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Background Information

Founded in 1994, the Common Sense Foundation is named for the most famous work of Thomas Paine, one of America's earliest progressives. Like Paine, Common Sense is guided by a belief in equality and justice for all people regardless of race, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, or economic status

Programs and Activities

Common Sense acts as a center for the progressive movement in North Carolina in many important ways:

• Publishes special research reports on important issues and trends in North Carolina.
• Helps grassroots groups by providing media consulting and advice on how best to reach state policy-makers.
• Serves as a resource for statewide media to balance the conservative viewpoint on key issues.
• Publishes Common Sense Says..., a quarterly research report that focuses on a different topic each quarter

Mission Statement

The Common Sense Foundation is a North Carolina non-partisan public policy organization. We believe in equality, equity, and justice for all people regardless of race, gender, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, or economic status. Our primary goal is to ensure that state government and the political process attend to the interrelated economic, political, social, and cultural needs of those who are systematically denied access to power.

To that end we do the following:

• Develop and promote a multi-issue progressive agenda.
• Provide exposure to progressive issues and voices.
• Encourage more media coverage of progressive issues and voices.
• Help grassroots/progressive organizations improve their access to the media and participation in the legislative process.
• Serve as constant, persistent watchdog over state government and the political   process.

Our major activities include:

• A variety of publications.
• Presenting our views in other media including radio, television, and newspapers, and through public speaking appearances.
• Training and other forms of technical assistance.
• Regular monitoring of governmental activities.
• Networking with other progressive organizations.

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Making a Difference

What public policies would North Carolina be pursuing today if the Common Sense Foundation did not exist? On dozens of key issues from AIDS funding to corporate welfare to the death penalty, the Common Sense Foundation helps move the debate, and policies that emerge from that debate, to the left. The Common Sense Foundation, since its inception, has brought new views and new voices into the policy discussion in North Carolina with a bold, progressive, and uncompromising perspective. Common Sense tackles issues that the mainstream media ignore and provides fresh look at issues they already cover.

Positions Common Sense has taken on various issues:

• Mandatory Minimum Sentencing: Mandatory minimum sentencing is unfair, ineffective, and expensive.  NC should reform its sentencing practices to abolish the Habitual Felon Law, reduce drug incarcerations, and provide rehabilitation and treatment alternatives. (April 2003)
• Death Row Lawyers: New trials, with two competent attorneys with some capital defense experience, should be granted to the more than one in six on death row who were represented in trial by attorneys disciplined by the Bar. (Oct. 2002)
• AIDS Drugs: North Carolina must increase funding to the AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) and increase the maximum income eligibility level to receive this assistance so that drugs are not denied to the poor. (Oct. 2002)
• Toll Roads: North Carolina should not fund highway construction and maintenance through tolls, which would create unequal access to public highways and be an unreliable source of revenue. (July 2002)
• Cigarette Tax: NC should not raise the cigarette tax, which is a regressive tax and the wrong way to fix the state’s budget shortfall problem. (May 2002)
• Charter Schools: Charter schools are breaking the law by resegregating NC schools.  NC should enforce the law and invest in its public schools. (April 2001)
• Domestic Violence: Domestic violence is a tragic reality in NC and domestic violence programs, which currently operate on shoestring budgets, should be adequately funded. NC also must address domestic violence issues as economic issues, supporting higher minimum wage laws and child-care subsidies. (Aug. 2001)
• Environmental Injustice: Poor communities and communities of color face a disproportional variety of environmental hazards.  State negligence in terms of monitoring and cleaning-up these hazards reflects an unwillingness to protect its citizens, racism, and classism and should be addressed. (July 2001)
• Coastal Wealth Protection Acts: Taxpayers should not have to fund wealthy businesses’ and homeowners’ private beach front property through coastal WPAs.  (May 2001)
• Housing Crisis: NC must address the pervasive lack of affordable housing by allocating more money to the NC Housing Trust Fund, allocating future apartment space for low-income persons, strengthen laws punishing neglectful landlords and predatory lenders, and raise the minimum wage. (April 2001)
• Lottery: NC should not implement a regressive state lottery, which would negatively impact the poor and require the government to promote gambling as a way out of poverty.  Benefits to programs would be unevenly distributed and funding unreliable. (Jan. 2001)
• NC should address the funding disparity between traditionally white and historically black public universities, the rising cost of tuition, the state’s persistent poverty rates, and prison privatization. (December 2000)
• Child-Care Workers: NC should provide wage subsidies to ensure a living wage for child-care workers, high quality child-care, and affordable child-care for working parents. (Nov. 2000)
• Toll Roads: Instead of toll roads, especially privately operated toll roads, that create unequal access to public highways, NC should invest in mass transit. (Sept. 2000, see July 2002)
• Voting Districts: NC should not allow politicians to craft voting districts and implement a system of proportional representation that would politically empower underrepresented groups. (Oct. 2000)
• Domestic Violence and Welfare: NC should help victims of domestic violence on welfare become self-sufficient by ensuring that recipients and social service providers know about available benefits through the Family Violence Option and that these benefits are properly assessed and administered. (Aug. 2000)
• Farmworkers: NC needs to provide more oversight to H2A program (which allows farmers to hire guestworkers when there are not enough domestic workers) by hiring more inspectors to ensure that farmworkers live and work in safe conditions. (July 2000)
• Voting Laws: Election officials should consider voting by mail, same day voter-registration, keeping polls open later or on the weekend, and enfranchising felons on probation to increase low voter participation in NC. (June 2000)
• Tobacco Settlements: Money from the tobacco settlements should go to prevent smoking, treat ill ex-smokers, and help workers and families in the tobacco industry. (May 2000)
• Candidate Evaluation: Voters should ask 12 particular questions of candidates vying for their votes. (April 2000)
• Private Prisons: NC should pass a moratorium on all private prisons and instead invest in more ethical and cost-effective prevention and rehabilitation efforts. (March 2000)
• Segregation: State officials should require localities to develop plans for affordable housing, and city officials should implement inclusionary zoning as well as encourage the revitalization of existing inner-city neighborhoods to overcome inherently unequal racial and economic segregation in neighborhoods and schools. (Feb. 2000)
• Tuition Increases: The UNC Board of Governors should not pass a system-wide tuition increase, which would hurt racial diversity among students and limit the number of citizens who are able to attend college. Money instead could be raised by eliminating tuition grants for NC students in private colleges and corporate tax loopholes (Jan. 2000)
• Top 10 policy changes (Dec. 1999)
• Food Safety: NC should provide more support for organic and sustainable agriculture to protect the environment for future generations of farmers and ensure safe food for citizens. (Nov. 1999)
• Coastal Development: NC should limit coastal and wetland development in order to mitigate storm damage and environmental degradation. (Oct. 1999)
• Gun Laws: Stricter gun laws are needed to limit the accessibility of guns, such as cracking down on improper gun sales, state monitoring of gun shows, a one-gun-a-month law, and stricter penalties for adults who allow children access to guns. (Sept. 1999)  
• Long-Term Care: The elderly and their relatives should have access to information about long-term care facilities.  NC should establish clear, high standards of care in assisted-living facilities (ALFs), ensure that regulatory agencies have enough funding, require cost reporting from ALFs, and publish a consumer guide listing information about complaints and reports. (Aug. 1999)  
• Developmentally Disabled: NC should provide year-round support for the developmentally disabled through services like physical therapy, vocational training, and residential assistance, allowing them to become self-sufficient and saving money in the long run. (July 1999)  
• AIDS Funding: NC’s AIDS Drug Assistance Program needs more funding to make it available to more people.  NC should also spend more money on AIDS education and prevention. (June 1999)
• Lobbying Laws: NC needs stricter lobbying laws so that lobbyists cannot spend unlimited money on gifts and entertainment for legislators or make big campaign donations, and legislators should be prohibited from soliciting contributions from lobbyists and their clients. (May 1999)  
• Lottery: A state lottery is an inefficient and unreliable source of revenue and preys on the poor. NC should raise revenue instead by making corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share. (April 1999)  
• Sex and Privacy: NC should repeal antiquated and discriminatory “crime against nature” laws that deny citizens their privacy and other rights based on sexual behavior that occurs between consenting adults in their own homes. (March 1999)  
• Black Colleges: The state’s historically Black universities deserve the funding and resources that predominantly white universities have long enjoyed. (Feb. 1999)  
• Tax Fairness: NC should raise revenue by making by making sure that corporations and the affluent pay their fair share, eliminating the bank tax loophole, readjusting the tax rate on business equipment, eliminating the tax credit for insurance companies, and eliminating the cap on the sales tax on certain luxury items. (Jan. 1999)  
• Consumer Debt: In light of escalating consumer debt, NC should impose stricter regulation of banks, credit card companies, and finance companies, instead of increasing the caps on loan sizes and interest rates, to protect consumers from predatory lending and practices and ensure equal access to banking services. (Dec. 1998)
• Poverty: Claims about NC’s booming economy ignore how the state’s benefits are unfairly and unequally divided. NC must make economic investments in a living wage, job and educational training, work-related income subsidies, affordable housing, medical care, and child care. (Nov. 1998)
• Death Penalty: NC should abolish the racist and arbitrary death penalty and address the root causes of crime. (Oct. 1998)

The Common Sense Foundation is a 501(c)3 non-profit, member-supported organization. Donations are tax-deductible.