NC GOP, Waiting To See What They Can Get Away With

Strong editorial in yesterday's News&Observer against the Republicans' plan to introduce voter photo ID in North Carolina. Excerpted below, that portion of the editorial that says the current GOP leadership's "go slow" approach really has to do with waiting for the Washington Supremes to throw out the Voting Rights Act that applies in North Carolina:

Bob Hall of the government watchdog Democracy North Carolina made the case when Republicans first got up to these shenanigans in the last General Assembly session, when their Voter ID law was vetoed by Gov. Beverly Perdue. Answering those who claimed a Voter ID was harmless because people had to show identification to get insurance or buy groceries with a check or get a credit card, etc., Hall noted that voting was a right, not a privilege, and thus something that deserved protection.

Republicans are not interested in that argument. They want a Voter ID law, and with Republican Pat McCrory now in the governor’s chair, they’re likely to get it. This time out, though, they say they’ll move it slowly through the General Assembly, affording opponents and others with different ideas to speak and be heard.

Of course, the lack of a rush is more likely due to their awaiting a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a case in which a county in Alabama is challenging a provision related to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, part of which required that any changes in election procedures in select states and in 40 counties in North Carolina be approved by the federal government in advance. A Voter ID law in North Carolina would constitute such a change.

But if Shelby County, Ala., succeeds in convincing the court to do away with that requirement for approval, on the grounds that the racial discrimination the provision was designed to prevent is nonexistent, then Republican leaders in this state will feel empowered to move ahead with their Voter ID bill.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/03/09/2736000/the-id-push.html#storylink=c

McCrory, No Rocket Scientist

Editorial in today's News&Observer: Gov. McCrory runs from common sense, caves to radicals in the General Assembly, and hurts North Carolina in both the short and the long run.

Congrats, North Carolina. You've got the puppet governor you voted for.

Cool Move

Senate bill 235 and House bill 253 were filed this week as a compromise solution to the threat of a voter photo ID law that will make voting difficult for many citizens, and at first blush, we could support this solution.

The FayObserver summarized this approach to "voting integrity" yesterday:

Under [the] bills, voters would be asked to produce an unexpired government-issued identification card, such as a driver's license or military ID, in order to vote. Voters without an ID would still be allowed to cast a ballot, but only after they had their photos taken at the poll and signed an affidavit swearing to their identity. 

Lying would be a felony. Voters' photos would remain on file with board of elections, ready to view if someone wanted to file a challenge.

Seems to us (and, granted, we only deal with reality and not the popular fantasy haunting Republican minds that busloads of illegals are being driven to polls), this satisfies both the itch to demand "Show us your papers!" and the promise of our democracy that people be allowed to vote.

Plus we imagine (okay, that's not strictly real, but still) that the cost of equipping polling places with photographic equipment might not be any more expensive that supplying at public expense all the many thousands of government-issued photo IDs that the Republicans are going to have to mandate in their own version ... to keep their law from running afoul of the NC Constitution.

These two bills will at least force the issue ... that the Republican radicals in Raleigh aren't really interested in voting integrity but in voter suppression.

ADDENDUM ON COST
One of the sponsors of the House bill said that this approach is "less expensive than other Voter ID bills. 'According to the NC Fiscal Research Division, the bill would cost slightly over $3 million. I’ve seen estimates on other Voter ID bills run way up in the money,' he said." Richmond County Daily Journal

Why Are These People Smiling?

Because they are elected North Carolina government officials with government-provided healthcare at the closed-door signing of the law that will deny government-provided healthcare for some 500,000 North Carolinians who live precariously without insurance.

Not to worry, eh, Governor McCrory? You got yours.

The New Jim Crowism

They tell us -- Thom Tillis tells us -- that voter photo ID voter suppression is coming to North Carolina.

Yeah, we knew that.

Governor McCrory Howdy Doody was nodding his head up and down yesterday, up and down, because he hearts everything the radicals in the General Assembly tell him to do. And, by the way, he equated voting with buying Sudafed, for which he said you need a photo ID without also distinguishing between the right to vote and the right to buy an ingredient in methamphetamine. Which in his mind script are evidently the same thing.

