|
|
|
North Carolina - Republicans
Gary Pearce posted on April 24, 2013 11:51
Absolute good met absolute evil in a quiet Raleigh home Monday evening. Early Wednesday morning, Jamie Hahn lost her fight to live.
Her husband Nation and her family are devastated. But, as always happens at times like this, the best in people comes out. All day Tuesday, friends streamed into WakeMed to do what they could, say what they could and simply be with her family and with each other.
Mid-afternoon, their friends decided there should be a prayer vigil. Less than four hours later, hundreds of people jammed into Pullen Memorial Baptist Church. We lit candles for her. Nation spoke. We hugged, and we wept.
Together, Jamie and Nation had a unique quality that people responded to. They liked people. Their home was a familiar gathering place. People had fun.
Jamie liked politics, and she was good at it. She exemplified all that is good in politics. Nation is familiar to readers of this blog. He has been a guest blogger and will again, I trust.
This is one of those times when what unites us as people is so much bigger than what divides us in politics.
[Click to read and post comments...]
Gary Pearce posted on April 19, 2013 10:55
Dwane Powell’s return to the N&O captured in one cartoon – a depiction of the Republican elephant gone wild – what thousands of words fail to describe.
(Congratulations, incidentally, to Powell on being selected for the N.C. Journalism Hall of Fame.)
Even a Republican TAPster wrote: “This cartoon just about sums it up. The speed limit sign of infinity cracks me up.”
He added, “They (GOP legislative leaders) think that if they don’t go for everything all at once, then they will be betraying their base and get attacked for it.”
Haste. And arrogance. As epitomized by Senator Tommy Tucker from Union County, who told a North Carolina newspaper publisher “I am the senator. You are the citizen. You need to be quiet.”
Chris Fitzsimon’s blog at NC Policy Watch captured that incident best: “Tucker’s berating of a citizen he is supposed to be representing wasn’t all that surprising. That’s the way the General Assembly, especially the Senate, is run these days.
“The folks in charge not only want to make sure you know they are in charge, they want your obedience, not your questions or doubts and certainly not your disagreements. It’s clear they not only have an ideological agenda to pursue, they have scores to settle from their years in the minority.”
[Click to read and post comments...]
Gary Pearce posted on April 18, 2013 14:36
The Republicans’ education agenda finally comes into focus: It’s about creating a market for private enterprise. They want to privatize Medicaid and privatize the Department of Commerce, so why not privatize schools?
It’s the only thing that makes sense. You might be wondering: How do they propose to make public schools better when they demonize and demoralize teachers, take teacher assistants out of the classroom and increase class sizes? (And, at the same time, demand that schools teach the Bible, cursive writing and, for all we know, creationism.)
The answer has to be that they don’t want to make public schools better. They want to make them worse. They want to say: “The schools are broken, they are failing. So we have to give tax money to private schools.”
Then families that can afford it will move their children to private schools. Which leaves public schools with the kids from poor and broken families. Which drives down the schools’ performances even farther. Which…well, you get it.
And who will fill this need? Entrepreneurs like big Republican contributor Bob Luddy, who owns and operates private schools. You see, it’s all about the private sector, not public schools.
[Click to read and post comments...]
Carter Wrenn posted on April 16, 2013 10:32
For years Jesse Helms wrote every speech he made, typing each on an old reporter’s typewriter, then one year when he was unusually harried he decided it was time to hire a speechwriter – so we hired ‘John.’
John was an unusually gifted writer but for all his virtues he had a peculiar view of politics (and the world in general). John saw politics as one tiny pinnacle of pure white light populated with saints, surrounded by a pitch-black engulfing darkness filled with goblins and liberals who had to be exterminated and, since the saints were badly outnumbered, the way John saw it there was no room for the luxury mercy.
Of course the fearfulness of his vision meant he was angry a great part of the time and naturally, over time, his anger turned him mean.
