Confederate Control of Polling Places?

Writing in the Atlantic magazine, Ari Berman says that, on a recent visit to Chapel Hill NC, he discovered that Southern states are planning to suppress voting by requiring a valid photo ID card! In an article entitled "Voter Suppression: The Confederacy Rises Again," Berman writes:

Eight of eleven states in the former Confederacy have passed restrictive voting laws since the 2010 election, as part of a broader war on voting undertaken by the GOP. ... [It's] breathtaking to consider the different ways Republicans have sought to suppress the minority vote in the region.

Not sure exactly what the Confederacy has to do with this. Of the myriad complaints liberals make about the Confederacy, I can't remember them ever claiming that Jefferson Davis demanded photo ID cards to vote.

And what is the big issue about photo ID cards anyway? The North Carolina DMV doles them out to everyone, even non-citizens.

And there's this:

North Carolina Democratic Governor Bev Perdue twice vetoed efforts by North Carolina Republicans to pass a strict voter ID law before the 2012 election. If GOP gubernatorial candidate Pat McCrory wins in November, it’s all but certain a tough voter ID law will be among the first pieces of legislation he signs.

That sounds like the strongest endorsement yet for McCrory in 2012.

Abolitionists Exposed in Asheville

In the Asheville (NC) Mountain XPress, Lara Terstenjak berates the Asheville City Council for not supporting her "Go Topless" movement for women, and somehow ties the City Council's decision to North Carolina's support for the Confederacy:

North Carolina contributed more soldiers (with gun rights) to the Confederate cause than any other state. I hope you do not continue to make the same relative mistake regarding women's rights.

Mistake? Gun rights? While reasonable minds may differ on the issue of topless women, surely Ms. Terstenjak understands that it was the Confederacy that fought to uphold a woman's right to ... to ... Well, what exactly does the Confederacy have to do with public nudity? Ms. Terstenjak says:

City Council members, your North Carolina predecessors voted to keep slavery. What could be more immoral than the buying and selling of human beings? Yet in 2012 you oppose women being topless on moral grounds.

Of course - it's all about slavery. The Confederacy was all about slavery. The Asheville City Council is enslaving women, not by requiring them to cover their breasts, but by encouraging others not to look!

We suspect Ms. Terstenjak will ultimately learn the hard way that there is no constitutional right to public nudity. At that time, we can suggest some appropriate attire for her exhibitionism.

Until then, if you'd like to educate Ms. Terstenjak, please respond with a letter to the editor at PO Box 144, Asheville NC 28802, via fax to (828) 251-1311, or via email to letters@mountainx.com.

"Studies" without Study

It's now clear that the University of North Carolina should be forced to forfeit its national basketball championships from 2005 and 2007, and probably even 1993. This is due to the latest revelations that the UNC Department of African and Afro-American Studies, since its inception, has been nothing more than a fraudulent shelter to keep athletes eligible.

And why is anyone surprised? Remember, the African and Afro-American Studies department was created in response to protests by UNC football players in 1992. (See Charlotte Observer, “Fight for Black Cultural Center Spills into UNC Stadiums,” 17 Sep 1992.) It's been all about athletics from the beginning, and any academic administrator worth his salt would have known that. While African and Afro-American Studies may be a worthwhile specialization for a few undergraduates majoring in Social Studies, it's hardly the sort of broad curriculum that can support an undergraduate major all by itself. Julius Peppers' transcript - loaded with courses like Black Nationalism, Black Experience (twice!), Blacks in Film, etc. - attests to that.

But the real tragedy here is not the fraudulent national championships won by the Tar Heels with their "student-athletes." It's the fact that the African and Afro-American Studies Department has been fully subsidized by North Carolina taxpayers - not just UNC athletics boosters. Meanwhile, real students in real academic disciplines at our state universities continue to suffer ever higher tuition payments to these "public" universities, who fritter away those tuition dollars on such complete wastes of time as African and Afro-American Studies and UNC basketball.

