The latest TIME magazine responds to North Carolina’s historic 2013 legislative session.
Since February, the governor has signed nearly 300 bills from the Republican-controlled legislature into law that have, among other things, blocked an expansion of Medicaid enabled by Obama’s Affordable Care Act, reduced access to federal unemployment benefits, cut the corporate tax rate, trimmed public-education funding, allowed concealed weapons in bars and restaurants, proposed a ban on Islamic Shari’a, enacted voter-identification laws and restricted access to abortion.
“We’ve had more reform in this state government in the past six months than we’ve seen in the past 30 years,” said Governor Pat McCrory, the first Republican to hold the office in two decades.
Perhaps the most interesting paragraph concludes the piece.
“I can’t think of any individual policy or proposal in North Carolina that is unprecedented,” says Tom Carsey, a professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “Some conservatives would probably argue North Carolina is just catching up.”
That’s a far cry from the over-the-top reactions other media outlets have offered to North Carolina’s latest news.
