Civitas thins the herd over on Jones Street
What a difference a month makes. Last month, EVERYBODY was getting perfect scores from Civitas. A month later, after the solar scam has come and gone, there are only SEVEN House members with perfect scores of 100: Mark Brody, George Cleveland, Carl Ford, Larry Pittman, Jeff Collins, Michael Speciale, and Chris Millis. (Kelly Hastings gets a score of 100, but he’s disqualified for taking a walk when the solar goons’ bill came up for a vote. No profile in courage there. Nosirree.)
What changed in a month? The solar giveaway bill that warmed the heart of every lobbyist in town.
Moore County’s Jamie Boles is sporting a conservative grade of 71.4 out of 100. Democrat William Brisson finds himself tied with Republicans Tim Moore, David Lewis, and Justin Burr. Republicans Nelson Dollar, Cody Henson and Chris Malone are all sporting grades of 66.7 — making them the most liberal in the GOP caucus.
Civitas is more generous with the perfect scores over in the Senate. ALL BUT FIVE GOP senators got perfect scores of 100.
Civitas rates a vote for the pay-to-play protect the giant hog farm donors as a conservative vote.
I respectfully disagree with that assessment.
You are spot on. That bill is an attack on the property rights of average North Carolinians in order to pander to a special interest, the industrial hog operations which are mostly absentee owned. Civitas has then one ass backwards. Conservatives should support individual property rights, not allow special interests to trample all over them.
As do I, and I won’t regard Civitas as a conservative organization so long as they make determinations like that particularly egregious example.
The law of nuisance has been developed over the centuries to balance one landowners rights against the property rights of neighboring landowners. This bill is a law on property rights, but of enhancing the property rights of some at the expense of property rights of others. It upends the existing level playing field and tilts that playing field heavily in favor of a powerful special interest, the big hog producers, at the expense of ordinary people of North Carolina. That is not conservative. It is trampling upon the property rights of the average Joe. It is blatant special interest favoritism.
It would be interesting to see if Civitas got some big contributions from the big hog producers
Any alleged conservative rating that leaves out the repeal of HB2 is as phony as a three dollar bill. Even though Civitas itself in its newspaper wrote about this being important legislation that separated the conservatives and liberals, they fail to use it in their rating. Civitas has trashed the credibility of their rating by failing to rate on this issue.
The repeal of HB2 is a defining bill on conservatism or lack of same in the General Assembly. It should not only be included but it should be triple weighted. One wonders is John Hood put a hex on using this issue.
One also wonders about the absence of the Constitutional Carry bill.
On the other hand, the judge bill is a simple partisan bill, not an ideological one, and should not be included in a conservative / liberal rating.
why is Justin Burr so low I thought he was making a conservative turn around last session taking a stand against the other liberal R goons but I guess that did not last long based on this score
This tax credit ‘syndication’ mess sort of describes how I feel about the “Syndicate”. They’re only helping themselves to tax funds, bellying up to the government trough at our expense. What a scam!
Sadly we have Tim Moore and probably Phil Berger, behaving like Marc Basnight and Jim Black in brown nosing the special interests instead of looking out for our citizens. Republicans were supposed to be better than that.
I thought it was the liberals who pander to the special interests not the conservatives. I guess they are concervative in name only, Republican ? Democrat? Both sides of the isle cannot be trusted to be for the people, it is time to do away with career politicians. They all need to be limited in years in office a career in politics means covering themselves in corruption and the smell of the sale of their office for huge gratuities from big business. With the amount of money they receive for their favors from their elected office they could donate their entire salary to charity and still become wealthy while in office. If they were investigated and found guilty of any impropriety they should pay restitution to the people and then serve time on a chain gang keeping the Hiways clean of litter and dog dirt at a rate of two years on the chain gang for every year in office.
And those elected officials that remain true to their office be rewarded for their service with the opportunity of advancement in public office and the gratitude of the people for resisting such temptations of easy money.