The Latest on the State Board of Elections

You'll recall that S 4, passed in another Special Session (#4) of the NC General Assembly on December 15, completely rewrote the State Board of Elections so that the Republican bosses in the GA got to appoint half the members of an expanded board that folded in the old Ethics Commission (now headed by Pat McCrory's lawyer from his election protests). S 4 gave the appointment of half of the Democratic members of the new board to Phil Berger and Tim Moore, and would have put a Republican chair in control of elections in even-numbered years. Among other stuff.

You'll also recall that the implementation of S 4, which was supposed to go into effect on January 1, was stayed by Judge Donald Stephens of Wake Superior Court. Stephens' injunction was set to run out this coming Monday, and he set a hearing on the constitutionality of S 4.

Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark Martin took the case away from Stephens and assigned it to a three-judge panel (mandated in new legislation by Berger-Moore, incidentally). That panel heard arguments yesterday from lawyers for Governor Roy Cooper on one side and lawyers for Darth Vader and the Grand Moff Tarkin on the other side.

Wish I could have been at that hearing. Reporter Anne Blythe recorded some key bits of colloquy between the Berger-Moore side and the judges:

[Judge] Caldwell asked Noah Huffstetler, a Raleigh-based attorney representing Phil Berger, president pro tempore of the state Senate, and Tim Moore, speaker of the state House, if he knew why the law to revamp the elections board was adopted in a special session without public hearings on the matter or a study commission to develop cost analyses.

“Do you have any information why this is so compelling to be brought up in an emergency session?” Caldwell asked.

Huffstetler said he could not comment on the legislators’ intent. He added that he did not think their reasons for crafting and adopting the law should be considered by the judges. The question before the judges, Huffstetler argued, was whether the law violated the separation of powers clause in the state Constitution as Cooper’s attorneys argued. [Indeed, that is one of the questions.]

Best part: The Berger-Moore lawyers "tried to persuade the three-judge panel that the special session law maintained the status quo."

With the merger of the Elections and the Ethics boards into a single body, “You’re not suggesting that all that will be happening is a new sign will be put up?” Judge Campbell asked.

Anne Blythe reported: "The lawmakers’ attorneys responded that, indeed, that was what they contended the special-session law does."

[Put this shit into a movie and people would take it for a comedy.]

The Upshot: Cooper won, at least temporarily. Late last night the judges sent word to all the lawyers that the temporary injunction staying the law is continued until the constitutional issues are fully adjudicated, and they directed Gov. Cooper's lawyer to write the order for the new injunction.

What Possible Benefit?

Why would Julian Assange buddy-up with Donald Trump?

Could it have anything to do with being stalked by the U.S. government since 2010 in a criminal investigation of Wikileaks and its broadcasting of secrets?

Wouldn't it be nice if that all just went away under the Trump administration and the Justice Department management style Jeff Sessions?

Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said. 'One can't believe impossible things.'

'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.'

1. Our new governor Roy Cooper announced that he will file the paperwork tomorrow to expand Medicaid in North Carolina under the Affordable Care Act. As many as 650,000 working people who can’t get private insurance or otherwise make too much to get Medicaid could benefit, generating jobs, helping rural hospitals, and boosting the economy. GOP legislative leaders said Cooper would be violating state law if he went forward. Cooper replied that the 2013 NC General Assembly law banning Medicaid expansion intrudes upon a governor’s “core executive authority” to accept federal funds and look out for the public’s health.

2. Donald Trump has formed a united front with Julian Assange in claiming that the Russians did not hack emails in order to help get Trump elected president.

3. Yesterday, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) called Julian Assange a “sycophant for Russia.”

4. Franklin Graham has converted to veganism.

5. After a contentious closed-door meeting between Republican senators and Vice President-elect Mike Pence over how and when to repeal Obamacare, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said, “What we [Republican senators] own is the responsibility for getting something that can actually improve health care. That was the message that was coming across in the meeting today.”

