At some point in the future, North Carolina will more fairly distribute rewards and risk than we do today. What we don't know is when that will happen and how much suffering will occur in the meantime.

Not the alternative we're looking for:

"With wood you get half the amount of energy typically than with conventional fossil fuels." Mitchell says it'll take at least 100 years for everything to equal out. "You're going to be doing more harm than good than if you were to just be using fossil fuels."

I could argue that (most) wood contains far fewer toxins and heavy metals than coal, but none of these are the proper questions. The proper question is: "Why are we still relying on steam to generate our power?" Which includes nuclear power, by the way. It's just a fancy (dangerous) steam engine. This is what we need:

Funny stuff at Policy Watch.

I don't know what's worse; playing dumb, or actually being dumb:

He twice read Ingalls' comments, in which he said: "We have to eviscerate McCrory. There is no way to prop up Dalton enough." "I didn’t know what it meant," McCrory told the crowd. "It means they are going to open me up and take (my) guts out."

Bolding mine. Myers Park Pat is actually trying to do a couple of different things with this comment. First, he's trying to appeal to the anti-intellectualism prevalent in such a crowd, and second, he's trying to convince them he's part of that crowd. But what he's really doing is insulting the entire crowd. And causing me to have a "visceral" reaction, but that could be partly due to the grilled chicken I ate last night.

Inexplicably, there are reports that the Legislative Ethics Committee is not going to investigate the Speaker's-Office-Sex-With-Lobbyists Scandal.

The Legislative Ethics Committee denied the investigation request saying it did not have the authority to investigate legislative employees or lobbyists. The committee governs the conduct of elected lawmakers in the General Assembly

On what planet do these people operate?

The Republican war on women has a steady ally: the good old boys' club we call the fourth estate.

The numbers are stark, but not exactly surprising. When it comes to coverage of issues that directly affect women, the beacons of traditional journalism—the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Sunday talk shows—clearly subscribe to the Darrell Issa school of thought: that the people best qualified to talk about women are, in fact, men.

The information graphic below the fold, from 4th Estate, will turn your stomach.

The waiting list for drug treatment grows each week:

According to NASTAD’s most recent ADAP Watch, released on May 17, there are 10 states with waiting lists, totaling 2,552 people. That report shows NC as having 185 clients on the waiting list, which was our official count at COB on May 17. At that time, NC made up approximately 7% of the national ADAP waiting list.

That was two weeks ago. Now there are 220 individuals on the waiting list. So much for a moratorium on the death penalty.

Have you heard Mitt Romney’s friends are in our state this weekend? They’re here for the North Carolina Republican Convention in Greensboro. Tim Pawlenty, Rick Perry and even the Donald (as in Trump) will be there to make their case for the Republican ticket.

And with friends like these, its no wonder Mitt’s not here too.

Welcome to Greensboro fellas ... and now a message from your leader.

Enjoy the show and don’t forget that Etch-A-Sketch.

Updated with embedded video by James.

Hat tip to the Progressive Pulse and Yes Weekly:

Workers routinely aren’t paid the full amount they are owed. While it isn’t a legal term, the practice is commonly called “wage theft,” and it comes in many forms: missing hours on a paycheck, no overtime pay, a promised raise or paid vacation time that never materializes, being paid below minimum wage and many other examples.

I guarantee you won't hear a peep out of Republicans in the Legislature over this. They're too busy tweaking the system to take away even more worker's rights, and the Libertarian solution is "If your employer is ripping you off, go ahead and quit! Eventually they'll have to change or nobody will work for them!" And here's why they do it: