New Year's With Thomas Mills, Year of Our Lord 2025

 

"For better or worse, campaigns are no longer restricted to the year of the election and they aren’t made in the context of a media environment. They are about creating the media environment itself."

--Thomas Mills, "The two party mess"

Thomas Mills

PoliticsNC founder Thomas Mills has deep institutional knowledge of the workings of both the national and the North Carolina Democratic parties. Plus he's a wise head, a strategist with foxhole experience, so I tend to pay attention to his misgivings and his proposed remedies.

"Our two party system is struggling. We may have outgrown it as a country, but changing it is more difficult than reforming it. Democrats are operating under control of a political elite that knows how government and governing work, but excludes or alienates too many people from the process. Republicans have become a party of people who either want to plunder the system or burn it down. Their elites have surrendered power to the mob. One of the parties needs to fix itself."

Ouch. If "knowing how government and governing work" equals "educated"-- in that the very fact of education itself puts you in a higher class of society that knows stuff -- and if your experience with "educated elites" has revealed any level of social snobbery, then, yes, Democratic political elites are to blame and maybe the whole Democratic enterprise is doomed. Unless we can visit again our Christian humility.

Without any hesitation or doubt, I can accept that I'm not only a "political elite" but also an educated political elite, and I certainly admit that our local demographic of high educational attainment makes a huge difference in how we run campaigns. Also agreed -- that highly educated people sometimes don't know how to talk to other people, that we've lost touch with roots, that we're grown way too addicted to the same money that corrupts everyone eventually -- dependence on the big-rollers. Going gussied up in the circles where elites go to ingratiate themselves is not a good look for a party that claims allegiance to "the people." It's a behavioral problem. And it's a fact. 

Mills wants Democrats to relearn honesty (which also implies authenticity):

"Democrats should have surrogates going on Joe Rogan’s show to talk about the H-1B visa dispute, making sure people understand the contempt that Trump’s billionaire buddies have for working Americans. They should recruit people from outside politics to deliver the messages on social media and podcasts. And they need to deploy Pete Buttigieg. Hell, give him his own podcast. The legacy media is no longer reaching enough Americans to shape elections and Democrats should quit relying on it to inform the public.

I'm too old and worn-out now to be in that vanguard. Intelligence and education are two separate and different things. Some of the smartest I've known have been relatively un- or under-educated, and some of the dumbest people on the planet are "academics." I'd recommend that educated progressives stop making fun of grammatical flubs, stop defining and denigrating their supposed enemies as yahoos, stop acting like snobs and know-it-alls and try to reclaim the humility we learned about in Sunday School.

Mills's Substack column, PoliticsNC, is well worth subscribing to.

Thomas Mills Dismantles Senator Thom Tillis

 

From the title -- "Some Hot Tillis-on-Robinson Action" -- to the last paragraph, which is bitter, the bitter end, this piece of writing makes a master class in Swiftian sarcasm, that form of irony that tears flesh, or seeks to. Political commentator and long-time Democratic operative Thomas Mills takes down Sen. Thom Tillis as a hypocrite in epaulets, a self-described "SERIOUS PERSON" who theatrically sez he upholds Truth and the American Way, but who turns out substantial as cardboard. That "SERIOUS PERSON" mainly shows up, says Mills, "when Republicans are about to do something bad or stupid. He puffs up, issues muscular declarations, and promptly folds like a cheap tent." 

Mills has the receipts on those "folds," times when the senator announced a policy principal he would not breach and then breached it. Like when he wrote an editorial opposing Trump's declaration of emergency at the border -- the better to divert Federal funds to his wall -- and then promptly repented, after a dose of fury from MAGA loyalists who'll crucify anybody who offends Trump. Tillis had to swallow a lot more than his tongue to take it all back. He's abandoned his stated principles on immigration compromise more than once. It's the Tillis straddle: feint to the left with condemnation of a clown like Mark Robinson and then to the right with continued obeisance to El Hefe: 

Tillis doubles down on his support for Donald Trump who is now focused on fleecing his supporters by selling commemorative coins and $100,000 Trump watches. That’s what you call Republican coalition building. The grifter wing of the party is taking advantage of the rube wing and everybody is happy. That is some serious, principled shit.

 Sen. Tillis, according to Mills, is pure show but with muddled intentions: 

While other [Republican] candidates are trying to avoid talking about Nude Africa, Tillis is delivering vague ultimatums that sound tough, just like his op-ed and principled support of the immigration bill he voted against. Just follow his lead. Let reporters and others know about your grave concerns and hint at skepticism about Robinson’s denials.