6. People who live very near busy roads may be more susceptible to dementia.

Worshippers Want To Know: What Does the Oracle Mean?

...the ACA has real problems [lots of ACA markets with too little competition and thus spiking prices], [but] it had its best year of sign-ups to date. It is demonstrably not failing and not a disaster. Indeed, it's gotten marginally more popular over the last few months, though that is likely because Republicans are now less invested in reflexively opposing it. The real bottom line number is that the latest polls show that only about a quarter of Americans want Obamacare repealed. A quarter!

--Josh Marshall, "Chauncy Trump"

Repeal of Obamacare without a replacement would be a disaster, and plenty of conservative voices are saying so. The AMA, which has opposed Obamacare from the beginning, came out today with a warning to Republicans in Congress: "policymakers should lay out for the American people, in reasonable detail, what will replace current policies."

Those same Republican "policymakers" have therefore hatched a scheme to placate their insane base while not (ever?) producing a written replacement for Obamacare that would work: "repeal and delay." That is, repeal the goddamn thing right now this minute, with the proviso that the "repeal" doesn't actually go into effect until a date certain or the day the policymakers have come up with a way not to throw 25 million Americans off their insurance. In other words, approximately never.

The American Enterprise Institute, the mother ship of reactionary conservatism, called "repeal and delay" a "disaster" in the making.

Then PEOTUS Trump decided to throw some magic spice into this brewing stew, with the following three tweets this morning:

 

Donald J. TrumpVerified account‏@realDonaldTrump

Republicans must be careful in that the Dems own the failed ObamaCare disaster, with its poor coverage and massive premium increases......

 

Donald J. TrumpVerified account‏@realDonaldTrump

like the 116% hike in Arizona. Also, deductibles are so high that it is practically useless. Don't let the Schumer clowns out of this web...

 

Donald J. TrumpVerified account‏@realDonaldTrump

massive increases of ObamaCare will take place this year and Dems are to blame for the mess. It will fall of its own weight - be careful!

If you understand what any of that means, you should apply to divination school. (I hear there're openings.)

"It will fall of its own weight -- be careful!" That could be interpreted as "do nothing, Peckerheads!" "Get out of the way and let it fail"? Is that what he means?

Wow. Just ... wow.

Slut Shaming Pat McCrory

And look at how out-going assistant governor Pat McCrory took care of his staff:

Thanks to The Independent for the above, but the most egregious McCrory midnight appointment -- John Branch, a former general counsel to the NC Republican Party, appointed to chair a new Elections/Ethics commission just created by the General Assembly to keep Republicans in charge of ballot-access (a new law currently stayed in Wake County Superior Court). Branch was also McCrory's lead attorney during all sorts of election delay, until McCrory finally conceded.

And we get him -- John Branch -- at the tip of the pyramid over legal control of voting in North Carolina?

Are you kidding me?

Slut Shaming Donald van der Vaart

Photo NCDEQ

Meet former Governor Pat McCrory's head of the Department of Environmental Quality, Donald van der Vaart, a political appointee who took over the department in 2015 when John Skvarla, the Coal Ash King, could no longer be allowed to get near TV cameras. Van der Vaart was also good like Skvarla at easing off enforcement on polluting industries. He based environmental regulation on "a cost-benefit approach." (The "benefit" in that equation usually goes to polluters  -- "jobs!" -- the cost, to the environment.)

As a political appointee, van der Vaart's salary was supposed to end at midnight December 31, and he knew it. Everyone knows how that works. So what did van der Vaart do (with no doubt "a cost-benefit approach")? He signed an order (there must be official paper on this somewhere) demoting himself back down to a lower managerial slot in the Air Quality branch, a job level not subject to political appointment or firing. He made it impossible to get rid of him in North Carolina environmental management.

How Did Virginia Foxx Vote?

That didn't take long. Last night, in a secret vote, the Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives voted to gut the independent Office of Congressional Ethics, which was set up in 2008 following congressional scandals. We don't know what the vote was, because it was secret. We don't know how Rep. Virginia Foxx voted, because the vote was secret, peckerheads!