For six months John diligently labored writing passionate and articulate speeches for Jesse then one day in December, as we walked to my car to go to lunch, John handed Jesse a speech and launched into a tirade about Christmas – he said Christmas was a greed-ridden desecration of the story of the Christ child, an abomination reeking of materialism, then tore into Santa Claus, saying Santa Claus was a hobgoblin invented by greedy shopkeepers to con little children – then he stepped in front of Jesse, turned to face him, and said, Somebody needs to stand up and tell those children the truth about Santa Claus – and pointed to that speech.
Not with the white-hot passion (born of fear or betrayal or meanness) of a common murderer but with the cold-calculated passion of a Grand Inquisitor ticking off the names of heretics John had proposed the murder of St. Nicholas.
Jesse stopped dead in his tracks, rocked back on his heels, looked back at John, and grinned, Well, if you don’t mind, I believe I’d as soon pass on running for the Senate by telling children there’s no Santa Claus.
Back in those days you could usually find a fellow like John in almost every town of any size but given the limits of geography and communications in those days it was nearly impossible for John to find (or share fellowship with) his natural political soul mates. He was sadly isolated and fought his political battles alone.
John passed on a decade ago but today his lineal descendents (not in blood but in politics) are happier because they’re no longer alone – modern day Johns build websites then with the click of a button other ‘Johns’ can find them and they form a tribe as bellicose as Huns.
The other day, without meaning to, a soft-spoken lady from Charlotte who’s one of the four Republican leaders in the House – Representative Ruth Samuelson – sent one of those Hun-tribes into a white-hot fury.
Back to 2007 a previous state legislature passed a bill to encourage companies to produce ‘renewable energy’ – like solar power – in North Carolina; hardly a word has been said about the bill for six years, until last week when State Representative Mike Hager stood up in a House Committee and announced that utility companies using solar power was adding millions of dollars to electric bills and he was going to put a stop to it by repealing that six-year-old bill.
Those two words – renewable energy – reverberated across the Internet with the power of a magnet and hit a tribe of Johns right squarely between the eyes. Because the one person they knew who favored renewable energy was Barack Obama. And that’s all they needed to know. No sooner had Mike Hager sounded the war tocsin than a full-throated battle cry filled the air and charges flew about the evil of government subsidies and the worse evil of government interfering with the free market – which in a way didn’t add up because utility companies are monopolies and there is no free market for selling electricity.
Then just when it looked like Representative Hager’s bill was sure to sail through that committee Ruth Samuelson stood up and politely said that it might be a good idea for legislators to stop and do a little research before voting.
About an hour after that one Hun-like tribe put a picture of Samuelson and a picture of another Republican legislator on its website alongside a picture of Obama then added a headline over the pictures roaring: They voted with Obama!
The way that tribe saw it Ruth Samuelson had gone over to the Dark Side or, worse, become a liberal – which didn’t add up either because how on earth could an Obama-liberal be one of the four Republican Leaders in the State House?
So I looked up that 2007 bill and an odd fact popped up right away: George Bush was President when that bill passed. Then a second fact leaped off the page: The most rock-ribbed conservative in the legislature, Phil Berger, had voted for that bill. As had Thom Tillis, Tom Apodaca, Skip Stam, Robert Pittenger and just about every other Republican in the General Assembly.
Whether that Hun-like tribe’s attack on Ruth Samuelson was cold-blooded calculation or hot-blooded rage there’s no getting around one more fact: It was an act of pure meanness – like when John told Jesse, You ought to tell little children there is no Santa Claus.
[Click to read and post comments...]
Carter Wrenn posted on April 15, 2013 14:27
Republicans and Democrats over in the legislature have been battling hammer and tongs but, still, it raised eyebrows last week when the News & Observer reported Republicans have declared war on the cities.
House Speaker Thom Tillis explained the new conflagration philosophically, saying ‘Part of the conflict is due to a different world view of the role of government.’ Other legislators were blunter, saying ‘Cities are getting too big and too powerful’ and ‘Cities are too arrogant.’
The mayors (who’re mostly Democrats) tried to fight back but the legislators (who’re mostly Republicans) had them over a barrel: The General Assembly had the power – legally – so it rolled happily forward redrawing school board districts, rewriting local housing regulations, and taking the airport from Charlotte, the water system from Asheville and Dix Park from Raleigh.
