Forget the football and basketball teams. How about that LAW SCHOOL? | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: Brant Clifton looks at the UNC Law School through clear eyes in his "bare knuckles" Conservative online publication known as The Daily Haymaker.

    Chapel Hill is known mainly for two things: (1) Great basketball and (2) loony-tunes lefty nuttiness. Basketball is down a little bit this year. (The football team is showing some promise as it emerges from probation.) But the UNC law school is still swinging away in all of its leftist glory.

    I have a judge friend here in the state who also happens to be a UNC law alum. He's a rather conservative jurist, so its safe to say that the indoctrination / mind control didn't work on him. He once told me a great story about his alma mater:

    "Every year, they call me up looking for a donation. I usually interrupt the caller, halfway through his spiel, and ask 'Is Barry Nakell still on the faculty?' Every time they say Yes, I tell them 'Call me back when he's gone.'"

    Well, Mr. Nakell is gone. But it looks like a new lefty warrior has stepped in to fill his BIG SHOES. Gene Nichol is THE Boyd Tinsley Distinguished professor and Director of the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at UNC Law School. Boyd Tinsley? Who's that, you ask? A signatory to the state or US Constitution? A founding father of our state or country? Some great legal mind? Well, the name sounded familiar. SO, I turned to my old friends at Google. My suspicions appear to be confirmed. The ONLY Boyd Tinsley I could find is the violinist for The Dave Matthews Band. (Who went to UVA, by the way.)

    (By the way, that Poverty Center thing is the gig initially established for John Edwards after he left the Senate and lost the 2004 presidential race.)

    So, a member of Dave's band gets a distinguished professorship? What's next? The Ozzy Ozbourne Distinguished professor of the Culinary Arts? The Snoop Dogg Distinguished professor of Pharmacology?

    Well, Professor Nichol published quite the lefty screed in the Raleigh edition of McClatchy's daily journal of creative writing:

    For the first time in modern history, North Carolina is ruled entirely by Republicans. The vast tide of 2010, a seemingly unpopular incumbent governor, weak Democratic candidates, potently gerrymandered legislative districts, boatloads of ideological money, a still-lousy economy, energized evangelicals and, of course, an anti-Obama racial animus combined to decisively deliver both state houses, the governor's mansion and the state Supreme Court to the Grand Old Party.

    Way to slander the hard-working taxpayers who foot the bill for your, um, *important work*. I do have to commend Mr. Nichol for the way he so quickly injected 'racism' AND that hideously long run-on sentence into this masterpiece. More:

    The victors are, to understate, striking while the iron is hot. Though we have among the highest poverty rates, the highest unemployment rates, the highest "food insecurity" rates, the highest uninsured rates and the highest levels of income inequality in the nation, our leaders have concluded, all facts to the contrary, that the only thing wrong with North Carolina is that those at the bottom have too much and those at the top don't have enough.

    At the risk of sounding like a judge or law professor or something, I have to ask: "Any evidence to support your claims, counselor?" MORE:

    We decided to reject a Medicaid expansion that would benefit us more than virtually any other state - shoving us to the right of even the pernicious Rick Scott of Florida. Over 500,000 needy citizens are now effectively ejected from the health care system, though the feds were ready to foot almost the entire bill.

    Um, OBJECTION. First, who got kicked OFF of Medicaid? Second, the feds cannot, with any confidence, promise that they will "foot almost the entire bill." I hate to break it to the professor, but the feds AND the state get their money from THE SAME SOURCE. More:

    We cut unemployment insurance dramatically in a way that will forfeit federal funds appropriated as part of the fiscal cliff negotiations - brushing aside money, once again, already on the table. A bumbling committee chairwoman explained she'd been working on the changes for weeks and didn't want to go back and re-do things to get the federal dollars. Too much trouble. After all, it's just food and sustenance and housing for 170,000 immensely distressed human beings. Whoever cares?

    Again, your honor, I object. Unemployment insurance got cut because (1) we have some of the most generous benefits in these United States, and (2) we are more than THREE BILLION DOLLARS in debt to the federal government. More:

    We're moving to end the state's exceedingly modest earned income tax credit.

    Actually, one reason that tax credit was ending was that TOO MANY folks who pay NO taxes were GETTING MONEY BACK. One more welfare handout from the state . More:

    Yet another proposal speeds forward to dramatically cut, or eliminate, the state income tax and increase the sales tax on food and other essentials. This is necessary, reportedly, so that poor people pay can more taxes and rich people less.

    Really? How? Evidence? Just a little, please?

    And we're re-introducing payday lending, long outlawed here, to help wealthy folks steal more readily from impoverished ones. Government by brigands.

    Wow. Just a wee bit over the top there. Click here for some actual facts on the pay day lending legislation. Oh, and "brigands"? Really, professor? Which party's speaker of the House got a taxpayer-funded trip to a federal corrections facility for brigand-like behavior?

    According to the legislative leadership, the right to vote, the Racial Justice Act and the destruction of the public schools are on deck.

    Wow. This is so ludicrous that I am at a loss for words. More:

    [...]

    We can suffer such damage in two or four or six years that it will take generations to recover.

    Kinda like that "War on Poverty" LBJ got started in 1964? More:

    We face exigency, true and unrelenting, cruel and demeaning, serious and deadly. An outraged citizenry is now obliged to rise in order to protect its children, its future and its shared bond.

    That can't wait for the next electoral season. It'll be too late. See you in the streets.

    All right, now. A call for revolution. *There is clearly some important educatin' going down at Mr. Nichol's Center for Poverty, Work and Opportunity.

    We ought to thank our lucky stars that we get to subsidize this guy's very existence with our hard-earned tax dollars. This is my first exposure to the work of Gene Nichol. I can now say that I have been exposed to someone and something that is just SCREAMING to be cut from the state budget.
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