We Love You, Howard Dean, And Always Will

Howard Dean taught us modern campaigning. He pioneered social media outreach and fundraising. As chair of the Democratic National Committee from 2005 to 2009, he preached and enacted the "50-state strategy," an effort to put staff and resources into every state to bolster the grassroots. Which worked. Which lives on today in North Carolina as "a candidate in every single House and Senate district" -- all 120 House seats and 50 Senate seats, contested -- no matter how improbable the prospects, and the literally hundreds of new candidates in every state that are running strong right now, with clear positive platforms, and who owe absolutely nothing to the political establishment.

When he led the Democrats, he encouraged county parties to return to retail politics, one-on-one voter outreach, and he taught everyone the importance of social media for fundraising and for message propagation -- where boomlets happen like lightning. Howard Dean was leading the DNC when Watauga Democrats flipped the county commission from red to blue in 2006, and Cullie Tarleton and Steve Goss won House and Senate seats. We learned so much.

Dean's tenure at the DNC coincided with Jerry Meek's chairmanship of the NC Democratic Party, a renaissance of grassroots activism and retail politics. Jerry Meek came to Watauga and participated in the biggest ever "kickoff canvass" in 2006. Unfortunately, Jerry Meek passed the torch after two terms, and we didn't hardly see his like again, until recently.

Howard Dean made the right kind of enemy. Rahm Emanuel hated his guts. Emanuel favored a different political model that ignored some states -- actually, many -- and poured all the money into boosting the presidential candidate rather than building local parties. Emanuel got rid of Dean as soon as Obama became president. Senator Chuck Schumer participated in that purge. He didn't like Howard Dean either. As far as I'm concerned, Rahm Emanuel was everything that was wrong with Barack Obama's first term, and Chuck Schumer is everything that's wrong with sucking up to money-pimping Democratic donors today, particularly the ones with Wall Street addresses.

Howard stirred excitement among punked-out Democrats and bored independent voters during his presidential run in 2004. It was such excitement. If you were a part of it, you remember it. I see the same vibration around many new Democratic candidates this year. They're rewriting the Party and rewiring the Party brain, just like Howard Dean did.

Thom Tillis to Gen'l Assembly: "Shut the Eff Up," He Explained

Thom Tillis, just back from his annual jaunt to the Koch-snorting ALEC seance in Oklahoma City, has now gotten the religion of "Let's play nice" and is telling his GOP troops to shut the eff up and stop spooking the horses.

"I was the GOP minority whip in 2009," he began in a Facebook post. "My job was to get conservative Democrats to help us defeat liberal legislation. The Democratic leaders, heavily influenced by their most liberal members and far-left groups, could not resist the pressure to move too far to [sic] fast. They did not compromise and they went too far.

"They got out of step with the citizens of NC and they lost their majority as a result. It was their lack of discipline that laid the groundwork for Republicans to have House/Senate super majorities, a GOP governor, and [lieutenant] governor," he concluded. "Our lack of discipline will lay the groundwork for their ascendency and if they succeed we will only have ourselves to blame."

Tillis's grasp of history is lacking. The Democratically controlled General Assembly was nothing if not "business-friendly," and as he offers zero examples of "liberal" and "far-left" legislation that "laid the groundwork" for the Republican take-over, we believe he's just blowing smoke.

It was some high-profile Democratic sleaze, a comatose NC Democratic Party, and one of the nastiest Pope-directed campaigns in 2010, smearing about a dozen good Democratic office-holders like Cullie Tarleton and Steve Goss, that got Mr. Tillis his drug of choice ... POWER.

The fact that he's now afraid of losing it is practically like a whiff of springtime blossoms. And we count on the crazies in his caucus and in the NC Senate to refuse to play nice. After all, that's not what got them elected.

The Outlook for Higher Education in NC

A group of 30 Big Heads with the portentous title "UNC Advisory Committee on Strategic Directions" is meeting for the first time today, and a student group has formed to protest the makeup of the committee, which is apparently charged with setting goals and directions for the 16-member University of North Carolina system.