Verbalizing in Valdese

People in Valdese are up in arms over a speech made at its Founders Day Festival by Archdale pastor Herman White. One of the "credible" witnesses claims "he heard White saying things like black people should still be slaves and that the races should not mix."

Since there's absolutely no chance that those things were actually said, what is motivating the false claims? Apparently, White's "racist remarks" were the fact that he criticized Abraham Lincoln and called the Gettysburg Address "political garbage." As libertarian commentator Britt Combs sees it, "The mere suggestion that federal power is anything less than divine marks the speaker irrefutably a racist."

Nail on the head. As another libertarian, Rand Paul, recently discovered, as soon as the feds discover that someone with a microphone is onto them, the klan-watchers come out and start discovering [planting?] white sheets in closets.

Unfortunately, Combs takes his analysis one step farther:

What White, the SCV, the League of the South, the Southern Party and all the other pro-South groups miss is this: The Confederate government was evil too. ... If there is a future for freedom, if libertarians succeed in resisting the growth of Washington's empire, if Americans regain an interest in individual liberty, property rights, human rights and all that, it won't have anything to do with the C.S.A.

Evil? What exactly was "evil" about the closest thing this world has seen in the past 150 years to a true American constitutionalist government with respect for states rights? Of course, the answer is slavery, under which "priceless individuals were murdered and ruined." Murdered?

Like Paul, who was eventually convinced to denounce the South of the 1960s, Combs has fallen for the media manipulations and distortions about the South of the 1860s -- the same manipulators and distorters that rose up to attack Herman White last week.

Yes, the Confederacy wasn't perfect, and it's a good thing that slavery is gone. But it was hardly a unique institution to the Confederacy [a nation that only lasted about four years]. And equating the institution to murder is downright ignorant.

What Combs and other small-government types should understand immediately is this: The Confederacy is attacked, not because it promoted slavery, but because it promoted freedom. And that's the same reason White was attacked last week, and the same reason Paul was attacked the week before that. The same fate will meet Combs or anyone else who comes remotely close to helping "Americans regain an interest in individual liberty, property rights, human rights and all that." Anyone who doesn't have the stomach for it needs to get out of the fight right now.

Self-Reliance, Kennedy-Style

Billy Kennedy, candidate for US Congress from the 5th District of North Carolina, says his campaign is about "self-reliance" and "us governing ourselves." Sign us up!

On second thought, don't. Kennedy's bizarre concept of "self-reliance" and "people governing themselves" apparently involves massive federal intervention into every corner of our lives--from healthcare to education to the environment to the economy to the transportation system!

Kennedy says he has a real problem with "these people that bash government day in and day out, and then, on their own, take advantage of it." As if we're not allowed to criticize the size of government if we use the services that are paid for by our own money through the confiscatory federal income tax system.

Maybe Kennedy should consider running for Congress in Massachusetts.

Capitol Monuments Challenged (Again)

Spring is coming soon, so it's time for the annual attack on Confederate monuments at the North Carolina State Capitol. This time around, the N.C. Historic Commission is concerned about the "underrepresentation of women and ethnic minorities at the State Capitol and on the grounds." The Historic Commission, apparently run by the same crowd who is trying to "diversify" history education in the public schools, now wants to "diversify" the monuments at the Capitol.

While the Historic Commission claims that it does not plan to [immediately] remove any existing monuments, we can expect them to be diluted as new monuments are erected to relatively insignificant ethnic minorities from North Carolina's past. The News & Observer has already begun the process of deriding the existing monuments: "There are already monuments honoring Confederate soldiers killed in the Civil War and white supremacy activist Gov. Charles Aycock." [Question for the N&O: When did Aycock transform from "the education governor" to "white supremacy activist"?]

