NC Republicans, Are You Ready for a Purge?

It may be spring in North Carolina, but this is the winter of Hasan Harnett's discontent.

He's about to be the first chair of the North Carolina Republican Party ever ousted from his post (not even a full year after he was elected to it). The NCGOP leaders are meeting in Raleigh this Saturday for an "impeachment-like trial" of Harnett (or a kangaroo court?). Harnett himself says he's out of the country and won't attend. That'll certainly make it easier to take away his title.

The tea party wing of the NCGOP, which put Harnett into his job, has lost the power struggle with Dallas Woodhouse, the executive director of the state party. The only question that remains after Saturday's auto-da-fé: can/will the NCGOP pull itself together in time to save Governor Squishy's ass this fall?

The Toxic Legacy of Commissioners Miller, Hodges, Yates, and Blust

While Watauga County Commissioners Jimmy Hodges, Perry Yates, and David Blust were turning a deaf ear to the pleas of citizens to appeal the Maymead asphalt decision to Superior Court -- because it would cost too much -- they were paying out to Eggers Eggers Eggers & Eggers over $47,000 to intervene in the Boone ETJ lawsuit.

[Above: the accounting of what's been paid to Eggers x 4 in the matter of the Boone ETJ lawsuit intervention]

Priorities? Yeah, both the Maymead decision and the ETJ lawsuit intervention reveal very clear priorities. If Boone loses its ETJ, there goes any zoning restrictions that would keep an asphalt plant, a cement facility, a race track from imposing their charms on a Boone ETJ residential neighborhood.

That's where commissioners Hodges, Yates, and Blust stand.

To be fair, the decision to intervene in the Boone ETJ lawsuit was initiated by then Commission Chair Nathan Miller (who's also represented both the fairgrounds race track and the cement plant in their efforts to subvert Boone's land-use regs). Both Yates and Blust went along with Miller. They share the blame. They must also now share the fall-out.

Fact-Checking Claims on Both Sides RE HB2

We should thank God for PolitiFact for keeping politicians honest. Or for sweeping up after the elephant parade has gone by. You can read full discussions of these fact-checks here.

1. "There are 31 other states and 10,000 other cities that have the same type of policies that we just passed."

-- Rep. Paul "Skip" Stam, N.C. House Speaker pro tem

Rated Half True.

2. "We have not taken away any rights that have currently existed in any city in North Carolina."

-- N.C. Gov. Pat McCrory

Rated False. 

3. "Towns, cities and counties in North Carolina are still allowed to set stricter non-discrimination policies for their own employees if they choose."

-- N.C. Gov. Pat McCrory

Rated Half True.

4. "Will [HB2] threaten federal funding for public schools under Title IX? No, according to a federal court which has looked at a similar issue."

-- N.C. Gov. Pat McCrory

Rated Half True.

5. Charlotte’s anti-discrimination ordinance would have "opened all bathrooms to all sexes at all times" if it hadn’t been overturned by HB2.

-- N.C. Lt. Gov. Dan Forest

Rated False.

6. "The city of Charlotte passed a bathroom ordinance mandate on every private-sector employer in Charlotte."

-- N.C. Gov. Pat McCrory

Rated Mostly False.

7. North Carolina spent "almost as much as it spends on government rape crisis programs in a year" to convene a special session for HB2.

-- LGBT Progress

Rated Mostly False.

8. "There have not been any public safety issues" in cities that allow transgender people to use the bathroom of the gender they identify as.

-- Equality NC Director Chris Sgro

Rated Mostly True.

9. "Attorney General Roy Cooper refuses to do his job" by not defending House Bill 2 in a lawsuit.

-- N.C. Senate President pro tem Phil Berger

Rated Half True.

10. The Human Rights Campaign is "more powerful than the NRA."

-- N.C. Gov. Pat McCrory

Rated False.

The Word For Those Who Legislate Gender Identity -- "Authoritarian"

Henion Family Raising Money to Take Maymead Asphalt Case to Superior Court

Randall & Carolyn Henion, who are neighbors to the Doc & Merle Watson Scenic Highway and to the Maymead asphalt plant (set down squat on that highway), are raising money through GoFundMe to appeal the Watauga Board of Adjustment's decision to reinstate Maymead's permit to make asphalt and ruin the neighborhood.

The Henions are going forward with an appeal because the Republican majority on the Watauga County Commission would not.

Visit their GoFundMe page and give if you can.

Boone Town Council Does Not Approve High-Rise Student Housing in Downtown But Also Does Not Reject It

Go figure.

At their regular monthly meeting this evening, the Boone Town Council didn't have much good to say about the proposed Rivers Walk development at the corner of Rivers Street and Water Street. Too huge. Too "rent-by-the-bedroom" and aimed at students. Too out of character with the rest of downtown Boone. Too little parking. Too big a building, which will run for over 700 linear feet next to two-lane Poplar Grove Rd. and tower over it, creating a kind of experiential "tunnel."

Yet, on the motion of Councilwoman Loretta Clawson, seconded by Mayor Pro Tem Lynne Mason, to reject the proposal, only Clawson voted in the affirmative. Even Lynne Mason would not vote for the motion she seconded.

