There’s a new bill in the legislature to repeal House Bill 2, or repeal parts of it. Once again, the only people happy with it are the sponsors. Liberals say it leaves in place discrimination against the LGBT community. Conservatives like Dan Forest aren’t going to support anything that might lift discrimination.
The legislature likes to blame other people for the debacle but they have nobody to blame but themselves. They passed HB2 to override a local ordinance passed by a single city in the state. While the heavy-handed overreach was bad enough, they also packed in a bunch of legislation that restricted the actions of local governments across the state and erased protections for LGBT citizens that were already in place.
The Republicans expected to fire up their base. Instead, they hurt our recovery. They didn’t anticipate the backlash against the bill and now they’re powerless to fix it.
So far, we’ve lost a bunch of high profile sporting events like NCAA championship games and the NBA All-Star game. Yesterday, Bryan Moynihan, the CEO of Bank of America, said that we’re losing a lot of business and that we can’t calculate the cost because we don’t know how many companies are marking North Carolina off their lists as a location for expansion or conventions.
In response, Republicans keeping talking about how fast our economy is growing and how much better we’re doing than other states. In reality, we’re catching up because our recovery has been so much slower than other places. Our economy is certainly improving but Republicans would have more to crow about if it weren’t for their self-inflicted wounds.
HB2, though, is probably just the final straw for businesses looking for a place to expand or convene. The whole country knows that the voter suppression bill targeted African-Americans and young people to make voting more difficult for them. The country also watched the legislature pass a law of state-sanctioned discrimination that would allow magistrates to opt out of marrying gay couples. Those companies don’t want to do business in a place where their employees would be treated like second-class citizens.
Before the GOP took control of the state government, North Carolina was known as a welcoming and open state. HB2 is really a sinister Humpty Dumpty tale where Humpty is our carefully cultivated reputation. The GOP pushed him off the wall and now all of Berger’s horses and all of Moore’s men (and women) can’t put Humpty together again. What a shame.
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 >
A polite suggestion about the power of words:
Please stop referring to leaders and followers of the GOP as “conservatives.” Neither Lt. Gov. Dan Forrest nor any other Republican in the legislature or the Council of State is a conservative. They are radical deConstructionists, part of the radical right-wing branch of political ideology. Giving them the polite, and once respectable, name “conservative” is an insult to true conservatives, who do not wish to destroy the existing social, political, or cultural order.
I say this as a writer who knows the meaning and value of words; as a political junkie who knows how powerfully the language used in public discourse can influence thinking about public policies; and as a very progressive Democrat who considers himself a staunch conservative: that is, I believe in the Constitution of the United States, in the radical enlightenment vision that underlay its development, in the Rights of Man (of humankind), and in the normal pace of progress and improvement in the life of humankind that has pulled us forward from clan to tribe to nation-state, from tyranny to slavery to feudal indenture to democratic republic … You get the gist.
So, please, when you refer to those people who support the GOP’s radical deConstructionist agenda, call them what they are: right-wing radical. NOT conservatives.
Financial analysts with tell you that economic performance statistics are a look at the past. When you are looking at stock market performance, unemployment or GDP statistics you are looking at what has already happened. Performance statistics are a convergence of multiple factors. So when politicians claim credit for the growth in the North Carolina economy, they are saying, in effect: “We have no idea how things work.”
The bad effects of HB2 would not have been reflected in North Carolina’s jobs numbers prior to its having been enacted on March 23, 2016. After the measure became law, there was a period of time when its implications became understood. All of the ill effects of HB2 are prospective, not retrospective. Proponents of the Bathroom Bill pointed to the strong performance of the North Carolina economy at that time, but the figures cited were irrelevant. They were the glory days of the past.
North Carolina’s economy was hit hard by the Meltdown which began in 2008, Unemployment at the start of the Meltdown was around 5%, but the nightmare cycle of mortgage foreclosures, banking contraction, and business closures was only beginning. Eventually, the state’s unemployment rate reached double-digits in 2010. Even a profound change in the state’s fortunes takes a while before it runs its course.
