Last September, the Republican super-majority in both houses of the NC General Assembly passed a budget that included a provision to allow lawmakers to determine what qualifies as a public record and to destroy the items that they unilaterally determine are not public records. Or even sell the records they think they can make a profit from. But most importantly, hide their maneuverings, plots, and dirty deeds behind a stone wall.
The John Locke org -- of all people -- commissioned a poll following that hide-everything-from-the-public-view addition to the state's budget and found that "93.5% of likely voters in the state believe open records laws are important in maintaining accountability, with a majority believing they are extremely important. Support for open records is exceedingly bipartisan, with over 90% of both Democrats and Republicans recognizing its importance."
Nevertheless, Republicans in the General Assembly are very satisfied with their own secrecy and aren't about to change.
Sen. Meyer
Enter Democratic Senator Graig Meyer from Orange County who is the chief sponsor/writer of a proposed constitutional amendment that would guarantee the public's right to all government records and meetings. (Hattip to Bryan Anderson for uncovering this development.) And here you were thinking (probably) that we already had that right, but you would be wrong, since Republicans slipped that secrecy clause into the budget last year.
Sen. Meyer admits that his constitutional amendment has less-than-zero chance of passing this Republican General Assembly, but at least he's raising the profile of Republican secrecy and lack of accountability. Like, who do they think they are? Donald J. Trump? And thereby above the law, the scrutiny of the voters, if not history itself?
--Sen. Thom Tillis, about Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene
Oh please! Your "brand," Senator? You've already promised to support your party's nominee this November, which in this present case [checks notes] is Donald J.Trump. Trump has BRANDED you all, which includes you and Marjorie Taylor Greene and any number of other substantial lunatics including the current lunatics who are running to take over the state of North Carolina (Mark Robinson), its justice department (Dan Bishop), its school system (Michele Morrow), and protections for its labor force (Luke Farley). Farley ran in your branded Republican primary in March on the slogan "Let's make elevators great again!" because he promises to put his picture in every one of them should he win in November.
If this were Texas, the branding iron for the Republican Party would be a curliqued Low T.
There have been moments during the last few months when Tillis showed encouraging signs of independence from the Trump brand, but like most cowed Republicans afraid of the rabble that's taken over their party, he'll fall in line come November, especially if the partisans on the US Supreme Court decide that Trump has limited immunity which will need to be argued and litigated past any chance that he'll be on trial before November.
I don't know what to tell you, Senator, but Marjorie Taylor Greene is not your problem.
There will be no two-party give-and-take in North Carolina until further notice. The Republican Party of Phil Berger will own it all, from steerage to stateroom, even if the other Republican Party of Mark Robinson wins the governorship, because Phil Berger and his boys have stripped this governor and any subsequent governor of much of their former power. (Robinson will have to be content as just a video sensation.) The courts, of course, will be no help to the rest of us looking for simple fairness. Justices Newby, Berger Jr., Barringer, Dietz, and Allen drove the final nail into fairness -- their ruling very recently that overturned the previous court's decision that partisan gerrymandering inherently violates the rights of voters. Unleashed by the Newby Court, Berger-Moore did (and will continue to do) as they pleased.
They made themselves -- named in the law as "President Pro Tem of the Senate" and "Speaker of the House" -- heads of a super-secret investigative arm of the legislature known as "Gov Ops." Why do Mr. Berger and Mr. Moore get their own secret police? They also slipped it into the budget that each member of the General Assembly gets to decide which of their communications to hide and which to reveal -- the need to hide kinda screaming incipient corruption.
They can be petty in their punishments: "Attorneys who work for Legal Aid of North Carolina—which helps low-income people navigate civil courts—can no longer participate in NC LEAF, a state program that helps public-interest lawyers pay their law school debt." They can be (and were) grandiose with their singular innovations: "The General Assembly also gives itself the ability to pick 10 special superior court judges, whom Newby can appoint to hear challenges to General Assembly laws and legislative districts." (Quotes from Jeffrey Billman) Berger-Moore also solidified their control of the commission that is hounding Democratic Justice Anita Earls. Bottomline: They will punish you if you're a problem for them. Hence the sudden interference in how Watauga elects its county commission.
