The HB2 Debacle: They Did Not Think This Through

Opinion | thepilot.com

Poor Pat McCrory. Poor General Assembly. Guess convening a special session to ram through a poorly-thought-out, hastily written, bigoted and ignorant anti-LGBT bill didn’t make everyone rush to do business in our fair state. Who’d have thunk it?

Seems that HB2, the abominable legislation aimed at depriving our cities and towns of the ability to protect the human dignity of their citizens as they see fit, immediately drew more than just criticism from some of the very businesses that our supposedly pro-business, pro-jobs, and pro-growth Republican overlords claim they want to bring here.

The online payments site PayPal canceled plans to expand its facility in Charlotte, citing HB2 as the reason. “The new law perpetuates discrimination, and it violates the values and principles that are at the core of PayPal’s mission and culture,” PayPal CEO Dan Schulman said in a press release announcing the cancellation. That cost the city an estimated 400 jobs.

So who needs PayPal, anyway? Buncha bleeding heart liberals trying to impose their radical tolerance agenda on the people of North Carolina. For that matter, who needs Hulu or Lionsgate Films, both of whom who are moving the locations of TV shows and films previously scheduled for production here? Who needs Braeburn Pharmaceuticals, which says it’s considering pulling the plug on a proposed $25 million dollar facility in Durham?

Who needs companies like Google, PepsiCo, Hewlett-Packard, Bank of America, Apple, Red Hat, Pfizer, Microsoft, Marriott International, or any of the over 100 companies or organizations who have come out against the law? Who cares that some of them have said they’re either pulling some or all of their business out of N.C. or are seriously considering doing so?

Who needs travelers from the states of New York, Vermont, Washington or Minnesota, or cities like Atlanta, San Francisco, Boston or Seattle, all of which have banned personnel from “nonessential” travel to our state on their states’ or cities’ business?

And hey, maybe those people who might have been employed by PayPal, Braeburn et al., can get employment as bathroom monitors, peeking over the tops of stalls and standing by the urinals to make sure that no person with unauthorized biology is using the public restroom. Eternal vigilance is, after all, the price of making sure the lady in the next stall truly has all the proper lady parts, or that the dude standing over there preparing to relieve himself is all dude, if you know what I mean.

Oh, and ladies, that macho-looking character who just swaggered into the ladies’ room? Don’t worry, he’s probably just a trans man. Believe me, he’d rather be in the bathroom that matches the gender he feels, but you know, his birth certificate says he’s “actually” a woman, so let’s just all try and get through this, mmm’kay? Let’s also just hope he’s not some creepy dude pretending that he’s a trans person whose birth certificate says he’s a woman, which was kind of the thing the law was supposed to prevent, wasn’t it?

Do you get the feeling that Gov. McCrory and the General Assembly might not have thought this thing through?

It gets worse. A “state policy declaration” dating back to 1977 says that it’s North Carolina’s policy to protect citizens from discrimination in employment based on “race, religion, color, national origin, age, sex or handicap.” The courts have held that gives those discriminated against the right to seek redress in the courts of North Carolina. But a line in HB2 that amends that declaration says that “no person may bring any civil action based upon the public policy expressed herein.” Many legal experts say that passage wipes out not just the rights of LGBT people to sue in state court, but also the rights of all people seeking relief in our courts for all kinds of discrimination. We can only hope that was inadvertent.

Confronted with the rising backlash, McCrory desperately tried to change the subject. “The people of North Carolina,” he said, “want to talk about roads and economic development and jobs, and that’s where I’m going to focus my attention, not on ridiculous restroom and locker room policies that some people are trying to force onto the private sector.”

Hey, Governor, you and your cronies brought this up. And “economic development and jobs” are precisely the things that are being hurt by this boneheaded bill. So, yeah, “focus your attention” on getting rid of this debacle, not trying to brush it under the rug.

Oh, and I’m terribly sorry if this hurts anyone’s feelings, especially the tender sensibilities of our governor, but my religion requires me to call out and mock the bigoted, the hypocritical, the cynical and the stupid. My religious liberty requires you to respect that. So there.

