Sunday News: From the Editorial pages

UNC BOARD'S IDEOLOGICAL BIAS EXPOSED IN COURTING PRINCETON'S CONSERVATIVE CENTER: It is of questionable wisdom, not to mention fairness, for the UNC Board to complain of ideological bias and close some campus-based centers while at the same time actively courting another, clearly ideological center. Does anybody on the board worry about this inconsistency? It is particularly troubling to consider that such a center might be publicly funded or carry the endorsement of the state. As it is imagined now, it is not the place to spend the taxpayers, tuition or student-fee dollars. This board is acting with the kind of fiat that we’re used to seeing from the General Assembly. Sure, the board has the power and authority. But there should be a sincere effort to demonstrate a need, and desire to build support – in this case from a campus, its students, faculty and administrators.
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Judge sides with environmentalists in Blounts Creek ruling

Score one for the good guys:

The court ruling can on December 18 when Judge Joshua Willey Jr. overturned the lower court decision and vacated or annulled the twelve million gallons per day mine discharge permit given to the Martine Marietta Materials by the Division of Water Resources.

Judge Willey also ruled that the Sound Rivers and community members had the right to bring a permit challenge to court. The foundation said they worked hard to protect the public’s right to access the courts when the regulatory agencies get it wrong. The court win will protect Blounts Creek.

This is a pretty big victory, folks. On par with successfully shutting down the Titan Cement project, both of which involved limestone mining and the ruination of hundreds (if not thousands) of acres of critical Eastern NC wetlands. Interesting side-note: This case was originally given to Junior Berger, after daddy got him an appointment as an administrative law judge. But Little Phil ran for Court of Appeals back in November 2016, and after daddy got his name pushed to the top of the voting ballot, Junior stole that seat from the highly-qualified Linda Stephens. While that election was a kick in the pants, it very well may have paved the way for the savior of Blounts Creek.

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Saturday News: So much for philanthropy

NEW TAX LAW COULD DEAL DEATH BLOW TO CHARITIES AND NON-PROFITS: Taxpayers claim charitable contributions, along with mortgage interest, property taxes and some other expenses, as deductions from their taxable income if they itemize and the total exceeds the standard deduction. For some people – particularly those with higher incomes – the deduction for charitable gifts has served as an important incentive for giving because it helps reduce taxes owed. Operators of some nonprofits are hopeful Congress may still act. If not, and if charitable giving drops $13 billion nationally as one economist has predicted, North Carolina charities could be expected to take a big hit. So could the people who depend on them. In the state, Heinen said, nonprofits collect and spend roughly $42.5 billion a year and employ about 10 percent of the workforce. In the Triangle, they include Duke University Medical Center and WakeMed hospitals.
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Notable environmental developments during 2017

Topping the list is a new Governor who actually cares about it:

Molly Diggins, executive director of the North Carolina Sierra Club, said the most noticeable change in 2017 was definitely the new governor. Cooper, she said, has been consistently showing leadership on environmental issues, like offshore drilling since taking office. “Second to that is the end of the reign of terror at the Division of Environmental Quality and the return of staff being able to do their jobs and being able to have transparency and accessibility in their work again,” Diggins said. The department had become secretive under Regan’s predecessor, Donald van der Vaart, she said, with professional staff reports subject to rewrite to satisfy policy objectives. Regan has done a better job of transparency and outreach, particularly in rural parts of the state.

Grady McCallie, senior policy analyst for the North Carolina Conservation Network, agreed that the change within DEQ’s top ranks has been important. “We have an administration that cares about good, science-based policy and isn’t trying to smother what their agency scientists are telling them with political overlay,” he said. “Every administration considers politics, but this administration seems to be listening to its civil servants and longtime staff and that’s a huge change.”

And it's a job that has been made monumentally more difficult by the NC GOP's approach to funding. Not satisfied to allow Cooper and/or Regan to manage DEQ how they see fit, Republicans have tailored their budget line items to whittle down the staff in certain areas, while blocking the shifting of resources to fix those shortfalls. It was in the midst of these budget debates that GenX contamination of the Cape Fear was initially reported:

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Friday News: Death sentence

NC PRISON GUARDS FREQUENTLY SKIP INSPECTION ROUNDS LEADING TO UNNECESSARY INJURIES AND DEATHS: Early one winter morning in 2012, officers at an eastern North Carolina prison found inmate Willis Gravley hanging from a bed sheet. He’d been dead for hours. His death raised a question: Why didn’t officers at Bertie Correctional Institution stop Gravley from killing himself – or why, at least, didn’t they find his body earlier? Prison investigators later found that officers in Gravley’s unit had been skipping a crucial part of their job for years: doing the required 30-minute security checks. Instead, officers falsified prison records to indicate they had made their rounds, according to dismissal letters issued to some officers involved. In some of North Carolina’s most dangerous prisons, officers routinely fail to make their rounds, a Charlotte Observer investigation found.
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Friday fracking video

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The NC GOP's hypocrisy on lottery funds abuse

And of course the irony is lost on them:

State Sen. Phil Berger, a Rockingham County Republican, led lottery opponents as minority leader in 2005. He derided the lottery as “a diversion from other educational problems that Democratic leaders have failed to address,” in the far-right Carolina Journal in August 2005. He also told the Journal he doubted the money would end up where advocates said it would go. ‘The money for education is not going to increase.”

Now they are addicted to its cash. Worse, they are the ones fulfilling their own dire prediction – using the cash to pay for basic education needs. Today much of the money goes to “non-instructional support staff” that provide for on-going school operations while Berger, House Speaker Tim Moore and others shower their political patrons, particularly the businesses that control the N.C. Chamber of Commerce, with tax breaks and credits.

This K-3 class size (unfunded) mandate is about to crush schools statewide, and the friction between school boards and county commissions is going to boil over long before Spring Break rolls around. But instead of rolling up their sleeves and preparing to fix it, BergerMoore is too busy crafting propaganda in an effort to shirk the responsibility for this crisis. The next few months are going to get ugly.

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Thursday News: Sore loser

ROY MOORE TRIES TO STOP ALABAMA FROM CERTIFYING DOUG JONES: Republican Roy Moore filed a lawsuit to try to stop Alabama from certifying Democrat Doug Jones as the winner of the U.S. Senate race.The court filing occurred about 14 hours ahead of Thursday's meeting of a state canvassing board to officially declare Jones the winner of the Dec. 12 special election. Jones defeated Moore by about 20,000 votes. Moore's attorney wrote in the complaint filed late Wednesday that he believed there were irregularities during the election and said there should be a fraud investigation and eventually a new election. Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill told The Associated Press Wednesday evening that he has no intention of delaying the canvassing board meeting. "It is not going to delay certification and Doug Jones will be certified (Thursday) at 1 p.m. and he will be sworn in by Vice President Pence on the third of January," Merrill said.
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After dark

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Income inequality by race in NC stark and staggering

And it creates a formula of generational poverty that's almost impossible to reverse:

Disparities in outcomes did not come out of thin air; they arise from systems and policies, past and present, that create barriers to economic opportunity for people of color. For example, inequity in pay, rooted both in occupational segregation and in people of color being paid less for doing the same work as their white colleagues, is a major reason that communities of color struggle with higher levels of poverty.

African American workers in North Carolina were paid roughly $3.25 per hour less on average than their white colleagues in 2016, a gap that compounds rapidly over time into a monthly pay disparity of almost $600 and a deficit of more than $6,700 annually. The gap is even larger for Hispanic workers in North Carolina, who are paid $5.34 less than whites on average, which compounds into a pay gap of over $11,000 annually.

These numbers sound more like something that would have been compiled back in the 1950's than just last year. And while many folks I know prefer to write stuff like this off as merely one more example that Capitalism is inherently corrupted and needs to be replaced, in many ways, that's just a cop-out. It gives you an excuse to not even try and fix the wage disparity problem, and I have a big problem with that. Here's more:

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Wednesday News: "White" Christmas?

