I've Stopped Going to Tractor Supply

 

I was pleased when a brand new Tractor Supply store got built about a mile from my garden, which saved me a much longer trip to the garden center at the local Lowe's, and I spent a lot of money there on everything from a new manure fork to dog food. If I wanted to mingle with rural folks, Sunday just after noon was the time to visit, because lots of church-goers in their Sunday clothes made a stop there on their way home from church.

During the height of COVID, you never saw anyone in masks, including the cashiers, so I tended to stand out as maybe the only liberal in the store. I got a few side-eyes, but at my age the stinkeye doesn't much faze me.

The company had a good reputation nationally, especially for its diversity programs that encouraged voter registration and PRIDE festivals. Bloomberg praised it for promoting gender equality, while Newsweek called it one of the best U.S. companies for diversity.

But the current reign of MAGA hatefulness was bound to notice. So a conservative podcaster with a big following in Tennessee, where Tractor Supply is headquartered, posted a denunciation of the company because it supports queers. An employee had messaged the podcaster the inside poop that Tractor Supply was way too woke for his taste. “Start buying what you can from other places until Tractor Supply makes REAL changes,” the podcaster wrote on X on June 6. Other MAGA soldiers joined the boycott, and the company’s share price fell by 5 percent in the past month, according to the Financial Times.

So Tractor Supply caved to the bigots, issued a public letter recanting all its diversity efforts, and why on earth would I want to give any more money to a company with that little courage of conviction?

Chief Justice Paul Newby's Flag Merely Confirms What We Already Knew About Him

Paul Newby, Chief Justice of the NC Supreme Court, waited just hours (it seems) after the 2022 elections gave him his conservative majority to reverse the Court's previous ruling that gerrymandering of legislative districts violates the equal rights of citizens. Newby's newspeak: It's perfectly all right for the Republican majority in the General Assembly to stack the deck however it damn well pleases. Short version: Newby is an enemy of democracy.

So it came as no great surprise that the same Christian nationalist/MAGA escutcheon, the "Appeal to Heaven” or Pine Tree flag, that got Samuel Alito into hot water, was flying over Newby's beach property in Cartaret County (a house technically owned by Newby's wife, so there's another "my wife did it" excuse in the making) as recently as May 23rd.

Picture and story, NewsAndObserver, June 27

Newby told the N&O in a statement that he was given the flag as a gift before Jan. 6, 2021, and flies it during national holidays such as Memorial Day. 

“Until recently, we had no idea of the association of the ‘An Appeal to Heaven’ flag with anything other than its actual history — a history that reminds us to pray for our nation,” he said. “At no point did we intend the display of the flag to be a political statement, only a statement of our faith.”

Uh-huh. So Newby -- wholly innocent of political intent -- runs a flag up his pole, the sign-of-the-times meaning of which is totally mysterious to him. May 23rd, just incidentally, is the day after the New York Times ran its story on Alito's flag, which became the news of the nation.

And please forget any enforcement of judicial ethics in Newby's case. The Judicial Standards Commission is totally under Newby's thumb. He appoints six of the 14 members himself, and another eight are appointed by Berger/Moore in the General Assembly. 

Just Another Day in the Clown Car

 

Rep. George Cleveland,
cheerleading his H 1071 last Thursday

Let's put election deniers in charge of purging North Carolina's voter rolls! Yeah, baby!

Can't imagine why it's taken this long to think of the next brilliant solution to the greatest problem vexing North Carolina -- too many people voting.

NC House member George Cleveland (R-Onslow) just last Thursday introduced H 1071, a bill that would force all county boards of elections to establish a new system for investigating and correcting data provided by “election integrity” organizations to assist in maintenance of the state’s voter registration lists.

In case you haven't been paying attention, "election integrity" is code among election deniers for using idiotic claims of massive voter fraud to harass as many progressive voters as possible, particularly those with skin pigmentation slightly darker than George Cleveland's. This is merely another attempt to take power away from our State Board of Elections and give the right to vote to partisan manipulators who can, on any given day, find hoards of people who need to be eliminated (and not just from voter rolls).

In a House discussion of Cleveland's proposed legislation (reported on by Clayton Henkel),

“How is a voter integrity group defined?” asked [Democrat] Rep. Ashton Wheeler Clemmons.

