How To Increase Unemployment and Alienate Your Friends

People down in the trenches of North Carolina towns and cities are beginning to notice what's afoot in Raleigh with this new radical Republican majority in charge. Unemployment has already gone up under these people -- remember that they passed the state budget two years ago, over Gov. Perdue's veto, and they're about to pass another one.

By attacking the ability of North Carolina cities and towns to thrive, they're attacking employment itself in this state, the economic engines that make everything go.

So you can't blame Blowing Rock town council member Jim Steele, a Republican, who wonders out loud, "...Why are we messing with this [snatching city assets in Raleigh, Charlotte, and Asheville and making economic survival for the cities as difficult as possible] when we've got in our state so many other things that need to get accomplished?"

Good question.

Here's a pretty thorough over-view article by Jim Morrill on the entire 2013 war on North Carolina's cities.

Republican Bastards Go Home for Easter

I love the "Urban Dictionary" for defining words accurately. To wit:

bastard: noun, an uncaring and destructive person; you covered dog shit with a leaf and left it outside your brothers' front door because you thought it was funny, you bastard. You killed Kenny, you bastard.

The Republicans currently populating the General Assembly in Raleigh are bastards. As Jim Jenkins said Wednesday, the legislative Republicans "are more interested in destruction than in building.” That's what bastards do.

Bastards don't want you to vote. Bastards have only one good reason to limit the Early Voting period. Bastards are hypocrites about Sunday voting. One of the biggest bastards, Rep. Edgar Starnes of nearby Caldwell County, said, "I think Sundays just should be – some things you just shouldn't do on Sundays, so I am just opposed to voting on Sunday." What a bastard!

Are we going to allow the bastards to keep us down? That is the only question.

The bastards have all gone home now for Easter, because as Rep. Starnes suggested, Sundays are for smug bastards to gather in their churches and thank God they are not as other men (and women) are.

Raleigh GOP: First, We'll Make Voting Harder

No, not the voter photo ID law. That hasn't surfaced yet. House Bill 451 is a whole 'nother can of worms that will crawl out all over North Carolinians' previous rights to ballot access, among other outcomes.

H451 will...

1. Eliminate the public financing program for judges.

2. Make all judicial elections partisan rather than nonpartisan.

3. Repeal Same Day Registration.

4. Slice a week off Early Voting.

5. Ban Sunday voting during Early Voting, which has been popular among the state's black church congregations.

6. Eliminate straight-party voting.

7. Make mail-in absentee voting easier, which is far more susceptible to fraud than the mythical voter impersonation ruse.

Hell gets hotter by the minute.

Revenge Drama

Taking instruction from the scorched-earth behavior of Republicans in the North Carolina General Assembly, Watauga County Commission Chair Nathan Miller launches his own local version of "government by revenge."

Boone raises the bulk of sales tax revenues in the county but will under Mr. Miller's scheme get $2 million less of that money back. That's a knife in the back. Or the chest.

Why? Because Boone has done what no municipality can ever do and survive ... inconvenienced the Templetons. And according to the very interesting comment thread under that article, the Town of Boone hasn't even done that, certainly not like the Templetons have been claiming (whining).

Meanwhile, Mr. Miller has been wheeling & dealing with the other towns in the county for kickbacks, the "hybrid" solution, Mr. Miller called it, which "could possibly be executed with the other municipalities exhibiting a surplus so Watauga County doesn't end up in the red" -- kickbacks, say I. Such a scheme smells like corruption, not to mention the various conflicts of interest among the several lawyers involved.

This will make for a pretty good  lawsuit or for a subsequent news media investigation, whichever comes first.

Do "Cut-and-Run" Republicans Have a Clue?

Yesterday the full North Carolina Senate tore to shreds the lease that had already been negotiated, drafted, and signed for the City of Raleigh to take control of the former Dorothea Dix insane asylum site for a public park. The Senate Republicans carried that vote without the help of two Republican senators from Wake County who "cut and ran" from their party's position: Senators Chad Barefoot and Neal Hunt.

Gary Pearce wrote some wise analysis of those renegades this morning:

Barefoot and Hunt might look safe politically. They have good districts. They have a big money advantage. 

But, to keep winning, they have to win moderate Independents. The kind of voters who don’t like partisanship. The kind of voters who might see the legislature as a bunch of rural Tea Party extremists who hate cities in general and Raleigh in particular. The kind of voters who see Republicans nationally as a gang of vengeful, angry old white men. 

Barefoot and Hunt have to worry that a future opponent might figure out that there are a lot of well-heeled people in Raleigh who are mad enough to give big money to a Democrat – or to a super-PAC helping Democrats. 

They also have to worry that, in 2014, President Obama’s OFA might pump a lot of money into North Carolina. Or that, in 2016, Hillary Clinton might set off a Democratic tidal wave among moderate Independent women in their districts. 

Hunt and Barefoot have no control over a lot of that. They could control how they voted. So they voted with Raleigh and against their fellow Republicans.

Dan Soucek and the Charter School Gravy Train

In May of 2012, Dan Soucek accepted an all-expenses paid "educational" trip to Florida from a big Charter School industry honcho, and lo and behold, Soucek introduces a bill in the North Carolina General Assembly to flatten impediments in this state to further privatizing education.

Earlier this morning, the same man who paid for that Florida trip for Mr. Soucek and who is also an executive with the North Carolina Charter School Association, was up testifying before the Senate Education Committee on Mr. Soucek's bill, and who woulda guessed? He agrees that oversight of Charter Schools should be removed entirely from the State Board of Education, which otherwise oversees all public education in the state.

Falling dominoes, folks. Do you see where this is headed?

The dissolution of public education in this state is intimately entwined in Mr. Soucek's push to deregulate charter schools.

Also generated at the hearing this morning in the Senate Education Committee, this tweet: "Sponsor of charter de-reg bill admits that segregation is unavoidable and okay with him." We haven't discovered yet if that "sponsor" was Soucek or one of his co-sponsors. And does it, finally, even matter? We know exactly where Mr. Soucek wants to take this state's education system.

FOOTNOTE
WRAL coverage of the hearing this morning.

NC GOP, Messin' with Sasquatch

What, Me Worry?

The appetite among the new Republican majority in the NC General Assembly to grab the assets of our state's cities and to generally micro-manage municipalities from Raleigh may negatively impact bond ratings which would increase the costs of borrowing money which would be a hindrance to every town's ability to direct its future and every town's taxpayers' bottomline.

If the NC GOP can't build up, they sure as hell can tear it down!

Jobs? Yeah, this is going to help immensely!

North Carolina, Red in Tooth and Claw?

NC Sen. Thom Goolsby Ghoulsby from New Hanover County looks at the 152 people on the state's Death Row and sees fresh meat. "Damnit," sez he, "we haven't executed one of those sonz-a-bitches since 2006, and I need diversion. I need it now!"

So Mr. Ghoulsby's bill to restart executions in North Carolina is moving in the General Assembly today, aided by the same bloody-minded world view that wants to see the unemployed grovel, the uninsured poor die of their infections, the state's well water risk toxic infection, ignorance bloom, and education shrivel on the vine.

Yeah, We're in Good Shape

Hattip: DBS.