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.
One of the first and most horrific steps Gov. McCrory took was to appoint Art Pope — his biggest campaign donor, a tea-bagger multi-millionaire and a Koch brothers Mini-Me — as the state’s budget director. Pope funds right-wing think tanks that promote repealing the state income tax, privatizing Medicaid and reducing the state workforce — the sort of austerity policies that have hobbled the recovery in Europe.
Earlier this month, Gov. McCrory also went on the right-wing radio show hosted by Bill Bennet, George H.W. Bush’s drug czar, to announce his intention to gut the funding of one of North Carolina’s most vaulable assets: its public university and community college systems.
But wherever the tea party takes over, the teavangelicals are not far behind — and state Rep. Rayne Brown, who represents a district in the northwest mountainous part of the state, has shown where she puts her priorities. She has proposed a law that will ban women from exposing their nipples in public:
On Wednesday, the state House Judiciary Committee C approved House Bill 34, which makes it a Class H felony to purposefully expose “private parts” for the “purpose of arousing or gratifying sexual desire.”
The bill expands the state’s definition of “private parts” to include a woman’s “nipple, or any portion of the areola.”
[Brown] told lawmakers that she was co-sponsoring the bill because activists had held a topless women’s rights rally in Asheville last summer, where as many as a dozen women bared their breasts (NSFW video here).
Although Brown’s district is 100 miles from Asheville, she felt it was important to act before women tried to assert their rights again by going topless at another rally.
“You’ve got local governments passing ordinances to protect themselves from just this thing,” she explained. “These folks don’t need to be doing that, but they do it because they’re not sure about the law.”
Under the law, exposing one or more nipples would be a felony punishable by six months in prison for first time offenders. Women who accidentally expose their nipples would be charged with misdemeanors and would only serve 30 days in jail. Women who expose their nipples in the godly pursuit of breast feeding are exempt. (One of Rep. Brown’s tea-party colleagues suggested that women who fear being arrested for accidentally exposing their nipples could cover them with duct tape.)
Of course, the new law would not apply to men, who are free to expose their nipples at any time and for any reason, presumably even for the “purpose of arousing or gratifying sexual desire.”
Because the Tar Heel teabillies gained control in 2010, just in time to gerrymander North Carolina’s congressional and legislative districts in their own favor, it appears that nothing can stop them from implementing their agenda, despite the fact that there are more registered Democrats than Republicans (2.9 million to 2 million) and independents (1.6 million). McCrory was elected easily last year — 54.7 to 43.2 percent (2.4 million vs. 1.9 million votes) against the Democrat, Walter Dalton — because he was able to swing independents and some Democrats his way. Many of them are undoubtedly coming to realize they made a big mistake.
Based on the numbers, it appears that dark days are ahead for the Old North State.
NC is spinning it’s wheels backward in every issue imaginable. Wow – Pat – knew this would happen if you were elected. You were no more than a token mayor in Charlotte. You could be bought with a blink of an eye for the right price. How you are treating the citizens of this stupid state is beyond reproach. Will always remember sitting around a campfire in Terlingua, Tx (Big Bend National Park) discussing life. I was a visitor and was proud to say I was born in NC. One lady commented – man, there are a lot of petty tyrants running loose in that state. Now, I understand.
My God! NC is the 10th largest Progressive State in the Nation? Mea Culpa! I wouldn’t have moved here if I had known that.
You should know, if you’ve studied it carefully that the first tea party also fought against BIG FAT DISGUSTING GOVERNMENT! They balked when King Georgie imposed a 1% tax on tea imports. No, I didn’t misplace the decimal place.
Here’s an accurate definition of Progressive: One who believes that only Government has the right to tell you what to do, how much to earn, what to think, where to go, and, usually, who to vote for, whereas Patriots, not RINOs, believe Government should be only so large as to be able to protect it’s citizens (from ANY government, including our own and) from foreign armed forces. By those definitions I and most tea party supporters despise Progressives. We actually consider them REGRESSIVES.
Since we’re on the subject of “nipples” I’d like to ask a Progressive how much more nipple and areola they would like to see? How about the whole dang boob hanging out? But what if men wanted to walk around with their penusses dangling in air? I wonder if that would offend Progressives? How much of an 80 year old man’s hairy ass can be exposed before Progressives take their kids home for some wholesome TV (assuming there will be any wholesome TV after liberals change it all?)
If an honest survey were to be taken we would probably find that most Americans have a limit to how much skin they want their oversexed teenagers to see, before their hormones kick and they start jumping the girls and boys in the streets? Asheville anyone? Hendersonville? No darn way. I like visitations from my grand kids and their parents will stop visiting when the boobs begin to bounce out of their proper holders.
George Danz
George – You must be getting your history from Glenn Beck University. The Boston Tea Party was not conducted by patriots. Local moneymen and agitators, mostly smugglers and tax evaders, hired wharf rats to dress up like Indians and dump the tea. George Washington and Ben Franklin criticized it at the time: http://www.pensitoreview.com/2011/06/08/sorry-tea-baggers-washington-and-franklin-opposed-the-boston-tea-party/
The current tea party is built on similar chicanery: http://www.pensitoreview.com/2011/10/11/the-true-tea-party-history-first-protests-were-over-a-govt-plan-to-help-underwater-homeownerster-homeo-febover-opposition-to-helping/
It would have been more accurate if the Koch brothers operatives who picked up Santinelli’s branding had named their astroturf movement after the Whiskey Rebellion rather than the Boston Tea Party. The Whiskey Rebellion was a true grass-roots uprising by tax-hating Americans. Pres. Washington himself led the military effort to put down the rebels, marking the only time in U.S. history that the Commander in Chief actually led forces into battle.
To answer your question, progressives and other normal North Carolinians want to see politicians working on jobs, jobs, jobs, not banning exposed nipples (which should be handled by local ordinances, not Raleigh), resurrecting Jim Crow, putting big-government Republican restrictions on women’s health, gutting the education system that helped make North Carolina the 10th largest state and other embarrassing wastes of time that have, in just eight short months, turned a once great state into a national joke.