practices for good.“Everyone may have health insurance in four years, but no one will have a doctor,” he said. “It potentially could be an access problem.”B.J. Lawson, the Republican challenger to U.S. Rep. David Price, D-N.C., who represents the Triangle area, endorses Forrest’s ideas.“Physicians are already frustrated with the direction medicine has gone — what (reform will) do to their ability to do the right thing for patients,” said Lawson, who graduated from Duke Medical School and opened a software company for medical administration.Proponents of the federal health care law are skeptical of the viability of Forrest’s model.“I think it’s of limited value,” said Adam Linker, a health policy analyst at the N.C. Justice Center.He said avoiding insurance may work well in the primary care setting but could prove disastrous in the case of serious illness.“It’s not realistic once you reach a certain level of complexity,” Linker said.Price, who voted for the health reform bill, said he stands by his decision.“I voted for reform because of the protections it gives Triangle families. Those both with and without insurance,” Price stated in an e-mail.“If Republican candidates want to campaign on repealing reform … and let insurance companies drop coverage for adults when they get sick and need it most, they are welcome do so,” he said. “But why would anyone want to do that?”Forrest said his model works for patients in need of specialists or hospitalization.He said he’s been able to negotiate lower prices for his patients by convincing area specialists to also accept cash payments.While this arrangement is not applicable to hospital stays, Forrest said he is able to keep his patients out of the hospital by providing more comprehensive care and giving them the time and attention they need.“I wanted to be able to see one patient every 45 minutes to an hour,” he said.But he encourages his patients to purchase high-deductible insurance for emergencies.Forrest said he is launching a website to help physicians emulate his model for a fee, which he expects to be up by early July.Contact the State & National Editor at stnt@unc.edu.
The candidates in the June 22 runoff election for the Democratic primary for the state’s U.S. Senate seat are dead even, according to a Public Policy Polling survey released Wednesday.
With the Democratic primary less than a week away, the race for the state’s U.S. Senate seat has become a two-person contest, pollsters say.And many voters still don’t know what makes one candidate different from the other.Iraq war veteran and former N.C. Sen. Cal Cunningham, D-Davidson, now trails N.C. Secretary of State Elaine Marshall by only 3 percentage points, according to poll numbers released Tuesday by Public Policy Polling.
Voters have until Saturday to vote early in the primaries.
RALEIGH — Hundreds of students and former civil rights activists filled the First Baptist Church in downtown Raleigh on Saturday to hear U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder pay tribute to student civil rights leaders of the 1960s.Holder, the first African-American ever to hold the post, was the keynote speaker for a conference at Shaw University commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s founding.Established at Shaw in 1960, SNCC emerged from the student sit-ins in Greensboro and advocated for the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The land off the coast of North Carolina potentially has trillions of cubic feet of natural gas and billions of barrels of oil resources that could be exploited in the coming years.President Barack Obama announced at the end of last month that he is lifting the moratorium on offshore drilling along the east coast, and North Carolina has larger offshore acreage of all of those states.But no one knows exactly how much oil and gas might be present or how offshore drilling will take shape along the state’s coast, said Jeff Warren, a coastal hazards specialist from the N.C. Division of Coastal Management.A 2009 report by the Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance estimated that North Carolina’s outer continental shelf contained 1.74 billion barrels of oil and 15.29 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.“It’s going to take a while for North Carolina to be comfortable with exploration,” said Lincoln Pratson, an environment and energy professor at Duke University.Currently, offshore drilling is regulated by the federal government through the Minerals Management Service in the U.S. Department of the Interior.The agency leases rights to drill according to provisions in its five-year plans. Since the current plan expires in 2012, none of the state’s offshore acreage could be leased until then.But some environmental groups are less than thrilled at the idea of drilling off the state’s coast.Molly Diggins, director of the N.C. Sierra Club, said the best areas for drilling are also prime areas for fisheries and offshore wind power.“Going forward, North Carolina might need to make a choice,” Diggins said.Pratson said just the search for oil and natural gas would also have an environmental impact.Sonar used in the search for resources could disturb marine mammals, and drilling could result in spills, he said.But he said drilling would be so far offshore that spills would likely not reach the beach. Also, fish tend to thrive around oil and natural gas drilling structures.“The oil and gas industry is familiar with operating in these areas and has a pretty good safety record,” he said.Connie Nelson, communications and public relations director for the Wilmington/Cape Fear Coast Convention and Visitors Bureau, said her organization would need more information before they would know how drilling might affect North Carolina coastal areas and tourism.Pratson also said the estimated amount of oil and natural gas off the Atlantic seaboard is equivalent to the amount used by the country in about 12 to 18 months.“This is not going to make us energy-independent,” he saidBut more natural gas in the market could mean lower prices nationally, said David Trusty, a spokesman for the Charlotte-based utility Piedmont Natural Gas.Tom Williams, director of external relations for the N.C. utility company Duke Energy, also said the move toward drilling is a positive development.“It shows a sense of compromise on climate change,” he said.Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.
