Our Nickelback Headache

When Is a Lobbyist Not Like a Hooker?

Answer: When he/she operates in North Carolina:

"Consensual sexual relationships do not have monetary value and therefore are not reportable as gifts or ‘reportable expenditure made for lobbying.’ However, a lobbyist or lobbyist principal’s provision of paid prostitution services by a third party to a designated individual could constitute a gift or thing of value, albeit an illegal one, depending on the particular facts.”

--North Carolina State Ethics Commission

The background, from the N&O: "In 2012, the [ethics] commission investigated two lobbyists who had intimate relationships with top aides to House Speaker Thom Tillis, according to documents The News & Observer obtained at the time. Tillis’ chief of staff resigned and his policy adviser was asked to resign.

"A key focus of that investigation, which did not result in any public penalties, was whether the lobbyists provided things of value to the public officials."

Inflation, the NC GOP Way

Speaker Tim Moore

Republican NC Senate leader Phil Berger and Republican NC House Speaker Tim Moore each have more than a dozen "partisan" staff members serving their manifest needs. Personnel data from the Financial Services Office at the General Assembly show the staffs' combined salaries total more than $2 million.

The top four partisan staffers in Moore's office:

Clayton Somers, chief of staff, $158,500

Andy Munn, deputy chief of staff, $120,000

Mitch Gillespie, senior policy adviser, $100,000

Sarah Newton, senior policy adviser, $85,000

The top four partisan staffers in Berger's office:

Jim Blaine, chief of staff, $158,500

Andrew Tripp, general counsel, $147,500

Amy Auth, deputy chief of staff for communications and operations, $112,500

Jeffrey Warren, policy analyst, $108,000

Fiscal Mismanagement in Raleigh Leading to Higher Gas Prices, Fewer Jobs

The Republicans in the North Carolina General Assembly are driving the state into such a hole that they're resorting to magic hat tricks, or rather, cruel bait-and-switch tricks, to be more precise.

They're moving legislation right now to lower the gas tax by 2 1/2 cents a gallon for the next four months on their way to raising the gas tax very substantially in the coming years. So they're shouting "We're cutting taxes!" when their plan is really and truly quite the opposite. It's a "stealth tax increase," says notorious Tea Party blogger Brant Clifton.

Jobs? O hell. The minus 2 1/2 cents on the gas tax during the next four months will mean firing 500 Department of Transportation workers, some 4% of the agency's employees. Those are your neighbors, your friends, your fellow struggling North Carolinians looking for that "Carolina Comeback" that Governor Squishy has been touting.

Meanwhile, the state's revenue forecast proves that "trickle-down" doesn't work any better in this Year of Our Lord than it did in 1982.

The Transparency of the Elections Men

Now that Republican members of the Watauga County Board of Elections, Bill Aceto and Luke Eggers, have forced the retirement of our fair-minded and non-partisan elections supervisor, Jane Ann Hodges, they intend to put in their boy, who'll be fully partisan and not at all fair-minded.

That "fix" was signaled when Aceto and Eggers announced that they wouldn't be needing an official search for a successor to Hodges. They already have their guy in mind. You bet!

The shenanigans we've seen since 2013 are nothing compared to the shenanigans we're now in for. The last impediment to all-out electoral manipulation has been removed. Their pick to replace Hodges should be very revealing of their intentions.

The Economic Hostages of the Religious Right

Guest blogging: Dickson

"I don't want to see religious bigotry in any form. It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it."
— Rev. Billy Graham, Parade, 1981

Just about every election year, I watch in amazement as an unbelievable number of people in America vote against their own best economic interests. Likewise, in just about every election year, I turn to my wife and say, “What the hell is wrong with these people?” My reaction is not based solely on my left-leaning political views or on some bizarre desire to smear conservatives. My reaction is derived from simply paying attention to what politicians do once in office, for whom they seem to be working, and my genuine shock at who votes for them, given what they habitually do.

Knowing what little I do about human nature, I can tell you without hesitation that behavior is always functional in the mind of the individual. Even the behavior of people with, say, schizophrenia. It may seem strange to us, but their behavior makes functional sense to them. So, armed with this universal truth, I set out to find out how middle-class and poor people come to believe it is functional behavior for them to vote against their own economic self-interest.

It’s no secret that right-wing politics and fundamentalist Christianity are joined at the hip. Watching their bizarre, contradictory, and often hypocritical dance is like watching a train wreck. You don’t want to watch, but you can’t look away. Mostly, though, the GOP mission is to do whatever the evangelicals set before them. They are dependent, after all, on the evangelical vote to have even a chance at getting re- elected. More than any other factor, it is the faith and beliefs of the individual that control the hand of the poor and middle-class voter.

