Roanoke Times Endorses Pat McCrory for Sending Jobs to Virginia

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory who prostituted himself to Right wing Christian by signing HB2 continues to get pummeled for the damage he has done to North Carolina's economy.  Now, the Charlotte Observer reports on how the Roanoke Times of Roanoke, Virginia, endorsed McCrory for all the economic good he has done for Virginia and the Roanoke area in particular.   As I have said many times, bigotry does have its price as does social backwardness - think Gloucester County, Virginia - when communities are vying to attract good paying jobs.  Progressive businesses do not want to locate in areas defined by discrimination.  Here are highlights from the Observer:

From an editorial published Friday in the Roanoke (Va.) Times:

Which candidate would do the most to help our local economy? That’s easy. It’s Pat McCrory, the Republican governor of North Carolina, who’s seeking his second four-year term in the November election. We can point to specific and multiple ways he has helped the economy – our economy. North Carolina panicked and made a spectacle of itself by passing HB2, its so-called “bathroom bill.” In response, various companies and even sports leagues pulled events from the state. Three of those have wound up in Salem — the NCAA Division III men’s and women’s soccer championships, as well as the Division II Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association football championship. That’s money in the bank for us.

McCrory has given Virginia a competitive advantage in economic development, as well. When the University Economic Development Association recently held its national conference in Roanoke, the keynote speaker highlighted a North Carolina program to encourage partnerships between colleges and companies, as a way help recruit technology companies interested in research and development. The speaker hailed it as a model for other states to follow as they try to build a “knowledge economy.” Then the speaker noted that McCrory had cancelled it. The pro-business audience groaned.

On Monday, a data company picked Richmond as the site for a new office, with 730 jobs. Industry officials said it beat out Charlotte specifically because of HB2.

Feel free to argue all you want which presidential candidate would be best, but it’s clear that Virginia would be best served if North Carolina re-elected McCrory.

Trump is Helping to Sink Pat McCrory

Ever since he rushed to sign infamous HB2 into law, North Carolina governor Pat McCrory has been fighting for his political life and deservedly so.  The heinous law has caused boycotts against his state and triggered the decisions of corporations to forego expansion plans in North Carolina.  Down in the polls for his re-election effort, McCrory has resorted to lying about the state's economy and played the victim of progressive activists.  Now, Donald Trump's efforts to convince voters that the economy is terrible is running directly opposite to McCrory's effort to downplay the economic damage wrought by HB2.  A piece in Politico looks at how Trump is perhaps unwittingly helping in the effort to defeat McCrory next month.  Here are article excerpts:

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory is desperate to talk about his economic achievements after a year mired in contentious debate over social issues, including the state’s transgender “bathroom law.”

The only problem? Donald Trump keeps coming to town and telling voters how terrible the economy is.

It’s the most glaring example this year of the disconnect between Trump’s apocalyptic rhetoric and the message of achievement that many Republican incumbents are trying to use to win reelection. . . . . the gap between McCrory’s “Carolina Comeback” theme and Trump’s doom-and-gloom assessments yawns particularly wide, as McCrory faces the toughest reelection challenge of any governor in the country in 2016.

McCrory’s TV ads open with text promising “the truth about North Carolina’s economy” before McCrory touts “one of the fastest-growing economies in the country,” one in which thousands of new jobs are announced “every month.” Yet earlier this month, Trump told attendees at a raucous rally in Greensboro that only under a Trump presidency would their “jobs come back” and “income go up.”

[M]ost Republican operatives said that Trump does McCrory no favors by harping on economic woes without citing the state’s successes, as it could further depress turnout in an already volatile political environment. What Trump would add to McCrory are voters who were already probably going to vote for Trump and McCrory,” said one national operative who works on governors' races. “But the rhetoric isn’t helpful. If voters hear a mixed message, it could keep them at home on Election Day.”

Trump’s negativity on the stump compounds the feeling that the state is on the wrong track, said Carter Wrenn, a local Republican consultant. He pointed to polling that says voters are not personally feeling an economic turnaround in their lives, so Trump’s comments “complicate McCrory’s life,” Wrenn said, because he believes voters “don’t separate North Carolina from the national message.”

[Trump] sucks the oxygen out of McCrory's message. I don’t think voters can hear all the negativity on the national level and believe the state has turned around.”

Cooper’s campaign capitalized on that feeling early, putting out an ad in August that asked voters to “raise your hand if your taxes have gone up, while those at the top are the ones getting the tax break,” flashing images of voters raising their hands. “And raise your hand if you’re working more for less.”

A High Point University poll in late September found that 60 percent of voters said it was more important to end House Bill 2’s economic impact than to enforce the law.

“McCrory’s message just doesn’t ring true with people because he’s got to face all the headlines around HB2, all the job losses from companies leaving and losing sporting events,” said Gary Pearce, a Democratic consultant in the state. “He’s singing the wrong key.”

It is important that McCrory is defeated.  A significant loss may at last convince some Republicans that prostituting themselves to the Christofascists is no longer good for their political survival.  I hope the Virginia GOP is watching how anti-LGBT extremism is having the exact opposite effect of what the North Carolina GOP had thought the bill would achieve for them.

Charlotte Observer Endorses Roy Cooper for Governor

Less than 35 miles from where I sit is North Carolina, a state that once prided itself of being a state that was business minded and avoided issues that upset the larger business community.  Then, the North Carolina GOP won control of the state legislature and the governor's mansion and insanity set in.  Or more precisely, the North Carolina GOP decided to utterly prostitute itself to the Christofascists, in particular by enacting HB2 that not only attacked restroom use by transgender individuals bit also rolled back many civil rights protections. The irony is that the whole effort which was supposed to have guaranteed Republicans being re-elected this November has blown up in their faces.  Indeed, Gov. Pat McCrory, a incredibly craven individual may lose re-election because of the social and business fallout from HB2.  Now, the Charlotte Observer has endorsed Roy Cooper, McCrory's Democrat opponent despite its decades long history of supporting McCrory in the past. 

Here are editorial highlights:

The Charlotte Observer’s editorial board has endorsed Republican Pat McCrory in every one of his bids for office since 1991. That includes twice for City Council, seven times for mayor and twice for governor. That streak comes to an end today.

McCrory’s term as North Carolina governor is the ultimate illustration of the Peter Principle: that people are promoted based on their past performance and not the abilities needed for the new role and thus rise to the level of their incompetence. McCrory has certainly done that.

Fortunately, voters have a superior option in Democrat Roy Cooper. A Morehead Scholar at UNC, a former Senate majority leader and a four-term attorney general, Cooper has the experience, the intelligence and the policy stances needed to return the state to its stature as a progressive leader in the South.

That stature has been lost under McCrory. While the state’s and nation’s attention has rightfully been focused on HB2 since spring, McCrory’s lack of leadership and wrong-headed policies have been on display since his first year in Raleigh.

Here are four reasons we recommend a vote for Roy Cooper and against Pat McCrory:

1. HB2.
McCrory rushed to sign House Bill 2 on March 23, hours after the House and Senate rammed it through. North Carolina’s reputation has been melting ever since. McCrory adamantly defends the discriminatory measure and dismisses the NCAA, the ACC, scores of business executives and others who have condemned the legislation. It was a hateful and self-defeating bill, and it will be McCrory’s legacy.

Cooper opposes HB2 and says he would work to repeal it.

2. McCrory’s other policies.
McCrory has signed enough bad legislation to fill a library, and his administration has enacted one misguided policy after another. He supported new restrictions on abortion after promising he wouldn’t. He signed what many experts have called the nation’s most restrictive voting laws. He has been soft on his former employer, Duke Energy, after a catastrophic coal ash spill. He has been tepid in raising teacher pay, while cutting teacher assistants and other education spending. He refused to accept billions of dollars from the federal government to provide health insurance to the poor.

Under McCrory, North Carolina was the only state to cut off long-term federal unemployment benefits, the first in the Southeast and maybe the nation to decline federal money to study streams and wetlands and the only one to cut WIC benefits during the federal government shutdown.

Cooper supports the other side of every one of these issues.

3. We need a check on the legislature.McCrory has been spineless before Senate leader Phil Berger and House Speakers Thom Tillis and Tim Moore. Cooper would offer more resistance and, if Democrats pick up a handful of House seats, would use his veto to stop the legislature’s most egregious ideas.

4. Cooper’s integrity, education and experience.McCrory had no state government experience and it has shown. Cooper was a leader in the legislature and then served 16 years as attorney general. He knows the state and its history, and understands its government from different perspectives. He would not have the learning curve McCrory continues to climb.

Cooper has a clear vision of what he wants to accomplish, built largely on investing in public education and creating a well-trained workforce that will feed a growing economy and strengthen the middle class.

Applying the Observer's criteria here in Virginia, it basically comes down to a condemnation of failed GOP policies that have supported religious extremists, trampled on civil rights, and been bad for working Virginians.  Thankfully, we have had a Democrat governor who could veto the worse of the batshitery. 

Pat McCory's Defeat Could Be a Watershed Moment for Gay Rights

Admittedly, today's Republican Party offers a cavalcade of douche bags and assholes, starting with Donald Trump.  But Trump is merely a symptom of the larger cancer infecting the GOP.   Here in Virginia, a glance southward to North Carolina offers a look at another GOP Governor Pat McCrory, a foul Republican who has staked his political career on the denigration of LGBT Americans, and the transgender individuals in particular.  If current polls prove accurate, McCory may be headed to defeat largely because of his anti-gay bigotry and willingness to prostitute himself to Christofascists.   Should he creash and burn and go down to defeat, McCrory's demise may be a much needed wake up call to the GOP that anti-gay bigotry is now a guaranteed loser at the polls.  Here are excerpts from the Washington Post that looks at McCrory's much hoped for defeat:

Not since Larry Craig widened his stance has a bathroom caused so much trouble for a politician.

