Civitas Review Online

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) which is the mother-organization of the state employees association (SEANC) apparently feels it is above the law when it comes to complying with North Carolina’s campaign finance laws.

The SEIU’s political action committee, like all PACs, is required to file regular reports with the NC State Board of Elections (SBOE).

Only, SEIU has decided that it isn’t going to file its report detailing expenditures from the last quarter of 2008 (yes, the same quarter that includes the 2008 elections).

SEIU has been given ample opportunity to rectify the situation and has repeatedly failed to do so:

On Feb. 2, 2009 the SBOE sent a letter informing it that it was in non-compliance by not filing a 2008 4th Quarter report.

After receiving no response, on March 19, 2009, SEIU was informed that its committee’s active status was being terminated, meaning that could not have any activity in North Carolina.

Then on May 15, 2009, after still receiving no response from SEIU, the SBOE sent another letter threatening to refer the committee to the District Attorney’s office for prosecution for failing to file the 2008 report.

As of today, no response has been given and no report has been filed.  SEIU continues to act in blatant violation of North Carolina’s campaign finance laws and continues to hide how it spent money in North Carolina in the days and weeks leading up to last year’s elections.

What makes this situation more bizarre and makes you think it is hiding something is the group filed its Mid-Year 2009 report.  So it files reports on time when there are no elections occurring, but ignores requirements to do so in the time period around elections?

From records I can find, SEIU spent in excess of $1.5 million on North Carolina elections in 2008.  How much more did they spend that hasn’t been reported?

Sen. Tony Rand, who announced last week that he was stepping down from the NC Senate to become Chairman of the state’s Parole Board played a large part in reshaping the board to its current configuration.

In 2005, Rand introduced S 897 which changed the makeup of the parole board from three full-time members to one full-time chairman and two part-time associates and ended the term of the current board, requiring new members to be appointed.

The bill passed the Senate unanimously on April 13, 2005 and was later incorporated into the 2005 budget bill to be signed into law.

I guess the question becomes, is this just a coincidence or did Rand have this all planned out years ago?

So let me get this straight, Rush Limbaugh isn’t acceptable as a small piece of an ownership group for a National Football League team, but  this guy is allowed to own an NBA team and nobody says a word?

Los Angeles Clippers owner and real estate mogul Donald T. Sterling has agreed to pay a record $2.725 million to settle allegations that he discriminated against African Americans, Hispanics and families with children at scores of apartment buildings he owns in and around Los Angeles.

Sterling is an actual racist that has actually harmed people.  Limbaugh was slandered with quotes that were proven to be false.  Where’s Al Sharpton with his famous outrage on this one?  Oh wait, nowhere to be found.  Where are the black players in the NBA saying they wouldn’t play for the Clippers or don’t want him as an owner?  Again, nowhere to be found.

Hmm… why the double standard?

Some in and out of the the media have speculated that Senate Majority Leader Tony Rand’s move from the Senate to the Parole Board was partially motivated by the significant pay increase he would receive.  His Senate salary is around $17,000 per year while the Parole Board pays in excess of $100,000.

From an examination Sen. Rand’s 2008 Statement of Economic Interest (4MB), money is certainly not a concern.  Sen. Rand has become a very wealthy man over the years.

By my quick analysis of the report, Rand’s net worth includes:
2 houses in Fayetteville, 1 in Raleigh
Positions of at least $10,000 in 140 different stocks, bonds or mutual funds (do the math there…)
Interests in 21 other non-publicly traded companies of $10,000 or more.

Sen. Rand is a very rich man, to say he left the General Assembly for an $80,000 pay increase is laughable.

This has to be one of the dumbest things I’ve seen in a very, very long time.  There is now a dress code for cab drivers in Raleigh.  Seriously.

Short shorts, miniskirts, short dresses, T-shirts, tank-tops and flip-flops can no longer be worn by cab drivers under a dress code the Raleigh City Council approved Tuesday.

What exactly is the definition of a “short short”?  Will Raleigh police officers be given tape measures to determine the appropriate length of shorts and skirts of cab drivers?  And no T-shirts or flip-flops?  Raleigh cabbies now have a tougher dress code than many of the trendy night clubs in NY and LA.