“Actually, it’s two or three people who have years of experience in data collection and data usage. There’s two that are prominent here in North Carolina,” Cleveland responded....

“So my question is can you name a group?” asked [Democrat] Rep. Allison Dahle.

“I can name two,” said Cleveland. “I don’t know what the gentleman’s real name is. It’s Totes Legit. He has consistently over the past several years sent voter list problems to the state board. And there’s a Ms. Snow out in Morganton.”

“I didn’t hear the names,” Dahle asked him to repeat himself.

“Totes Legit. That’s what he calls himself. I don’t know what the gentleman’s name is.”

Seriously? Reporter Henkel went looking for Ms. Snow and "Totes Legit" (who sounds totally legit):

In Georgia, anonymous claims of voter fraud from someone going by the name ‘Totes Legit’ were dismissed last October. It’s unclear if that is the same person Cleveland was referencing.

The second person Cleveland mentioned, Carol Snow of the NC Audit Force filed a complaint with the elections board claiming inadequate maintenance of the computerized registered voter list put the state out of compliance with the 2002 federal voting law.

Snow presented examples of what appeared to be duplicate voter registrations. In one example, a son with the same name as his father was mistakenly checked in as his father. The father and son both received ballots and each voted once.

As NC Newline reported in April, the Board of Elections rejected Snow’s complaint about duplicate voter registrations

What is funnier? That this walking joke from Onslow County has introduced his bright new idea for interfering with the work of election officials or that H 1071 by last Friday had been fast-tracked through the House Rules Committee and three subsequent floor votes (66-45) and now heads to the Senate. Though it didn't get there in time for action, as the Senate adjourned sine die. Thank God. But this will come back next term. You can bet on it.

Religion in Schools

 

By Jack Yordy, guest-posting:

She who would be Superintendent
of all NC Schools -- Michele Morrow

Religious schooling is familiar to me. As a graduate of Christ The King (CTK) Catholic High School in Huntersville, North Carolina, religion wasn’t just in my school. It was the central idea of my schooling. The core tenet of CTK’s teaching philosophy was "faith through reason." 

Teachers and students alike had difficulty grappling with that ideological framework. In my first year at CTK, we learned about the Big Bang and the theory of evolution in history class. The next class of the day was Theology, where our teacher did not just call those ideas into question but claimed that they were unequivocally false. Between claims about homosexuals infiltrating the Church, he also liked to discuss the difference between Christianity and Catholicism, highlighting with vigor the "heresies" of other Christian doctrines and biblical interpretations, and of course, his belief that god put dinosaurs on earth to "test our faith." 

One day in my Junior year, after I had come out and was known to be gay by both my peers and professors, my history teacher decided to spend an entire class session talking about homosexuality. He asked us, “Well, why would gays want to get married? What’s the point other than getting government benefits?” and claimed that gay people knew they weren’t truly married if they weren’t married in the church. He finished this diatribe with a point directed at me and my mother, who was also the biology teacher at the school, saying in front of my classmates, “If you let your son be homosexual, it’s the same as letting him jump off a bridge." One of my classmates brought this to the administration, who decided that my history teacher was speaking within Catholic doctrine and therefore was not in the wrong. 

On Thursday, June 27th, the Oklahoma State Superintendent mandated that the Bible be taught in Oklahoma public schools. As a person who went to a Catholic school, these are some of the questions that I believe must be asked when we’re thinking about teaching religious doctrine in schools: 

• Which doctrines and interpretations of the Bible are we going to teach?

• Will we allow or encourage teachers to contradict scientific claims that are universally accepted but are in conflict with the Bible?

• Does it mean vilifying queer students and students of other religious and cultural backgrounds who don’t fit into a teacher’s interpretation of the Bible? 

• If a student disagrees with a teacher’s Biblical interpretation, will their grades be affected? 

  
  

These are not rhetorical questions. When voters go to vote in North Carolina’s state superintendent election this year, they should be asking these questions because the Republican candidate Michele Morrow is not thinking of them at all. She will likely try to implement the Oklahoma state policy in tandem with other Republican states regardless of the chaos in classrooms that will follow. Voters in this election must consider if they want to live in a state where these questions need to be answered and where their tax dollars are spent, through private school vouchers ("Opportunity Scholarships"), to confuse and punish students without the same religious views as their teachers.

