NC House GOP Off to Kiss Koch

Mark Binker has uncovered the names of the 30 Republican members of the NC House (and the two Democrats, both members of the Five Goobers) who are off this week to attend the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) conference in New Orleans.

What is ALEC? It's the secretive, Koch-funded clearinghouse for state legislation that -- surprise! -- helps immensely in the Billionaire's Coup that has taken our federal government and is taking, one by one, all the state governments. The photo voter ID bill, for just one example, emanated directly from ALEC and was introduced and pushed by Republicans in several state assemblies and most especially in ours.

The 30 Republicans going this week to eat steak and get their orders from The Matrix:

Marilyn Avila
Jeff Barnhart
Hugh Blackwell
Jamie Boles
William Brawley
Harold Brubaker
Rayne Brown
Justin Burr
Bill Cook
Dale Folwell
Kelly Hastings
Mike Hager
Craig Horn
Julia Howard
Linda Johnson
Stephen LaRoque
David Lewis
Darrell McCormick
Chuck McGrady
Tim Moffitt
Tim Moore
Tom Murry
Ruth Samuelson
Paul “Skip” Stam
Mike Stone
Fred Steen
Sarah Stevens
Thom Tillis
John Torbett
Harry Warren

The two Democrats (both of whom played patty-cake with the Republicans in the veto overrides last month):

Bill Brisson
Bill Owens

Among other contributions ALEC has evidently suggested to the new Republican majority in the General Assembly is the idea for gutting environmental regulations.

One of the Five Goobers Strikes Again

NC House member Bill Owens gives new meaning to the phrase "destructively befuddled."

He just voted to override the governor's veto of the Gutting of Environmental Regulations Act of 2011 (S781), a.k.a., Regulatory Reform Act, apparently because he saw that the override was going to fail 75-43 ... because

1. Two minutes -- literally, two minutes! -- after he voted with Gov. Perdue to uphold the veto, he changed his vote to go with the Republicans, making the final vote enough for the override (76-42), and

2. A few minutes before that he had said in debate that he would vote to sustain the governor's veto, yessiree-Bob.

Befuddlement? Wrong word, probably, as it appears much more calculating, since Mr. Owens apparently (and quite obviously) changed his vote on the veto because four Republicans are absent today, and Speaker Thom Tillis had to call in his chit.

This prize of a Democratic legislator announced on June 3rd that he would not be running for reelection, so perhaps he feels perfectly free to make a perfect spectacle of his so-called "principles."

All Eyes Now on the Five Goobers

Gov. Beverly Perdue has vetoed the Republican budget. Laura Leslie's reporting:

Perdue said the state budget "is more than a roadmap. It’s a reflection of our values. It’s a reflection of what we believe in."

"For the first time, NC has a legislature that’s turning its back on our schools, our children, our longstanding investments in education."

Perdue said the cuts in the GOP's "ideologically driven" $19.7 billion dollar plan would harm classrooms, turn kids away from preschools, and close college programs, causing "generational damage" to the state's schools.

And she stressed that cuts in other areas would be damaging, too, from emergency response to law enforcement to the courts - "not just education, but our communities, our environment, our public safety system, and our ability to care for those that need us the most.” ...

All eyes now turn to the five House Democrats who voted for the Republican budget when it first passed. They're pictured above, and perhaps their own constituents know them as sterling gentlemen. We know them only as ... well, Republican chumps, not to put too fine a point on it.

They are, left to right:

William D. Brisson, who represents Cumberland and Bladen counties
James W. Crawford, Granville & Nash counties
Dewey L. Hill, Brunswick & Columbus counties
Bill Owens, Camden, Currituck, Pasquotank, & Tyrrell counties
Timothy L. Spear, Chowan, Dare, Hyde, & Washington counties

Portrait of a Goober

NC House member Bill Owens of Elizabeth City, one of the Five Goobers from Demsville that the Republicans are counting on to override Gov. Perdue's veto of their budget, has already announced that he's probably not going to run for a 10th term in the NC House, which means in all likelihood that he's turning a deaf ear to his own political base.

