One of the blemishes on the Queen City’s crown is the Charlotteans' tendency to drink and drive. CL columnist Nsenga Burton wrote an article last November citing Charlotte as third in the nation with drunk-driving arrests. This week an article in Spanish-language newspaper Hola offers up some optimistic news:

Cifras divulgadas por la Oficina del Alguacil de Mecklenburg indican que en 2010 un 14.67% menos de hispanos fueron arrestados por conducir bajo la influencia del alcohol u otras sustancias (DWI, en inglés), comparado con 2009.  De acuerdo con esta información, 628 latinos fueron detenidos en el condado en 2010, mientras en 2009 la cifra fue de 763.

En total, Mecklenburg reportó que 3.571 personas perdieron su libertad por manejar en estado de ebriedad en 2010, un 3.93% menos que en 2009.

Para las personas indocumentadas, las consecuencias son aún peores pues tras un arresto por DWI son automáticamente deportadas. La cárcel de Mecklenburg reportó que 436 personas fueron procesadas y deportadas por el cargo de DWI en 2010.

[Translation; Figures released by the Mecklenburg County Sheriff's Office indicate that in 2010 14.67% less Hispanics were arrested for DWI, compared with 2009. According to this information, 628 Latinos were arrested in the county for DWI in 2010, while in 2009 the figure was 763.

In total, Mecklenburg reported that 3,571 people lost their freedom for driving while intoxicated in 2010, a 3. 93% decrease from  2009.

For the undocumented, the consequences (of drunk driving) are worse because after an arrest for DWI they are automatically deported. Mecklenburg jails reported that 436 people were prosecuted and deported on charges of DWI in 2010.]

The article also quotes Nydian E. Cooker, supervisor of Latino programs for substance-abuse prevention agency Anuvia, as saying that a combination of increased education outreach and stricter laws have led to the dip in DWIs. Hopefully the downward trend will continue through the decade and beyond.

Back in the fall of 2005, I was a writer for the newspaper of a prominent, and prominently white, CMS high school. I was new to Charlotte and puzzled at the lack of diversity on campus. In talking to some of the school’s seasoned teachers, I learned that this had not always been the case. From 1971 to 1999, CMS students were bussed across the city in an effort to increase socioeconomic diversity in schools. I wrote an article for my high school’s newspaper about how the reversal of the bussing plan had affected CMS, and never gave the issue much thought again. That is, until this morning when I read an article in the Huffington Post titled, “N.C. Plans a Step Back Toward Segregation.” You can read the full article here, but I've excerpted the most important parts;

In the last few months, extreme right-wing members of North Carolina's Wake County have advanced an agenda of "neighborhood schooling" that would drastically reduce school diversity and roll back years of progress and integration.

Neighborhood schools, when implemented, usually mean some children get public schools that are racially identifiable and high-poverty, while others get schools that are selective, highly resourced and in effect function as "private" schools for the white and affluent.

Research confirms that students in racially diverse schools do better in math and reading and display a marked increase in critical thinking. A 2006 study showed that the Latino and African American gains in math were much greater in diverse schools than in segregated ones.

Other studies have shown that diverse high schools have smaller gaps in reading than schools with few or no students of color.

In Wake County, they are trying to fix something that isn't broken.

In a school board survey, 94 percent of parents said they support the current system; 86 percent of all students already go to schools within 5 miles of their homes.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan criticized the Wake County school board in a letter to the Washington Post.

"America's strength has always been a function of its diversity, so it is troubling to see North Carolina's Wake County school board take steps to reverse a long-standing policy to promote racial diversity in its schools," he wrote.

The Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights is investigating the board's decision, after the state chapter of the NAACP and other groups filed a complaint last year.

Those who dismiss this issue as a local concern should consider that Wake County is emblematic of a larger problem. School boards across the country, including Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Illinois and elsewhere in North Carolina, have problems with segregation or racial achievement gaps in classrooms.

And several like-minded school board members in those states are hoping to replicate the experiment unfolding in North Carolina. North Carolina could become a social justice battleground, just as Arizona has been in the immigration debate.

My article never did make it to print those six years ago. Now the same issue resurfaces in the same state, and during Black History Month, no less. History will repeat itself endlessly until we wake up, stand up, and refuse to stand idly by.

