People rallied in Asheville and other places across the state to protest state budget cuts that would impact chi-i-i-i-ildren; namely, public education and healthcare. The executive director of Children First/Communities in Schools, Allison Jordan, collected postcards and signed petitions to hand-deliver to Governor Beverly Perdue.

Meanwhile . . . Beverly Perdue is going to be junketing to rallies across the state to attend similar rallies, apparently as a cost-cutting means of telling legislators, “Don’t make me use my veto power.”

Back at the ranch . . . Joseph Coletti at the John Locke Foundation has taken the time to prepare an alternative budget. He points out, for example, that the state could redirect $85,000,000 from overhead for university research, $124,692,755 from non-teaching centers at UNC, $2,095,402 from non-teaching centers in community colleges, $22,842,586 from excess positions in the Department of Public Instruction, $18,128,286 from excess school administration positions, and much, much more.