Teacher salaies are still controversial

For years, I served as devil's advocate whenever N.C. teacher salaries were discussed. For decades, as editor of a daily newspaper in the state, I chased beginning teacher salaries as a benchmark for newspaper reporters' salaries to aspire to. When I got into the newspaper business, I was making less than $9,000 a year as editor of a weekly paper. Starting teacher salaries at the time were around $13,000 or $14,000. Teachers were demonstrating for higher salaries and benefits. Journalists were getting by on their miserly salaries or finding other jobs. I was never able to get starting reporter salaries even close to starting teacher salaries. The few times I won higher pay rates for my reporters, teacher salaries would jump far higher as the state played catch-up with rising prices.

Teacher salaries are an annual topic of state politics, and teacher advocates have grown more vocal the past two or three years. One reason for this is the General Assembly's cuts in school spending. Even though teacher salaries in North Carolina have risen, they lag behind other professional salaries. Teachers in Oklahoma, Kentucky and other states have gone on strike.

As Paul Krugman points out in this column, Republican-dominated state legislatures are cutting taxes as a means of ensuring that teacher salaries can't be raised and overall school spending cannot keep up with rising costs for books, equipment, construction and maintenance. Taxes pay for state services, primarily education, transportation and law enforcement. Cutting taxes drastically will ensure that the needs of an expanding population will not be met.

North Carolina's average teacher pay is now above $50,000 — a figure unheard of in this state through all the years I tried to raise reporter salaries to the state's teacher benchmark. But $50,000 does not put the average salary in North Carolina in the top quintile of states.

There are two reasons state legislators should be more generous with teacher salaries and benefits. First, public education is the best opportunity we have of ensuring a fair, upwardly mobile society and ensuring America's leadership in the world economy. The uneducated are a burden to the economy; the educated are a creative asset. Second, children have changed so drastically in the past two generations that teaching is a far more difficult, intensive, dangerous occupation. Pop culture, absent parents, an antagonistic society, entrenched poverty, irresponsible families all combine to make teaching more difficult.

Only by training and paying teachers well, modernizing and equipping schools, and providing discipline and motivation to students who get none at home will schools be able to reach their promise of preparing each generation for tomorrow. 

Journalists, maligned by the president as "enemies of the people," will continue to suffer as among the poorest paid of college graduates. I'm glad I'm no longer fighting that salary battle.

Speaker of the House is calling it quits

Every politician trying to get out while the getting is good claims he/she wants to "spend more time with my family." In Speaker of the House Paul Ryan's case, this excuse may actually be truthful, at least in part. His children have largely grown up without him over the past 20 years.

Nevertheless, Ryan's decision not to run for re-election to a safe seat in Congress and to not continue as speaker of the House has to have been influenced by several factors: the difficulty of legislating with an impulsive, unpredictable, often angry and spiteful president in the White House; the nearly impossible task of getting a majority of House members to agree on legislation of any kind in a hyper-partisan atmosphere, the frustration of trying to work with members of the Republican right wing that wants to cripple the federal government as a means of realizing their dream of a more decentralized, unregulated society.

Ryan may also not want to preside over a congressional minority if Republicans lose enough seats, as many are predicting, to give the Democrats a majority. Who wants to be the minority leader after you've been Speaker of the House? Just ask Nancy Pelosi. Republicans have already been wounded by an unusual number of decisions not to seek re-election. Mid-term elections usually result in lost seats for the party in power.

Whatever his reasons might be, Ryan's decision will likely weaken the GOP effort to retain control of the House and the Senate, if for no other reason than the appearance that the party's leader is giving up.

Democrats are excited and optimistic about mid-term elections. They plan to run against an unpopular president and a Congress that has done little to address key issues that are priorities for many Americans. However, Democrats would be foolish to be over-confident. Few, if any, Democrats thought Donald Trump could win the White House in 2016, and gleeful Democrats are probably underestimating his support again this year. Polls and other indicators show that Trump supporters are more loyal than ever and are determined to follow their leader wherever he goes.

November's election results might hinge on Trump, but at this point no one knows whether Trump will turn voters toward Democratic candidates or will drag Republicans into an abyss.

A poll question for Trump supporters

Here's a question I wish some enterprising pollster would ask Trump's loyal supporters:

Would you support President Trump if he issued an executive order dissolving Congress and allowing the president to pass needed legislation without congressional action?

I'd love to see the results.

DACA tantrum is typical of Trump

President Trump has announced in a tweet (of course) that "DACA is dead." Only a few months ago, Trump was virtually commanding Congress to send him a bill that makes the Obama administration's DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) policy a permanent program, allowing immigrants who came here as small children with their illegal-immigrant parents to remain. But a short while later, Trump was demanding that a DACA fix must include billions of dollars for a border wall (an idea that obsesses him). The dysfunctional Congress could not find the votes to put a DACA fix in the same bill with border wall appropriations, so both DACA and the border wall went unfixed.

This episode is typical of many elements of the Trump presidency. Trump says something extraordinary, then he changes his mind just days later and reneges on the entire promise. We saw it in his reaction to the Parkland, Florida, school shooting, negotiations with North Korea and tariffs. Swept up in sympathy for the surviving Parkland students, Trump seemed to endorse long-sought restrictions on gun purchases, including universal background checks of gun buyers. Then he backed away. He tried bullying North Korea and its dynastic leader, Kim Jong Un, calling him "Little Rocket Man," but then he declared his willingness to negotiate directly with Kim with no limits on discussion topics. He has also announced tariffs on international trade and then backed off the tariffs for select countries. 

The president's reversals must be leaving America's allies' heads spinning.

DACA would seem to be an easy compromise. Large majorities of Americans support legislation allowing persons who came here illegally in the custody of their parents to remain in this country, where they have grown up and attended school. These children were too young to form a criminal intent to violate immigration law and should, essentially, receive forgiveness under these circumstances.

You can agree with Republicans' criticism of Obama's executive order creating DACA, that it over-stretched a president's authority to change immigration policy through an executive order, and still be willing to give the million or fewer DACA applicants forgiveness for their parents' actions. You can also agree with Trump that Mexico should have done more and should do more to prevent illegal entry into the United States from Mexico but also agree that punishing DACA recipients is the wrong way to get Mexico's help.

Trump seems to believe that international diplomacy is just like a business negotiation. It's not. International disputes can lead to war. A wrong turn in trade negotiations can lead to a collapse of carefully structured trade agreements with catastrophic worldwide economic consequences.

The president is right about one thing: DACA is dead, and he's the one who killed it.