Oh it gets better.  The city feels the need to police a cabbie’s choice in footwear but a cabbie’s legal status is of no importance to the city.

The council initially approved a provision that would have allowed city staff to deny permits to applicants who weren’t U.S. citizens but deleted that clause during a Tuesday evening vote.

And where did all this nonsense originate?  From the lone supposed conservative Republican member of the Raleigh City Council, Phil Isley, who was apparently forced to ride in a cab whose driver was shirtless.  Apparently none of the other 116 registered cab companies or 902 registered cab drivers could give him a ride, he just had to ride with that one driver.

So instead of using his free choice to not get into a car with a driver whose hygiene he saw as unacceptable, he felt the need to regulate the industry.  Unbelievable.

Once again the Governor’s office and NC Department of Commerce feel the need to celebrate the state’s ranking as most likely to give out corporate welfare by Site Selection magazine.

And once again, I will point the readers to a piece written by our own Brian Balfour that seriously calls into question these supposed rankings as nothing more than a scheme for the seekers of corporate welfare to reward states that generously hand out the checks.  From Brian’s piece:

Site Selection’s “best business climate” ranking is actually a measure of which states are engaged in the highest amount of corporate welfare activity. Here is how they develop the ranking: “Fifty percent of the total score is based on a survey of corporate real estate decision makers and fifty percent comes from data associated with actual project activity as tracked by our proprietary New Plant database.”

Neither of these criteria are accurate reflections of a state’s true “business climate”:

• Half of the score is based on a survey of corporate real estate decision makers. What do they rank as the most important issues?
  • Three of the top ten answers are centered on economic incentives (#5 “Availability of incentives”, #7 “State & local economic development strategy”, #8 “Flexibility of incentives programs”)
  • This is the only topic mentioned three separate times. In short, the survey basically reflects which states are most willing to provide corporate handout
    
• The other half of the score is based on their “new plant database,” a list that tells a very incomplete story:

According to their website, the Site Selection new plant database includes only “projects costing at least US$1 million, covering at least 20,000 sq. ft. or employing at least 50 people.” In other words, projects more likely to have received some government incentives are included, while small, independent business starts are ignored

It must also be pointed out, and especially this year, if North Carolina’s business climate is so good, why is our unemployment at 11% and has been for the past eight years been above the national average?  There seems to be some divergence between what the corporate welfare seekers say and what the facts seem to bear out.

Yesterday, the NC Auditor’s office released a new audit detailing some deficiencies in the operations of the Golden LEAF Foundation. Of note:

There is a risk that potential conflicts of interest or political influence play a role in Golden LEAF investment decisions.  For example, in 2002 Golden LEAF invested $30 million with an investment company owned by a well-known political campaign contributor.  In 2006, Golden LEAF approved a $10 million investment in which a board member voted on the investment after disclosing, at an earlier meeting, a conflict of interest regarding his brother’s position on a related board.

The problems with Golden LEAF should not be anything revolutionary to readers of the Civitas Institute as our own Brian Balfour made the case earlier this year to dissolve the organization.  Brian wrote then:

The political nature of Golden LEAF’s Board of Directors has corrupted the Foundation’s grant-making process. Rather than an objective analysis of which projects will best advance the “economic well being of North Carolinians,” grants have all too often been decided by political turf wars and power plays. A review of pet projects and questionable items funded by the Foundation, in fact, prompted the Capital Monitor to state, “many are concluding that Golden LEAF has been nothing more than a multi-million dollar slush fund.” ⁹

The need for Golden LEAF to exist is highly questionable.  It’s grant-making can be handled by existing government agencies and its revenues could better be used to pay for the Medicaid and State Health Plan costs for smokers (as the funds were originally intended to be).

I was trying my best not to dignify the results of the latest Elon “poll” with a response, but since the media seems to simply parrot their results without any scrutiny on their methodology, I feel the need to respond.