Less than a month away from the May 4 primary for one of North Carolina’s U.S. Senate seats, the Democratic field remains wide open.Six candidates vying for Republican U.S. Sen. Richard Burr’s seat defended their positions Tuesday at a forum co-sponsored by the Chapel Hill- Carrboro branch of NAACP and the Sonja Haynes Stone Center.ABC 11 news anchor Fred Shropshire moderated the event. In attendance were four candidates seeking the Democratic nomination: N.C. Secretary of State Elaine Marshall, former N.C. state senator Cal Cunningham, attorney Ken Lewis and attorney Marcus Williams. Larry Linney, who joined last minute, is seeking the Republican nomination over incumbent Burr. Rounding out the group was Libertarian Michael Beitler.The candidates discussed their views on health care, immigration and education reform for more than two hours in the Stone Center auditorium.By the end, it was still difficult to understand what policy stances differentiate the three Democratic frontrunners, Marshall, Cunningham and Lewis.A survey released Tuesday by Public Policy Polling indicated that while Marshall leads the pack with the support of 23 percent of likely primary voters, the race is still wide open.Cunningham received 17 percent and Lewis received 9 percent.Rather than articulating their differences on issues, the Democratic frontrunners focused on their backgrounds, experiences and qualifications.Throughout the forum, Marshall emphasized her image as a problem solver not afraid to take on serious reform.“We’re in absolutely the worst of times,” she said. “People matter.”Cunningham focused on civic duty, in particular his time in the military. He served in Iraq in 2008 as a military prosecutor.“I believe very passionately in public service,” he said. Lewis said he was the candidate capable of representing the diversity of interests in North Carolina.Lewis, Cunningham and Marshall varied the most on national security issues. Cunningham said he supported keeping resources devoted to counter-insurgency strategies in Afghanistan in order to recover the war’s momentum. Marshall said she didn’t support the troop surge and said the war needed to address more than the situation in Afghanistan.“If there’s a country that needs rebuilding, it’s America,” she said.Ken Lewis took a center position, saying he advocated finishing the job of rebuilding Afghanistan, but did not support giving President Barack Obama a timeline or any other restrictions that would limit his options.Contact the State and National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.
Young people will bear the burden of the ballooning federal budget deficit, according to the UNC-system leader asked to head a national commission on debt.Erskine Bowles, current UNC-system president and one of the leaders of a bipartisan effort to reduce the U.S. government’s debt, said a climbing deficit could mean higher taxes, reduced government services and fewer jobs for college students when they enter the work force.“I want you to be angry about it,” Bowles said. “We’re literally mortgaging your future.”The Congressional Budget Office predicts that the federal deficit will reach $1.3 trillion in fiscal year 2010. That is the second-largest deficit since World War II, as a percentage of the gross domestic product.Bowles, a Democrat who served as former President Bill Clinton’s White House chief of staff, is co-chairman of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, with former U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo., who once served as the Senate’s Republican whip.In the late 1990s, Bowles was a key player in the last balanced budget, which he negotiated with the Republican-controlled Congress.President Barack Obama has asked the deficit commission, composed of 10 Democrats and eight Republicans, to develop policy recommendations by Dec. 1.Congressional leaders have agreed to bring the commission’s proposal to a vote if 14 of the commission’s 18 members reach a consensus. However, that is more easily said than done, Bowles said.“This is really a political discussion more than an economic discussion,” said David Colander, a professor of economics at Middlebury College in Vermont, who gave a lecture to UNC’s economics department on the federal deficit last month.Bowles said he only agreed to lead the commission because Obama assured him no fiscal reform was off-limits.One option available to the commission is a reduction in the federal programs such as Social Security and Medicare, which Bowles admitted could be unpopular.“To balance the budget, you’re going to have to focus on where the money is being spent, and that’s principally in the entitlements and to some extent in the discretionary budget,” Bowles said.Another option Bowles did not rule out is a tax increase, which is also traditionally unpopular — especially in an economic downturn. “I would love to think we could do it all on the spending side, but I doubt it’s realistic,” he said.“All the decisions we make will be painful. At the end of the day I’m not going to be very popular.”Colander said he thinks the commission is most likely to adopt a value-added tax of 6 percent or 7 percent, which taxes goods and services as they are produced or performed.Since it’s similar to a sales tax, it’s less noticeable to voters than a hike in the income tax, he said.“One of the reasons the United States adopted the income tax system is that people feel the pain,” Colander said, adding that fiscal conservatives might dislike a value-added tax for that reason.While the solutions remain politically elusive, the problems associated with the deficit persist.“This ever-increasing debt we’re building up is just like a cancer,” Bowles said. “Over time, it is going to destroy our country from within.”Government debt eats away at the capital available to businesses which could translate into fewer jobs in the future, he said.He also said he is concerned the deficit will reduce the United States’ ability to compete globally in education and research. Also, Colander said, since the U.S. sells bonds to finance the spending that exceeds tax revenue, foreign countries could stop buying U.S. debt if the deficit grows too large. “A lot of the debt is international,” Colander said. “The real concern is an international financial crisis.”Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.
DURHAM — Students at the N.C. School of Science and Math attempted to break the world record for the most food ever collected at a food drive Saturday.
