TRUTH, TAXES, AND SENATOR BUDD'S FIB: Ted Budd doesn't want folks to pay the share of taxes the law says they owe. He doesn’t want those people who need help from the tax collector – the federal government’s Internal Revenue Service, to have adequate staff to help people with questions or to make sure they don’t pay a penny more or less than what is due. He wants it to be more difficult for those who have questions or who need help to get it. He wants to make it easier for people to cheat on their taxes -- forcing the rest of us honest folks to take up the burden of supporting the nation --- including the tax scofflaws Budd cares so much more about. Budd is dishonest. He says there's going to be 87,000 new IRS tax collectors invading people's homes and offices. The truth, as Budd SHOULD well know it, is very different. The additional money, in the Inflation Reduction Act, provides money to modernize the IRS and make sure there are enough workers to REPLACE about 50,000 in the agency’s workforce expected to retire or leave in the next six years. That is a problem having a huge impact as well on local, state and national public AND private employers. The additional workers will largely bolster direct services to those who need assistance or have questions of the agency. The truth means little (or nothing) to people like Ted Budd, whose entire political platform is based on misconceptions about what government does or should do. That comes from owing fealty to people like Grover Norquist and other dark money mages, who don't give a damn about 98% of American citizens. You get what somebody else pays for.
https://www.wral.com/editorial-truth-taxes-and-sen-budd-s-fib/20698480/

SPEAKER TIM MOORE'S POWER GRAB: Since 2011, and until last week, it has been the rule in the North Carolina House of Representatives that there must be at least a day’s notice before a vote on overriding legislation vetoed by the governor – two days if the bill originated in the House. That rule was adopted in 2011 -- the same year Republicans initiated their now 12-year domination of both the state House and state Senate in the General Assembly. The provision was placed in the House rules at the behest of former Republican state Rep. Paul “Skip” Stam. Stam is no fair-weather partisan and at the time was the Republican Majority Leader in the House. Every representative present – including then Rules Committee co-chair and now Speaker Tim Moore – voted for it. The point of the rule is not to give any political party or state official any advantage or disadvantage. The point is to make sure citizens know what’s going on and can hold their elected representatives fully accountable. Giving notice on important actions – whether hearings and votes on bills before legislative committees, debates and votes in the state House or Senate – makes sure the public has a way to track and hold their elected officials responsible for their actions. Responsibility is exactly the kind of behavioral trait that Berger and Moore try to avoid, so they can keep shortchanging our public schools and block Medicaid expansion. And they will use every dirty trick in the book (and those not written yet) to get there.
https://www.wral.com/editorial-speaker-tim-moore-s-power-grab/20675246/

NEW HOUSE PANEL STIRS MEMORIES OF EARLIER MCCARTHY: Lawmakers point to outrageous abuses of the federal government’s unchecked law enforcement and intelligence apparatus, vowing to get to the bottom of the dirty business and root out the shadowy figures responsible. McCarthy on Thursday described the new committee as “Church style” as he trumpeted the first week’s work of House Republicans, including the creation of the panel. “Government should be here to help you, not go after you,” McCarthy told reporters. Democrats and historians see darker historical parallels. They liken the Republican zeal to pursue nebulous allegations of deep state conspiracies to the “Red Scare” days of a McCarthy from an earlier era: Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wis. The McCarthy hearings in the 1950s and investigations by the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1930s and 1940s have come to be seen as sordid, painful chapters in the congressional past, a series of communist witch hunts that needlessly destroyed lives. Lawmakers unleashed unfounded allegations in pursuit of sensational headlines and nonexistent infiltrators and traitors, and Democrats warn that the same could happen again. “Dozens of whistleblowers who have come and talked to Republican staff on the Judiciary Committee don’t think this is a ploy,” said Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, chair of the Judiciary Committee. “That is why they came to talk to us. They know how serious this is.” Right, just like the "dozens of whistleblowers" who claimed they had evidence of widespread voting fraud that led to Donald Trump's "stolen" election. Nothing but conjecture and conspiracy theories. We knew this was going to happen after Trump's (two) impeachments and the Insurrection hearings, but hopefully the media will give it the attention it deserves, which is very little.
https://www.wral.com/carl-hulse-adam-goldman-new-house-panel-stirs-memories-of-earlier-mccarthy/2066...

Porting to a new server, and there will likely be some disruptions. Our Facebook page will still be operational, and we'll try to monitor it regularly. But it may take some time to get things back up and running here.

BIDEN'S AMERICA FINDS ITS VOICE: Zelenskyy and his fellow Ukrainians have reminded Americans of the values and causes we used to admire in ourselves — the ardent hunger for freedom, the deep-rooted respect for equality and human dignity, the willingness to fight against brutal authoritarians who would crush the human face under the heel of their muddy boots. It is as if Ukraine and Zelenskyy have rekindled a forgotten song, and suddenly everybody has remembered how to sing it. Zelenskyy was not subtle about making this point. He said that what Ukraine is fighting for today has echoes in what so many Americans fought for over centuries. I thought of John Adams, Frederick Douglass, Theodore Roosevelt, George Marshall, Fannie Lou Hamer, the many unsung heroes of the Cold War. His words reminded us that America supports Ukraine not only out of national interest — to preserve a stable liberal world order — but also to live out a faith that is essential to this country’s being and identity. The thing that really holds America together is this fervent idea. Finally, Zelenskyy reminded us that while the authoritarians of the world have shown they can amass power, there is something vital they lack: a vision of a society that preserves human dignity, which inspires people to fight and binds people to one another. The lust for power, which leads to tyranny and subjugation, has been with us since we began to walk upright on two legs. And it will be with us long into the future. But these "Strongmen" are actually exhibiting weakness; a flaw in their character that drives them to dominate others. We have to (constantly) make the cost for such behavior higher than the benefit. De oppresso liber, forever.
https://www.wral.com/biden-s-america-finds-its-voice/20641310/