North Carolina’s Republican governor, Pat McCrory, was a good bet for reelection earlier this year. But then he signed HB2 into law in March, eliminating municipal nondiscrimination ordinances and requiring transgender people to use the bathroom of the gender listed on their birth certificates.

Since then, McCrory’s fortunes have been, well, in the toilet.

Last fall, the conservative group North Carolina Civitas had a poll showing the governor with a favorable rating of 54 percent. But in late April, a month after McCrory signed the bathroom bill, the same group found his favorable rating had dropped to 39 percent. Polling shows McCrory trailing his Democratic opponent, Roy Cooper, by four percentage points. And there’s little doubt HB2 is a major cause. A plurality of North Carolinians disapprove of McCrory’s handling of the issue and say it makes them less likely to support him.

 

Human Rights Campaign, a gay-rights organization, puts the law’s cost for North Carolina at nearly half a billion dollars. Whatever the figure, the reaction has been severe: The NBA moved its 2017 All-Star Game from Charlotte, while the NCAA and the Atlantic Coast Conference took their championships from the state. PayPal — one of about 200 corporations calling for repeal — canceledplans to bring 400 jobs to Charlotte. Bruce Springsteen, Maroon 5 and others have canceled performances in the state. , the James Beard Foundation canceled its meeting in the state because of HB2.

[A] defeat of McCrory because of the bathroom bill would be a watershed (or, if you will, a water closet) moment for gay rights. Stigmatizing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans has already lost its potency as a political weapon. But this would be the first case of a prominent official being voted out of office because his anti-gay actions backfired.

Maggie Gallagher, founder of the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage,wrote in National Review in August that “the future of religious liberty for traditional religious believers hangs on” McCrory’s reelection. If he loses, she wrote, “the GOP will concede whatever the Left demands on gay rights.”

There’s no realistic prospect of reversing the legalization of same-sex marriage, so opponents are instead pursuing scores of state initiatives restricting gay rights in the name of “religious freedom,” bathroom bills and more.

But while 202 such bills were introduced in 2016, only five were enacted, according to the Human Rights Campaign. GOP governors in South Dakotaand Georgia vetoed such bills to avoid backlash — and both are considerably more popular than McCrory, who finds himself increasingly lonely. Republican Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, in a tight reelection race, distanced himself from HB2. Half a dozen Republican state legislators who voted for the bill have said they want a do-over.

Confident that public opinion continues to shift in their favor, gay-rights advocates, with Hillary Clinton’s backing, are aiming for a federal “Equality Act,” which would bar anti-LGBT discrimination in employment.

The legislation faces long odds in Congress. But that could change — if North Carolinians flush Pat McCrory next month.

 Personally, I hope that McCrory - and others in the North Carolina GOP - go down to defeat.  Until the laws change and the GOP becomes a permanent minority in North Carolina, the husband and I will not visit the state if we can find a way to avoid it. 

ACC Conference Pulls All Championship Games from North Carolina

Following the actions of the NCAA, the ACC has announced via press release that it has pulled all championship games from North Carolina for the 2016-2017 academic year.   This move will no doubt further fuel the fury being directed at North Carolina Republican Governor Pat McCrory in particular and the North Carolina GOP in general, but more on this shortly.  The ACC press release reads in part as follows:

Statement from the ACC Council of Presidents:“As members of the Atlantic Coast Conference, the ACC Council of Presidents reaffirmed our collective commitment to uphold the values of equality, diversity, inclusion and non-discrimination. Every one of our 15 universities is strongly committed to these values and therefore, we will continue to host ACC Championships at campus sites. We believe North Carolina House Bill 2 is inconsistent with these values, and as a result, we will relocate all neutral site championships for the 2016-17 academic year. All locations will be announced in the future from the conference office.” Statement from Clemson University President James P. Clements, chair of the ACC Council of Presidents: “The ACC presidents engaged in a constructive, wide-ranging and vigorous discussion of this complex issue over the past two days. The decision to move the neutral site championships out of North Carolina while HB 2 remains the law was not an easy one but it is consistent with the shared values of inclusion and non-discrimination at all of our institutions.”

Now for the fun part - or at least in my view.  GOP political whore, Pat McCrory is getting excoriated and being blamed for the damage being done to North Carolina, both in terms of lost business and now the stain put on collegiate sports and the adverse impact on North Carolina athletes.  Above is the image of  the front page of the sports section in today’s Greensboro News & Record.   Here are some excerpts from the editorial:

