CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP)
North Carolina's law limiting protections for LGBT people took center stage Friday in the state's first gubernatorial debate between the incumbent who signed the law and his challenger who wants to repeal it.
Republican Gov. Pat McCrory and Democratic challenger Roy Cooper made clear their differences to a Charlotte audience over the law, known as House Bill 2.
Cooper, the state's attorney general, has refused to defend the law in court.
It was a lively debate with McCrory continuing his defense of HB2 and Cooper openly mocking the Governor’s stance.
"He's blamed the left wing, Charlotte, Charlotte schools, the media, President Obama, all of the musicians," he said. "I think the governor needs to take a long look in the mirror here."
The two candidates also prodded each other Friday on the economy, teacher pay and tax policy. McCrory positioned himself as an outsider who came to Raleigh to clean up what Democrats like Cooper who had controlled state government for decades had produced.
McCrory highlighted bills he signed that lowered income tax rates and accelerated the repayment of more than $2.5 billion owed the federal government to cover unemployment benefits. The state's jobless rate is now at 5 percent, half of what it was when he took office. Cooper, a former legislator elected attorney general in 2001, said tax changes haven't helped the middle class and school teacher morale is low because average pay remains near the bottom of the states.
TAYLOR BATTEN, Editorial Page Editor, Charlotte Observer
If Pat McCrory hadn’t fully realized what a heavyweight bout he is in, he does now after Roy Cooper delivered a series of hooks and uppercuts in the first round of their championship fight in Charlotte on Friday. McCrory came out with his chin out, unprotected. Today, he’s back in his corner, his trainers putting salve on his busted lip. Soon, his coach will work with him on making stronger jabs and better defending himself.
No North Carolina governor has ever run for a second term and lost, but McCrory could be the first. Friday’s debate at the Westin uptown was the first of several and marked the kickoff of what is sure to be a fierce four-month campaign.
Gene Nichol is Boyd Tinsley Distinguished Professor at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Please read the story with complete descriptions of each of the ten items below . They perfectly lay out what this regime has done. He closes with “Rarely have so few inflicted so much, so quickly, on so many, with so little justification. Revolution born in malice.”
News&Observer
When I read the other day that lawmakers are now telling schools how to teach math, I remembered Lily Tomlin’s quip: “No matter how cynical I get, it’s impossible to keep up.” We’ve gotten used to a lot of insanity during this campaign to destroy the meaning of North Carolina.
I know that sounds overblown. Courts sometimes demand a “bill of particulars” to clarify such vague assertions, a detailed itemization of claims made against one’s adversary. In the spirit of clarity and particularization, here’s mine.
The governor and General Assembly have:
1. Tragically refused to expand Medicaid.
2. Enacted the most aggressive voter suppression law in a half century.
3. Launched an internationally derided war on LGBT people.
4. Moved systematically and pervasively to dismantle the public schools.
5. Initiated the nation’s most appalling crusade against poor people.
6. Violated the personal liberty, constitutional privacy and bodily integrity of NC women.
7. Abused legislative power to limit necessary and traditional prerogatives of public and private institutions.
8. Opened the door to degradation of the environment and natural resources.
9. Embraced government by perjury.
10. Perhaps most distressing, ruled as a white people’s party.
In their ongoing quest to take away the power of local governance, NC Republicans are steadily beating the drums of partisanship. From legislation requiring all school boards to have partisan only elections to Raleigh meddling with school boards at the local level, the goal is clear, usurp local power. Remember when “limited government” was a thing with these folks?
News&Observer
When House Republicans earlier this month voted to make Transylvania County’s Board of Education elections partisan, they highlighted a growing trend.
The number of partisan school board elections has doubled in the past five years, according to the N.C. School Boards Association. Data from the association shows that of North Carolina’s 112 elected school boards, 23 are now elected on a partisan basis.
In 2018, Rockingham County will be partisan, and if the Transylvania bill passes the Senate, that will make 25. The association’s official position on whether school boards should be partisan is that it’s a local issue.
Republicans are trying hard to undermine a strong foundation of environmental protections concerning nutrient runoff from farms into waterways. The following is just a little of the article. The rest goes into detail about the science and the politics of this important subject.