The protesting student group, calling itself N.C. Student Power Union, is upset about the old, rich, white man  lack of diversity on the committee. There's only one student representative. There's only one faculty member representative. There's only one staff employee representative.

The N.C. Student Power Union didn't tell the half of what's wrong with that committee, seeing as how it also includes the power base of the NC Republican Party, particularly the ultra-right, Tea Party wing, the very people primarily responsible for the major, crippling budget cuts to the university system in the last two state budgets (both vetoed by Gov. Perdue, whose vetoes were overridden) and for the general weakening of all public education in the state.

Thom Tillis, Republican Speaker of the NC House, is on the committee.

Phil Berger, Republican NC Senate President Pro Tem, is on the committee.

Lew Ebert, President of the NC Chamber of Commerce, who is very actively supporting Tea Party darling Paul Newby for the NC Supreme Court, is on the committee.

Robert Ingram, former president & chief operating officer of GlaxoSmithKline, who according to OpenSecrets has given some $96,000 to Republican causes, is on the committee.

Fred Eshelman, a  Big Pharma mogul who principally funded RightChange in 2010 and who was therefore directly responsible for much of the sleaze that was directed at Cullie Tarleton and Steve Goss, is on the committee.

Art Pope, the prelate of predatory conservatism, the Death Star of the NC political universe, the Big Boss who bosses around Tillis and Berger (see above) and got his own puppets on the Tillis and Berger payroll, is on the committee.

The very people who have been most consistently and tenaciously critical of a Liberal Arts education in North Carolina are going to be setting priorities for our best institutions of higher education. Students ought to be organizing to call attention to the radical tilt of this crucial advisory committee.

And incidentally, ASU Chancellor Ken Peacock is also on the committee.

It's Coming ... From the Black (Pope) Lagoon

Mark Binker is reporting that Real Jobs NC (remember them?) is about to unleash their Art Pope-financed smeers of Democratic candidates again this election cycle.

And why not? The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that billionaires have the inalienable right to buy any legislature that they can personally afford. And the Real Jobs NC slimeballs of 2010 worked so well to turn the NC General Assembly over to Dan Soucek, Jonathan Jordan, and other Tea Party types.

Remember what they did to Cullie Tarleton and Steve Goss in 2010, the mailers the put Mexican sombreros on those gentlemen's heads and warned about rapists moving in next door to your granny.

Soucek's Chances

It may have come as a shock to Sen. Dan Soucek to have George S. Robinson file to run against him in the Republican primary for the Dist. 45 NC Senate seat.

We were surprised but not totally shocked, since we had been hearing for months -- through Caldwell County Democratic channels -- that the Republican Party in Caldwell was very dissatisfied with being added to Mr. Soucek's district and was looking for someone credible to challenge him in the primary. We didn't take those reports very seriously, thinking it unlikely that Caldwell would so noticeably step out of line.

Not only did they find a credible candidate. They found in George Robinson an A-List candidate with plenty of experience. Mr. Robinson was a member of the North Carolina House for two terms, 1980-86, 1988-96; he stepped down in 1986 to challenge Rep. Cass Ballenger in that year's Republican primary for the U.S. Congress, 10th District, which of course he didn't win, but he's a man who clearly doesn't mind challenging the status quo.

Hmmm. The Caldwell County Republican establishment is trying to take out Dan Soucek.

And here's the thing: Caldwell County is now the population center of the newly drawn 45th senatorial district. Caldwell County alone accounts for 45% of the voters in the new district. Soucek has been a weak fundraiser: he currently, in his last finance filing with the State Board of Elections, reported about $20,000 on hand. Robinson will no doubt be able to raise big money. He's a businessman, he's tied in to Chamber of Commerce types, he's a known prestige candidate.

The open question awaiting an answer: how will Soucek's millionaire backers down-state, the ones who won the seat for him in 2010 by trashing the reputation of a good man and who have told Soucek how to vote for the past year -- will those Big Money-Bags come rushing to Soucek's primary-endangered future in the NC General Assembly? Or will they sit it out and wait to see who survives (seeing as how they're philosophically aligned with the "survival-of-the-fittest" social Darwinism of the 1920s).

