Hearing the stories and viewing the images from the tragedy that befell us two months ago still brings me to tears. So many are still in need; so many in so much pain. Small businesses are staggering under immense rebuilding costs with greatly reduced revenue. Many will have to shut their doors.
It seems that my concern about the suffering people of Western North Carolina is not shared by the GOP-controlled N.C. General Assembly. Last month, General Assembly leadership crafted a bill in the dark and brought it up for a vote less than three hours later. Though they claimed the bill was a “disaster relief bill,” only 11 pages out of 131 had anything to do with helping WNC.
The law included one paragraph stipulating an additional $227 million from the rainy day fund be transferred to the Hurricane Helene Disaster Recovery Fund. That money is to “remain unspent until appropriated by an act of the General Assembly.” They are not sending money to folks in need; they are moving it from one fund to another in Raleigh.
The rest of the bill was a massive reshaping of state government to take power away from those state offices won by Democrats (governor, attorney general, state schools superintendent) and giving it to the General Assembly and their designees. I’ve been following politics for a good long while, but I can’t say that I’ve ever seen anything so cynical, mean-spirited and cruel. It was so bad that three Republican House members from Western North Carolina voted against it. Gov. Roy Cooper has vetoed it, but you can count on it coming up for a veto override vote in December.
It seems like Republicans in the General Assembly are focused on making life easier for themselves. Shame on them.
— Cinda Chima
Asheville
North Carolina…. quickly becoming an apartheid state where a republican minority rules thru systemic corruption of the democratic process. Worse, there’s no foreseeable way out of this …they’ve made sure of that thru rampant gerrymandering and now institutionalized and sanitized election fraud. People need to clearly see the MAGA GOP for what it really is… and it’s nothing short of organized and sanctioned financial theft for the ruling class, nothing else ( wait until their clueless and basically penniless non-country club “folk” supporters finally figure this out …that will and won’t be fun to watch). Anyone who values what’s left of their personal and constitutional liberties and rights should be alarmed… very very alarmed.
Their supporters are too stupid to know how stupid they are. You really expect them to be worried about anything? They are zombies and they are a cancer on the planet.
During the 100+ years of total NC democrat control gerrymandering was done by them always without a whimper from anyone, for they dare not interfere with the NC democrat power mongers. Those days are gone for the good of the people.
The good of which people? Certainly not the voters. NC is a purple state, not a red state, and the legislature should reflect that. 2.7 million NC voters voted for Democratic NC representatives, and 2.5 million NC voters voted for Republican NC representatives, yet the GOP won 71 of 120 seats because of partisan gerrymandering. Healthy competition is what’s good for the people, not allowing a wannabe ruling class to put its thumbs on the scale. (This is coming from someone who previously lived in a state that has been under single-party rule for 30 years. The results were not, I assure you, anything remotely resembling freedom. Some people reading this may think I’m talking about California, and others may think I’m talking about Texas, but the answer is actually the same either way.) This country was founded on the principle of no taxation without representation, yet here we are in 2024 allowing gerrymandering to resoundingly undermine that principle. Just because one party, in its past incarnation, did something shady doesn’t mean that another party, in its current incarnation, has the right to do likewise.
Any power you give to your “side” is a power that you theoretically give to the other “side” as well. (I use air quotes because saying that there are two “sides” in this country is a scam foisted upon us by elites who benefit from pitting us against each other like dogs. The two-party system is not reflective of who we are as a people. Per Duverger’s Law, a two-party system naturally emerges from plurality-rule voting. Such a system would and should go away if we were merely to adopt ranked-choice voting.) I guarantee you that Republicans would take up arms if it were Democrats pulling these shenanigans, and just understand that nothing legally prevents Democrats from doing so the second they manage to claw back a majority. But maybe something should legally prevent our elected representatives from acting like they rule us rather than represent us. Newton’s Law of American Politics: For every action, there is a greater and opposite overreaction. The more one “side” overreaches, the greater the overreaction will be when the other “side” finally obtains power again. The only way to prevent that is to prevent the other “side” from ever obtaining power again, but of course that requires jettisoning the bedrock principles of our constitutional republic. Many decades ago, some intelligent and forward-thinking U.S. congressmen sounded the alarm about the potentially destabilizing effect of minoritarian rule, about the fact that gerrymandering and the winner-take-all perversion of the Electoral College could ultimately end our republic. I fear that they were right, because it is ultimately congressional inaction at the federal level– resulting in part from a lack of healthy competition– that has made people much more receptive to presidential overreach (and the corresponding judicial overreach that backs it up.) In this case, however, it is legislative overreach that is forcing policies upon NC that are clearly to the right of what most NC voters want. Most NC voters clearly and fairly elected Democrats (albeit relatively moderate Democrats) to the highest state offices, and in terms of votes cast, they clearly preferred more representation by Democrats than Republicans in the state house as well. Voters in NC clearly preferred Trump for president as well, so this isn’t about partisan whining. It’s about saying that the voice of the people must be heard in all levels of government. That is what ensures a healthy system of checks and balances, competition for ideas, and maximum freedom for the maximum number of people. Any government institution that fails to respond to the voice of the people is a government institution that is easily corrupted, and legislating more power for yourself is certainly a form of corruption.
Sirs: While your compassionate readers are asking one industry – rental owners – to give up their receipts in order to accommodate a disadvantaged group – renters – this is not the best solution. A moratorium on rents for even three months will disadvantage the landowners considerably when the legislature could provide some amount of remuneration if a fund could be set aside for them. A landlord would simply apply for a designated stipend/grant to cover some costs. Housing issues are the most essential to well-being, and offering some amount of money could help both sides. I am sure that NC conservatives are not dispassionate; they are just not willing to be taken to the cleaners in a bill with that pretense.