DURHAM — U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner met with local leaders Thursday to discuss the expansion of a tax incentive encouraging private investment in struggling communities.Geithner toured local, small businesses financed by the New Markets Tax Credit program and participated in a roundtable discussion about loosening the rules surrounding who is eligible for the tax credit.The New Markets Tax Credit program is designed to give low-income communities greater access to private capital. The Treasury Department offers tax incentives to people who invest in community development projects.“Investment is like oxygen,” Geithner said. “Credit is like oxygen.”He was joined by U.S. Reps. Brad Miller and David Price, both local Democrats.Geithner emphasized the importance of efforts such as the New Markets Tax Credit to support small businesses because of their ability to create jobs.He also said that $1 in tax revenue lost due to the credit created $12 in private investment. Geithner said President Barack Obama is committed to expanding funding for the program. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act already pumped more money into it last year. Obama’s proposed budget for next year contains a provision to expand the program by an additional $5 billion in 2010-11. Randy Chambers, chief financial officer for Self-Help, a nonprofit community development agency, said he supported extending the credit so more investors would be eligible. Chambers said his organization — which has benefited from the tax credit program — was the first private investment “this side of downtown” Durham. He said the building that the company renovated had been abandoned for years. It now employs hundreds of Durham residents, he said.Ray Moncrief, executive vice president and chief executive officer of Kentucky Highlands Investment Corporation, said the program helped his company invest in community projects in the Appalachian region, including a small hospital and local college.“Communities like this will be the engine of renewal in this country,” Geithner said. Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.
RALEIGH — Student leaders lobbying legislators for a return of tuition revenue to UNC-system schools were given little encouragement Thursday.The need to balance the state budget makes it unlikely the universities will receive the funds, legislators said.“We can’t print money,” said N.C. General Assembly Majority Leader Rep. Hugh Holliman, D-Davidson, whom student leaders met with Thursday. “We have to balance the budget.”UNC-Chapel Hill Student Body President Jasmin Jones, five other UNC-system student body presidents and Greg Doucette, president of the Association of Student Governments, traveled to the capitol. Their goal was to convince legislators to return tuition-increase dollars to the system, rather than the state’s general fund.The Association of Student Governments is making the campaign a central focus for the rest of the semester.Student body presidents have been collecting signatures on a petition voicing their request since the beginning of the semester and plan to send out a press release to local media outlets later this month to put further pressure on legislators.At UNC-Chapel Hill, 2,227 students have signed the petition, almost half of the 5,000 that Jones pledged to gather.ASG members also plan to conduct an e-mail and phone campaign later in the semester, Jones said.But many of the presidents’ terms will end in April, just when the real work needs to begin, Jones said. The legislature resumes session in May.Holliman said that North Carolina has seen revenue decline by 20 percent, and budget cuts would have been much worse if legislators had not raised the sales tax.“Everyone’s going to feel some hurt,” he said.Cortland Mercer, student body president of UNC-Asheville, said he was not discouraged by Holliman’s lukewarm response.Brad Congleton, student body president at East Carolina University, said student leaders would continue to fight for the money to be returned.“For tuition dollars, we just want them to remain tuition dollars,” Jones said.Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.
In less than two weeks, no one under 21 will be able to apply for a credit card under their own name unless they can provide proof of income.The new rule is part of federal legislation designed to prevent young people from getting into debt. The changes could have a significant effect on college students’ relationship with credit.Under the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act — signed by the president in May — companies will be prohibited from issuing cards to many students under 21 without a cosigner 21 or older. The previous age was 18.
Student body presidents from across the UNC system will discuss strategies to lobby the state legislature at the Saturday meeting of the Association of Student Governments. ASG, an organization of student leaders from around the UNC system, is trying to persuade the N.C. General Assembly to send revenue generated from tuition increases back to universities.The money is currently slated to go into the state’s general fund.Student body presidents have been collecting students’ signatures on a petition that asks the legislature to return money and to approve the tuition-increase proposals made by the campuses, rather than the legislature.“Student government hasn’t taken this active of a role in while,” said David Bevevino, UNC-Chapel Hill student body vice president.Jasmin Jones, UNC-CH student body president, said 2,500 signatures have been collected at UNC-CH so far — half the number Jones pledged to get by the end of the semester.Jim Ceresnak, student body president at N.C. State University, said the signature-gathering process is well on its way at his campus. The NCSU student government plans to collect 10,000 to 15,000 signatures.Jones and ASG President Greg Doucette have also met with legislators to advocate ASG’s position.The initial meetings have been a process of learning what works and what doesn’t work, Bevevino said. There is still plenty of time to talk to lawmakers, Doucette said.“The legislature isn’t going to convene until the middle of May,” he said. “It’s still early.”Next week the UNC-system Board of Governors will meet to discuss tuition-increase proposals.Doucette said the student body presidents are waiting to pursue lobbying fully until the board approves a final plan, so that ASG members can lobby with the support of the whole system — not just student governments — behind them.‘That’s when we can really step up and engage folks,” Doucette said.Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.
Some state legislators say chances are slim that the UNC system will see any of the revenue generated by the state-mandated tuition increase.