I have always chosen to believe that people are good and have the best intentions. When in doubt, I choose to believe there was a miscommunication and had the person, who’s actions are in question, known the full facts, their actions would have been different. Isn’t that the approach that produces the best results? It [...]
NBC Nightly News reported on December 9, 2015 that North Carolina is one of the worst states when it comes to charging hidden fees for traffic tickets. The segment reported that hidden fees in NC increased an original traffic ticket of $30 over seven fold to $218. While the State has to find funding for [...]
Dallas attorney Bill Minick (Photo credit Dylan Hollingsworth for ProPublica) Texas and Oklahoma have both adopted an “opt-out” system for Workers’ Compensation. ProPublica along with NPR recently published an in-depth look at the results in these two states. Under this system, employers can opt-out of state mandated workers'’ compensation insurance by creating their own policy [...]
A study titled “Does Public Financing Affect Judicial Behavior?...” was recently published by three political scientists who looked at North Carolina’s Supreme Court. From 2001 until 2013 (for eleven years) North Carolina had an optional public financing system, making it the perfect case study. The conclusion of the study? Yes. Public financing made justices on [...]
NY Times article "Friends at Work? Not So Much" The New York Times recently published an op-ed claiming that the amount of people who seek or maintain friendships in the workplace has dropped in recent decades. Where people once looked to the workplace as a main source of long-term friendships, by 2004 only 30% of [...]
Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of the University of California Irvine School of Law School and Constitutional Law ScholarErwin Chemerinsky, Dean of the University of California Irvine School of Law School and author of the textbook Constitutional Law, recently wrote an op-ed for the L.A. Times in which he noted a pattern he has seen in [...]
A bill attempting to address North Carolina’s crisis of employers misclassifying employees as independent contractors passed through the Senate on Tuesday. Senate Bill 694 creates an “Employee Classification Division” within the Office of State Budget and Management which is tasked solely with the responsibility to oversee and enforce proper classification of employees. The tasks [...]
The News & Observer recently published an article exposing the under-reporting of workplace deaths by the North Carolina State Department of Labor. The Department reported only 23 deaths for 2013 and for 2014, the Department reported 44 deaths. However, even 44 deaths is significantly less than the 243 workplace deaths reported by the Department in [...]
Duke Basketball Coach Mike Krzyzewski has struggled with back pain If you are a fan of college basketball, you probably know the accomplishments of Coach Mike Krzyzewski, who has led Duke University’s men’s basketball program for 35 years, including 4 national championships. What you might not know is that Coach K struggled with [...]
Flushing drugs down the toilet is the old way of getting rid of unwanted, expired or unused drugs, but recent studies have shown that this practice harms our environment. Low levels of drugs, such as birth control and anti-depressants among others, are being found in our lakes, rivers and streams and are negatively impacting fish [...]