Dollar: Nichol's center had no impact on poverty

Published March 3, 2015

by Rep. Nelson Dollar, letter to the editor, News and Observer, March 2, 2015.

It’s the height of ivory tower elitism for professors to defend the UNC Center on Work, Poverty and Opportunity. It’s the height of absurdity to analogize closing the center with the censorship of E.E. Ericson and John Spencer Bassett, as  Rob Christensen did in his Feb. 22 column.

Everyone knows the center on poverty was contrived to give John Edwards a platform for the core message of his 2008 presidential campaign. The center traded on the prestige of the university for personal political gain, not for poverty.

When that fiasco blew up, the university doubled down, making the center Gene Nichol’s personal golden parachute. Why? Was he a nationally renowned expert on poverty or work? No, he was an abject failure as president of William & Mary so UNC bailed him out. Nichol makes a six-figure salary, and the only poverty he’s acquainted with is a poverty of original thought.

The bottom line is the center has contributed nothing impactful on the issues of poverty, work or opportunity, and Nichol is nothing more than a strident left-winger with no fresh ideas. The university system has no business creating and maintaining centers for the likes of Edwards and Nichol.

Finally, we have a Board of Governors willing to end this type of abuse.

STATE REP. NELSON DOLLAR 

March 3, 2015 at 10:52 am
Rip Arrowood says:

"Everyone knows..."

Is that was passes for fact in NC now?

How about... "everyone knows" NC is being run by a legislature that operates on a Junior High School level.

March 4, 2015 at 6:47 am
Pat Ferguson says:

Rip is right. I'm an everyone and I don't know a lot of things. But I do know what Rip says is true.

March 3, 2015 at 12:03 pm
Frank Burns says:

I agree with you. But you have to understand the mindset of the left, for them talking about an issue is accomplishing something. This is what is commonly called talking the walk. We need to get away from the smoke and mirror mindset of the left and actually solve problems.

March 3, 2015 at 4:34 pm
Doug Lowder says:

Well Rip,

I see the legislature has stepped up two levels since the 140+ years of oppressive rule by pre-schoolers.

March 3, 2015 at 11:03 pm
Frank McGuirt says:

Let me see now, Rep. Dollar and his Republican cronies eliminated the earned income tax credit, reduced unemployment benefits, rejected Medicaid expansion, cut legal services, refuse to increase the minimum wage, yet they closed the UNC NC Poverty Center because they say it didn't help poor people? (With apologies to Kevin Siers, Charlotte Observer).