After a month of counting absentee and provisional ballots, exploring voter fraud, and recounting 90,000+ ballots in one of the progressive strongholds of the state that were turned in at 11:30 p.m. on election night, North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory conceded that he lost his re-election on Dec. 5.
McCrory lost his re-election by only 10,277 out of 4.7 million votes, or two-tenths of 1 percent. However, repeal of the H.B. 2 “bathroom bill” is not the lesson to be learned from the election.
The governor’s race in North Carolina had barely concluded before the Human Rights Campaign and other LGBT groups began taking credit for having unseated the one-term governor over his refusal to back down to their bullying.
The Human Rights Campaign engaged in an eight-month smear campaign against the state of North Carolina—with McCrory as the primary target—over the passage of North Carolina’s privacy law, which blocked a Charlotte city ordinance that would have allowed men into women’s bathrooms, showers, locker rooms, and other intimate facilities.
The Human Rights Campaign points to highly suspect internal polling as proof that this issue was his downfall, but the facts bear out a different conclusion. McCrory’s strong stance for privacy and safety and ensuring that local laws do not impose financial and legal liability on businesses actually helped him in his re-election bid, rather than hurting him.
An excellent article that examines the reasons why Pat McCrory lost the election. The print is small in the article but if you click on the printed article, it will increase the size of the print. Nancy
A barbecue fundraiser for Lt. Governor Dan Forest of North Carolina, was held on August 24, 2016 at the lovely home of Betsy and Jim Duncan in Durham. Lt. Governor Forest spoke of the tremendous accomplishments that have been made under the Pat McCrory administration.
North Carolina’s unemployment rate decreased below the national average to 4.7 percent in July. Since Governor Pat McCrory entered office in 2013, the number of unemployed persons in North Carolina is 45 percent lower.
Recently, Governor McCrory stated that “As home to one of the fastest growing economies in the country, North Carolina’s unemployment rate has now dropped below the national average and more than 300,000 new jobs have been added since 2013,” said Governor McCrory.“We have successfully modernized the tax code, fixed the broken unemployment insurance system and implemented an economic development strategy that has strengthened the economy and put more people back to work.” The unemployment rate is now lower than it has been since May 2007 and the size of the labor force is 2.9 percent larger than in January 2013.
Paul McHugh, MD, isUniversity Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School and the former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He is the author ofThe Mind Has Mountains: Reflections on Society and Psychiatry.
The idea that one’s sex is a feeling, not a fact, has permeated our culture and is leaving casualties in its wake. Gender dysphoria should be treated with psychotherapy, not surgery.
For forty years as the University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School—twenty-six of which were also spent as Psychiatrist in Chief of Johns Hopkins Hospital—I’ve been studying people who claim to be transgender. Over that time, I’ve watched the phenomenon change and expand in remarkable ways.
A rare issue of a few men—both homosexual and heterosexual men, including some who sought sex-change surgery because they were erotically aroused by the thought or image of themselves as women—has spread to include women as well as men. Even young boys and girls have begun to present themselves as of the opposite sex. Over the last ten or fifteen years, this phenomenon has increased in prevalence, seemingly exponentially. Now, almost everyone has heard of or met such a person.
Publicity, especially from early examples such as “Christine” Jorgenson, “Jan” Morris, and “Renee” Richards, has promoted the idea that one’s biological sex is a choice, leading to widespread cultural acceptance of the concept. And, that idea, quickly accepted in the 1980s, has since run through the American public like a revelation or “meme” affecting much of our thought about sex.
The champions of this meme, encouraged by their alliance with the broader LGBT movement, claim that whether you are a man or a woman, a boy or a girl, is more of a disposition or feeling about yourself than a fact of nature. And, much like any other feeling, it can change at any time, and for all sorts of reasons. Therefore, no one could predict who would swap this fact of their makeup, nor could one justifiably criticize such a decision.
Patrick Gleason is director of state affairs at Americans for Tax Reform and a senior fellow at the Beacon Center of Tennessee, a free market think tank based in Nashville. Follow Patrick on Twitter: @PatrickMGleason
North Carolina has been generating national headlines over passage of House Bill 2, the new state law blocking a local ordinance passed by Charlotte earlier this year that allows people to use public restrooms assigned to the gender with which they identify. Opponents have criticized the new state law as discriminatory, while proponents assert that it was necessary for public safety. A number of corporate leaders have spoken out against the law, and critics point to business community opposition to HB 2 as proof that the law will hurt the state economically.
