Fayetteville is my hometown more than any – I was born here to military parents, this is where my grandparents retired from the military, and I moved back over 7 years ago as a military spouse. My community has done much to improve quality of life here, but still desperately needs expanded healthcare access.
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It’s long been understood by those who pay attention to public policy debates that the age-old conservative talking point about the supposed evils of “big government” was always just that – a talking point more than a genuine belief. The truth of the matter is that American conservatives love government in a wide variety of circumstances.
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Earlier this week, the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees (BoT) began plans to erect a statue dedicated to white supremacy. This is not a kind characterization of events, but it is an accurate one. A characterization that failed to permeate the decision-making process, and with horrifying consequence.
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The North Carolina Senate Finance Committee voted yesterday to approve a bill that will almost triple the maximum amount of cash that companies receive for each individual job they create through the Job Development Investment Grant program (JDIG), North Carolina’s premier economic incentives program. Although well-intentioned, the plan still needs some work before legislators finally approve it.
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Editor’s note: Gerry Cohen – former special counsel to the General Assembly – is widely understood to be North Carolina’s most knowledgeable and respected expert on state elections law. Yesterday, Cohen testified before the Joint Legislative Elections Oversight Committee regarding the controversial subject of voter ID and the proposed legislation that lawmakers are expected to adopt on the subject in the coming days.
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The North Carolina General Assembly has returned to Raleigh this week for yet another convening. Contrary, however, to some previous erroneous references, this will not be—at least technically—a “special” session like the three that convened in July, August and October. Rather, lawmakers will merely reconvene the regular 2017-18 session that left off at the end of June. Of course, whatever formal label one attaches to this week’s proceedings is mostly a matter of semantics.
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Embedded in bark, the Emerald Ash Borer gleams like the gem. Adult females lay their eggs in the cracks and crevices of ash trees, and once hatched, larvae, cream-colored and as thin as filament, gnaw into the deeper layers. They chisel fatal curlicues that disrupt the flow of nutrients. A few months later, the life cycle begins again, and the adults emerge through a D-shaped hole in the bark. By that time, the tree is dying or dead of starvation.
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If you’re looking for a hopeful sign about modern North Carolina, here’s a small one to buoy your spirits on a holiday week: Fewer and fewer North Carolinians have any idea who Jesse Helms was. The trend has been evident to me in recent years as I’ve traveled the state giving talks about policy and politics. Each time I bring up Helms’ name and the mostly toxic legacy he constructed during three decades in the U.S. Senate, I get a growing number of blank stares...
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Despite the manufactured panic of the migrant caravan, despite the midterm’s so-called “referendum on Trump,” despite the nation’s nonsensical gun laws, despite an election that often seemed a direct rebuke of misogynist GOP leaders and policies, the pollsters told us the 2018 election would begin and end with healthcare.
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The 2018 election may finally be in the rear view mirror, but for better or worse, the next battle over the state’s future will commence very soon – on Tuesday, November 27. That’s the day that Republican legislative leaders will convene the latest of their endless stream of “special” legislative sessions.
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