Did I say corruption? It's actually out in the open. Under new provisions in the Republican budget, lobbyists in Raleigh can pay $2,000 each for the privilege of “expedited entry” into the Legislative Office Building and State Legislative Building. Lobbyists for state agencies pay a reduced $1,000 for that privilege. Please exit through the gift shop.
When Democrats held absolute power, they also became corrupt. It's an inevitable development for any group that gets so powerful and dominant that they have no credible, let alone organized, challenge to their dictatorial power, no guardrails of a vigilant court system, no debates or the informed backing of the people. Who can resist the corruption, that tickling of flattery and tinkling of coin? And how do you fight it, when its power is unchecked and apparently limitless?
I'm indebted to Rob Schofield's NCNewsline podcast of October 9th for new information on just how awful the hidden provisions in the state budget are turning out to be. They're not just naked and crushing power-grabs but also so badly written that some of them can't be enforced. Two examples:
Schofield: "The State Board of Education learned from its attorney that while it can hear appeals from parents regarding local school board actions under the new Parents Bill of Rights, it has no authority to take any action."
Under the controversial law, educators must alert parents if their child changes their name or pronoun at school. It also restricts instruction about gender identity and sexuality in K-4 classrooms and makes provisions for parents to review schoolbooks.
Parents can take concerns to the state board if a concern has not been resolved by a local school district within 30 days. Parents must submit concerns to the state board in writing.
Bad Law-Writing Example Number 2:
"The UNC-Chapel Hill official directed to establish a new conservative school on the campus [the School of Civic Life and Leadership] by year’s end, says some of the directives he faces are so illogical that they defy the laws of physics."
In addition to a $2 million allocation in each of the next two fiscal years, the budget sets an aggressive hiring deadline of December 31 for the school’s dean. Typically, such a hiring process can take a year or more. The budget also requires the university to hire between 10 and 20 tenured or tenure track faculty for the new school from outside the university....
Prominent faculty members [said that] mandating details down to the number and type of faculty to be hired and from where they must come is a clear message from the legislature that a faculty-led process cannot be trusted to create the school the legislature’s Republican majority wants in the way it wants it.
In an interview with WFAE political reporter Steve Harrison, Republican candidate for governor Mark Walker pulled a stiletto and jabbed at his rival Mark Robinson for being waaay out of the Republican mainstream, out there beyond where reality delivers the mail. Harrison quotes Walker:
Walker said he doesn’t expect Robinson to participate in any debates before the March primary because his campaign team “won’t put him on the stage and let him trip all over himself.”
He cast Robinson as unprincipled on issues like abortion: “Who knows where he is today? I don’t know if that is a script he is trying to follow.”
He suggested Robinson as governor would be a rubber-stamp for GOP Senate leader Phil Berger: “There is a reason Phil Berger never stood with Pat McCrory. There is a reason he never stood with Dan Forest. Yet he is the first one up the steps with Mark Robinson’s campaign announcement.”
Walker continued: “The question is, why? I think that’s one of the reasons why Robinson hasn’t said anything the last few months about anything Phil Berger is trying to do” [like get gambling casinos into the state budget].
Robinson in fact came out saying he had been against gambling casinos since the beginning but only said so after gambling casinos were no longer an issue, causing even fellow Republicans to laugh behind his back at the obvious pusillanimity of that convenient conversion.
“My prediction is he will never take foot on the debate stage,” Walker said. “One, he is not familiar with the policies. Number two, there is so much that he can’t answer for when it comes to his background.”
By "background," he meant personal problems such as unpaid taxes....