But, a year from now, this war may take a turn that surprises the General Assembly: Years ago, when Jesse Helms first ran for Senate, most of the voters lived in small towns and rural crossroads not big enough to be called towns. But those days have long-since vanished. Cities are now the political dynamos and cities and suburbs decide elections and mayors (like Raleigh’s Mayor Nancy McFarlane) are popular – more popular than, say, a Republican legislator from Raleigh.
So what began as a legal fight may spiral into a political fight and, next election, if Mayor McFarlane decides to lead one of those independent Super PAC campaigns, Republican legislators in swing districts in Wake County could become casualties.
There’s also another more nuanced problem. Legislators changing government policies – like cutting spending or reforming the tax code – is one thing. But Republican legislators passing laws to weaken Democratic mayors is another thing entirely. Voters are pretty tolerant of politicians’ foibles and clay feet and hardly a soul believes anymore American Democracy is an exercise in selflessness or clean hands – but sometimes when a politician goes too far he runs afoul of a political current that runs bone-deep – then the wind changes and tolerance ends and a bedrock American spirit (that cannot abide a politician who grabs for too much power) breaks loose and wreaks havoc.
[Click to read and post comments...]
Gary Pearce posted on April 15, 2013 10:42
Now that UNC-Chapel Hill has a new chancellor, maybe it can move beyond the battles over sexual assaults and athletics-versus-academics and get on with the real war – the one with the new Republican majority in Raleigh.
And it will be war.
This is a fundamental social, cultural and political conflict. It is free inquiry versus free enterprise, scholars versus CEOs, free-thinkers versus true believers. It is, writ large, the same battle that has gone on since Jesse Helms railed against Chapel Hill in the 1960s. It is, 50 years later, the Speaker Ban Law sequel.
It is the ultimate brawl between the two traditions that have long defined North Carolina politics: the liberalism of Chapel Hill against the conservatism of North Carolina’s rural areas, fundamentalist churches and selected boardrooms.
But this time the anti-UNC crowd controls the legislature and the Governor’s office.
Governor McCrory, though he is quick now to defend liberal arts, has questioned gender studies and any studies that don’t put “butts in jobs.” Art Pope has long railed against what he sees as UNC’s hostility to business. And then there is a strong streak of anti-intellectualism in some Republican quarters.
In past years, UNC could count on the solid support of North Carolina’s newspapers. That relationship, especially with the N&O, has been strained by battles over public records. Some veteran N&O hands question whether the paper has gone too far and is damaging the university.
This wouldn’t be the nation’s first war between the academic world and a business-government complex that wants to “reform” academia. See the University of Virginia.
And here, like there, it could become a fight to the death of one side or the other.
Does Chancellor Folt know what she’s getting into? Holden Thorp certainly knows what he’s getting out of: big-time college athletics, the N&O’s firing range and Art Pope’s turf.
As an N.C. State alum, I could sit back and enjoy this. After all, State doesn’t face the same hostility. It puts butts in jobs: scientists, engineers and agribusiness managers. (And even a few of us history majors.)
But Chapel Hill is an essential element of North Carolina’s progressive tradition. Which is why it’s in the crosshairs.
And why it’s worth fighting for.
[Click to read and post comments...]
Gary Pearce posted on April 13, 2013 08:05
A laurel and hearty handshake go out to Rep. Robert Brawley for boldly speaking up for the right of legislators to take free gifts from lobbyists. Right on, brother!
The legislature should pass this bill. Because it then would take almost no time before most of the members are in jail or forced out by scandal. A most healthy house-cleaning would result.
[Click to read and post comments...]
Carter Wrenn posted on April 11, 2013 14:52
Years ago some crafty Democratic gnome sitting cloistered in a cell pouring over reams of demographics (trying to figure out the political inclinations of people who didn’t vote) had a revelation: If those folks did vote, a lot more Democrats were going to get elected.
