GOP-Dominated General Assembly ... Very Unpopular

Sometimes polling gives you the willies; sometimes it gives you ideas. From PPP:

One thing that's been true all year is that whenever the GOP legislature comes back to town, it gets less popular. That's the case once again after their late November return to Raleigh. Only 29% of voters now have a favorable opinion of the Republicans in the legislature, a new record low. The previous worst had been 33%. 48% of voters have an unfavorable opinion of them. The biggest issue for the Republicans is that independents, after voting for the GOP by a huge margin in legislative contests last year, now give them a 22/44 favorability rating.

Contained in such dismal numbers may be the key to the path forward for Gov. Perdue, who has her own bad polling to deal with:

Finally one finding in this poll points to a potential path to victory for Bev Perdue. 44% of voters in the state trust her more compared to 40% who put a greater deal of faith in the Republican legislature. Pat McCrory has tied himself closely to the unpopular new legislative majority so if Perdue can run against their agenda and McCrory's support of it, that might just be the way she pulls out a second term. It won't be easy, but it's something.

Republican Co. Commissioners Want to Violate the Constitution

Republican county commissioners in Craven, Davidson, Gaston, Rowan, and now Lincoln counties are begging the new Republican majority in the NC General Assembly to give their counties -- and just their counties alone -- an extra hurdle to voting in the form of the photo ID vetoed for the whole state by Gov. Perdue, but as most readers of both the state and the federal constitutions already realized, and as the NC Attorney General's office has now officially opined, extra hurdles in individual counties would raise serious equal protection concerns.

NC Policy Watch has the full account of the AG's written opinion.

Clown College Reconvening in Raleigh Tonight

Good deal of breath-holding going on around the state, what with the new Republican majority in the NC General Assembly coming together this evening to continue their roll-back of the state's progressive advancements since, oh, 1895.

They seem to be drawing a particular bead on the Racial Justice Act, since they obviously don't like racial justice or even just fairness in the judicial system.

Pressure has been on Democratic members of the General Assembly to drop those turkey legs, or the concomitant Tums, and get themselves to Raleigh, because the fear is that the Republican leadership will use any Democratic absences to suddenly call up a veto override of the voter photo ID bill, but ace reporter (for the Greensboro News&Record) Mark Binker posted on Facebook that it's highly unlikely.

Why the Republicans couldn't get their shit together in the long session and now insist on recalling everyone repeatedly to Raleigh when the moon is full (and on Sunday night, fer crissakes! Is nothing sacred?) for these micro-sessions of social engineering and right-wing flapping, well, chalk that up to their regular and well documented incompetence at governing!

The Simple Truth

"Here’s why the supercommittee [failed], in one sentence: Democrats wanted the rich to pay more in taxes towards deficit reduction, and Republicans wanted the rich to pay less in taxes towards deficit reduction."

--Greg Sargent

Hattip: The Impolitic

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Well, thank Gawd SOMEONE is concerned about the woes of the super-rich!

A Hurricane Committee That Ron Paul Can Be Proud Of

Ron Paul, that madcap fella who seems to be channeling the crazy perfesser character from the "Back to the Future" movies, doubled down last night on his call to abolish FEMA. Just let good ole ordinary red-blooded American folks who've been flattened by a hurricane get up out of the debris and start cleaning up things themselves. Snap to it, your sluggards who've become dependent on government!

As if to advance that philosophy, the much-touted "Hurricane Irene Committee," appointed in the NC General Assembly by Republican Senate Pres. Pro-Tem Phil Berger last week, has announced that it will accomplish Ron Paul's dream ... precisely nothing.

According to Under the Dome, Republican Sen. Pete Brunstetter, the co-chairman of the committee, said "it isn’t likely the committee will propose any Irene-related legislation next week. He said there might be a organizational meeting."

"Might be," but don't count on it.

You people down east just need to get your own microwave out of the elm tree.

Now More Than Ever

NC GOP Creates Jobs -- NOT!

Since the Republican budget went into effect in NC on July 1, at least 1,012 people have lost their jobs, according to the NC Office of State Personnel (via Progressive Pulse).

