Congressman Patrick McHenry is in the news this week, railing about the decision to allow public input into a move to weaken investor protection laws. Firedoglake has a good summary of the story.

Congress created tight deadlines in the JOBS Act for rule promulgation, ones which would have made a public comment period impossible….Investor groups sought the opportunity to make their case, said they would take the SEC to court to ensure that, and Schapiro ultimately decided to follow the normal course of action with a public comment period. So McHenry is mad that the public gets to weigh in, as per usual, on the terrible ripping up of investor protection laws envisioned by the JOBS Act.

The confusion about Gov-elect McCrory’s position on turning the Dorothea Dix land into a park continues. Under the Dome reports this morning that McCrory’s name appears on a list of names on the Dix Visionaries Advisory Council that supports the park.

Yesterday Gary Pearce said on Talking About Politics that a reliable source told him that Perdue ran her proposal for the park by McCrory and Art Pope and believed they both supported it, only to have McCrory come out against it after Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger and House Speaker Thom Tillis announced their opposition.

Hard to know what to make of all this but McCrory’s folks would be well-served to clear it up for us. Flip-flopping before you are even sworn in is not the best way to start your administration.

A Sunday story by AP’s Michael Biesecker appears to catch Rep. Nelson Dollar in a blatant falsehood about why the state now faces a crisis that that threatens to throw 1,400 people with mental illness out of group homes and into homelessness.

The story details how a last minute change to the technical corrections bill in the last legislative session banned group homes from receiving any money from emergency funds set aside to keep thousands of people with a mental illness from being thrown out of their beds in certain facilities because of the state response to a federal ruling about who was eligible for benefits.

The legislative change meant only people in adult care homes would be allowed to stay with the new money, leaving the 1,400 people in group homes at risk. 

Then when the crisis became public Republicans predictably blamed Gov. Perdue, as the AP story documents. Read More…

Governor-elect Pat McCrory does not appear to be on the same page as legislative leaders when it comes to the state’s implementation of the Affordable Care Act, certainly not in tone anyway.

Governor Perdue declared Thursday that North Carolina will partner with the federal government to run the health care exchange under the health care law.  States can set up their own exchanges, do nothing and let the federal government set them up, or pursue a hybrid partnership model, the path Perdue chose—after she consulted with McCrory. 

McCrory’s statement was cautious and noncommittal, but certainly not hostile.

Gov. Perdue’s decision leaves flexibility for North Carolina in the future when it comes to the delivery of health care,” McCrory said in a statement. “I will be discussing this with more governors today, and will continue those discussions in the coming weeks to ensure the best results for North Carolina.

Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger took a different tact, criticizing Perdue for making the decision at all, saying she should have waited for the new legislature and new governor to decide, ignoring both a looming federal deadline and the fact that she consulted with the new governor before making her decision. Read More…

The latest jobs report released this morning brought positive news, as the economy added 171,000 jobs in October.  Below is an interesting chart from Steve Benen that he updates every month that shows the trendline of job growth since the depths of the Great Recession in early 2009.

The overall national unemployment rate increased slightly to 7.9 %, largely as a result of more people entering the workforce.