If it's my paranoia, please tell me, but I read Gov. McNugget's outrageous editorial explaining his signature on North Carolina's new "Voter ID" bill and thought this was a cannonball headed for NorthEast Central Neighborhood of Durham, North Carolina. In his third paragraph the Governor writes:
Even if the instances of misidentified people casting votes are low, that shouldn’t prevent us from putting this non-burdensome safeguard in place. Just because you haven’t been robbed doesn’t mean you shouldn’t lock your doors at night or when you’re away from home.He says that a law to stop/prevent in-person voting fraud didn't have to wait for the actual problem to exist, but I think it's it something else and much more sinister.
I think the governor is not accidental in his language. He's not a lawyer (neither am I), so maybe he doesn't know that if someone breaks into your house when you're not home, it's a burglary, not a robbery. He does know, with certainty, that those most affected by his reduction in access to voting are African American, elderly, disabled and/or poor. Northeast Central Durham, a democratic party stronghold, and it's ground zero for this law. There's a bullseye on the Bull City. The GOP has a storied history of disrupting voting in Durham to win elections. We hear the dog whistle.
In explaining his reasons for reducing access to voting for low income, vulnerable people, McNugget wants to reminds us about scary crime - specifically home invasion.
I find no coincidence in it - just as I didn't think he was tone deaf at all when he brought cookies out to women who were protesting to keep the keys to their own wombs. One should know when one is being arrogantly insulted. He wasn't clueless, he was showing the extreme right that he knows where women belong.
The one good thing about what the GOP is up to in Raleigh is that they have abandoned all sense of subtlety or appearance of interest in the public good or responsible governance. They are nakedly pursuing the agenda that the national GOP is grasping for with manifest desperation:
Restore Us To Power Because We Should Be In Power. We have money and connections and we'll know what to do.ALL of their strategies for accomplishing their return to power are predicated on one thing - NOT THEM (Democrats). NOT THEM because they're non-white. NOT THEM because they're women. NOT THEM because they're gay, poor, disabled. Just NOT THEM.
They have no real platform or cohesion to what they are doing or why (in terms of an actual philosophy or policy). It's almost literally as through the left hand doesn't know that the right hand already robbed that bank.
A moment after state employees demonstrate their displeasure at going yet another year with raises, the Department of Health and Human Services gives raises in excess of $20,000 each to two "leadership team" members who are obviously patronage appointees from the McNugget campaign.
Ricky Diaz and Matthew McKillop, both 24 years old, were bumped up to annual salaries of more than $80,000. Without an amazing fastball or a .380 batting average, you cannot justify those numbers.
And they have no intention of justifying those numbers, because elderly, disabled, poor African Americans or teachers or families that won't be covered under a passed-up Medicaid expansion are too busy struggling to figure out the political action that's necessary to slow the process of the rich getting richer.
And the governor wants us to equate making it easy for low income, elderly, disabled citizens to vote with the careless practice of leaving your house unlocked when you go out - an invitation to violation and theft. Governor, you're as subtle as a sticky doorknob, with half the charm.
It's not paranoia when they're really after you.
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