Well, we decided we didn’t want to be Detroit
(Slate) North Carolina is proving itself to be the poster child for all that is wrong with modern American democracy and—with thanks to Moral Mondays—also highlighting all that may someday save it.
Ironically, as I’ve mentioned, Moral Monday has added abortion on demand to their list of grievances whines, demanding zero regulations on the procedure. They do not even like the notion that abortions should be performed in clean, medical clinic type offices. And there are supposed men of the cloth involved with pushing abortion. Hey, they’re even upset about people being allowed under law to not perform one due to their consciences without reprisal. So, yeah, there’s your MM crowd, lots of whom are bused in from out of state.
Once a temperate and tolerant beacon of the South, the state is poised to enact a rash of inexpressibly awful legislation, rushed through a Republican legislature. Because the GOP has veto-proof super-majorities in the state House and Senate and a Republican governor—for the first time since Reconstruction—the party has been on a spree. Republican-controlled redistricting was fantastically effective. So much so that in the 2012 elections, nearly 51 percent of North Carolina voters picked a Democrat for the U.S. House, yet Republicans won nine of the state’s 13 House seats, as Chris Kromm and Sue Sturgis recently pointed out.
Elections have consequences, as we were told while Obama and the Dem Congress were passing a wasteful $838 billion Stimulus that failed, Obamacare which is highly unpopular and people want repealed, and a whole raft of other bills, all while the economy stagnates. Nothing went wrong, except in Liberal World, where the old school Blue Dog Democrats turned hardcore Progressives were replaced because the voters of the state were tired of the graft, wasteful spending, poor economic policies, and so many others. For the first time we have a GOP governor and General Assembly at the same time. Dem governors in the past have been pretty good (at least post-Civil Rights era): then we got a miserable excuse for a Chief Executive, Beverly Perdue, who followed the Obama model of incompetence.
Some of the gems advanced recently in the legislature include an abortion bill tacked first onto an anti-Sharia law and then snuck in through a motorcycle safety law (new TRAP regulations may shutter all but one clinic in the state). Another bill forces all educators to teach seventh graders that abortion causes preterm birth (it doesn’t). Lawmakers also enacted legislation (described here and elsewhere as “the harshest unemployment insurance program cuts in our nation’s historyâ€) that resulted in 70,000 North Carolina citizens losing their unemployment benefits. The state is one of the 15 to have refused Medicaid expansion under Obamacare. A proposed education bill would slash teacher compensation, (already ranked among the lowest in the nation), eliminate tenure, and use vouchers to reallocate $90 million of public-school funding to private schools (The school superintendent issued a statement this week saying that in light of the proposed deep cuts to the education budget “For the first time in my career of more than 30 years in public education, I am truly worried about students in our care.â€) Don’t forget the embarrassing proposed resolution allowing counties and cities to enshrine a state religion. Or the proposed ban on nipples.
Gee, remember the bribes in Obamacare? Remember how we were told we’d have 3 days to review laws out of the Democrat federal Congress? I don’t remember liberals whining about the GOP adding a minimum wage hike into a Defense bill. Notice that the first thing the Slate write worries about is abortion on demand. That highlights were the first concern of Democrats is. As for the unemployment insurance, the money had to be paid back. NC made a few slight changes to the unemployment system, which was hemorrhaging cash, so the Feds called in the loan. They could have provided a waiver, as they did for other states. They refused to provide the waiver. Perhaps if the Democrats at the federal level weren’t incompetent, and the previous NC Dem governor Perdue wasn’t an incompetent hack, people would be able to find jobs. Good paying ones.
Of course we refused the medicaid expansion. We. Don’t. Want. Obamacare. Period. For the schools, liberals are pissed off about the voucher program. God help them and the power of the teacher’s unions, there for themselves not the kids, if the kids have a choice to go to schools to get educated, instead of indoctrinated and worthless. We could be like Chicago, where 50% do not graduate, and a portion of those who do have a substandard education. The “nipples” thing? Yeah, liberals have a problem with laws that make it a “Class H felony to purposefully expose “private parts†for the “purpose of arousing or gratifying sexual desire.— Perhaps a Class H might be too much (more than a year in jail, same class domestic abuse (based on repeat status)), but we here in NC would prefer that citizens not expose themselves in front of anyone, including children, to satisfy their sexual desire.
Slate also whines about the new voter ID law. Well, good news! The Slate writer doesn’t live here. And, really, if Dahlia Lithwick can’t afford $5 for a picture ID, then she should work on her jobs skills. People have ID for everything else….well, you know how this goes. Dahlia did get the talking points memo, apparently, as she mentions “voter suppression”.
But, other than a some of the big city Progressives, the vast majority of North Carolinians like what the General Assembly is passing. They like the new firearms bill. They aren’t complaining. It’s a small portion of people who would prefer the same types of measures that ruined California and Detroit, and you add a bunch of folks from other states, who can mind their own business, Bless Their Heart’s.
Finally, Dahlia is worried about this spreading. Well, there’s a reason so many States have elected Republican governors and General Assemblies: California, Detroit, and Obama.
Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.
