Republican Lies

Despite John Hood's happy talk about the GOP's use of research for formulate policy, Republican legislators continue live in the alternate universe of their ideological agenda. Case in point: new legislation to mandate cursive writing in schools, where it appears that Representative Pat Hurley was happy to make up claims out of thin air.

For a detailed take down of this Republican criminal negligence, check out the extensive coverage on Diane Ravitch's blog.

Pulling the wool over the public's eyes:

One reason for sustained support: fully 40 percent of all voters (48% of Republicans) agree that “cases of people voting in the name of someone else are commonplace,” despite the lack of hard evidence.

Not only has this misunderstanding been artificially enhanced by the propagandists on the right, it actually defies logic and common sense. Aside from the occasional unbalanced person, why would anybody risk being arrested (or at least hassled) just to throw one vote in the mix of thousands? It makes absolutely no sense on a cost-benefit scale, which means (wait for it) it would only happen on extremely rare occasions. Like, even more rare than getting struck by lightning. The people polled should understand that, just as they should also understand there must be another reason for Republicans to pursue it.

Draconian measures for imaginary threats:

"We call this restoring confidence in government," Tillis said. "There are a lot of people who are just concerned with the potential risk of fraud." He added a voter ID law "would make nearly three-quarters of the population more comfortable and more confident when they go to the polls."

I dispute those numbers but, even if they are true, where do you think that public perception came from? Several years of propaganda-laced electioneering by fear-mongering Republicans, who don't have the capacity to fix real problems so they
manufacture strawmen to bring down. And like most propagandists of totalitarian regimes, Tillis tries to convince those he's hurting that he's actually helping them:

I bet you won't see this on a campaign sign:

Veteran lawmaker Rep. Mitch Gillespie – who in 2011 literally drew a bulls-eye target on his legislative office window aimed at the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources – will resign next month to become an assistant secretary of the agency.

Setting aside for the moment the negative impact of having an outspoken opponent of DENR taking over some of its reins, over 2/3 of the voters in his district turned out to vote for Gillespie, and donors contributed over $150,000 to his campaign. And in return, they're going to get someone else as a Representative, chosen by a small group of (also) unelected people. And this:

NC GOP dictionary revision #74: more and less are now synonyms:

"Our level of state funding for K-12 education for FY12-13 will also be roughly $50 million higher than the Democrats’ K-12 budget for FY09-10."

But the graph is misleading in terms of the money that was actually available to schools. It ignores key pieces of the 2009-10 and 2010-11 budgets. Taking a more complete view, the budget proposed for 2012-13 is actually $330 million less than the one enacted in 2009-10.

Call it what you want, either "spinning" the numbers or a bald-faced lie. But when the GOP leadership feels the need to mislead on something as important as education funding, it means that deep down, they know they've taken a step that a majority of North Carolinians would oppose. If they learned the truth, that is.

Using the rules to sterilize needed legislation:

Senate Republicans say they will not vote on a plan to compensate eugenics victims because Senate Democrats included the payment plan in a failed budget amendment this week.

The House (including Speaker Tillis) must be fuming over this, after working hard to straighten out the kinks and assemble a super-majority (86-31). Especially considering that Berger could waive the damned rule anyway:

He must have been a telemarketer in a previous life:

"It is a beginning and it will be funded by corporations that believe in educational access for everyone," Stam told several hundred people attending the rally. "It will not cost the state money; it saves the taxpayers money while at the same time providing tens of thousands of scholarships for children whose families earn, for a family of four, up to about $50,000 a year."

It most certainly will cost the state money. Right out of the revenue coffers and into the hands of private schools:

If you can't prove lawbreaking without breaking the law yourself, maybe you're tripping down the wrong path:

Zbigniew Gorzkowski is registered to vote in North Carolina, the film shows. Project Veritas acquired his September 21, 2007 voter registration form and provided a copy to TheDC. On May 8 the workers at Gorzkowski’s assigned North Carolina polling place offered his ballot to an actor in the film who gave Gorzkowski’s name while hidden-camera video rolled.

And here's the law that was broken by these Republican fiction artists:

Standing on a wobbly soapbox:

“We stood up to the trial lawyers’ interest groups and the governor to make sure doctors would be able to stay in our state without the fear of baseless, exorbitant lawsuits. The costs of those lawsuits were being passed along to patients, and in an already broken health care system, we had to act.

First of all, if a large portion of those suits were "baseless", they would (or should) have been contested, and legal fees reassigned to the losing plaintiff. But setting aside that plainly illogical claim, let's look at what motivated him to make that declaration: