Tea Party "Utopia" Is North Carolina's Dystopia

Art Pope

"With no remaining checks to Republican rule in North Carolina, the state has now become a haven for some of the most ideological — and ill-considered — tea party fantasies dressed up as legislation." All at the behest of millionaire puppet-master, Art Pope, now budget director to Governor McCrory.

The long list of radical legislation now moving in the General Assembly in Raleigh has been designed to dismantle every progressive feature of North Carolina.

What has it gotten us go far? Republicans haven't just taken control of the budget. They've had control for two years. Recall that they passed their own budget over the governor's veto in 2011. And what has all that Republican wisdom gotten us? Higher unemployment, for one thing. They preached jobs, jobs, jobs, like a hypnotist cooing "Sleep now, sleep, sleeeeeep," and meanwhile the state's lost jobs, and the Republican radicals in the General Assembly, with McCrory's assent, tightened access to unemployment benefits.

That's the Tea Party "utopia" in a nutshell.