AMID CONTROVERSIES, ROBINSON
PROMISES BETTER ECONOMY,
EDUCATION IF ELECTED
By Cash Michaels
An analysis
During the third day of the North Carolina Republican State Convention in Greensboro last Saturday night, gubernatorial candidate Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson made some key promises to the cheering crowd of 1,000, even though controversy continues to plague his campaign.
Robinson, 55, pledged that if elected governor, he would improve North Carolina’s economy, and reform the state’s educational system.
“It’s real simple, we fight for two things, change in two areas,” Robinson told attendees at the convention’s old North State Dinner.“Number one, our economy, number two, our education system. Economies are built on pillars. Those pillars are public safety, public education, health care, infrastructure, and housing. If you don’t have those things, and those things aren’t healthy, your economy will not be healthy.
The controversial Black Republican continued, “North Carolina is literally on the cusp of exploding economically. It is time to direct that explosion in the right way and cause this state to be something even better than it already is.”
But when it came to public education, Robinson was blunt.
“Our education system in North Carolina is in shambles.” Robinson said. “This is not the fault of our school teachers. The way we treat the teachers in this nation and in this state is abysmal. It needs to be turned around. Quick, fast, and in a hurry.”
Our standards are full of (Critical Race Theory). Our standards are full of (diversity, equity and inclusion). They do not give the proper direction to the local agencies that they need. That’s got to be changed."
Robinson called Critical Race Theory “garbage” and “absolutely sickening,” even though CRT is not taught in North Carolina public schools.
“Our state school board is wrong headed and headed in the wrong direction.” the Greensboro native continued, pledging to appoint conservatives to the board who will focus on "classical education" like math, English and grammar.“When I take office in January, I get to flip that board. Not upside down but right side up.”
Robinson also promised to expand Republican efforts pertaining to school vouchers.
"These all-powerful bureaucrats who think they know more than you, know your children better than you, believe that it’s OK to feed your children a steady diet of Communism and pornography — they’re not right,” Robinson said.
Robinson also promised to eliminate DEI policies from state government wherever he found them.
“I’m going to go through every document in North Carolina’s government, all of them," he said. "When I find DEI, I’m going scratch them out — with a red pen.”
There were at least two ironies to Robinson’s address Saturday.
Even though he hailed efforts by the Republican-led NC General Assembly for resurrecting the state economically over the past 13 years, saying that “North Carolina is literally on the cusp of exploding economically,” a poll conducted by conservative publication Carolina Journal showed 58% of registered Republicans “…thought that North Carolina is on the “wrong track,” compared with 42% of registered Democrats and 52% of registered unaffiliated voters.”
Robinson also said that Republican state lawmakers were right about passing the discriminatory HB 2 so-called “bathroom bill,” several years ago which cost North Carolina hundreds of millions of dollars in lost business, opportunities and jobs to the state.
The second Robinson irony in his NCGOP convention speech Saturday was his sharing how he grew up poor “in a little rat-infested house” in Greensboro, not far from the convention center, and how later in life, he grew up working at a minimum-wage job at a nearby shopping mall.
He has also experienced several bankruptcies, a home foreclosure and misdemeanor charges, later dropped - for writing bad checks - in adulthood.
Though Robinson expressed pride in making it as far as he has in politics and in life, he offered nothing by way of policy to directly help other poor North Carolinians who are working hard, looking for a way up to help their families.
In fact, Robinson is on record as calling government safety-net spending as “a plantation of welfare and victimhood” that has mired generations of Black people in “dependency and poverty.”
But records show that state regulators are now probing his wife’s nonprofit taxpayer-supported agency, “Balanced Nutrition, Inc.” - which provided free lunches for poor children - for years of unaccounted spending totaling over $100,000.
Reportedly Robinson, his wife, and other members of their family earned at least $830,000 from this enterprise which, according tax filings and state documents, has collected approximately $7 million in government funding since 2017, despite his disparaging remarks about “a plantation of welfare and victimhood.”
Many of the most recent polls show Robinson either in a dead heat in th race for NC governor against Democrat NC Attorney General Josh Stein, some show Robinson with either a slight lead, or being slightly behind.
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FOR FAMILIES OF HOMICIDE
VICTIMS, ACCESS TO
AUTOPSY REPORTS
MAY BE OVER
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
In the aftermath of a fatal police shooting, there are two vital avenues to determine the truth - the body camera that the officer is wearing at the time of the shooting, and the autopsy report that confirms cause of death.
But in some cases, some officers either forget, or deliberately do not turn their body cameras on to capture the events of the shooting, thus complicating the investigation.
That’s when, traditionally, the family of the victim could rely on obtaining a copy of and reviewing the autopsy report to at least determine how their loved one died.
But now, a bill pending in the NC Senate, could to stop those families, or anyone else from obtaining those autopsy reports in a timely fashion, effective July 1st.
Robeson County Republican Sen. Danny Britt, an attorney and former prosecutor, is sponsoring the measure that if passed, would restrict public and media access to written reports from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) during the course of a criminal investigation.
The bill would also repeal a state law that allowed the public and media to inspect and review, but not copy, autopsy photographs, videos and recordings under supervision.
Sen. Britt says, however, that a victim’s family might be able to sit down with a prosecutor to review crime photos.
At press time Monday, the results of consultations with state health officials, representatives of state district attorneys and others still had not been revealed that could impact the final form the Senate bill takes.
It was expected to be voted on in Senate committee.
But according to Sen. Britt, his main concern is release of autopsy report materials prior to the completion of a criminal investigation could “unfairly’ taint a potential jury pool.
“I think that due process in the courts is more important than the public knowing about what happened related to someone’s death,” Britt said after a committee hearing last week. “I also think it’s more important for that person who’s being prosecuted to have due process, and that due process not being potentially denied so that case gets overturned and then that victim doesn’t receive the justice they deserve, or that victim’s family.”
Currently, the public and media can obtain copies of death certificates, autopsy reports, toxicology and investigative reports once they are cleared by the OCME and released. Sen. Britt’s bill, if passed, would classify all of these records as part of a criminal investigation and not available to the public prior to trial.
Opponents of Britt’s bill counter that there is a backlog of cases at the OCME, with autopsies sometimes taking up to a year to complete in many cases.
According to Mark Benton, chief deputy secretary for health with the state Dept. of Health and Human Services, “this bill as currently written, would make those [OCME] challenges much, much more difficult.”
A DHHS spokesperson added that among other things, Britt’s proposed bill “…limits the ability to share information with families.”
If the final Senate bill is passed by the state Senate, it goes to the N.C. House, and if passed there with no changes, onto Gov. Roy Cooper for his signature or veto.
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