Fitzsimon File

Insurgents attacking the safe haven

The North Carolina Senate is turning into the Politburo according to political analyst John Davis, formerly of the business group N.C. Free that ranks legislators to determine how “business friendly” they are.

Davis uses the announcement that Senator David Hoyle is not running for reelection as the basis of an essay called “Liberal Insurgents End Basnight’s Historic Era of Power.”

Liberal insurgents? Does he mean progressive Senators who the voters of their districts sent to Raleigh?  Not sure what is so insurgent about that, though the use of the word is probably not an accident, given its common use these days to describe the enemy in Iraq.

Davis proclaims that liberal urban lawyers are taking over the Senate which he says means that “the Senate is no longer a safe haven for business.”  All of Davis’ labels come from the N.C. Free rankings of each legislator on their business friendliness.  Many of the folks Davis seems so afraid of, Senator Dan Blue, Senator Martin Nesbitt, Senator Dan Clodfelter, have business rankings over their careers in the General Assembly of 50 to 60 percent, putting them in the “occasional friends” category on N.C. Free’s bizarre and misleading scale.

The rankings are based on a group of votes and the opinions of business lobbyists and corporate leaders.  One of the votes used in this year’s evaluation was a bill that would give local school boards more flexibility in deciding when the school year begins.

The supposedly "free enterprise" vote was against the legislation because the tourism industry doesn’t like it.  But more local control of schools has long supported proposed by conservatives and business interests alike. Not any more. A vote for your local school system is a vote against business and helps make you an insurgent.

Another bill used in the rankings was legislation to setup a pilot program for public financing of local elections if local communities choose to participate. Once again, the "free enterprise" position is to deny local people a say in how their elections are conducted and whether or not candidates can run for office without relying on special interest money.

The N.C. Free Foundation says the legislation "could serve to eliminate or substantially curtail the participation of Political Action Committees in local elections."  Goodness knows we can’t have that, less domination of the local elections by PACs of the realtors and homebuilders. More democracy is anti-business and also helps make you an insurgent.

The rating system has never included votes on education or workforce development, or any state investment that improves the quality of life and creates jobs. 

It has long been a misleading way to evaluate legislators and now it is being used to brand them insurgents bent on destroying the Senate’s safe haven.

The last two words of Davis’ essay are “vote Republican.” Oh, now I get it.

From the Fringe

This week’s From the Fringe features the latest fundraising appeal from WakeUpAmerica.com, the hard right website run by State Senator Andrew Brock and Rep. Bryan Holloway. The solicitation not only includes the ridiculous rants about President Obama being a socialist, it now claims that he has surrounded himself with “convicted felons, devout communists, and unaccountable Czars with socialist roots.”  It is all part of his “radical, left-wing, socialist change.”

And remember this is not some obscure website run by a guy in his pajamas in a basement in rural Idaho, though it often reads like it. These are the words and views of two elected members of the North Carolina General Assembly.  Wonder if Brock sees devout communists behind every tree in Raleigh too? N.C. State’s colors are red and white after all.

And what would From the Fringe be without the folks from Popeville? Locker Jon Ham titled a recent blog post “Green means oppression.”  Apparently if you recycle, you are a fascist. But it’s the climate change debate that really has them riled up.

George Leef praises one essay on the climate summit in Copenhagen by saying the writer has it exactly right, that the proposed treaty is an extremely costly and authoritarian non-solution to an imaginary problem. Don’t you feel better now about the future of the planet?

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This entry was posted on Friday, December 11th, 2009 at 3:04 pm and is filed under Fitzsimon File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.