You have the opportunity to speak in favor of keeping the Capitol grounds as they are by attending public hearings in Asheville (at the YMI Cultural Center) on Monday, 15 February; in Raleigh (at the State Capitol) on Thursday, 18 February; and Greenville (at the Carol Belk Building on the ECU campus) next Monday, 22 February. All of the meetings will be at 7PM. If you can't attend one of these events, please post comments in favor of maintaining the existing Capitol grounds on the blog of the Capitol Memorial Study Committee.

Tea Party Takeover

A columnist for the Durham Herald-Sun compares the "Tea Party" movement to the Ku Klux Klan. Paul Scott says the Klan was formed because "following the end of the Civil War, there was a dramatic surge in African American political power." Since Barack Obama is now President, history must be repeating itself. Oh, and both the Klan and the Tea Party held their first conventions in Nashville!

Actually, Nashville has pretty much been a consistent harbinger of death for independent political movements in recent history. It was where the famed Southern Party split in two in 1999, and where the Reform Party was forever fractured just one year later.

Scott says that what the Tea Party considers a "patriot" is "the dude with the Confederate baseball cap and the gun rack in the back of his pickup blastin' Lynard [sic] Skynard [sic]." Sounds like our kind of patriot! But then he writes, "The Dixiecrats of yesterday are the Ultra Right Wing Republicans of today." And that's the rub.

Disparagement of Dixiecrats aside, the convention that took place in Nashville over the weekend is not a product of the same movement that held the Tea Parties across the country last April, or took part in the march on Washington in September. No, this "convention" was just another example of the neoconservatives appropriating honest middle-America dissent for Repubican purposes.

Truth be told, "Tea Party" was a bad name for a 21st-century movement. While we would always encourage people to look to history for inspiration and guidance, yesterday's issues are not today's issues. And after the leftist media began lewdly referring to the protesters as "Teabaggers", the name should have been dumped.

Hopefully, the real American dissenters (taxpayers, independents, libertarians, conservatives) who founded the Tea Parties will not be fooled by the Republican Party's attempt to get them back in line. Let the Republicans be the Teabaggers, while the rest of us keep working for real change.

Dumbing Down History (Again)

Once again, North Carolina's educational system is making national headlines. Thanks to Fox News for alerting us to this year's plan by the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) to remove U.S. history from the course in U.S. history. Under the plan, the required 11th-grade course will now include "U.S. history only from 1877 onward."

Not so fast, says June Atkinson, Superintendent of Public Instruction, who claims the plan increases the amount of history education in the curriculum. "The years prior to reconstruction would have been covered with students three times before - in fourth grade (as part of North Carolina history) in fifth grade and in seventh grade."

However, a closer look at the proposed elementary school curriculum shows what's really going on. The 4th grade class in North Carolina history seems to be transformed into a study of how the North Carolina colonists destroyed the indigenous Native Americans. Fourth graders will now learn to explain the "causes and effects of European exploration and colonization on North Carolina American Indian groups." Fifth graders will learn to "analyze the relationships between European explorers and native peoples."

Things don't get better in middle school. Gone is any mention of the War Between the States in the 7th-grade course in North Carolina history. Instead, our children will learn about "the Indian Removal Act, governmental authority & racial tension during the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898, desegregation during the Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education." [Question for DPI: Are there any historic events worth teaching that don't involve discrimination against minority groups?]

This is the same stunt DPI attempted in 2001, when it plotted to remove the middle school course in North Carolina history, all the while claiming that it was actually increasing North Carolina history education. We didn't fall for it then, and after outraged parents showed up at town hall meetings around the state, the N.C. General Assembly amended the General Statutes to require two full years of North Carolina history education in the public schools.

Since DPI apparently didn't learn its lesson, contact your legislators again and let them know that you oppose this plan. North Carolina has too much history for the public schools to ignore it.

International Shakedown Museum

When the new International Civil Rights Museum opened this week in Greensboro NC, it was no surprise that the ribbon was officially cut by Skip Alston and Jesse Jackson.



