Obama looks to bankrupt North Carolina into LGBT submission
North Carolina is about to square off with a big opponent -- and it has nothing to do with college basketball. While the Tar Heels are celebrating
the chance to play for a national title, the federal government is showing
whose team it's on with new
threats over the state's money. Furious that Governor Pat
McCrory (R), a bipartisan legislature, and 70 percent of voters dare
to block grown men from girls' bathrooms, the president's team is looking at
ways to bankrupt the state into submission.
Using federal funds as a club, the Obama administration has
perfected a play that's been quite effective at "persuading" local
school boards and other governors to reconsider their position on radical LGBT
policies. We watched the same cat-and-mouse game play out in Texas, when Health
and Human Services tried to zero out the state's Medicaid money after it
stripped funds from Planned Parenthood. Now, Washington's sore losers are at it
again, warning that every federal department from Transportation to Housing
will put the squeeze on North Carolina for doing the citizens' will. It would
be an unprecedented move -- even for this administration -- to punish an entire
state for rejecting a gender policy that the American College of Pediatricians
calls "child
abuse."
Yet still, the Department of Education insists that the agency
is already trying "to determine any potential impact on the state's
federal education funding." "We will not hesitate to act if students'
civil rights are being violated," a spokesman insisted. At least two other
departments are playing the same "conform-or-else" hardball, which
would put tens of billions of North Carolina's dollars on the line. Lt.
Governor Dan Forest (R) was stunned that the administration would stoop to
these thuggish tactics. "It would be wrong -- even illegal -- to single
out North Carolina for unfavorable treatment," he argued. "I'm
confident that we will continue to receive this federal money despite the
threats from a few in Washington, D.C."
Even experts think the government's threat is a stretch. For
starters, the administration doesn't have the statutory authority to blackmail
states. (Not that the law has ever factored much into this president's decision
making.) "Disregarding the facts," Governor McCrory fired back,
"other politicians -- from the White House to mayors to state capitals and
city council members and even our attorney general -- have initiated and
promoted conflict to advance their political agenda and tear down our state,
even if it means defying the Constitution and their oath of office."
Interestingly enough, Duke University's Jane Wettach thinks the
threat -- like so many of the Left's -- is an empty one. "I think the
federal government would be loath to do it and would give North Carolina every
possibility, every chance to change their position, to change the law, to
negotiate, to make some exceptions." Based on the rash of
assaults and evidence about how these policies are being gamed, the
last thing North Carolina should do is reconsider. Just because liberals are
operating outside reality on anatomy, human nature, and even public safety
doesn't mean the rest of the country should.
Of course, the real irony in all of this is that the federal
government has never adopted the law that the Tar Heels just rejected. How's
that for hypocrisy? Like most Americans, it has always believed that real
freedom is letting businesses set their own policies. But if the federal
government will yank states' funding over something as radical as gender
politics, what's next? Will officials use taxpayer dollars to trample on
states' Second Amendment rights too? Anything is possible in a country whose
biggest bully is the one leading it.