Above is just one article on the front page of the sports section in today’s Greensboro News & Record. See the full thing below. Here’s what two college athletes are saying in an op-ed for the Raleigh News & Observer We hoped it wouldn’t get this far. We hoped cooler heads would prevail as the two sides rolled toward the cliff.  But now it’s happened. We’ve lost the NCAA basketball tournament for March. We’ve lost the NCAA soccer tournaments for December.
 Thanks, Governor Pat.
 In a shocking announcement this evening, the NCAA announced it was pulling all postseason events from the state of North Carolina for 2016-17 in response to the state’s refusal to reconsider the controversial House Bill 2 law that discriminates against the LGBT community and limits civil rights protections.
 This is an embarrassment to North Carolina. Aside from it being a logistical and economic problem for cities such as Greensboro and Cary, which will lose four events scheduled for the upcoming year, this is a slap in the face of a state that has a long tradition of hosting NCAA postseason events. [I]t’s also an indication of how tone-deaf our governor is. Having the embarrassment of seeing the NBA All-Star Game taken from the city where he was once mayor wasn’t enough for McCrory, who seemed to delight in the attention the snub brought. Did he really think the NCAA was powerless to further inflict pain on the cities of his state?
 McCrory has now hurt North Carolina. His senseless crowing about bathrooms and birth certificates has made him look like fool in front of the entire country. And now he’s dragged us into it and forced us to pay.
 This didn’t have to come to this. Cooler heads could've worked this out. People with sense don’t do this. Governors with compassion for the people they represent don’t allow this to happen.  This is a blow to our way of life. This is a slap in the face of a state that has long been a model of progressive ideas.
 McCrory has made a fool of himself and made us all pay for his foolish ignorance. The best thing we can do now is hope for the best when the new sites are awarded and hope our governor has already rolled off the cliff by himself.

Ouch!!  But there's more fun to be witnessed.  Here’s what two college athletes are saying in an op-ed for the Raleigh News & Observer:

Sports are the anti-discrimination.  All sports, no matter what kind, reward one thing and one thing only: the better performance.

And yet we continue to witness intrusions into our respective epicenters of fairness that turn our stomachs. . . . this time the intrusion comes from Gov. Pat McCrory’s office. In reaction to HB2, the NCAA’s Board of Governors will relocate all seven collegiate championship events from North Carolina in the upcoming year. The University of Vermont and the University of Albany have already canceled games against our university and others within North Carolina. Every single one of those events was an opportunity for the staff, administration and student-body communities of colleges throughout the state to demonstrate what they work so hard for. They were opportunities for students to compete for championships in their home state. They were opportunities to celebrate universal values of discipline, perseverance, the pursuit of excellence.

Instead, McCrory has associated us with states that fly discriminatory symbols on state grounds and schools that use “abusive Native American imagery” – other violations for which the NCAA bans championships.

Our jerseys are stained with hate, exclusion and injustice. For better or worse, fair or unfair, we are associated with HB2. Not hard work, blood, sweat or tears. Not sportsmanship.

As I have noted a number of times, I hope that members of the Virginia GOP are watching and perhaps realizing that prostituting themselves to Victoria Cobb and her fellow hate merchants at The Family Foundation during the 2017 session of the General Assembly could inflict a huge cost on Virginia and irs citizens.  Bigotry and hate carry a cost - just ask North Carolina.  

The "Smoking Gun" Confirming the Racist Intent of NC's Voter ID Law

Racist homophobe, GOP Gov. Pat McCrory

As noted in a piece last evening, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down North Carolina's racially motivated voter ID law - a similar GOP backed voter ID law in Wisconsin was also struck down by a different court).  A piece in the Washington Post gives further analysis of the 4th Circuit's ruling and the blatant motivation of the North Carolina GOP in passing the measure.  Increasingly, the GOP cannot win elections except through gerrymandered districts and restricting likely Democrat voters from voting.  Rational individuals would get the message that they need a new message and agenda, but not in today's Christofascist and white supremacist controlled Republican Party.  Here are highlights from the Post article:

In addition to requiring residents to show identification before they can cast a ballot, the law also eliminated same-day voter registration, eliminated seven days of early voting and put an end to out-of-precinct voting. The federal court ruling reinstates these provisions, for now.

Supporters of the law, like North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, have long maintained that requirements like these were necessary to prevent voter fraud. But time and time again, scholars and legal experts have found that the type of fraud these laws are meant to combat is largely nonexistent.

One of the most comprehensive studies on the subject found only 31 individual cases of voter impersonation out of more than 1 billion votes cast in the United States since the year 2000. Researchers have found that reports of voter fraud are roughly as common as reports of alien abduction.

 

The federal court in Richmond found that the primary purpose of North Carolina's wasn't to stop voter fraud, but rather to disenfranchise minority voters. The judges found that the provisions "target African Americans with almost surgical precision."

[T]he court found that North Carolina lawmakers requested data on racial differences in voting behaviors in the state. "This data showed that African Americans disproportionately lacked the most common kind of photo ID, those issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV)," the judges wrote.

So the legislators made it so that the only acceptable forms of voter identification were the ones disproportionately used by white people. "With race data in hand, the legislature amended the bill to exclude many of the alternative photo IDs used by African Americans," the judges wrote. "The bill retained only the kinds of IDs that white North Carolinians were more likely to possess."

The data also showed that black voters were more likely to make use of early voting — particularly the first seven days out of North Carolina's 17-day voting period. So lawmakers eliminated these seven days of voting. "After receipt of this racial data, the General Assembly amended the bill to eliminate the first week of early voting, shortening the total early voting period from seventeen to ten days," the court found.