Jackson is an alumnus of North Carolina A&T, the school whose students sparked the sit-in "movement" at the Woolworth's cafeteria where the museum is located today. Alston, past president of the North Carolina NAACP, is chairman of the non-profit Sit-In Movement, Inc., which was established to develop and run the museum.

It's also not a surprise that the museum has received annual donations in the $250,000 range from the City of Greensboro.

However, what surprises city councilmembers, according to the Rhino Times, is that the museum is actually renting the old Woolworth's building from the for-profit Museum Landlord LLC. And the sole member of this LLC is -- Skip Alston!

Perhaps the city council shouldn't have been surprised. Just last month, it was revealed that Alston convinced the Guilford County Commission (of which he is a member) to put the put the Ole Asheboro hotel project (of which he is a broker) first in line for federal stimulus money!

It seems Alston has learned to play the shakedown game well.

That Bastard Lincoln

North Carolinians have long held that Abraham Lincoln was a bastard, but now even the News & Observer is publicizing that argument.



Folks in Bostic NC claim that Lincoln was born nearby (on Lincoln Hill!) the illegitimate son of Abraham Enloe. Nancy Hanks, the future President's mother, was a servant girl in Enloe's house when she became pregnant and was banished from the Enloe home. She later married Thomas Lincoln, who adopted her infant son Abraham.

We see no reason to wait for DNA testing -- North Carolina should go ahead and stake its claim by adding the original Log Cabin Republican to its "Three Presidents" statue in front of the State Capitol, alongside his vice-president Andrew Johnson. We have a long history of ignoring "official" birthplaces. The monument's centerpiece -- Andy Jackson -- long claimed that he was actually born in South Carolina.

Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be ALE Agents

Why in the world did they have to pick Willie Nelson?



North Carolina Alcohol Law Enforcement (ALE) officers protected the ticket-buying citizens of North Carolina from dangerous country outlaws on Friday, arresting Willie Nelson's band for possession of moonshine and marijuana. As a result, Willie's Friday night concert in Kenansville was cancelled.

This might make sense except:

- ALE is supposed to be investigating the growing scandal that is North Carolina's state-run alcohol monopoly, not ruining everybody's weekend.

- It is practically entrapment for the state to promote its moonshine heritage for tourism purposes and then arrest visitors for partaking while they are here.

- There are tons of worthless stoned musicians constantly playing in this state, whose arrest would actually improve North Carolina.

North Carolina law enforcement is looking more and more like Roscoe P. Coltrane, serving no purpose except to protect Boss Hogg's monopoly on the liquor business. Maybe it's time we disband not only ABC but ALE as well.

Bipartisan Mismanagement

Chris Kromm of the Institute for Southern Studies frets that the North Carolina legislature is the most likely Southern state legislature to come under Republican control in the 2010 elections due to public disapproval of the Democratic party. If only 10 percent of existing Democratic seats change hands, the Republican party will enjoy an 8-vote advantage in the House and reach a "deadlock" in the Senate.




Kromm's concern seems to be that Republicans would use their newfound ability to control the redistricting process to disenfranchise "urban voters, African-Americans, Latinos and other key demographic groups." He needn't worry. The last time the Republicans held such a strategic position, they managed to squander it by scandalously selling control back to the Democrats. Just because former House Speaker Jim Black is now in prison doesn't mean that the corrupt North Carolina Democratic party is somehow above using any and all means to retain its majority.

NC Attorney General Asks for Federal Control

Who does Roy Cooper work for?

The Attorney General for North Carolina filed an amicus brief in a Supreme Court case encouraging the federal government to continue to have control over North Carolina state elections.

The case challenges the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which gives the US Justice Department total control over elections in states that have "historically suppressed minority votes." So why would Cooper, a state elected official, beg the US Supreme Court to put the federal government in charge of him?