With "SERIOUS PERSON" (always ALL CAPS) Mills puts a verbal duncecap on Sen. Tillis, mocking his occasional and sudden eruptions of principle even while sticking with a party "full of tinfoil hats, snake oil salesmen, and rubes." 

Sen. Tillis seeks reporters' ears to sound-bite strategically like a maverick in a party that despises mavericks. He suffered a censure by the NCGOP, yet he's become something of a bridge-builder behind the scenes in the Senate. Somehow, he persists, even after his privates hit the top rail of the fence he's been straddling, maybe largely because Trump hasn't sicced his dogs on him. (Remember what Trump did to independent John McCain and to Liz Cheney and to several others.)

Did I say the end of Mills's piece is bitter? He makes a point of speaking directly to Mark Robinson about Sen. Tillis's very recent ultimatum that Robinson either disproves "the CNN lies" or steps down: 

Hang in there, Mark. Don’t let the haters and the RINOs get you down .... Just grit it out, because even if you lose, you can run against Thom Tillis in 2026.

You know what I think? I think Thom Tillis would love to be a Democrat and actually hates being a Republican, especially right now when the Party-under-Trump appears to be sitting in an airless booth pleasuring itself with peculiar fantasies.

Do Democrats Have a Pulse? Maybe

 

I had just finished reading -- and agreeing with -- Thomas Mills' editorial attacking the Democrats' insecurity about making a big issue out of Trump's 34 felonies -- Democrats look "weak, uncertain, and incompetent," Mills wrote, while Republicans are unified in attacking the justice system itself -- when I also noticed that Joe Biden may also have read Thomas, because Biden went after Trump yesterday as a "convicted felon" at a campaign event: “For the first time in American history a former president that is a convicted felon is now seeking the office of the presidency,” Biden said at a fundraiser in Greenwich, Connecticut. “But as disturbing as that is, more damaging is the all-out assault Donald Trump is making on the American system of justice,” he continued, going on to call Trump “unhinged.”

What set Thomas Mills off was the memory of how John Kerry went into a mute and defensive crouch when he was "swift-boated" in 2004 and that Democrats seems to be similarly unsure how to play Trump's convictions in 2024:

[Kerry's] lead pollsters told us [Mills was working on the Kerry campaign team at the time] that the ads were not affecting Kerry’s numbers and that his war record was still his strongest single attribute. They believed that the controversy would die down and that we would not hear about criticism of Kerry’s heroics going down the stretch in the period from Labor Day to Election Day. They would not respond with attacks on Bush and would address the ad’s criticism mainly through the press.

I thought then, and believe now, that it was the most naive response to an attack I had seen up to that point in my political career.

We know now, after decades of frustrating experience, that Democrats are by nature naive, by nature hesitant, by effing nature always worried what someone -- anyone -- is going to think of them if they do anything to fight back, so I took it as a good sign that Dark Brandon is willing to go nose-to-nose with Trump's fat, felon face.

I Haven't Got Words

 

Brandon Presley

I've been glued to various internet feeds and news sites, catching up on everything that happened last night in several states, including in North Carolina, where it was municipal leadership on the line, and in Virginia, where Democrats flipped back their House and held the Senate and caused Republican "Great-White-Hope" Glenn Youngkin some major agita, and in the whole wide world where Moms 4 Liberty apparently lost bigly. I'm only sorry about Mississippi, where Democrat Brandon Presley impressed me, tearing relentlessly into Republican Gov. Tate Reeves over the expansion of Medicaid and the price of groceries. If Presley had won, or come closer (the margin was about 5 points), he might have proven a political point that Democrats with fight in them do best in the reddest of spots.

I'm glad to give Thomas Mills the floor on what happened and how we might feel about it:

Democrats won up and down the ballot and across the country. Last night should be a cautionary tale for Republicans, but the party is still beholden to a man who lives in a fantasy world of stolen elections and imaginary fortunes. Democrats have messages that work and an organization that’s functioning. Ignore the narratives of Democrats in disarray. Republicans are the ones in the wilderness.

Sisyphus Was a Bad Democrat (In Which I Sass Thomas Mills)

 

Most all troubles come from having standards.

--Thomas Berger, Little Big Man

We Democrats are deciduous. We fade, lose heart, become torpid, languish, then the sap rises again and we are passionate.