KKK LEFT RECRUITING FLYERS IN HILLANDALE NEIGHBORHOOD ON CHRISTMAS EVE: A Triangle community is expressing concern after discovering KKK fliers in their driveways on Christmas Eve. The notes, meant to recruit members, were placed in plastic bags, along with rocks and a few KKK business cards, and distributed throughout the Hillandale neighborhood in Wake County. "And, for whatever reason, they put peppermints in there," resident Mike Chandler said. Chandler found the bag in his driveway on the morning of Dec. 24. He said his wife drove around the neighborhood and found many other homes with the bags in their driveways. "It's a little bit disconcerting. I've been here 33, going on 34, years, never had anything like this come here before," he said. Among other things, the flier says “white pride doesn’t mean hate,” but many residents said they believe the KKK stands for hate.
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Tuesday News: Trumplethinskin

2017 LEFT WORLD LEADERS STUNNED BY TRUMP'S LACK OF DIPLOMACY: “The change in Washington puts the European Union in a difficult situation; with the new administration seeming to put into question the last 70 years of American foreign policy,” Donald Tusk, president of European Union, in a Jan. 31 letter raising concerns about Trump’s “worrying declarations.” “The times in which we could completely depend on others are, to a certain extent, over. I’ve experienced that in the last few days. We Europeans truly have to take our fate into our own hands,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel to an election rally in Munich May 28, alluding to difficulties with Trump after meetings on NATO and the G7 summit. “Make our planet great again,” French President Emmanuel Macron statement June 1 on the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement.
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Tuesday Twitter roundup

Making sure judges don't go too easy on those law-breaking children:

Exclusive: U.S. memo weakens guidelines for protecting immigrant children in court https://t.co/sto7PIbHVy #Immigration #Children #ncpol #ncga #nc

— ncFortyEight (@ncFortyEight) December 25, 2017

"Cold-hearted" just doesn't quite cover this:

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Monday News: Christmas edition

HOSPITAL-BOUND PATIENTS GIVEN TEDDY BEARS AS LITTLE FURRY COMPANIONS: Had she her druthers, Wynell Richardson would be spending Christmas at home with her husband of 63 years. But the eighth floor of Rex Hospital grew two shades brighter Sunday morning when a pair of children laid a teddy bear on her lap. A heart patient from Nashville, Richardson will pass her holiday in a telemetry bed, watching Raleigh’s holiday lights twinkle out her window. But when Chase and John Pittman brought her gift, she found new comfort to recuperate by. “I’m a whole lot better now,” said Richardson, 83. “They can keep me here until they get me right.” As the hours until Christmas ticked nearer, the volunteer Rex Guild brought presents to nearly every patient in the hospital, a tradition that dates to 1936. Before bears, the gift of choice for 20-plus years, they brought poinsettias.
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Sunday News: From the Editorial pages

WHY CAN'T LEGISLATIVE LEADERS STOP LYING ABOUT THEIR UNFUNDED CLASS-SIZE MANDATE? A group of parents rallied at the North Carolina Legislative Building to demand the General Assembly’s leadership repeal, or responsibly fund, the unfunded class-size mandate due to go into effect in the upcoming 2018-19 school year. The rally drew a troubling response from Phil Berger, President Pro Tem of the state Senate: “Even though some local school leaders decided to use the extra state funding to benefit their own spending priorities instead of to reduce class sizes, those reductions have already been fully funded,” he said. About three weeks later, Speaker of the House Tim Moore was asked to weigh in on the class-size issue. He, too, gave a worrisome response: “We have funded the positions.” Why are these responses so troubling? They are wholly untrue, indicating that the two most powerful men in state government either fail to understand the biggest issue facing North Carolina’s public schools, or are purposefully lying about the issue.
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Republican attacks on NC's judiciary most extreme in the nation

Not just pruning back the branch, they're trying to break it off:

Republicans haven’t hidden their displeasure with what they call judicial activism. Last February, Senate Leader Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore lashed out at three state judges who sided with Democratic Governor Roy Cooper in a dispute over his appointment powers. “If these three men want to make laws, they should hang up their robes and run for a legislative seat,” the duo said in a statement.

“They have firebombed the courthouses across the state, creating chaos, and I think it’s all to gain partisan advantage,” says State Representative Marcia Morey, a Democrat who spent almost two decades as a judge. “They have not liked case decisions, and they need to get friendly judges in there.”

And once again, I can't help but see parallels between what the NC GOP is doing, and what authoritarian regimes in other countries do. They purge hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of experienced judges and replace them with unqualified political hacks, so there's nobody left to question their undemocratic behavior. Republicans have been whittling away at NC's judiciary since they took over in 2011, but it looks like 2018 may be when they try to deliver their merciless version of a coup de grâce:

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Saturday News: Can you say "Death Tax"?

DALE FOLWELL NOW WANTS TO COLLECT OVERPAYMENTS FROM ESTATES OF DEAD STATE EMPLOYEES: Families of some dead state employees may be getting a letter from the state Treasurer. The message: Pay up. Treasurer Dale Folwell’s office has already been recovering disability overpayments from former employees who are still alive. Now, according to agency emails, it has broadened the effort to the estates of former workers who have died. Last summer, the agency began notifying people who receive payments from a state program called the transitional disability income plan that since 2006 they had been getting too much money and the office was going to start taking it back. In winter and spring of this year, managers in Folwell’s office developed plans to get money back from 61 people who owed $871,892. Three others had died after January 2017 and owed $64,220.
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Roy Cooper has not given up fighting NC GOP tax cuts

There are simply too many important things to do to just let this go:

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said Wednesday that he’d keep trying to block pending state tax cuts for corporations and top wage-earners that Republicans approved last summer, a long-shot effort that could become a key 2018 election-year issue.

The GOP-controlled General Assembly voted to lower both corporate and individual income tax rates again in January 2019, halfway through the next fiscal year’s two-year budget that lawmakers will adjust when they return for their regular work session in May. Cooper has blasted other tax cuts approved by Republicans since 2013 because he said they benefited the rich and out-of-state corporations the most. The latest round of cuts was approved over Cooper’s veto of the two-year budget containing the rate reductions.

I realize it's a little early in his tenure to start fashioning a "Legacy" name for Roy. You know, like "Education Governor" or what have you. But after watching the numerous battles he's been dragged into by an immature and spiteful Legislature, I'ma go ahead and put this forward, so y'all can chew on it for a little while: "Resistance Governor." Would that we could give him an easier job after November 2018, but that's going to take a phenomenal effort.

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Friday News: YOYO

IN ABSENCE OF FEDERAL AID, TEXAS HURRICANE VICTIMS FORCED TO RELY HEAVILY ON CHARITIES: The groups helping to rebuild on the Texas Gulf Coast after Hurricane Harvey have collected close to $1 billion in donations, according to an Associated Press tally of major national and local organizations. Much of that money is already being put to work after Harvey, which ravaged cities in Southeast Texas in August with high winds before dumping record amounts of rain on the rest of the coast, including Houston, the nation's fourth-largest city. Of the $928 million raised by major groups involved in the recovery, the most money has been collected by the Red Cross, which said this month that it's raised $493 million for Harvey relief. The Greater Houston Community Foundation, which is operating the relief fund endorsed by Houston's top elected leaders, has raised more than $108 million. The Rebuild Texas Fund, administered by the family foundation of computer magnate Michael Dell, has raised more than $89 million. The evangelical group Samaritan's Purse has also raised $86 million. United Way has raised more than $54 million.
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Friday fracking video

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Thursday News: Deplorables

DC follows in North Carolina's corrupted footsteps

Thomas Mills drops several truth bombs on our current political climate:

As I’ve said before, North Carolina Republicans were Trumpists before Trump. They were willing to trash the state’s reputation as a forward thinking, welcoming state in order to pass tax cuts that disproportionally benefited the wealthy while dramatically cutting the services that helped people climb out of poverty and stay in the middle class. And they were willing to pander to the ugliest strains of reactionary populism to do it.

It’s pandering to populism in exchange for a huge kickback for the wealthiest Americans. The country club Republicans who want to enrich themselves and their friends and the movement conservatives who believe that tax cuts are a panacea for every ill don’t have the numbers to get much done. So, they’ve cut deals with social conservatives, many of whom harbor nasty resentments, to get elected and to get their tax cuts.

It truly is a sad state of affairs. The GOP has learned to give the worst elements of our society what they want, the racists, the sexists, the Islamophobes, the holier-than-thou gay-haters, etc., all in an effort to line the pockets of the wealthy even more. Here's more:

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Wednesday News: Every vote is important

BALANCE OF POWER IN VIRGINIA HOUSE FLIPPED BY A ONE VOTE MARGIN: A single vote may spell the end of Republican control in Virginia's House of Delegates. A Democratic challenger seems to have won a recount Tuesday by one vote, putting the partisan balance in the House at a tie. It would mean a rare power-sharing agreement may have to be brokered. Shelly Simonds beat three-term incumbent Republican Del. David Yancey in the 94th District in Newport News, 11,608 to 11,607, in a dramatic hourslong recount that ended only after the precinct ballots were exhausted and provisional ballots were examined. The recounted votes still must be certified by a court Wednesday, although officials said they expected that no ballots would be challenged.
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Tuesday News: The biggest heist in history

Tuesday Twitter roundup

Today's hot story: A desperate attempt by Republicans to bury damning evidence of voter suppression:

Reached out to @ThomTillis and @SenatorBurr on this, both stand by Farr. Tillis spox said Farr the victim of "baseless claim posted on a left-wing blog," provided letter from @carterwrenn saying Farr didn't see postcards before they went out. #ncga #ncpol https://t.co/zcIuVvAA8L

— Travis Fain (@TravisFain) December 18, 2017

Make no mistake, Burr and Tillis aren't just trying to protect Trump nominee Thomas Farr, they're trying to shield their entire party from the exposure of their often disgusting campaign tactics. Hat-tip to Indyweek for some blockbuster reporting:

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This is how good state government deals with a sold-out FCC

Reason #54 why we need to take back the NC General Assembly:

Inslee’s proposal, which makes Washington state the first in the nation to act on net neutrality, includes pursuing the following actions:

Direct the state’s Utilities and Transportation Commission (UTC) to establish a process for ISPs to certify that they will not engage in practices inconsistent with net neutrality principles. Limit state-conferred benefits to ISPs that have made such certifications. Limit applicability of UTC pole attachment rules to ISPs that are net neutral. Use the state government’s role as a big customer, and our ability to establish state master contracts used by local governments, to incentivize Washington companies to adhere to net neutrality principles. Pursue regulatory and legislative action to award contracts to vendors that meet net neutral business requirements. Lead the exploration of a multi-state purchasing cooperative to procure internet service from providers that adhere to net neutrality principles. Collaborate with legislators to strengthen our consumer protection laws to include the principles of net neutrality. Pursue legislation authorizing public utility districts and rural and urban port districts to provide retail ISP and telecommunications services.

