Operation Charlotte's Web

 

“Get the hell out of my yard, assholes.”

--Charlotte, NC, homeowner Rheba Hamilton, driving off Customs & Border Protection officers who had accosted two landscapers hanging Christmas lights on her property

Trump's goon squads descended on Charlotte's Hispanic neighborhoods on Saturday, and The Assembly has an early account of some of the confrontations and counter-demonstrations.

Also a partial political reason behind the invasion of masked, beefy men who seem to enjoy their work roughing up people, breaking car windows, and disrupting commercial life: The Sheriff of Mecklenburg County, Garry McFadden was "one of five sheriff candidates, all Black Democrats in urban North Carolina counties, who won office in 2018 after campaign pledges to end cooperation with federal immigration enforcement."

Add to that clear provocation for putting a Black sheriff in his place the grotesque, on-camera killing of Iryna Zarutska last August by a deranged Black man on the city’s light rail, and you've got the perfect set of symbols for armed racial profiling.

Stay strong, Charlotte.

Braxton Winston Running for Labor Commissioner

 

The offices the wolfish Republicans can't gerrymander in North Carolina are the Council of State seats, including the Commissioner of Labor. The various commissioners with their own constitutional kingdoms run statewide, along with the governor and the lieutenant governor. Every four years the voting power of Charlotte and Raleigh and Fayetteville and Greensboro isn't sliced into strips and sauteed for the benefit of conservatives too extreme to win a fair race.

So Braxton Winston has a shot. He announced he's running for Labor, and he could energize whole new swaths of infrequent voters who'll follow his banner.

Winston has served for the last six years on the Charlotte City Council and is currently mayor pro tem. He is also a labor activist -- a professional videographer but also, as a stagehand and grip, a union member, in "our region’s robust sports television and entertainment production community" (Winston website). He was born at Camp Lejeune where his father was serving in the Marine Corps, but Braxton was educated up north at the super-prestigious Phillips Academy Andover, "where he excelled in academics, arts, sports, and student government." After high school, Braxton came back to North Carolina for a bachelor's degree in anthropology at Davidson College.

But the real measure of the man came in 2016 when Keith Scott was shot dead after police say he failed to drop a gun upon their order. The officer who shot him was not charged. On the evening of September 20, 2016, at the south Charlotte address on Old Concord Rd. where Keith Scott lived and where he was shot dead, a crowd gathered and grew angrier.  Braxton was in that crowd and he live-streamed Keith Scott's daughter pleading with the police -- "Why did you just kill my father? He didn’t have to die." Something shifted in the videographer, who had after all led a pretty privileged life: "And it was just like, a chill came over me and everything changed. And I took the people’s side ... you know, we gotta get these questions answered and when the police tried to get out of there, the people demanded the conversation to keep going and that turned into a protest. We were met with riot police and tear gas after that and, you know, the rest is kind of history.” [WBTV]

That history contains a famous, viral photo of Braxton Winston, shirtless, with a clinched fist confronting a phalanx of riot cops. AP photographer Jeff Siner took the shot. Braxton said his shirt was off to serve as a gas mask. He had not been prominent before as a civil rights activist "but found himself taking on a leading role after the demonstrations, which eventually turned into a run for office. Charges against him after his arrest were dropped, as was a lawsuit he filed against the city. [Guardian]

That photo was September 2016. By 2017, Winston was running for an at-large seat on the Charlotte City Council. He was one of four Democrats elected and was reelected just last fall.

He puts his money were his mouth is. In 2020, during building fury over the killing of George Floyd, he was arrested a second time. He had joined protesters outside of Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department's metro division "in an attempt to de-escalate the tensions between the police and the citizens of Charlotte," an official Winston statement said. "During the time he was out there, he was in communication with CMPD, press, community leaders, and protesters." [WCNC]

Winston is part of a whole wave of young talent now emerging in North Carolina, and none too soon. It won't be instant, a winning wave, but it will come. Statewide campaigns will be the point of the spear.