--Garrison Keillor, Homegrown Democrat

Democrats are always characterized by their gene for unrequited conciliation.

--Jeffrey Toobin, Too Close To Call

Jerry Meek, 2007

Democratic blogger and political consultant Thomas Mills dropped a turd in the punchbowl yesterday -- "The Low Stakes of State Party Chair" -- in which he argues that even if the reformist insurgency of Anderson Clayton wins the election for party chair today, it won't make any difference. Oh, it'll produce a momentary high for the young and the restless. But then, deflation. "The party chair only has as much power as the establishment, both here and in Washington, allows," Mills concludes. "The chair will either cooperate and become an arm of that establishment and have money, or they will buck the establishment and have none."

I pay attention to Thomas Mills, even when he makes me wince. He's a righteous Democrat, gives off the aura of a scrappy street-fighter, but generally speaking, he's moderate to the point of caution. Mills helped recruit Dan McCready to run for Congress in 2017 and worked as a paid consultant on that 2018 campaign. McCready wrote the definitive book on caution. He's not currently in Congress.

Mills remembers the last insurgency that took over the state party differently from me, the administration of Jerry Meek, but Mills was in a better position to observe and knew the insiders better than I, so I don't discount his recitation of facts: 

While he was popular with the party base, Meek never established much of a working relationship with Easley. Not much really changed within party headquarters. The executive director, who oversees the day-to-day operation of the party, stayed the same and kept his working relationship with the governor, which in turn kept the funds necessary to keep the party operational. The state house and state senate caucuses continued to operate as if nothing had happened. Meek was able to tamp down the restlessness among the party faithful, but he couldn’t change the fundamental reality of politics: it takes money, and lots of it.

One correction: Our "restlessness" with the state party in Watauga was more than "tamped down" during those Jerry Meek years. From our perspective, we had a much more open road, paved with cooperation from Raleigh, leading directly to the total sweep of president, governor, and US Senator in 2008 because we had tested and perfected an intense, data-driven field operation (Meek himself came to one of our canvasses to learn). I give Jerry Meek credit for turning several county parties around between 2004 and 2008, because he was deliberately pursuing a "hundred-county strategy" inspired by Howard Dean's "fifty-state strategy." 

Yet Mills doesn't think his impact amounted to much. Maybe he's right. But I'm pretty dug in with my lived experience.

Mills's downer post isn't just about seeing political history differently. It's also about declaring that the current enthusiasm for change in the party is doomed from the get-go, that "not much is going to change regardless of who is state party chair" because of the stranglehold of a self-interested Establishment. The money grip is iron -- eternal, ineluctable, and insidious. 

Much of the dissatisfaction of the party is far beyond anybody’s control. Those who believe Democrats need a year-round organizing operation have never said how they plan to fund it. The state Democratic Party is dependent on the support of the governor or from some organizational component of the national party. There’s no independent funding base for the North Carolina Democratic Party itself.

[Current party chair Bobbie] Richardson is getting blamed for not implementing a robust statewide field program during the 2022 cycle, but that’s not her fault. All of those operations are funded by national money and have been for decades. In 2022, those folks largely took a pass on North Carolina. Field programs are expensive and take millions of dollars to implement in a state the size of North Carolina.

Money, of course, but also whatcha gonna do with money once you get it?

If I believed that no amount of reform, even reform mixed with a widespread willingness to spend sweat equity, was bound to fail, even as it was being born, how the hell could I go on as a party activist? Hell, how could I go on paying the bills as a simple functioning member of a community held together by a social contract?

Yeah, I'm a fucking idealist.

For Those on a High Protein Diet: More Red Meat from Bladen County

Rev. Mark Harris, the putative winner
in the NC-9

Thomas Mills lays out some detail we had not seen before about absentee ballot manipulation down in the NC-9. The hinky results of absentee voting goes back to Republican primaries, in both 2016 and in 2018, and the same character, McCrae Dowless, was involved in all of it:

In the 2016 Republican primary that Mark Harris lost narrowly to incumbent Robert Pittenger, a third candidate, Todd Johnson, won the mail-in absentee vote in Bladen County with 221 of 226 votes cast. Johnson’s “consultant” in Bladen County was a convicted felon named McCrae Dowless. This year, Harris’ team hired Dowless and got an even more lopsided result in the primary in May, defeating Pittenger with 437 to 17 in mail-in absentee ballots. It’s very hard to believe Harris didn’t know what was happening even if he’s maintaining plausible deniability and the Red Dome guys are willing to go to jail for him.

