Here are an NBC-17 video report and the Associated Press news article about the rally today by Democracy North Carolina, other organizations and grassroots leaders protesting the “Out of Control” General Assembly. After the rally, people moved inside the legislative building and presented a petition against voter suppression to the legislative leadership. The petition included [...]
The protection money that Big Oil doles out to politicians has paid off again in Washington. A solid majority of Americans want to end tax breaks worth over $4 billion a year for oil companies, but 43 Republicans and 4 Democrats blocked a crucial vote in US Senate last week, so the windfall continues. An [...]
Despite promises of cleaning up what it called a “pay-to-play culture in Raleigh,” the new leadership in the General Assembly has done nothing to strengthen ethics or campaign finance laws. It hasn’t even enacted stronger disclosure laws to help the public’s right to know how money flows through the political system. Instead, as the Independent Weekly [...]
The NC General Assembly came back to town today, as demonstrators protested the leadership’s lousy record of out-of-control mischief and “madness against schools,” “madness against workers,” “madness against voting rights,” “madness for fracking,” etc. The Associated Press provides a good overview, and News 14 has this video of the demonstration. Protestors later went inside the [...]
How did your state legislator perform in 2011? What effect did Art Pope’s money machine have on state policy? Here’s an answer to both questions: A scorecard of key votes to protect NC’s environmental resources reveals that the current crop of lawmakers in Raleigh achieved the worst grades in decades. The new majority killed bills [...]
Titan America is back in the news, winning a draft air pollution permit for its proposed cement factory near Wilmington. Citizens in southeastern NC have kept up a vigorous campaign to force the company to play fair, but Titan apparently believes the free market means its competitors should shut up and trust them to do [...]
Pay-to-play politics can be petty – or deadly serious. The Wilmington Star-News reports that state Sen. Thom Goolsby received a $4,000 donation from the head of the city’s home builders association and shortly thereafter introduced a bill in the General Assembly that the association’s lobbyist had prepared. The bill overrides a city policy about how [...]
The Koch brothers, Art Pope’s Locke Foundation, Americans for Prosperity, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Exxon, BP, Massey Coal and many others understand that if people took global warming seriously as a condition that will kill their children, then government regulation (or just regulating CO2 production) would gain new popularity - and the freedom of [...]
Where do the conservatives and right-wingers in the General Assembly get their worst ideas for legislation? Some of the nutty ideas come from their own heads and a fair number from right-wing outfits inside North Carolina, like Art Pope’s Civitas Institute and John Locke Foundation. But many of them come from the American Legislative Exchange [...]
5/13/2011 - The Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Triangle has gained a new distinction: Biggest gas guzzling metro area in the nation, according to Forbes. The Triad and Charlotte metro areas are also in the top 10. As Big Oil profits soar and gas prices approach $4 at the pump, more people and politicians are wondering how the [...]