Welcome inaction
Published July 8, 2016
Editorial by Greensboro News-Record, July 8, 2016.
Legislators missed chances to do good things, such as repealing House Bill 2, in their recently concluded short session. The negative consequences will continue to add up.
But, fortunately, they didn’t get around to enacting all the bad proposals on their agenda.
One of the worst was House Bill 100, which would have barred police from recognizing privately issued identification cards and imposed harsh penalties on cities where “violations” occurred.
This measure was aimed squarely at Greensboro, where the police department and FaithAction International House collaborated on a program to provide verified ID cards to resident immigrants. The effort was so successful in improving police relations with immigrant communities that other cities and counties adopted it, provoking a potential legislative backlash.
The bill would have empowered the state attorney general to find violations and trigger a cutoff of state funding. Little wonder the measure was opposed by state law enforcement associations. Yet, it was approved by the Senate with all Republican votes. Wisely, House leaders declined to call a final vote.
Likewise, the House let a package of three proposed constitutional amendments die for lack of a vote. The most troubling of the three would have restricted state spending and put a 5.5 percent cap on income-tax rates. It would have tied the hands of future legislatures to set budgets based on economic conditions and state needs of their own times.
The legislature failed to adopt a proposal to put strict limitations on the development of wind and solar energy projects. Enacting this measure would have posed a severe and unwarranted setback to the state’s fast-growing solar-power industry.
On the negative side, lawmakers adjourned before passing new regulations to ensure water safety at parks like the U.S. National Whitewater Center near Charlotte, where a teenager from Ohio died last month from a brain infection caused by an amoeba in the water. The House passed a measure to require appropriate water testing, but the Senate did not concur.
Another split between the House and Senate led to a dramatic House debate in the final hours before adjournment last Friday. The House voted down a Senate bill to restructure the Asheville City Council, with Greensboro Rep. John Blust leading the opposition. The vote produced one of the finest moments of the session and was a rare defeat of attempted meddling in local affairs that powerful legislators have pursued in recent years. While all Senate Republicans voted for the bill, 24 House Republicans said no. With Democrats, they were enough to kill it.
On their main task, updating the state budget, Republicans achieved some bipartisan support by raising teacher salaries and enacting income-tax relief for lower- and middle-income taxpayers for a change. They socked more money into savings accounts, guarding against another economic downturn. It would have been wise to invest more in education and transportation, but this legislature’s work could have been worse.
July 8, 2016 at 10:42 am
Norm Kelly says:
Here we go again. Or is it still?
The FBI director laid out the charges against Hildabeast quite eloquently, then told us that these charges were insufficient to prosecute. And what do libs whine about? Bathrooms for gays! Talk about a stuck record!
There are real issues to deal with, not whether someone confused knows which bathroom to use. Again, the bathroom problem was CREATED BY LIBS! It's time to let it go and concentrate on something that can actually make a difference in ANYONE'S life. Bathrooms ain't it!
Hildabeast being let off the hook, AGAIN!, is an issue.
Every lawyer in America needs to start using lib defenses, pointing specifically to Clintons when getting their perps off the hook.
If it's good for the elite's, for demons, for lib pols, it's good for the masses. If some elite pol can get off the hook for breaking MULTIPLE LAWS, then it's good enough for the rest of us.
Libs want us to ignore that illegal aliens are breaking our laws to be here, allow them to steal our jobs, and take government money to support them. We are to ignore that they are breaking MULTIPLE LAWS.
Libs also want us to ignore that libs themselves are permitting themselves special treatment and are ALLOWED TO BREAK ANY LAW THEY CHOOSE! But the masses are supposed to follow the laws as LIBS lay them out.
It's time for a revolt. It's time to put every lib in their place. It's time to force libs to follow the same laws the masses are forced to follow. One recent example, besides Hildabeast, is Obamacancer. We were told Congress was going to fall under control of THEIR law. After it was implemented, how did libs respond? They PURPOSELY, SPECIFICALLY EXEMPTED THEMSELVES from the failure that is socialized medicine.
What will it take for the masses to finally revolt? Certainly NOT electing Hildabeast! Shame on every lib out there who accepts the tyranny that is elitism. Perpetrated by your own lib leaders and excused by those same law-breaking lib leaders. Don't expect truth from your 'news' sources either. They are libs also, and support elitists who ARE above the law. Your 'news' sources make excuses for law-breaking libs expecting you accept their smoke-screen. And, unfortunately, most of you low-information lib voters DO accept their garbage and go along with it like it's not a problem.
Every time one of you libs whines about Republicans, we WILL remind you of who and what you support!