As you can see, several of those actions would be impossible to implement with GOP control of our Legislature, and some (most?) of the other actions could/would be quickly undermined by the same. Which brings up another (broader) issue that Progressive activists need to keep in mind: I'm starting to see more of these, "Why doesn't Roy Cooper do this or that thing I want? He's just as bad as the Republicans!" Understand, we put him in the Governor's mansion, but we also crippled him in the process. Governor Cooper is held hostage by a supermajority that is hell-bent on stripping his powers and defunding his administration, but he's still made more progress for our state than McCrory did his entire tenure. Context is important, so put that energy to work where it's needed.

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Monday News: Hypocrites R' Us

TRUMP DENIES RUMORS HE PLANS TO FIRE MUELLER, BUT STILL ANGRY OVER E-MAIL ACQUISITION: President Donald Trump says he is not considering firing special counsel Robert Mueller, but that didn't stop him from adding to the growing conservative criticism of Mueller's acquisition of thousands of emails sent and received by Trump officials before the start of his administration. While conservatives have been critical of Mueller's probe of Russian activities during the 2016 campaign, Trump said Sunday afternoon that he has no plans to fire Mueller. The president did criticize the fact that Mueller had gained access the emails, however. Trump said it was "not looking good" and again stressed that there was "no collusion" with Russia — an important question the probe is examining. The documents were provided to Mueller's team by the GSA in September in response to requests from the FBI, but the transition team didn't learn about it until last week, Langhofer said.
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Sunday News: From the Editorial pages

WHAT ALABAMA TELLS US: VOTING MATTERS, GERRYMANDERING DISTORTS: Exit polling Tuesday indicated that about 30 percent of the electorate was African-American – a greater share than during the 2008 and 2012 elections with Obama on the ballot. The exit polls indicated that 96 percent of the African-American vote went to Jones. Doug Jones managed to win the election, but carry only one of Alabama’s seven congressional districts. How could that be? Well, here in North Carolina, we know the answer to that all too well: pack as many African-American voters into a single district as possible. In Alabama, two-thirds of the voters in the state’s 7th District are African-American. Nearly a third of all the state’s African-American voters live in that district – meaning that the rest of the state’s African-American voters are scattered among the remaining six districts. As a result, these gerrymandered African-Americans, most of whom happen to be Democrats, see their voting strength is significantly diluted.
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NC county government sues Big Pharma over opioid crisis

New Hanover County takes their battle against addiction to court:

Drug makers “aggressively pushed highly addictive, dangerous opioids, falsely representing to doctors that patients would only rarely succumb to drug addiction,” the lawsuit reads. “These pharmaceutical companies aggressively advertised to and persuaded doctors to prescribe highly addictive, dangerous opioids and turned patients into drug addicts for their own corporate profit.”

“The residents of New Hanover County are bearing the burden of the cost of the epidemic, as the costs of treatment for addiction, education and law enforcement continue to rise,” Woody White said in a Friday news release. He’s the chairman of the county commissioners. “New Hanover County aims to have this suit accomplish two things: require the responsible parties to pay our taxpayers for the monetary damages caused, and to force them to follow federal law so we can stem the tide of this horrible epidemic, and help save lives.”

Good for them, but this is likely going to be tougher than winning a lawsuit against gun manufacturers, since some of the most respected professionals in our society (doctors) have to approve each prescription. But if the county can get a hefty settlement out of this, it might just jerk a knot in the machine that's destroying so many lives.

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Saturday News: We've heard this before...

NC REPUBLICAN LEADERS SAY THEY MAY NOT TAKE UP JUDICIAL REFORMS IN JANUARY: Lawmakers may not find enough consensus on judiciary reforms to pass anything when they gather again for a special legislative session next month, House Rules Chairman David Lewis said Friday. Lewis, R-Harnett, a key leader in the House, said legislators haven't coalesced behind proposals to redraw election districts for judges or to move instead to an appointments system. There has been a divide between the House and the Senate on this, but there also are indications House Republicans aren't all on board with proposed new districts for judges, which could prove important given the possibility of veto from Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper. "If we can't get agreement, and that was one of the main things we were going to do, it may be a very short session," Lewis said. He also said there's no plan, at the moment, to approve potential constitutional amendments during the coming session. That would include a voter ID proposal.
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What Republicans did not want to hear when they blocked Judge Stephens from speaking during Committee hearing

Here are some excerpts from his prepared statement:

It is my opinion that the quality and integrity of the trial bench [in North Carolina] is above reproach. I have found no evidence to the contrary. None. I have heard no sworn testimony or information presented to this body or any other legislative committee that challenges or impugns the quality or the integrity of the [North Carolina] trial judiciary.

I understand that the fire trucks are here, but where is the fire? Who saw the fire? Who declared that the judicial house was on fire? You are drawing up plans to rebuild our judicial house that is not on fire and has no structural damage. Where is any evidence that the quality and integrity of this state’s judiciary is so poor that the constitution of [North Carolina] must be immediately drastically changed? Who has declared the emergency? On what basis?

Oh, there's an emergency all right. But it's one of Republicans' making. They're engaged in an all-out war on the judiciary, from the NC Supreme Court all the way down to the District and Superior Courts. And as for Republican judges who are already sitting, when one of their own (Doug McCullough) resigned from his CoA seat early so Governor Cooper could name his replacement instead of the Legislature, well. That just pissed them off to the point they decided to burn the whole damn thing down. Judge Stephens continues, and hat-tip to NC Policy Watch for (once again) providing truth to power:

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Friday News: Remember Heather

Friday fracking video

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New York AG files lawsuit against FCC over Net Neutrality vote

And rumor has it Josh Stein just added NC to the effort:

Citing his investigation into the FCC’s public comments process preceding the vote, Schneiderman declared his office’s intention to sue to “stop the FCC’s illegal rollback of net neutrality” — a forthcoming legal challenge that’s sure to be in good company. In response to questions from TechCrunch, Schneiderman’s office noted that he will spearhead a multi-state lawsuit and that we can expect it “in the coming days.”

“We will be filing a claim to preserve protections for New Yorkers and all Americans. And we’ll be working aggressively to stop the FCC’s leadership from doing any further damage to the internet and to our economy,” Schneiderman said in a press release.

Hopefully they'll be able to get an injunction put in place with the quickness, before we start seeing shenanigans with our Internet access.

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WUNC uncovers disgusting behavior by lawmakers in NC Legislature

Thursday News: Walkout

DEMOCRATS LEAVE COMMITTEE MEETING AFTER REPUBLICANS REFUSE TO ALLOW JUDGE TO SPEAK: Bishop said that since Stephens isn’t employed by Cooper’s office, he wouldn’t let him speak. Democratic Sen. Jay Chaudhuri of Raleigh told Bishop that was “a missed opportunity.” A fellow Democrat, Sen. Floyd McKissick of Durham, then asked permission to speak. Bishop denied him several times but eventually let McKissick ask a question. McKissick asked for Stephens to be able to give his presentation. Bishop disagreed, saying he’s the committee chairman and gets to make that decision. Then McKissick, Chaudhuri and the third Democrat on the committee, Joel Ford of Charlotte, stood up and walked out without another word. The meeting proceeded without them. At the end of the meeting the remaining Republicans introduced a new set of proposed election maps for judges and district attorneys – an issue that was not on the public agenda for the meeting.
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Charlotte Council member Lawana Mayfield boycotts restaurant

Reclaiming her time in the face of bigotry:

While she has not patronized any of Noble’s restaurants since 2015, she said she spoke out now because of Noble’s plans to open a business in the district she represents. “Any business that is within my district where I know that they signed on to the letter to support discrimination through legislation, I will not patronize knowingly,” she said. She said she knows of no other business in her district whose owner signed it.

