WataugaWatch

The two most powerful Democrats in the N.C. Senate already departing the premises ... Tony Rand and David Hoyle. Speculation now burning bright about arguably the most powerful Democrat in all of state government, Marc Basnight, president pro tempore of that chamber.

Lengthy article in today's Washington Daily News RE Basnight's health and the prospects of his running again next year.

Labels: David Hoyle, Marc Basnight, North Carolina Senate, Tony Rand

Tony Rand, Democratic Majority Leader in the NC Senate and arguably the second most powerful member of that body, is resigning from the Senate to take an appointment as chairman of the state parole board.

Politicians (along with Mother Nature) hate a vacuum, and Rand's departure will leave a big one.

There's an interesting profile of Rand's career in today's N&O.

Labels: North Carolina Senate, Tony Rand

Jim Jacumin (R) has been representing Caldwell & Burke counties in the NC Senate for three terms, but he's announced he won't be running again next year ... opening up a real opportunity for Democrat (and Caldwell County veternarian) Beth Jones, who has already built a campaign structure and offers a younger, more vigorous, and more forward-looking vision for our sister Senate district down the mountain. Check her out.

Labels: Beth Jones, Jim Jacumin, North Carolina Senate

Because sales taxes are not based on the ability to pay. Sales taxes are essentially underhanded. One sees different brands of coffee on the shelf, ranging in price from (very) high to (possibly) affordable. But that's not the price of the coffee, 'cause at the cash register the agents of the state are going to tack on 6 percent or 10 percent or whatever percent, and you've been snookered. Worse, sales taxes are regressive, meaning that as income decreases, tax as a percentage of income increases.

And the Democratic grandees in the state Senate intend for us to pay more of this regressive tax, while they coddle their corporate buddies. N.C. House leaders had wanted, for their part, to reform corporate taxes by instituting "combined reporting," which would have made it harder for mega-corps to hide their profits, which is to say, pay their fair share of state taxes for the privileges of doing business in N.C. But under pressure from the state Senate, the House has abandoned that reform.

A 1-cent sales tax increase (which seems likely) would raise $843 million in the next fiscal year. Legislative analysts predicted requiring combined corporate reporting would have raised $18.5 million this year and $43 million next year. Apparently, our working citizens are much greater money-bags (and softer targets) than big corporations

You don't have a lobbyist down in Raleigh, most likely. The corporations do.

Labels: North Carolina corporate taxes, North Carolina Senate

Somebody in charge -- who? -- decided that the ban on photography from the Senate gallery was inappropriate. So the sign prohibiting photographs was removed last night. Good.

North Carolina homophobes bulldozed the NC Senate into delaying -- killing? -- the anti-bullying legislation because it mentioned sexual orientation as one of the causes of bullying. Bad.

Labels: bullying, homophobia, North Carolina Senate

The Winston-Salem Journal editorializes today on "the malignant tumor" (the hog industry) that reappeared last week in Raleigh, bamboozling the NC Senate into passing legislation giving the swine industry "the license ... to destroy the quality of life for all around them."

It smells to high heaven.

The NC House can stop this lapse of good sense. So can the Guv.

Labels: hog farms, North Carolina Senate, Winston-Salem Journal

Adam Searing over at The Progressive Pulse thinks that he personally might be the reason for a new sign that went up on the visitors' gallery door at the NC Senate chamber in Raleigh this past week (photo courtesy of the same site) ... "PICTURE TAKING IN THE GALLERY IS PROHIBITED."

Writes Searing, "A short video I did a few weeks ago criticizing the Senate for attempting to close NC's affordable children's health insurance program included some footage of [a certain] type of oration," which is to say, oration that was sometimes fact-challenged, maddeningly complacent, and occasionally tinged by personal prejudices.

Searing continues, "I understand the fears of the Senate. The thought that anyone might be held to account for what they actually say is terrifying, especially if they feel what they say is taken out of context. Unfortunately, explaining what you said and what you meant to the people back home is just part of the job of being a politician."

A job that the Senate leaders obviously don't relish.

We note that some readers of Searing's post are calling for civil disobedience in the face of this new, wholly arbitrary "rule," a course of action we would devoutly endorse. Let a thousand YouTubes bloom!

Labels: Adam Searing, North Carolina Senate

Everywhere we look we see Democrats falling like dominoes to the selfish interests of huge corporations.

Labels: hog farms, North Carolina Senate

The state program to map landslide hazard areas in the NC mountains is zeroed out in the proposed NC state Senate budget.

Not soon enough, however, to prevent homeowners in two counties -- Franklin and Watauga -- from knowing whether their new McMansions are planted in previous debris flows or on slopes that have been geologically judged as wanting, that is, highly susceptible to sudden and catastrophic land movement.

The maps of landslide hazards in Franklin and Watauga counties, completed under a state program that the Raleigh Senate now wants to kill dead dead DEAD, was greeted locally with the kind of cheer one might associate with being told you've got an untreatable boil on your gluteus maximus. No one, apparently, wants the information. No one wants to be told that he can't trust the ground on which he wants to pile expensive new infrastructure.

It was, of course, the Democratic grandees of the Senate that xed out the money.

The NC House budget maintains the funds for that mapping program. We'll see how the negotiations between House and Senate budget-writers go.

The unwillingness of NC Senators to ruffle the feathers of real estate and building interests by actually scientifically predicting where people and property could likely come to ruin on our steep mountain slopes is very akin to those now pounding the table for oil drilling off our coasts and in the Arctic Wilderness. "We want candy! We want candy now! No one can tell us that CANDY NOW is not good!"

The next hurricane event in these mountains -- and there will be one -- that buries homes and people's lives will lead to recriminations against government. Elected officials will be called to account for (a) refusing to identify the danger or (b) refusing to act on the information once the danger was mapped.

Our NC senatorial budget dictators obviously plan to out-live the catastrophe, just as the oil-suckers plan to out-live the consequences of their addiction.

The love of money is the root of all evil.

Labels: North Carolina Senate, steep slope hazards

Very interesting thread called "Dear Senator Hagan" over at BlueNC, and if you want to educate yourself a little about the NC Senate's proposed budget, its implications and the roles of Kay Hagan and Walter Dalton in the making of it, and how it's a document that might seem to give political cover to the reelection of Sen. Liddy Dole, against whom Kay Hagan is supposed to be running, and the morality of children's health insurance specifically, on which topic do NOT miss Dan Besse's several comments in the thread ... then you should read it fer shur.

Labels: BlueNC, Dan Besse, Elizabeth Dole, Kay Hagan, North Carolina Senate, Walter Dalton