webodec3ARCHIVEPreview
Open in TheBrain

Josh Stein Gov

===

NC full of wacky nazi wignuttery

---

AN 11 25

It’s been a hallmark of most of the noteworthy political movements that have emerged and risen to power in modern times that their leaders aspired to use government power to improve society. Plenty of these movements were deeply flawed or downright fraudulent, but virtually all – even some of the worst authoritarian parties and leaders –have at least professed to have a plan for using the levers of power in an intentional way to make life better for average people.

Here in the U.S., until recently, even archconservatives who opposed many social welfare programs were still committed to strengthening the national defense in order to help defend the nation and its allies against foreign adversaries, and to boosting basic components of societal infrastructure that they saw as aiding in that effort — like public education, transportation and public health.

Weirdly and disturbingly, however, this is not the case with the MAGA movement. While it’s true that Donald Trump regularly dispenses absurd and delusional promises to magically solve every societal ill – promises that not even his most ardent supporters take seriously – when it comes to fashioning a real agenda for getting things done, the modern right is consistently and harmfully silent.

Indeed, save for their efforts to: a) enhance state police power vis a vis immigrant communities and women seeking to control their own reproduction, and b) strengthen their own capacity to remain in power through gerrymandering and election-rigging tactics, it’s clear that the main objective of MAGA conservatives when it comes to public structures is tearing things down.

Nowhere is this better exemplified than in North Carolina where, after a decade and a half of conservative Republican dominance in state government, it’s virtually impossible to identify any public system or structure – public and higher education, public health, environmental protection, transportation, courts and corrections — in which things are demonstrably better than they were at the start of GOP rule.

And nowhere is this sad pattern better exemplified today in North Carolina than in the current destructive budget stalemate between conservative leaders at the General Assembly.

North Carolina is now almost five months into the 2025-26 fiscal year, and it continues to operate without a new state budget. As a result, numerous core public structures and systems – perhaps most notably, its already fragile and dramatically under-resourced Medicaid health insurance program – are operating under old law and old, inadequate appropriations.

Mind you, this is not – as an outsider might superficially surmise – the result of a conflict between the state’s Republican-controlled legislature and its Democratic governor.

No, in this case, GOP legislative leaders never even passed a comprehensive budget bill for Democratic Gov. Josh Stein to consider. Instead, the state is being held hostage to their internal disputes over how drastically and rapidly to further eviscerate the state’s regressive and inadequate income tax structure, as well as a series of other mostly petty matters – like Senate Leader Phil Berger’s need to appear sufficiently reactionary as he tries to fend off a far-right Republican primary challenger in 2026.

Gov. Stein has done his best to break the logjam and direct public attention to the destructive impact the stalemate is having – particularly on the Medicaid program, where the lack of funding certainty has forced his Health and Human Services department to slash reimbursements to providers to maintain program solvency. Earlier this month, he took the extraordinary step of calling lawmakers to Raleigh for a special legislative session to address the rapidly metastasizing problem that is likely to soon lead to preventable deaths of people no longer able to access health care.

It was precisely the kind of strong and common-sense leadership that North Carolinians undoubtedly expected when they elected Stein by a wide margin last November. The session was supposed to have commenced on Monday.

Unfortunately, legislative leaders were unmoved. Much like the Republicans in Washington who, despite their control of both Congress and the White House, allowed their own internal conflicts to translate into a record-breaking federal government shutdown and huge new health insurance rate hikes for millions of Americans, state Senate and House leaders have simply ignored Stein’s directive and, in true Trumpian fashion, tried to disavow blame for the Medicaid crisis that their own failure to act has created.

And so, it appears that, absent a hard-to-imagine political 180, Republican leaders will stick to their plan to hold no further votes during the on-again, off-again 2025 legislative session, thereby allowing the Medicaid program – and dozens of other vitally important public structures and services — to wither on the vine while thousands of North Carolinians needlessly suffer.

And once again, instead of coming together to intentionally use the levers of government power to make life better for the many, Republican leaders will, in true MAGA fashion, remain committed to a do-nothing agenda for which the only discernible unifying principles are dysfunction and cruelty.

---

===

aN 3 24

On Super Tuesday, voters in North Carolina picked their gubernatorial nominees to succeed term-limited Gov. Roy Cooper: State Attorney General Josh Stein on the Democratic side, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson on the GOP side.

Stein's campaign has a lot of political ammunition to use against Robinson, a far-right Holocaust denier and Christian nationalist who is stridently anti-gay, has called Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. a "communist," and believes that women should not have been giventhe right to vote in the United States.