...Walker criticized Robinson and other Republicans for having what he said is a “lack of sensitivity” on the issue. That includes, he said, Robinson’s comments that abortion is “murder.”
Robinson is now downplaying his past comments on abortion....
“Most of us don’t believe the Civil Rights Act was a communist plot [as Robinson has claimed],” Walker said. “When you are defending Harvey Weinstein. And when you say it’s Illuminati that went after Bill Cosby, I’m thinking, ‘My gosh. This is so far out of reality.’ ”
It all comes down to who will represent the "Republican brand" in North Carolina. We're kind of counting on it not being Mark Walker.
They're turning North Carolina into a shithole state.
Ray Pickett, House Dist. 93
Meanwhile, I'm trying to control the acid reaction to them now coursing through my own body politic. The big boys in Raleigh, last seen grubbing for even more unseemly power in the new state budget, put a heavy tax on our last nerve. They only want control of the voting process, control of the judiciary, control of the classroom, and control of their own nasty secrets. (The best run-down on all the bad stuff in the budget was written by Jeffrey Billman for The Assembly -- which is well worth subscribing to. NC Newsline also has excellent cumulative coverage.) I could have cried, "Told ya so!"
I knew when they caved to the governor on expanding Medicaid coverage but tied its expansion to the passage of a new budget -- didn't you know they would deliver a portmanteau of abominables in that budget? Of course you knew it, or else you're a spring flower unaware of coming frost or don't have a clue about the character of these "conservatives" because you didn't believe such cruelty and contempt for democracy could actually exist in modern American human beings. Especially the ones who say they follow Jesus.
Gov. Cooper surely knew and apparently resigned himself to the inevitable horrors the Republicans would visit on representative government. He wanted Medicaid expansion. He's getting it, with tons of stuff he didn't want -- none of us wanted! -- and letting it become law without his signature. Because, you know, Tricia Cotham (plus five other Democrats who haven't switched parties -- four Black and one white -- who also voted for this waste-dump of ideology run amuck).
Ralph Hise, Senate Dist. 47
In my House District 93, Rep. Ray Pickett voted for it. He's just a drone anyway. Under his brand name, he votes for whatever the brand wants. He must be defeated for reelection. Democrat Ben Massey will make the run in 2024. Winning will depend on whether the citizens of District 93 really do prefer pay-to-play, petty vindictiveness, and the scolding laws of men who don't trust women.
In my Senate District 47, Sen. Ralph Hise is the actual author of much mischief (including double-bunking himself with Sen. Deanna Ballard in 2022, to get rid of her). He's already mucho powerful and doesn't mind bending rules to benefit himself further. As Chair of both Appropriations/Base Budget and Redistricting and Elections, Hise has his foot on our necks. Without any doubt, he will run for reelection. So far there's no Democrat willing to carry the flag against him. Both this Senate district and House District 93 were gerrymandered to make them unwinnable by Democrats. How about Democrats and Unaffiliateds together?
NB: Of course all House and Senate districts are up for another round of partisan redistricting (promised for next month, as close as possible to the December filing period for 2024, so that Democrats have less time to recruit and field candidates). Supreme Court Chief Paul Newby decided partisan gerrymandering is the true American way. As I said, they own the highest court and they've taken new steps in the budget to create and control their own Superior Court judges. Holy crap!
"A legislator, while in office or after leaving office, shall not be required to reveal or to consent to reveal any document, supporting document, drafting request, or information request made or received by that legislator while a legislator."
The NC Open Government Coalition said of this particular provision that it "codifies a broad, sweeping legislative privilege that exempts members of the General Assembly from the public records law in its entirety."
Ah! Because secrecy is essential for authoritarianism.
The Republicans also erased an existing state law that makes communications behind redistricting decisions public once the process has wrapped up -- so voters can know which Democratic (or recalcitrant Republican) legislators were fingered for double-bunking or for simple elimination via partisan packing.
