Gubernatorial relevance | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: Jim Bispo's weekly column appears in the Beaufort Observer.

    How do you suppose our Governess ever got to be our Governess?? I'm starting to believe (yes, I'll admit to being a slow learner) that if she had a brain, she might be dangerous (as the old saying goes). It's bad enough as it is. With her veto pen she seems to be trying to prove that a "lame duck" governess can still be relevant. (Still be??) Not so much when the "lame duck" status is self proclaimed. And not so much when the attempts at relevance are so poorly thought through. Talk about tilting with windmills...

    After three and a half years in office, she apparently has suddenly decided that she needs to assert herself. Do you suppose that's in the hope that folks will look back on her as a "strong" leader?? Reportedly the most disliked and least effective governor in the country and she is going to fix that in the last six months of her reign?? She is going to do it with her "Veto" pen?? Of course she is. I rather doubt that even if she was smart about it, six months would not be long enough to pull it off - especially in her case. She clearly has no idea about when to pick a fight and when to start getting agreeable.

    Let me lay this on you about the thought process that should go on when deciding whether to "go to the mat" or not. If you get into an argument and win - and the best thing that can happen to you is you break even, don't bother. Forget it. On the other hand if you get into an argument and lose and the worst thing that can happen to you is that you break even, have at it. Go for it...

    Then there's an old adage to the effect that "A little bit of something is better than all of nothing".

    And there's another which says, "Figures don't lie - but liars figure."

    It seems rather obvious that she was never exposed to any of those pearls of wisdom, or, if she was that no one ever explained their meaning to her, or, if they did, she was unable to comprehend them.

    How about a case in point, the veto of the budget. Suppose the legislature hadn't overridden the veto. She would have won the argument, but (in this case) wouldn't even have come out even. The schools would have been stuck with last year's budget. Last year's numbers weren't anywhere nearly as good as the new numbers included in the bill she vetoed. Instead, she wanted more. Instead of "testing the water at the legislature, she whipped out her "veto" pen. If her veto hadn't been overridden, she would have ended up with less. Not with a little bit of something, but all of nothing. Smart... Fortunately for the people of North Carolina, the legislature overrode her veto.

    And then there is the "fracking" (watch your diction) argument. As I recall reading the proposal, the bill required the development of standards for and controls over any fracking performed in North Carolina. Do you suppose no one told her in terms she could understand that the approval to drill for natural gas using the fracking process would require an affirmative vote (another one) of the legislature after the standards and controls had been developed and approved. (In the meantime, I suppose the environmentalists and the yellow dog Dems could develop a training program designed to ensure that all the Dems were fully trained in the proper use of the red and green buttons used in the NC legislature to indicate each legislator's voting preference.)

    Apparently our governess hasn't ever been exposed to the "Figures don't lie" adage. First we enact a law which would seemingly guarantee statisticians a much better income than they would have made as actuaries working for insurance companies or risk analysts working for banks or investment houses. They will now be able to work along side trial lawyers and presumably share in some of the normally outlandish remuneration they receive. But then we make it more difficult to "use mainly numbers" to support our arguments and there goes a lot of trial lawyer and statistician income. Using numbers (i.e. statistics) worked in school segregation cases, but look at what that cost and where it got us. Short answer: a lot and not so far.

    Don't tell me that most of the "death penalty bias law rollback" will be pro-bono, so we don't need to worry about the cost.. (Dictionary.com, defines pro-bona as "done or donated without charge; free: pro bono legal services." ) Except for the state lawyers who have to defend the cases, that's probably true, but what happens after they succeed in getting someone off after they have spent 5 or 10 or 15 years on death row?? What then?? I'll tell you. Another court case (presumably involving the same lawyer) in which a big dollar judgement against the state will be pursued. When the lawyer prevails the "bias convicted" person will likely be handsomely remunerated for the time they spent on death row, with a normally obscene amount of that settlement going to the lawyer.. When that happens, it will also likely be a big pay day for the person who made it all work (the statistician) - unless the lawyer figures out a way to keep it all (which is clearly within the realm of possibility).

    In any case, what we see is the Governess, apparently aided and abetted by a folks who seemingly want to make it easier to get folks' sentences changed, trying to assert some relevance. Better luck next time. All we can hope is that the folks who will be arguing against this law in the courts get a truly fair and honest hearing and outcome. If that happens, they will surely lose.

    What I see happening is that the "do gooders" among us subscribe to the "figures don't lie" part of the adage. This looks strangely like the same argument on which they base their anti voter ID arguments. The realists among us seem to also subscribe to the latter part of the adage, (i.e. "but liars figure").

    What our governess has shown us is that she either doesn't understand what pragmatic is or she is so doctrinaire that it doesn't matter. Forget relevance...

    D'ya Think??