If You Want To Dial In to the State Board of Elections Meeting Today...

At two p.m. this afternoon:

Dial 415.930.5321. Access code = 127-597-008

It's reportedly a long agenda, and the Watauga County case may be near the end. Check these document files.

Uncovering Deception at the Watauga Board of Elections

Watauga BOE Chair Bill Aceto and his handpicked successor to Elections Director Jane Anne Hodges -- Matt Snyder -- have clearly colluded in attempting to mislead the state Board of Elections.

Background

Bill Aceto

Tomorrow in a teleconference, the State Board of Elections will vote on an Early Voting plan for Watauga County during the March primary. The Bill Aceto Plan denies an Early Voting site on the campus of Appalachian State University. The alternative plan submitted by "minority member" Stella Anderson provides an Early Voting site on the ASU campus.

Both sides presented their different plans in writing to the State BOE. The Anderson plan is accompanied by numerous displays, calculations of votes-per-hour during the fall 2014 elections (after an Early Voting site was restored at ASU under court order), and demographic information on population density.

Aceto's argument, on the other hand, relies on a factual lie.

Aceto & Snyder Collude

In his argument to the State BOE justifying no polling site on the ASU campus, Aceto attempts to show that a single courthouse Early Voting site for the entire town of Boone is perfectly adequate.

This is a direct quote from Bill Aceto's argument to the State BOE:

"For the November 2014 General Election, 6,142 early voters were easily accommodated by the nearby Board of Elections office site, which averaged 77.25 voters per hour …. Please note the calculations of voters per hour differ with those provided by Member Anderson, and I have verified my calculations with the Watauga County Elections Director [Matt Snyder]. In sum, these numbers do not justify having two sites within one-half mile of each other duplicating efforts when our funds could be utilized in other locations." (italics added)

Indeed, those "calculations of voters per hour differ" from Anderson's evidence … mainly because Aceto's numbers -- "verified" by Matt Snyder -- are totally bogus.

Matt Snyder

Aceto took the combined Early Voting turnout of both the courthouse site and the ASU Student Union site and attributed it to the courthouse site, never bothering to inform the State BOE members that 2,551 of those early votes attributed to the courthouse site were actually cast at the ASU Student Union and that in fact the ASU site hosted more voters per hour than the Administration site.

Why Do We Not Trust Elections in Watauga County?

Because the people in charge of conducting elections in Watauga County are transparently partisan in their goals and fundamentally dishonest in their behavior.

A Sleeper Redistricting Court Challenge Suddenly Explodes Over the Blue Skies of North Carolina

No one in particular was watching the court challenge to the redistricting of two congressional districts filed over two years ago, but late yesterday plaintiffs David Harris, Christine Bowser, and Samuel Love suddenly prevailed in the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. The three-judge panel unanimously threw out the racial gerrymandering of Congressional District 1 and District 12. It was a blistering opinion. The judges gave the NC General Assembly exactly two weeks to fix the problem.

Meanwhile, all adjoining and abutting congressional districts will be impacted by any fix, which is throwing the March primary -- another bright idea of the Republican geniuses in the General Assembly -- into chaos and doubt. We intercepted the following opinion from a legal authority with expertise in election law:

The ruling throws the March 15 primary into chaos, as the judges ordered state lawmakers to redraw the maps within two weeks and not to hold any elections for U.S. House until the maps are in place. A special session of the legislature would have to be called to approve new maps, and they might have to pass federal muster again.

Of course, the redistricting masterminds in the Republican Party promise a quick appeal to the Supreme Court, which will further drag out the resolution of this colossal mess the legislators have created. They want to blame the courts, but that dog won't hunt: the courts are there for the redress of grievances, and there are grievances aplenty with this General Assembly.

How much chaos is enough chaos? We've gotten it in spades from those guys, as they tried to legislate North Carolina back into the 19th century, and court after court has slapped them down hard.

The chief drawers of those redistricting maps claimed over and over that racial considerations were never a part of their calculations. No one with at least two working synapses believed them. Neither did the judges on the 4th Circuit: “The record is replete with statements indicating that race was the legislature’s paramount concern,” the judges wrote.

A Dunce Hat for Bill Cobey

Bill Cobey, chairman of the State Board of Education, former chair of the NC Republican Party, and a former one-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives, has "a weak explanation" for why few college kids in North Carolina are now pursuing a career in public school teaching. Cobey said the decline in interest reflected a society that emphasizes “making a lot of money as opposed to making a difference” (N&O).

Do we call that "psychological projection," a.k.a. "blame-shifting"? Certainly, Mr. Cobey's Republican Party is money-obsessed, but insulting an entire generation of bright, young college students, many of whom have been inspired by excellent teachers to the point they thought seriously of pursuing a career in teaching, but most of whom also need to eat regular meals and pay the rent and buy gas for the car -- it's out of line, Mr. Cobey.

The profession of public school teaching in North Carolina has declined under the ministrations of Mr. Cobey's Republican Party to the point where one's rationality might be questioned if he or she announced to the family, "I think I'll go into teaching in North Carolina, because the General Assembly and the Governor have succinctly signaled their lack of interest and, in fact, their active hostility toward public schools and public school teaching, and I'm promised a long career of poor pay and no advancement and dipping into my own pocketbook to buy my own supplies." 