Most strikingly, the judges point to a "smoking gun" in North Carolina's justification for the law, proving discriminatory intent. The state argued in court that "counties with Sunday voting in 2014 were disproportionately black" and "disproportionately Democratic," and said it did away with Sunday voting as a result.

This is about as clear-cut an indictment of the discriminatory underpinnings of voter-ID laws as you'll find anywhere. Studies have already shown a significant link between support for voter ID and racial discrimination, among both lawmakers and white voters in general.

"Faced with this record," the federal court concludes, "we can only conclude that the North Carolina General Assembly enacted the challenged provisions of the law with discriminatory intent."

The take away?  When you hear Republicans blathering about the GOP being the party that supports the constitution, supports morality and decency, know that it is a lie.  The GOP has become the enemy of constitutional government, morality and decency.  

NBA Pulls All-Star Game Out Of Charlotte Due to HB2

NBA commissioner

The ongoing self-prostitution of North Carolina Republicans to Christofascist extremists continues to inflict financial harm on the state of North Carolina and its metropolitan areas in particular.  Now, the NBA has followed through on its threat and is moving the 2017 All Star games from Chrarlotte in light of the North Carolina GOP's continued refusal to repeal HB2 which wiped out civil rights protections for LGBT individuals and others.  Hate, bigotry and the embrace of ignorance carry an economic price - something I hope Virginia Republicans are learning from North Carolina's self-inflicted harm.   Here are highlights from the Huffington Post:

The NBA has pulled the 2017 All-Star Game out of Charlotte in protest of North Carolina’s House Bill 2 (HB2), otherwise known as the “bathroom bill,” the league announced on Thursday.

“While we recognize that the NBA cannot choose the law in every city, state, and country in which we do business, we do not believe we can successfully host our All-Star festivities in Charlotte in the climate created by HB2,” the league said in a statement. 

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver had previously warned in April that the league would pull the All-Star Game out of Charlotte should HB2 not be altered, but had not set a deadline for the state to do so. The NBA and Charlotte Hornets were reportedly working with lawmakers to alter the bill to the league’s satisfaction in the weeks leading up to the decision.

The league has not finalized where it will host the All-Star weekend instead, but said it will make a decision “in the coming weeks.” The Vertical reports that the league is zeroing in on New Orleans as a potential alternative.

Gov. Pat McCrory (R), a staunch defender of the law, rebuked the NBA and “left-wing special interest groups” who have criticized the law.

In a joint statement, the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ civil rights organization in the country, and Equality NC, a North-Carolina-based LGBTQ advocacy organization, praised the NBA for taking a stand against bigotry. 

“Today the NBA and Commissioner Silver sent a clear message that they won’t stand for discrimination against LGBTQ employees, players or fans,” HRC President Chad Griffin said in the statement. “Every day that HB2 remains on the books, people across North Carolina are at risk of real harm. We appreciate the leadership of the NBA in standing up for equality and call once again on lawmakers to repeal this vile HB2 law.”

Perhaps, ironically, canceling the All-Star Game will most adversely punish Charlotte, a city that had tried to protect transgender people before the HB2 was signed into law. The city passed a resolution just one month before to protect the transgender community from discrimination. The anti-LGBT state law made it so the city could not follow through.

In its statement, the league left open the possibility that it award the 2019 All-Star Game to Charlotte, should North Carolina resolve the issue to the league’s satisfaction. The NBA apologized to fans in North Carolina for the decision. 

68 Major Companies Join in Amicus Brief Against HB2

NC homophobe-in-chief, Pat McCrory with Paul Ryan

I continue to believe that the hate and batshitery embodied in North Carolina's HB2 and the corporate backlash to the bill ought to be an object lesson to Virginia's knuckle dragging Republicans and their spittle flecked Christofascist puppeteers.  Not only is North Carolina continuing to hemorrhage business losses  - Charlotte's convention business is being hammered - but the media coverage is unrelentingly negative.  Now, 68 major corporations have joined in an amicus brief arguing that HB2 must be struck down.  The list of companies is a who's who of household names and some are major players in North Carolina's business community that are livid over the North Carolina GOP's self-prostitution to the ugliest elements of the Christofascists in that state (and national hate groups funding some of them).  The Raleigh News & Observer looks at the companies joining in the brief. Here are excerpts:

American Airlines, Microsoft and Marriott are among 68 companies that signed an amicus brief in the lawsuit challenging North Carolina’s House Bill 2.

Former U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson authored the brief on behalf of Human Rights Campaign, the LGBT advocacy group that is leading opposition to the law. The brief will be filed in the lawsuit currently pending between state leaders and the U.S. Department of Justice, which is trying to strike down the law as discriminatory.

“That so many in the business community are willing to stand up in opposition to HB2 underscores the immeasurable and irreparable harm the law is doing to the transgender community and to North Carolina’s economy,” Olson said in a news release.

