Comments for NC's Green New Deal – the anatomy of a betrayal | Eastern North Carolina Now

This legislation must be brought to the public’s eye so that it can be trashed! NC should not be a model of communist Russia!

Commented: Friday, September 30th, 2022 @ 1:02 am By: PaulaRevere

Mr Steed:

TY for your concerns and good commentary.

FYI, prior to HB951 being voted on, I wrote up a detailed Critique of it, and emailed it to every NC Republican legislator. Here is the url .

Some Republican legislators stood up to their leadership (e.g. Larry Pittman, George Cleveland, etc.).

However, despite my attempt to get citizens to speak to their representatives about this, not enough did.

For more info, please send me an email at "aaprjohn" at "northnet" dot "org".

Commented: Tuesday, November 16th, 2021 @ 11:50 am By: John Droz, Jr.

One point that is important to this sandbagging of the GOP base is that several Solyndra Republicans, those who are go-fers to the solar grifters were heavily involved with that backroom stakeholders group, led by Rep. John Szoka (RINO-Cumberland). These Solyndra Republicans were the bridge between the special interests and the GOP leadership and are particular bad actors in this debacle.

Before blaming all committee members, one should look to see if they attended the committee meetings where the committee substitutes were adopted. Those records should exist. With many scheduling conflicts, it is common for some to not be in attendance. Unfortunately, records are rarely kept of who votes how in these committee meetings.

When the leadership moved these substitutes, they moved them fast and with the least notice possible. They suckered many who would not normally be expected to vote for such leftwing garbage. I talked to one usually solidly conservative Senator who was crowing about how they had stopped the solar / wind stuff that came over from the House. He apparently did not comprehend that the CO2 reduction mandate run through Cooper's appointees actually made it much worse. The fast track - 3 days from when the Senate committee adopted their last minute substitute to final passage - left no time for legislators to research what was going on or for constituents to let them know we did not want this Green New Deal garbage. That was all planned, to be sure.

House Speaker Tim Moore got temporary support from some conservatives by misrepresenting what the Senate would do with the bill and by promising to put conservative on the House - Senate conference committee. Since it appears that there was never any intent to ever appoint such a committee, and one was never appointed, this was another scam to temporarily get some key conservatives on board at least to get the bill over to the Senate where the worst of the dirty work was done.

The Freedom Caucus was indeed Missing in Action on this, the most left wing bill ever adopted by the NC General Assembly. Its chairman and his wife had bouts with Covid where both were hospitalized and both had complications, and were thus out of action during much of the key time period, and whatever mechanism the Freedom Caucus had for secondary leadership to take over apparently did not work out.

I wish I could see some way to undo this terrible legislation, but as long as Cooper is governor and we still have Solyndra Republicans in the legislature, I don't see a path to do so. Our state's electric consumers are just screwed and it was RINOs who did it to us.

Commented: Tuesday, November 9th, 2021 @ 9:28 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Those primarily at fault in this sell out to the left wing Democrats are the GOP legislative leadership and the members of those committees that did the committee substitutes.

As to leadership, in the Senate that would be Berger, Hise, Harrington, McInnis, and Perry (Jim Perry of Kinston, who is now in Beaufort County's Senate district). In the House, that would be: Moore, Stevens, Bell, B. Jones, and Hardister.

On the Senate Agriculture, Energy, and Environment Committee that would be B. Jackson, Barnes, Burgin, Craven, Jarvis, McInnis, Sanderson, Newton, Proctor, and Steinberg. Also on that committee is Edwards, but he voted against the bill.

On the House Energy and Public Utilities Committee, that would be Arp, Szoka, Watford, Pare, Miller, Bell, Brisson, Dixon, D. Hall, Hastings, Howard, Humphries, B. Jones, Riddell, Saine, Sauls, Setzer, Strickland, and Winslow.

These are the "Republicans" who screwed NC electric consumers to the wall to do the bidding of the climate alarmists and "woke" Duke Energy. They all deserve primaries.

Commented: Sunday, November 7th, 2021 @ 3:33 pm By: John Steed

Oh the way of bad legislation:
A) The House vote I referred to gets it started;
B) Then, it breezes through the Republican majority Senate with great bi-partisanship and a 42 aye and 7 noe vote;
C) And, back to the House this Frankenstein monstrosity comes and 37 Democrats are now all for it;
D) 3 House Republican members stand firm and vote against it again (Brody, Pittman, Torbett);
E) 2 House Republicans vote for it after after initially voting against it;
F) 5 House Republicans vote against it while 4 of them initially voted for it;
G) 7 House Republicans are absent from the final vote (6 of them initially voted for it and 1 was absent for both votes).

Thus, the anatomy of a betrayal.

What do I get from this? I'm surely going to miss Pittman.

Commented: Saturday, November 6th, 2021 @ 11:45 am By: Charles Hickman

Charles, I share your disgust at this fiasco. It is worth remembering that AOC's Chief of Staff openly said that the green new deal was not really about the environment but was actually about building socialism. Why are Republican legislators, or at least the leadership, so keen to help build socialism?

I would not heap too much blame on the original bill sponsors. There was nothing wrong with the original bill they filed, and in fact it would have helped. The small modular nuclear reactors are a very efficient way to make electricity. The real blame falls on the members of those legislative committees who approved adding all this other leftist rubbish to what had been a good bill. Hopefully they will draw primary opponents, especially the ones like Szoka and Steinberg.

The first vote in the House is not the key vote I look at either. A number of usually solid conservatives were misled on that vote. The vote in both House and Senate on the Senate version, when everything was clear as to what was up is the key vote I look at, and yes some of those who voted for it then are shocking to say the least. Some were absent, and those with excused absences generally had a good reason, such as medical, but those without excused absences who just took a walk are not much better than those who voted for it.

What happened with this bill tells conservatives that we have a lot of work to do within our own party. This bill goes against the principles set out in the North Carolina Republican Party platform. If our legislative leadership goes off the reservation like this, there must be a way to rein them back in.

Commented: Friday, November 5th, 2021 @ 9:32 pm By: Steven P. Rader