A pack of creeps in Raleigh mean to have it all their way. And they assume that the governor will sign the budget bill because he wants Medicaid expansion more than he hates the other shit, so Republicans take the opportunity to slip in all sorts of other mischief.
No doubt in my mind that the overturning of Roe (combining subliminally with the exposures of the January 6th Committee) are tilting election prospects toward the Democrats, and I'm coming to resent the poor-mouthing I hear from some Democratic activists. Maybe we lose the Democratic House and the Democratic Senate, and maybe we don't. You cherry-pick your intimations of doom, and I'll cherry-pick ... my cherries. The prediction that 2022 is going to rival 2010 for the Democrats has become conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom is a ass and a idiot (to paraphrase Mr. Bumble).
Because some Republican leaders know they're on dangerous, extremist ground, they're actually trying to pump the brakes on the conservative lust to regulate women and punish the queer, because they surely feel the seismic rumbling under the earth beneath them. From the NYTimes, this small wrap-up of the case of nerves some Republican governors have developed (italics added):
...in Nebraska, where an effort to pass a trigger ban narrowly failed early this year, Gov. Pete Ricketts has discussed the possibility of a special session but has yet to call one. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis has largely avoided questions about whether he would take immediate steps to pass new restrictions. In South Dakota, where a ban went into effect after Roe was struck down, Gov. Kristi Noem backed away from an initial pledge to call lawmakers to the Capitol to consider more abortion bills....
But they can't stop the runaway train of conservative cruelty and authoritarianism, so Republican-dominated states try to outdo one another on medieval tortures for women who become pregnant by accident or by force.
"Some Republican-controlled states have enacted, or are in the process of enacting, draconian restrictions on abortion, some banning the procedure almost from conception and with no exceptions for cases of rape, incest, or the life of the mother. Many of these laws are far more extreme than Mississippi's 15-week abortion ban. Some states, most famously Texas, have also put in place highly unusual enforcement mechanisms intended to evade the possibility of court challenges, with a few even attempting to criminalize crossing state lines for the purpose of procuring abortions" (Damon Linker).
Republicans in the US Congress join in the legislative spite-fest by blocking a bill yesterday that would have expanded healthcare coverage for military veterans exposed to toxic burn pits. Which roused Jon Stewart so passionately:
That may seem a diversion from the topic at hand, but not really. Republican legislative activity is all part of a pattern of denial, punishment, and subjugation. So I have more than hope that the Republicans who can't help themselves will be hoist with their own petard. By any human measure, they've gone too far, and the interest in seeing them defeated among young women (and other casually haphazard voters) has burgeoned and cannot be denied.
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.
Is it possible the GOP doesn't yet realize it's in a suicide pact?
Because they continue to do stuff that looks suicidal, yet they do them as if they're Jimmy Stewart in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." (Not Robert DeNiro in The Deerhunter.) Full of earnest good resolve that they're doing the absolute right thing for America. And for themselves.
But to me, looks like playing lethal games of chance with more than one chamber loaded. Why do they continue making people hate them? In North Carolina, the Republican General Assembly went tyrannical and power-hunger and obnoxious after the 2010 Tea Party Revolution. They decided to be obvious about it because they'd gerrymandered themselves into unassailable seats of power.
Even a castle can be swamped by a wave.
More voters are watching. More nominally educated voters. And more of them are pissed. Maybe, as we enter 2018 and the end of a whole blessed year of Donald Trump, maybe NC voters are more pissed at Trump than at Phil Berger, but they're pissed enough to want to take down anybody that reminds them of Trump.
The Magic 8-Ball sez, 2018 ain't gonna be a Republican year.
So you'd think they'd be quieter about their ambitions. Less obnoxious. (Even Virginia Foxx learned to say fewer stupid, hateful things in public.) But no. The Phil Berger General Assembly has launched a new power-grab and the most obnoxious yet: He's monkeying with the judicial system, with the ultimate goal of giving himself the power to appoint the guys he wants wearing the robes.