Tim Moore: 'We Don Need No Freaking Mass Transit'

 

In the New York Times this morning, a lengthy article by Michael Wines about how Republican-dominated state legislatures seek to punish big-city governments in their own states because the majority rural Republicans feel mainly contempt for "urban" (read "Black") cultures and because most of those big-city governments are dominated by Democrats.

It's part of the incipient new civil war that conservatives seem to invite and love.

Here's a section about one of our own Republican legislative bosses who has an obvious cob up his ass about Charlotte:

In North Carolina, where Democrats and Republicans have warred for a decade over gerrymanders, voting restrictions and social issues, the Republican speaker of the State House, Representative Tim Moore, seemed prepared this month to scuttle a $13.5 billion initiative by the Democratic leadership in Charlotte to expand mass transit.

Charlotte leaders aim to move half of the city’s trips away from cars by 2040 through embracing light rail, buses and bike paths. But they need the Legislature’s approval of a local sales tax referendum to finance the effort.

Mr. Moore, who lives in the Charlotte exurb of Kings Mountain scoffed at the plan. “If you put more bike lanes in, that doesn’t mean more people are going to ride their bikes to work — that’s not going to happen,” he said at a political forum this month. “You need to build and expand roads because we are driving cars.” Charlotte’s mayor, Vi Lyles, later said she hoped to meet with Mr. Moore to explain the proposal.

 

Poor Jacksonville, If True

Multiple news orgs are reporting that the GOP upper echelons have decided on Jacksonville, Florida, for the big, splashy, packed-to-the-rafters Trump acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, because Governor Cooper wouldn't guarantee a packed Spectrum Center in Charlotte for Twitterman.

An authoritarian needs adoration.

But Charlotte is not completely in the clear: "The GOP will reportedly still hold routine convention meetings in Charlotte to avoid potential lawsuits for violating its contract with North Carolina" (Talking Points Memo). Presumably after three days of business votes in Charlotte, all the delegates will get themselves to Jacksonville to genuflect. By trains, planes, and automobiles.

Jacksonville is Florida's largest city and has a Republican mayor. The state, of course, also has a Republican governor. Evidently, they are not inclined to impose any silly rules about social distancing and mask-wearing. Meanwhile, COVID cases in Florida are also on an upward trend. Almost three times more people have died from the virus in Florida than in North Carolina.

But the appetite in Jacksonville for Trumpism may be limited: "Jacksonville is among the dozens of cities and towns where protesters have called for changes in the treatment of black people by law enforcement. On Tuesday, [Mayor Lenny] Curry walked with protesters who were demonstrating outside City Hall. Early Tuesday morning, city officials took down a confederate statue there" (Maggie Haberman).

Meanwhile, In North Carolina Tim Moore and Some Bar Owners Compete for Title "Stupidest Human Beings on Earth"

Coronavirus is still raging in North Carolina and shows signs of accelerating. Yesterday the state posted the highest daily increase in cases ever, making Governor Cooper's caution about allowing 19,000 Republican ass-kissers to crowd into the Charlotte Spectrum Center in August look pretty reasonable.

Tim Moore.
Why is this man laughing?

Meanwhile, NC House Speaker Tim Moore and Rep. John Torbett are the main sponsors of an actual law to force the governor to allow 19,000 Republican ass-kissers to fill every seat in the Spectrum Center in August, because of course.

And a group of NC bar owners want their piece of helping to spread COVID-19. They've filed a law suit to force the governor to open them up. There are plenty of barflies willing to do their part to spread the virus.

Although Twitterman has stalked off in a huff over Governor Cooper's refusal to guarantee a full arena for his renomination, the executive committee running the Republican National Convention is being much more reasonable. They're proposing to do a scaled-down convention in Charlotte which would handle the essential business, like taking the vote on Trump's renomination, while planning Trump's acceptance spectacle is some other state, likely one with a toady Republican governor. This sounds like a kind of win-win for Charlotte -- increased convention business without the presence of Twitterman and the protests his presence are likely to inspire.

