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Ted Cruz

7 (6.5%)

Rick Santorum

16 (14.8%)

Michelle Bachmann

13 (12%)

Chris Christie

23 (21.3%)

Rand Paul

49 (45.4%)

Total Members Voted: 107

[Mictlantecuhtli]

I'll just leave this here.

Shouldn't make the entire topic about the gun "debate" though.

[GlyphGryph]

The only problem I'd have with it is that legislating through your constitution is fucking bullshit. It's not like it's the only state with that particular bit of stupidity though.

2.) is pretty crazy if you actually read his statements. He's basically saying he doesn't like Universities, doesn't agree with the purpose of Universities, and wants to shut them all down or change them into vocational schools/technical colleges. It also represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how jobs and education interact. Many Humanities and Liberal Arts majors have HIGHER placement rates, in-field, than "business" majors, which seems to be what he wants to switch funding to. The article actually covers all this pretty well though.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

The proposals that touch on spending are good or bad policy compared to the state deficit. You certainly don't think New York, Illinois, and California are sane with such debt levels, do you?

Considering that all three of those states are making money for the Union instead of draining it, yes.

Is severe unserviceable debt a sane practice?

Yes.

For a group that preaches the benefits of capitalism, conservatives don't seem to get this very much. You have to spend money to make money. That is how making money works. Investment is the only way to get a net gain. Is it a gamble? Yes. Every economic decision is a gamble. But not playing the game doesn't help us, it means we'll never make money.

As loathe as I am to quote him:

If you owe the bank one hundred thousand dollars, you're a liability. If you owe the bank one hundred million dollars, you sit on the board of directors.

Debt puts our foot in the door. It gives us influence, because eventually some of that money is going to be paid back even if we aren't debt free. It's economic MAD and it is the only thing that keeps our current financial system spinning.

You've spoken against increasing taxes before, so let me tell you: If you want America to ever be in a position in which raising taxes won't be necessary to keep the country running, the government has to play the game. It's that or increased taxation, far more increased than it will have to be to fund money-making projects. Call it an investment into our collective financial future.

[RedKing]

Since this is local politics, I really wouldn't know the details, but being able to fire people is a really useful thing, even on state boards.

That's why I provided articles that give the details. Replacing some board and commission members here and there over time is expected. As is possibly replacing a member with whom you have a particularly salient conflict with. Wholesale purges so you can staff the boards with cronies is bullshit that hearkens back to the spoils system. They know they have a trifecta of power, and they're looking to use it to entrench themselves as much as they possibly can before they start getting voted out.

The proposals that touch on spending are good or bad policy compared to the state deficit. You certainly don't think New York, Illinois, and California are sane with such debt levels, do you? Is severe unserviceable debt a sane practice?

Is gutting your state university system (the oldest in the country and regarded as one of the premier university systems in the country) a sane practice?? Businesses, especially high-tech ones, have chosen to locate in North Carolina specifically because of our university system. They're not just coming here for the comp sci majors or the biochem majors, they're coming because of the cross-pollination of ideas that occurs when you have three top-notch universities in close proximity to each other, and that includes the humanities and liberal arts. This is pure ideology and it's bad for long-term business prospects in North Carolina. We'll see a brain drain like nobody's ever seen around here before.

As for conceal-carry, many states have will-issue policies and armageddon hasn't happened yet.

The issue isn't concealed-carry itself. We already have a fairly permissive concealed-carry law on the books. What this is about is the same reason they floated and got passed a constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage, despite the fact that it was already illegal in North Carolina: it's a judicial firewall to allow them to flaunt the Federal government. If all you have is a law against something, Federal law trumps state law. But if something is specified in your state constitution, you have a much better platform to argue from in court if you wish to defy the Feds. To grossly oversimplify it, state law < Federal law < state constitution < Federal constitution.

The language of the proposed amendment even couches it in terms of "resistance" and "God-given rights". 
Yes, let's have a second Fort Sumter over assault rifles and high-cap clips. Maybe when the ocean rises to claim the Outer Banks, they can fight off the sea by shooting it dead.

[FearfulJesuit]

I assume business is telling him to sod off, then?

Man, if the Republicans keep going like they're going, the Democrats will become the business party. No CEO likes a higher tax rate, but he's an idiot if he doesn't like going over the fiscal cliff and brain drains even more.

[Grek]

I realize that this thread is mainly progressives preaching to the choir, but actually, those things aren't crazy. Best policy? Maybe not. Gibbering mad? Nope. Since this is local politics, I really wouldn't know the details, but being able to fire people is a really useful thing, even on state boards.

Government is a big deal. People underestimate just how many people there are in America, or even in their own state that are effected by the government.  Let's look at the state in question: North Carolina. It has just under 10 million people living there. Your average nuclear family has 4 people. A policy that would be an honest and maybe forgivable mistake for a single family (push your kids not to get a Humanities degree) is literally 2500000 times worse if you're the Governor of North Carolina and make a similar call (push students in the state away from Humanities degrees). And it's even less forgivable than that, since the government has paid experts on staff who's only job is to tell the state government whether or not various education-related laws are a good idea or not. The head of the family can be excused for not knowing better. He doesn't have the time to research every decision he makes. Sometimes he has to just go with his gut. The government can get expert knowledge, can pay for studies, can do everything in their power to be sure they're doing the right thing. And if they don't, they're responsible for all the people they hurt (or, could have helped but didn't) because they decided to make their policies in ignorance, or to ignore the facts and pick based on politics or ideology.

The specific policy choices mentioned are bad ones. They would be bad for a family business, and they're millions of times as bad when the government makes them.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I assume business is telling him to sod off, then?