News&Observer
Some Republican legislators, developers and upstream communities want to throw out those safeguards and start all over with new rules. They are frustrated at the minimal improvements seen so far and the potentially exorbitant costs of fully implementing protections put in place before Republicans took over the General Assembly in 2011.
They would repeal the restrictions that are meant to clean up Jordan Lake and Falls Lake – which provide drinking water to more than 700,000 people in the Triangle – and do away with stream buffer protections across the state, which have been the primary tool in minimizing runoff pollution.
Environmentalists counter that the protections have not been given enough time to fully work, and that it’s not a good idea to throw out the current rules without knowing what might replace them. They fear a return to past decades and the loss of more than 1 billion fish in the Neuse River, the Pamlico River being declared commercially dead and acres of shellfish harvest rendered unusable.
“This without a doubt will have a very large negative impact on water quality,” said Matt Starr, the Upper Neuse riverkeeper. “We are in the rare situation of being able to see the future. We know what will happen if we roll back these nutrient management strategies.”
Democratic nominee for Congress, NC08. Coms consultant. Blogger. Husband and Father. NC Native. Occasional carpenter. Heats with wood. Don't feed the trolls.
Even though a large majority of people support background checks on guns and trying to keep them out of the hands of suspected terrorists, the GOP in Washington won’t even allow debate on the matter. And even though we’ve been fighting about our immigration system for more than a decade, no solution is in sight. But it’s our broken political system that is really causing the dysfunction in government.
Gerrymandered districts are probably the single biggest problem. They’ve reduced the competition in elections that forces political leaders to find common ground. Instead, battles are fought in primaries that tend to elect the most conservative or liberal candidates. In these districts, compromise is a sign of weakness and a recipe for defeat.”
Politics NC
Commissioner of Labor Race: Cherie Berry (R, incumbent) vs. Charles Meeker (D)
Cherie Berry, the incumbent Commissioner of Labor, has probably the most recognizable face on the whole Council of State. That’s because her picture is in every elevator. This notoriety has gained her a nickname, “the Elevator Queen.” The picture, and her memorable name, are actually two key political assets and two reasons why it will be difficult to dislodge her from her throne.
But this year, Democrats think the Elevator Queen could be going down. They have a formidable candidate, former Mayor of Raleigh Charles Meeker. Meeker is running because he believes the current department is failing the workers of North Carolina and is in vast need of updating. Berry supporters, on the other hand, believe she’s more than just a pretty face and the department is already doing a good job at protecting North Carolina workers.
Typically, women on the Council of State enjoy the greatest level of job securityin North Carolina politics. Meeker supporters are hopeful that Berry will be vulnerable anyway. They feel that finally they have a candidate who will have the resources to give voters a look at what they feel is the real picture of Cherie Berry. But they know they’ll need some luck, too.
NC Policy Watch has some of the best Koch research
The Kochs in North Carolina
Here in North Carolina, where the Kochs’ home-grown junior partner Art Pope has played the role of right-wing financier and kingmaker for years, direct Koch tentacles have been somewhat less visible. Recently, however, this has started to change. Last fall, we reported on the establishment of a new Koch-funded propaganda shop at Western Carolina University to be dubbed the Center for the Study of Free Enterprise.
Meanwhile, as is noted in the Mayer piece, another Koch network shop has sprouted and is taking shape 200 miles to the east at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem. The Wake Forest operation is called the “Eudaimonia Project” and it is headed by James Otteson – the head of the BB&T Center for the Study of Capitalism at Wake (where the project is based) and the same fellow who outlined the Koch plan at the California retreat in the above excerpt.
Washington Post
RALEIGH, N.C. — A day after seeking to portray Donald Trump as unfit to manage the nation’s economy, Hillary Clinton used a second speech here to pledge to make the largest investment in U.S. jobs since World War II and remind voters of a long list of her prescriptions to bolster the middle class.
The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee’s address focused on largely familiar proposals, including measures to make college debt-free, increase corporate profit-sharing, expand access to child care and ensure that large companies and the “super rich” pay their “fair share” of taxes.
“I will not raise taxes on the middle class,” Clinton said, recounting the difficulties that families in North Carolina have making ends meet, particularly those with children.