How Can You Tell When Donald Trump Is Lying?

Answer: When his fingers do the typing.

Two days ago Twitterman tweeted:




"I insisted on having the Republican National Convention in Charlotte" is just one of his quotidian whoppers, no biggie, like claiming Joe Scarborough killed someone or like saying all mail-in voting is fraudulent -- just a passing little lie that is supposed to sound like flattery.

When the fact is that Charlotte was the only city to bid for the 2020 Republican National Convention. The only one. (For the record, the Nevada Republican Party put in a request for Las Vegas, which was not supported by the city government nor by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.)

We could stage a good-sized tiff over just how misguided the six votes on the Charlotte City Council were to bring Trump and 50,000 of his flying monkeys to town, discounting of course the keen hindsight that a pandemic is giving us, but the fact that even Dallas, Texas, didn't bid for Trump's circus might have warned Charlotteans off this particular project.

Which is looking daily like a bigger burden than anybody bargained for. Roy Cooper could do worse than call this blowhard's bluff.

The Elections of March: Democratic Primary in NCS39

This NC Senate district should be another easy pickup for Democrats next November, so profiling the Democrats who have filed for the March 3rd primary seems essential. Senate District 39 is Republican Dan Bishop's old homebase, before he made the jump to the US Congress in a special election this year, and it's been redistricted to rank as "Likely Democratic." Two Democrats are running.

DeAndrea Salvador

On paper Salvador looks like she could be the frontrunner. She's a 29-year-old millennial (born 1990) without political experience but with demonstrated commitment to community-building. She graduated from UNC-Charlotte (econ and anthro), studied energy and environmental design with the U.S. Green Building Council, and founded the Renewable Energy Transition Initiative (RETI) to help educate low-income households to cope with high energy costs. She did a TED talk about that effort in 2018 which was perhaps stronger on inspiration than on science, but the exposure might just propel her into the NC Senate.

She has a campaign web URL but so far no content, and her social media presence is de minimis (other than Facebook). We expect all of that to blossom soon (it better!). Her RETI website is much more developed, but from the content I can't assess just how successful she's been in helping poor people cope with high energy costs. The website boasts of at least one low-income household getting solar panels installed free, through a partnership arrangement, but other concrete accomplishments are not immediately obvious.

She's been recognized in Mecklenburg County as a rising star. In 2018, UNC-Charlotte listed her as an Alumna of the Year and SouthPark Magazine called her a "Woman To Watch." We're watching!


Darrell Bonapart

Bonapart is a Gen-X-er, born in 1969. He's been far more active with the Mecklenburg County Democratic Party than Salvador (given his age, perhaps), and he's tried unsuccessfully for public office several times in the past. He first ran for a Charlotte City Council at-large seat in 2015, was defeated in the primary and then ran again in 2017 and did better, making it to a primary run-off before he lost. The campaign flyer pictured to the right makes it clear that he ran as an anti-abortion rights Democrat who also apparently supported HB2 (or at least opposed Charlotte's bathroom ordinance that prompted HB2).

Bonapart had also put himself forward in 2014 as a possible replacement for Sen. Dan Clodfelter, who quit the senate to become mayor of Charlotte, but current incumbent Jeff Jackson won the appointment.

He has even less campaign infrastructure so far than Salvador -- no website that I can find and only a Facebook page.


The Republican on the Fall Ballot -- Josh Niday

Whoever wins the Democratic primary will face Republican millennial Josh Niday. He's 26, born in 1993. Niday previously ran for the NC House in 2018 in District 99, getting just over 17% of the vote against Democrat Nasif Majeed. He graduated from UNC-Charlotte in 2016 with a degree in poly sci. He has a Facebook page but little else that I can find.