Likely 2024 GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has endorsed him, and Democratic strategists are hoping that having someone as extreme as Robinson on North Carolina's ballot will benefit President Joe Biden in the swing state.

READ MORE:['Cowardly': NY Times pummeled for ignoring NC GOP nominee’s Hitler and Holocaust remarks

In an article published on March 11, the Daily Beast's Dan Merica stresses that the Stein campaign has another issue to use against Robinson: health care.

Democrats have been slamming Trump for promising to overturn the Affordable Care Act of 2010, a.k.a. Obamacare, if he returns to the White House in January 2025. But Merica points out that Robinson is even to the right of Trump on the ACA, which he considers a plot to "enslave everybody."

"Democrats are eager to focus the race on health care in the southern state, hoping to use Robinson's opposition to the Affordable Care Act and his more recent antipathy to the state expanding Medicaid as a focal point of attacks against the Republican, employing a similar strategy that worked for the party in 2018," Merica explains. "Robinson's particular complaint about the health-care law, signed by President Barack Obama in 2010, was against one of the most popular provisions: the ability for children to stay on their parents' health-care plans until they turned 26 years old."

Trump had high hopes for abolishing Obamacare when the America Health Care Act passed in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2017, but the bill failed in the U.S. Senate. And in the 2018 midterms, health care was a strong issue for Democrats — who didn't retake the U.S. Senate that year but recaptured the U.S. House of Representatives in a big way.

"Robinson, with his history of bombastic comments, has even argued for a more conservative position on health care than Trump, who made repealing Obamacare a focal point of his successful 2016 campaign and attempted to do just that when he took office in 2017," Merica recalls. "Trump, in a bid to assuage critics who worried that taking away health care with no replacement would be politically detrimental to Republicans, often said he would replace the Affordable Care Act 'with reforms that expand choice, freedom, affordability'…. He ultimately got on board with a Republican alternative that was projected to kick 23 million people off health insurance, significantly raise prices for people with pre-existing conditions, and send health insurance markets — according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office — into an 'unsustainable spiral.'"

READ MORE:[John Oliver smacks down Holocaust-denying GOP candidate and 'racist' Trump

Merica adds, "Robinson, however, advocated for full repeal of the Affordable Care Act with no replacement — an even bleaker alternative."

Merica points out that Stein's campaign is already attacking Robinson on Obamacare.

Elisabeth Greenleaf, campaigns director for Progress North Carolina and a Robinson critic, told the Daily Beast, "I can only imagine he will continue to double down on this stance. And our work is educating voters on the impacts of that. It's going to be a big issue in this race."

READ MORE:**Trump’s call to repeal Obamacare blasted as 'outlandish' as signups hit new record high

*Read The Daily Beast's full report at this link (subscription required).

===

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Stein

Joshua Stein (born September 13, 1966) is an American lawyer and politician who serves as the 50th and current Attorney General of North Carolina, a position he has held since 2017. A Democrat, Stein previously served as a member of the North Carolina Senate representing District 16 (Wake County).

While a member of the North Carolina Senate, Stein announced in 2013 that he would run for re-election in 2014 and then for North Carolina Attorney General in 2016. His former boss, Attorney General Roy Cooper, successfully ran for Governor in 2016. Following the 2016 Democratic primary, Stein resigned from his seat in the North Carolina State Senate to focus on the race for Attorney General. In the 2016 general election, Stein was elected North Carolina Attorney General, defeating Republican Buck Newton.[1]

Stein is currently running for reelection as North Carolina Attorney General.[2]

Early life:{:(style="margin-right:0.25em"):}:[edit:{]}:

Stein was born in Washington, D.C., the son of a civil rights attorney.[3] Stein's father, Adam Stein, co-founded North Carolina's first integrated law firm.[4] Stein graduated from Chapel Hill High School and earned his undergraduate degree at Dartmouth College. After college, he taught English and economics in Zimbabwe.[5] Stein then went on to earn degrees from Harvard Law School and the Kennedy School of Government.

Career:{:(style="margin-right:0.25em"):}:[edit:{]}:

He has worked for the Self-Help Credit Union in Durham and for the United States Senate. Prior to serving in the North Carolina General Assembly, Stein spent eight years as North Carolina's Deputy Attorney General for Consumer Protection. From 2012 until 2016, he served as Of Counsel at Smith Moore Leatherwood LLP, a regional law firm.