1. First, let’s discuss who is sampled.  Elon polls all North Carolina households.  So as long as you have a phone you have an equal chance of getting called.  Whether you a registered to vote or not, or are in the country legally or not is irrelevant to the Elon poll.  Almost every other political polling will at the very least call from the voter file or ask if the person answering the phone is registered to vote.  Because, frankly, if you’re not registered to vote, your opinion on politics really doesn’t matter.

Now, there is a place for polling all households for general interest questions or consumer behavior type research.  Do you like Coke or Pepsi?  Did you watch the Super Bowl?  Those are questions to be asked of all households.  Asking all households regarding the re-election prospects of a politician is useless at best and actually may do more harm than good by clouding reality for the media and interested observers.

2. Because Elon’s goal is to sample the entire NC population, their demographics are completely off when it comes to a political survey.  Take a look at the demographic breakdown of Elon’s poll.  While that may be an accurate reflection of the adult population of North Carolina, it is very far off from being an accurate reflection of the voters in North Carolina.  Even if we look at the 2008 voter turnout statistics (which had the highest turnout for all traditionally low voter turnout groups — minorities and youth).

Elon’s sample is 63.6% white.  In 2008, roughly 75% of the general election voters were white.  Why does that matter?  Well, white voters generally break 65-35 for Republican candidates for one.  Second, it’s just not an accurate sample of the voters.

Similarly, Elon’s poll is 22.9% black and 8.9% Hispanic.  Again, comparing that to 2008 voters, the percentage black is pretty close, but the Hispanic portion is far off (only 2.5% of registered voters say they are Hispanic).

But it’s not just on ethnicity where Elon’s poll has variance with the voting population.  Its age breakdown varies from that of actual voters as well.

3. The third factor that everyone should question in Elon’s poll is it’s weighting methodology.  Like many polls, the people who actually respond to the poll may not fit the demographic profile to what the pollster wants to model their data.  In Elon’s case, too many white voters responded and not enough minority voters.  Because 81.5% of the actual respondents to the poll were white and Elon’s target white percentage was 63.6%, each white voter’s answers were diluted by about 3/4ths.  Meaning each white respondent really only counted as three-quarters of a response.

Conversely, only 1.3% of the respondents were Hispanic (more than likely because the interviews were done in English only, but that’s a different issue for a different day).  But Elon’s target for Hispanic participation was 8.9%.  Thus, each Hispanic’s response was counted roughly 7 times its actual response rate.  Elon took the responses of 8 or 9 Hispanics and made them worth the responses of roughly 60 Hispanic voters.

Similarly, 8.9% of the actual respondents to the poll were black, but Elon weighted their responses by about 2.5 times to account for the 22.9% of the poll that is black in their final results.

Whenever you are weighing something that much, small variances lead to big margins of error.  I’ve seen a lot of polls and talked to a lot of pollsters, but I’ve never met one that would weigh a demographic group 700% of their responses.  It just makes for bad math and introduces a higher likelihood of error.

While the results of the Elon poll should not be completely dismissed, they should be highly scrutinized and questioned.  The fact that they are weighing responses heavily to the entire population should make it practically useless as an instrument for gauging political questions.  If we cared about if people in North Carolina preferred Coke or Pepsi it may be more reliable, but in a political world, it doesn’t pass muster.

In our latest poll, we have Sen. Richard Burr leading NC Sec. of State Elaine Marshall 43.7% to 33.0%.

Burr is leading among Republicans 79-6 and among Unaffiliateds 47-24.  Marshall leads with Democrats but by a much smaller margin 57-17.

In fact, Burr’s hardcore support — those who say they are definitely voting for him (33.2%) — is slightly larger than Marshall’s overall support.

While yes, Burr is below 50%, he’s still in a good position.  His base is solidified, so he can spend the next year winning swing voters.  Meanwhile, Marshall still has to get through a potentially crowded primary (especially if Etheridge and/or Wicker get in the race), solidify her base and then start winning over unaffiliated voters that are already breaking for Burr.

Full results and crosstabs here.

We’re down to the final 8 of the Bad Bill of the Year tournament.

The matchups keep getting tougher as the bills keep getting worse.

Vote now!