Noble, who is also an ordained minister, was one of 94 signers of the letter, including prominent Christian conservatives such as Dr. Mark Creech of the Christian Action League of North Carolina. Others included business owners, realtors, educators, medical professionals and two captains for USAirways/American Airlines. The only restaurant owners were Noble and Joseph Acovski of Joey’s Fine Food and Pizza in Denver, N.C.

I know many of my friends in political circles are exhausted after the bitter fighting over HB2, but the truth is, bigots like Noble pretty much won that war. HB142 wasn't even really a compromise, it was a victory of form over substance. Lawana was right to vocalize her opposition to patronizing this establishment, because there are over 90,000 LGBTQ folks living in the Charlotte Metropolitan area, and they deserve to know which businesses hold them in contempt, and actively work to deny them rights. And there's something else this story exposes, the dangers of government relying on religious institutions to provide services to the poor:

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Wednesday News: Good job, Alabama

Tuesday News: ALEC's new poster boy

Tuesday Twitter roundup

Today's the big day in Alabama:

Here at #DougJonesForSenate rally here in Birmingham!!!! Let’s go #DougJones Let’s get out and #Vote tomorrow! http://pic.twitter.com/0PRxmF1oHu

— Piper Perabo (@PiperPerabo) December 12, 2017

Do what Piper says, she has sources who know Everything...

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Blue Monday kicks off 120 seat strategy for retaking the General Assembly

Monday News: Narcissist-In-Chief

Sunday News: From the Editorial pages

UNHAPPY LEGISLATORS SLING MUD AT COURT: The legislature’s redistricting plans have invariably been concocted in secret, keeping motives and methods far from the view of the public they serve. GOP leaders have also relied on their own taxpayer-financed “outside expert” for help drawing the gerrymandered maps, which is conveniently forgotten amid their outrage over Persily’s alternative plan. There’s no mystery about what Persily’s done or how he’s done it. He has been open, transparent and explicit about his methods and criteria. Legislators and others have had broad opportunities for input. Rather than seeking ways to minimize some voters’ voices, Persily worked to give all voters a full voice in picking their representatives. The only transparency coming out of the General Assembly these days is the hyper-partisan, inappropriate and insulting braying to impugn the work of a bipartisan panel of judges -- working simply to bring fairness to North Carolina’s elections.
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Wake County still battling with Legislature over electoral districts

At stake are Commissioner and School Board seats:

Election officials are asking a judge for permission to use old district lines for next year’s election of Wake County school board members and commissioners as a lawsuit continues to make its way through the court system.

In 2011, the school board and commissioners adopted new election districts that they expected would be used through 2020. But the General Assembly redrew the maps in 2013 to turn two Wake school board seats into regional districts, with each covering about half the county. In 2015, state lawmakers changed the Wake commissioner lines to match the school board districts.

This should really be a no-brainer; nothing of substance has changed since they were allowed to use the old maps in the 2016 Election. And something doesn't become "Constitutional" just because it's aged a couple years:

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Saturday News: Carolina Red?

UNC BOG CONTEMPLATING FORMING A RIGHT-WING "CENTER" ON CHAPEL HILL CAMPUS: Members of the UNC Board of Governors are exploring the idea of establishing a conservative-leaning center at UNC-Chapel Hill that they say would foster debate and achieve more intellectual diversity. The board will hear a presentation Friday from Robert “Robby” George, founder and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. A delegation of UNC board members and administrators made a university-funded trip to Princeton this fall to learn more about the program, which was founded in 2000, according to its website, to explore “enduring questions of American constitutional law and Western political thought.”
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The Republican two-step: Same dance, different music

Today's Two-Step Series Topic: HOMELESSNESS & HARDSHIP
Two steps to watch in Congress: Step 1) Proposed Tax Plan cuts taxes now; and Step 2) Increases homelessness and hardship by cutting vital programs next year #ncpol #ncga #taxfairness #taxbill #homeless http://pic.twitter.com/9TTf3VzHdq

— Budget & Tax Center (@ncbudgetandtax) December 8, 2017

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Friday News: California burning

Friday fracking video

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Billionaire trying to take over NC schools gave $50,000 to Dan Forest

And since Dan Forest will have a vote on who wins the contract, the conflict of interest glaringly obvious:

John Bryan has contributed about $600,000 to legislative candidates in North Carolina, most of them Republicans, and GOP political committees from 2011 to 2016. Included is a $100,000 contribution to a group supporting GOP candidates for the state Supreme Court. He contributed $50,000 to a political action committee called Truth & Prosperity, set up to support Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Forest. Forest is a member of the State Board of Education, which will help select which companies are chosen.

Forest said in an interview earlier this year that he did not know why Bryan contributed to the PAC.

Whether you know or don't know why is beside the point; at minimum, you should recuse yourself from any actions dealing with the Innovative School District. But the best way to handle this would be to resign your seat on the State Board of Education entirely. Because make no mistake, this story is not going to "fade away" like you're hoping it will.

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Thursday News: Dirty tricks by GOP pricks

Judge cracks the whip on pork producer Murphy Brown

That simply won't do, pig:

A federal judge is telling a major pork producer to live up to an agreement it signed 11 years ago and work on cleaning up water pollution tied to almost a dozen industry-scale hog operations.

U.S. District Court Judge Malcolm Howard this week ordered Murphy-Brown LLC to end a three-year delay and have a mutually agreed consultant develop plans to fix problems at 11 sites in in Bladen, Columbus, Duplin, Pitt, Sampson and Scotland counties. Environmentalists say the independent expert found groundwater contamination or waste lagoon problems at the operations.

It's as good a time as any to report on NC's current hog population (9.2 million), which of course produce a hell of a lot more waste than the 10.2 million humans residing here. It's bad, and Murphy Brown is the worst of the worst:

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Wednesday News: Provocateur-In-Chief

TRUMP ENRAGES MUSLIM NATIONS WITH RECOGNITION OF JERUSALEM AS CAPITOL: The Arab League said it will hold an emergency meeting for foreign ministers on Saturday and Turkey announced it would host a meeting of Islamic nations next week to give Muslim countries' leaders an opportunity to act together and coordinate following Trump's move. Palestinian officials declared the Mideast peace process "finished." Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, slammed Trump's imminent recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel while in Syria, a Foreign Ministry statement said the anticipated announcement is a "dangerous step" that will fuel global conflict. It described Trump's imminent move as the "culmination of the crime of the seizing of Palestine and the displacement of the Palestinian people" and urged Arab states to stop normalizing relations with Israel. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said the "whole world is against" President Donald Trump's move and argued that moving the embassy to Jerusalem would be a "grave mistake."
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Tuesday News: NC exports justice

REVEREND BARBER TAKES MORAL MONDAY MOVEMENT NATIONWIDE: A national “Moral Revival” effort that has echoes of North Carolina’s “Moral Monday” protests will be launched next spring by the Rev. William Barber II and his co-chair at the Poor People’s Campaign. “We must transform the moral narrative in this country,” Barber, who led N.C.’s Moral Monday efforts, said in a statement announcing the plan ahead of a Monday news conference. “We went through the most expensive presidential campaign in U.S. history in 2016 without a single serious discussion of poverty and systemic racism. Now we are witnessing an emboldened attack on the poor and an exacerbation of systemic racism that demands a response." Barber served as leader of the N.C. conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People from 2005 until he stepped down in October.
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Tuesday Twitter roundup

The front lines in the war against democracy:

Should judges remain nonpartisan? Because #ncga wants (D) & (R) next to the names of judges & making it a partisan issue. We need to separate politicians & judges.They have eliminated 2018 primaries for judges this year creating confusion at the voting booth. @democracync #ncpol

— Bryson Jones (@JonesNCHouse) December 5, 2017

Here's a prediction, and one which I hope I get wrong: The November 2018 ballot will have painfully long lists of candidates for judicial districts, and after voters have been forced to slog through all those names with which they're not familiar, they will be given the choice to continue electing judges, or allow them to be appointed. Thus creating a new phenomenon, the "push ballot."