The Red Dome guys.  The Red Dome Group lists Charlotte as a primary base of operations, with officers in Wilmington, in Montgomery, Ala., and in Washington, D.C. Hilariously, their motto (displayed in blood red, no less): "We Know What It Takes To Win!" Among the other "accomplishments" they're willing to tout on their website ... Dale Folwell's win as NC Treasurer in 2016 and the congressional career of Mark Meadows in the NC-11.

According to Mills, Reverend Mark Harris paid Red Dome $400,000 "for field services," which is a hell of a lot of field services and a nice wad of "walking around money" for people like McCrae Dowless.

Who Is This Man, and Why Is He So Happy?

This is Harry Smith, the next chair of the University of North Carolina Board of Governors, and doesn't he have an eye for the main chance? Yes, the teachers and scholars and students in the UNC system have found themselves a standard-bearer for corruption and double-dealing. Copying here from Thomas Mills, in whose debt we all are for blowing the whistle on this joker:

Under the leadership and example of Donald Trump, the GOP has openly become a party of grifters, using positions of power and influence to benefit themselves and their cronies. The latest example is over at the UNC Board of Governors. The next chair has been trying to profit off his position with little shame or regret.

Harry Smith, who is running unopposed for Chair of the Board of Governors, tried to push a sweetheart deal that would have given East Carolina University more beds and made a bunch of money for him and his business partners. He wanted to buy a foreclosed apartment complex adjacent to university property and then rent the units to ECU. He said he would split the profits with university. The only catch is that to keep the place full, ECU would require sophomores to live in Smith’s newly acquire apartment complex.

Smith and his business partners, The Preiss Company, own apartment complexes including some near other universities. Smith is currently part of a legal battle right now in which he is accused by a North Carolina Central University employee of pushing the school to do business with Preiss. Of course he denies any wrong doing.

Smith’s actions are part of a pattern that’s emerged since Republicans took over the state. House Speaker Tim Moore has gotten rich since he won a seat in the North Carolina House of Representatives. He drives a Maserati. Last month, reporters uncovered a deal where he bought a troubled property with an old chicken plant on it for $85,000 and sold it three years later with no improvements for more than $500,000. That’s a windfall and it’s not likely to have happened if Moore were still just an attorney in Kings Mountain.

In Washington, Republicans in Congress have decided to look the other way while Trump and his family cash in on him being president. They fill their hotel in Washington, DC, with guests looking for favors. His resort down in Florida, Mar-a-Lago is a destination for GOP bigwigs and others seeking favor from the president. Nobody in the GOP is going to criticize the Trumps or hold them accountable in any way.

The GOP has become a party of grifters who worship at the altar of Ayn Rand and supply-side economics. Profits are all that matter and if you can turn your stint in public service into windfall profits, good on you. Accountability and transparency seem quaint. When Democrats did these things, they went to jail. When Republicans do them, the GOP base cheers.

The Shape of Water: Cheer-Leading the 2018 Blue Wave

Thomas Mills, one of my favorite political operatives, wrote this soon after the close of candidate filing in North Carolina on Wednesday, as it became clear that for the first time in many, many years every single NC House and Senate district had a Democratic competitor -- 170 in total:

And if a wave hits, all bets are off. Challengers in seats that should be safe will find themselves in office. The best defense against a wave is a strong campaign. The best chance to catch a wave is a strong campaign. Candidates should be raising money and organizing.

And the people said Amen.

If you've visited WataugaWatch even as a drive-by since the first of January, you know that we've been obsessed with all the new Democratic talent announcing their campaigns. Many of them have been raising money and getting themselves and their supporters organized, because they have at least the basic campaign infrastructure -- a web presence.

Many others don't yet, but I'm counting on them to show some life, some enthusiasm for the struggle ahead based on some support from their homies, some published biographies and platforms and statements of purpose and values, which will bring them volunteers (in the best of all possible worlds) and some campaign cash to mount websites and Facebook advertising, and a Twitter account (with a super-volunteer to run it) to get out their message and their whereabouts when they're going to speak to the Greater Black Lagoon Garden Club, or wherever.

Get some on-line fundraising apparatus, people! I've given to several new candidates already and might give to more, if I could only find an easy way to do it.