He don't seem to care that voters are paying attention. Berger goes right on grabbing, even the blade-end of knives.
The GOP's own suburbs -- the very neighborhoods where they drive to their big houses from work in Raleigh and Charlotte and Winston-Salem and Greensboro -- are becoming less congenial. Other good candidates are announcing for office, and new faces are winning elections. Especially Democrat faces. (Virginia is for lovers!)
C/Net
But there's no reactive nor self-protective toning of it down by the Republicans running the General Assembly, no discernible attempt to come back to a middle ground, no moderating. It's a sight to behold and marvel at, like a man gathering a crowd and then willfully walking off a bridge.
Now that's just North Carolina. Nationally, the Trump tax bill they're about to pass in Washington doesn't look particularly healthy for Republicans facing the voters. The voting public hates the tax bill, 2 to 1, because they're probably onto the motives and the effects. They hate it like they hated ending Obamacare. Like they should hate Twitter by now. Like they really hate the assassination of net neutrality.
Office-holders huffed on power maybe don't notice what's obvious to others. They don't hear the bullet that kills them.
I have to admit that I'm going to miss the Roy Moore campaign. It's been a primer on where the Republican Party has parked its identity in the Age of Trump. Those reminders are both necessary and, lucky for us, numerous. Who is the Trump/Moore Republican? He's a soldier -- defiantly reactionary, divisive by prime instinct, preacher-perfect at denouncing other people's sins while personally wearing no underwear, and sentimental about slavery.
That's what made this Kayla Moore moment last night in Midland City so ... solid. The film is going to live forever.
Doug Jones can win this thing. I discount all polls on this race, including the Fox News one yesterday that had Jones up by 10 points, because how do you model who's going to actually show up and vote? The Alabama secretary of state predicted "a modest turnout of 20 to 25 percent" — surprising, given all the national media attention and the fact that voter turn-out was about 64 percent in the 2016 presidential election. Not surprising though, given the depressing downer nature of the whole campaign. The religious right is turned on by Roy Moore, and of course Democrats are ecstatic about how well Doug Jones has done, but a wide middle swath of not-particularly-engaged voters, including many educated Republicans, have been turned off by the spectacle of Moore, are embarrassed about him, and they either won't vote at all or they'll write in someone else's name (and maybe a few of them will even vote for the Democrat because they no longer believe in Hell).
Reportedly, African-American voters aren't energized about Jones, though major national political figures and celebrities like Charles Barkley have stumped the state. Last night, Jones got "an implicit boost, of a sort," from Condoleezza Rice, who without ever mentioning Doug Jones by name (or Roy Moore either), called on Alabamians to “reject bigotry, sexism and intolerance” and “insist that our representatives are dignified, decent and respectful of the values we hold dear.” Rice is a native of Alabama and maybe still has family there.
Based on what happened nationally with so many suburban, nominal Republicans and independent voters back on November 7, Jones could win it with the growing urban/suburban centers like Birmingham and Montgomery and Huntsville, especially if African-Americans don't sit at home and enough moderate Republicans either do stay at home or throw their vote in any direction but Moore's. The Democrats have been working hard while Moore's got no ground game and has been totally absent from the campaign for days at a time, including all of the past six days before his rally last night, when Mrs. Moore schooled everyone on who's a bigot. When a candidate acts like he doesn't need to work for it and doesn't show up with the public for days on end, do voters reward him with high office? Sometimes they don't.
Steve Bannon did his part at last night's rally, encouraging the booing of Republican Senator Richard Shelby, attacking both Condi Rice and Bob Corker, and then mocking Ivanka Trump's comments about Moore, that there's a special place in hell for people who sexually molest teenaged girls. Bannon has his entire reputation of king-maker and incipient political empire riding on this election today.
The best thing that could happen to the National Republican Party in the short term -- Roy Moore loses in Alabama. Otherwise, he's the aloha lei that every Republican at every level will be wearing in 2018, and it's not going to smell garden fresh.