Yeah, we knew that too.

Yesterday, Sharon McCloskey published the complete, appalling list of all the cases of voter impersonation that have come to light since 2000, and it's an epic, long list -- 22 persons across a dozen years. That's approximately 1.83 cases of voter fraud per year, folks, and this outrage has GOT to end before this country elects another Muslim Kenyan, let alone another black man. How else will North Carolina keep elective office safe reserved for white people?

Bob Hall, a great North Carolina warrior for voting rights, issued a statement on the Republican push to restrict voting, which said in part:

"Democracy North Carolina continues to believe the photo ID requirement is a needless and expensive barrier to address a problem – voter impersonation – that is grounded in myth more than fact. Any new barrier will have a consequence, including making the process appear confusing and intimidating to some voters. Depending on how a photo ID requirement is implemented, it could cost millions of dollars and affect tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of active registered voters. It inevitably will have a disproportionate impact on low-income citizens, African Americans, other people of color, and seniors who no longer drive."

NC GOP: "Energy Efficiency, Bad!"

House Bill 201 is being heard in the Regulatory Reform Committee today. It would roll back energy efficiency standards in North Carolina building codes.

That's the intellectual playing field we're on in Raleigh these days.

One of the primary sponsors of this piece of brilliance is Cabarrus County rep Larry Pittman, who early in 2012 was advocating public hangings. Plus he wanted all the doctors who have given abortions to be first in line for the noose. I believe he may have offered to hold the coats of the executioners. The other primary sponsor, John Torbett, made money as a house "rehabilitator," so he would naturally know every cheapskate shortcut and have plenty of experience resenting those pesky energy efficiency rules.

The real beneficiary of lowering energy efficiency standards, though, would have to be Duke Energy, which is already well on its way to purging members of the Utilities Commission (Senate Bill 10) so that their former employee, Governor Whatisname, can appoint the people who'll vote on Duke Energy's requested rate hike.

Yup, the NC GOP is transforming government, though we have to observe that a bunch of kerosene (or fracked gas) and a single match would do the job faster.

Sorry, Coastal Carolina, But You're Just Gonna Have to Drink This S**t

From 1968 to 1972, four miles from Wilmington, N.C., the Hercules corporation, injected some 300,000 gallons of acids and other toxins into deep wells to get rid of them. Industrial waste. Hey! Out of sight, out of mind.

Then it was discovered that those industrial waste wells, "set between 850 and 1,050 feet deep, clogged and leached chemicals into a sand, gravel and limestone aquifer. Monitoring wells in upper aquifers later showed that the chemicals traveled past a clay containment zone and contaminated upper aquifers." The clay in the ground was supposed to stop the leaching of toxins into aquifers. They didn't.

Armed with the knowledge that injecting shit deep into the ground has every expectation of turning drinking water to shit, the NC General Assembly passed a good law banning the dumping of industrial shit into deep wells.

Enter fracking. "Each fracked well requires 3 million to 5 million gallons of water, chemicals and sand to break up the shale rock and release the natural gas." All those millions of gallons of contaminated water have to go somewhere.

The fast-tracking of fracking in North Carolina will destroy that earlier ban, passed in 1973, against pumping toxic shit into deep wells.

The Raleigh News & Observer says today that the 3-5 million gallons of toxic tea from each well is likely going to end up on the North Carolina coast, one way or another. The same region that proved back in 1972 to be highly unreliable for storing industrial carcinogens.

Welcome to the brave new world of Republican rule in North Carolina.

A GOPer Cautions His Party in the NC General Assembly

Rep. John Blust of Guilford County (brother of David Blust of Watauga County) warned his colleagues about hubris on the floor of the NC House yesterday.

Republican leaders were in the process of rushing through the bill to simply fire all the existing members of several important regulatory commissions and boards. Blust complained about the rush, the failure to follow procedure, the arrogance that has been a feature of the General Assembly since early in January:

"I don’t like this idea, 'Well we have the power, let’s go ahead and do it,' " he said. "Just because we have power we need to be judicious with it. I wish we would be more careful with it."

"The people have the right to yank us in two years and put someone else in," he added.

Video of Blust's remarks:

Female Impersonators