Even if you know little to nothing about the Bible, you know that many sins can get you sent to hell. Religious fundamentalists will tell you that being gay will doom you, or supporting pro-choice initiatives, or voting for the politicians who support pro-choice or pro-equality policies. Even if national and local politicians and their supporters don’t come right out and say it -- “You’re going to hell if you vote for a Democrat” -- it’s always implied.

The most recent addition to this propaganda is a "godly" victimhood -- “The Christian faith is under attack.” "There's a war on Christmas!" "They won't let our kids pray in school!" Etc.

Much of this is spread by Christian pastors. While people may be suspicious of most politicians, regardless of their stripes, they trust their pastors. Most all of the religious leaders I’ve met in my life have been good, caring, and compassionate people. They're also human and subject to their own biases. Whether unwittingly or with full knowledge, some pastors have become enablers of an impoverished status quo. Because they preach hell-fire against what's "worldly," they cut off many pathways to economic help, including education.

These statements may seem ludicrous to many of you. You may think to yourself, “That’s ridiculous. Our pastor would never be so cruel or hard-hearted.” But by presenting one political party as the party of God and the other as godless, many preachers, especially in the South, quite literally block the possibilities of positive economic change.

Why would a pastor encourage his/her congregation to vote for a candidate who opposes health insurance for those desperate for it? Why would pastors encourage votes for a candidate who'll pander to the wealthy while ignoring the needy? Why don't pastors offer this guidance -- “Do what is best for your family. God loves you and knows you love him. Honor him by caring for those you love and by doing what is best for your family”?

Even though the Christian faithful may not agree with reactionary policies on welfare, schools, sales taxes, or healthcare, by appointing themselves the “Party of God,” Republicans have forced Christians across the nation into a moral corner. Fear of being ostracized from the church family weighs heavily on its members. Fear of the devil, of those "who do evil against us," is potent.

Until more church-goers see the evils in politicizing the church, of using fear as a political wedge, the Republican Party will likely go on owning the pulpit.

A Stupid Waste of Money

Tim Moore

The Republican pooh-bahs in the NC General Assembly have now spent over $107,000 in pointless lawyer fees trying to defend the indefensible, the state's discriminatory Amendment One.

Pointless? The pooh-bahs decided to spend the money after the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals indicated that Amendment One was unconstitutional and thereby legalized gay marriage in North Carolina as well as several other states in the Fourth Circuit, and after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to stay that ruling, and after NC Attorney General Roy Cooper said he was therefore not going to waste any more of his time (and the state's money) defending the indefensible.

But the pooh-bahs actually enjoy banging their heads into brick walls and spending our money needlessly. “I see no sense in stopping,” said the new Republican Speaker of the House Tim Moore. He really said that.

What lawyer got the lion's share of that $107,000? California attorney John Eastman, director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence at The Claremont Institute and ... wait for it ... chairman of the National Organization for Marriage. One of the people in this wide land who has been most teeth-grittingly determined to stand in the courthouse door against gay marriage is now profiting as a lawyer from defending the indefensible.

It's a nice gig if you can get it. Luckily, Mr. Eastman has enablers in the NC General Assembly who don't know when to stop.

This Is What an Activist Judge Looks Like

Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore said this week that “men and their daughters or women and their sons” would want to get married next if gay people were granted equal marriage rights.

On the Sunday before a federal judge ruled that Alabama must begin issuing same-sex marriage licenses, Moore had ordered the state’s probate judges to refuse licenses to gay couples, a move that was compared to Gov. George Wallace blocking desegregation in the 1960s.

Although some same-sex marriages were performed in Alabama on Monday, more than 50 state judges followed Moore’s advice.

Power and Powerlessness and the NC GOP

Politics in North Carolina right now -- if you have any progressive leanings at all, or even moderate leanings -- just suck ass. Public education, starved; the door slammed on the unemployed; a loud "eff off!" to at least 200,000, and probably many more, who would benefit from health insurance provided through Medicaid. The state's natural resources -- air, water, native scenery -- betrayed to high-dollar industries that basically don't give a shit.

Not to mention the deliberate hobbling of ballot access in North Carolina, especially for black voters but also especially for college students. Everyone was talking about photo voter i.d. requirements and how they would disproportionately impact the poor and the black. But the most transparent and little-talked-about voter disenfranchisement was the provision that will disallow college-issued photo i.d.s. and most out-of-state driver's licenses. That deliberate targeting of college students is in a subsection of the deceptively named "ACT TO RESTORE CONFIDENCE IN GOVERNMENT BY ESTABLISHING THE VOTER INFORMATION VERIFICATION ACT" (H589), passed by the Republicans and signed by Gov. McCrory in 2013.