These days, it seems North Carolina voters have more to fear from state elected officials like Cooper than the federal government. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court said the state could no longer rely on the Voting Rights Act to force the election of minority candidates. Hopefully, the Court will continue this trend and put North Carolina elections back in the hands of North Carolina voters.

Lottery Corruption Spreads to Supreme Court

Despite being passed in violation of the General Assembly's own rules and all standards of professional ethics, the North Carolina "education" lottery is here to stay.

The NC Supreme Court deadlocked in a 3-3 tie, which means that the lottery survives. Unfortunately for people who support good government and accountability, we will never know which Justices voted which way. Like everything else related to the lottery's creation, this becomes just another backroom deal that the public can know nothing about.

State Sen. Tony Rand says he's "delighted" that this "goes into the win column" in favor of the corrupt General Assembly. "To think that the taxpayers of North Carolina might be deprived that significant amount of money at a time when the state is facing unprecedented fiscal problems was a frightening thought to me." Tony, where is the money coming from if not from the taxpayers of North Carolina?

Bring Back Jesse Helms

Lots of people are missing former US Senator Jesse Helms these days. In a letter to the editor of the American Spectator, former Republican White House aide Joseph P. Duggan says conservatives need to ask themselves, "What Would Jesse Do?" While the mainstream media are sure to criticize Republicans if they fail to jump on the Obama bandwagon, Duggan reminds us that the former Senator from North Carolina was politically rewarded for acting as a roadblock:

For his success using the "hold" to delay or kill legislation and objectionable nominations for ambassadorships and policy positions, Helms was known by both friend and foe as "Senator No." ... The Senate needs a new conservative champion of foreign policy realism who will, to paraphrase Bill Buckley, stand athwart extremist nominees and noxious legislation, yelling "Stop!"

Meanwhile, in the Civitas Review, Helms Center President John Dodd attempts to answer the question, "What Would Jesse Say?" Dodd makes the case that Republicans did not lose power because they failed to work with Democrats -- but rather because they were too willing to compromise conservative principles:

[Senator Helms] would point out that we have far too often strayed from our principles on key issues in order to seek more political power. This has allowed the opposition to coopt conservatives on important issues, like the need for fiscal restraint. Senator Helms would remind us that, although we should be willing to compromise our preferences, we should never be willing to compromise our principles.

Here's hoping the next generation Jesse Helms is out there right now, about to make a big splash in North Carolina politics.

Welfare State

This can't be good: According to the Treasury Department,
North Carolina is receiving more funds from the TARP bailout than any other state except New York: $28.5 billion!

Of course, to say that North Carolina is receiving it is a huge misstatement. Almost all of that money is going to Bank of America. The mega-bank is essentially being rewarded for unfair competition - using unsustainable business practices to put all our homegrown local banks out of business. Now it's up to the taxpayer to sustain the Charlotte empire. They're taking us over with our own money.

Meanwhile, Gov. Perdue just appointed career bureaucrat Dempsey Benton to oversee the new federal "stimulus" money coming into the state. [This after Benton's dismal failure as Director of Health and Human Services during which, among other things, the state's mental health system was revealed to be a giant scandal.]

The State of North Carolina gets $6 billion (not the $25 billion that Bank of America gets, showing us exactly where we fit in the pecking order) to "rebuild the state’s infrastructure, including highways and schools." Again, North Carolinians are coughing up tax dollars to the federal government, which it uses in return to take ownership of our critical infrastructure. Evidence of this is that one of Benton's assignments will be to "establish lines of communication with federal and state agencies." In other words, he will be working to make our state agencies part of the federal government.

Monumental Ignorance

Columnist Peder Zane of the News & Observer is calling on Gov. Perdue to tear down the Confederate monument in front of the State Capitol. Zane refers to the Confederate monument as "Raleigh's most prominent piece of public art, a signature symbol with an ugly past representing values and ambitions that no longer reflect who we are."