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Durham moving forward with "Bike Boulevards" program for safety

Monday News: Juvenile injustice

"RAISE THE AGE" PANEL BEGINS WORK TO STOP PROSECUTING MINORS AS ADULTS: North Carolina legislators have agreed to stop being the only state that automatically prosecutes 16- and 17-year-olds as adults for crimes in two years. Now a committee charged with ensuring the "raise the age" legislation approved last summer is carried out well is beginning its work. The Juvenile Jurisdiction Advisory Committee scheduled its first meeting for Monday in Raleigh. The panel comprised of law enforcement, prosecutors, advocates for victims and juveniles and others are supposed to develop the plan that increases the age of juvenile jurisdiction for young people charged with misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies. The "raise the age" law directs the change in December 2019.
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Sunday News: From the Editorial pages

CONSUMERS SHOULDN'T PAY FOR DUKE ENERGY'S COAL ASH BUNGLES: As a regulated monopoly, Duke Energy has an obligation to produce reliable, affordable and safe power while still being guaranteed a reasonable profit for the company and its shareholders. It is up to the state Utilities Commission to determine that balance. When the company fails to meet one of the three obligations it has to its customers, it isn’t the fault of the ratepayers, nor should it be their responsibility to pay. The Utilities Commission shouldn’t reward Duke for the failure to do its job, nor should its ratepayers, who have no other choice for electric service, be forced to subsidize that failure. No matter what the rate increase the Utilities Commission may approve, it should not include costs of dealing with Duke’s coal ash mistake.
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After dark

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In-depth analysis of Senate GOP Tax Scam

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Saturday News: When fairness hurts the unfair

NC REPUBLICANS NOT HAPPY WITH PROPERLY RE-DRAWN MAPS: The Stanford University professor hired to draw North Carolina election maps for a panel of federal judges weighing a gerrymandering case has submitted a plan that quickly drew criticism from Republican lawmakers and praise from challengers. Nathaniel Persily, a law professor tapped in November to review state House and Senate maps adopted by legislators ordered to correct unconstitutional racial gerrymanders, on Friday submitted proposed election district changes in Cumberland, Guilford, Hoke, Mecklenburg, Wake, Bladen, Sampson and Wayne counties. Persily’s maps only redrew a fraction of the state’s 170 legislative districts, mostly in urban counties that tend to favor Democrats. Most of the districts drawn in August favor Republicans, according to a News & Observer analysis.
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NC Business Court On Conversion Of Electronic Data

The Defendant in SQL Sentry, LLC v. ApexSQL, LLC, 2017 NCBC 105 was alleged to have copied the Plaintiff's software program which was designed to make "resource intensive T-SQL queries. . . in the Microsoft enterprise database platform, SQL Server."  Op. Par. 5.  (Ask your IT person).

Adding insult to injury, the Defendant marketed the program it had copied under the same trademark used by the Plaintiff  to sell its competing program ("Plan Explorer"). 

So, when representatives of this Plaintiff walk into your office, what claims do you fire off in your Complaint against that thieving Defendant?  Trademark infringement, obviously.  How about a claim for conversion?

Maybe.  Electronic data is personal property, so it falls into the category of property which is subject to a claim for conversion.  Op. ¶14.

But the Plaintiff ran into a problem with its conversion claim.  It still had full access to its software, and that killed its conversion claim.

The NC Business Court has repeatedly "held that making a copy of electronically-stored information which does not deprive the plaintiff of possession or use of information, does not support a claim for conversion.” Op. ¶15 (citing RCJJ, LLC v. RCWIL Enters., LLC, 2016 NCBC 44, ¶67; accord New Friendship Used Clothing Collection, LLC v. Katz, 2017 NCBC 71, ¶77; Strategic Mgmt. Decisions, LLC v. Sales Performance Int'l, LLC, 2017 NCBC 68, ¶18; Addison Whitney, LLC v. Cashion, 2017 NCBC 50, ¶39.

Trying to fit a 21st century development like ESI into a tort like conversion, which has been around since the 1500's, is like trying  to fit a round peg into a square hole.

If you are insistent on including a conversion claim in your lawsuit over improper copying of electronic data, you might do better suing in federal court.  The United States District Court for the Western District of North Carolina has recognized such a claim.  Bridgetree, Inc. v. Red F Marketing, LLC, 3:10CV228-FDW, 2013 WL 443698 (W.D.N.C. Feb. 5, 2013).

But avoid the NC Business Court.

 

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Sessions refuses to answer on Trump interference in Russia probe

When the Attorney General of the United States can't be trusted:

"I asked the attorney general whether he was ever instructed by the president to take any action that he believed would hinder the Russia investigation and he declined to answer the question," Rep. Adam Schiff told reporters after the closed-door meeting concluded.

"If the president did not instruct him to take any action that he believed would hinder the Russia investigation, he should say so. If the president did instruct him to hinder the investigation in any way, in my view, that would be a potentially criminal act and certainly not covered by any privilege," the California lawmaker continued.

If you want to know why Jeff Sessions hasn't been fired yet, well there you go. Trump knows removing him won't make his position any safer, and it may actually make it worse, since Sessions would have nothing left to lose by coming clean. But the specter of the highest law enforcement official in the country choosing silence over honesty is about as ugly as it gets. And so is the reluctance of Congressional Republicans to report that silence to the American people:

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Friday News: Word of the day: Triggers

SENATE REPUBLICANS SCRAMBLE TO REFINE TAX CUT BILL: The scramble to alter the bill came after the Senate's parliamentarian ruled that automatic "triggers" designed to guard against big deficits would violate Senate rules. GOP leaders' main concern was winning over the hawks worried about adding more red ink to the mounting $20 trillion deficit. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., had expressed confidence early in the day, but he has little margin for error with a 52-48 Republican majority. He can afford to lose only two votes while counting on Vice President Mike Pence to break the tie. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, said the bill will have "alternative, frankly, tax increases we don't want to do" to address deficit concerns. Flake said the "trigger" tax increases would raise about $350 billion over 10 years, though he didn't specify which taxes would go up.
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UNC Board of Governors contemplating move out of Chapel Hill

Apparently they're afraid of those notorious Liberal Cooties:

At both the October committee meeting and November’s full board meeting, members discussed a perception that having the general administration staff in Chapel Hill confuses the UNC system and UNC-Chapel Hill. It also makes it look as though the Chapel Hill campus is superior to the other schools, they said.

“That’s a very minor part of this, but it’s still a consideration,” Kotis admits. “Are we the Board of Governors for the UNC Chapel Hill or the UNC system? What does it say about the link between UNCGA and Chapel Hill? Is it the favorite school? It’s like having your house near one kid’s house but not the other.”

Dude, it's the Flagship University. It was the first public University chartered by the NC Legislature in 1789, and the first public University in the *entire country* operating when it opened its doors in 1795. By contrast, it wasn't until 1931 that a "Board of Trustees" was formed to oversee the combination of three state-chartered universities (UNC-CH, UNC-G, NC State), and the BOG itself didn't materialize until 40 years after that. So yes, UNC Chapel Hill is the natural location for such a body. But this move may have a lot more to do with having an antsy real estate developer on the Board than even ideological considerations:

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Thursday News: Globally unpopular

LONDON MAYOR CALLS FOR CANCELLING TRUMP VISIT OVER ANTI-MUSLIM EXTREMISM: The mayor of London on Thursday added his voice to mounting calls for President Donald Trump's state visit to the U.K. to be canceled over his retweets of a British far-right group. Sadiq Khan said Trump has promoted "a vile, extremist group" and an official visit by him to Britain "would not be welcomed." Trump's retweeting of anti-Muslim videos from far-right fringe group Britain First has been widely condemned in Britain. Prime Minister Theresa May's official spokesman said the president was wrong to have done it. In response, Trump urged May to focus on "the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom," rather than on him.
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Brad Woodhouse may have been additional target in James O'Keefe's botched sting

Leroy Gibbs' Rule 39: There is no such thing as coincidence:

Woodhouse said he recognized Phillips’s name and image in a Washington Post story Monday that described how she falsely told reporters that Roy Moore, the Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Alabama, impregnated her as a teenager. Phillips appears to work with Project Veritas, an organization that uses deceptive tactics and secretly records conversations in an effort to embarrass members of the mainstream media and left-leaning groups.

“I was stunned,” Woodhouse said Tuesday night. “It took a little while to sink in and then it was like, ‘Really? Are you kidding me?’ ” James O’Keefe, the Project Veritas founder, declined to answer questions about whether he dispatched Phillips to rent from Woodhouse. Phillips did not respond to inquiries.

And before you ask, it's because O'Keefe is an idiot. He always tries to go for a straight flush when a King-high two pair will usually win the hand. Okay, that's a little obscure, what I mean is: He can't help but add clever (he thinks) little twists to his plots, that make the cons much harder to pull off, but game-winning zingers if he does. In this case, he (thought) he could make the entire sexual harassment movement look like a Democratic plot, by tying Brad to this one false accusation. And the sad thing is, close to 1/3 of American citizens would probably believe that nonsense.