Stein also worked with the North Carolina Minority Support Center, raising capital to invest in small businesses, and InterAct, Wake County’s domestic violence prevention and care organization. Stein currently serves on the board of the Truth Initiative, America's largest non-profit public health organization.[6]

Stein was sworn into office as a member of the North Carolina Senate on January 15, 2009. After being re-elected, he was elected minority whip by his colleagues in December 2010.[7]

North Carolina Attorney General:{:(style="margin-right:0.25em"):}:[edit:{]}:

As Attorney General, Stein has sought and received additional funding to test North Carolina's backlog of untested sexual assault kits.[8][9][10] This has led to new arrests in cases involving a 2015 assault and attempted murder in Durham, North Carolina;[11] assaults in 2009 and 2010 in Fayetteville;[12] and a 1993 assault in Winston-Salem,[13] among others.

Stein is among the four state attorneys general negotiating a national settlement framework with drug companies over the nation's opioid epidemic.[14] He helped finalize a settlement with the opioid manufacturer Mallinckrodt in which the company agreed to pay $1.6 billion for its role in the epidemic.[15]

In 2018, Stein filed a brief with the United States Supreme Court arguing in favor of the Affordable Care Act.[16] In 2019, Stein became the first attorney general in the country to sue e-cigarette manufacturer JUUL for unlawful marketing to minors.[17]

Stein negotiated eight Anti-Robocall Principles with a bipartisan coalition of 51 attorneys general and 12 companies to protect phone users from illegal robocalls.[18] He also launched Operation Silver Shield, an effort to protect older North Carolinians from fraud and scams.[19]

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Stein won a preliminary injunction against a Charlotte tow company sued for price-gouging,[20] and announced the investigation of nine North Carolina-based sellers on Amazon who are accused of raising prices on coronavirus-related products, including hand sanitizer and N-95 masks.[21]

Recognition as a state legislator[

Personal life:{:(style="margin-right:0.25em"):}:[edit:{]}:

Josh Stein is married to Anna Harris Stein and has three children: Sam, Adam, and Leah.[5]

===

wow bad news cycle day, but not in echo bubble?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/this-vulnerable-gop-senator-was-a-top-recipient-of-postmaster-generals-alleged-illegal-donation-scheme/

republican Sen. Thom Tillis was a top beneficiary of a straw donor scheme orchestrated by Donald Trump’s postmaster general, Louis DeJoy,according to a lengthy and detailed article published over the holiday weekend by The Washington Post.

:{

}:

The Post reports that DeJoy pressured employees at his logistics firm to make large contributions to Republican candidates for over a decade and then reimbursed them with company bonuses—a ploy that would violate both federal and state laws prohibiting “straw donations” designed to get around campaign finance limits. DeJoy pressed for these donations in a bid to win influence as a political power broker, a strategy that culminated in his heavily criticized appointment as head of the United States Postal Service earlier this year.

But before Trump boosted him onto the national political scene, according to the Post, DeJoy directed his efforts chiefly toward politicians in North Carolina, the home state of New Breed Logistics, which he ran for more than 30 years until it was bought out in 2014. Tillis, who faces a difficult reelection this fall, received almost $300,000 from New Breed employees when he first ran for the Senate in 2014—a race in which he defeated incumbent Democrat Kay Hagan by just a 48.8-47.3 margin.

In a statement, a Tillis spokesperson told the Post, “Neither Senator Tillis nor our campaign had knowledge of these findings.” However, Tillis’ November opponent, Democrat Cal Cunningham, has called on the senator to return the donations. House Democrats, meanwhile, say they are investigating DeJoy, and North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein said that allegations like those made in the Post‘s report would “merit investigation,” though he declined to comment further.

==

===

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/postmaster-general-urged-to-immediately-step-aside-as-north-carolina-ag-backs-probe-into-campaign-finance-fraud-allegations/

w/ ith less than two months before U.S. elections in November and amid demands for his immediate firing, high-level Democrats in Congress and the Attorney General of North Carolina called for both state and federal investigations into Postmaster General Louis DeJoy after explosive reporting Sunday afternoon contained allegations that the GOP megadonor now running the U.S. Postal Service criminally violated campaign finance laws.

First reported by the Washington Post, the story included claims from former employees of DeJoy, most notably from his human resources director David Young, who said DeJoy—a major donor to the Republican Party and President Donald Trump—would reimburse workers using payroll bonuses for political giving, an arrangement that is unlawful under both federal law and in North Carolina, where his logistics company, New Breed, is located.

North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein responded to the news Sunday evening by backing an investigation.

“It is against the law to directly or indirectly reimburse someone for a political contribution,” Stein said in statement on social media. “Any credible allegations of such actions merit investigation by the appropriate state and federal authorities. Beyond this, it would be inappropriate for me as Attorney General to comment on any specific matter at this time.”...

==