William Rivers Pitt of Truthout compares the donor lists of Hillary Clinton and her would-be Republican challengers and finds little difference.

For reasons some may argue are not entirely fair, the Post article about those preposterous people helped crystallize a few things as I encompassed the rhetoric contained in Secretary Clinton’s big campaign speech this past weekend. Despite her long history of association with these kinds of people, Mrs. Clinton on Saturday deployed the sort of populist bombast that one might have heard at an Occupy Wall Street rally not so long ago.

[…]

Interesting, that … especially the stuff about hedge fund managers and CEOs and billionaires and fair compensation. Heady stuff; she sounded for all the world like Elizabeth Warren, or Bernie Sanders.

Yet a peek at her donor list is revealing. The roll-call of Mrs. Clinton’s top twenty campaign donors is topped by Citibank, and includes Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse Group … basically, a cohort of the worst people in the United States, the ones who gamed the system by buying politicians like her and then proceeded to burn the economy down to dust and ash while making a financial killing in the process.

Source: William Rivers Pitt | Don’t Believe the Hype: Candidate Clinton’s Sudden Populism

Nice profile of North Carolina Senate majority leader Tom Apodaca.

In another life, Tom Apodaca chased knife-toting bail jumpers and once found himself in a cheap motel staring into the barrel of a shotgun.
The conservative Republican used to be a Jimmy Carter Democrat. And for a long time, Tom Apodaca wasn’t even Tom Apodaca. But now the Hendersonville Republican is the North Carolina Senate’s enforcer, the muscle for President Pro Tem Phil Berger of Eden.

Along with Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore, he’s one of the state’s three most influential lawmakers. As Rules Committee chair, he’s the ultimate gatekeeper. At one point last month, more than 460 House and Senate bills sat parked in his committee. Few measures become law without his blessing.

Source: Tom Apodaca: Senate’s enforcer uses muscle, humor to deliver GOP agenda | The Charlotte Observer The Charlotte Observer

This May 17, vice-president Joe Biden address the graduates of Yale University at their Class Day. He spoke about the personal tragedies in his life, losing his wife and daughter to a car accident at age 30, which has been covered following the news of his son Beau’s death less than two weeks later. Beau and his brother survived the crash, and Biden almost resigned his newly won Senate seat before being talked out of it by Ted Kennedy, among others. Biden instead turned into an Amtrak commuter, coming home from Washington to Delaware every night to care for his sons as they recovered, and then to raise a family with his new wife, Jill.

But Biden also spoke about how he learned to work with someone who should have been his nemesis, the conservative senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina.

Source: How Joe Biden learned to work with Jesse Helms, who should’ve been his nemesis – Quartz

State lawmakers are moving to make repeat graffiti charges a felony. I have reported more graffiti in Raleigh than probably anyone (I am on a first-name basis with Raleigh’s graffiti team), however making graffiti a felony will not put the brakes on graffiti. It will, however, put more people in prison that honestly don’t need to be there.

As annoying as graffiti is, we do not need to make felons out of people for such a simple crime. A better approach would be to increase funding to the NCDOT and to municipalities to fund anti-graffiti efforts. That’s not seen as being “tough on crime,” though, and it also costs money. But hey, effective solutions sometimes require spending some money.

Graffiti vandals could land in prison under a bill, which received preliminary approve in the NC Senate, that would make repeatedly marking up buildings a felony.The state Senate gave preliminary approval in a 42-7 vote to a proposed law that expands and toughens graffiti penalties. A final vote is expected Wednesday in the Senate.

Current law covers statues, monuments and public buildings. Tagging public property is a Class 2 misdemeanor, with the stiffest penalty for five or more convictions two months in jail.

House Bill 552 would extend the protection to any property. The severity of the offense is stepped up to a Class 1 misdemeanor, with a minimum $500 mandatory fine.

Source: NC lawmakers move to make graffiti a felony