HB2 is only 11 months old. Be patient. Things will get worse. The last NCAA basketball tournament was held here in March prior to the enactment of HB2. This is the first year of the NCAA basketball ban on North Carolina venues and the first year the ACC tournaments will be held outside our borders. There were immediate negative results last year with famous entertainers canceling their gigs. Those were minor and temporary effects. We will begin to see figures reflecting the downturn in economic results later this year.
Famous people shunning a place can do damage to the brand name, but the immediate impact on jobs was minimal. There could well be the unanticipated and opposite result as well. The good effect of turning Bedford Falls into Potterville. Bigots and racists flocking to the North Carolina coast and mountains to fly their Confederate flags and to beat up liberals, gay people, and their wives. We could become a haven for deplorable people. Tattoo parlors, gun shops, target ranges, beer joints, hoards of Harley riders rumbling through our neighborhoods, with XXX theaters and bikini shops popping up everywhere. But those markets are limited compared to high-tech businesses we have courted in the Research Triangle.
The longer-term impact will be felt as the state becomes associated with the block of bigoted, racist places where no one wants to go on vacation, no decent company would hold a conference, where no one wants to build a factory and where no one will want to send their children to school. That will take a while. Contracts are written for hotels, convention centers and ground-breaking for the future. Our state has not yet felt the true impact of HB2. The longer it is the law of this state, and the longer the state is held up to nationwide ridicule, the worse it is for North Carolinians.
No one has ever accused republicans of ‘forward thinking.’ You’re absolutely correct
Exactly, Jay. We have no good way of more accurately gauging the adverse economic impact of HB2 on the state until a few years down the road (and I’ll say REGARDLESS of whether HB2 is repealed son or not). That’s when all the decisions made by organizations–since March 2016 in their board/meeting rooms–to drop NC from consideration as a convention site, an investment location, or an expansion opportunity will become more obvious and more measurable. And one measuring stick will be how well–or poorly–NC is doing compared to neighboring southern states such as SC, VA, TN, and especially compared to how NC USE TO DO against those states in the convention and entertainment biz, as well as in corporate re-location and investment competitions.
If the outcome is positive, it will be because Republicans have fought off the forces of liberal evil and prevailed. If the outcome is negative, it will be because Governor Cooper has somehow defiled the good people of this Great State and implemented his stated goal of repealing HB2 in spite of Dan Forest and the virtuous God fearing men and women who fought it at every turn. The people who just wanted to keep sexual predators out of bathrooms and showers.
Woe be visited upon the heads of those who buy tickets to NCAA tournaments, rock concerts, and other venues that supported the dark works of those who repealed the last vestige of human decency and protection afforded to our young people from those who would prey upon them on the cold tiles of the State Education System lavatories and showers. A rueful day indeed.
By the time you’ve read this far, you should hear the steady drip, drip, drip of sarcasm from the previous two paragraphs.
But they’ll cling to HB2 chapter and verse until they’ve had their noses rubbed in it. They have collectively failed to see the obvious; HB2 is just a piece of paper. The only thing it has done is polarize and drive away.
100% agree with you, Thomas! Amen!
HB2 has to be repealed. Period, Simply, clearly, without much compromise, and with an honest admission from GOP state leaders that it was discriminatory, ill-advised, and harmful to transgenders as well as the state’s image and business/job growth . That’s the only way NC’s image and economy can get a jump-start on fully healing and recovering from the GOP’s error in judgment.
Yes, I am fully aware that the above might NEVER happen, as the NCGOP is likely just too ideological, backward, pandering, proudful, and small-minded to allow it to happen that way. But it’s what’s needed and I hold some hope!
This legislature is not going to do that period. And I am not sure this state will see a legislature that will anytime soon but who knows. Anyway looking at this objectively there are a group of legislators from both parties are trying to piece something together. You may not agree with what they come up with but they seem to the only ones trying to find something that has a realistic chance of passing something.