In the brief, the companies argue that the law is “an affront to their nondiscrimination policies” and “undermines their ability to do business within and outside of North Carolina,” according to the news release.

Other companies that signed the brief include: Apple, Bloomberg, Capital One, General Electric, IBM, Nike, Morgan Stanley, PayPal, Dow Chemical and Red Hat.

Late Friday, Gov. Pat McCrory’s office issued a statement criticizing the companies’ involvement with the lawsuit.

Meanwhile, McCrory's Democrat opponent continues to hammer him on the harm he and anti-LGBT extremists are doing to the state.  As for McCrory's claim that HB2 "protects women and girls,"  there are ZERO cases of transgender individuals stalking in restrooms. ZERO cases.  In contrast, if one looks at Freethought Today, EVERY issue has multiple pages filled with reports crimes by clergy, many involving sexual misconduct.  Banning clergy from restrooms would do far more to protect the public than HB2.

The Other Parts of North Carolina's HB2 That Republicans Want to Hide

North Carolina's file HB2 has triggered a national debate on transgender rights and members of the GOP - especially the feckless Pat McCrory - are claiming that the bill is a "common sense" means of protecting women and young girls from sexual predators.  But HB2 has four more parts that do much, much more than merely targeting transgender citizens. They target minimum wage increases, child labor safety provisions, and limit civil rights protections across the board.  Other bills being pushed by Republicans across America likewise have additional agendas attached to them. HB2 is a dream that the Virginia GOP would like to foist on Virginia.  They and their GOP allies across the country who want to bring back the worst abuses of the Gilded Age need to be stopped.   A piece in Huffington Post looks at what they GOP wants the media and public to ignore.  Here are article highlights:

When non-lawyers hear Pat McCrory’s claim that North Carolina’s House Bill 2 is just common sense while at the same time they hear the Department of Justice attacking part of it as illegal, I can understand how easy it is for such non-lawyers just to take the word of the political party they prefer.

If you haven’t yet read the Bill, please click on the link and let’s take a little tour. Politicians like Pat McCrory are betting everything that you won’t.

Part I (pages 1-3): This is the so-called “Bathroom Bill” and makes up only the first Part of the five Parts of House Bill 2.

Part II (page 3): This Part and the remaining parts of the Bill have unfortunately been largely ignored by the press. Let’s try to fix that now. Part II jumps from bathrooms and straight men putting on dresses to the totally unrelated subjects of restricting minimum wage increases and child labor protections. This Part prohibits local governments from regulating or imposing “any requirement upon an employer pertaining to compensation of employees, such as the wage levels of employees, hours of labor, payment earned wages, benefits, leave, or well-being of minors in the workforce.” On its face, this quoted language not only prevents local governments from setting a minimum wage. They’re even prohibited from taking care of child labor problems they might feel are specific problems in their locality. How can this change be a good thing?

Part III (pages 3-4): Here House Bill 2 continues its attack on workers. Before the Bill, North Carolina’s public policy was: “to protect and safeguard the right and opportunity of all persons to seek, obtain and hold employment without discrimination or abridgement on account of race, religion, color, national origin, age, sex or handicap by employers which regularly employ 15 or more employees.”

After tweaking the old public policy protection against “sex” discrimination to discrimination based on “biological sex,” Part III then effectively guts all the public policy section by providing that it “does not create . . . a statutory or common law private right of action, and no person may bring any civil action based upon the public policy expressed herein.” In other words, there is no longer any state law claim for discrimination based on race, religion, color, national origin, age, sex (biological or otherwise) or handicap. What does this have to do with bathrooms? Nothing of course.

Part IV (pages 4-5): This is what lawyers call a “severability clause” and it’s a very important piece of House Bill 2. This provision provides that if any part of the bill falls, the rest will stand. The gamesmanship of House Bill 2 is no more evident than here. The business interests that pushed Parts II and III under the guise of Part I no doubt knew the problematic nature of Part I and wanted to assure that the limitations of Parts II and III would not fall if Part I falls.

Part V (page 5): This part addresses the effective date of the Bill and raises interesting and troubling questions about claims existing or pending at the effective date. Those technical questions I’ll leave for others to address. I feel sorry for the injured workers who have or may have lost claims because of the language of Part V.

Conservatives [claim to] champion truth and family. There is no championing truth in supporting a bill that only pretends to solve a bathroom crisis (apart from the further issue of pretending an imminent crisis exists in the first place). Furthermore, there is no championing of family in taking away the rights of localities to protect our minors in the workplace or in limiting flexibility for better minimum wages for our families. There is no championing of family in taking away their rights to sue an employer that has treated them wrongly because of the family member’s race, religion, color, national origin, age, sex, or handicap whatever a conservative might think of other categories not included in the protections we used to have. I have seen many “conservatives” thank McCrory online for House Bill 2 because they say it supports God’s will. A Bill that takes away remedies for religious discrimination is not godly. It is ungodly.

