The posts in this category discuss our core issues.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican-controlled legislature have stirred national passions with their bold attacks on long-held rights of workers to organize. Now they’re making the state, once a leader in voter participation, the new ground zero for the national movement to restrict voting. There’s a connection between attacks on labor rights, voting rights, [...]
In a moment of unthinking transparency, US Rep. Patrick McHenry told a Politico reporter that the Republican redistricting plan for North Carolina will use racial data to pack African Americans into three Congressional districts and thereby make several surrounding districts more heavily white and more Republican friendly. This strategy to isolate (or ghettoize) black voters [...]
Yesterday, after hours of debate on the House floor over the proposed state budget, Rep. Edgar Starnes (R-Caldwell County) suddenly introduced an amendment to kill North Carolina’s public campaign financing programs. The mood in the chamber dramatically shifted. With blistering intensity, several Democrats plummeted Republican leaders for using the devious tactics they campaigned against to [...]
You can tell NC House Republican leaders what you think of their budget proposal before it gets a final vote this week and goes to the state Senate. The House budget fires tens of thousands of workers, crowds our schools and health centers, and at the same time protects tax loopholes for big-money donors worth more [...]
As the price of gas moves toward $4 a gallon and oil company profits soar, US House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) declared that Big Oil should pay its fair share of taxes and the industry’s lucrative federal subsidiaries should be reviewed. That was Monday of this week. By Thursday, he was in retreat and echoing [...]
The Charlotte and Raleigh McClatchy newspapers have a story today about the new voter suppression bill in the General Assembly, featured in our April 21 Link of the Day: S-657. You can read the lame reasoning of the Art Pope-funded legislators who are the bill’s chief sponsors. Saving tax money can’t be a justification for [...]
Former Sen. Alan Simpson, a conservative Republican from Wyoming, uses a supply-and-demand market analysis to dissect why governance in Washington is broken. It’s broken because the campaign finance system is a private monopoly controlled by wealthy special interests. Everything favors their private agenda, not the public interest, and as a result the nation is going [...]
The Sunlight Foundation provides a valuable overview of President Obama's draft executive order that would require federal contractors to disclose their direct and indirect political spending. Indirect means donations made to other groups (like 527 committees, trade groups or c-4 organizations) with “the intention or reasonable expectation” that the money would be used for independent [...]
A trio of state Senators introduced a bill this week that hits each of the goals of the Art Pope-Civitas-Americans for Prosperity agenda for voting: Senate Bill 657 would kill pre-registration for teenagers, repeal Same Day Registration, cut down the days and hours for in-person Early Voting, cripple out-of-precinct provisional voting, but allow organized campaigns [...]
NC House bill would give insurance companies and other special interests control over healthcare reform implementation The NC House Insurance Committee has taken up a controversial bill (H-115) that gives insurance companies a large role in overseeing how consumers will be able to buy "affordable" insurance coverage through a state-level “health benefits exchange” to be [...]