Tag: North Carolina

Addicting Info: 10 Embarrassing Things Republicans Have Done to North Carolina Since the Tea Party Seized Power

Jon Ponder

The message on the vendor’s T-shirt reads, "Yup, I’m a racist"
Addicting Info has collected the 10 most embarrassing things that Gov. Pat McCrory and his tea party cohorts have done to North Carolina since they took over the state government for the first time in over 150 years. Read the whole thing here, but here are the broad points:

1. Reinstating Jim Crow-style voter suppression laws 53 years after the historic Woolworth sit-ins in Greensboro

2. Under the guise of motorcycle safety, passing a big-government Republican takeover of North Carolina women’s uteruses, which Gov. McCrory signed into law despite a campaign promise not to restrict women’s reproductive rights

3. Cutting funding for programs that feed the hungry and house and clothe the unemployed — which is a paradox because these Republicans claim to be Christians and this directly countermands Jesus’ requirement that Christians must help the poor and needy

4. Attempting to unilaterally nullify the U.S. Constitution and create a North Carolina state religion

5. Killing a proposal for background checks for gun buyers while passing a bill to make it legal to carry concealed weapons on college campuses, state property, greenways, bike trails, at sporting events and in businesses that serve alcohol

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North Carolina Tea Party Gov Says He ‘Doesn’t Know Enough’ About Neo-Jim Crow Voter Suppression Bill He Plans to Sign

Jon Ponder

North Carolina’s tea party governor admitted on Friday that he has not read the voter suppression bill he’s about to sign into law:

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) said Friday he would sign a bill passed by the North Carolina legislature that would become the most suppressive voting law in the nation. But when asked to speak about a provision in the bill that would prohibit 17-year-olds from registering in advance of their 18th birthday, McCrory admitted he “did not know enough” and had not read that portion of the bill.

The bill, passed just weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act and paved the way for new suppressive state laws, imposes a laundry list of new restrictions on access to the ballot, including eliminating same-day registration, cutting early voting, easing campaign contribution limits, and expanding the mechanisms for alleging voter fraud. In remarks saying he would sign the bill, McCrory focused on his support for the bill’s voter ID requirement — a particularly suppressive and discriminatory policy that McCrory has long supported. But when asked by an Associated Press reporter about another provision in the bill to limit new voter registration opportunities, McCrory said, “I don’t know enough. I’m sorry. I haven’t read that portion of the bill.”

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Poll: North Carolinians Unhappy with Teabilly Takeover of State Government

Jon Ponder

With the election of tea party Republican Pat McCrory as governor last year, the GOP completed its first takeover of the North Carolina government in nearly 150 years. Since then, the Republican governor and state House and Senate have generated one embarrassing headline after another.

And what about jobs, jobs, jobs? Nada. At 8.8 percent in May, North Carolina has the fifth highest unemployment rate in the country.

A few of these include the governor’s installation as budget czar Art Pope, a Koch brothers’ Mini-me; draconian cuts in benefits for the unemployed and Medicaid patients; raising taxes on the poor and middle class while cutting taxes for for Czar Pope and his fatcat cohorts; a short-lived proposal to jettison the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and institute an official state religion in North Carolina; a bill to make it a felony for women (but not men) to expose their nipples in public; and the stealthy passage of anti-abortion bill, first on the back of anti-Sharia law legislation and then as a rider on a motorcycle safety bill, during the July 4th holiday, a week when North Carolinians vacation at the beach.

And what about jobs, jobs, jobs? Nada. At 8.8 percent in May, North Carolina has the fifth highest unemployment rate in the country.

Results of a new poll from Raleigh-based Public Policy Polling show that North Carolina voters are beginning to return to their traditional progressive moderation on political issues:

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McCrory Says Moral Monday Protests are Not Very Moral

Buck Banks

I go out in the crowd all of the time. Frankly, yesterday I went out and talked to several of them and they were not very respectful. They did not represent the majority of those who call themselves moral by cussing me out. But that’s the way things go some times.

— North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R), quoted by the Wilson Times, on the “Moral Monday” protests at the state capitol every week.

Protests over Right-Wing Assault on Women’s Rights Continue in Raleigh

Jon Ponder

RT America:

North Carolina’s first Republican-led state government in more than a hundred years has been met with weekly protests opposing the legislature’s attempts to limit access to women’s health clinics that provide abortions. Dubbed “Moral Monday,” the rallies have combined with similar controversy in Texas to raise the national consciousness on a conservative movement that could make it almost impossible for women in the states to terminate a pregnancy safely and legally.
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North Carolina Republicans to State’s Unemployed: Drop Dead

Jon Ponder

McCrory
Raw Story:

A new law taking effect in North Carolina over the weekend will cut unemployment benefits for new claims and disqualify the state from receiving federal funds for the long-term jobless.

According the The Associated Press, lawmakers passed the bill in February to accelerate the repayment of $2.5 billion federal debt by cutting jobless benefits and increasing taxes on businesses. Because the bill cuts benefits to those who are newly unemployed, the state also disqualified itself from receiving federally funded Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC).

The U.S. Labor Department has estimated that about 170,000 out-of-work North Carolinians stand to lose $700 million in EUC payments.

GOP N.C. House Leader Says Voting Is among ‘Things You Just Shouldn’t Do on Sundays’

Jon Ponder

GOP N.C. House Leader Edgar Starnes
Just four months after Florida’s experiment in Jim Crow style voter suppression failed — the restrictive new laws actually drove up turnout rather than depressing it, which helped deliver the state to Pres. Obama in a 0.88 percentage point squeaker — North Carolina Republicans who now control all branches of government have proposed a slate of similar laws, apparently without any reservations that their attempts to disenfranchise minority voters might have the same result in the tenth largest state that they had in the fourth largest.

Obama won North Carolina in 2008 with just 14,000 votes. He lost the state in 2012 by 92,000 votes.

The GOP gained control of both houses of the N.C. legislature in 2010 for the first time since the 1870s. In 2012, the party achieved veto-proof majorities, which is all but irrelevant since the newly elected governor, Pat McCrory, the former crypto-moderate mayor of Charlotte, is also a Republican.

In a classic example of Big Government Republican thinking, when asked to defend ending Sunday voting, N.C. GOP House Majority Leader Edgar Starnes explained that there were “some things you just shouldn’t do on Sundays.”

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Tar Heel Teabilly at CPAC: Frederick Douglass Should Have Thanked His Former Slave Master for Giving Him Food and Shelter

Jon Ponder

In the above exchange from a panel discussion on minority outreach at CPAC titled, “Trump The Race Card: Are You Sick And Tired Of Being Called A Racist When You Know You’re Not One?” (so not kidding), Scott Terry, 30, from North Carolina, shared his views on white supremacy and the ingratitude of once-enslaved people toward their former masters with the facilitator of the panel, Karl C. Smith, a member of the Frederick Douglass Republican club.

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The Tea Party Seizes Control of North Carolina, Sets Priorities: European Style Austerity And a Felony Ban on Women Exposing Their Nipples

Jon Ponder

Pope, Brown
In the 2010 tea party wave election, Republicans took over both houses of the North Carolina legislature for the first time in 140 years. Last November, the tea party completed its takeover with the election of Republican Pat McCrory as governor.

Since then, Democrats and progressive independents have watched in muted horror as the Tar Heel tea party has signaled its determiniation to turn one of the most progressive states in the South — and the tenth largest state in the nation — into a poorly educated, poverty-stricken backwater like South Carolina, Alabama or Mississippi.

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