I sure hope residents of NC get the news.
Politicians are playing with fire. A smoldering combustion that will in short order engulf centuries of progress if not extinguished on November 6. A blaze that is stealthily burning away the skin of individual rights and allowing a Phoenix of Robber Barons to take flight with the state's wealth; promising to leave our children in pine-tar ruins.
Fellow North Carolinians and members of the press, please redouble your efforts in exposing the agenda we fear. It's real and it's not democratic. And we can not afford to hide behind "every politician does it" excuses.
We stand at the proverbial cliff and it ain't a federal deficit we are worried about. It's the wholesale takeover of our legislative process. Our enemy is a corporate pig so greasy that the best athlete in Benson on Mule Day could not grasp it.
And this shrewd sow, fat from victories in other states, has taken control of NC's Republican Party and many Democrats, too.
The American Legislative Exchange Council along with the Koch brothers through their in-state partner and fellow board member of American's for Prosperity, Art Pope (of dime-store fortune fame), have motivated, funded (purchased) and successfully ensnared naive evangelicals and narrow-minded Tea Party wingers and the leadership of the Republican Party. Whipping them up and inspiring Republicans to ideologically shout state's rights, family values--we know the script--instilling them with patriotic desire to vote against the Democratic bogeyman; pretending to be "God-fearing' comrades while simultaneously plotting their take-over of the government in order to insure that their true corporate agenda weaves the entire fabric of the legislative process.
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So what can we do fellow North Carolinians? The press, for one, can step up and do justice to Edward R. Murrow and realize that there is hardly ever two equal sides to the truth. The truth is what it is. "Call out politicians who lie and make the extra phone calls when investigating stories."
Those residents of NC who are faithful Republicans need to swallow the truthful pill that the old Republican Party of conservatives does not exist and realize that electing more Republicans, especially Pat McCrory as governor, will seal the state's fate for decades to come.
A fate promising dire consequences to education, growth, healthcare, the environment, the state's resources (state parks, museums, prisons, transportation, etc.). An agenda that promises tax cuts, tax cuts and more tax cuts. In reality, it's an agenda that threatens civility and undermines centuries of progress won in deadly battles.
It's a threat to civil rights issues of race, gender and voting: eroding "what it means to be a good human being; possessing a spirit of collective responsibility."
How do we know that today's Republican Party has our best interests at heart? The proof is in the pudding. Let's take a closer look at education as an example.
During the past two years, the Republican-led-legislature has decimated education on all levels; attacking and firing teachers, crowding classrooms, appointing right-wing, rich cronies to boards, de-funding scholarship and teacher development programs while their leaders, House Speaker Tom Tillis and Senate Leader Phil Berger, called the state's most successful early childhood programs, "baby-sitting services" in the face of decades of peer-reviewed evidence that the early-childhood programs are a win-win.
But that's only the beginning, they have plans to privatize the entire system over time.
They have made way for more charter schools already and plan to promote digital for-profit, on-line charters as well as introducing vouchers; which like charter schools, suck tax money from the state's K-12 public system--funds the public schools desperately need to maintain quality and rapidly growing enrollment.
The vouchers are a give away to corporate education companies which provide unproven learning materials and teaching methods. Jed Bush anyone?... His people are Berger's leading consultants along with ALEC's national education committee which NC legislators have seats upon. They are leading the privatization bull shit.
A reasonable person might presume that legislators would turn to the state's venerable institutions of higher education for guidance in reforming K-12, but there is no profit in that.
For instance, future teachers in NC will receive their certification through a cottage industry started approximately ten years ago. An industry created by allies of ALEC; a scam that lacks any appropriate accreditation except accolades from think tanks they created!
I call it the "Give us the dough and we certify you to teach enterprise."
There is no reason to doubt that the private, for-profit--yes, for-profit religious schools in NC that will be funded by vouchers--will, like their cohorts in Georgia, teach flat-earth creationism.
Do the corporate leaders care? Not now, the voucher and charter school initiatives please their voting evangelical constituency while making them fortunes.
Many of these schools are for whites only. Nuff said.
The state once known as an oasis of educational opportunity in the South will become a global laughing stock. Wait, the Republican legislature won that prize this past year when they ignored a costly, thorough, scientific sea-level-rise study.
European newspapers covered the Republican legislature's sea-rise denial that ducked science so developers wouldn't be burdened with climatic truth getting in the way of building profitable gated communities for the one percent on ocean-front property.
Late-night comedians poured salt on the wounds made to the state's intellectual integrity by these arbiters of "GOD."
Another onerous Republican sellout to corporations this summer was the fast tracking of a FRACKING bill. The fracking bill provides no protections for our water and air and the new committee appointed by the Republican leadership to write the rules on fracking was stacked with "Gas" company executives. Wake up property rights people, eminent domain power for the gas and oil companies to take your land is already on the books in NC. The law provides no local control.
Ask the Sierra Club about the passed air toxic regulation bill that cuts regulations and will pollute our air again and comes after years of progress in cleaning up.
The Republican House Chair has a bullseye on our Department of Environmental and Natural Resources on his office window. Ask Clint what his true intentions are?
The Republicans moved to privatize the famed NC Zoo this summer. All our state resources are under attack! Republicans will sell our state land to the insiders, you bet; privatize the state parks, you bet; toll roads, you bet; no more Planned Parenthood, you bet; no more abortions of any kind, you bet; no more birth control, you bet; no more early voting, you bet; a stringent voter ID bill coming, you bet; no education for children of immigrants, you bet; Arizona's flagrant immigrant papers law in NC, you bet; freedom to carry guns in churches, schools and bars, you bet...etcetera.
But wait I've saved an important issue for last, healthcare in NC. The Republicans have not moved to implement ACA in any way although the medical community and hospitals encouraged them to do so.
If McCrory wins, the crew in Raleigh most likely will follow Texas. That means no Medicaid potentially or at least greatly reduced Medicaid funding. Grandma and disabled children will be out of luck and shoved from care homes into the street. No shit Sherlock, that's what's at stake.
NC needed money the past two years, but what did the Republicans do? They passed a tax cut for the wealthy; expect more of the same.
This diary is getting long. Perhaps others Dkos members can add to this partial list of what's at stake in North Carolina on Nov. 6?
Residents of NC of all political persuasions, please do a little more research about who and what you are voting for, then:
"Vote like your life depends upon it, because it does!" Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, North Carolina NAACP President.