These are actual jobs with actual people filling them. But since these now-unemployed folks worked for the people of North Carolina, Republicans apparently regard them only as convenient cannon fodder. Let them eat air!

To recap, this Republican job-killing budget was courageously vetoed by Gov. Perdue. Her veto was over-ridden only because five NC House Democrats -- the Five Goobers -- chose to vote with the Republicans.

The job-loss figure above is very conservative, as it does not count job losses in the state's 115 public school districts or its community college system. Many NC counties are already reporting job losses in schools in the multiple hundreds. The state's Department of Public Instruction is trying to compile cumulative job losses in public education, and those numbers should be available by the first week of the new school term.

Increased unemployment in a down economy -- that is the "Republican brand."

Hypocrisy Watch

This morning's editorial by Steve Ford in the Raleigh News & Observer dings Republican hypocrisy in the matter of campaign finance. His opening:

"As Paul Stam, the illustrious Apexian who is majority leader in the state House, noted in a letter we published Friday, 'Campaigns cost money.' He could well have gone on to echo another Paul, who wrote in his first letter to Timothy (6:10): 'For the love of money is the root of all evil...'

"Stam was defending his Republican colleagues from our editorial criticism of a fundraiser conveniently timed to put potential contributors over a barrel and loosen up their checkbooks.

"Have Tar Heel Democrats done the same when they've had the chance? Absolutely, as the editorial said. But it was the Republicans who mounted atop their high horses and boasted about how putting them in charge would send a bracing breeze of propriety through the capital. Well, there's no law against the kind of soft-core shakedown they conducted. But let's not pretend it wasn't the same old money-grubbing that fueled GOP complaints about Democratic sleaze...."

Your State GOP Reps on Break

Taking advantage of a loophole in laws governing political fundraising from special interests, the new Republican majority in the NC General Assembly will hold a swank shake-down of corporate money tonight in Raleigh.

After all, they delivered the state to corporate interests in the session just adjourned. It's time for those corporate interests to slop the hogs.

We've already experienced the corporate coup in Washington and the total takeover of every branch of government by the rich. The same coup is well underway in North Carolina too.

The Raleigh News & Observer publishes strong words today in an editorial about the Republican pay-to-play culture of corruption, now in full flower. It does not lessen the moral spectacle to now say "the Democrats did it too!" It only heightens the crashing irony behind the promises of these "Christian" hypocrites.

Republicans, Welcome to Your New Reality

The new Republican majority in the General Assembly have consistently tried to spin it that their budget actually contained more jobs for teachers, but of course the reality was something entirely different. Via WRAL:

Layoffs sweeping through school districts
Lillington, N.C. — With the school year over and the state budget passed, many teachers across the region have learned in recent days that they no longer have a job.

The $19.7 billion budget, which the Republican-led legislature passed Wednesday over Gov. Beverly Perdue's veto, includes discretionary cuts for school districts statewide. School administrators say the size of the needed cuts entail layoffs, including thousands of teachers and teaching assistants.

Critics of the budget predict as many as 13,000 jobs could be lost. Harnett County Schools, for example, has cut 88 jobs, most of them teaching assistants.

What happened to the "jobs, jobs, jobs" bunch? They became the "increased unemployment and crippled schools" bunch.

Thom Tillis: "Let Them Eat Chalk Dust!"

"The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor." --Voltaire

The new Republican majority in the NC General Assembly ... working to keep the rich comfortable for the foreseeable future!

The Five Goobers from Demsville might contemplate Voltaire before they vote tomorrow to override the governor's veto. But perhaps they're too busy carrying the royal train for Thom Tillis.

Thom Tillis, Bullying Teachers

Editorial in this a.m.'s News & Observer calls Republican Speaker of the NC House a bully for his recent comments about our state's public school teachers, both when he didn't know the microphone was on and when he did.

"...does Tillis think teachers choose their calling in order to get rich?" asks the editorialist. "No one is that big a fool."

No, but someone is that big a jerk, leading a platoon of jerks, and taking us all down the road to turning North Carolina into Mississippi.