Whose Side Are They On?

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion


Imagine, if you will, the following scenario: Your neighbor has spilled toxic waste in your yard. You take him to court. Your lawyer stands up and tells the court the neighbor should clean up the mess he made in a “reasonable time.”

“I’ll do better,” His Honor says. “I’ll tell him to clean it up immediately.”

“Hooray!” you think. “I got more than I asked for!”

Then your lawyer announces he’s appealing the judge’s ruling. Immediately is too soon, he says. We want that nice, squishy “reasonable time” language.

You might be upset. You might wonder whose side your own lawyer is on. And you’d be right. But that’s pretty much what happened last week when our state Environmental Management Commission was in court over the problem of coal ash contamination by Duke Energy, aka Duke “Progress” Energy.

State regulators have known for years that coal ash is nasty stuff. It’s a byproduct of coal-fired power plants and contains poisons like arsenic, selenium and cadmium. It’s been piling up in wastewater ponds owned by Duke Energy for years.

But they’ve been sitting on their hands until a coalition of environmental groups sued last year under the Federal Clean Water Act. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources finally got off its butt and filed environmental violations against Duke’s coal ash pits, but only after meeting with Duke Energy’s chief lobbyist.

Then they immediately offered to settle with the $50 billion company for $99,112. Duke could probably pay that out of the change in the couch cushions at its headquarters.

After a stormwater pipe in one of the ponds sprang a leak, dumping as much as 39,000 tons of the ash into the Dan River, the public outcry caused DENR to back out of the sweetheart deal with Duke. So you might have thought that when the matter came to court, the EMC, which “oversees and adopts rules for several divisions” of DENR, might take a sterner line, especially after Gov. Pat McCrory suggested that his administration would get tougher with Duke.

You might have thought that, but you’d be wrong. The EMC argued that it didn’t have authority to order an “immediate” cleanup. When Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgeway said, “Actually, you do,” you might have thought that EMC might go, “Cool. We can do a better job defending North Carolina’s environment now.”

You might have thought that, but you’d be wrong again. EMC, apparently deciding that a toothless watchdog was a good thing to be, announced that it would be appealing the ruling to the N.C. Court of Appeals. Tell me again: Whose side are these guys supposed to be on?

I’m sure all this has nothing to do whatsoever with the fact that McCrory worked for Duke for more than 28 years. I’m sure the fact that Duke has provided more than $1.1 million in support to McCrory campaigns since 2008 has nothing at all to do with the fact that the people he tasked with protecting our environment are in court arguing for an easier ride for the people who are trashing it.

It’s true that the governor directly appointed eight of the commission’s 15 members (including one of Duke Energy’s former lawyers), and the remaining seven members were appointed by Republican House Speaker Thom Tillis and Republican Senate leader Phil Berger, both McCrory allies.

But I’m sure that has absolutely no influence over the way our so-called environmental regulators are bowing and scraping to McCrory’s former employer and biggest supporter and asking, “Sirs, we don’t want to bother you, sirs. How much time would you like to clean up the horrendous mess you made, sirs? … Until you’re doggone good and ready? That would be fine, sirs. Please excuse us, and feel free to kick us in our behinds on our way out.”

If you truly believe none of that is connected, I have some waterfront property to sell you on the Dan River. Cheap.

Oh, and by the way, shame on you, Democratic Attorney General Roy Cooper, for your complicity in this farce. I actually had some hope for you for a while, but you’ve turned out to be just another remnant of the limp and weak Perdue administration, whose fecklessness and corruption made it possible for these oligarchs to take over and sell us out to the highest bidder while you drew up the sale papers.

Thanks to McCrory and his cronies, thanks to the people who voted for them, and thanks to the lame and wimpy Democrats who made it all possible, it’s Duke Energy’s state now. Their state, their water, their dumping ground.

They own it. We just live in it, unless we get off our own behinds and vote these rascals out.