Now, in a way, that sounds odd (after all, How could he know?) but as far as political theory goes he was standing on rock-solid ground. Demographics seldom lie.
Of course there was no way to keep an earthshaking fact like that secret – word of the gnome’s discovery quickly reached Democratic legislators. About the kindest thing to say about what happened next is: Those legislators started passing laws to help themselves get elected – they passed a ‘motor-voter’ law so that every time anyone over eighteen years old applied for a driver’s license they were also handed a voter registration form. But, to the Democrats’ chagrin, while registration soared, most of the new voters never even bothered to go to the polls.
It was a setback but the Democrats legislators took it in stride. They went back to work and tackled the problem from a different direction, writing a whole new set of laws – they passed ‘early voting’ and ‘same-day registration’ and ‘Sunday voting’ and, suddenly, in 2008 what they’d been dreaming of actually happened: Those non-voters flocked to the polls and for the first time in forty-eight years – in the same election – the Democrats elected a Governor, a U.S. Senator and the Democratic candidate for President won North Carolina.
The Democrats must have felt the Promised Land was within reach but then the unexpected happened: Republicans won the next two elections. Suddenly, Republicans were in control of the State House and Senate, and – the way they saw it – if Democrats could pass laws to elect Democrats, they could repeal them, or better still, add a few new laws to elect Republicans. They rolled out bills to repeal Sunday voting, end same-day registration, end straight-party voting and curtail early voting. Then proposed laws to make it tougher for college students to vote and to make absentee voting easier (since Republicans vote more often by absentee than Democrats).
There’s a kind of rough justice in all that but looked another way it’s also proof of an unkind truth: One bad deed begets another and, after that, it’s an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth with no remorse anywhere.
[Click to read and post comments...]
Carter Wrenn posted on April 10, 2013 11:10
My grandmother used to say, ‘Idle hands are the devil’s workshop’ – and while legislators are waiting for the Senate to introduce its budget over in the General Assembly, they’re making a strong case that temptation and too much time on your hands is as deadly a combination as ever:
-
One legislator sponsored a bill to make teaching cursive handwriting mandatory in public schools, saying teaching cursive would develop brain activity in third graders and help them read historical documents like the Constitution – which a Google search shows, is available in print on the Internet in 123,000 places.
-
Two legislators declared the 1st Amendment (and the Freedom of Religion Clause) of the Constitution doesn’t apply to North Carolina, and that under the 10th Amendment, the legislature can nullify federal laws they don’t like – but they missed one crucial fact: The last time the state legislature tried to nullify the Constitution it didn’t work out too well.
-
A Senator filed a bill to prohibit male students and female students from rooming together in dormitories at UNC – it’s hard to argue with that, but a better question to ask might be how on earth UNC ended up with a Chancellor who could be gulled into believing it made common sense to allow gay men to room with straight women in UNC dormitories?
So, with the time they had on their hands, legislators wrote bills that enraged women, nullified the Constitution, stimulated brain activity, separated gay men and straight women at UNC, and threatened FBI agents – is it any wonder (according to the latest polls) only 23% of the voters approve of the way the state legislature is doing its job?
[Click to read and post comments...]
Gary Pearce posted on April 10, 2013 09:15
The more you hang around, the more things come back around. Like controversial Dix land transfers and privatizing the Department of Commerce.
At the dedication of N.C. State’s new Hunt Library last week, one visitor took note of a Duane Powell cartoon in Governor Hunt’s office. It poked fun at his hotly debated plan to transfer land from Dix to NCSU (for what become the Centennial Campus, a jewel for the school and one of the world’s most outstanding university research campuses.) That was in 1984, almost 30 years ago.
This week, Governor McCrory proposed privatizing the Department of Commerce. Exactly what Lt. Governor Bob Jordan proposed in 1988, exactly 25 years ago, when he was running against Governor Jim Martin.
By the way, Martin and his Republican allies denounced the idea then. They said it would hurt the industry-hunting efforts of the Department of Commerce (which Hunt had created in 1977).
[Click to read and post comments...]
|
|
|