Raleigh GOP: "Not Smart Governing"

Considered negative opinions on the food-fight in the Clown College in Raleigh continue to snowball, this one by the editorial staff at the Charlotte Observer, an item titled "Penny Foolish." Hard to isolate just one short quote about the new Republican majority in the General Assembly, and their dunderheaded leaders, but this one will have to do:

"...No matter how thick the lenses on their rose-colored glasses, their solutions to a $2.5 billion budget shortfall that certainly demands some budget reductions are too drastic when it comes to public education at all levels, cuts in Medicaid for the poor, the cutoff of money for passenger rail projects and a reduction in important services for the sick...."

Birds of a Feather...

Republican senators, including our own Dick Burr, successfully filibustered a bill that would have denied the big oil companies multi-billions in tax subsidies -- billions -- because hey! you don't peck at the hands giving you big fat worms of campaign cash.

NC GOP: Controlling Women Is JOB ONE

"Jobs, jobs, jobs"???

No, it's "Control, humiliate, subjugate."

The new raft of anti-abortion laws being blissfully introduced in the NC General Assembly by the most extreme and repressive elements of the contemporary Republican Party (but I repeat myself) aims to take women as far back into the Victorian past as the Supreme Court will allow ... which is plenty far back.

Young women especially are going to have to fight back or watch the theocracy set up a circus tent over their vaginas.

The Republican War on Women

Women in North Carolina, and especially young women, are going to have to wake up and pay attention to the way the new Republican majority in the NC General Assembly intends to treat you with this new legislation.

Because you're immoral for getting pregnant, because you're too stupid for school, because you're making the wrong decision if it's not OUR decision (say these legislators), you'll have to subject yourself to intrusive, humiliating, insulting probing by the state before you can have an abortion.

I'm not going to lead you into the street over this, but I'll come with you. You're going to have to take up the banner. If you don't, you'll become nothing more than the complacent breeding stock that the Christian Right, and Senator Dan Soucek and Representative Jonathan Jordan, want you to be.

New Republican Majority in Raleigh: 'Landslides? We Couldn't Care Less!'

In their rush to cut anything and everything that smacks of progressive policies, the Republican NC House budget eliminates the Landslide Mapping Program. Watauga County, which has experienced catastrophic landslides with significant damage and loss to property (but so far no outright deaths, at least not since 1940), was mapped a few years ago, not that any local official will ever do squat with the warnings contained therein, other than throw the info up on the County's website for whoever has the time and patience to search it out.

Other western counties that have been completed are Macon (where five people died in 2004 in the Peeks Creek slide, during the same hurricane event that brought the house pictured here down a hillside in Watauga), Buncombe, and Henderson counties. Some of those counties has enacted county-wide steep-slope building regs to minimize the loss of property and lives.

But this is precisely the sort of "public good" that Republicans hate, because it might interfere with someone's profit margin.

The NC Budget from Hell

Laura Leslie is the only General Assembly reporter that we've seen (so far) who is doing detailed reporting on what's in the new proposed Republican state budget released by the NC House.

Leslie says that of the 333 pages in the total budget, 63 of those deal with the dismantling of environmental protections through the dissolution of the Department of Environmental and Natural Resources (DENR).

And here is Part 2 of her analysis, with more to come.

It's quite clear that the new Republican majority intends to use the budgeting process to rewrite the long-range vision of what North Carolina can and should be as an enlightened state in the Union. We used to be the most enlightened state in the Old South. Those days are over, at least for the next year and a half, unless Bev Perdue keeps that VETO stamp handy.

The Latest Assault on Voting in NC

A proposed new law (Senate Bill 657) would limit early voting in North Carolina to a week, eliminate "same day registration," and generally knee-cap the kind of ballot access that North Carolinians have come to enjoy.

And that's the problem, folks! All this delight in early voting has GOT TO END!

And this "same day registration" ... clearly a Communist plot!

Some 60% of the total vote cast in 2008 was cast during early voting. In the 2010 mid-terms, the early voting was again enthusiastic, but dominated by Republican voters. It can work for both parties, depending on who's best-organized and who has public opinion behind them. The Republican honorables in Raleigh might want to consider that. But they won't.