Man, if the Republicans keep going like they're going, the Democrats will become the business party. No CEO likes a higher tax rate, but he's an idiot if he doesn't like going over the fiscal cliff and brain drains even more.

The Democrats are already the business party. The Republicans just keep up the fiction that their policies are the only way to improve the economy because Lord Reagan made it happen by exploiting the short-term growth that can be caused by deregulation, which has its own consequences for individuals and the environment. Now even that has shorted out and they can't do anything but try to yell as loudly as possible that they make money and the Democrats don't. On this, the Tea Party especially lives in its own delusional bubble.

So don't be fooled: It isn't a choice between government services and a good economy. Those two things are related.

[FearfulJesuit]

I wonder if it's too early to put a list of potential primary candidates in the OP.

I'd really love to see Warren v. Santorum. That would be epic.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Let the election thread take care of that when the time comes, three and a half years from now.

[FearfulJesuit]

Sorry. Old habits die hard, y'know.

[RedKing]

I assume business is telling him to sod off, then?

Man, if the Republicans keep going like they're going, the Democrats will become the business party. No CEO likes a higher tax rate, but he's an idiot if he doesn't like going over the fiscal cliff and brain drains even more.

Depends on their ideological leanings. Certainly, the hardcore conservative among business seem to be revelling in watch them long-haired, hippie liberal professors squirm and fret. And there is an argument to be made that ivory tower degrees don't have the greatest job prospects compared to engineering. But that's a decision for the students and their families to make, not the Republican Party.

[FearfulJesuit]

Interesting editorial at the Huffington Post: is Karl Rove finished? And if so, what does that mean in future?

It'll be interesting to see whether the GOP will go down into the dust in the next few years, or whether fresher faces like Susanna Martinez and Marco Rubio can remake it...

[RedKing]

Rove's stock as a kingmaker has been in steady decline since 2006. Especially damning is the feeling within establishment GOP circles that Rove helped to stoke the Tea Party surge, then lost control of it when it began disrupting establishment candidates and platforms in 2010 and 2012. The Tea Party hates him because he began to actively work against them in the 2012 primaries.

[Trollheiming]

2.) is pretty crazy if you actually read his statements. He's basically saying he doesn't like Universities, doesn't agree with the purpose of Universities...

What is the purpose of universities? You could say that it's about teaching critical thinking, but that's not been a proven outcome. I daresay many people enter college looking to advance up the job market food-chain. So universities become de facto vocational training for the knowledge economy. Therefore we have to grade them based on the aspirations of their students, not some emotional tripe about education being a good unto itself.

Do you want to hear a real crazy person? Here you go, from that same article... "The governor offended me as a UNC student, as a social science major, as a North Carolinian and as a public-education-supporting Democrat," Booker said. "It is our minds that enrich society, not our careers."

In crazyland, you can eat thoughts, drive thoughts to starbucks, and your iPhone is conjured up by thinking about its existence. None of these things are created by people holding down a job. The iPhone is not created by engineers with specialist educations that built up a career by hard work. It's created by ruminating about third-wave feminism over coffee.

I don't want her mind or its thoughts, the observed product of which so far is muddle-headed uncritical thought deifying her professors. I don't think her mind actually can produce anything that I would regard as wealth.

They know they have a trifecta of power, and they're looking to use it to entrench themselves as much as they possibly can before they start getting voted out.

That seems rather sane, actually. You said the Republicans were crazy, but actually, becoming entrenched and creating a local machine has been done in many places like Chicago and New York by the perfectly sane Democrats!

This is pure ideology and it's bad for long-term business prospects in North Carolina. We'll see a brain drain like nobody's ever seen around here before.

Well, it's true that many businesses need people proficient in generalist skills like writing a legible report and articulating a concise point. However, this is a failure as far down as at the highschool level. People should have been taught more argumentation, more logic, more grammar and style there. University is not a place for remedial subjects, and businesses are actually merely chasing after the few university students who acquired these fundamentals of education by accident on the path to a university degree. We really need a back-to-basics movement, because I have seen too much shoddy writing from English grad students.

When I was in university, my university had a push to improve the report-writing of its engineering students, so every lab was taught by a pair of TAs, one an engineering grad student and the other an English grad student. I was decent enough at theory and capable at doing projects, but I shone at technical writing. I wrote the most amazing lab reports, properly worded, formatted and concise--with the most impeccable grammar and usage. This liberal arts idiot actually made a correction on one of my reports. I wrote "more quickly" and she marked it wrong and corrected with "quicker."

Despite that "more quickly" is adverbial, and "quicker" is adjectival! Whatever trash dialect of English she speaks to her family isn't valid in technical literature and certainly doesn't give her the right to lower my grade. The only problem with modern English grads is that they don't really know English.

The language of the proposed amendment even couches it in terms of "resistance" and "God-given rights". 

I think the language is an unfortunate mix of the reactionary and the faddish, but the goal seems lucid and non-crazy. You were able to explain why it is being done and pinpoint a worthwhile advantage. It's a given that opponents won't like it, but that hardly makes it crazy.

[Nadaka]

Oh yeah, another nifty item....NC legislature is looking at slashing uneployment benefits, EVEN THOUGH doing so would mean passing on $600 million in Federal funding. Of course they would be doing this right before I'm going to be laid off.

The measure would reduce the maximum weekly benefit from $530 to $350 per person. If it passes, North Carolina workers will no longer receive long-term compensation starting in July, since states cannot remain eligible for federal unemployment insurance if local lawmakers cut weekly benefit amounts.

They're literally passing up free money to fuck over the unemployed. I'm beginning to think this is their plan to reduce unemployment -- force the unemployed to move somewhere else.

Voluntary deportation.