Dan Forest Needs a Staff

First off, who the hell is Dan Forest?

He's our newly installed NC Lieutenant Governor and someone's son who's famous in Republican circles. (That's one of his campaign pitches to the left.)

He made a show of announcing his new staff, including a "director of operations" and a "director of constituent services" (featuring a recent graduate of ASU who's just completely brilliant in Republican circles, we hear) and (natch!) a "chief of staff."

As Gary Pearce sez, quoting an unnamed Raleigh source, “Just goes to show – it’s easy to talk about reducing the size of government until it’s your turn to build a taxpayer-supported empire.”

That same unnamed critic of politico empire-building had a bit more to say:

“Why does he need a chief of staff? And why on earth does he need a ‘director of operations’? To operate what? The copier? The office microwave? 

“And why are we paying for him to have a ‘director of constituent services’? Does he have constituents who are not represented by the governor or someone in the legislature? 

“The lite gov in this state has a single function – to preside over the Senate. He bangs the gavel and does what the leadership tells him, and he votes to break ties. Who needs a staff to manage this? Does he really need a trooper to drive him around? Who wants to harm him? Who even knows who he is? 

“Democrat Walter Dalton also had a needlessly large staff when he was lt. governor, so we thought a Republican would embrace the notion of smaller government and have a little office near the Senate chamber and an assistant to answer his phone in case it ever rings.

A Dunce in Charge of NC's Environment

Pat McCrory's appointment to head the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) is one John Skvaria, who in an interview with WRAL suggested that oil is a renewable resource and expressed skepticism about climate change.

Yep, Industrial Polluters, the door is open to you in the Tarheel State.

Foxx Votes No on Relief for Sandy Hurricane Victims

Well, at least the woman (...) is consistent in her refusals to help Americans devastated by natural disasters. Once it was Katrina aid. Today it was Sandy. She voted no, one of 67 mostly Republican members to turn their backs on the citizens of New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut.

Joining her were the three newest North Carolina Republican members of the U.S. House, Mark Meadows (NC-11), Richard Hudson (NC-8), and George Holding (NC-13).

Wonder what they'll be saying, and how they'll be voting, when the North Carolina coast is wiped out by a hurricane.

CORRECTION
All 67 of those voting against Sandy aid were Republicans.

Tony Tata To Lead DOT = A Favor for The Pope

So Pat McCrory appoints the former Superintendent of Wake County Schools, the controversial Tony Tata,  as his Secretary of Transportation, and everybody goes "Say whaaa?" Does that make any sense? Tony Tata got fired as Superintendent of Wake County Schools for botching school bus management, among other things, and compared to the man he's succeeding, Gene Conti, he's woefully under-qualified for this job.

This a.m., a News&Observer editorial gives an explanation for this puzzling appointment: Art Pope wanted it:

The DOT, long riddled with political patronage problems under Democratic governors, was straightened out by the departing secretary Gene Conti, who had experience in the state department and in the federal Department of Transportation before taking the job. Tata’s lack of experience is quite a contrast, and raises suspicions that his appointment is a political statement by McCrory’s budget guru and adviser Art Pope, the Raleigh businessman who contributed heavily to the GOP majority in the General Assembly. Prior to that, Pope helped win a temporary Republican majority on the school board. That majority hired Tata in 2010 despite his scant qualifications as an educator.

We're in for a lot of this sort of thing as long as Pat McCrory plays Assistant Governor to Art Pope.

Republicans in General Assembly Slapped for Violating the Constitution

The new Republican majority in the NC General Assembly took unprecedented action in 2011 to punish the North Carolina Association of Educators (NCAE) by disallowing payroll deductions for dues. Gov. Perdue vetoed that bill. In another unprecedented action (a post-midnight vote) just exactly a year ago, the General Assembly Republicans, with the help of two turn-coat Democrats, over-rode the governor's veto.

That law was quickly enjoined by a restraining order just days after the veto over-ride, and it has now been ruled unconstitutional by the same judge. In the ruling issued yesterday, the judge said the dues-deduction ban "constitutes retaliatory viewpoint discrimination" against NCAE, which violates the group's free speech rights.

If you think for a moment that the full Republican regime we'll have in place in Raleigh after tomorrow won't use its power to punish (or attempt to punish) its ideological enemies, no matter how many judges slap them down for violating the constitution, you are too naive for this earth.

Next stop: voter suppression.

Lies, Assault Weapons, and Public Education in Forsyth County

It passeth understanding.

But the leading Republican contender for appointment to the Republican Board of Education in Forsyth, an appointment to be made by the Republican County Commission, sure as hell got himself off the top of the list as soon as people started asking questions about his Uzis and other toys of that ilk and how he got them.

The Alternate Reality of Grover Norquist

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Lake Geneva recently discovered the long-sought atomic particle, the Higgs boson, which is theorized to allow matter to achieve mass, and the operators of the LHC still hope to find other hidden elements of the universe, including additional dimensions of space.

One of those extra dimensions appears to reside in or near the brain of No-Tax Czar Grover Norquist, who has decided that the best antidote for John Boehner's collapse and the votes of 85 Republicans for the fiscal cliff deal is to deny that anything like a tax increase actually happened, and if it did happen, Republicans had nothing to do with it.

His butter-will-NOT-melt-in-my-mouth denial to Andrea Mitchell may go down as one of the great political fails of the modern era.

A Public-Private Partnership We Could Do Without

The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement of course freaked out the banks. But now we're learning that it also freaked out our surveillance-prone government, which formed its own apparent conspiracy with the corporate world to hobble, or cripple or outright eliminate, OWS.

Naomi Wolf summarizes the beans spilled in FBI documents obtained through Freedom of Information requests:

The documents, released after long delay in the week between Christmas and New Year, show a nationwide meta-plot unfolding in city after city in an Orwellian world: six American universities are sites where campus police funneled information about students involved with OWS to the FBI, with the administrations' knowledge (p51); banks sat down with FBI officials to pool information about OWS protesters harvested by private security; plans to crush Occupy events, planned for a month down the road, were made by the FBI – and offered to the representatives of the same organizations that the protests would target; and even threats of the assassination of OWS leaders by sniper fire – by whom? Where? – now remain redacted and undisclosed to those American citizens in danger, contrary to standard FBI practice to inform the person concerned when there is a threat against a political leader (p61).

It's like the election of 2008 really meant very little, so far as the domestic spying abuses of the Bush administration are concerned.

Bad Night in Mugstomp-on-the-Potomac

Both Virginia Foxx (R-5th District) and Brad Miller (D-13th District) voted against the Senate's "fiscal cliff" legislation last night. I agree with Foxx and Miller: that "fix" should not have passed.

House Republicans fractured, badly, and John Boehner's speakership appears to be on the line. Foxx didn't vote with Boehner and with her recent kissy-face partner, Paul Ryan, who amazingly supported the Senate deal. She voted against, following the path of that super ambitious snake Eric Cantor, and that other ambitious snake Kevin McCarthy, both of whom are clearly angling to push Boehner off his mountain. "Foxx and Cantor, sitting in a tree..."

Boehner reportedly told Sen. Harry Reid to "Go fuck yourself!" ... twice. No report yet on how many of Boehner's own Republican conference suggested he do something similar, after he informed them that the fiscal cliff legislation included no spending cuts. If Foxx didn't say it, she was certainly thinking it.

As for the Negotiator-in-Chief, we see no reason to retract our earlier estimation of his poker-playing abilities. President Obama gave away the farm, or at least a large portion of it, and the "victory" the White House is celebrating today is rotten at the core, setting up another confrontation with the Republican House in a couple of months where, once again, the president will negotiate.

Oy.