North Carolina GOP Braces for "Bathroom Law" Blowback

What some in the North Carolina Republican Party thought was a ingenious way to rally the Christofascists in the party so as to sweep them to re-election in November is now looking more likely to sweep them out of office, especially Gov. Pat McCrory who appears to be falling further behind in the polls with every passing day.  McCrory is trying to play the victim of an over reaching Washington, D.C., but other than rabid Christofascist simpletons, most North Carolina residents do not seem to be suckered into support for McCrory and his party that are now defined by anti-LGBT bigotry.  A piece in Politico looks at how the North Carolina GOP seemingly out smarted itself by a mile.  Here are excerpts:

Republicans in North Carolina are increasingly worried that the state’s new “bathroom law” blocking protections for the LGBT community will cost the GOP dearly in November’s elections.

They say the reason is simple: The party that took over North Carolina as champions of small government is now seen by moderate voters as the party of the bathroom police.

Republican lawmakers and strategists in the state say the GOP is badly losing the public relations battle over House Bill 2, the law banning local nondiscrimination ordinances, which Gov. Pat McCrory signed in March. That trend only worsened Monday, when U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch called the law “state-sponsored discrimination” and compared it to Jim Crow-era laws while announcing new legal action.

The GOP argument that the law is about public safety has been overrun by a coalition including some of America’s biggest businesses, which says HB2 discriminates against transgender people by, among other things, forcing them to use bathrooms that may not correspond to their gender identities — and the law has come to define the Republican Party in North Carolina.

“The reality is that HB2 hurts,” said state Rep. Charles Jeter, the GOP lawmaker responsible for maintaining his party’s majority in the state legislature. “It doesn’t matter that I’m opposed to it or that I’ve called for its repeal … because the mailer to voters [in my race] is going to say that I was a part of the Republican majority that passed the most discriminatory bill in the state. HB2 is going to have reverberations for our party no matter what we do, in November and probably beyond that.”

[T]he strategist said. “Republicans could lose their veto-proof majority in one or both [legislative] chambers, with a cloud of uncertainty surrounding the governor’s race.”

McCrory has staunchly defended the law, especially after the Department of Justice told the state last week that it was in violation of the Civil Rights Act and Title IX, jeopardizing billions of dollars in federal funding.

“Had [McCrory] been a strong leader, he still could’ve fixed this,” Cooper said. “He could’ve vetoed the legislation and said it was too broad and it would hurt our economy, like Gov. Nathan Deal did in Georgia, but he chose not to.”

The Democratic Governors Association started airing TV ads last month targeting McCrory and Republicans for “taking North Carolina backwards,” highlighting economic fallout as companies like PayPal have backtracked on planned expansion in North Carolina since McCrory signed the law.

[O]ther North Carolina Republicans have been eager to keep the conversation on HB2 going because it is popular in rural areas of the state, which have become GOP bastions as the Democratic Party has shifted into the growing cities and melting-pot suburbs.

“When I saw [HB2], I could not believe they were going to pass that legislation,” Cooper said. “I spoke out immediately and said discrimination was wrong, period. We should not write discrimination into our law and it was going to hurt our economy, but they passed it anyway and the governor signed it that night, and that has come true.”

Perhaps the most amazing thing about HB2 is that it is a self-inflicted wound for the North Carolina GOP.  Its sole purpose was to pander to Christofascists - a group that more and more Americans are rightly being seen as motivated solely by hate and bigotry - with no thought of the likely repercussions.  I continue to believe that North Carolina needs to be crucified if you will so that no other state will ever opt to embrace anti-LGBT bigotry again. 

Department of Justice to North Carolina: HB2 Violates the Civil Rights Act

Political whores in the North Carolina GOP who laughed off the possible consequences of their shameless self-prostitution to Christofascists may be experiencing stomach clenching - and other parts of their anatomy clenching -  despite their posturing and anti-Washington blustering after today's announcement by the United States Department of Justice that anti-LGBT HB2 violates the Civil Rights Act.   More to the point, North Carolina was given until Monday to cease enforcing the discriminatory law.   I for one sincerely hope that federal funds are stopped and that these assholes are forced to figure out how they are going will explain to voters why they threw away billions of dollars in federal funding just to pander to Christian extremists who are nearly as demented as ISIS followers.   A piece in the Charlotte Observer looks at the much increased stakes now facing the anti-LGBT bigots in the North Carolina GOP.  Here are highlights:

RALEIGH - U.S. Justice Department officials repudiated North Carolina’s House Bill 2 on Wednesday, telling Gov. Pat McCrory that the law violates the U.S. Civil Rights Act and Title IX – a finding that could jeopardize billions in federal education funding.

The department gave state officials until Monday to respond “by confirming that the State will not comply with or implement HB2.”

The letter says HB2, which pre-empted Charlotte’s anti-discrimination ordinance, violates Title IX, which bars discrimination in education based on sex, and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which bans employment discrimination.

If the finding is upheld, North Carolina could lose federal education funding. During the current school year, state public schools received $861 million. In 2014-2015, the University of North Carolina system got $1.4 billion.

