Ward on Words

Freshman Senator Thom Tillis, straight off of the most expensive senate race in US history, is in the news. Sadly, he's in the news as an advocate of deregulating hand-washing in restaurants . I guess we all now know, thanks to the brilliance of Tillis, that hand-washing regulations are crippling the restaurant business (and FYI, low-wage restaurant jobs are growing in NC - as are other low-wage jobs. Jobs that provide middle-class incomes are harder to find in this "right-to-work" state.) Here's the quote : “I was having a discussion with someone, and we were at a Starbucks in my district, and we were talking about certain regulations where I felt like ‘maybe you should allow businesses to opt out,’” he said, “as long as they indicate through proper disclosure, through advertising, through employment literature, or whatever else.” Tillis was, at the time, the minority whip of the North Carolina House of Representatives. “She said, ‘I can’t believe that,’” he ...

So three years ago, I moved away from a state that half of the residents want to leave. We left Illinois to settle (for now) in the Tar Heel state. And I have to say - coming from a state everyone wants to leave, a state that has nothing in the coffers but a lot of IOUs to state employees looking for their pensions, a state with political corruption famous throughout the nation - nothing I witnessed in the Land of Lincoln has prepared me for politics in the Tea Party Tar Heel state. Nothing in Illinois - not a series of governors on the path to jail, not Blago and his big mouth (and fondness for Kipling), not RM Daley and his crony capitalism that helped the Loop grow pretty flower boxes and a very expensive Bean as the neighborhoods withered, not the epic failures of privatization set into play by Daley before he retired - none of this prepared me for politics in North Carolina. That's how crazy it is in this state today. When we moved to North Carolina from up north, it w...

Two years ago, I moved from Illinois to North Carolina. It was a jarring move - I'm a life-time resident of the Land of Lincoln, a state where politics are considered a true sporting event. Yet despite the state-wide passion for political sport, governance of that state is at an all-time low. Governors tend to end up in jail. Illinois is facing a terrible fiscal crisis caused by unfunded pensions. Pat Quinn, Illinois' current governor, is now withholding legislator salaries until the passage of pension reform; House Speaker Mike Madigan, the most powerful man in the state, has filed suit because he wants his paycheck regardless of whether or not a significant, long-term problem is solved for the state. Because of the serious and ongoing political issues of Illinois, I was, to be frank, looking forward to a change of pace.  And the Tar Heel state CERTAINLY has provided that for me... in spades! The GOP has taken charge - and as a colleague told me the other day, the state to...