The best observation in Thomas Mills' blog post is this:

Activists tend to make poor candidates. They think their role is to convince people to come to their point of view when, really, their job is to prove that they would best represent the views of their potential constituents. As I tell my candidates, “It’s not about you. It’s not about your opponent. It’s about the voters.”

 Don't try to tell the voters everything you think. Ask them what they think.

Folly That Knoweth Not Tomorrow

Phil Berger and Tim Moore

Thomas Mills has written a good piece on what the NCGOP is currently undertaking in the North Carolina General Assembly (GA) -- another case of "overreach," of which the GA has a long and unhappy history -- unhappy for citizens subjected to unconstitutional measures but also unhappy for the NCGOP, because those measures attrack the disapproval of various judges. Sanctions, economic harm, loss of prestige -- all follow.

"Overreach." Historically, that same habit used to be called just plain "folly."

folly, noun -- criminally or tragically foolish actions or conduct, often repeated despite known negative consequences and the presence of a less foolish alternative.

Thomas Mills: Back in 2013, instead of passing a sensible voter I.D. law that would have protected people’s right to vote while adding scrutiny, the NCGOP passed a sweeping bill that clamped down on access to voting while deliberately targeting African-American voters. The whole bill got tossed by the courts.

Folly is known for its inability to stop repeating a critical error. For the boys in Raleigh, it's always overreach, followed by a good slapping down by the third branch of government.

Mills: They could have easily drawn redistricting maps that would have given them healthy majorities in the legislature and Congress while including a few more competitive districts. Instead, they drew some of the most gerrymandered maps in the country. [Tossed out by the courts. Twice.]

With House Bill 2, they should have let Charlotte handle its own affairs, since the GOP at one time was the party of limited government. Once they called the special session, though, they loaded up the bill with clearly discriminatory measures that affected every county and city in the state. [Not yet tossed by the courts, but challenged.]

With the current special session, the GOP legislature is trying to restrict Cooper’s ability to govern while grabbing as much power as possible. [Will be in the courts as soon as it's passed. Roy Cooper has vowed to sue. And well he should!]

 What causes such folly?

Short answer: An excess of power. That's historical fact, actually. Historically, when a ruler has had too much power -- like, say, one of those popes around the time of Michelangelo -- he believes he can do anything, damn the consequences! But consequences are usually unforeseen and rarely prepared for, and they always come.

Too much power is like too large a sail on too light a boat.

The folly of the corrupt popes of Michelangelo's age brought on the Protestant Reformation. In France, the follies of Louis XIV provoked the French Revolution and the dissolution of the monarchy. The follies of Lyndon Johnson forced him out of running for reelection. You might say the follies of "Four" Eggers led to the recent overthrow of the Watauga County Commission.

There are many such examples.

The NCGOP's current legislative folly is an unprecedented and cynical power grab intended to kneecap the duly elected governor, Roy Cooper. A coup d'etat, it's being called. Will the NCGOP pay for this folly? How?

We hear that the scene in Raleigh at the General Assembly -- hundreds of citizens of all ages expressing their protests and beginning to be arrested in acts of civil disobedience -- has actually rattled at least some Republicans. The level of anger is singeing the paint. Individual members of the GA are feeling a vibe like they've never felt before.

Many of them will presumably be up for reelection in 2017 in the court-mandated special elections in NC House and Senate seats that were ruled unconstitutionally gerrymandered for racial disadvantage. At least 28 House and Senate seats have to be redrawn, meaning abutting districts will also have to be redrawn, and the dominoes will fall from there. May be twice that many seats up for election in 2017. All the seats will be up for election again immediately in 2018.

The stripping of powers from the new governor, the favors done the defeated governor, the monkeying with the courts and the state's boards of elections -- all of them -- all of this overreach is being seen for what it is. The people I know are angrier than I've ever seen them. I'm angry. I want to picket someone's house.

Historically, comeuppance always catches up with the fool eventually.

Sign of the Times?

Rep. Justin Burr

Today, PoliticsNC blogger Thomas Mills highlights the interesting NC House race in Dist. 67 between incumbent thumb-in-the-eye Republican Justin Burr and his baby-faced Democratic opponent Carson Snyder.

Both Justin Burr and now departed House Majority Leader Mike Hager were consistent agitators against the Republican leadership in the House. Hager rather mysteriously resigned his seat this month, and no doubt House Republican Speaker Tim Moore would just as soon see Justin Burr forcibly retired too.

