REPUBLICANS TAKE AWAY RETIREE HEALTH BENEFITS FOR STATE WORKERS HIRED AFTER 2020: People who go to work for the state beginning January 2021 will no longer qualify for state health insurance when they retire, a provision in the budget that caught critics by surprise. Republican state senators want limits on future retiree benefits to control costs and get the state more in line with perks private-sector employees get. The state employee health plan has a $42.2 billion unfunded liability, estimated future costs that are outpacing revenue. The retiree health care provision is in the budget the legislature passed this week. Republican senators filed a bill limiting future state employees’ retirement benefits that received a committee hearing earlier this year. That bill never went to a vote.
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/politics-columns-blogs/under-the-dome/article15...

Subsidizing fraud with taxpayer dollars:

The groups call themselves “pregnancy resource centers.” They used to be called “crisis pregnancy centers,” and have long been the bane of abortion-rights advocates, who say they mislead pregnant women into thinking they are abortion clinics, and then try to coerce them out of the procedure. The groups dispute that and say they are simply helping women at a difficult time.

“Time and time again Crisis Pregnancy Centers have been revealed to provide false information about both abortion and birth control,” said Tara Romano, Executive Director of NARAL Pro-choice NC. “It’s outrageous that our legislature would increase these centers’ funding without also creating a mechanism to hold them accountable.” But the anti-abortion groups dispute that characterization. They say they are up-front with the women who contact them, and are just making sure they fully understand their options.

Within this huge budget bonanza for anti-abortion propaganda mills is $300,000 to set up an operation (In the Capitol, no less) of a Texas-based group called the Human Coalition, whose main goal is to fool women into believing they're contacting an abortion provider. In order to understand their true motives, we need to hold our nose and take a dive into the land of fanaticism:

BURR CLAIMS SENATE BILL WILL STRENGTHEN MEDICAID, BUT IT CONTAINS VICIOUS CUTS: Burr said the bill would strengthen North Carolina’s Medicaid program, even as critics focused on the deep cuts the Senate bill would make in the government health insurance program for poor, elderly and disabled people. The cuts to Medicaid are deeper even than the $834 billion proposed in the AHCA. “We were hoping it would be an improvement. We don’t see this as an improvement,” said Julie Henry, spokeswoman for the North Carolina Hospital Association. “We’re very disappointed in this version. The thing that is difficult for a lot of people to see — there are lots of things that are key buzzwords and phrases and repealing a lot of the requirements of the Affordable Care Act — is how much of a burden it pushes to the state.” North Carolina has roughly 2 million people on Medicaid, according to Henry, a figure in line with the national percentage of 20 percent, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/politics-columns-blogs/under-the-dome/article15...

For the next day or two we'll be moving to a new server, so you may not see any new content posted, and you may experience some problems clicking stuff here and there. Also, there's a somewhat ugly yet comfortable sofa that won't fit with the decor of the new place, and we really don't want to leave it out by the road unless we have to. And no, it won't fit in that hybrid minivan, so you'll need to call your brother-in-law with the truck. Thanks ahead of time for your patience, and if you have any boxes, we could sure use them.