BOGged Down

How do you destroy a great educational institution?

One 28-member Board of Governors at a time, when it's packed with political hardliners and hacks who care more about ideological posturing than they do about education.

UNC BOG meeting yesterday.
Spellings is 2nd from right.
Photo Julia Wall, News&Observer

The University of North Carolina Board of Governors met yesterday, and a radical majority of right-wing Republican members -- almost all the members are Republican -- pushed through surprise resolutions that had not been shared in advance. The thrust of those resolutions was clearly aimed at undermining the authority of UNC System President Margaret Spellings, who was just appointed in 2015 (amid plenty of controversy).

Jane Stancill captured the action yesterday for the News&Observer.

Among the most destructive decisions was the vote to prohibit the UNC School of Law's Center for Civil Rights from pursuing legal remedies for low-income and minority groups or for individual citizens. As a result, the Center will close and pursue its activities elsewhere. The Center was funded entirely by outside contributions anyway. The BOG isn't saving money by smashing the Civil Rights Center; it's merely signaling its political hostility to equal rights.

It's the old Confederacy reasserting itself, and that plantation mentality appears to be at heart the animus toward President Margaret Spellings. When the statue of Confederate symbol "Silent Sam" was becoming a flashpoint on campus, Spellings reached out to Governor Roy Cooper for advice and help in keeping order. The Republican hardliners, who intend to keep the sacred flame of the slaveholding South burning bright, were deeply offended. These 15 members of the BOG, which includes several hard-right former members of the General Assembly, signed a sharp letter of warning to Spellings:

Harry Smith
Jim Holmes
Marty Kotis
David Powers
Alex Mitchell
Philip Byers
Mike Williford
Thom Goolsby
Pearl Burris-Floyd
Wendy Murphy
Bob Rucho
Randy Ramsey
Kellie Blue
Tom Fetzer
Bill Webb

The cabbage worms are eating the cabbage from the inside out.

Trump: Full Frontal with the Democrats

Photo by Al Drago for the NYTimes

House Speaker Paul Ryan had earlier in the day yesterday called "the deal" that Trump struck with Congressional Democrats "ridiculous" and "disgraceful." Yet Trump jumped at the offer from Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to tie Hurricane Harvey relief to a three-month extension of government funding and increase in the debt ceiling.

In other words -- and the short version -- Schumer and Pelosi ate Republican lunch.

Besides Schumer and Pelosi, representing the Democrats, who else was there? Trump, yes, but also House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. All those Republicans opposed the Schumer-Pelosi plan -- one might say, opposed it bitterly -- but Trump ignored them. In fact, later on Air Force One, on his way to North Dakota, Trump deliberately praised Schumer and Pelosi for striking a deal with him while not even mentioning the Republicans who were also in the meeting.

Schumer and Pelosi now have more than just leverage. Their three-month deal on the debt ceiling will force another painful vote for Republicans around Christmas time, with every chance of political disaster. Paul Ryan had wanted a debt ceiling extension of 18 months, which would have put another vote beyond the 2018 mid-term elections. Trump in effect shat in Ryan's hat.

Trump also later talked up the mutual willingness among the Trump-Schumer-Pelosi triumvirate to make the "Dream Act" (DACA) into solid law. Trump now wants the Democrats in Congress to save him from the blowback over his tromping on DACA on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Ryan and McConnell fumed in the corner like jilted spouses in a nasty divorce.

The deal struck between the Democrats and Trump still has to go for votes in both House and Senate, and many Republicans are steaming mad about it. “The Pelosi-Schumer-Trump deal is bad,” Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska tweeted. Representative Mark Walker of North Carolina, chair of the Republican Study Committee, said, “I’m still processing this, but my first instinct is I’m not very happy about it." But can Republicans afford to vote against it?

Score one for Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi.

Trump Lays a New Turd in the GOP Punchbowl

Republican leaders in the US Congress were perhaps looking forward to a September when they could get a couple of positive things done, like beginning to relieve Houston, and maybe raise the debt ceiling -- votes likely to be bi-partisan and popular -- but no, Trump has to go and drop DACA on them, saying, "Now, you've got six months to pull my bacon out of the fire."