Regardless of one’s opinion on HB 2, it cannot overshadow or remotely counteract what North Carolina has done legislatively over the last five years to become one of the most attractive places in the country to do business, invest, live, raise a family, and retire. Since Republicans took control of the state legislature for the first time in over a century in 2010, North Carolina legislators and Gov. Pat McCrory (R), who was elected in 2012, have enacted a collection of policy reforms that is more impressive from a free market and limited government standpoint than what any other state accomplished during that time, with the arguable exception of Wisconsin.
Why is the extreme discomfort and embarrassment that women and children would be exposed to not being discussed if transgenders would have free access to their ladies rooms and shower facilities? Many people express sympathy for transgenders, well, what about the women and children ? I would think most women would be extremely apprehensive showering with a man who had surgically mutilated his body so he could become a she !!!! Thanks to Meg Gresham for sharing this article. Nancy
There is a Cooper’s hawk living in a tree in my back yard near the Intracoastal Waterway in Wilmington, North Carolina. He is extremely aggressive when defending his territory. In fact, just a few months ago he was annoyed by the presence of some Blue Jays nesting in a tree within his territory. So he grabbed one by the wing, flew him down to the ground, pinned him on his back, and slowly ripped his heart out of his chest right in front of the other Blue Jays – all just to send a message to them. That Cooper’s hawk is aptly named. Tactically speaking, he reminds me a lot of the North Carolina Attorney General.
Roy Cooper’s job as AG is to serve and defend the people of North Carolina. But he has long since abdicated his professional responsibility in order to pursue a larger social vision. That vision is to take over the State of North Carolina and transform it into California – even if it means turning cities like Charlotte into San Francisco.
So it really is no surprise that that Roy Cooper has decided not to defend HB2, which seeks to protect women from having to share public and “public accommodation” (read: private business) restrooms with men posing as women. Cooper would never dream of opposing the ACLU lawyers bringing the lawsuit. That is because he shares their worldview as well as their vision for the Tar Heel state.
Even with lower rates, tax revenues have increased 6% this year, and the state has a $400 million budget surplus.
by Stephen Moore Mr. Moore is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation
June 4, 2015
Raleigh, N.C.
Four years ago North Carolina’s unemployment rate was above 10% and the state still bore the effects of its battering in the recession. Many rural towns faced jobless rates of more than 20%. But in 2013 a combination of the biggest tax-rate reductions in the state’s history and a gutsy but controversial unemployment-insurance reform supercharged the state’s economy and has even helped finance budget surpluses.
As Wells Fargo’s Economics Group recently put it: “North Carolina’s economy has shifted into high gear. Hiring has picked up across nearly every industry.”
The tax cut slashed the state’s top personal income-tax rate to 5.75%, near the regional average, from 7.75%, which had been the highest in the South. The corporate tax rate was cut to 5% from 6.9%. The estate tax was eliminated.
Next came the novel tough-love unemployment-insurance reforms. The state became the first in the nation to reject “free” federal payments for extended unemployment benefits and reduce the weeks of benefits to 20 from 26. The maximum weekly dollar amount of payments, $535, which had been among the highest in the nation, was trimmed to a maximum of $350 a week. As a result, tens of thousands of Carolinians left the unemployment rolls. (more…)
The Attorney General tries to reverse a Supreme Court ruling by the back door.
For Eric Holder, American racial history is frozen in the 1960s. The Supreme Court ruled in June that a section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act is no longer justified due to racial progress, but the U.S. Attorney General has launched a campaign to undo the decision state-by-state. His latest target is North Carolina, which he seems to think is run from the grave by the early version of George Wallace.
The real current Governor, Republican Pat McCrory, signed a law in August that requires voters to present government-issued photo ID at the polling station, including a state driver’s license or military ID. Voters who show up without one can still cast a provisional ballot pending their return with a photo ID. The law also shortens early voting to 10 days from 17 and ends a program that preregistered high school students before they were eligible to vote.
According to Mr. Holder, this amounts to a shocking return to the Jim Crow era. He describes these modest measures to secure the integrity of the ballot as “aggressive steps to curtail the voting rights of African Americans.” And he is suing the state to bring it back under the federal supervision of the Voting Rights Act for all of its future voting-law changes.