north carolina Archives - Where Is The Outrage?

News Roundup – Egypt, Paul Krugman, North Carolina

The violence in Egypt is simply breathtaking. Maybe heartbreaking is a better term.. I understand that Egyptians, for the most part, weren’t happy with the Muslim brotherhood. I’m sorry. If you indeed had a free and fair election, you need to live with the consequences. I am sitting here in North Carolina seizing over what has happened to what was the most progressive state in the South. Our answer is not to take to the streets and begin randomly shooting people. Instead, we are organizing. We’re going to get more people registered to vote. We’re going to vote these ultra conservative Republicans out of office and take back our state.

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Paul Krugman had two excellent posts yesterday. The first post had two things that were very interesting to me. First, Professor Krugman wondered if most Americans knew that the budget deficit has been rapidly decreasing. Somebody from Google got in contact with him and they quickly put out a survey. This isn’t the exact same thing as a poll, but it does give you an idea of the power of the Internet. The poll suggested that over 75% of the respondents had no idea that the federal deficit had significantly decreased. This brings me to my next point, that the budget deficit has significantly decreased compared to GDP.

In Paul Krugman’s other post, he talks a little bit about the economy in the Netherlands. The Netherlands had the kind of “Grand Bargain” that several in Washington have been arguing for for the last couple of years. Basically, cut the federal budget and cut the federal budget some more. Then, when you think you’re through, cut the federal budget once more for good measure. Well, this didn’t work out so well for the Netherlands. Their economy is in the tank. (more…)

By ecthompsonmd|2013-08-18T22:36:22-04:00August 15th, 2013|Economy, Foreign Affairs, Legal|1 Comment

Disappointing

Amendment One is one of worst pieces of legislation that I’ve read in a long time. It will take years to undo the damage that has been done today. In my opinion, I don’t think that we need to add discrimination to our state constitution. Unfortunately a majority of North Carolinians disagreed with me. They believed that it’s okay to discriminate. They believed that women don’t deserve the same rights as men. They believe if your loved one is in the hospital you shouldn’t have an opportunity to talk to the doctor about your loved one or even visit your loved one in the hospital unless you’re in a heterosexual relationship. Or they were simply misinformed. (more…)

By ecthompsonmd|2013-11-03T17:15:14-04:00May 9th, 2012|Civil Rights|2 Comments

Redistricting confusion in the Lone Star State

There are several things that I truly hate about our political system. One of them is the intentional gerrymandering of voting districts which seems to occur in every state every 10 years. It doesn’t seem to matter who’s in power, the overall purpose of redistricting seems to be to openly suppress the vote of your opposition. I feel pretty confident this is what’s happening in North Carolina as well is Texas. The Supreme Court has rejected the redistricting map from Texas because it appears that it has violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. For this conservative court to unanimously reject a redistricting map is extraordinary. Texas now has to scramble to get a map approved before its April first primary. This is a daunting task.

We need to adopt a computer-generated nonpartisan redistricting process. (This is a very detailed map using a nonpartisan process.) In my opinion, this is a must in order to take back our democracy from special interests which includes both Democrats and Republicans.

By ecthompsonmd|2012-01-22T12:35:48-04:00January 22nd, 2012|Civil Rights, Elections|Comments Off