Dan Soucek may turn out to be a one-termer.

The Brains Behind Thom Tillis's Rise To Power

The Battleground Group, which designed and handled the mailing of many of the attack pieces on Democratic members of the North Carolina General Assembly in 2010, is a Sarasota, Florida, hack-shop that proudly displays a nuclear explosion as its logo and "vision thing."

So proud are these guys of the scurrilousness of their 2010 campaign in NC, they proudly display the "NC Case Study" on their homepage.

It didn't take too much browsing in these toxic weeds to find the mailer that they didn't use in 2010, one targeting Cullie Tarleton for allegedly applauding rape. (WARNING: Clicking that link will show you just how vile these people are.) If they had used that mailer against Cullie, they would have used it against every other targeted Democrat in 2010. Notice that the return address on the mailer is the state Republican Party Executive Committee, the same return address that was on all of the Battleground Group-produced mailers (of which there were dozens mailed against each Democrat in 2010).

It's interesting to speculate on why they didn't actually use the mailer, since the ones they did use were every bit as below-the-belt. Did someone in the NC Republican Party actually take a look at this and blanch: "Oh my God. We can't have our name on that!" But their name IS on that, and worse. And it's clear from the Battleground Group's NC Case Study that they were behind the push-polling and the other mailers that flooded our mailboxes (including one that warned us that murderers and rapists looking very Hispanic were moving next door to us, thanks to Steve Goss and Cullie Tarleton).

This is the nastiness that the Battleground Group is proud to offer to all deep pockets coming their way. This is the nastiness that the NC Republican Party was willing to put their name on. This is the nastiness that elevated Tantrum Thom to the Speakership of the NC House. This is the nastiness that we will see no end to, as 2012 grinds into gear. This is the nasty essence of the abuse of power that has now taken over our state and will hold whatever midnight seances it needs to punish their enemies and advance their extremist goals.

Hattip: JP

Prevarication, noun

"Americans for Prosperity is a nonpartisan, issue-based policy organization and does not support or oppose candidates for public office."

--Dallas Woodhouse, NC State Dir., Americans for Prosperity

Hattip: Greg Flynn

For an outfit that had a fat finger in the effort to defeat both Sen. Steve Goss and Rep. Cullie Tarleton last year, that's a hell of a whopper.

Greg Flynn lays out the documentable $$. Both Jonathan Jordan and Dan Soucek are on that list ... twice.

Dan Soucek's Senate District

The new NC General Assembly districts drawn by the Clown College in Raleigh make some major changes to Dan Soucek's 45th Senate District. He would lose Wilkes and Alexander counties and gain Alleghany, Avery, and Caldwell. Watauga and Ashe would remain.

Soucek defeated a good man in 2010, Sen. Steve Goss. Soucek benefitted from big corporate money, the Pope Machine in Raleigh, and from some of the most dishonest campaigning we've seen close up. Since he appears to be free of original thinking and most apt at letting bigger, brighter people run his life for him, we suspect he expects big corporate money, the Pope Machine in Raleigh, and some dishonest campaigning to win his seat again.

Meanwhile, we'll tip our hat at the Law of Unintended Consequences. Caldwell County suddenly becomes the big dog in the 45th Senate District. Caldwell, along with Watauga, represents over 50% of the vote in the new district. Alleghany has been a dependably Democratic-leaning county, with enough votes to off-set the extreme "red" of Avery.

Maybe it'll be a breeze for an empty suit to win this new district. Maybe not. Depends a lot on whether the general public has grown weary of the pie-throwing irresponsibility of the Raleigh Clown College by next fall.

GOP Repeal of Racial Justice Act Stalls

You will, of course, remember that the General Assembly, under Democratic control in 2009, passed the Racial Justice Act which allows an inmate facing the death penalty to file an appeal asking a judge to consider whether racial prejudice played a role in his or her sentence. If such evidence is compelling, the law gives state judges the discretion to commute sentences from death to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The last part of that is important because it's the part that was totally ignored by Jonathan Jordan and Dan Soucek when they ran against Cullie Tarleton and Steve Goss last year, smearing them both as the miscreants who wanted black rapists to move in next door to you. You remember those mailers, of course!

