
{"id":15814,"date":"2011-02-10T10:35:31","date_gmt":"2011-02-10T15:35:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=15814"},"modified":"2011-02-10T10:35:31","modified_gmt":"2011-02-10T15:35:31","slug":"uh-jobs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2011\/02\/10\/uh-jobs\/","title":{"rendered":"Uh, jobs?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The new crews in charge of the North Carolina General Assembly and the U.S. House of Representatives were swept into office during a time of massive unemployment and amid a growing concern that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the government\u00e2\u20ac\u009d was trying to control too much of our lives.<\/p>\n<p>So, naturally, among the first things the new leaderships does \u00e2\u20ac\u201c after sending a symbolic raspberry to the Obama Administration over health care \u00e2\u20ac\u201c is get down to the business of regulating the reproductive rights of a little more than half the population.<\/p>\n<p>It is a chore to try to understand the pretzel logic coming out of Washington and Raleigh these days, especially if you try to overlay what we saw during the last campaign with the priorities of the people now in charge.<\/p>\n<p>In this state, as it was elsewhere, the economy and the dearth of jobs was at the heart of voters\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 discontent.<\/p>\n<p>Whether you then believed it was a good idea to throw the incumbents out or not, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard to believe after a week of watching them in action that the new batch in office has any special aptitude for the hard work of righting the economy.<\/p>\n<p>What we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re seeing instead is a stream of bills aimed at reigniting fires over social issues like abortion and gay marriage as well as attempts to undo the work of previous legislatures, like the Racial Justice Act and anti-bullying legislation.<\/p>\n<p>And this week, just in time for the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, the state House flirted with the nascent nullification movement via a resolution asserting state sovereignty. How quaint.<\/p>\n<p>None of this business is going to add a single job. And none of it should be a surprise.<\/p>\n<p>Over the years, plenty of bills aimed at exploiting hot-button social issues and outright jingoism have been introduced, but the Democratic leadership never allowed them to get close to the floor. Now that the new GOP leadership is comprised of or beholden to the very people who introduced those bills, we are fixing to have the kind of divisive, angry debates we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve managed to dodge all these years.<\/p>\n<p>There are legislators who no doubt think they have been sent to Raleigh to refight the culture wars of the 1990s. But by and large, voters from both parties indicated they want basically the same things. They want jobs, better public schools, greater access to higher education and a safe and healthy environment.<\/p>\n<p>It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time to stop the political posturing and get these issues back to the top of the priority list. Legislators should save the save the tut-tutting over the 10th Amendment and the supremacy of the federal government for after hours at the Oyster Bar and spend their time on the clock trying to get this state moving again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The new crews in charge of the NC General Assembly and the U.S. House were swept into office during a time of massive unemployment and amid a growing concern that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the government\u00e2\u20ac\u009d was trying to control too much of our lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15814"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15814\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15876,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15814\/revisions\/15876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}