Charlotte City Council Condemns Trump's Racism But Does Not Rescind RNC

Last night the Charlotte City Council voted 9-2 to condemn Donald J. Trump's "racist and xenophobic comments," but it did not take the action that many citizens wanted -- breaking the contract to host the Republican National Convention in August of 2020. On advice of counsel.

Reporting by Felicia Sonmez:

Some audience members at Monday’s meeting urged the city council to try to back out of its contract to host the convention. One local resident, Diana Levitt, received a standing ovation from many in the crowd when she urged the council to reconsider.

“The hate has since grown louder, and yet you continue to sit quietly,” she told the council members. “Our community has asked you to revoke this invitation, and you sit quietly.”

Despite the calls to reconsider hosting the convention, it appears the city’s options are limited.

The Charlotte city attorney, Patrick Baker, said he had examined the contract and determined that the city probably would not be able to walk away from it, even if it were willing to suffer the financial penalties of doing so.

“I’m not in a position to recommend that you terminate the contract,” Baker said, noting that a potential breach could trigger a lawsuit that would result in the city being forced to follow through on its contractual obligations.

We'll find out next August whether the cost of breaching the contract would have been less than the loss of reputation and the damage to infrastructure and the citizenry when Twitterman brings his white nationalism circus to town.

Petition to Charlotte City Council: Please Rescind the Republican National Convention

A little over a year ago, on July 16, 2018, the Charlotte City Council voted 6-5 to invite the Republicans to hold their 2020 National Convention in the city. It was a contentious as well as a narrow vote: "Council members debated whether Charlotte could host President Donald Trump without endorsing him and his administration’s controversial policies, but they ultimately decided that the potential benefits outweigh risks to the city" (Steve Harrison, Ely Portillo, and Katie Glueck).

Wonder how those six pro-invitation voters feel now after last week's Republican display at ECU.

Activists think that the Republican National Convention will give Charlotte a black eye, if not a bloody nose, tarnish it's reputation as a progressive Southern city, roil racial animus, and spark a backlash. Those activists have mounted a petition drive to induce the Charlotte City Council to rescind its invitation. "President Trump’s re-election strategy centers on stoking hatred, resentment, fear, and division. For his personal political benefit, he is determined to stir-up his most ardent supporters in a way that will invariably lead to violence and destruction in our city," the petition reads in part.

I'd call that Republican Convention from August 24 to August 27, 2020, a clear and present danger. The business community that intends to profit off all those visitors probably won't see it that way, but maybe the elected overseers will.

#RevolutionInTheU.S."

Braxton Winston. Photo by Chuck Burton/AP

Braxton Winston is part of the wave of new, diverse talent taking public office for the first time after the recent round of elections. Winston just won a seat on the Charlotte City Council.

That's just the most recent chapter of his story. Winston was born in North Carolina into a military family, was recruited by Davidson College to play football, earned a degree in anthropology, coaches football part time at Providence Day School, and became an accidental but powerful symbol for Black Lives Matter in Charlotte following the September 20, 2016, police shooting of Keith Lamont Scott. That killing prompted several days of street protests. A chance photograph of Winston by the Charlotte Observer’s Jeff Siner went viral (see below) and catapulted Winston into the fame that comes of courage. He's 33 years old.

Asked if Braxton Winston had been a student activist at Davidson College, his favorite anthropology professor said, “I’m not saying that Braxton wasn’t ‘woke’ during his college years, but he wasn’t in leadership in social justice.”

If you don't know what "woke" means, try this (and scroll down).

So on September 20, 2016, Winston was on his way home after coaching a middle school football game. He was driving Old Concord Road past the Village at College Downs apartments, where a ruction was going on. An angry crowd was gathering the way a crowd gathers after a shooting, and Winston pulled over to find out what it was.

Winston actually makes his living as a cameraman -- videographer -- who films home games for the Charlotte Hornets as an independent contractor. He began live-streaming the aftermath of the Keith Lamont Scott shooting to his Facebook page.

