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.

Life begins at conception, and so do rights

The National Rifle Association and the National Republican Campaign Committee announced today a new initiative for the 2020 elections and beyond. In a move that consolidates two major Republican campaign themes — guns and abortions — the initiative proposes arming fetuses, or, as Republican literature prefers to call them, "preborn voters."

This proposal dovetails with the stand of some anti-abortion activists who have sought to declare "personhood" as beginning at the moment of conception; therefore, preborn voters have, from the moment of conception, all of the constitutional rights of post-born voters, including the right to bear arms.

NRA researchers are working on miniaturizing AR-15 assault rifles so that they can be inserted into the womb. After such an implant, the preborn voter would be able to defend himself/herself against an abortion doctor, just as post-born voters can defend themselves from burglars, rapists and IRS agents.

"We see this as a combining of two great cultural movements," said a spokesman for the NRA's Guns for the Preborn Committee, who asked not to be named.

More than millions marching will be needed

A skeptic though I am, I was impressed by the numbers of marchers and the number of marches by (mostly) young people Saturday to protest school shootings and advocate for stricter gun laws. Washington, D.C., was the primary focus of the marchers, but demonstrations were held all around the country and in foreign countries as well. Collectively, it was quite impressive.

I hope the protesters were not naive enough to think that their demonstrations will bring about immediate change in the form of federal restrictions on gun purchases, types of combat-style weapons that can be sold to the general public, and various efforts to make schools safe from deranged killers.

Although the numbers on the streets Saturday were impressive, soles on the pavement rarely sway those who hold the reins of power in Washington, or in state capitals. To succeed in their goals, these youthful protesters — some of them survivors of school shootings — will have to take actions that will directly influence votes on the Senate and House floors. That means putting political careers on the block by voting out those who oppose "sensible gun laws." Or it will mean buying their own members of Congress, as the National Rifle Association has done for years. The second alternative will be more difficult because of the deep pockets of the gun lobby.

To their credit, some demonstrators carried signs reading "Vote Them Out." That slogan epitomizes the real key to effecting change in Washington. Changing the minds or removing from office a majority of 535 members of the House and the Senate is no easy task. It will require organizing in all 50 states and in all 435 House districts. It will also require finding and supporting qualified and appealing alternative candidates to run against incumbents who can't be swayed.

The road to success will be treacherous. I heard a Fox News commentator claim that the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators are "pawns" of a powerful, secret, unnamed organization that is financing and using the naive student protesters. Some Americans will believe that.

The path the change in Washington runs through the ballot box in thousands of precincts across the country. It will take millions of dollars and years of effort to shift Congress' perspective on gun regulations.

To gun loyalists who claim that cars kill more Americans than guns every year "so why not ban cars?" I remind them of some essential flaws in their analogy:
     ° Motor vehicle deaths are almost never deliberate acts. People are killed by cars in accidents, not preplanned, malicious acts.
     ° In order to operate a motor vehicle, you must have an operator's license issued by the state, certifying that you are competent to operate the vehicle and are responsible for any damage caused by your driving of the vehicle.
      ° All vehicles must be registered with the state and must meet federal regulations to ensure the vehicles are safe and cannot be easily stolen. Visible tags must be displayed so the vehicle can be easily identifiable and traced back to the owner. Unsafe vehicles can be removed from road.
      ° States require that vehicle owners have liability insurance on the vehicle that will cover the costs of any personal injury or property damage caused by the vehicle.

I suspect that Saturday's marchers would be happy if the state and federal governments would use automobile registration and regulation as a template for improving gun safety and eliminating school shootings. As for the gun lobby's canard opposing gun registration because it will lead to "confiscation," there is no proposal to "confiscate all guns." Gun ownership is not in danger. The Second Amendment as well as the Fourth would prohibit any confiscation proposal.

Why would you expect lower taxes?

For years, I looked forward to the day when filing an income tax return would be simpler and less painful, but this year's struggle with my 2017 tax return has shown me that nothing associated with taxation ever gets simpler.

I had anticipated having a lower tax bill in 2017. After all, I worked for only half the year. My small pension and Social Security income were unchanged, so I should be paying less in taxes, right?

Not really. Even after a serious drop in income, we still had to pay more than $800 to the IRS. At least that was down from the more than $1,000 I had to pay last year. What really surprised me and galled me was the estimated tax I am having to pay this year. I fell into the estimated tax trap three years ago, when I began receiving Social Security income (on top of the small pension I took the year before). Although I had taxes deducted from my SS payments (and the pension), that extra income threw me into a higher tax bracket. The IRS requires individual taxpayers to pay estimated taxes if they owe more than $1,000 at the end of the year. If you fail to pay estimated taxes, the IRS will not only collect the extra taxes you failed to pay but will impose a penalty for underpayment. For 2018, I will have to pay an additional $200 per quarter in estimated taxes, even though I will not be receiving wages for the entire year.

My wife (we file jointly and always have) is still working, but my only income this year will be the pension and SS. The only positive is that we should receive a huge refund on 2018 taxes, assuming no major changes, for the first time in decades. My wife tried to calm me down by pointing out that we no longer have dependent children to claim, we have no mortgage interest (paid off), no child care credits or other deductions except for charitable donations.

The big unknown in all of this is the impact of the December 2017 changes in the tax law. That's the law that was supposed to give all middle-income taxpayers lower taxes. I'm not sure we'll benefit from this. Our tax rate will be about what it was before, according to an online chart I found. The big change is that the standard deduction will rise to $24,000 for joint filers. Although we give a lot of money to charities, we don't quite exceed $24,000, so the tedious work to retain donation records and record each donation in the tax return (I use Turbo Tax) will be eliminated; itemizing deductions will not be advantageous.

I was not counting on a big tax break for 2018, but I certainly wasn't anticipating a big increase in estimated taxes (I had hoped estimated taxes would be eliminated because of our lower combined income). Last year's tax proposal was originally touted as a tax simplification bill. 

Nothing about taxation is simple.