All is not well in NC Republicanland. Tea Party conservatives hate the party's leadership, and the voters may very well hate them all. The highly publicized Dallas Woodhouse memo to Republican board of elections members to "screw the Democrats, ever which way you can," and the bizarre actions taken by the Watauga County Board of Elections and by the boards of elections in a third of NC's 100 counties -- still to be resolved by the State Board of Elections -- none of this is helping Republican bids for reelection.

Who wants these creeps back in power?

Trump Towers

Our favorite North Carolina political blogger, Thomas Mills -- who's also a candidate for Congress from the 8th Congressional District -- is using the "T word" -- tsunami -- to suggest what's about to happen to the Republican Party via Donald Trump in this Year Of Our Lord 2016.

As a general rule of thumb, tsunamis are not very noticeable when they're far out at sea:

Tsunamis, they say, can be deceptive. Out in the deep ocean, travelling at 400 to 500 mph, they may appear on the surface to be nothing more than just a large swell -- like the wake of a large ship. While sensors can estimate the wave's size and power, it's true destructive force doesn't become visible until it reaches shallower water and all that energy is compressed and forced towards the surface. Then it hits, at which point the last place you want to be is on the beach.

But this year, the political tsunami that Donald Trump has perhaps caused for the GOP seems very visible to most political observers, despite the fact that it still has months to reach land. The only people who don't seem to notice are the Trump rally-goers, like the ones recently recorded in Greensboro, or Donald Trump himself.

Long may they turn a blind eye! But if I were them, I think I'd be stacking my deck chairs and looking for high ground.

What Is Margaret Spellings Up To?

Thomas Mills connects some first dots in the Margaret Spellings era for the University of North Carolina system. Ain't looking good.

"It seems our university system is about to become yet another experiment for the conservatives who took over the state."

NC GOP Dysfunction Debuts in National News

Tea Party insurgent Hasan Harnett gets elected Chair of the North Carolina Republican Party, in a big surprise upset, and about 30 minutes later the executive director of the party resigns ("the last adult in the room," according to Thomas Mills), followed closely by the interim executive director, so now word has leaked that the Republican National Committee might run its money through a county party, instead of the state party, because Hasan Harnett and his "team" don't know what they're doing.

It's bad mathematics: general ineptitude + a looming gubernatorial/presidential/senatorial year. Panic sets in.

This unlovely situation is pretty much where the NC Dems were in late 2013, when Sen. Kay Hagan abandoned the dysfunctional party apparatus and ran her state-wide campaign through the Wake County Democratic Party.

Stay calm, NC Republicans. You'll eventually recover from your tea infection, though it's going to take maybe a spoonful of comeuppance. Make that a tablespoon.

The Arrogance of Their Power

L to R: Speaker of the NC House Tim Moore, Sen. Tom Apodaca,
Sen. Bob Rucho, Sen. Phil Berger

Thomas Mills on the arrogance of these boys: 

"They want taxpayers to pick up the tab for going to a conference of their choosing, even though ALEC is little more than a political organization that pushes right-wing policy ideas. They should pay a political price for such abuse, but with heavily gerrymandered districts, they don’t think they’ll be held accountable.

"Legislative Republicans have gotten very comfortable with power. Their veto proof majorities allow them to pass legislation at will and their gerrymandered district protect them from being held accountable for bad behavior–like wasting taxpayer money. With few restraints, they’ve quickly become arrogant. Corruption is surely not far behind."

We Perceive That We've Been Screwed

Kevin Siers, Charlotte Observer

The Republican overlords in the North Carolina General Assembly promised that everyone's taxes were going down when they passed their flat-tax revision. We were in a crowd of 25-30 people this week, and someone thought to poll everyone in the room: Did your taxes go down?

There was a resounding "NO!" from a majority of people in that room. Some said their state taxes had remained about even with last year, and a few weren't sure.

The overwhelming opinion was that the Republicans in the General Assembly had not delivered on their promise. Many tax deductions were gone, along with tax credits for child care, disability, property taxes on farm machinery, as well as deductions for college savings plans. If you own a yacht, however, or a private jet, you've still got your tax credit for those "necessaries," though no one in that room owned a yacht or a private jet.

The "Carolina Comeback" that Governor Squishy used to tout has been a mirage for most taxpayers. Unless you're making $900,000 a year, and up, you didn't see much in the way of economic benefit. In the meantime, the state's budget has fallen into an ever deepening black hole of deficit, and the decline in basic services threaten to turn North Carolina into a third-world society, or worse, Mississippi.

