You don’t have to be on the Left to agree that some outcomes are just bad. Wages should not grow at a too-slow rate. Infant mortality should never rise. Rivers shouldn’t be choked with poison, rural hospitals should not shut down, and a booming city shouldn’t lose $132,000,000 dollars in economic activity for a law that didn’t have to pass.
But Pat McCrory has overseen all those baleful developments. Politics aside, his record is one of comprehensive, objective failure. Yet to hear him tell it, every shortcoming of his administration is the fault of an outside force. And that’s when he acknowledges that the failures happened, and aren’t just an apparition conjured by the malignant warlocks of the media. He won’t take responsibility for his actions.
This election will test whether the people demand personal responsibility from their leaders. McCrory would like us to believe that damage is a depersonalized phenomenon–something that happens. The core of the Democratic campaign is an argument that events in public life are caused by people. They believe that power means something, and that when it is wielded for ill the malefactors deserve to be punished at the polls. It is a case that weaves together many American traditions.
Fifty-four days from now, we will learn whether that principle carries weight in NC politics. If Pat McCrory is reelected despite inflicting sweeping damage on the state, we will know that a slick ad campaign can cancel out a failed record. Public service itself will be devalued, and an insidious message will be sent to the young people of our state. Or we can uphold the standard that you deserve the blame or credit for what you do.
Conservatives claim to believe in personal responsibility. Let’s hope the voters show them what that means in practice.
Alexander Jones is an original contributor to PoliticsNC.
Contrary to taking responsibility, Gov. McCrory is comfortable repeating several lies about HB2 and his role in it. In spite of warnings by large, powerful organization that dire consequences would flow from discriminatory laws, the governor and the leaders of the North Carolina GOP defied business leaders, university leaders, athletic organizations and North Carolina citizens.
The governor and his henchmen refused to extend Medicare coverage, which was already paid-for by taxpayers, to the poor. The GOP made deep cuts in education, cutting per pupil expenditures and support staff. The governor’s record of supporting pollution of North Carolina streams, rivers and wells is an abomination. He has crafted lies which fly in the face of the facts, and he is quite comfortable speaking them into a camera or to audiences. He raised taxes on poor people and the middle class.
He needs to go.
The Trump story is one of TV power, celebrity, and lies. Leni Riefenstahl, Sound familiar? She was the woman who directed “Triumph of Will”. It contributed to the rise of Hitler.
I worked with labor, as labor, for the majority of my life. It was typical that I could well be the only man in the break room who had read a novel, much less essays, or had even done as Greenspan said we ought, and been retrained.
(For my modeling of the Transcendia tm Insurodollar, I am a qualified Creative Economist.)
If you think you can win without TV, you are simply wrong. If you even think movies are important, they no longer make the cut.
Games, it is games.
If you really want to win just have a game made that people want to play, and give it away on line for a couple of bucks.
Thomas Mills & the 8th District Computer Game! Or the Not Conscious, or North Carolina Computer Game!
Try it.