“If Jennifer Roberts, Roy Cooper and the far-left Political Correctness Mob she’s unleashed really care about the economic future of her city, they’ll stop the misinformation campaign immediately … before more damage is done”
That’s part of the statement released by Senate President Pro-tem Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore in response to Pay Pal announcing it won’t be adding jobs in North Carolina after all. I would be embarrassed if any of my clients ever released something like that. That’s the language of social media warriors, not state leaders.
Their statement is a pathetic attempt to shift the blame for the loss of business from Pat McCrory and the legislature to the City of Charlotte and its new mayor, Jennifer Roberts. It won’t work. The GOP has lost control of the message. The debate is no longer about bathrooms. It’s about discrimination. And if they keep releasing silly statements like this one, it will be about them.
The businesses that are protesting House Bill 2 can read. They know that the bill goes far beyond the bathroom issue, stripping away protections for LGBT citizens everywhere and limiting the ability of workers to sue if they’re harmed by discrimination. They also know that the language of the legislators pushing the bill is bigoted and fear-mongering, implying that transgender people are pedophiles and perverts. Today’s businesses don’t want to work in places that treat some of their employees like second-class citizens. The western world is becoming more tolerant, not less.
The North Carolina Republican leadership has gone full Trump. They’ve shed any veneer of respectability or maturity. Now they’re hurling insults and threatening people, just like their likely presidential nominee. Like Trump, they’re clearly not concerned about winning the moderate middle. They’re using juvenile and hyper-partisan rhetoric to try to regain control of the debate. It might work with a portion of their base, but it’s not the language that wins elections in North Carolina.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
I’m guessing that mock election was before Bernie made his attempt at “international relations” by flying to Rome (and arriving hours too late for the speech he’d scheduled at the Vatican). Nice try at impressing us with his international cred….And BTW, I’m still waiting for him to share his contributions with down-ticket progressive candidates (but I’m not holding my breath).
It’s long overdue to vote the Tar Heel Teabilly Taliban, and all of the Pat “One And Done” McCrory, A.L.E.C. along with Art “Mini Koch Brother From Another Mother” Pope out of Raleigh. This the last straw as we are now referred to on the internet blogs as the 21st century Mississippi of the South.
Time to change the interstate Welcome highway signs on the VA, TN, GA, and SC state borders to:
“Welcome To North Carolina – Set your Clocks Back 75 Years!”
How embarrassing.
This is delusional and I am doubtful whether most of you are even from North Carolina! Paypal is doing business in countries where LGBT’s are murdered, tortured and abused. Give me a break! Read the bill. Simply says that transgendered may use the bathroom of the sex listed on their birth certificate. If they wish to change their sex on their birth certificate they may! Simple solution for a small minority to take, when considering the rights – of ALL NORTH CAROLINIANS! Paypal is trying to bully and intimate North Carolinians, nevertheless, they still want North Carolinians to continue remitting their funds through their services. I have closed my Paypal account!
No, there is absolutely nothing simple about this bill, and, considering how far they are taking it, there won’t be many rights of ALL NORTH CAROLINIANS left.
I don’t know what bill YOU read, but the HB2 bill reversed an ordinance that was already in place in Charlotte that protected transgender people using public restrooms based on their gender identity. Not only that, this piece of crap bill has now overturned ordinances that would have expanded protections for those in the LGBT community.
But wait, there’s more!
The law limits how people can pursue claims of discrimination because of race, color, religion, national origin, biological sex or handicap in state courts. They also slipped into the bill that a city or county cannot set a minimum wage standard for private employers, a fact that hasn’t gotten much coverage in the media.
North Carolina offers limited protection for all workers, since this is an “at will” employment state. State law doesn’t have any protections for workers who are LGBT, which is why there needs to be a federal law prohibiting discrimination against LGBT’s applying for or already working at jobs. Behind the damn times! HB2 makes it much more difficult in that the state won’t create new protections based on sexual orientation or identity, as well as not allowing cities and counties to create protections.
Truth be told, MOST financial companies “do business in” all of those places, absent sanctions against them. Further, PayPal will continue serving NC customers and businesses as a transactor processor. That is, they will still “do business” in NC. Which they have done all along (as you obviously know as an account holder).
What they will NOT do is build a new global data center here, taking the 400 skilled jobs it would have brought and the investment in the local economy to another state that has less in common with those countries you mention.
This bill — like so many before it — is nothing more than a smoke screen to distract us all from the abject failure that is the NC General Assembly. It’s easy to get half the people to vote against their own interests if you can convince them they’re voting against the interests of the other half.
Phil Berger is a toxic shame to this State. Let’s give him his walking papers along with McCrory. They are ruining this State.
Reminds me of the slogan: “Welcome To North Carolina – Turn Clock Back 50 Years.”
The bottom line: there is obviously only one solution to all the nonsense going on in Raleigh, and that is getting the vote out in November to fire the Governor and certain, mostly Republican, members of our Legislature.
For anyone needing information, you can Google your county’s Democratic Party website and donate and/or volunteer in some way…
This degree of dissembling by the NC Republican Party leadership is a desperate reaction to their confusion and lack of consciousness.
The gall of Pat “Fat Cat” McCrory, Phil “The Pill” Berger and Tim “Less” Moore! To blame the mayor of Charlotte for their own political stupidity in pushing, passing and signing HB2 is a new low even for NC Republican’ts. I can only hope that Tar Heels see their stupidity for what it is.
The GOP = a teenage boy saying, “It’s not my fault that she let me get her pregnant!”
Ditto my comment made on “Bashing Big Business”
The tried and true method of blaming the media when it reports the facts never seems to work. The Republicans have tried to build their brand on economic growth in jobs while obfuscating the jobs. McCrory touts every indication that the economy is improving under the Republican cudgel. He never mentions the loss of thousands of jobs when his budget sent teachers’ assistants packing. Now that the private sector has expressed repugnance and an intention to avoid the state, the Republicans are blaming the media on the negative message. Maybe it’s just bad business to be racist and bigoted.
Typical Republican move – do something so backward and discriminatory that there are business consequences, and then blame the liberals who are on the same side as the fairly conservative businesses! Maybe Republicans should grow a conscience so they will know right from wrong before they pass discriminatory laws.
Sorry, McCrory, but your bill is the cause of businesses wanting nothing to do with our backward state. Thank goodness for Cooper and others who are standing up to you.
The bad news is that North Carolina has become the laughing stock of the modern world for our embarrassingly backward views.
The good news is this is hastening the demise of the deliberately un-representative conservative stranglehold on our once progressively moderate state.
It’s not just the West. Even Japan, with its deeply conservative culture, is edging toward SSM.
The Carolina Setback rolls on!