In the just released EIP report, North Carolina’s overall electoral integrity score of 58/100 for the 2016 election places us alongside authoritarian states and pseudo-democracies like Cuba, Indonesia and Sierra Leone. If it were a nation state, North Carolina would rank right in the middle of the global league table – a deeply flawed, partly free democracy that is only slightly ahead of the failed democracies that constitute much of the developing world.

Indeed, North Carolina does so poorly on the measures of legal framework and voter registration, that on those indicators we rank alongside Iran and Venezuela. When it comes to the integrity of the voting district boundaries no country has ever received as low a score as the 7/100 North Carolina received. North Carolina is not only the worst state in the USA for unfair districting but the worst entity in the world ever analyzed by the Electoral Integrity Project.

Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, nearly two years away from Election Day 2018, deposited $50 million into his campaign account this week in what party operatives billed as a "first installment" in the effort to win a second term for the wealthy former venture capitalist.

The contribution — nearly double what Rauner spent personally on his entire 2014 campaign — is an early indication of the massive amount of money that's expected to be spent on the 2018 election, even as it remains unclear who will emerge on the Democratic side to challenge him.

pacino wrote:white supremacist Richard Spencer wants to run for Congress in Montana.

td11 wrote:@allegrakirkland
Paladino, co-chair of Trump's NY campaign, said this in response to Buffalo newspaper's Qs about his '17 wish list https://t.co/WdyTQUNsdY

"The standard has been frozen at 2.5 percent since 2014 while lawmakers studied the issue. The veto means the standard grows by 1 percent to 3.5 percent in 2017 and then annually by 1 percent for several years until it reaches 12.5 percent in 2027."

To comply with the standards, power companies can build their own wind and solar installations or contract to buy the green power from independent companies that build them. Most power companies have bought the power.

Reaction from Sen. William Seitz, a Cincinnati Republican and the driving force behind legislative efforts since 2013 to modify or scrap the state's energy and efficiency mandates was quick and somewhat bitter.

"It is apparent that Gov. Kasich cares more about appeasing his coastal elite friends in the renewable energy business than he does about the millions of Ohioans who decisively rejected this ideology when they voted for President-elect Trump," he wrote in an email immediately after the release of the veto.

While praising Trump and his "amazing Cabinet of free market capitalists," Seitz vowed to make another effort in the coming year to get rid of the standards.

"We will do our part by launching a full-scale effort next session to totally repeal these [former Gov. Ted] Strickland-era mandates. With veto-proof majorities next session, we are optimistic of success.

The News & Eagle, with a circulation of 10,000, lost 162 subscribers who canceled the paper. Eleven advertisers pulled their ads, including a funeral home that had a sizable account. Someone stuck a “Crooked Hillary” bumper sticker on the glass doors of the paper’s downtown office. A man left a late-night message on the publisher’s voice mail, expressing his hope that readers would deliver, to put it delicately, a burning sack of steaming excrement to the paper.

A former mayor, Doug Frantz, 72, withdrew his participation in this year’s Pillar of the Plains events, which are sponsored by the paper and honor community leaders and volunteers. Emails, letters, phone calls and comments denouncing the endorsement have poured into the paper’s website and Facebook page, and online, the editorial logged more than 20,000 page views the week it was published, making it one of the most viewed articles to ever run on Enidnews.com.

Days after the editorial, Paul Allen, 81, one of Enid’s most prominent residents — he financed construction of the ballpark downtown — stepped into the paper’s offices on Broadway. He walked past the statue of an eagle in the lobby and canceled his 43-year-old subscription at the front desk. He might have done it sooner, but hesitated because he knows the publisher, Jeff L. Funk, whom he sees at weekly Rotary Club meetings.

“Looking back on it, I think it was all talk, but at the time I thought there was a possibility that he might take a swing at me,” said Mr. Mullin, a member of the editorial board. “And I thought this is crazy. This is a newspaper endorsement. Some of the people almost seemed hurt. Like, ‘How can my newspaper’ — in a small town like this, it’s their newspaper — ‘do this to me?’ I think there was almost a sense of betrayal.”

‏@realDonaldTrump 11h11 hours ago
The U.S. Consumer Confidence Index for December surged nearly four points to 113.7, THE HIGHEST LEVEL IN MORE THAN 15 YEARS! Thanks Donald!

@realDonaldTrump 29m29 minutes ago
Doing my best to disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks.Thought it was going to be a smooth transition - NOT!

pacino wrote:consumer confidence is up because old people feel great again. people under 35 ain't buying tickets for the #MAGA train. essentially, they're excited a republican is coming back.
https://twitter.com/TheStalwart/status/ ... 07/photo/1