A recent PPP survey commissioned by the NC Justice Center’s Budget & Tax Center found that 60 percent of North Carolinians, including half of Republicans, say their taxes went up in the last year. Only 8 percent believe they went down.

In a very sensible blog post, Thomas Mills suggests that Republicans -- particularly our woebegone governor, who isn't gerrymandered into a safe seat -- are going to pay the electoral price next year for promising the moon and delivering a swamp.

Tectonic Update: North Carolina & Kansas, Together at Last

The exceedingly bright Thomas Mills writes today about how Kansas and North Carolina became "laboratories" for far-right, ALEC-sponsored experiments in dismantling the social compact, moving as much of government as possible to private contractors, including public education, while unleashing the polluters and the pillagers and shifting more of the tax burden to the middle class while coddling the rich.

Just a sample:

...Both states are seeing a public backlash.

Just like North Carolina, Gov. Sam Brownback and the Republican legislature slashed taxes on the wealthiest while raising them on the poor, promising that the changes would spur economic growth. It didn’t happen in either state. Kansas has seen a hole in its budget so large that its bond rating was downgraded. North Carolina already has a 10% drop in revenue and we are still a couple of years behind Kansas.

In Kansas, Republican Brownback won by double digits in 2010. Today, he’s trailing his Democratic opponent, Rep. Paul Davis. More than 100 Republican elected and former elected officials endorsed Davis.

If Pat McCrory were running this year, he would likely face similar numbers. But he’s not. Instead, all of our legislature is up for re-election. And the numbers aren’t far off of Kansas. In districts that should be safe for Republicans, they are trailing. Thom Tillis is losing his race to Kay Hagan right now largely because ofhis record as speaker of the house....

"Man in a Hurry"

Intensely interesting and informative summary of Thom Tillis's meteoric rise from Cornelius city councillor to Speaker of the NC House and now candidate for U.S. Senate, with a lot of insightful reminders of the tensions that have existed between the basically "moderate Republican" Tillis (whatever that may mean now) and the much more extremely conservative leader of the Republican NC Senate, Phil Berger, who's really running things in Raleigh.

Tillis comes off as a kind of Sammy Glick, an overly ambitious "climber" who's learned to mainly keep the clamminess of his ambition out of sight. A man afraid to buck the "raging conservatives" of his own party. A politician whose upward mobility is far more important than principle.

Kudos to Thomas Mills!

Don't You Love the Smell of Republican Panic in the Morning?

It's becoming clear that the real reason that Art Pope resigned as state budget director is that his Republican troops in the General Assembly, so expensively elected in 2010 to take North Carolina down the smelly rabbit hole we're now buried in, are about to get some comeuppance from the voting public. Pope is the grand strategist Daddy Warbucks of the Right-Wing Takeover, and apparently the knuckleheads need him now more than ever. He quit state government in order to save it, at least his twisted version of it.

Thomas Mills details the approaching tsunami through recent polling of individual races for General Assembly seats, where Republican incumbents -- even in gerrymandered districts thought to be safe for Republicans -- are experiencing dissatisfaction and underwater polling numbers. Mills says that their "fix" for their own dismal lack of popularity is to begin early the usual deluge of negative mail, mainly saying Obamacare as often as possible and trying to tie their Democratic challengers to the Washington of Barack.

Ain't working. Their "favorability" rankings are actually worse than Obama's in state polling.

We've braced ourselves to see the nastiness that incumbent Republican House member Jonathan Jordan has in store for challenger Sue Counts. Mills doesn't mention how Jordan is polling, but we happen to know that it ain't good news for him.

Republicans Will Attempt to Bribe NC Teachers

Thomas Mills, one smart dude whose analysis I tend to trust, is saying that Republicans in the North Carolina General Assembly have already won the PR battle over teacher pay: they're bragging, pretty much in unison now, that they're going to raise it, though the small print underlying their promise is a good deal more problematic.

Can North Carolina's teachers be bribed into silence and submission this easily?

Teachers were in the Forward Together/Not One Step Back march in Raleigh yesterday. We detected fire in their eyes, and we're not altogether sure that they're going to now lay down because Republicans are using the term "pay raise."

We know that Republicans like a public that will saddle a gift horse without looking in its mouth, but we also know that North Carolina's hard-working teachers can tell a hawk from a handsaw and may not be so easily bought off.