A Charlotte cop on the scene told Winston to leave. Winston didn't, and the cop left him alone. Perhaps because she/he already knew Winston as a good man from a previous incident. In November 2015, Winston called the cops to help a Hispanic woman being severely beaten by her husband. There was a big commotion, involving neighbors and a little boy running around crying. Winston grabbed up and hugged the boy to him. With his mother going to the hospital and his father to jail, the little boy didn’t want to leave Braxton's arms, "so Braxton went with us to the hospital. He stayed the whole night, trying to make sure the little boy was OK as he clung onto Braxton...” (according to CharlotteMeck PD Officer Shannon Finis).

About a year after that incident, one of the same cops who had seen Winston act heroically with the little boy encountered Winston again, at the Keith Lamont Scott shooting on Old Concord Road. The neighborhood was stirred up, the cops were getting questions they either couldn't answer or wouldn't, and more people were arriving by the minute. Braxton Winston had his iPhone camera. And what his camera saw woke him.

Student reporters for The Davidsonian, after several interviews, concluded this: "Winston had never been involved in any protest movement. He thought of tear-gas or potential injury as 'the price I got to pay to speak up on behalf of my children, [on] behalf of myself, and [on] behalf of what I believe in and what the world should look like.' ”

According to Olivia Daniels and AJ Naddaff, "tension between police and civilians escalated. Winston removed his shirt to cover his mouth from tear gas. He approached a line of police in riot gear and thrust his fist in the air in an act of civil disobedience." Jeff Siner took his picture.

Jeff Siner, Charlotte Observer

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article123858364.html#storylink=cpy

The very next night and still on the street, Winston’s video caught the sound of a pop and the sight of spattered blood -- the police shooting of protester Justin Carr.

Later, after things died down, Winston became a community spokesman, first calling for the resignation of CharlotteMeckPD Chief Kerr Putney and then meeting face-to-face with him and apparently reaching an understanding that there had to be a change in methods for interacting with segments of Charlotte that feel over-policed and under-served.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article123858364.html#storylink=cpy

When eventually the police officer who killed Keith Lamont Scott was exonerated because department policy leans way over backward to absolve the government from responsibility when the police kill people without due process, Braxton Winston acknowledged that police followed policy in letting the cop off. But he intends to help review and rewrite that policy as a Charlotte City Councilman. Councilman Braxton Winston and Police Chief Kerr Putney are going to have an interesting journey together.

P.S.
Forgot to mention that there was an interview with Winston worth hearing today on "Morning Edition."

Rad more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article123858364.html#storylink=cpy

Following 5th Special Session of General Assembly, HB2 Is Still Driving Away Business and Shaming the State

Let's get to the gist quickly: The city of Charlotte upheld its half of the "deal" -- repealed its non-discrimination ordinance, leaving the LGBTQ community without any job protections -- and the Republicans in the NC Senate couldn't resist adding a little side spin to their end of the "deal" at the last minute -- a long moratorium on any city in the state passing any ordinance "regulating employment practices or regulating public accommodations or access to restrooms, showers or changing facilities.”

But it really ended up that the meddling moratorium, which essentially would establish a "cooling off" period during which discrimination would still be legal, wasn't the reason the special session disintegrated into chaos. Phil Berger in the Senate could have passed whatever he wanted to pass -- he has a veto-proof majority of Republicans -- but too many Senate Republicans feel very affectionate toward their ability to discriminate against people, so they were never going to vote for repeal anyway.

And don't even get us started on the NC House, where the fiercest bigots hang out with that paragon of virtue, Jonathan Jordan, and where passage of repeal was going to be even harder than in the Senate.

All I want for Christmas is a functional state government.

Berger (and probably Speaker of the House Tim Moore) blamed Roy Cooper for the debacle (because, right! Roy Cooper has that veto-proof majority in the Senate). McCrory blamed "well-funded left-wing interest groups," because who else are you gonna blame when you're a pile of soiled laundry waiting to be shipped out for washing? Everybody blamed the City of Charlotte, which should never have tried to negotiate with these people in the first place.