Speaking to business leaders Wednesday night, McCrory called the letter “something we’ve never seen regarding Washington overreach in my lifetime.” . . . . GOP lawmakers also criticized the Justice Department – and President Barack Obama. 

[O]pponents of HB2 applauded the Justice Department finding.

“The letter confirms what we’ve already known – that HB2 is deeply discriminatory, violates federal civil rights law, and needs to be repealed as soon as possible,” said Rep. Chris Sgro, a Democrat who is executive director of Equality NC. “We’ve already lost $500 million in economic impact, and now we are violating federal civil rights law and risking Title IX funding.”

Again, the feds need to withdraw all federal funding if North Carolina does not comply and hang the economic disaster around the necks of McCrory and his GOP sycophants and, of course, the Christofascists who need to become social and political lepers.   The terms "Christian" and "decent people" need to become mutually exclusive in the public mindset.

Will HB2 Be The Downfall of Governor Pat McCrory?

North Carolina GOP political whore, Pat McCrory

Karma can indeed be a bitch.  Ask North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory who nearly fell over himself to quickly sign anti-LGBT HB2 into law in order to prostitute himself to the Christofascist elements in the North Carolina GOP base.  Now, as he plummets in the polls - reportedly he is now 8% behind his Democrat challenger in the latest poll - McCrory told the New York Times that he suspected that the passage of the Charlotte ordinance targeted by HB2 had been orchestrated by Democrats and the Human Rights Campaign to Democrats an advantage in a tight governor’s race. Funny thing is that I saw no one holding a gun to McCrory's head as he happily signed HB2 into law, surrounded by right wing supporters.   Meanwhile, Charlotte lost another big convention today. Personally, I find a tawdry prostitute to be more virtuous than McCrory and similar Republicans who rush to pander to Christofascists and bigots.  A column in Huffington Post looks at whether or not McCrory assured his own defeat in November by signing HB2 into law.  Here are highlights:

It may too soon to tell, but so far North Carolina GOP governor Pat McCrory’s signing of a sweeping anti-LGBT law hasn’t been a great help to his re-election campaign. It would be ironic — and just desserts — if a cynical political move to save his campaign actually doomed it.

All winter McCrory was slightly ahead or tying with Democratic attorney general Roy Cooper in the polls, but since his signing of HB2 several weeks ago — and since the tremendous backlash across the country and around the world — Cooper now has a lead over McCrory by several percentage points in several polls. At the same time, a new poll shows that HB2 is deeply unpopular with the state’s electorate, with only 36% of North Carolina voters supporting it.

Again, it’s early. And polls of the gubernatorial race may have little to do with HB2, as there’s been a lot of dissatisfaction with McCrory for many other reasons, his approval numbers having plummeted. But it’s certainly better than if McCrory saw a boost in support while anti-LGBT conservatives and groups like Family Research Council and demagogues like Ted Cruz have been heralding this bigoted law.

With the daily barrage of media attention, McCrory’s re-election could fast become a referendum on HB2, and if he goes down it may be because progressive activists and Democrats took a far different approach than LGBT activists did in Houston last November, when voters rescinded the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance.

Opponents had turned the Houston ordinance — which protected 15 classes of people against discrimination — into “ The Bathroom Ordinance,” via ugly but effective ads that, like McCrory and the North Carolina GOP legislators, claimed protecting transgender people would allow predators into women’s restrooms.

But in North Carolina, not only has the economic impact of the law’s passage been front and center every day, with powerful companies, major musicians like Bruce Springsteen and cities and states joining a boycott, but Democrats are committed to ads that focus on that devastating economic impact. One powerful ad already being deployed lays the economic harm to the state at McCrory’s feet.

At the same time, the pressure on McCrory has been intense, at the political level and literally on the ground, as activists this week have engaged in civil disobedience meant to bring more attention and underscore the passion people have about the harmful effects of the law.

It would seem that support for HB2 would need to be much higher than the current poll to help embattled McCrory in a great way, and this is only the beginning: As the backlash grows and more economic impact is felt, support for the law is only likely to decrease as voters believe McCrory has harmed the state.

[I]f McCrory loses the race, the optics of the anti-LGBT law, and the backlash against it, will be damaging to anti-LGBT conservatives. After the terrible defeat in Houston that gave anti-LGBT forces some wind at their sails, McCrory’s loss could deal a blow to anti-trans bathroom bills.

That’s why LGBT activists and allies must continue to do everything possible, including civil disobedience and forceful, uncompromising messaging to the public about how dangerous and detrimental these laws are to a state. If Houston taught us anything it’s that pleading for equality while hate-mongers put out lies is not a strategy.

I am in total agreement with the column's author.  I would also argue that HB2 and the economic harm it is bringing to North Carolina needs to be hung around the neck of every single Republican who voted for it.  Examples need to be made and voters need to become convinced that politicians who pander to Christofacists are a clear and present threat to economic well-being.  Indeed, they need to be voted out of office.