What values and ambitions might those be? State sovereignty? Self determination? If those values no longer reflect North Carolina, then the solution is not to tear down Confederate monuments, but to build more of them. As Stephen Parsons writes, "that is a cause worth remembering with honor."

Business School

Gov. Beverly Perdue created a new post this week - "Chief Executive Officer" of the North Carolina state school system. Dr. William Harrison will serve as both CEO and Chairman of the State Board of Education.

Problem is, we just re-elected someone to run the school system - Superintentendent of Public Instruction June Atkinson.

Apparently the position was created to eliminated the logjam between the Board and Superintendent. Atkinson dealt with the conflict in her previous term by just abdicating her responsibilities, and appointing a Deputy Superintendent to handle day-to-day operations.

Although Perdue is being praised by the usual suspects for her decision, no one seems to be concerned about pesky details like democracy. The only position established by law is the Superintendent - not a Deputy and not a CEO - and that position is supposed to be determined by the vote of the people, not a political favor from a sitting governor.

Also, having the same person serve as Chairman of the Board and the Executive violates all sorts of corporate law principles and separation-of-powers concerns. Logjams in government are healthy things - they show that people in decision-making positions are looking over each other's shoulders, preventing corruption, all to benefit the electorate (or are we "shareholders" now?).

Sen. Martin Nesbitt (D-Asheville) says this is a blatant power grab by the governor to take over the school system and stifle any opposition:

What the governor says, goes, Nesbitt said, and no one within the state Department of Public Instruction is allowed to offer different opinions. "We've muzzled other voices that might tell us what we need to know," he said.

Equally troubling is that Harrison has been instrumental in imposing federal standards and federal regulations over the state education system, through evil tools such as No Child Left Behind.

North Carolina has the obligation to run its own schools -- even the federal statutes admit they have no authority to impose educational mandates on the states. But with no representative of the people in the process, Harrison and Perdue can completely hand control of the state educational system over to the federal government.

Corporate Handouts

The UNC Center for Competitive Economies reports that North Carolina should end its system of providing tax credits to recruit businesses to the state, according to Forbes:

"The incentives that worked well 10 years ago are not performing as well today and suggests that the portfolio should be reallocated to capture higher returns and changing (to) the types of incentives that we use," center director Brent Lane told the Joint Select Committee on Economic Development Incentives.

If that means ending corporate welfare for select industries with large lobbying budgets, then all is well. Unfortunately, the devil is in the details. The Fayetteville Observer reports that the "incentives" favored by the Center are just a more direct mechanism for funneling money to corporations:

The report said incentives expanded by then-Gov. Mike Easley are more useful. They include paying cash to companies for creating jobs.

Here's an alternative idea: Reduce state spending. End all programs that favor redistribution from one group (or one industry) to another. Reduce taxes across the board to reflect the fact that we no longer have so many welfare programs to administer. That favorable tax climate, and the hardworking population of North Carolina, are the only "incentives" industry should need.

Unconstitutional Judges?

Former N.C. Supreme Court justice Bob Orr is no longer on the bench, but still working to preserve the North Carolina Constitution. According to the News & Observer:

The North Carolina Constitution says the terms of the governor and lieutenant governor "shall commence on the first day of January next after their election and continue until their successors are elected and qualified."

That means Mike Easley was no longer N.C. governor as of 1 January. But instead of retiring and leaving the business of state government to his successor, Easley used the interim between 31 December and 10 January (when Beverly Perdue was inaugurated) to make midnight political appointments of his cronies:

On Jan. 9, he appointed the daughter-in-law of a close ally to a judgeship, and he appointed an administration official to a seat on the state industrial commission.

Easley's supporters would say Perdue could not have been governor because she had not been inaugurated. No argument there. But neither could Easley have been governor, according to the letter of the law. UNC law professor John Orth says Easley must have been governor because "somebody's got to be in charge."

As North Carolinians, it's time to demand that our elected officers begin to act based on legal ethics rather than political expediency. And the place to start is with the text of the Constitution.