Meanwhile, Trump is the nominal leader of the Republican Party but displays little actual leadership. Oh, he'll stomp on someone he thinks dissed him, like Jeff Flake of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee, but as far as providing the political machinery by which Republican candidates can run next year, that ain't exactly happening. Trump's poll numbers are stuck at a low register, and Republican office-holders who have to run again in 2018 are trying to figure out how to run without inviting Trump into their states or districts.
Then there's the Trump whisperer, Steve Bannon, who's said he'll primary every Republican incumbent senator except Ted Cruz next year. What does Trump do? Does he dive in to help the incumbents against insurgents, like he tried to help Luther Strange in the Alabama primary? He's still miffed about that, that Strange lost by 9 points. He's complained that he should never have listened to Republican Party operatives who told him he had to campaign for Strange to protect the party. That's why calling Trump the "head of the GOP" seems like a suicide pact.
More like he's the demise of the GOP, the virus that wipes out the host. So we get the spectacle of the RNC withdrawing financial support from Roy Moore weeks ago and then hurriedly reinstating it yesterday after Trump tweeted on Monday his full endorsement of the child molester. Trump didn't tell anyone in advance he was going to endorse Moore, so the RNC is left looking like what it is -- rudderless and without any moral foundation.
The results in Chesterfield are also a potential harbinger of what looms beyond Virginia, in suburbs where anger toward Trump is motivating voters bent on defeating Republican candidates in next year’s midterm elections.
You might want to read Schwartzman's in-depth profile of Chesterfield County -- Virginia's third most populous, consisting mainly of Richmond's southern suburbs -- and why (or how) it went Democratic on November 7th for the first time in 61 years.
Powerful energies sparked by the surprise election in 2016 of an unqualified huckster, awakening a political complacency to rise up and assert itself in 2017. There ain't no better story anywhere for what it portends for 2018.
Volunteers came out of the woodwork in Chesterfield. Collectively, they reached out either by phone or by door-knock to over 50,000 voters on behalf of Democratic candidate for governor Ralph Northam and the rest of the Democratic slate; they staffed with poll greeters all 75 polling sites in Chesterfield County, the first time in living memory that they had the volunteer workforce to pull it off.
That kind of energy, and the organization behind it, is what is prompting so many premature retirements among the Republican gospel choir.
The TV ad below -- aimed specifically at the vote of a Maine Republican on the hose-the-middle-class tax plan recently passed in the US House -- is about to be duplicated in some 25 Republican House districts with large numbers of white voters who had previously voted for Obama but who opted for Trump in 2016.
The ad probably won't be shown in Foxx's 5th Congressional District, though it ought to be.
The ad was created and paid for by Not One Penny, "a campaign launched by progressive groups to oppose all tax cuts for millionaires, billionaires, and big corporations."
The ad hits two messages: GOP changes to the tax code are enormously regressive, showering most of their benefits on the wealthy while giving crumbs to working- and middle-class Americans (or even raising their taxes). These tax cuts will necessitate big cuts to the safety net later — the ad references $25 billion in Medicare cuts that could be triggered by the GOP plan’s deficit busting — further compounding the GOP agenda’s regressiveness down the line.
NC Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger is the acknowledged dictator of North Carolina. He runs the NC Senate, which means he runs North Carolina. He ran over Republican Governor Pat McCrory for four long years and is partially responsible for making the "toe-stepping" McCrory a laughingstock. And just to show him who's Boss, Berger's crippled the governorship of Democrat Roy Cooper.
Berger wanted to make Phil Berger Jr. a congressman in Washington, his greatest failure to date. Still, he could make Junior a judge as consolation, and now Junior sits on the bench.
