If you remember, the recent North Carolina Senate budget included a provision offered by Sen. Chad Barefoot to do away with more liberal arts opportunities for our students and replace those prospects with state funded “camps” to teach students how to legislatively run the state in the same manner as the current powers that be.

Amendment #2 to Senate Bill 257 proposes to establish a “Legislative School For Leadership and Public Service” using the very funds that would have financed Governor’s School starting in 2018-2019 (https://ncleg.net/Applications/BillLookUp/LoadBillDocument.aspx?SessionCode=2017&DocNum=4282&SeqNum=0) .

Actually, it could be called a “Legislative School for Gerrymandered Boroughs and Public Policy to Promote Total Discrimination,” but why split hairs?

I hope that Sen. Barefoot makes sure to include a couple of prerequisite courses for those lucky students fortunate enough to use taxpayer money to learn from his creation.

They should learn their shapes and how to draw well in a gerrymandering district redrawing course. For instance,

No. That is not an internal organ. It is not a paramecium. It is not an ink blot. It is not a lake on a map. It is a real shape.

And the shape is called “Gerrymander.” Students at the “Legislative School for Gerrymandered Boroughs and Public Policy to Promote Total Discrimination” use shapes like this to help draw maps of voter districts.

See how it looks on a real map? Looks just like the 12^th congressional district. It somehow connects Winston-Salem, Greensboro, High-Point, Charlotte, and multiple sites in between in a way that only crafty politicians can do. In fact, this district was called the most gerrymandered in the nation (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/05/15/americas-most-gerrymandered-congressional-districts/?utm_term=.6a56823e620f).

There are more shapes. Some even represent parasites sucking the blood right out of the democratic process.

Looks like a tick sucking out the blood of its victim, but in actuality, this is a shape called “Unconstitutional” and it can also be used on maps.

Like here in the 1^st district in North Carolina.

Sen. Barefoot will also want to make sure to include a class for students at the “Legislative School for Gerrymandered Boroughs and Public Policy to Promote Total Discrimination” on crafting policy that will eventually be struck down in the legal court system or have judgement passed against it in the court of public opinion.

Think about the recent decisions by the Supreme Court concerning the gerrymandering of congressional districts.

Think about the recent decision by the Supreme Court to not “revive a restrictive North Carolina voting law that a federal appeals court had struck down as an unconstitutional effort to ‘target African-Americans with almost surgical precision’”(https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/15/us/politics/voter-id-laws-supreme-court-north-carolina.html?_r=0).

Think about other decisions in state and federal courts that have rejected legislation brought forth by Sen. Barefoot and his cronies like separation of powers, redrawing school board districts (Wake county), and removing existing teacher due-process rights.

And then of course, there is the infamous “Bathroom Bill” which cost North Carolina untold amounts of revenue and stains in reputation.

But that is no matter, because that’s what the “Legislative School for Gerrymandered Boroughs and Public Policy to Promote Total Discrimination” is supposed to do – keep North Carolina moving in the direction that Sen. Barefoot and his ilk has us moving.

Backwards.

To the past.

But please do not tell him that “Legislative School for Gerrymandered Boroughs and Public Policy to Promote Total Discrimination” has the initials LGBT in it.

He’ll probably want to make a new amendment.