One of the solemn promises made by this new Republican majority in the General Assembly was the immediate repeal of the Racial Justice Act, since this bunch likes killing everything but fetuses, and the state's executioner wants work.

Yesterday the NC House passed the repeal 63-53 (not veto-proof, by any means), and every informed Clown College observer expected the Senate to quickly follow suit. But not so fast.

According to Under the Dome, "In a big surprise, Senate leaders said they will not take up the bill before adjournment."

"When we come back in May, I guess we will pick it up then," said Sen. Tom Apodaca, a Republican from Hendersonville. "We had our schedule for tonight, and that was not on it. I want to go to the mountains."

Hmmm. Apparently, those black rapists moving into all our neighborhoods weren't all that, after all.

The Big Gamble at the Raleigh Clown College

It's simple logic at work with the new Republican majority in the NC General Assembly: We can be as extreme as we please, because the flow of corporate cash will save our asses next year in the general election.

We can (and will) cripple public education, cripple environmental protections, cripple people's access to the ballot, and move our religio-corporatist agenda in hobbling women's rights to reproductive freedom and in singling out gays in the state's constitution for unequal treatment under the law ... because Art Pope & Friends put us here to do their bidding and they will return us again to our positions of power through the unleashing of their limitless cash on the muddle-headed masses who will believe any crazy thing if it's in writing. For example (from 2010), Cullie Tarleton and Steve Goss want to put a black rapist right next door to every last one of you God-fearing idiots.

Let's see what else is up in Raleigh with a General Assembly that Dan Soucek was bragging about on WATA this week -- bragging that stuff had passed far faster than at any time in history and certainly faster than his particular reading comprehension could keep up with, to know what was actually buried in all those new laws:

1. "House panel guts air pollution rules .... At the urging of some of the state's largest polluters, a committee in the Republican-controlled state House voted Tuesday to eliminate the state program that monitors and enforces clean air regulations." (N&O, 15 June 2011) That alone ought to be worth many thousands of $$ in Dan Soucek's and Jonathan Jordan's reelection coffers!

2. "Bill passage puts offshore drilling, 'fracking' one step closer .... Senate Bill 709, the Energy Jobs Act, does not explicitly allow either offshore drilling or hydraulic fracturing ('fracking'), but it represents the state’s first steps toward both." (WRAL, 14 June 2011) You think they're NOT taking us there? They're taking us there.

3. "NC lawmakers ease environmental laws for business .... Environmental advocates in North Carolina suffered setbacks Tuesday as Republican leaders rolled out a flurry of legislation sought by the state's business interests. Legislation unveiled in the House would reduce state regulation of toxic industrial chemicals like ammonia and sulfuric acid released into the air. A second bill in the Senate combines nearly two dozen changes to environmental laws, including a delayed cleanup of one of the main water supplies for Piedmont cities and broader access to taxpayer funds for underground fuel tank owners forced to clean up leaks." (Wilmington Star-News, 14 June 2011)

4. "North Carolina GOP ... Axes Planned Parenthood Funding .... Republican state representatives in North Carolina voted to override Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue's veto of the state budget Wednesday morning, ensuring that a provision to strip all federal and state money from Planned Parenthood will take effect on July 1 .... Planned Parenthood of North Carolina (PPNC), which has nine clinics across the state, provides affordable birth control, preventative health care and family planning services to over 25,000 men and women. Without the $434,000 a year it usually receives in state and federal funds, Planned Parenthood says it will now have to axe its teen pregnancy prevention and adolescent parenting programs and force its low-income patients to pay out of pocket." (Huffington Post, 15 June 2011)

This (and a whole host of other bad bilge that I won't pause to document) is only the warm-up to the main event ... redistricting of every U.S. Congressional seat and of every NC House and Senate seat so that the Republican majority can retain its power for generations. Laura Leslie has tweeted that county maps will be out this Friday, full maps July 1st, and the special session to pass the whole plan is scheduled to begin July 17.