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Wednesday News: Going out with a fizzle and barely audible pop

SOON TO BE EX-CIVITAS LEADER DE LUCA WHINES ABOUT GIVING TUESDAY: The Civitas Institute, a Raleigh think tank, distributed a fundraising email Monday night that urges people to carefully consider the motivation for their donations on “Giving Tuesday,” the Tuesday after Thanksgiving during which companies and nonprofits encourage people to donate to charitable causes. Francis De Luca, outgoing president of Civitas, in the email criticizes the “guilt” associated with what he called a “leftist idea.” “The phrase ‘give-back’ comes from the leftist idea that individuals can’t achieve success on their own; that successful people must have taken advantage of others to get where they are; and that they have an obligation to ‘return’ some of their wealth to those they took it from,” he continued. “The Left has used this idea as a fundraising tactic for decades.”
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Debunking yet another right-wing conspiracy theory

There are no such thing as ghost voters:

Los Angeles County’s registrar of voters, Dean Logan, explained to the Bee that the names on the inactive voter list are kept as a “fail-safe” so as to not disenfranchise or discourage voters. Combining “inactive voter” and “active voter” lists could result in a higher total number of registered voters that Judicial Watch says raises suspicions.

Logan and Gail Pellerin, the Santa Cruz County registrar of voters, told the Los Angeles Times that very few people on the “inactive voter” list actually show up to vote. As few as 12 people, out of 44,172 people on Santa Cruz County’s inactive list, showed up to vote in November, Pellerin said.

Deeply embedded in North Carolina's voter database are three (3) registration files for yours truly. I have seen them pulled up on a screen during an early voting session. One is from when I was stationed at Ft. Bragg back in the 1980's, another when I was still a (confused) Republican, and my current registration as a Democrat. The two older ones are "inactive" files, and mean absolutely nothing in the scheme of things. It's not a conspiracy to subvert democracy, and it's not even a "weakness that could be exploited" in the system. But efforts to purge voter rolls very likely is a conspiracy:

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Tuesday News: Don't feed the trolls

Tuesday Twitter roundup

One of the biggest swindles in history is happening right in front of our noses:

The @GOP wants to jack up 1.2 million NC’ers taxes.

That means that thousands of Craven County residents will see their tax bills go up, all so the @GOP can give away even more $$$ to billionaires like trump and his Wall Street buddies.#TrumpTaxScam #ncpol @NCDemParty https://t.co/b77bM4Thyf

— Craven County Dems (@CravenDemocrats) November 28, 2017

I honestly don't really care if my taxes go up or down, my main concern is the likelihood they will target Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security disability to balance their twisted books. Putting lives at risk just so the wealthy can afford a second yacht makes me want to break something.

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When your Primary opponent is a Baptist minister...

It's War on Christmas and persecuted Jesus time:

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Small to mid-size farmers will likely suffer greatly under US Senate tax bill

For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction:

In this season of giving, the U.S Senate is rushing to pass a tax bill next week that would overwhelmingly benefit corporations and the richest households. If passed, this tax plan would not only raise the tax load on millions of low- and middle-income families, it would also mean the elimination of vital programs that help many Americans get by every day. The reason: Math.

By increasing the U.S deficit by more than $1.5 trillion over the next ten years, Congress would have to reduce spending in fiscal year 2018 alone by a total of $136 billion due to spending rules.

Before we look at some of the specific agricultural support programs that are vulnerable under this plan, I'll go ahead and answer your inevitable question, "Why would Republicans intentionally go after their solid base (rural farmers) when they could probably find these cuts elsewhere?" Because US Senate contests are state-wide, not really fitting the profile of "representative." While individual Congressional districts might be particularly hurt by these cuts, Senators will not feel the adverse effects of that. Here are some of the programs at risk:

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Monday News: GOTAAV

SHARP DECLINE IN BLACK VOTER TURNOUT COULD SPELL TROUBLE FOR DEMOCRATS IN 2018: Once prized fighters in the battle for voting rights, students at America’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities dropped their guard in the 2016 elections. Voter turnout among the estimated 300,000 students at HBCUs fell nearly 11 percent from 2012 to 2016, according to a national survey by the Institute for Democracy & Higher Education at Tufts University. The decline, while consistent with a fall off among black voters of all ages in 2016, was a sharp departure. If historic trends hold, Democrats could see black voter turnout drop 30 percent in 2018, resulting in 5.2 million fewer African-American voters, according to a report by the non-partisan Voter Participation Center and Democratic pollster Celinda Lake.
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Sunday News: From the Editorial pages

IT'S TIME FOR LEGISLATIVE LEADERS TO COOPERATE NOT OBFUSCATE ON REDISTRICTING: Federal judges have said repeatedly that North Carolina’s Republican-dominated legislature has produced voting districts that discriminate against African-American voters -- illegally segregating them into state Senate and House districts. One court puts it bluntly, that Republican legislators had, with “surgical precision,” targeted black voters to minimize their participation in elections. So, when the court appointed an expert to draw fair districts and remedy the mess the General Assembly’s created, the legislators’ stubborn reaction didn’t come as a surprise. “It appears the special master has engaged in racial sorting to establish districts with racial targets for black voting age population,” lawyers for the legislature said Friday – objecting to the draft plan Special Master Nathaniel Persily offered up a few days earlier. So, addressing the problem the legislature CREATED marks illegal consideration of race? Let’s get real here.
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House GOP tax plan especially painful for teachers

When making something more "simple" also makes it more costly:

Any full-time instructor at a public or private K-12 school is currently eligible for the $250 deduction. It’s an “above-the-line” deduction, meaning teachers don’t have to itemize to claim it. It’s listed on the part of the tax form alongside deductions for moving expenses, student loan interest and Health Savings Accounts. The House GOP bill does away with those popular deductions as well.

Richardson worries about other ways the legislation may affect education. The Senate bill scraps all state and local tax deductions. Most schools in the United States get their funding from property taxes. Atlanta’s public schools already had to make budget cuts this year after a property tax freeze. School funding could become even more contentious, especially in high-tax cities, if the GOP tax bills are enacted.

In a perfect world, negotiations between the Senate and the House would get rid of the bad parts of each, lessening the sting for teachers and others. But we don't live there. A closer look at some of the things this particular teacher has had to purchase out-of-pocket provides a glimpse of a much deeper problem:

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Saturday News: An idiot shall lead them

THE CLOSER YOU LOOK AT DALLAS WOODHOUSE, THE LESS YOU SEE: In 2014, Woodhouse stood on the sidelines of a Moral Monday protest. He recruited a young woman to wear a sun costume. He wanted to convey to protesters that sunny days had arrived for the state’s economy under GOP leadership, so he handed out Sunkist sodas and yellow, sun-shaped stress balls with the message, “Jobs up, unemployment down.” Woodhouse went on MSNBC during the 2016 presidential election to explain why the state should not have early voting on Sundays. He then pulled out a pair of handcuffs mid-interview to blast Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. “We don’t have a suppression vote problem in North Carolina,” he told MSNBC. “The Democrats have a depression problem. And you know why? It’s very simple: Their candidate, if elected, could have these (handcuffs) on Inauguration Day.”
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Ralph Hise leads latest GOP attack on teacher's union

First you thin their ranks, then you question their membership numbers:

The legislature started requiring the audits in 2014, after a different Republican-backed law targeting the NCAE was struck down in court as unconstitutional. But each year, the NCAE simply refuses to cooperate. “... It certainly appears NCAE is refusing to respond because it does not meet the requirement and is violating the law,” Republican Sen. Ralph Hise said in an email. Hise is a critic of the NCAE who was a driving force behind the audit requirement.

The NCAE says it doesn’t have to comply with the audit. “The NCAE believe the law as written and being implemented by the state Auditor is overly intrusive in violation of the constitutional rights of the association and its members and further exceeds the authority of the state Auditor,” the group wrote in a letter to state officials earlier this year.

As usual, this is just another end-around attempt by Republicans to get something the courts refused to allow them, the discontinuation of payroll-deducted membership dues. But what nobody seems to want to talk about: Membership in the NCAE is voluntary. As in, the teachers in question have agreed to pay these dues, and are fine with that method of payment. This isn't just an attack on the NCAE as a monolithic entity, it's an attack on the individual teachers themselves. And frankly, Ralph Hise is the last person who should be criticizing people over non-compliance:

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Friday News: Prepare to be fleeced

Friday fracking video

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Thanksgiving open thread: Celebrate, but also contemplate

Thursday News: Suborned

POPE-FUNDED THINK TANK TAKES CREDIT FOR MANIPULATING UNC BOARD OF GOVERNORS: A conservative think tank in North Carolina is taking some credit for recent university policies enacted by the legislature and the UNC Board of Governors. In its Thanksgiving-themed fundraising letter, the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal thanked its supporters and referred to them as partners in higher education reform. “Thank you for helping us make great strides this year in advancing needed reforms in North Carolina,” said the email, signed by Jenna Robinson, president of the center. “Finally we’ve seen action from the people who are in the position to make decisions,” she said. “Seeing that means that we are pointing out problems that people think are important. We will continue to point out those problems, and obviously not every problem that we point out will lead anyone to take any particular action.”
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After dark

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Jerry Tillman admits judicial redistricting is partisan power grab

The word you're trying to recall is "Brazen."

