{"id":7212,"date":"2016-12-16T18:01:55","date_gmt":"2016-12-17T00:01:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=7212"},"modified":"2016-12-18T11:06:50","modified_gmt":"2016-12-18T17:06:50","slug":"is-north-carolina-the-most-toxic-state-in-the-union-ctd-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2016\/12\/16\/is-north-carolina-the-most-toxic-state-in-the-union-ctd-13\/","title":{"rendered":"Is North Carolina the most Toxic State in the Union?, Ctd"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The depths to which the <a href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2016\/10\/12\/is-north-carolina-the-most-toxic-state-in-the-union-ctd-12\/\" target=\"_blank\">North Carolina<\/a> GOP is sinking raises serious questions about the shared sanity of that particular branch of the party. In case you hadn&#8217;t heard, the digested form is that they called a special session, supposedly to address some disaster recovery concerns, but now are apparently trying to pass legislation effectively stripping the Governor-elect, a Democrat, of the powers employed by the current governor, McCrory, who lost the election and is apparently a very sore loser. A\u00a0North Carolina resident has sent me a link to the Facebook page of Jeff Jackson (D), a state Senator, where he&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/JeffJacksonNC\/posts\/596957477173511\" target=\"_blank\">written<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>When we engage in blatant power grabs, there are consequences beyond merely writing bad laws and disrespecting the voters. We also broadcast to the rest of the country that we&#8217;re a state that isn&#8217;t committed to honest, decent government &#8211; and that brings a set of consequences all its own, as we&#8217;ve seen this year.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>He then goes on to list links to stories in newspapers such as <em><strong>The New York Times <\/strong><\/em>and<em><strong> WaPo<\/strong><\/em> detailing these last-moment activities. And now I see this discouraging news, also from Senator Jackson:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In the end, it took Gov. McCrory less than one hour to sign the bill that will restrict the authority of incoming Gov. Cooper.<\/p>\n<p>You deserve honest, decent leadership. Not this.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Well, it&#8217;ll be interesting to see how this plays out. As Jackson implies, there&#8217;s a variety of angles: voter reactions, corporate reactions, even the reactions of recruits for\u00a0the famed UNC basketball program.<\/p>\n<p>And the evaluation of the GOP should be interesting as well. Generally, American governance&#8217;s ideal has been to assume that the opposition is quite loyal; it may differ on policies, but the well-being of the State or Union is uppermost in our minds. The current behavior suggests that the GOP in NC has no such opinion of the Democrats; indeed, they seem to think <del>their<\/del>\u00a0they&#8217;re all devils. And that, in turn, tells me that the GOP is composed of second- and third-raters, people who listen to the worst, not the best, who have learned to be obdurate and closed, rather than open and willing to learn. Or so I speculate; it&#8217;s hard to find an alternative that sounds both reasonable and better.<\/p>\n<p>But one thing&#8217;s for sure: North Carolina&#8217;s legislature is making a strong bid for the title of <em>The Most Toxic State in the Union<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The depths to which the North Carolina GOP is sinking raises serious questions about the shared sanity of that particular branch of the party. In case you hadn&#8217;t heard, the digested form is that they called a special session, supposedly to address some disaster recovery concerns, but now are apparently \u2026 <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2016\/12\/16\/is-north-carolina-the-most-toxic-state-in-the-union-ctd-13\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7212"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7243,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7212\/revisions\/7243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}