Republican idiocy

We'll start with a little judicious satire:

Rob_Schofield 10:48am via Tweet Button
Must read: An open letter to the glorious NC Senate shar.es/JORwh via @NCPolicyWatch #ncga #ncpol #ncgov #bluenc

Okay, the satire actually starts now:

When employers no longer even want to talk to you:

But just how bad is it for the long-term unemployed? Ghayad ran a follow-up field experiment to find out. In a new working paper, he sent out 4800 fictitious resumes to 600 job openings, with 3600 of them for fake unemployed people. Among those 3600, he varied how long they'd been out of work, how often they'd switched jobs, and whether they had any industry experience. Everything else was kept constant. The mocked-up resumes were all male, all had randomly-selected (and racially ambiguous) names, and all had similar education backgrounds. The question was which of them would get callbacks.

It turns out long-term unemployment is much scarier than you could possibly imagine.

I know this is depressing as hell, but I had to post it. Many on the right favor the meme that long-term unemployed simply aren't trying to get a job, and I'm sure there are some that aren't. But the vast majority are breaking their asses trying to find something, and they don't deserve to be treated the way the NC GOP is treating them. The sadness continues:

We'll start out with a little reality check:

Action_NC 10:30am via TweetDeck The new voucher bill in the #NCGA doesn't do much for students, but sure helps corporations. #ncpol #ncED actionnc.org/not_much_oppor…

The hypocrisy is mind-boggling. Republicans whine about poor performance, and cook up all sorts of ideas on how to micro-manage, belittle and economically strangle public school teachers. And then they turn around and throw money at private schools with no accountability attached to those dollars. And no protections for students, either:

Whether the GOP listens or not, some things must be said:

The Climate Convergence on Raleigh (CCR) will be a critical mass event of concerned citizens and organizations from across North Carolina that are fed up with inaction. We will rally, march, and meet with our legislators that have the responsibility of charting the course of our future. We must take it upon ourselves to enact the political changes necessary to avert further climate devastation.

As we've seen from the economic success of renewable energy, bringing our atmospheric carbon emissions down to 350 parts per million doesn't have to be painful, and it's damned sure less painful than losing a third of our state to the inevitable volume of ocean that will result from the loss of sea and land ice. Burying your head in the sand might bring short-term comfort, but when the waves start lapping at your neck, changing your mind will no longer be an option.

Pimping cheap power while raising our rates:

On Tuesday, Duke named John Fremstad of Orlando, Fla., to head its data-center recruiting efforts. The program has been an enormous success in North Carolina, where Duke (NYSE:DUK) has been a major player in closing 15 data-center deals.

I'm not sure squandering our resources should be described as an "enormous success", and I'm pretty sure other residential customers would agree with me:

We'll start with a salute to small-government, hands-off Conservative ideology:

Rob_Schofield 9:10am via TweetDeck War on cities continues - House Finance takes up plan to take Asheville's water system against the citizens' will #ncga #ncpol #ncgov

Our current Republican-led General Assembly reminds me of a recalcitrant 5-year-old methodically grabbing various items in the candy aisle before mom finally blows her top and smacks the soft tissue where he sits. In this case, the voters are "mom", and the time for blowing their tops is long past.

Creating a fictional moderate majority:

House Republicans rolled out their voter ID bill, which was less restrictive than the one vetoed by Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue two years ago. Democrats and others will still hate it, but it will take some of the air out of the opposition. Because of some of the provisions, it is far less likely that grandma, students or poor people won’t be able to vote compared to the earlier version. The GOP had the votes to adopt any voter ID bill they wanted. But House Republicans decided against the hard-line approach.

What Rob has missed (or chosen not to include in his narrative) is that there is no substantial difference between the phrases "won't be able to vote" and "won't vote", as far as how they impact elections, anyway. There's a reason Republicans have different (harsher) versions of the same bill, and Christensen just proved the reasoning for that was sound. It's a basic sales technique (bracketing,) which creates a false "moderate" that can be chosen. And if you want to create a false moderate group of people, you set aside a smaller group via "labeling":

The NC GOP garners more embarassing national attention:

Whom did you people elect? The people with the brightest bulbs for a nose? The people with the biggest, floppiest shoes? Does every member of the Republican majority in your legislature all arrive at work every morning in the same tiny car?

The writer references three pieces of legislation in this story; the cursive writing bill, the nutty religious freedom resolution, and the effort to punish parents for allowing their college-student children to vote. Only one of those has a chance to seriously impact our rights and, in doing so, it could contribute to even more outrages down the road. Which one is it? Here's a clue: