Worker Safety in NC Is Being Managed By Montgomery Burns

Investigation by the Raleigh News&Observer reveals that NC Department of Labor Commissioner Cherie Berry has been flagrantly violating North Carolina statutes about worker safety.

That should come as no surprise. Since she took office in 2001, she's coddled dangerous businesses and turned a deaf ear to worker complaints. Berry has actually bragged, publicly, that she sees her job as helping NC businesses avoid the "burdens" of protecting the health, safety, and general well-being of more than 4 million workers.

Her failures to enforce workplace safety regs on the poultry industry led to an investigative series in the Charlotte Observer in 2008 and a stinging editorial denouncing her Cruella Deville attitudes toward our sweating laborers.

Lawsuit Over Gerrymandering of Wake County Commissioner Districts

The Republicans in the General Assembly jammed through their rewriting of Wake County commissioner elections last week -- a naked power grab, after losing the commissioner elections last fall -- but there's already a federal lawsuit aimed at overturning it.

Most interesting fact that emerged from the lawsuit: the new Wake commissioner districts are very unequal as to population, varying as much as 9.8 percent, which certainly flies in the face of "one person, one vote."

The Truth Has Come Out in North Carolina

Republican Rule:

The Continuing Corruption of the Watauga Board of Elections

We can only assume that the falsifying of the minutes (see item, down-column) of the Watauga County Board of Elections was the final step in readying the submission of Matt Snyder's name for appointment as Watauga County elections director. State Board of Elections Director Kim Strach has the final say, and according to Jesse Campbell at the Watauga Democrat, word of that appointment had not yet reached Raleigh as of yesterday (or early this morning). Once Kim Strach has Snyder's name, she has 10 days to make a decision.

Watauga BOE Republicans Bill Aceto and Luke Eggers were in an awful hurry to get this appointment done, so rather than do the right thing -- call a special meeting and actually take the formal vote to appoint Snyder -- they chose the corrupt thing: rewrite the minutes and simply establish a fiction as the truth.

It's not the first time they've changed the minutes to suit their personal view of reality. Back at their very first meeting on the BOE, August 12, 2013, they "erased ... wide sections" of the minutes taken by the clerk and substituted their own sanitized version. That erasure made the Winston-Salem Journal.

This is a board that has been a partisan tool since it was appointed, making every effort to disadvantage Democratic and young voters. Their actions have been ruled "unconstitutional" by the senior judge on the Wake Superior Court, and that case is still moving through the higher courts.

Their appointment of a fully partisan elections director in Matt Snyder fits right into their pattern of corruption.

Virginia Foxx Draws a Primary Challenger for 2016

And she's something of a Foxx Fox News celeb.

Patti Curran, "housewife, mother, and Army veteran," thinks that Virginia Foxx has been too much the Party girl in Washington, kissing up to John Boehner and failing to end Obamacare.

Yep. Virginia Foxx is waaaaay too liberal for the 5th district of North Carolina!

Hattip: LE.

The Fictional Minutes of the April 1 Board of Elections Meeting

Watauga Board of Elections Secretary Bill Aceto has turned in his draft minutes for the April Fool's Day meeting of the board, the one during which there was a vote on calling the question to appoint Matt Snyder but no actual vote on appointing Snyder.

But take a look at what's recorded in Mr. Aceto's minutes, a falsified account that attempts to cover up the failure to properly appoint Mr. Snyder:

Under the section headed "Director Appointment" on the second page, these fictional minutes say, "Secretary Aceto called the question and Chairman Eggers ruled Aceto out of order and added additional remarks about his support for Matt Snyder. Chairman Eggers then called the vote for the director position...."

Well, that didn't happen, and there were dozens of citizens in the room who know it didn't happen. Eggers certainly didn't rule Aceto out of order. The vote was taken, 2-1, on Aceto's calling the question, and Chair Eggers was angrily stalking out the back door as people in the audience were calling out, "You never voted on the appointment."

Another thing: under the section of these minutes headed "Public Comment," Aceto writes that Pam Williamson spoke during public comment. She did not speak.

This lousy piece of public malfeasance -- and it's not as though there wasn't already a history of Aceto's simply making the minutes fit the reality he's peddling -- constitutes a transparent attempt to make an error committed in the April 1st meeting simply disappear. Like everything else this corrupt elections board has done since August 2013, the fiction is visible from outer space.

Eggers & Aceto: You're In a Heap of Trouble

Kim Strach

NC State Board of Elections Executive Director Kim Strach just denied the appointment of a new elections director in Duplin County. Reading the news below should alert everyone that the Republicans on the Watauga Board of Elections are in for some heavy weather over their appointment of ex-Watauga GOP Chair Matt Snyder.

In an unusual move, the executive director of the State Board of Elections is refusing to confirm the appointment of a new director at the Duplin County Board of Elections, citing concerns over the way the candidate was chosen by the local board, which includes two Republicans and a Democrat.

Kim Strach, the state board’s executive director, informed Duplin County Board of Elections Chairman Derl Walker late last week that she would not appoint the board’s nominee, Edward Hudson Jr., as Duplin elections director. The former director recently resigned.

