Put the Emphasis on Fat

Speaker of the new NC Clown College Thom Tillis has given his government-payroll lawyer a 27% raise, bringing his per annum haul up to $140,000. He also gave his government-payroll Chief of Staff a 25% raise, bringing his per annum haul up to $150,000. He also gave what the News&Observer called "fat raises" to five more of his 14-person staff.

Is Thom Tillis growing the government?

Or just basking in the aroma of his own righteousness?

Those much fatter staffers, being paid by thee and me, are chuckling in their Martini glasses while Cumberland County Schools, supposedly represented by one of the Five Goobers -- William Brisson -- has announced it's laying off 377 people, including 130 teachers and 177 teacher assistants.

Mr. Brisson still stoopidly claims that no teaching jobs will be lost under the Republican budget, just administrators. He also claims that nobody on the Republican side offered to keep a Bladen County prison open as a "goodie" to get his vote.

With a grasp on reality like that, and with that towering commitment to truthiness, Mr. Brisson is certainly a sterling representative of the people in Cumberland and Bladen counties!

Hattip to "Monday numbers" at The Progressive Pulse.

All Eyes Now on the Five Goobers

Gov. Beverly Perdue has vetoed the Republican budget. Laura Leslie's reporting:

Perdue said the state budget "is more than a roadmap. It’s a reflection of our values. It’s a reflection of what we believe in."

"For the first time, NC has a legislature that’s turning its back on our schools, our children, our longstanding investments in education."

Perdue said the cuts in the GOP's "ideologically driven" $19.7 billion dollar plan would harm classrooms, turn kids away from preschools, and close college programs, causing "generational damage" to the state's schools.

And she stressed that cuts in other areas would be damaging, too, from emergency response to law enforcement to the courts - "not just education, but our communities, our environment, our public safety system, and our ability to care for those that need us the most.” ...

All eyes now turn to the five House Democrats who voted for the Republican budget when it first passed. They're pictured above, and perhaps their own constituents know them as sterling gentlemen. We know them only as ... well, Republican chumps, not to put too fine a point on it.

They are, left to right:

William D. Brisson, who represents Cumberland and Bladen counties
James W. Crawford, Granville & Nash counties
Dewey L. Hill, Brunswick & Columbus counties
Bill Owens, Camden, Currituck, Pasquotank, & Tyrrell counties
Timothy L. Spear, Chowan, Dare, Hyde, & Washington counties

Portrait of a Goober

NC House member Bill Owens of Elizabeth City, one of the Five Goobers from Demsville that the Republicans are counting on to override Gov. Perdue's veto of their budget, has already announced that he's probably not going to run for a 10th term in the NC House, which means in all likelihood that he's turning a deaf ear to his own political base.

So the editorial in the Elizabeth City Daily Advance probably won't prey on his conscience, but it should. (Hattip: Progressive Pulse)

Owens got concessions in the budget for his district -- those goodies that get traded every day in our legislative bodies -- but The Daily Advance ain't swayed by money for the Museum of the Albemarle and money for the Mid-Currituck Bridge across Currituck Sound and an exemption from tolls imposed on other ferries for the Knotts Island and Ocracoke ferries. The editorialist actually sees the bigger picture -- and the huge damage -- in the rest of the Republican budget:

...these concessions [mentioned above] seem like high prices to pay for a budget that, among other things, is still projected to eliminate 13,000 education positions, including 9,300 in the public schools; lose the state $1.2 billion in federal matching funds for Medicaid funding; slash funding for the Clean Water Management Trust Fund from $100 million annually to $11.3 million; and eliminate the North Carolina Health and Wellness Trust Fund, a program that fights obesity and that’s put a significant dent in the number of teen smokers in North Carolina....

It's an open debate whether Rep. Bill Owens really thinks he's doing the right thing, strapping on that feedbag with the Republicans, or whether he's just very bedazzled with his own power as a horse-trader.

Senator Hagan Sided with the Bankers

On a major showdown over what fees the big banks can charge every time you swipe your debit card for a purchase, our own Democratic Senator Kay Hagan danced with who bought/brought her, the Big Banks.

And go figure this: Sen. Dick Burr voted with the other side.

According to The Hill, "The vote abruptly ended the biggest K Street battle of 2011, a debate that pitted banks and credit unions against a coalition of retailers and consumer-rights groups."

Birds of a feather and all that. Hagan worked for ten years as a vice president of NCNB, now known as Bank of America. Her loyalties seem to lean more toward that privileged class than toward consumers, which makes her not (alas) unique among Democrats in the U.S. Senate.

Sen. Dick Burr? We dunno, but we can thank him for his vote.

Old White Men Know Best

Because the extremists in the NC Republican Party (but we repeat ourselves) do not trust women to make their own decisions, the new Republican majority in the NC House, joined by a few fearful Ds, passed a new law to require that women seeking abortions be force-fed some anti-abortion "information" and then wait 24 hours before having the procedure.

Without a doubt, this piece of government intrusion into the private lives of women will also pass the dunderheaded NC Senate, where Dan Soucek can't wait to tell women what to do.

Then it will be up to Beverly Perdue.

Thom Tillis, Bullying Teachers

Editorial in this a.m.'s News & Observer calls Republican Speaker of the NC House a bully for his recent comments about our state's public school teachers, both when he didn't know the microphone was on and when he did.

"...does Tillis think teachers choose their calling in order to get rich?" asks the editorialist. "No one is that big a fool."

No, but someone is that big a jerk, leading a platoon of jerks, and taking us all down the road to turning North Carolina into Mississippi.

Photo ID Law Headed for House Passage Tomorrow

Tonight the Republicans on the NC House Appropriations Committee, believing themselves to be in Georgia and voting on strictly partisan lines, passed a photo ID law very similar to the one passed in Atlanta, which promised to disenfranchise black voters and those troublesome 18-year-olds in college.

Tonight the Deep South came to Raleigh.

In the fall of 2012, these guys intend to launch a thousand years of Clown Rule, based on limiting ballot access.

Dear God, Make Them Stop

This evening, on straight party lines, the Republicans in the NC Senate voted to end straight-party voting in North Carolina.

They can't keep their cotton-picking hands off our right to vote.

Only explanation for this particular clownish act is this fact: in the 2010 election, Democrats cast slightly more straight-party ballots (51.24% of the total) than did Republicans (47.98%).

Surely the Clown College is bound to run into the law of unintended consequences sooner or later!

Final Show-Down on the Watauga County Budget

The Republican majority's budget passed 3-2 at this a.m.'s regular meeting of the Watauga County Commission, but not without last-ditch amendments offered by Democratic commissioners Jim Deal and Tim Futrelle. Both men expressed their deep disappointment at the way the majority are treating education in the county and the way that the important work of many non-profits was zeroed out, or severely reduced, in next year's county budget.

Mr. Deal, in particular, expressed unhappiness with the message being sent to the hundreds of volunteers who work to provide various county safety-nets through non-profit orgs -- all for a measly savings of $52,000. That isn't much in the overall county budget but means a great deal to the work of those agencies. Board Chair Nathan Miller responded with a succinct expression of his "vision": "My philosophy is to fund what government has to fund and nothing else. Non-profits need to go find their money elsewhere."

Mr. Deal addressed that difference in philosophy head-on, especially as regards the importance of education: "The economic vitality of our county is tied to our educated workforce." Deal and Futrelle tried without success to amend the budget to add another $595,000 to the school budget, to make up the expected shortfall from the state of NC.