Then what? It's frankly unclear, but the bottom-line is that the Council majority couldn't bring itself to say no. There'll be more meetings between the developers, their lawyer Jim Deal, and the Council, or between the developers, their lawyer Jim Deal, the Council, and the Planning Commission (which last week voted in favor of the project with provisions that town attorney Allison Meade said this evening were unenforceable).

Negotiation with the developer, we guess. Interesting concept in this context ... negotiation. Especially considering that the out-of-town owner of that property shouted out in the meeting, when it was clear he wasn't going to get an affirmative vote, "We're trying to negotiate with you, but you don't know how to negotiate!"

I'd have to agree with that assessment.

"A Special Kind of Ignorance" Infects the Ashe County Commission

On Monday night, the Ashe County Commission, which apparently didn't want The Guv and the General Assembly to feel lonely in their quest to become the laughing stock of the nation, unanimously passed a resolution of support for HB2. The meeting was full of the kind of "out there" statements that Phil Berger, Roy McCrory, and other supporters of HB2 have spread around -- that somehow grown men, a.k.a. "sexual predators," were by the grace of God and the passage of HB2 now being prevented from going into women's rooms to molest small girls.

That fantasy is so far off the known gravitational pull of earth as to be laughable, but the Ashe Commissioners were eating it up, and the preachers were slopping the hogs.

We wouldn't necessarily have noticed the overwhelming aroma of self-righteousness and self-induced hysteria emanating from Ashe County had not a retired U.S. Air Force Colonel took pen to paper and sent in a letter to the Jefferson Post blasting the "special kind of ignorance" that had propelled the Ashe elected officials into the netherworld of the culture wars.

"It takes a special kind of ignorance to waste time on a frivolous resolution rather than focusing on improving the lives of their fellow Ashe Countians," Ken Lynn wrote. "It takes a special kind of ignorance to inflict this craziness on fellow citizens. How do the county commissioners intend to enforce this law? Will we be required to carry a copy of our birth certificate? Will a new Bathroom Compliance Officer position be created so body parts can be checked against our birth certificate before we enter the restroom?"

Having known a few dozen preachers in my time, I feel fairly certain that self-reflection will fail them yet again, and Mr. Lynn is more likely to be the subject of their sermons this Sunday, rather than their own ignorant and destructive crusade against some of their fellow citizens.

Justice Is Coming for You, North Carolina!

Phil Berger

Yesterday, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that bathroom restrictions against transgender people are unconstitutional. Governor Squishy and the Republican leaders in the NC General Assembly ought to grab their waders and rush through the door the court just opened: "Oops, sorry! We take back HB2!" But of course they won't

Phil Berger, the Republican leader in the NC Senate reacted as only a bunkered and blinkered culture warrior could: he essentially denied that transgender people even exist and made it clear that if they do exist, they're not welcome in North Carolina.

Berger's published statement after the 4th Circuit's ruling came down: “People need to wake up: Roy Cooper, Barack Obama and two unelected federal judges are on the verge of completing their radical social re-engineering of our society by forcing middle school-aged girls to share school locker rooms with boys."

There's the language guaranteed to stir up the church folks: teenaged girls sharing the locker room with a boy. Not "a transgender boy who looks and acts like any other teenage girl," which is the reality of that situation. Berger's willful misuse of language amounts to denying the existence of people who have changed gender identities.

This is a transgender woman. She used to be a man. To Phil Berger, she doesn't exist, but if she did, by Gawd, Berger would make her go to the men's room.

The continual fallback to the meme of bathroom sexual assault -- that the threat of forced sex is what HB2 is all about -- is both ignorant and prejudicial, but since when did Berger and the preachers shy away from ignorance and prejudice?

They will cling to their prejudices and take as many others down with them as they can. Meanwhile, the mills of justice are grinding. The 4th Circuit's ruling is coming to North Carolina.

The Economic Downside of Bigotry

Our Republican Overlords in the NC General Assembly (along with Governor Squishy) don't just talk about economic development. They do something about it, as in drive it the hell away from North Carolina. Chad Nance did a little toting up of lost dollar amounts just since Squishy signed HB2:

The numbers are extremely grim:

PayPal: $44 million
Deutsche Bank: $21.4 million
Unnamed tech company expansion in Buncombe County: $14.3 million
Lionsgate: $3 million
Bruce Springsteen concert: $0.7 million
Charlotte hotel revenue lost from canceled or relocated events: $2.2 million
Five canceled, relocated, or scaled-back events in Raleigh: $0.7 million

That doesn't even count the canceled Pearl Jam appearance and Gawd knows how many other economic expansions that were scuttled without alerting the press, let alone the canceled vacations.

Chad Nance addressed his rage at those who passed HB2 or who support it now from pulpits and other armored bunkers of self-righteousness:

For years, and currently with HB2, y’all have been happy to shame anyone you wanted, from single mothers to the gay kid down the street. Now the shame has rightly been directed back at the people who have spent years using it as a weapon. No longer is it socially acceptable to behave this way, and it is eating some of you up to such an extent that you feel obligated to act out publicly. It is those who live their lives in a state of reactionary bigotry that should feel shame. Y’all be embarrassed when you go out of your house. You should feel like people are watching you and silently judging you because of who you are. It’s your turn, folks….

They should feel shame, but I've watched those obsessives long enough to know that they're incapable of shame.