There's No End to the Republican Extremism in Raleigh

Perhaps worried that their troops won't turn out in November, Republican Overlords in the NC General Assembly decided to goose right-wing voter turnout by unveiling a bill yesterday containing "a constitutional hat trick," as WRAL's Laura Leslie dubbed it -- three proposed amendments to the state constitution tucked into a single bill. All three, if approved by a three-fifths vote of both the House and the Senate, would appear on the ballot in this November's election.

One of the three, in particular, is guaranteed to rev up the know-nothings who hate everything: a so-called "taxpayer's bill of rights" (TABOR) which the Overlords aren't calling by that name, because since Colorado tried something very similar in 1992, TABOR has had only bad press and worse fall-out for the single state that ever tried it:

A Taxpayer Bill of Rights or TABOR is a constitutional measure that limits the annual growth in state (and sometimes local) revenues or spending to the sum of the inflation rate and the percentage change in the state’s population .... Overriding these limits requires voters’ approval or some other high bar, such as a supermajority vote of the legislature.

Colorado enacted the nation’s only TABOR in 1992 but suspended it for five years in 2005 in response to a sharp decline in public services. Though anti-government groups have promoted TABOR proposals in at least 30 states since 2004, no other states have adopted it. [Center on Budget & Policy Priorities]

 God help us.