An NC tax plan that’s an exercise in villainy

BY GENE NICHOL

excerpt :

I’ll be the first to concede that the governor and the General Assembly mean to do a lot. They want to make it harder for black people to vote. They want to stop women from controlling their bodies. They want to shame and stigmatize lesbians and gay men. They want to disparage and marginalize immigrants. They want to dismantle the public schools. They want to eliminate environmental regulation. They want to foster purchased elections. They want to lay low their political opponents. The list is long. They’re ambitious sorts.

But their true sweet spot, their principal raison d’etre, the campaign to which they return enthusiastically in each succeeding session, is taking money and benefits from the impoverished in order to give more to, and to demand less from, the wealthy. They seemingly believe the main thing wrong with North Carolina is that those at the bottom have too much and those at the top don’t have enough. They have converted our government to an exercise in villainy.

Now, once you’ve kept a half-million vulnerable citizens from the Medicaid rolls, secured the largest unemployment compensation cut in American history, abolished the earned income tax credit, ended legal aid appropriations and made it tougher to afford to go to college so you can pay for a stream of tax cuts for the wealthy, you have to get creative to continue the oppressing crusade. But the income tax/car repair tradeoff shows our leaders are up to the challenge. And should they falter, the American Legislative Exchange Council stands ready to whisper in their ears.

The McCrory era will be adjudged a dark and shameful chapter in North Carolina history – a last gasp effort to cling to legacies of privilege and subordination, to deny the promises of democracy and dignity. That may seem unfair to a governor who appears unable to do much about anything that’s happening to his state. But saying: “I didn’t know what was going on and I couldn’t do anything to stop it” doesn’t excuse a chief executive’s destructive legacy. Even if you’re, otherwise, a nice enough fellow. Just ask George W. Bush.

Gene Nichol is Boyd Tinsley Distinguished Professor at UNC-Chapel Hill.

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