Of Course Trump Lied (Like a Cheap Walmart Rug), But It Doesn't Matter

 

Many of my fellow Democrats took the lemon that was Thursday night and have been busily making lemonade, occasionally spiked with a good dash of grenadine and a jigger of Tequila. "Look at all the lies Trump told!" they shout, giving ample evidence and seeking any comfort they can find in these stormy seas. The best fact-checker in the business, Daniel Dale, did a whole segment about the lies on CNN, or if you'd prefer to read his analysis at length, go here.

None of it actually matters, especially in that part of the electorate that I work most closely with, college-age skeptics who are more than likely registered Unaffiliated and who generally distrust both political parties, but who are children of the age in that style matters more than substance. In fact, style is substance. One person looked alive and in control. The other didn't. That's awfully hard to overcome among people who spend their lives watching rather than reading (though Joe's performance the next day in Raleigh may have helped, but how many saw that speech compared to the millions who tuned in to the debate?)

I love that man. I memorably got to sit in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room in 1981 and watch Judiciary Chair Joe Biden grill Reagan's nominee Sandra Day O'Connor for the Supreme Court. With grace and good humor, he spared with her, and I've remembered him ever since as a good man who upholds the best values of our history. The morning after that terrible debate, I posted down-column a cri de coeur begging for some alternative to Joe, but I know that's not going to happen. We've been dealt our hand, and we have to play it as bravely as we can.

But we can't kid ourselves that the debate didn't hurt Joe's chances in North Carolina, especially among the unaffiliated and more especially the young unaffiliated. Which means for us personally as campaign operatives that all our door-knocking persuasion shifts to the down-ballot -- the governor's race, all the rest of the Council of State races, judge races, legislative seats, and local candidates -- a universe certainly rife with MAGA extremism at every level and a fiery determination for revenge and retribution.

Give Us an Open Democratic Convention!

 

Well that was awful. A catastrophe. You know what I'm talking about. Trump is a crisis for our nation, and now Joe Biden is a crisis for the Democratic Party.

Joe needs to step aside. Let us have an open Democratic presidential convention in August. A loud, angry, smelly political convention that nominates someone capable of beating Donald Trump. Let the power-brokers do their broking. Let the pressure groups apply their pressure. Churn that cream into butter. Someone will emerge that we can all get behind.

Gavin Newsom, who's shown himself fully capable of going straight for Trump's esophagus. Pete Buttigieg, who's supernaturally smart and can turn Republican ignorance back on itself. Stacey Abrams. Jamie Raskin, who knows a poltroon when he sees one. Hakeem Jeffries. Joe Neguse. Hell, Beto O'Rourke.

I'm sure Kamala Harris would put herself forward, and maybe she could rally everyone. Someone is going to have to rally everyone, and I'll be good with whoever that is. (I don't think Joe Manchin would dare.)

Give us a genuine open convention, and let's see if we can turn this ship around.

The Corruption Destroying the Town of Summerfield

 

A tweet from NC House member Pricey Harrison (Guilford Co.) last night caught my eye, because it reveals so much about the pay-to-play corruption of the North Carolina General Assembly under its current Republican super-majority:

#ncga votes to strip #Summerfield of a significant portion of its town at the behest of a developer who happens to be a large campaign donor. The largest deannexation in #NC history. Coming to a community near you soon. The best Legislature money can buy. #ncpol

The bill is H 909, "Various Local Provisions."  "Local" bills are convenient cover for the big hand of Raleigh meddling in local municipalities, usually for the sake and profit of special interests who want things the local city won't otherwise give them. The Summerfield deannexation is contained in Section 10 of H 909 and is shocking in its thoroughness of removing a huge portion of the town from control of the town.

