Last week, to welcome new governor Roy Cooper to Raleigh, we published a list of five things we’d like to see him do during his first term [“Roy Cooper vs. the World”], despite the handcuffs placed on him by the very Republican legislature. Paula A. Wolf writes that there were some “glaring oversights.”
“Women’s reproductive freedom has been trampled upon by the GOP since they got the majority in 2010,” Wolf points out. “Mandatory scripts for doctors; transvaginal ultrasound; medically unnecessary building requirements; taxpayer funding of medically inaccurate information by anti-choice ‘clinics’ and defunding Planned Parenthood’s pregnancy prevention programs, to name a few. Access to health care is blockaded by not expanding Medicaid.
“Public schools have been seriously underfunded while the GOP hands over more and more of our tax money to private and parochial schools that are not accountable for it. These schools are free to discriminate and teach their own flat-Earth version of science. They eliminated the nationally recognized and wildly successful Teaching Fellows Program.
“The GOP brags about how they cut taxes, but those cuts only benefit big business and the wealthy. In point of fact, the new tax on some services (e.g., auto repair) unevenly hurts the middle class and the poor. The GOP continues to draw ‘surgical and precise’ racist districts, falsely repeat the bogus claim of voter fraud, and put up obstacles designed to disenfranchise minority voters, seniors, and young people.”
John Quintero, meanwhile, says that “what is extraordinary about the list is its omission of any reference to the economic prospects of working North Carolinians. While North Carolina’s economy has improved since the worst part of the recession, that recovery has bypassed most North Carolinians, who, on any number of indicators, are worse off now than when the recession started. Moreover, current patterns, if left unaddressed, are unlikely to generate meaningful improvements in employment opportunities, wages, household incomes, and living standards for a broad swath of North Carolinians.
“The omission of economic concerns also is extraordinary coming as it does on the heels of an election in which anger and despair over deteriorating economic prospects led many people to sit out the election or take a flyer on radical candidates. How, then, can economic issues not be considered anything other than essential to a meaningful progressive policy agenda here in North Carolina?”
“Power certainly did not devolve to the people under McCrory and the NCGOP,” writes cityfox. “The right wing was too busy undermining the U.S. and state Constitution. The General Assembly moved to enshrine itself forever without a public hearing or input. Roy Cooper must challenge Phil Berger and Tim Moore and the rest of the GOP cabal. They are kleptocrats who are supporting a boorish, uncouth autocrat who believes he can set policy with tweets.”
“Left-liberals learn absolutely nothing,” counters commenter JK 1. “1) The only meaningful priorities are the two LAST on your list, and 2) exactly where on this list is the material welfare of working people? This has really become a completely worthless rag.”
Thanks, JK! But Twilight Zone wins the week in terms of hating on us: “What the hell is wrong with you losers? This list is so wrong. You really want ‘immigrants and refugees’ here in our state? ‘Go on the offensive on LGBTQ rights’? What about the rights of every person who lives and works in this state? LGBTQs have the same rights as every other North Carolinian and American. Why do they need special rights? They are not special.
“You are all a bunch of idiots with IQs of a dog’s butthole. Get a life or get the hell out of America.”
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