We ain't seen nothing yet!

The King Snake

Finally! The North Carolina Independent and the Institute of Southern Studies have produced an exhaustive series of investigative pieces on kingpin Art Pope and his coils wrapped around the General Assembly in Raleigh.

I've managed to read only the one titled "The Art Pope empire: Media outlets, think tanks and election machines" by Chris Kromm. This is the piece that lays out the massive and relentless attack machine that smeared Sen. Steve Goss and Rep. Cullie Tarleton, though neither of them are mentioned in the article. But the exact same mail pieces that were used against Goss and Tarleton were used in dozens of other General Assembly races. This is the man pulling Dan Soucek's strings and Jonathan Jordan's guy-wires.

NOTE: Part of Art Pope's vision of the future includes voter suppression through his pet "voter photo ID" law.

Other articles in the suite of investigative pieces focus on other areas of the Art Pope empire:

Pope-funded groups and the dismantling of public education (more Charter schools and school vouchers, anyone?)

Pope Foundation failed to file tax returns on time (because the super-rich have different rules)

Pope-backed groups figure largely on N&O's op-ed page (The Echo Chamber)

Pope-backed climate cranks target North Carolina renewable energy law (among the things Art Pope and his minions HATE are solar energy and wind power)

Corporate Mischief

Some totals of outside spending in the NC House & Senate races have become available, and a couple of clear patterns emerge: all of it is connected in some way to low-end merchandiser Art Pope and most of it was used for purely negative attack ads:

Goss (D) vs. Soucek (R) (winner)

Americans for Prosperity $22,992, to support Soucek
Civitas Action $33,197.39, to tear down Goss
Real Jobs NC $110,132.38, to tear down Goss

Tarleton (D) vs. Jordan (R) (winner)

Americans for Prosperity $12,437.65, to support Jordan
Real Facts NC $28,549.15, to support Tarleton
Civitas Action $13,709.96, to tear down Tarleton
Real Jobs NC $51,733.11, to tear down Tarleton

Despair, Ashe County, Is All You'll Get

The implied criticism of Dan Soucek and Jonathan Jordan, newly elected Republican members of the General Assembly, is buried deep in the editorial, but it's there. Jefferson Post editor Lonnie Adamson gingerly points out the Soucek/Jordan campaign mantra of "tax cuts" as woefully inadequate for the crisis right now in the state of North Carolina.

Which has created an immediate crisis in the County of Ashe ... the threatened closing of Mt. Jefferson State Park.

While Sen. Steve Goss and Rep. Cullie Tarleton would have fought, and effectively, for the continued operation of the park, Soucek/Jordan offer little prospect of (1) giving a good goddamn about it or of (2) having any clout in Raleigh to head off disaster.

Lonnie Adamson:

The perceived answer to economic success themed in the recent election was tax cutting. The idea is that with lower taxes, businesses will invest, and hire and spend money to grow the economy.

Re-investing has not been the habit of businesses recently when they had a few extra dollars to spend. They have been more likely to sit on the reserves and see what the future holds.

I like to have a few extra dollars lying around as much as anyone, but you'll have a tough time convincing me that cutting immediate revenue sources -- taxes -- is the proper course of action when we are lacking at least $4 billion for the state budget already. In the coming reapportionment of property, we may well see a decline in county revenue sources also.

It seems more likely that tax cuts are going to leave people hurting if we take away more dollars from already hurting entities like schools and health departments.

Does it make sense to take away dollars from Mt. Jefferson State Park that brings thousands to Ashe County who buy things in our shops, eat in our restaurants, buy fuel in our service stations. Those attributes of Mt. Jefferson State Park make it -- in my limited understanding -- a revenue generator for the community.

'Bout Time

Andrew Whalen, executive director of the NC Democratic Party, is calling on fellow Dems to boycott Roses, Maxway, Super Dollar, Value Mart, and Super 10 Stores in North Carolina -- the cash cows that are fueling Art Pope's attempted take-over of state government (which has included -- natch! -- the wholesale trashing of two dedicated and decent local public servants, Steve Goss and Cullie Tarleton).