It was a preliminary vote involving the rules that the majority Republicans can -- and will -- impose on the operation of the House. The package of rules has to be voted on again today in the full body. One wonders whether enough Republicans opposed the very bad "optics" of this move to join the Democrats in voting this down. We do know from inside sources that both Speaker Paul Ryan and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy spoke against the motion.

Power breeds corruption. We've known all along that the Trump administration is likely to be the most corrupt in history, with more self-serving conflicts of interest than genes in the human genome, and now the Republicans in the U.S. House seem to be paving the primrose path to hell. We look for weak accountability over wrong-doing.

The Office of Congressional Ethics was established following a string of "bribery allegations against Representatives Duke Cunningham, Republican of California; William J. Jefferson, Democrat of Louisiana; and Bob Ney, Republican of Ohio. All three were ultimately convicted and served time in jail."

Instead of an independent agency conducting investigations, we'll now have the House Ethics Committee, a bi-partisan bunch which has been more than just reluctant in the past to lower the boom on corruption. They pussy-foot, because they're foxes guarding the henhouse, and the American public are the chickens.

Memo To: The Rest of America; From: North Carolina -- "We've Already Lived Through What You're About To Experience!"

The cutting-edge conservatives in the North Carolina General Assembly got the governor who wouldn't oppose them in 2012, and they really went to town on the progressive history of the state. The educate-for-the-future state became the stuck-in-tar state. Tar? How about coal ash and the shutting down of environmental watch-doggery? The squeezing of the poor -- "No Medicaid expansion for you!" -- and the get-lost message to the unemployed (80,000+ newly unemployed workers thrown off unemployment benefits in the first months of 2013). Only the beginning.

An agenda that destructive needs lots of help. Gerrymandering the NC House and Senate seats -- that helped. Coming down hard on liberal ballot-access laws with a new photo I.D. law -- that helped a lot (particularly the squeezing down of Early Voting opportunities, the elimination of straight-ticket voting, the barring of college student I.D.s as valid proof of identity, the use of boards of election as partisan hammers).

They even manipulated the courts, decreeing that you couldn't challenge their legislative acts for unconstitutionality in any forum except a three-judge panel appointed by the Republican Chief Justice, and they stacked the ballot to benefit the partisan election of judges (which backfired on them in the case of Mike Morgan).

Sauce for the Goose, Sauce for the Gander

Get ready, America. Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell can now pass what they please, and just look who'll be president. Grover Norquist said years ago that all he wanted in an ideal president was “a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to sign the legislation that has already been prepared.”

Trump will go along with them on everything they want. Why else did he pick that bunch of conservative billionaires and lesser millionaires and movement reactionaries to compose his Cabinet? For the mob, he's put on a new persona -- Right-Wing Hard Ass. But he won't play that with Congress. It's mainly pretend anyway.

Look for cold, conservative, opportunistic legislation to come pouring out of the U.S. Congress in time for Trump's first month. In fact, the word's out in Washington that Republicans intend to pass the "Regulations From the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act," or "Reins," and have it on Trump's desk when he first walks through the door into the Oval Office. ("Reins" would subject any environmental regulation with an economic impact greater than $100 million to a vote of Congress, which would guarantee death for any of the Obama administrations major environmental regs.)

List of what else might be coming, based on David Weigel's reporting in the Washington Post:)

1. Dodd-Frank regs on financial institutions will get "unspooled." They'll use "budget reconciliation" to do it.

2. Planned Parenthood stripped of federal support (and incidentally demonized in the process).

3. Full-bore assault on the social safety net, on many fronts, including most especially figuring out how to incinerate health insurance for the poor, not to mention the much lusted for privatization of Social Security and the phasing out of Medicare. In other words, the Affordable Care Act smells like toast. They'll use "budget reconciliation" for that too. 