• One bite won't hurt, my pretty. (Thanks to Andy Castro for the illustration.)

Ummm ... what? As usual, money rules. Unfortunately, money can't fix everything once you've ruined it.

As the Cree Indians say, "When all the trees have been cut down, when all the animals have been hunted, when all the waters are polluted, when all the air is unsafe to breathe, only then will you discover you cannot eat money."

In an unusual scenario that raises questions of conflict of interest, a company that conducts research on behalf of the pesticide industry has paid a U.S. government agency to help prove some controversial chemicals are safe.

The company, Exponent Inc., based in Menlo Park, Calif., is known for its scientific research on behalf of corporate clients facing product liability concerns. In this case, Exponent is trying to refute research showing that even a small amount of combined exposure to two agricultural chemicals, maneb, a fungicide, and paraquat, an herbicide, can raise the risk of Parkinson's disease, a progressive disorder of the central nervous system.

Exponent is listed as a member of CropLife America, the trade group that represents pesticide manufacturers, and also has worked regularly for Syngenta, which makes paraquat.

The federal agency involved in this instance is the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Federal ethics rules generally prohibit government employees from accepting money from businesses related to their jobs, which helps ensure that government staffers remain unbiased and free of corporate entanglements. Although NIOSH has statutory authority to accept 'gifts,' it does not "utilize" that authority to accept corporate donations for research, according to an agency spokeswoman.

Exponent was able to circumvent these restrictions, however, by donating $60,000 to the CDC Foundation, an independent, 501(c)(3) public charity. The foundation in turn passed the money along to NIOSH.

Exponent managing scientist Laura McIntosh said in an interview the company donated the money and sought participation by researchers at NIOSH to enhance the credibility of its study of maneb and paraquat. McIntosh said they wanted to make their research "bulletproof."

"We have a professional money-laundering facility at the Centers for Disease Control Foundation" said James O'Callaghan, the NIOSH researcher running the government's part of the project. "They accept projects from anyone on the outside."

Arthur Caplan, who runs the University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics, finds the arrangement disturbing. "If you have a private sector entity that has no interest and is just giving general money for support, that's not a conflict," Caplan said. But when a company or industry has "a stake in the outcome," or offers "support which is difficult to track, when it's not very transparent, it makes for trouble...I don't think every private dollar is tainted, but at the same time, when you're in areas where somebody has a dog in the fight, that's going to raise appropriate questions about conflicts."

Science-for-hire firms, Caplan says, must by nature be attentive to the needs of their corporate underwriters.

Read the entire Politics Daily piece, by Sheila Kaplan, here.

• Thanks to Kamal H. for the photo.

Grist.org is running an op-ed piece by George Black, which was originally in OnEarth Magazine, and I want to bring it to your attention. Here's a snip:

In my unending (and thus far, I have to confess, largely fruitless) attempts to figure out why Americans aren't more alarmed about climate change, one of the more intriguing ideas I've heard recently was put to me by a psychologist named Andrew Shatté.

Shatté, a professor at the University of Arizona, is best known for his work on resilience -- the ability of humans to deal with adversity. His thesis on climate change, in a nutshell, is that we are hardwired for extinction. He compares us to the Irish elk, which went extinct about 11,000 years ago. The male of that species evolved to grow big antlers -- I mean really gargantuan antlers, racks up to 12 feet wide, designed for the usual reasons of aggression, defense, and sexual display. Over time, the antlers got so big that the elk couldn't consume enough calories to sustain their growth, so instead the antlers began to feed in auto-parasitic fashion on the calcium in the animals' bones. If galloping osteoporosis didn't kill them, they got their antlers impossibly tangled up in the overhead branches and starved to death.

So why are we like the Irish elk? The problem is the human brain, Shatté says. Our evolutionary development has not yet caught up with the change in our circumstances. More specifically, the problem is our brain's fear triggers. Our instincts are still paleolithic; our fear reflexes respond to all the wrong things. They lie dormant in the face of climate change, no matter how ominously scientists predict its probable consequences. But we're programmed to pump adrenalin at the sight of spiders, snakes, and other mortal threats slithering into our caves. We still run a mile from snakes, although they only kill about five or six Americans a year. The most recent annual figure for fatalities from lightning strikes is 58, but would you go anywhere near a golf course in a storm?

Read the rest of this piece here.