Asheville City Council is getting district elections
In a unanimous vote last night, the North Carolina Senate approved a plan to carve Asheville into 5 electoral districts and to move the elections to even-numbered years.
The measure won Democrats' support - who knew it would pass regardless of their vote, so opted to get it amended in exchange for their votes.
That amendment changed the number of districts (from 6 down to 5) and switched the election cycle from odd-numbered years to even-numbered years.
From the Citizen-Times:
If the House agrees, the next council election would be in 2020 instead of next year. Council members would be elected to represent Districts 1 (West Asheville) and 2 (central and West Asheville) along with the regular member of council to be chosen citywide. The mayor's job and seats on council from the remaining three districts would be chosen in 2022.
The Senate unanimously adopted an amendment offered by Sen. Terry Van Duyn, D-Buncombe, and backed by Edwards to make the timing change.
Democrats traditionally have higher turnout in even-numbered years, whereas Republicans have higher turnout in off-year elections.
The Don't-Call-It-A-Trade-War trade war seems to be going well
You've likely heard about Harley-Davidson's decision to move some manufacturing to Europe because the new tariffs are so high it would put them out of business on that continent.
But did you hear about the nail manufacturer that's likely to be out of business by the end of summer? It's in Missouri, and it's cutbacks are affecting other businesses in that community. Like a cardboard box manufacturer:
Powderly, along with his brothers Greg and Steve, had to lay off four of the company’s temporary workers due to a downturn in business from a Poplar Bluff nail company. Mid Continent Nail Corporation has been hit hard with a 25% tariff on steel imports. It has slashed 60 temporary jobs and plans to cut 200 more by the end of July. It also faces possible closure around Labor Day.
The 48-year-old box company, which is made up of about 35 workers, has been in business with Mid Continent for more than 25 years. Powderly says until about ten days ago, his company had been shipping one daily tractor trailer load of corrugated boxes to the nail factory.
The President is mad, although this was predicted...
Ben Shapiro noted, "This language is indistinguishable from the Obama fans' claims that if companies fired people due to rising costs of Obamacare, that was because companies aren't quite patriotic enough."
And he's correct.
Also... more is coming...
This is fine.
I'm sure it's all going to be fine...
Is Iran turning towards the USA?
Are you watching what's happening in Iran? We should be.
From Commentary Magazine:
As I write in the July/August issue of COMMENTARY, the Islamic Republic faces a profound legitimacy crisis at home, with not a day going by without some explosion of popular discontent. The ideological currents tossing the mullahs this way and that, I argue, are strongly nationalist. The slogans that daily ring out from the streets point to a growing revulsion with the regime’s Shiite-expansionist project, which has starved the national fisc, not to mention the population, and left the country sanctioned and isolated.
The latest slogan: “Death to Palestine!”
You read that right. In a country that has become synonymous with Holocaust-denial cartoon contests and threats to wipe Israel off the map, people are chanting “Death to Palestine.” Iranians don’t have a beef with Palestinians, of course. But they have had it with their regime’s decades-long underwriting of Hezbollah, Hamas, and other Palestinian terror groups. Why is our national wealth going to Gaza, they ask, rather than to Tehran, Isfahan, and Shiraz? The regime has no good answer to such questions. It has to resort to the truncheon, and that may work for a time, perhaps for many more years. But not forever.
Let's all hope Iranians are able to win their freedom with as little bloodshed as possible.
But, wait! There's more!
A former immigration judge has a sobering assessment of the problems with the asylum process we use to screen illegal aliens entering the country.
Dan Way at the Carolina Journal has a good write-up of yesterday's Supreme Court ruling on North Carolina's partisan gerrymandering lawsuit.
The North Carolina girl who "sexted" with former Congressman Anthony Weiner was apparently romantically involved with a Charlotte teacher - who has now been arrested. A.P. Dillon has the story.