Summerfield may ring a bell, if you followed last year's attempt by Senate boss Phil Berger to get new gambling casinos in the state. Turns out H 909 is the second attempt to deannex much of Summerfield, as it was part of Berger's original plan to help out the casino gambling industry. I wrote this last September:

Look what else Berger's got up to because of that casino:

So Wednesday (this week), Phil Berger gets the Senate to vote to de-annex almost 1,000 acres of the little town of Summerfield in Guilford County, pop. 11,000, a bedroom community suburb of Greensboro that has stringent zoning laws about development. Berger takes the land away from Summerfield and gives it to Guilford County. "The de-annexation bill was requested by developer David Couch, who wants to build apartments and other housing" on at least some of those 1,000 acres. The track happens to lie 10 miles from the casino site. Who wouldn't notice it was going to be high-density housing for the hundreds of low-wage workers a gambling casino will need -- the dealers, floor-walkers, servers, security, and maintenance workers. Exactly the kind of development that an upscale suburban bedroom community like Summerfield would reject -- and, yes, it's a class thing. (NOTE: Berger has constantly pumped up the idea of the casino as a great job-creator for local people. But it's sobering to know that the "Average Casino Dealer Salary" in North Carolina -- Eastern Band Cherokee casino and the Catawba Two Kings casino -- currently: $27,429 per annum, or $13.79 an hour.)

Pricey Harrison doesn't say so, but David Couch was "the large campaign donor" she speaks of. He gave some $11,000 to Phil Berger's campaign.

Whatever else you call it, it's government corruption in plain sight.

Local news coverage by WGHP, wherein Mr. Berger figures prominently:

Darren Staley Is a Democratic Hero

Way back at the beginning of last December, I wrote about Democrat Darren Staley, carrying the torch for working people in NC Senate Dist. 36 (Wilkes, Alexander, Yadkin, and Surry, about as red as it gets), and I praised his common roots and his struggle to overcome a hard life (interview with Darren Staley). He did overcome difficult circumstances with native smarts and determination. Wilkes Community College offered a belated education -- he had dropped out of high school to take factory work -- and now Staley has a master's degree and works full-time for a small business that provides services to people with disabilities. He sits on several committees that advocate for people across the behavioral health spectrum. But he's very much a part of the fabric of his Senate district: "I am literally just a guy in a mobile home typing this from my kitchen table."

Senate District 36 looks hopeless for a Democrat because it's rated R+26, but Staley has proven a doughty contender, raising enough small-dollar donations to make a showing on a stage where Democrats usually don't even show up. Daley points at what recently happened in a special election in a deep-red Ohio Congressional district that was rated R+30. The Democrat in the race, a first-time candidate with no experience, running against a veteran Republican office-holder, came within 10 points of beating the Republican in a race he should have lost by 30 points. Staley commented on Facebook:

Now, a special election in Ohio is not a general election in North Carolina. But I think it says something about where voters are. They may not change their political affiliation or suddenly decide to vote the other side this cycle up and down the ballot, but they are paying attention.

They are realizing that a totally "safe seat" for one party or the other means that the person in that seat doesn't really have to pay attention to their issues. That the person in that seat is best served by only agreeing with the most extreme side of their party so that they don't get a primary challenge.

People are fed up with that.

I think Darren Staley is right: People are fed up with the heavy hand of partisan politics that's used to suppress, to hold down, to silence, to maintain a status quo of one-sided power and control that benefits no one but the powerful.

Last night Staley published a thread on Twitter that's worth quoting at some length:

I'm a unique candidate, but my story is not unique. So many people in my district have been impacted by some part of my story. Single mothers. Single fathers. Factory workers. Laid off factory workers. People who live in starter homes or trailers. People who have no health insurance. People with disabilities. People without access to quality education or quality healthcare. People who pay their power bill two days before the cutoff notice. People with student loan debt. People who depend on Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and SNAP benefits. People who can't afford child care.

I have also, more recently, seen the small business side too. I understand that we need regulation, but it can't be one-size-fits-all. I know about the small business bubble ... when you are successful enough that people like what you are selling, but you can't yet afford additional staff to grow. You can't afford an in-house IT person. You can't afford a good health care plan for your staff. Anytime you give an across the board raise to existing employees, your comp premiums increase because it is based solely on payroll. But your corporate competitors don't have that problem. 

...I spend a lot of time talking to the Republicans in this district. All of them who have been impacted by one aspect of my story or another. A lot of them don't vote often. But in the past two days, I have had a half dozen Republicans in the district reach out to me about my Facebook posts on gerrymandering. They don't like it once they see the facts. It strikes against their basic sense of fairness. Same thing when I talk about vouchers and public education funding....

My whole intention in making this run was to bring people out of their bubble. To show people in this district, regardless of party, you DO have a choice. You CAN change this bullshit. You MUST send a message. NO party owns a district. NO vote should be taken for granted....