Majority reaction -- wide and deep offense. Business leaders have risen up against Trump's move, risen up like a king cobra about to strike. Political leaders in both parties hate it, warned Trump against it, now scuff at the dirt. Qualified Hispanic voters who used to regularly vote Republican -- there are some -- are reconsidering their values. Congress will groan under the load while multiple "polls show that DACA enjoys overwhelming support among the public."

(Republicans stand to lose a substantial bloc of voters. Up to 38% percent of Hispanic voters have voted Republican, depending on the place and the candidate. Mitt Romney got 31% of the Hispanic vote. Trump, not.)

It's clear Trump didn't know what he was doing yesterday. By evening he was tweeting -- “Congress now has 6 months to legalize DACA (something the Obama Administration was unable to do). If they can’t, I will revisit the issue!”

I will revisit the issue. I bet you will.

If certain facts and human realities weren't clear to Trump, Sessions knew exactly what he was saying and what it all meant, and he gleamed like a greased pig in those television lights. Was he exulting in his heart? "Fewer brown people will be coming here, or staying. Praise Jesus!"

Why did Trump have to go and do that now? Of all the things that terrify him -- being touched by strange people, being laughed at, being put on the spot publicly and dared to tell the truth -- looking weak is strong juju for Trump men, and some eleven conservative Republican attorneys general had threatened to sue Trump by today if he didn't start to end DACA. (Plus he was on his way to a big public rally of his DACA-hating peeps in North Dakota today.)

The attorney-general-posse is led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is under indictment by a Texas grand jury for securities fraud. Paxton was joined by the attorneys general of Arkansas, Alabama, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia, as well as Idaho Gov. C. L. Otter, in a June 29 letter to Jeff Sessions urging the White House to start phasing out DACA by Sept. 5, or face a lawsuit.

Jeff Sessions ... the willing stooge Trump sent out yesterday to face the cameras, the man who loves what's happening -- he had reportedly told Trump that he wouldn't defend DACA in court. The Constitution is his shield, he believes says. With Sessions, the law follows the heart, and the white Anglo-Saxon race is very important to Sessions. He's on record praising the 1924 eugenics-based immigration law that enforced racial and ethnic animosity. In a Breitbart radio interview with Steve Bannon in 2015 Sessions made perfectly clear his preference for people who "assimilate" completely, and you can figger all day what that means.

And then comes Irma.

Lord, Have Mercy!

Lee at the VMA Awards.
Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File

A descendant of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, the Rev. Robert W. Lee IV, has stepped down as pastor of Bethany United Church of Christ in Winston-Salem over remarks he made during the August 27 MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) in which he praised the Black Lives Matter movement. He was introducing the mother of Heather Heyer, who was killed during demonstrations over a Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville, Va.

"We have made my ancestor an idol of white supremacy, racism, and hate," he said. "As a pastor, it is my moral duty to speak out against racism, America's original sin."

Some members of his church were outraged by his politics, while clearing remaining quite comfortable with their own: "A faction of church members were concerned about my speech and that I lifted up Black Lives Matter movement, the Women' s March, and Heather Heyer as examples of racial justice work," he said in the statement explaining his resignation.

Lee also issued an apology to church members for causing them pain with his remarks on MTV. But he said he continues to "strongly support" removal of monuments to his ancestor and other Confederates. Lee, a recent graduate of the Duke Divinity School, was only just appointed pastor of the church in April.

A Notorious Camera Hog Goes All Shy and Stuff

Donald Trump has never been one to avoid the camera ... until today. He won't personally announce his decision to sort-of, kinda end President Obama's "dreamers" program, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Trump himself won't face the cameras to announce his non-decision decision. He's sending out immigration hard-liner Jeff Sessions to make the announcement (and Sessions has already signaled that he'll take no questions -- how's that for standing proud behind your administration's decision to quash the dreams of some 800,000 otherwise productive members of this society?).

Non-decision decision? Trump will say he's ending the DACA program but has really decided to punt the whole question over to Congress for the next six months. Congress? Is he serious? Congress has never demonstrated any aptitude nor willingness to solve the problem of children brought to this country illegally who have subsequently made productive lives for themselves and rich contributions to the communities in which they live. The stories are now multiplying about "dreamers" who've been helping to pull people out of the Houston flood waters.