One of the legislative proposals is a bill that changes the configuration of superior court, district court and prosecutorial districts across the state. At last week’s meeting, Asheboro attorney Jon Megerian said the changes were designed to get more Republican judges elected. In a weekend interview, Tillman did not argue with that notion.

“All redistricting, whether it be Republicans or Democrats, they are partisan activities,” he said. “The Constitution says the winning party will do that. It’s a partisan activity that goes to the winning party in the election."

“If it’s partisan, you’re going to draw them to your advantage if you can. It’s our job and our time and our responsibility to do exactly that.”

There is a deep logical fallacy in the "I've been given power by gerrymandering which gives me the right to gerrymander" position, but I can't pin the damn thing down. Something something in Latin, how's that?

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Wednesday News: White lives matter more

Tim Moore takes propaganda to a whole new level

Babbling his nonsense on a national platform:

As President Donald Trump and the United States Congress finalize the details of their tax reform proposals, they need look no further than North Carolina as the bellwether for pro-growth policies to accelerate the nation’s economy rooted in tax relief.

Successful tax reform at the federal level will require the same long-term commitment to meaningful relief and structural improvements that worked in the Old North State. What the American public needs is an evolution in pro-growth tax policies under constant review and necessary iterations that improve the national economy for the long-term.

The only growth we've seen in North Carolina is the gap in wealth between the haves and the have nots. Frankly, The Hill has just dropped several rungs on the ladder of credibility by publishing Tim Moore's campaign rhetoric dressed up as an essay. I mean, it's bad enough we have to put up with it, but why expose everybody else to these mindless ramblings:

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Tuesday News: "I have Black friends!"

MARK WALKER WANTS TO TEAM WITH BLACK CAUCUS TO CUT FEDERAL SPENDING ON PRISONS: ep. Mark Walker, a conservative Republican, wants the GOP-controlled Congress to move on long-stalled efforts to revamp the nation’s criminal justice system next year — and he's enlisted a seemingly unlikely ally: The head of the Congressional Black Caucus. Walker, R-N.C., chairman of the conservative House Republican Study Committee, is teaming with Chairman Cedric Richmond, D-La. Richmond and Walker agree the current criminal justice system negatively impacts families, particularly in communities of color, costs the federal government too much money, and does little to reduce the rate of recidivism. The United States accounts for only 5 percent of the world’s population but 25 percent of its prison population.
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Tuesday Twitter roundup

Probably the single biggest crisis looming in the near future:

Republicans pay for huge tax breaks for the wealthy by cutting Medicaid. Priorities?#GOPTaxScam #ncpol https://t.co/ChSsDRsGxa

— Progress NC Action (@ProgressNow_NC) November 21, 2017

People will literally die in order for Republicans to put more money in the pockets of their wealthy donors. It doesn't get much more disgusting than that.

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DCCC ready to step up for Dan McCready against Pittenger

A closer look at Duke Energy's corruption of UNC Charlotte

Our public universities should never allow this to happen again:

Daniels described the board in a letter to Tom Reeder, then the assistant secretary of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, in a letter on April 5, 2016, arguing against a risk classification system for Duke’s coal ash ponds. “The NAMAB is an independent group of experts chartered through Duke Energy and managed by the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNC Charlotte). Board members provide advice to Duke Energy, but they are contracted with and report to UNC Charlotte,” Daniels wrote. That same letter concluded with a final reaffirmation of the board’s independence. “And we are independent,” Daniels wrote.

But emails obtained by WBTV show staff from Duke Energy scheduled meetings, coordinated the distribution of research materials and facilitated the day-to-day operation of the board; a direct contradiction of what Daniels wrote in his April 2016 letter to Reeder.

There's nothing fossil fuel companies like more than penetrating a reputable university and setting up an industry-funded "research" operation. When you can dictate the scope of the research, you can (very often) achieve the results you were hoping for. Or make changes to those results if you're not happy with them:

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Monday News: Irony alert

TRUMP STAYING OUT OF ALABAMA RACE DUE TO "DISCOMFORT" WITH SEXUAL ASSAULT ISSUE: Budget director Mick Mulvaney said while the White House had "serious concerns," it was hard to weigh in against Moore. Moore's name cannot be removed from the ballot before the special election even if he withdraws from the race, though a write-in campaign remains possible. Trump "doesn't know who to believe. I think a lot of folks don't," Mulvaney said. Short, pressed repeatedly about whether Trump still supported Moore, said: "I don't think you have seen him issue an endorsement. You have not seen him issue robocalls." Short added, "I think you can infer by the fact that he has not gone down to support Roy Moore his discomfort in doing so." Moore has forcefully denied the charges as "unsubstantiated" and "fake" even as more women have come forward to make complaints of sexual improprieties.
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From the brilliant mind of Andy Borowitz

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Sunday News: From the Editorial pages

SPEAKER MOORE'S BOASTING ABOUT EDUCATION DOESN'T ADD UP: North Carolina schools today have more students than ever, but fewer assistant principals, nurses, social workers and guidance counselors. Money for teacher assistants has been sliced $62 million. There are 3,150 fewer teachers in our schools today than there would be if formulas in place during the 2011-12 school year were still followed. North Carolina is on target this year to drop from 42nd – not much of a position to start with – to 43rd nationally in per-pupil spending. That’s more than $3,000 per student below the national average. The reality is that Moore and his ideological soulmates in the General Assembly are more intent on cutting taxes for big corporations and the wealthy than providing the needed funding for properly paid teachers and quality public schools. When it comes to doing more for education in North Carolina, Moore’s boasting is no more than school-yard trash talk. All platitudes, with little to back it up.
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2018 elections: The only thing certain is uncertainty

And the NC GOP has certainly screwed up the electoral landscape:

This week, Democrat Anita Earls announced she would run for the seat on the state Supreme Court held by Republican Justice Barbara Jackson. But will there be an election in 2018 at all?

There's a different question surrounding legislative elections in 2018: which incumbents will be forced to share districts? New proposed district lines are out, drawn by an independent mapmaker, but that's not the final word.

Even though the court has spoken (clearly), and even though Percily only redrew a handful of districts, Republicans are still trying to bully their way in to scribble on the damn maps. They need to be called out by the press for their efforts to undermine democracy and the voters who rely on it, and they need to be spanked a lot harder by the courts for constantly muddying the waters. The people need to reclaim their time.

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Saturday News: No refuge to be found

GOP meddling in teacher pay is like gasoline on a fire

Kicking turnover and teacher shortages into overdrive:

A pivotal legislative task force may be just beginning its dive into North Carolina’s school funding maze, but lawmakers’ hints that they may abolish the state’s teacher salary schedule or other state-set funding allocations is already spurring criticism from local district advocates. Talk of nixing a state-set pay scale emerged this year when lawmakers took on a revamp of school principal pay, and it’s resurfaced multiple times in the Joint Legislative Task Force on Education Finance Reform’s first meetings in November.

The state’s teacher pay struggles coincide with massive teacher shortages in many of the state’s 100 counties, as well as a substantial drop in students seeking teaching degrees in the UNC system. Mark Jewell, president of the N.C. Association of Educators (NCAE), the top lobbying organization for North Carolina teachers, said lawmakers’ invitation to ditch the salary schedule would be “short-sighted,” adding it may “jeopardize teacher retention and recruiting.”

With every year that passes under Republican reign, it becomes more clear what they are actually trying to achieve: A massive failure of our pubic school system. Making it much easier to stimulate the growth of charters and private schools, pushing millions of taxpayer dollars into the pockets of businessmen instead of genuine educators. In a political environment where scams are around every corner, this one has the potential to top all the others by a wide margin.

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Friday News: That's it, you're done

DEQ REVOKES WASTEWATER DISCHARGE PERMITS FOR GENX MANUFACTURER: The state revoked permits Thursday for the factory accused of dumping pollutants into the main source of drinking water for southeastern North Carolina. State regulators in the Department of Environmental Quality had been criticized by several legislators earlier this year – both Democrats and Republicans – who accused them of not acting swiftly enough to address the release of a chemical called GenX. They took their harshest action yet on Thursday, stripping the factory’s permission to put any of its wastewater into the river from here on out. The Cape Fear is the source of drinking water for cities like Fayetteville, Wilmington and others in that corner of the state.
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Friday fracking video

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Profiles in idiocy: GOP women who voted for Trump have buyer's remorse

Sometimes your explanation just makes things worse:

Republican women who voted for President Trump in North Carolina said during a focus group Wednesday night that they are embarrassed by and exasperated with him.

