Quoth Thom Tillis: Thop 10

Ten reminders of why North Carolina should vote to hear from Speaker Thom Tillis, Nevermore. Seriously, who talks like this?

1. "Teachers don't care about kids. They don't care about classrooms."

Via thepilot.com

"a convincing argument that the educational cuts went well beyond simple budget-balancing efforts and were clearly motivated, at least on the part of some of those pushing them, by an underlying element of hostility toward the whole concept of public education — referred to disparagingly in some conservative circles as “government education." - Southern Pines Pilot

2. "I would estimate he is directly responsible for more than $100,000.00 in financial support through personal contributions to my campaign committee and other candidates."

Via newsobserver.com

"When his fellow Republicans questioned why House Speaker Thom Tillis backed a Democrat to the University of North Carolina Board of Governors in March, the speaker had a simple reason:

R. Doyle Parrish had raised a lot of money.

“I would estimate he is directly responsible for more than $100,000.00 in financial support through personal contributions to my campaign committee and other candidates and through the Hospitality Alliance,” Tillis wrote in a March 21 email to House leaders.

Tillis also strongly supported G.A. Sywassink for the board, even after the Republican caucus rejected Sywassink because he lives in South Carolina. The House narrowly elected Sywassink after Tillis circulated a list of his preferred candidates that included Sywassink.

Sywassink, owner of a Charlotte freight company, had given $7,500 to Tillis’ campaign for the state House."

3. "Tillis and Time Warner have denied any relationship."

Via newsobserver.com

"In a letter read on the House floor, [Republican Rep.] Brawley complained that Tillis had blocked a bill he had introduced that would have expanded the territory of MI-Connection. Tillis, he said, cited a “business relationship” with Time Warner Cable. Tillis and Time Warner have denied any relationship. But the feud has put a spotlight on the campaign money the speaker, who is expected on Friday to announce his bid for the U.S. Senate, has received from Time Warner and other telecommunications companies as he rose to his powerful perch. In the push for the 2011 legislation, telecommunications companies and trade associations steered $1.6 million to state lawmakers from 2006 to 2011, including Tillis, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics."

4. “What we have to do is find a way to divide and conquer the people who are on assistance.”

Via ncpolicywatch.com

“The uncensored Tillis also railed against people on public assistance who had children, saying that there are people with disabilities who are about to lose their benefits while the state is sending checks to ‘women who have chosen to have three or four kids out of wedlock.’ ‘At some point you need to say first kid, we'll give you a pass, second, third, fourth kid, you are on your own,’ Tillis told the group. He continued with this: ‘What we have to do is find a way to divide and conquer the people who are on assistance. We have to show respect for that woman who has cerebral palsy and had no choice in her condition that needs help and we should help. And we need to get those folks to look down at these people who choose to get into a condition that makes them dependent on the government.’”

5. "the traditional population... it’s not growing. The African American population is roughly growing but the Hispanic population and the other immigrant populations are growing in significant numbers."

Via washingtonpost.com

"'Traditional' North Carolinians refers to North Carolinians who have been here for a few generations. A lot of the state's recent population growth is from people who move from other states to live, work, and settle down in North Carolina. Thom Tillis, for example." Given Tillis' actual words, that explanation doesn't make much sense. If "traditional" means "people who have been in North Carolina a long time," of course that population isn't growing. Without readily available time machines, it's hard to create new long-term residents of a state."

6. "Federal and State governments have redistributed trillions of dollars of wealth over the years by funding programs that are at least in part driven by their belief that we should provide additional reparations."

Via talkingpointsmemo.com

"House Speaker Thom Tillis, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in North Carolina, once released a statement that said federal and state governments had "redistributed" "trillions of dollars over the years" — amounting to "de facto reparations." That argument by Tillis, who is running to replace Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC), came during an explanation he offered on his website for why he supported a joint resolution expressing the North Carolina general assembly's regret for slavery. In his explanation for voting for it he tried to rebuff the idea that supporting that resolution would be a 'slippery slope to reparations.'"

7. "Whining coming from losers."

charlotteobserver.com / Via dyn.politico.com

"But Tillis, a 53-year-old former IBM executive who has the strong backing of the GOP establishment but is by no means the prohibitive front-runner, is betting that Southern Democrats who once thrived here are dying breeds because of the liberal policies coming out of Washington. He is defiant about North Carolina’s hard-right turn, calling it a “reform agenda unlike any other state in the United States.

'I think for the most part, what I see from the folks who are opposing our agenda is whining coming from losers,” he said in an interview in his Raleigh office. “They lost, they don’t like it, and they are going to try to do everything they can to, I think, cast doubt on things that I think are wise and that the average citizen when they know what we’re doing, I think, like it.'"

8. "Born out of emotions"

[e-mail] Robert Willett / Via starnewsonline.com

State Rep. Susi Hamilton Wednesday said the film community was "double-crossed" by House Speaker Thom Tillis, whose staff she claims actively worked to defeat a budget amendment to keep film incentive talks alive in the General Assembly... In a rare interview with the StarNews, Tillis retorted that Hamilton's comments were likely "born out of emotions" but that this "sort of behavior" makes her the "single greatest threat" to a compromise on film incentives in the state House." - Wilmington Star-News

9. "There are people that we want to hear from who may or may not feel as comfortable under your lights."

AP Gerry Broome / Via news.yahoo.com

“House Speaker Thom Tillis defended a closed-door meeting Thursday by members of the chamber's Republican caucus in which GOP members heard from lobbyists about the pros and cons of legalizing video poker again. The meeting, attended by several House Republican lawmakers in the Legislative Office Building, didn't involved any actual legislation and was designed to help members collect information on the controversial issue without the glare of the media in a committee meeting, Tillis told reporters. ‘There are people that we want to hear from who may or may not feel as comfortable under your lights,’ said Tillis, R-Mecklenburg." - Associated Press

10. "I do believe it's fair."

[e-mail] Robert Willett / Via wral.com

NC Republican House Speaker Thom Tillis on Thursday defended more than $19,000 in severance pay he ordered for two staffers who departed amidst a sex scandal. Tillis’s former Chief of Staff Charles Thomas left the office at the end of April, after a videotape by a private investigator showed him in a romantic relationship with Jessi Hayes, a lobbyist for the NC Home Builders Association. Both Thomas and Hayes are married, and both were left jobless by the scandal... Hobbs and Thomas were among several Tillis staffers given large pay raises last spring. In Thomas’s case, the raise was 30%. At the time, Tillis said he had hired the staffers at probationary wages, raising their salaries to the “full” level after three months of satisfactory performance. There was no notation of any such plan in the publicly available hiring documents for any of those employees. Probationary wages are not sanctioned by the state personnel act, either."