But Democrats never learn about giving a toe to the crocodile.

BREAKING NEWS: Another 730 Jobs Lost Because of HB2

CoStar Group, a real estate research firm, announced Monday that it had chosen Richmond over Charlotte for its research operations center. Say buh-bye to 730 jobs, Mecklenburg County, and an estimated $250 million in local investment.

CoStar officials had earlier focused their search on a new office tower under construction at 615 S. College Street in uptown Charlotte, where it would have been an anchor tenant, said the sources, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. But the company’s board rejected the location because of HB2, which limits protections for LGBT individuals, the sources said. [Charlotte Observer]

Less than two weeks left before that man who signed that law and who continues to defend it is gone for good!

Number 194 and Number 972

194: Keith Lamont Scott was the 194th black man killed by police this year. Charlotte has erupted over his death.

972: NC House Bill 972, passed and signed by the governor this past summer, prevents the release of police body-cam footage without a court order.

That ridiculous law comes into full focus because of the killing of Keith Lamont Scott. The officer who shot Scott was not wearing a body-cam. According to reports, it is Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department policy that all police officers should be wearing a body-cam during an arrest. Why wasn't the shooting officer?

HB972 comes into focus right now, even though it isn't in effect until October 1, precisely because of an incident like the shooting of Keith Lamont Scott. According to the Charlotte Observer, Scott's family today is being shown body-cam and dash-cam footage taken from other police officers on the scene. If HB972 were in effect, it would take a court order to see that footage.

Why would the Republicans in the NC General Assembly pass such a law, and why would the governor sign it? McCrory took pen in hand to sign HB972 and said he was balancing "public trust" with "the rights and safety of police officers." The governor said the new law will promote "uniformity, clarity and transparency." No, he really said that.

We believe that the law will promote precisely the opposite of "clarity and transparency," though, yes, perhaps it will give total "uniformity" to future police cover-ups.

We await reports of what the other body-cams show about this shooting. In the meantime, we ruminate on where our Republican masters have taken and continue to take this state.

Gov. Squishy, Melting Under the Heat Lamp

"He’s so unsure of himself that he plants his own questions and runs from the media at a crucial time."

--Taylor Batten, Charlotte Observer, describing Gov. McCrory's cowardly performance at a Charlotte lunch event

What happened? This:

At a luncheon where he was supposed to take questions from the audience, Gov. McCrory instead insisted on written questions only, except that unbeknownst to the audience, his staff was slipping in their own pre-written softballs that McCrory wanted to answer. He got caught, too.

Taylor Batten of the Charlotte Observer stood up and tried to ask an actual unsanctioned question about HB2, but The Guv cut him off, saying that he'd already answered three questions from the Charlotte Observer. Only those three questions weren't from the Charlotte Observer. They were planted by The Guv himself.

"I think you guys dominate the news enough,” McCrory said to Batten, thus doubling down on the lie that the governor was being open and honest. McCrory had started off the Q and A with this: "Ask anything you like. No filter here.”

If McCrory wasn't totally pathetic, his dishonesty would be really funny.

W
Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/taylor-batten/article102315532.html#storylink=cpy

Wells-Fargo to McCrory: Can You Spell "One-Term Pat"?

Wells-Fargo not only signed the open letter to Governor McCrory demanding the repeal of North Carolina's new anti-LBGT law (HB2), but the huge corporation also recently lit the 48-story Duke Energy Tower in Charlotte in pink, white, and blue, the colors of the transgender solidarity movement.

After Charlotte passed an ordinance that provided public accommodations protections for transgender people, Lt. Gov. Dan Forest and House Speaker Tim Moore called an emergency session of state lawmakers. Within 24 hours, legislators from both chambers passed the vehemently discriminatory HB2 law, and Governor Squishy signed it late that same night.