4. "Kill the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, whether by giving Congress control over its budget or finding cause to replace its director, Richard Cordray, with a weaker board."

5. Number 3 above will help pay for this: End the estate tax and lower taxes bigly for rich people and corporations. Remember Trump's campaign "stimulus plan" promise for investing in infrastructure: roads and damns and airports? That's now likely been forgotten in favor of "tax breaks." Those'll stimulate you, America, you bet!

6. "Some Republican lawmakers also want legislation that would stop courts from deferring to federal agencies’ interpretations of statutes — a practice known as 'Chevron deference,' after the 1984 Supreme Court case that went against the energy company — and have them instead defer to Congress."

7. New anti-abortion laws.

8. "Legislation to allow concealed weapons to be carried across state lines, a major goal of the National Rifle Association."

Trump's Role

Weigel takes pains to emphasize "how little Trump’s unpredictable, attention-grabbing style matters to the Republican game plan." Trump's intended to be kinda the stud horse to their brood mare. "We need you, standing for service. Otherwise, stay out of our way."

Our guess: Trump will stay out of their way. Trump will hold rallies and accept the adulation of the mob like the Second Coming. He will go along with Paul Ryan's agenda because basically Trump doesn't give a good goddamn about most of government -- all but the parts that directly benefit him and the family business. Don't believe he misses any sleep about workers, or poor people, or any of the other losers that the American Century has produced while he was rising.

America, we've experienced an out-of-control and dogma-driven legislative body, with a cypher chief executive, for the last four long years, and believe us, you're in for heavy weather. What do you do? You take to the streets. You register voters. You stay educated on what's happening and you raise hell about it in every way you can. You do not go along. You resist.

And the Congregation Said Yuck

Pity poor Pat McCrory! He just can't quit humiliating himself. Who told him that a 15-minute parting video of self-inflation would be a good idea? Are there influential lobbyists in Raleigh working for the barf-bag industry?

Watching McCrory take those last shots at other people and whine that he was inadequately appreciated … plain tiresome, in between winces. He might have done better to pull down his lounge pants and moon the camera. I could have respected that. Gumption, at least.

He never had the gumption in the Guv's Mansion. He was never gonna be anything but Phil Berger and Tim Moore's door mat. Just days into his term, on Feb. 3, 2013, McCrory had already been dissed, steamrolled, and preempted by The Boss, Phil Berger, Republican leader of the NC Senate, assisted by others in the NC House.

Instead of standing up for stuff he wanted, as opposed to the stuff they wanted -- like looking into the benefits of expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act -- McCrory ended up playing a far-fetched, scripted character part, "the Southern conservative pol" -- attacking UNC for its gender studies and Moral Monday protestors as paid outside agitators. But nobody bought that act. As far as the GA was concerned, he was tagging along on the hunt with wild beasts, and he had to wear the hair shirt for camouflage.

In the new video release, "McCrory reflects on his term as North Carolina's governor," he blames the Charlotte and Raleigh media, Charlotte city government, opponents of HB2 (particularly the ACC), Durham County (for unelecting him after midnight on November 8 with 90,000 surprise votes), college students who got to vote against him because the Voter I.D. law was declared unconstitutional (that law would have made it much, much harder for out-of-state college students to vote. Duke University in Durham County has a lot of out-of-state students.)

Best part? He claims he stood up to the General Assembly during Special Session # 4, when Republicans took back control of all the boards of elections in the state and stripped Roy Cooper of power, and he implies that he actually had a moderating influence: "I worked behind the scenes a great deal making sure the Department of Commerce wasn’t moved [away from Roy Cooper's purview], the Department of Public Safety wasn’t moved, the Supreme Court wasn’t packed.” He "still thinks" that parts of the bill to strip Governor Cooper's powers are unconstitutional (yet he signed the goddamn thing anyway! Way to flex that gubernatorial power!).

For embarrassing performances, I'd prefer to stick with proven Hollywood fare, like James Franco in "Spring Breakers."