
{"id":500,"date":"2007-06-28T07:59:09","date_gmt":"2007-06-28T15:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/2007\/06\/28\/exile-on-jones-street-12\/"},"modified":"2007-06-28T07:59:09","modified_gmt":"2007-06-28T15:59:09","slug":"exile-on-jones-street-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2007\/06\/28\/exile-on-jones-street-12\/","title":{"rendered":"Exile on Jones Street"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>By Kirk Ross<\/strong><br \/>\nColumnist <\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Sickus<\/strong><br \/>\nWorld over, if there is any consistent symptom of a sick society, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the infant mortality rate.<\/p>\n<p>Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t take my word for it. Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what state health director Dr. Leah Devlin said when she announced a rise in the numbers a couple years back:<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153But this is about much more than babies. It is an important warning sign that our population as a whole is not healthy.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>In 1988, this state had the highest infant mortality rate in the nation and the shame of that helped propel an effort to do something about it.<\/p>\n<p>At one point, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d improved to 40th. Now we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re 45th.<\/p>\n<p>And although there is some pride in the fact that after a long-term comprehensive effort rates have dropped 30 percent since 1998, the numbers are turning around.<\/p>\n<p>While rates have fallen for close to three decades running, they haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t changed much since 2000. In places, the downward slope has simply flattened out, and in others we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re losing.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Losing\u00e2\u20ac\u009d might not be the right word to use, since in a lot of parts of the state we never really started \u00e2\u20ac\u0153winning.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>In a country where the national average of infant deaths per 1,000 births is 6.8 and in a state with an average of 8.8, there are several eastern counties with rates in the mid-to-high 20s, rivaling countries like Syria, Brazil and Peru. Drill those numbers down even further and you have infant mortality rates for minorities that rival Pakistan, Iran and South Africa.<\/p>\n<p>Rates are going up throughout the South, and here in North Carolina big jumps are being seen in far western counties.<\/p>\n<p>Last weekend, the Asheville Citizen-Times took a look at western NC\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s downward spiral. The paper noted that in the 16-county WNC region, infant mortality jumped from a rate of 6.0 in 2004 to 9.8 in 2005. In Buncombe County, the rate has almost doubled in the same period.<\/p>\n<p>That should be setting off alarm bells in Raleigh, but raising funds for health initiatives just doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem to be all the rage this year. Shame, it seems, doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem to carry the same weight as it once did.<\/p>\n<p>If that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a sign of a sick society, then I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what is.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Junkies<\/strong><br \/>\nAnother sign of our declining health \u00e2\u20ac\u201d rampant addiction among the elected classes to PAC money. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sad, I tell ya.<\/p>\n<p>Case in point: the continued log jam over a high-risk health care pool. Shot down last year, a vote was promised this year. Insiders said that objections from insurers had been worked through. The measure, which, just like last year around this time, sits in a Senate committee waiting on action, was again introduced and shepherded through the House by Rep. Verla Insko, who still has hopes it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll pass.<\/p>\n<p>But even with a major push from patient advocates and backroom promises from the leadership that would allow it through, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still concern that the Senate won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t budge.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Name ring a bell?<\/strong><br \/>\nDoes the name Chris Mears sound familiar? He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the public affairs officer for the State Auditor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s office who probably wishes now he hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t claimed credit for the temporary derailment of a same-day registration bill.<\/p>\n<p>The temporary halt to the bill, at the request of Mears\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 boss, State Auditor Les Merritt, came to a quick end after Merritt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153never mind\u00e2\u20ac\u009d testimony before a Senate panel last week.<\/p>\n<p>But the hearing did underscore Mears\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 involvement and his apparent bragging about it via an email released by Democracy NC.<\/p>\n<p>It also brought attention to the fact that he is the very same Chris Mears who used to be the political affairs director for the NC GOP and the very same Chris Mears who wrote another famous email \u00e2\u20ac\u201d this one titled \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the pew and the ballot box.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the memo emailed to Republicans ahead of the 2006 election asking for help in a statewide effort to collect church directories.<\/p>\n<p>Ding<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Kirk Ross Columnist Sickus World over, if there is any consistent symptom of a sick society, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the infant mortality rate. Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t take my word for it. Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what state health director Dr. Leah Devlin said when she announced a rise in the numbers a couple years back: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153But this is about much more&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}