Blust keeps fighting
John Blust was duking it out for tougher House rules during yesterday's floor debate, according to Mitch Kokai's account in Carolina Journal.
Some Democrats seemed to resent the Greensboro Republican's implication that problems in the House won't necessarily disappear with Jim Black.
"I think you’re off base," Rep. Paul Luebke, D-Durham said. "You're presenting yourself here as the Lone Ranger, as if the 120 of us are not well aware of the sad thing that occurred to this House with the plea that was filed several weeks ago in federal court.
"I think all 120 of us care about this House a great deal and how it's been damaged," Luebke said.
The problem with Luebke's defense, of course, is that most of the Democrats who served under Black's leadership never questioned or criticized his actions -- which were so obviously wrong that every major newspaper in the state called for his resignation beginning more than a year before his conviction. As long as Democrats benefited from Black's results, they were happy to overlook his methods.
Blust used a great analogy to question assurances by Democrats that everything is going to be just fine now:
"If it's going to be real change, then why won't we put it in writing? Why won't we put it in the rules? I'd like to take the gentleman at his word, but let me explain it this way: If you've had a house broken into, and a couple days later, the police caught the person who did it, you wouldn't say, 'Great. Now it won't happen again. Now I can sit back and do what I always did, and my house won't be broken into again.'
"No, you get a dog, you get floodlights, you get deadbolt locks for the doors, you get special locks for the windows, you form a neighborhood watch committee, you get an alarm system. You would do something to put in place some safeguards so that it can't happen again. That's all we're asking for."
To be fair, the rules presented by new Speaker Joe Hackney will prevent a repeat of many of the abuses perfected by Black and allow a lot more sunshine and democracy in House proceedings.
But a lot depends on Hackney's integrity. It requires a two-thirds vote of House members to override his rulings during floor debate. Blust and others wanted that threshold reduced to a simple majority. Black held the Power of One; surely Hackney will be more respectful of the membership of the House.
Here are the new House rules adopted yesterday by an 83-34 vote.
Here are the rules proposed by Blust, which won't be adopted by the House.
Comments (7)
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Blust keeps fighting* Doug
You got that right Doug! He was a busy man yesterday at the Gay Bashing Christian rally in the Raleigh Mall. In fact the dude in the Uncle Sam uniform got bash twice by Blust in a mistaken attack by him. He thought Uncle Sam was a crossdresser Gay freak with the red white and democrat blue colors on his uniform.
Posted on March 7, 2007 10:37 PM
I like John. He was one of the few legislators who listened to the residents of North High Point during the Fed Ex debates. He didn't actually DO anything for us, but he listened, which, believe it or not, was a big step up from many government officials.
I do think he has some good ideas here, but the proposed rule allowing a majority to overrule a decision of the Speaker is a prescription for chaos. You have to depend on a fair Speaker - just like you depend on a fair Chairman in any meeting governed by Robert's Rules of Order.
Hackney is a good man, and he's already made several major changes.
Also, I'm not sure if John needs to let his opponents know that if they want him out of Raleigh, all they need to do is arrange for a break-in at his house. Evidently, he'll go back to Greensboro, lock himself in, and hide in the basement. ;-)
Posted on March 8, 2007 10:16 AM
John, I think a little democratic chaos would be preferable to autocracy. OK, Hackney's a good man -- albeit one who silently watched Black's misdeeds for years -- so he should not want the power to override the will of the majority. That kind of power can only be misused -- if not by Hackney, then by the next speaker.
Posted on March 8, 2007 12:18 PM
If the Republicans want to control the agenda in the House, I respectfully suggest they win some elections.
I don't recall Blust and others, including conservative columnists, complaining about the "autocracy" in the US House under Delay and co.
Posted on March 8, 2007 8:23 PM
John, please. As you'll recall, Republicans did win a majority of N.C. House seats in 2002 but lost their majority through bribery. Quite a proud moment for democracy in North Carolina, but Democrats who had to be very well aware of it didn't complain. I don't know why Blust, as a member of the N.C. House, should be expected to complain about how the U.S. House was run. If I'm one of the "conservative columnists" you're referring to, I have a job requirement to concentrate on state and local matters (in print, anyway), so I'm going to concentrate a lot more on the corruption in Raleigh than in Washington. It's funny to me how North Carolina liberals take the opposite view. They've been concerned about the crookedness in Washington under Republican leadership (plenty) while ignoring the crookedness by Democrats running state government (also plenty).
Posted on March 9, 2007 8:23 AM
"Hackney's a good man -- albeit one who silently watched Black's misdeeds for years"
Doug, you're using an awfully broad brush. Joe Hackney wasn't in that bathroom when Black handed Decker the cash he requested. To imply that Hackney witnessed lawbreaking and did nothing is unfair and just wrong.
Black is now singing to the Feds, but anyone who knows anything about Hackney would be very, very surprised to see him implicated in any way.
And he's going to be a fair and even-handed Speaker.
Posted on March 9, 2007 4:44 PM
John, I don't think for a moment that Hackney was an accessory to bribery or anything else illegal.
HOWEVER, the Mike Decker story is very damning to all House Democrats serving at that time.
Here was Decker, a conservative Republican, suddenly changing his party affiliation to help Black. Then his son gets a nice job and he starts collecting campaign contributions from Black supporters. Shouldn't that have made other Democrats a little suspicious that something was amiss? Wouldn't they ask Black what was going on? Or did they just not want to know?
Even after Decker pleaded guilty to the bribery count, did the Dems still not care? When I asked Earl Jones what he thought, he answered that Decker was probably lying. That made sense -- lying his way into a federal prison sentence? - but that just reflected the attitude of denial that seemed to infest House Dems. It was irrational denial, in my view, because anyone with any sense could see that something was rotten.
And that's not even touching on the people with all the lottery connections, or the video poker people or the optometrists.
It's funny that now everyone is willing to concede that the House was brought into disrepute, but while it was actually happening and could have been stopped, no one had a clue? Do you really believe that?
I don't, and I wouldn't let any of them off the hook for their willful ignorance of Black's doings.
Posted on March 9, 2007 5:06 PM