BREAKING NEWS

PayPal, which just last month was announcing a plan to expand into Charlotte with 400 jobs at a global operations center, has reversed course because of HB2. Said PayPal in a prepared statement, “The new law perpetuates discrimination and it violates the values and principles that are at the core of PayPal’s mission and culture. As a result, PayPal will not move forward with our planned expansion into Charlotte.”

 

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article70001912.html#storylink=cpy

NC Bigotry: Bad for Business

From coverage of North Carolina's latest wild lurch to the right:

...The N.C.A.A., which is planning to hold tournament events in North Carolina in 2017 and 2018, said in a statement that it would “continue to monitor current events, which include issues surrounding diversity, in all cities bidding on N.C.A.A. championships and events, as well as cities that have already been named as future host sites.”

And on Twitter, a new account calling for a boycott of the state emerged in response to the law. Chris Sacca, a Silicon Valley investor, implied he would no longer invest in businesses in the state.

In Charlotte, Mayor Jennifer Roberts said she was “appalled at the speed of the law being passed” without consideration of the ramifications for the business community. “The fallout is just starting,“ she said, adding, “We are very concerned about the ripple effects and I do believe that discrimination is not good for business.”

Some political observers noted that the state legislation, which deprives local municipalities of control over their own laws, seemed antithetical to conservative values. “This doesn’t seem conservative to me,” said Mac McCorkle, a former Democratic consultant and an associate professor of public policy at Duke University. “This seems authoritarian.”

The word authoritarian has special resonance, in this year of the T-Rump.

Those 'Small Government' and Not At All Extreme Republicans in the General Assembly

At a cost to taxpayers of $42,000 a day, the Republican Grandees in the NC General Assembly have called a Special Session for tomorrow to nullify a bathroom ordinance passed by Charlotte.

That is all.

#ncga and #ncgov -- Ready To Stick Their Thumbs in Charlotte's Eye

Last night the Charlotte city council voted decisively for new protections for LGBT citizens.

This morning, NC House Speaker Tim Moore sez he's ready to lead his Republican troops in overturning the Charlotte city council. (Governor Squishy had already announced that he would sign any law meddling with Charlotte's dangerous trend toward tolerance.)

So it goes.

NC Cities: Get Ready For Another Round of Torture

It is no secret that the Republican power-base in North Carolina in mainly rural. The cities generally vote Democratic, and the Republican-dominated General Assembly has shown every willingness to punish certain cities for that sinfulness.

Boone loses its Extraterritorial Jurisdiction. Check! Asheville loses its water system without compensation. Check! Charlotte loses its airport. Check! (All of these laws are being challenged in court, and their final disposition is unclear.)

Now comes advance warning that the General Assembly intends to redistribute sales tax revenues to benefit rural counties and starve the urban. From this morning's News&Observer:

RALEIGH — A redistribution of local sales tax revenue to benefit poor counties is on the agenda for legislative leaders preparing for the session that begins in January.

At a lunch Wednesday sponsored by the N.C. FreeEnterprise Foundation, Senate Majority Leader Harry Brown talked about shifting local tax revenues to help rural counties.

Shades of what Nathan Miller and the Watauga County Commission did to Boone last year. There's always spite and revenge running deep under any professed concern for the plight of The Rural, and there is a plight of The Rural that needs to be addressed. It just needs to be attended to without crippling the urban economic engine that lights the lights.

A comment posted on the N&O article highlights at least one irony:

If you redistribute income tax from the wealthy to the poor that is socialism and punishing the successful. But when you take money from successful counties and give to your poor county, that is considered good tax policy? Well no one said conservatives were consistent.

It's McCrory's Fault

This deer in the headlights says it's Gov. McCrory's fault that he got run over on the road to becoming the Republican mayor of Charlotte.

Meh.

Thomas Mills offers interesting and insightful analysis of the finger-pointing and slut-blaming going on in the North Carolina Republican Party.

Hey, guys, save some cream pies for the rest of us!