Another little noted provision in H589 targets college students in another way. The new rule says that if you are a legitimately registered voter, even a legitimately registered voter who has voted in prior elections, and if you walk into your polling place on election day, and it turns out to be the wrong polling place because you have moved since the last election and forgot to put in a "change of address" -- or were just plain confused about where you're supposed to be -- the new Republican majority in the General Assembly now won't let you vote, even provisionally, in that precinct. No, you have to vote in your assigned precinct -- "does anyone know where the Laurel Fork Baptist Church is?"

Republicans haven't had such unlimited power for a long time. Their first irresistible impulse was to legislate morality, especially the morality of women, most especially young women, but also the moral failures of the young generally, and they see an 18-year-old, first-time voter's confusion as nothing less than a moral failure.

I read on Republican blogs that commenters seem to think that failure to put in a change-of-address form, or to forget, or to simply not know ("where is Mt. Vernon Church?") -- that such "libtards" deserve what they get. College students shouldn't be voting anyway where they go to school because they're not from around here. So much for the democratic principle that every adult in our society should have ballot access, no matter their pedigree, race, or place of residence.

Well, as we know, a lack of knowledge can make you powerless. Being new to a system or a process makes you vulnerable, and the powerful feed on weakness of all kinds.

Power and Powerlessness in Watauga County

As the Watauga GOP has demonstrated through one of its public policy arms, the Watauga Board of Elections, Appalachian State student voters are pretty much powerless. Except when others file a law suit on their behalf, and a senior superior court judge, seconded by the NC Court of Appeals, rules that the State Board of Elections violated the rights of young voters when it approved the obviously suppressive Early Voting plan passed by local BOE Republicans Bill Aceto and Luke Eggers in 2013.

I get why the Republican power structure -- both locally and statewide -- is throwing its weight around. Their own genesis story casts them as God's Chosen People, a despised minority who suffered a hundred years of political banishment and profound powerlessness. Republicans in North Carolina were abused for generations, as Democrats ran the state, top to bottom. Feeling abandoned and powerless, impotent in the face of the powerful, will cause political gastric reflux.

Political gastric reflux. That feeling of powerlessness -- "there's nothing we can do to beat them!" -- can suddenly metastacize into something really toxic when conditions suddenly change. The current crop of Republican leaders, put suddenly in charge of everything following 2010, have turned into their own version of the scourge of God. It's their turn now. They have the upper-hand, and that hand holds a whip.

I get that psychology. And I can dig it. Any political party that stays in complete control, has the power for too long, becomes corrupt. The old Democratic Party was corrupted by men at the top. You remember their names, including at least one recent governor. That corrupt power deserved its comeuppance in 2010.

The new Republican overlords appear to be getting to the same corrupt place in record time. Total power inevitably breeds its own burrowing cabbage worm. Eventually, arrogance will do you in.

Not only did the Watauga GOP manipulate ballot access against college students, they manipulated polling places to move the most populous Boone city precinct far out to the countryside. They targeted the Elections Director Jane Anne Hodges, an acknowledged expert in elections law and an even-handed administrator, for elimination, and after months of harassment and meanness they have finally succeeded in forcing her retirement. They will replace her with a partisan who will not be open and fair. Take that to the bank.

The Republican Chair of the Watauga County Commission, Nathan Miller, sued Kathleen Campbell, the Democratic member of the Watauga BOE, for access to all her emails. The motive: retaliation for the public records requests that outed Republican County Attorney Stacy C. Eggers IV ("Four") as the real puppet-master behind the disenfranchisement plans of the BOE and the discovery that State BOE Republican member Paul Foley had been colluding with Four Eggers in secret.

When the Republican majority on the Watauga County Board of Commissioners discovered that by law they were responsible for paying Kathleen Campbell's legal defense against Nathan Miller's lawsuit, they attempted to foist their pick for attorney off on her, and when she insisted on her own lawyer, they're now refusing to pay her legal bills.

That's the current exercise of power in Watauga County.

I feel strongly for powerless college students as well as for innocent public officials because I know that there's danger in always feeling impotent. It can become a self-fulfilling habit of acquiescing: "Shit! I can't do anything about this, about them, so I just keep my head down, drink beer, and pay no attention to what's happening. I can’t do anything about it, and the end is near at hand anyway.”

Not just acquiesing -- accepting what others demand -- but also falling into quiescence, being too worn out by defeat to even talk back while you're being pounded into submission.

That's the death stinger in the tail of powerlessness. You get used to just taking it, or you develop the armor of not caring because you're "above it all," or you're glued to the meta-reality of mobile devices and have no inkling of what is actually being done to you and, through you, to the future of this society.