So the editorial in the Elizabeth City Daily Advance probably won't prey on his conscience, but it should. (Hattip: Progressive Pulse)

Owens got concessions in the budget for his district -- those goodies that get traded every day in our legislative bodies -- but The Daily Advance ain't swayed by money for the Museum of the Albemarle and money for the Mid-Currituck Bridge across Currituck Sound and an exemption from tolls imposed on other ferries for the Knotts Island and Ocracoke ferries. The editorialist actually sees the bigger picture -- and the huge damage -- in the rest of the Republican budget:

...these concessions [mentioned above] seem like high prices to pay for a budget that, among other things, is still projected to eliminate 13,000 education positions, including 9,300 in the public schools; lose the state $1.2 billion in federal matching funds for Medicaid funding; slash funding for the Clean Water Management Trust Fund from $100 million annually to $11.3 million; and eliminate the North Carolina Health and Wellness Trust Fund, a program that fights obesity and that’s put a significant dent in the number of teen smokers in North Carolina....

It's an open debate whether Rep. Bill Owens really thinks he's doing the right thing, strapping on that feedbag with the Republicans, or whether he's just very bedazzled with his own power as a horse-trader.

Wearing Socks with Sandals

Meet the NC House Democrat who 'fessed up today that he had already cut a budget deal with the Republicans ... behind Gov. Perdue's back.

What a prince!

Mr. Bill Owens of Pasquotank. Sez he thinks his fellow DINOs who currently seem to LUV themselves some Republican budgeting will vote along with him to override the expected veto of what the new Republican majority in the General Assembly have brewed up to take the state back a few decades.

We will know whom to thank, you bet!

The New Face of the Republican Party?

Meet Doug Hoffman, losing candidate for the U.S. Congress in the NY-23. Hoffman did NOT run and lose as a Republican. He ran and lost as a tea-bagging conservative. The GOP did NOT initially pick Hoffman as its candidate. No, it was worse than that. It picked a "moderate" Republican woman, Dede Scozzafava, who does not hate gay marriage and is pro-choice on abortion rights. Which led (as we're sure you know) to a major uprising within Republican and tea-bagger ranks. Ended up that every major Republican presidential hopeful in 2012, along with many other prominent national Republican spokespeople, bailed on Scozzafava and started endorsing Mr. Creepy Man Hoffman. Got so bad that Scozzafava pulled out of the race and endorsed the Democrat, the Unknown Man, Bill Owens, who won last night ... the first Democrat to be elected from the NY-23 since before the Civil War. Put that in your tea bag and steep it!

If this is what the conservative movement brings to the Republican Party, GOP operatives have very little to be strutting about this a.m. Exit polling in both Virginia and New Jersey strongly suggest that the voters in those states were not lashing out at President Obama. They were lashing out at Corzine in New Jersey (good riddance to all such present and former Goldman Sachs bankers, sez I). In Virginia, the 2008 Obama voters stayed home and demonstrated that Virginia definitely ain't for lovers. It's for old people.

Certainly, in North Carolina Tom Fetzer and the state GOP have precious little to crow about (from what we've been able to see so far this a.m.). But more on that in a subsequent post.

The elections in New Jersey and Virginia WERE about Obama in one way: those states went for him a year ago because he promised change, he promised an up-ending of "business as usual," he promised visionary leadership and progressive ideals. He has not delivered. He surrounded himself with the wrong people, and instead of dynamic leadership, we've gotten maddening caution and Rahm Emanuel. I might have sat at home myself in New Jersey or Virginia yesterday.

We keep hoping that the other Barack Obama, the one who won that huge election a year ago and told us things were going to be different, is eventually going to actually inhabit the Oval Office.

If he doesn't, 2010 will indeed be awful.