Dreamers like the undocumented daughter of some of Virginia Foxx's long-time servants, a young woman who reportedly graduated with honors from Watauga High School years ago and then had trouble finding a place in college because of her undocumented status. Did Virginia Foxx help her? No, at least according to people who know that situation.

Trump is purely playing to his alt-white base, and he should hide his face.

“It’s not clear what delaying this for six months means,” said Mark Krikorian, another immigration hard-liner who runs the Center for Immigration Studies.

“He’s being pulled in a bunch of different directions, and because he doesn’t have any strong ideological anchor, or deep knowledge of the issue, he ends up sort of not knowing what to do,” Mr. Krikorian said. “I think the fact that they did nothing to [DACA] suggests that they had no idea what to do,” he added.

The cruelest part of this: The federal government has the cellphone and home address of every DACA recipient, information they volunteered to the government with the promise it would never be used against them or their families. That was part of President Obama's original executive order.

“They grew up here, they work at nearly every major company in America, serve in the military and many are working on recovery efforts in Texas,” said Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us, a progressive immigration reform group that has urged the president to retain the program. “If DACA is repealed and no permanent legislation passed, they will all be fired and our government will begin the large-scale deportation of people raised in the United States.”

Does Trump want that as his legacy? Does the Republican Congress?

Dwane Powell, News&Observer

Goodbye, Rep. Millis

NC House member, Republican Chris Millis of Hampstead, the idiot who tried to start a movement in the General Assembly to impeach and remove Secretary of State Elaine Marshall, has himself fallen in the weeds. He suddenly announced his retirement because -- you guessed it -- he wanted to spend more time with his family. (Totally not making that up.)

His lust for impeaching Secretary Marshall, based on bad and misunderstood information, had earned him nothing but jeers and face-palms from both sides of the aisle in the GA.

General Kelly, in a Different Foxhole

The reporting team of Thrush and Haberman serve up another piping hot popover of inside poop on the Trump White House today: "Forceful Chief of Staff Grates on Trump, and the Feeling Is Mutual."

People on the inside are making bets on how long Gen. John Kelly will last as Trump's gate-keeper ... one month or a whole year? (Smart money's on the first option.) Trump has sprayed Kelly with his "volcanic resentment" at being managed -- cussing out the man he hired to manage him.

The Marine general is dealing with the worst, sloppiest, most ill-prepared recruit in his long military career, and he's forced to do it like no Marine is accustomed to, treading "gingerly through the minefield of Mr. Trump’s psyche."

That's real estate no sane military man would want to invade. And we believe that Kelly is nothing if not sane.

Competence, Like Truth, Beauty, and Contact Lenses, Is in the Eye of the Beholder

We usually avert our gaze from polls, because -- you know -- they have a troubled history and can lead you to believe things that just aren't going to happen, but our blood sugar is low this morning and we're jonesing for sweets.

Like this: YouGov has been regularly sampling American voters since January. Cumulatively, they find that Republicans' have lost faith in Trump’s ability to handle the job, from a high of 81% approval in January to 65% in August. Republicans, who have been seen to stick with Trump like cockleburs to mohair. But repeal and replace tanked. Tanked-- somebody didn't do it right! -- like the famous Wall's about to, due to a thug immigrant named Harvey.

YouGov uses Internet polling, which I've always thought was mighty skewed, but FiveThirtyEight gives YouGov an overall B grade for getting it right. And they have a 93% correct rate for calling individual horse races.

"Opinion has changed on the most visible issues of Trump’s presidency, which suggests that the public is reacting to the administration’s handling of specific policies." Short take: the new resident administration doesn't look competent, and even Republicans are beginning to think it has a lot to do with the man at the top.

The money shot:

Falling assessments of a party or president’s competence have important electoral consequences. For one thing, it limits the range of issues that a party can campaign on, since voters are unlikely to find persuasive promises from a party that has proven it can’t deliver. Voters punish governments for poor performance on a range of issues — not just on the economy, as some claim.

Explains the current signs of panic at 1600 Penn Ave., don't it?