-- Annie Anthony, 56, voted for Trump last year because she opposes abortion and did not like how Hillary Clinton handled Benghazi. Now she fears that Trump is marching us toward war with North Korea. She describes the first 10 months of his presidency as “chaotic, stressful and an uphill battle.”

Benghazi? During his campaign, Trump demonstrated time and time again that he wasn't even remotely qualified to serve as President, that he had nothing but contempt for women and viewed them as merely sexual toys to be played with when the mood came on him, and that he would lie about any subject, no matter how easily that lie would be exposed. But you didn't like Clinton because of a totally fabricated controversy that Fox News fed to you every day. You should be embarrassed, and don't expect the slightest bit of sympathy for your condition.

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Thursday News: Supremely qualified

Coalition headed by ACLU files suit for farm workers in NC

BREAKING: @ACLU @SupportFLOC @splcenter @ncjustice Sue North Carolina Over Law Stripping Rights From 100,000 Farmworkers #ncpol https://t.co/9nd6YCs5Ti http://pic.twitter.com/zvNEqa60RI

— ACLU-North Carolina (@ACLU_NC) November 15, 2017

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Democracy NC wants BoE to probe Forest television studio issue

Somebody needs to look that gift camera in the mouth:

A voting rights organization has asked North Carolina election officials to scrutinize spending by a nonprofit group for equipment for a television studio in the office of Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Forest.

Democracy North Carolina Executive Director Bob Hall wrote a letter Monday to the state elections board seeking review of $60,000 in purchases by what’s called the North Carolina Promotion and Development Fund. WRAL-TV reported the fund owns the equipment, which Forest can use to produce videos about issues important to him. One fund donor is a longtime Forest supporter.

And while they're at it, they might as well look into all the renovations this same supporter did to the Hawkins-Harnett House, which this little blurb leads people to believe Forest paid for it himself:

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Wednesday News: Truth or consequences

SESSIONS HAVING TROUBLE REMEMBERING ALL THE LIES HE'S TOLD TO CONGRESS: A defiant Attorney General Jeff Sessions told Congress on Tuesday he never lied under oath about Russian interference in the 2016 election and said sleep deprivation and the "chaos" of the Trump campaign clouded his recollections of campaign contacts with Russians. Sessions sought to explain away apparent contradictions in his public statements by portraying President Donald Trump's campaign as an exhausting operation and said he could not be expected to remember specific encounters from more than a year ago. "In all of my testimony, I can only do my best to answer all of your questions as I understand them and to the best of my memory," Sessions told the House Judiciary Committee. "But I will not accept, and reject, accusations that I have ever lied under oath. That is a lie."
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Tuesday News: Stopped clock version

BOTH BURR AND TILLIS CALL FOR ROY MOORE TO EXIT SENATE RACE: North Carolina Sens. Thom Tillis and Richard Burr joined a growing group of Republicans calling for Roy Moore to drop out of the Alabama Senate race after a fifth woman publicly accused the former judge of sexual misconduct Monday. “The allegations leveled at Roy Moore are disturbing. I have serious concerns about his prior conduct and fitness for office. He should immediately withdraw from the race,” Tillis wrote on Twitter on Monday evening. Burr also called on Moore to withdraw from the race. “With 5 women now coming forward, Moore should do the right thing and withdraw from the race,” he said in a statement released by his office. It was his first public comment since the scandal erupted last week. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he believed the women and called for Moore to get out of the race earlier Monday. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, also called for Moore to step down.
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Tuesday Twitter roundup

Bound to be the hot topic for at least a few days:

Special master in racial #gerrymandering case releases first round of redrawn legislative districts - https://t.co/lYodncFf3j #ncpol #ncgov #ncga

— NC Policy Watch (@NCPolicyWatch) November 14, 2017

Since Persily's mandate only covered a handful of districts, the redraw does not represent sweeping changes to the whole state, just a few clusters:

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Shadowy non-profit sets up TV studio for Dan Forest

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood for political propaganda:

A little-known group set up by the Lieutenant Governor's Office and headed by a major campaign donor has provided Lt. Gov. Dan Forest with enough television equipment to build an in-office studio. Forest's arrangement with the North Carolina Promotion and Development Fund appears to be unique in North Carolina state government. Gov. Roy Cooper doesn't have his own television studio, and neither does General Assembly leadership.

NCPDF is a 501(c)(4), also known by its IRS designation as a "social welfare organization." These groups are perhaps best known as political advertising vehicles for anonymous donors, and they're often called "dark money" groups. But attorneys who specialize in this section of the tax code said the category is much broader, and that the way Forest's office uses the NCPDF seems to be allowed under state and federal law, without disclosing donors, provided the group doesn't fund campaign activities. Neither "the studio nor any of the items purchased by the NCPDF have been or ever will be used for campaign purposes," Forest Chief of Staff Hal Weatherman said.

Aside from Dan Forest's inclusion in committees he's not really qualified for (like the Energy Policy Council), the man has no direct influence or responsibilities that would require him to "inform his constituents" about ongoing government matters. So this studio doesn't really serve or promote the office of Lt. Governor, it just promotes Dan Forest. And for at least one wealthy businessman, that promotion is worth a a big pile of money:

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Monday News: Deplorable

Sunday News: From the Editorial pages

TAX OVERHAUL MUST WORK FOR ALL, NOT JUST RIG IT FOR RICH AND BIG BUSINESS: “I think in their heart of hearts they believe that only the wealthy really help the economy, and they believe that the wealthy just carry the rest of us on their backs, that we're all worthless, and only the Charles Kochs and Robert Mercers of the world really add economic value to the economy, and, of course, this is just utterly ridiculous.” You don’t grow the economy by cutting taxes. The economy expands when consumers – mostly those at the middle income levels – have more disposable cash to go out and buy things. Look no further than our own state to see the proof. Over the last five years, the General Assembly has lavished tax cut upon tax cut to corporations and the wealthy while, in many ways, increasing tax burdens on those in the middle. What is there to show for it? A stagnant economy, underfunded critical state needs, declining tax revenues and the distinct possibility of a half-billion hole in the next state budget.
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Harry Brown's anti-wind energy "maps" are still alive

This is why we can't have nice things:

Brown, whose district includes the largest Marine base on the East Coast, believes the turbines could interfere with military radar or flight routes, and cause Department of Defense officials to close, downsize, or relocate military installations to other states. The solution, he says, is a statewide map that will rule out wind energy in certain places.

“The map says it’s okay here, it’s not okay here,” Brown told Southeast Energy News this summer. “To me that’s the only way we’re ever going to be able to resolve this issue.”

There's nothing to resolve, you idiot. There are already multiple mechanisms in place to safeguard the airspace for both military and civilian aircraft, which means this move by Brown is really about something else. And that something else becomes clearer by his effort to draw in Solar and Biomass energy projects into his crusade:

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Veterans Day reminder: Honor the fallen, but hire the living

Some thoughts to consider below the fold:

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Saturday News: From the pages of Pravda

TRUMP SAYS "PEOPLE WILL DIE" BECAUSE OF RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN MEDDLING INVESTIGATION: "Having a good relationship with Russia's a great, great thing. And this artificial Democratic hit job gets in the way," Trump told reporters, once again casting doubt on the U.S. intelligence community's conclusion that Russia did try to interfere in the election. "People will die because of it." Trump's suggestion that he may believe Putin over his own nation's intelligence community is certain to re-ignite the firestorm over the election meddling. Meanwhile, a special counsel investigation of potential collusion between Moscow and Trump campaign aides so far has resulted in two indictments for financial and other crimes unrelated to the campaign, as well as a guilty plea. Trump said the probe into the election hacking was a "fake barrier" placed by Democrats that was hurting the United States' ability to have a relationship with Russia, a distraction that was putting lives at stake.
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Sorry Not Sorry: Chemours "accidentally" spills more Genx into Cape Fear

Old (nasty) habits are apparently hard to break:

In a press release Thursday afternoon, officials with the state Department of Environmental Quality said preliminary data revealed a spike in the levels of GenX in untreated water near the chemical company's Fayetteville Works facility in Bladen County. After contacting the company, DEQ spokesman Jamie Kritzer said Chemours officials revealed that workers had spilled dimer acid fluoride during planned maintenance at the plant Oct. 6.

Dimer acid fluoride effectively breaks down in water into the equivalent of GenX, a poorly studied and unregulated contaminant in a family of chemicals linked to cancer and other negative health effects. Kritzer said it's unclear how much of the chemical leaked or how long it spilled into the Cape Fear River.

As our Riverkeepers and their cadre of volunteer water watchers will tell you, such "accidents" happen way too often to not be intentional. Whether it's polluting industries or municipal wastewater treatment plants, there are numerous cases of "Oops!" that occur every year. Because making it somebody else's problem is the easiest way to deal with chemicals and sewage. Until it starts costing you a lot of money, which is what needs to happen.

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