I've had a hard life, some by circumstance and some of my own making. I want to make the struggles we all have a little bit easier. That message is resonating, because it is true. It is the only reason I am doing it. And if ya'll didn't know that you wouldn't even be reading this....

I have donated to the Darren Staley campaign, and so can you, here. We need him, and we need more Democratic candidates like him.

The Letter the Watauga School Board Sent Opposing Sen. Hise's Bill To Gerrymander School Board Districts

 

At the Senate Rules Committee hearing Tuesday morning on S 912, Ralph Hise's scheme for changing both the Watauga County Commission and the Watauga County Board of Education -- gerrymandered into geographic districts that Hise came up with in the dead of night -- met with strong and unanimous pushback from current Watauga School Board members. The letter below was read into the record, and for the record, the Republican committee members heard but ignored it, voting immediately and without any discussion to approve the Hise bill and send it on to the Senate floor. The bill is not scheduled to go into effect for the School Board until the elections of 2026, but without successful legal action, the schools we know and love will be upended for the whim of a power-hungry state senator.

Dear Senator Rabon and members of the Rules and Operations Committee of the Senate,

The Watauga County Board of Education met this evening (June 17). During the "Board comments" section of our meeting each of the five members of our Board shared their thoughts about Senate Bill 912.

Each member of our Board, for various reasons, expressed opposition to the bill. Even though each of us on the Watauga County Board of Education was elected through a nonpartisan process, we thought it would be helpful to the committee to know that of our 5 members the political affiliations are equally distributed with 2 republicans, 2 democrats, and 1 independent We hope this demonstrates to the committee that our reactions and comments are not politically motivated. They are motivated by the belief that this bill has the potential to weaken one of the consistently top rated school systems in the state.

We feel it is important for you to know that none of us were told this bill was being considered nor were we asked if it was needed (or if it would be helpful in any way). Furthermore, during our discussion of this matter, each of us shared that we had not had anyone in our county speak to any of us indicating they felt there was a need to change anything about the way School Board members have been elected in Watauga.

One of our Board members reached out to the director of our county's Elections and also to the Chair of the Board of Elections and asked the following questions;

Have voters registered any complaints with your office about the election process for the Board of Education? Both the director and the Chair replied, no.

Has Sen. Hise voiced any complaints with your office about the election process for the Board of Education? Both the director and the Chair replied, no. One of our major concerns is that we believe this bill has been submitted with very little input from the citizens of our county. Embedded in this concern is our belief that very few citizens of our county even know this bill has been proposed.

Another concern we have is around the issue of moving to district elections and eliminating at-large elections. Each of us have varying concerns about this. Each member expressed the concern that this would create the potential to limit the number of people who would run for Board of Education that are passionate about public education and motivated to act in the best interest of all our county's schools. Conversely, we feel it would increase the number of people who are coerced into running just because a district needs a school board candidate.

We also are concerned that by electing school board members from districts instead of at large it creates the potential for divisiveness and self-interest instead of cohesiveness and "best for the whole school system" thinking. For the committee's consideration it may be helpful to know that our Board of Education has historically enjoyed having representation from a variety of areas of our county. (This information can be provided to the committee should it like to know the breakdown of representation from the various areas of our county.) We can also provide information (if requested) that shows how moving to district representation could generate potential Board of Education members that would not be acceptable to the majority of the citizens or fairly represent the current distribution of schools in Watauga County.

It is appropriate to add that the Board would like to express gratitude to Senator Hise for including the provision that our Board of Education elections remain non-partisan.

To conclude, in summarizing the many thoughts of the current Watauga County Board of Education members, we have consensus in our belief this bill should not be approved because of the aforementioned concerns and the following additional statements.

The way our citizens elect the members of the Board of Education is not broken and doesn't need fixing.

We are consistently one of the top performing school systems in North Carolina and we are very concerned this bill has the potential to weaken our school system.

Mr Chairman, should you or any of the committee wish to have further information, or dialogue, you may reach out to me or any of our other members. Their names and email can be found on our school system's website at https://www.wataugaschools.org/.

Thank you in advance for your attention to this message and to our concerns as the officials elected by the citizens of Watauga County to represent our excellent school system.

Sincerely and gratefully,

Gary L. Childers

Watauga County Board of Education, Chair