If you're offended by the lies and distortions, why give more money to the Father of those lies?

A map with the locations of all Mr. Pope's NC stores is here.

Wilkes County, yesterday.

Goss supporters greet the out-of-state bus tour of Americans for the Prosperous.

One sign reads: "Free Bus Ride - Next Stop: The End of Democracy."

The bright yellow sign reads: "Who Is Behind the Bus? Corporate Billionaire$ from out of state. Do you think they care about Wilkes County?"

Soucek Sez Some Ads Favoring Him Went "Over the Line"

Read Dan Soucek's deer-in-the-headlights defense of the nastiness and the money expended by his millionaire friends down-state to help him defeat Sen. Steve Goss ... in the Wilkes Journal-Patriot.

Tom Fetzer, chair of the NC GOP, already apologized to another member of the General Assembly who was attacked by the same untrue and racist mailing about the black rapist moving in next door to granny ... a mailing which Soucek deems to be "subject to interpretation," which is about as weak a defense of the indefensible as we've seen since the head-stomping Rand Paul supporter demanded that the woman whose head he stomped apologize to him for the attack.

The kind of people the Tea (Republican) Party and their millionaire puppet-masters want to put into office!

ASU Candidate Forum

At the Appalachian State University candidate forum last night, it was standing-room-only for head-to-heads between Cullie Tarleton/Jonathan Jordan and Steve Goss/Dan Soucek. When his turn came, congressional candidate Billy Kennedy had the forum to himself because Virginia Foxx didn't show up.

Observers agreed that the Goss/Soucek match-up was the main event.

On the topic of the war in Afghanistan, which evolved into a discussion on support for the troops, Soucek said: "I think it's quite clear which party has supported the soldiers and which has protested." That comment drew lots of boos and outrage from the audience. At Goss's next opportunity for reply, he said: "I think we probably ought to pray instead of holding a forum."

On state budgeting and priorities, Soucek said education is a top priority, but then when asked where he'd cut the state budget, he suggested eliminating the Golden Leaf Foundation, which he said would save $570 million. Which we reckon would make the $150,000 grant from the Golden Leaf Foundation for laptops for Watauga High School students just more needless pork.

We've also got to stop things like that tea pot museum, he said. "I would suggest you talk to your own folks about the tea pot museum," Goss said. "I didn't have anything to do with that." The proposed Tea Pot Museum was, of course, Virginia Foxx's big ear-mark.

Best Goss line: "We've got to stop throwing rocks, folks. Any moron can throw rocks and identify problems all day long."

Defacement, Wilkes County style.

Steve Goss Fighting Back

One-minute cable TV ad.

The Bidding War to Buy the NC General Assembly

Art Pope is upping his bid to take over the NC legislative body. From Chris Fitzsimon:

The Insider is reporting this morning that Civitas Action, the explicitly political arm of the Pope Civitas Institute, has raised $264,889 for electoral activities according to filings with the State Board of Elections.

The group has already sent out mailers in the districts of House Speaker Joe Hackney and Senate President Pro Tem Marc Basnight criticizing the legislative leaders and plans more mailers in coming weeks.

You can guess where the money came from, $190,000 from Variety Wholesalers -- that's Art Pope's company, and the rest from Americans for Prosperity, where Pope is a director and major donor.

The Insider points out that Pope is also a major donor to the Civitas Institute itself, which is a bit of an understatement. The group's 2009 tax return reports $1.635 million in income for the year, with $1.620 million in contributions from the Pope Foundation.

Pope is also a major donor and board member of Real Jobs NC, a 527 group running misleading ads against Democrats, including one criticizing them for voting for a $25 million fishing pier that every Republican also supported.

The Insider quotes Civitas Executive Director Francis De Luca saying that he didn't think the election activities of Civitas Action would hurt the credibility of the Civitas Institute.

That's true. It simply confirms what we already knew.

Though Sen. Steve Goss and Rep. Cullie Tarleton aren't mentioned, they are major targets of the Art Pope drive-by money-mobile.