But for Mr. Cobey, those kids just want to make "a lot of money as opposed to making a difference," which makes him a colossal ass as well as a clueless chair of the State Board of Education. Mr. Cobey and his pals in the General Assembly are the ones making the difference, the difference between a well educated and dynamic citizenry in North Carolina and a declining and doomed educational system.

Ginny, Call Your Office

Part of a sample primary ballot produced and circulated by the Rowan County Board of Elections.

Janet Cowell Caves

NC State Treasurer Janet Cowell, who is also chair of the board of trustees for the State Health Plan, has announced that controversial changes to the state employees health plan for 2018 have been taken off the agenda for the board's meeting tomorrow.

Janet Cowell is a Democrat. In a surprise move late last year, she announced that she would not be running for reelection, or for anything else.

Sometimes, public pressure works.

Employee Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves

Some 685,000 North Carolina state workers (including teachers, y'all!), state retirees, and their families are facing a sudden and cruel rewriting of the state health insurance rules that will drop employee spouses from coverage as well as simply eliminate the popular "80/20 plan," forcing state employees into junk insurance plans at higher cost.

The State Health Plan board of trustees will vote on whether to mug state employees this Friday. They say they're having to do this because the Republicans in the General Assembly demanded a reduction in cost. Members of the General Assembly, including the ineffable Jonathan Jordan, say they're as surprised as you are and don't understand why this is happening. Don't you believe it.

Every last one of those Republican members of the General Assembly voted for the budget that is busily shifting the cost of everything onto the backs of working people while giving big tax breaks to the rich and to corporations. Jonathan Jordan is responsible (along with Dan Soucek, who's getting the hell out of Dodge).

Changes under consideration would also add premiums and raise the deductibles paid by those who enroll in the remaining plans. One of those is a "consumer-directed" plan with high deductibles paired with a health savings account. For many state workers, particularly those who earn lower salaries, that plan isn't affordable, said Ardis Watkins, the lead lobbyist for SEANC [State Employees Assn. of NC]....

Watkins said that, if the health plan wants to look for savings, its own consultants have pointed toward potential changes that would net at least $250 million per year. The state, she said, should bring the rates paid to providers more in line with rates paid by Medicare. That would mean less profit for doctors and hospitals, something that would be likely to spur push-back by medical providers. Passing on the costs to state employees, she said, may be the politically easier option.

We should know by now, after five years of Republican rule in this state, that screwing their own employees comes very naturally to these guys. We can only hope that those 685,000 workers, retired or active, make it politically uneasy to do this dirt.

The best part? The trustees of the State Health Plan have made it virtually impossible for the citizens to contact them to express an opinion (see the video posted below). Their contact information is carefully shielded, though some sleuths have turned up a few of them (see below the video).



Contact info for members of the board of trustees of the State Health Plan:

Dr. Paul Cunningham cunninghamp@ecu.edu

Kim Hargett (who is also running for the NC House). Her campaign’s mailing address:
7817 WHITE STORE RD
MARSHVILLE, NC 28103

Charles T Johnson
220 Bragg St
Warrenton NC 27589

Aaron McKeithan amckethan@gmail.com

Billy Medlin
600 7 Lks #7
West End, NC 27376
pm_consult@yahoo.com

Warren Newton
590 Manning Drive
CB 7595
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7595
919-966-3711

David Rubin david_rubin@unc.edu

The Next Bad Republican Law To Be Overturned in Court?

Republicans in the NC General Assembly -- Rep. Jonathan Jordan and Sen. Dan Soucek voting right along with the crowd -- finally succeeded in passing an "Ag-Gag" law last summer (over Gov. Squishy's veto), only they made it worse ... much worse ... by making it illegal for any employee of any business, whether that business stomps chickens to death or mistreats bedridden seniors, from blowing the whistle on those practices.

The law originally got going because the chicken and turkey processing industry got a big black eye from hidden videos of the horrendous treatment of animals in those factories. So industry lobbyists induced the Republican leaders of the General Assembly to write a law making disclosures of horror  both illegal and "actionable" for the company (that is, Mr. Chicken Plucking Industry can sue your ass for damages if you reveal bad practices in his factory farm).

The General Assembly made it even worse by making the "gag" law apply to every business, including nursing homes, day care centers, half-way houses ... you name it!

According to the New York Times, no workplace gag law in the nation goes as far as North Carolina's, but then that's what we've been specializing in since 2011 in this state -- political extremism in the service of the rich and powerful.

NC Supreme Court: "Extortion of Public Employees Is Fine With Us!"

Justice Edmunds

The North Carolina Supreme Court on Friday issued a ruling that any county sheriff can demand a political donation from deputies and fire those deputies if they fail to pony up. No kidding! The court declared that "deputies work directly for the sheriff and do not have the same protections as county government workers when it comes to political activity."

Deputies (and sheriffs, for that matter) also work for the citizens in their jurisdiction, who might also want to believe that law enforcement is not about who's swinging the biggest political stick.

The sheriff in this particular case, incidentally, was a Democrat. Power fiefdoms, especially ones that feature the extortion of money from employees, are abhorrent to my notions of democracy.

The only sitting justice up for election in 2016 is Bob Edmunds, but the Republicans have made it impossible to vote for someone else. By the rules of the new "retention elections" for Supreme Court justices, we can only vote to "retain" Edmunds, or not retain him. We will have no choice to vote for someone else ... unless a constitutional challenge to "retention elections" gets heard favorably by a special three-judge panel.

I will not be voting to "retain" Justice Edmunds. I can barely retain my breakfast, thinking about this particular ruling.