The GOP Fueled Driven Decline of North Carolina

The southern boundary of the Hampton Roads area is the North Carolina/Virginia border.  Indeed, my office is less than 25 miles from North Carolina and I've spent a great deal of time in the Outer Banks surfing.  Hence, I thought I knew the state.  Yet, since the Republican Party took control of the North Carolina legislature and governor's mansion, North Carolina has veered off into insanity.  One has to wonder how long it will be before its reputation as a moderate and pro-business state is destroyed by the GOP/Christofascist extremism.  An editorial in the New York Times looks at the rapid decline of that state.  Here are excerpts:

Every Monday since April, thousands of North Carolina residents have gathered at the State Capitol to protest the grotesque damage that a new Republican majority has been doing to a tradition of caring for the least fortunate. Nearly 700 people have been arrested in the “Moral Monday” demonstrations, as they are known. But the bad news keeps on coming from the Legislature, and pretty soon a single day of the week may not be enough to contain the outrage.

In January, after the election of Pat McCrory as governor, Republicans took control of both the executive and legislative branches for the first time since Reconstruction. Since then, state government has become a demolition derby, tearing down years of progress in public education, tax policy, racial equality in the courtroom and access to the ballot. 

The cruelest decision by lawmakers went into effect last week: ending federal unemployment benefits for 70,000 residents. Another 100,000 will lose their checks in a few months. Those still receiving benefits will find that they have been cut by a third, to a maximum of $350 weekly from $535, and the length of time they can receive benefits has been slashed from 26 weeks to as few as 12 weeks.

At the same time, the state is also making it harder for future generations of workers to get jobs, cutting back sharply on spending for public schools. Though North Carolina has been growing rapidly, it is spending less on schools now than it did in 2007, ranking 46th in the nation in per-capita education dollars. Teacher pay is falling, 10,000 prekindergarten slots are scheduled to be removed, and even services to disabled children are being chopped. 

Republicans repealed the Racial Justice Act, a 2009 law that was the first in the country to give death-row inmates a chance to prove they were victims of discrimination. They have refused to expand Medicaid and want to cut income taxes for the rich while raising sales taxes on everyone else. The Senate passed a bill that would close most of the state’s abortion clinics. 

And, naturally, the Legislature is rushing to impose voter ID requirements and cut back on early voting and Sunday voting, which have been popular among Democratic voters.

North Carolina was once considered a beacon of farsightedness in the South, an exception in a region of poor education, intolerance and tightfistedness. In a few short months, Republicans have begun to dismantle a reputation that took years to build. 

Two things strike me: (1) what the GOP is doing in North Carolina is a blue print of what the Virginia GOP wants to do in Virginia, and (2) while the GOP claims to be the party of Christian values, its actions are the antithesis to the Gospel message of Christ.