No one can beat Phil Berger for his NC Senate seat, which includes parts of Guilford and Rockingham counties. At least that's the conventional wisdom. In fact, to oppose Berger or his lieutenants can figuratively land a horse's head in your bed, so to speak, and according to Greensboro News&Record Editor Allen Johnson.
Jennifer Mangrum
But lookie here at who's rising up to challenge Berger, not because she thinks she can win but because sometimes you just have to stand up to abusive power, no matter the odds.
Jennifer Mangrum is the child of two public school teachers and a lifelong educator herself. She taught elementary school in North Carolina for 14 years, and for the last nine years she's been teaching other public school teachers how best to teach (as a professor of education at UNCG).
She was until recently a lifelong Republican. The power-madness of King Berger (among other actions) changed her mind:
“I’m open. I was a Republican, I need to tell you that. I had a father who fought in World War 2, Vietnam and Korea, and when I registered to vote in the ‘80s, if you were military then the Republican Party was the party that you felt was going to take care of your family .... The party has changed so much since I registered. I’m also really embarrassed that leaders in the Republican Party represent us in the way they do, but I was a voter who looked at the person.” (The Carolinian)
I've only just started following her on Twitter (@jrmangru), and she doesn't appear to have launched a Facebook feed yet (though she's promised one), so I don't yet find a lot of "platform" on-line. But I did find this:
...why do we allow Phil Berger to remain in power? He does not work to insure that all men are created equal. In fact, he does the opposite. He creates laws that discriminate, he defunds schools so that children don’t have the same opportunities when they grow up, and he rules the NC Senate as though he were King, grabbing power from our executive branch and ignoring the consent of the governed.
Mangrum is just beginning to find her political voice, and we hope she'll campaign. That'll take money.
I agree with Gov. Roy Cooper: There's probably a better way to do this.
Like getting these Civil War symbols off public land and into museums or private venues.
But this particular metal statue -- which stood there in front of the Durham County Courthouse since 1924, looking as solid as the Confederate dollar -- turned out to be a cheap (zinc?) hollow casting, part of a mass-production made during the first two decades of the 20th century to satisfy the politics of that time. The politics of that time have not aged all that well into the 21st Century.
Work of art or commercialized pop culture from the Jim Crow South?
These statues, or others like them, went up all over and by the hundreds in the first two decades of the 20th Century. (The McNeel Marble Works in Marietta, Ga., did most of the marble ones, the famous "Standing Soldiers" and other icons, but this statue in Durham was cheap pot metal.) At the turn of the Century, these statues were prideful reactions to Northern industrial superiority and reassertions of segregationist ideology -- "Jim Crow." The money was often raised by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, but sometimes local governments wanted to jump on board for obvious reasons.
In North Carolina particularly, that era followed the brief power of the Fusion Party, a coalition of populists and black and white Republicans who swept state elections in 1894, including putting approximately 1,000 black officials into office. US Congressman George H. White was one of them. The Democratic Party of that day was suddenly, conspicuously, and pretty much totally out of power everywhere in North Carolina. There's usually been a strong reactionary white wave against any conspicuous advancement of colored people (and those waves right up to the present often include traditional "Democrats" in the reactionary voting bloc). The Civil Rights movement in the '60s produced a Jesse Helms. The election of Barack Obama brought the Tea Party sweep of 2010. So can't you guess what happened at the turn of the 20th Century? Following two virtual landslides for Fusionists in the elections of 1894 and 1896, the Fusion Party was swept into oblivion in the election of 1898. Boom! Gone! And the broom used in the sweep was overt white racism:
In the 1898 “White Supremacy Campaign,” led by future U.S. Senator Furnifold M. Simmons (1854-1940), chairman of the Democratic Executive Committee, the Democratic Party used identity politics to regain power. “Negro rule” and “Negro domination” became the catchphrases of the campaign. Josephus Daniels (1862-1948), editor of the Raleigh News and Observer, was the unabashed press spokesman for white supremacy. Red Shirts, reminiscent of the Klan, intimidated blacks and thereby limited the number of Republican votes. (North Carolina History Project)
Okay, motivation is one thing, but a God-fearing and church-going populace that didn't have anything to do with putting up those statues is allowed to view them as an honored and important part of their history, speaking to sacrifice and pain and loss and not the rest of it. I certainly see the statues as part of history, too, and I haven't been inclined to bash history or attempt to erase it. The psychic juice released by the fantasy of "the lost cause" is powerful ju-ju and lives today for the Alt-Right too -- "You will not replace us!" The pious matrons of the United Daughters of the Confederacy lacked the wherewithal to question the true ingredients of that "cause," its antecedents, and its effects. I just don't know how much history the Alt-Right understands. (Well, it takes time to see yourself. We've all got our bubbles.)
