Setting the Record Straight

This has been another remarkable week in North Carolina. Once again, a dark cloud of corruption has descended upon and enveloped the state’s politics as federal prosecutors unsealed an extraordinary grand jury indictment of one of the state’s best known politicians and a trio of well-heeled businessmen.

The 2018 election is finally and mercifully over and, as was noted in this space yesterday, now is no time for progressives to rest on their laurels. Having taken some promising initial steps in the struggle to overcome Trumpism and build a better, fairer, freer and more sustainable nation and planet, now is the time...

It should not work this way. State constitutions simply should not be fundamentally rewritten during a poorly noticed, hastily arranged, kangaroo legislative session in which new amendment language is unveiled and approved in a span of a few hours (or a day or two)...

With apologies to the Fitzsimon File (which, happily, returns next week…)

2.0---Degrees Fahrenheit that global temperatures have risen since the 19th Century (National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s “Global Climate Change” website)

President Donald Trump’s order to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA) has provoked a thunderous national response from Americans across the political spectrum who are rightfully outraged at the potential human carnage that could result from pushing more than 800,000 young people back into the shadows.

North Carolina Commissioner of Agriculture Steve Troxler and Labor Commissioner Cherie Berry could both be eligible for impeachment soon. At least, that’s the obvious conclusion one must draw from the laughably outrageous action taken yesterday afternoon by members of the Rules Committee of the North Carolina House.

For decades, members of both political parties in the United States Senate have discussed the idea of ending the “60 vote rule” – the requirement that the minority can demand a supermajority vote to pass extremely important and controversial legislation. In recent years, there has been some erosion in the rule, but as of today, the rule remains in place when it comes to the monumentally important matter of Supreme Court nominations.

In a strange and remarkable replay of the controversial one-day special legislative session that took place one year ago last week, the North Carolina General Assembly passed legislation today in a matter of hours that purports to repeal HB2 – the state’s infamous LGBTQ discrimination law. Surprisingly, the proposal also appears to have the backing of Governor Roy Cooper, who issued a terse statement of support last night.

There’s been a great deal of hubbub inside the right-wing echo chamber in recent years about a supposed wave of “political correctness” and free speech “suppression” that has infected American college campuses. According to this narrative, conservative students and academics are constantly squelched in their efforts to exercise their First Amendment rights by “intolerant, leftist” administrators who, it is claimed, are bent upon stifling views with which they disagree.

If you’re a student of world history, you will recall that one of the many horrific practices of the dictatorship in the old Soviet Union was the “purge.” Periodically, members of the Communist Party would run afoul of Stalin or some other boss and find themselves not just banished from the party (or worse), but literally excised from history.

North Carolinians can be forgiven if they haven’t thought a lot about the predatory “payday lending” business in recent years. Indeed, it was one of the great accomplishments of our state government in the early part of the last decade when it officially ended North Carolina’s four-year experiment with the business and made these inherently predatory loans illegal. The last of the payday shops was chased out of the state in 2006. Since that time, there have been periodic efforts to bring the practice back into North Carolina, but consumer advocates have repeatedly succeeded in beating them back.

Yesterday, after recording a segment for the Time-Warner Cable news show, Capitol Tonight, I had a parking lot discussion with a John Locke Foundation staffer about House Bill 2. As you may be aware, HB2 has actually been a divisive issue for some North Carolina conservatives. While many on the religious and Tea Party right have championed the law and, indeed, demanded that lawmakers sign a loyalty pledge to never add sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression to any state law or nondiscrimination policy (a demand since "rescinded"), other conservatives are clearly less passionate about the law.