The Decline of North Carolina Continued (Round 2)
An editorial last week lamented North Carolina’s abandonment of progressive policies in the seven months since Republicans took control of both the executive and legislative branches in the Tar Heel State for the first time since reconstruction.
The piece cited backward slides in areas such as public education, tax fairness, voting, abortion rights and the mean-spirited slashing of federal unemployment benefits for roughly 70,000 residents.
To that depressing list, I would add one more item: the destruction of North Carolina’s public financing system for judicial elections.
Enacted in 2002, the program set a laudable national example by allowing candidates for the bench to reduce their reliance on the special interest campaign money that now dominates state races for important judicial posts across the country — creating conflicts of interest that a new study from the American Constitution Society links to friendly rulings for business interests by both Republican and Democratic judges.
http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/16/the-decline-of-north-carolina-continued/
= new reply since forum marked as read