The ideology of the white Democratic Party of 1900 and 1910 and 1920 has been spectacularly replaced in North Carolina politics by the Republican Party of 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016, busying itself at knocking down and doing it like a raiding party of Vikings. Ta-Nehisi Coates captured very nicely the hidden agenda behind the "heritage not hate" argument: "The heritage of white supremacy was not so much birthed by hate as by the impulse toward plunder."
Trump declared yesterday that his new plan -- Plan D, by our reckoning -- is to "let Obamacare fail." "It’ll be a lot easier,” Trump said. “We’re not going to own it. I’m not going to own it. I can tell you the Republicans are not going to own it. We’ll let Obamacare fail, and then the Democrats are going to come to us.”
Translation: We will make people suffer to prove a political point. People are mere pawns, and sick people are even easier to torture.
According to Thomas Kaplan, Trump has several options for making Obamacare fail faster:
1. "He could throw insurance markets into a tailspin at any time by cutting off the subsidy payments to insurers, as he has threatened to do."
2. "He could further destabilize the markets by not enforcing the mandate that most Americans have health insurance."
3. "He could cancel advertising and other efforts to encourage enrollment under the Affordable Care Act when the annual sign-up period begins in November."
4. And then there's the poor-mouthing that Trump and all Republican politicians have been doing for months and months: "A barrage of negative statements from the administration could project an official view that the health law is collapsing, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy."
Sabotaging people's health insurance out of revenge seems just so perfect for the "Republican brand." And Trump's doubly an idiot if he thinks he won't own that.
The consumer finance industry, which recently succeeded in persuading the Republican-led state legislature to pass a bill that it wanted, has been a major contributor to GOP lawmakers in recent years.
An analysis of state Board of Elections data by Democracy North Carolina, a voter rights and campaign finance watchdog group, found that people associated with the consumer loan industry and two industry political action committees gave at least $530,000 to legislators and party committees over the past four years. Of that amount, 92 percent went to Republicans.
The "revised" Senate Obamacare repeal/replace bill will apparently contain new language insisted on by the most conservative Republicans. The Cruz-Lee amendment will allow insurers to sell unregulated plans – which would be cheaper (in every sense of the word) and could discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions – so long as they also sell an Obamacare-compliant policy.
J.W. Williamson was the founding editor in 1972 of the Appalachian Journal: A Regional Studies Review, which he edited until July of 2000. He has taught college classes in Appalachian history, cultural politics, and literature, and he has lectured widely on the pop-culture history of "Appalachia" in the American consciousness. His books include Interviewing Appalachia, Southern Mountaineers in Silent Films, and Hillbillyland: What the Mountains Did to the Movies and What the Movies Did to the Mountains. He has won the Thomas Wolfe Award given by the Western North Carolina Historical Society, the Laurel Leaves Award given by the Appalachian Consortium, a special Weatherford Award given by Berea College, and the Cratis Williams-James Brown Award given by the Appalachian Studies Association.
The views expressed on WataugaWatch are solely those of J.W. Williamson or individual contributors and are not necessarily shared nor endorsed by the Watauga County Democratic Party nor by any other adults of sound mind in this or any other universe.
