The Governor's visit was plum embarassing | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Governor Perdue came to town Friday. It was embarrassing.

    Her handlers couldn't have done a much worse job, all the way around. She visited PAS USA, the Beaufort County Child Development Center and the WDN. She got blindsided.

    Tommy Thompson, chief Economic Developer in Beaufort, took the credit/blame for selecting the industry she visited. It is a foreign owned outfit that sends its profits to Germany rather than investing them in the USA. Some would say they are here to exploit cheap labor and economic development incentives.

    Her visit was coincidental to the release of unemployment figures that showed the state still mired deep in a recession. While they say unemployment improved by two tenths of a percent, that's like saying you're drowning in 19 feet of water rather than 20. What they do not tell you is that the real unemployment number in most of Eastern North Carolina is closer to 20% if you include those who have given up looking for work and even higher if you include the "underemployed" or those working and working less hours.

    Thompson crows about the increase in jobs at PAS, but what he fails to say is that they are low paying jobs that are dependent on a single contract or two, not on a healthy economy. Why not PotashCorp? They're doing so well the wolves are trying to buy them out.

    The manager of PAS whined to Perdue that the applicants they hire can't read. What he does not tell us/her is whether they ask to see a high school transcript of those they hire. We doubt it. We'd bet that if he set high standards, such as a 3.0 average and demanded three years of science and math he would get very competent entry level workers. But then he'd have to pay a decent wage. If PAS is talking about hiring someone with only a minimum high school diploma they are competing with McDonalds. You get what you pay for.

    And speaking of quality of applicants, why did Governor Perdue not explain to the PAS guy why she signed a budget that cut dual enrollment for our high school kids?

    And speaking of cutting, how is it she came to visit a pre-school operation after she signed a budget that made the worst cuts in those programs in a decade? Did she come to see how much damage she's done to early childhood programs? What were her handlers thinking?

    If the purpose of the visit was to see "what's working" why didn't she visit Northeast Elementary, a school that has a remarkable turnaround record the last couple of years or Washington Montessori Charter School, arguably the highest performing school in the county?

    And we wonder why her handlers didn't take her around the corner from the WDN to talk to the people at the Employment Security Office. Probably the same reason they didn't take her to visit the domestic violence shelter in Beaufort County.

    But we would suggest that the best place for her to have spent her time was at Beaufort County Medical Center, learning about the problems our, and similar, hospitals are facing these days. That's where this county really needs her help right now.

    All told, it was embarassing.

    Delma Blinson writes the "Teacher's Desk" column for our friend in the local publishing business: The Beaufort Observer. His concentration is in the area of his expertise - the education of our youth. He is a former teacher, principal, superintendent and university professor.