“This office takes seriously its obligation to comply fully with state and federal laws governing the hiring process,” she wrote. “Unfortunately, the process by which your Board selected its nominee raises grave concerns that I cannot ignore.”

Strach’s letter was sent Friday. On Sunday, according to a letter provided by the state board, Hudson requested that the Duplin board no longer consider him a candidate for the position.

“May the Lord bless you in finding an individual who both you and the state consider deserving of this vital duty,” he wrote to Walker.

Circumstances around the appointment and Strach’s reasons for denying it weren’t entirely clear Monday, but documents provided by the state board provided some background. Before denying the appointment, Strach had requested from the Duplin board all job applications submitted by candidates interviewed for the position in late June, a list of the questions asked of the candidates, all notes and scoring sheets prepared by Duplin board members and any “additional items that support your position that Mr. Hudson was the most qualified candidate from among the pool of applicants considered for the position…”

Strach requested all job applications "submitted by candidates interviewed for the position." In Watauga, there were nine or ten applications. Watauga BOE Chair Luke Eggers admitted proudly last night that he had interviewed none of them, including the man he pushed forward for the job. Fellow Republican BOE member Bill Aceto said he had interviewed two and played phone tag with a third.

This should get very interesting, once Strach asks Eggers and Aceto for their supporting documents.

(Plus, O my brethren, the team of Eggers and Aceto didn't even actually -- legally -- appoint Snyder to the position ... because they don't know nor understand Robert's Rules of Order.)

Watauga Board of Elections: Give-a-Man-Enough-Rope Edition

Transparent men

Well, it is April Fool's Day after all.

Sure enough, this evening the Republican model citizens on the Watauga Board of Elections called the question on appointing former Watauga GOP Chair Matt Snyder as the elections director to replace the retiring Jane Ann Hodges. They voted 2-1 to call the question, but Chair Luke Eggers was so eager to get out of that room that he neglected to then conduct the vote on the actual appointment of Mr. Snyder. So there's that.

And this: it came out during the meeting that Chair Eggers had interviewed none -- zero -- of the almost dozen applicants for the job, including his own guy Matt Snyder. If that doesn't rise to the level of official incompetence, what would? Not to mention a blatant failure to perform even the most elementary tasks that go with being Chair of the Board of Elections. He interviewed no one. Because other men tell him what to do, what to think, where to be, and he obediently does it.

The reason is fairly obvious. He had been told by stronger and smarter men weeks ago who he would be putting into the job, so indeed ... why would he need to interview any applicant?

Minority BOE member Kathleen Campbell said it all very clearly in her remarks:

"...My fellow Board members have refused repeatedly to go forward with a search for the best-qualified person for this job. They refused in spite of the fact that this search would have cost nothing. They also never advertised the position on the County's website. Why would someone do this? There is only one reason. Because they already had chosen the person they wanted behind the scenes and were not interested in who might actually be non-partisan and qualified for the position. That's why Mr. Eggers put forward just one name, and Mr. Aceto never put forward any at all. Once another 9 people found out through the grapevine that there was a job opening, they applied for the position. Mr. Eggers has never interviewed any of these people at all -- even Mr. Snyder -- who told me last Friday that he had not heard from Mr. Eggers since he sent him a resume, right after he heard about Ms. Hodges retiring. Instead, Bill [Aceto] met with him about the job. But, in spite of never speaking to him, Luke [Eggers] had already made up his mind .... I cannot understand how this constitutes competence...."

It constitutes something, but it ain't competence.

The big laugh-out-loud moment came when Bill Aceto defended himself to Deborah Greene, who had applied for the job and who never got an interview. She said so during public comment. Mr. Aceto addressed himself to Greene, saying that her political activism had disqualified her from the job. At which point there were guffaws in the audience, some of whom apparently saw the glaring inconsistency of saying Deb Greene was too much the activist while the former Chair of the Watauga GOP, Mr. Snyder, gets off that hook scott free.

Kim Strach

What has never ceased to amaze this observer of this Board of Elections, since they took office in August of 2013, is the utter bland transparency of their every partisan move. Once again, they've plugged in their own personal neon sign for the world to see: "WE ARE PARTISAN HACKS WHO JUST APPOINTED ANOTHER PARTISAN HACK WHO'LL DO AS HE'S TOLD AND TILT FUTURE ELECTIONS OUR WAY."

If Kim Strach, Executive Director of the State Board of Elections, who has the final say on the appointment of Mr. Snyder, doesn't blush down to her designer footwear over the sheer balls of this appointment, then she too in supremely incompetent in her job.

Well, That Didn't Take Long

Wherein we declare North Carolina's Religious Freedom Restoration Act dead as a doornail.

Because Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger yesterday displayed no enthusiasm for it, and he's the dictator of the Republicans in the General Assembly.

In fact, Berger acted a little like an unvaccinated traveler encountering an obvious case of a communicable disease.

Perhaps the crashing and burning of Indiana had a salutary effect on our otherwise bullheaded and/or oblivious General Assembly.