All eyes are on Minneapolis, once again:

As soldiers prepared to take to the streets, the officer, Derek Chauvin, believed that the case against him was so devastating that he agreed to plead guilty to third-degree murder. As part of the deal, officials now say, he was willing to go to prison for more than 10 years. Local officials, scrambling to end the community’s swelling anger, scheduled a news conference to announce the deal.

But at the last minute, according to new details laid out by three law enforcement officials, the deal fell apart after William P. Barr, the attorney general at the time, rejected the arrangement.

The article claims that Barr nixed the plea deal because he thought it was too lenient, and would stir up public unrest. But after watching him in action supporting Trump for so long, I find that hard to believe. I think (it's possible) he wanted to force it to trial with harsher charges so the jury would fail to convict this cop. Whatever the case, a guilty verdict is not a foregone conclusion:

And the General Assembly is holding onto Billions that could help with that:

“We’re looking at potentially 300,000 evictions come January,” said Rick Glazier, executive director of the Justice Center. “There are probably another 800,000 other total folks who are in utility arrearages in this state. Those kind of numbers, which is why we’re having this discussion today, would overwhelm the courts and social service agencies in this state.” To prevent such a situation, people need the time to work out arrangements for how and whether they can pay their rent, Glazier said.

I don't want to undercut what Rick is saying, but kicking that can down the road with some sort of "payment plan" is just not enough. I'm in a radical mood, so here's a radical idea: The state should use that $4 Billion surplus to buy up people's rent debt. Private debt collectors do this all the time, pay 50c on the dollar and take over the debt. Of course they are bastards and torment families to get their money back, but that initial debt purchase is what I'm talking about. If a family is $5,000 behind in rent, the state pays the landlord $2,500 and cleans the slate, letting that family start over. The state could put a lien on that family's tax returns to recoup some of that $2,500, and maybe give a tax break to the landlord for cooperating. Richard Moore has a similar idea, but it would cost a lot more than mine:

At the intersection of pollution and socioeconomic despair:

We can see the through lines between climate change, polluting industries, and COVID-19 at North Carolina’s numerous factory farms. These farms, which can contain millions of hogs, chickens, and turkeys, struggle to keep hazardous animal waste pits called “lagoons” from repeatedly washing away due to hurricane flooding. Toxic animal waste pollutes river basins and streams, and flows into the Atlantic Ocean, creating algal blooms that harm aquatic ecosystems. In addition, some of the largest COVID-19 outbreaks in our area are with Black and Brown factory farm workers who’ve been denied proper protective equipment. Separately, factory farms, climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic are all extremely dangerous; but combined, lagoons overflowed by hurricanes and the poor working conditions that sicken workers are killing people, the economy, and the ecosystem.

These problems simply cannot be fixed from the top-down. Zoning is one of the major factors in environmental injustice, and that is (for the most part) a local government function. Zoning maps that were created in the 20th Century are usually only updated every ten years or so, and those updates are "tweaks," mostly focused on expanding population. The inequities built into that system (industrial zones near black neighborhoods) rarely come under scrutiny, and the refusal to zone in unincorporated areas by county commissioners is even worse. It's a major health problem for communities of color, and has gotten worse since the NIH studied it 20 years ago:

Battle lines have been drawn, and crossed:

A North Carolina police department supervisor has been disciplined after saying officers confronting demonstrators protesting George Floyd’s death in June were about to “hammer” them.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg police sergeant was suspended for two weeks without pay after comments he made during the June 2 protest in which officers deployed tear gas, pepper balls and other chemical agents against largely peaceful demonstrators, The Charlotte Observer reported.

Bolding mine, because police departments are increasingly reversing the "cause & effect" formula in their approach to keeping the peace during protests. They are trying to gain the "upper hand" by using deceptive tactics, like concealing their numbers and then exploding into a "shock and awe" show of force. Which includes preemptive violence to discourage violence, the logic of which is questionable at best. On-the-ground supervisors (like the idiot above) are given more and more discretion so they can "adapt to changing conditions," but in order for that to work well, it requires integrity and intelligence all through the ranks. Which brings us to another (apparently not alarming enough) trend that should have been dealt with 16 years ago:

There is simply no excuse for this draconian behavior:

It started in 2013 when, just after securing the governorship on top of both houses, the GOP supermajority passed HB4, a bill that made unprecedented cuts to unemployment compensation.

The bill lowered the maximum weekly payment amount from $535 to $350 and completely eliminated state appropriations for unemployment program administration, forcing the program to rely on declining federal funds. As a result, staff time designated to processing initial claims dropped by more than half from 2005 to 2020.

Get that? All these delays in processing the mountain of unemployment claims caused by the pandemic can (and should) be laid at the feet of Legislative Republicans. All this time they've been pointing a finger at Governor Cooper, they should have been pointing it at themselves. That's actually a question I've been trying to answer for a couple months, but I've been approaching it wrong. I looked at budgets going back five years to see if I could find a drop in funding, and couldn't seem to find said line items at all. That's because they're gone, and have been since 2013. Tens of thousands of North Carolinians have suffered because of that, and most of them blame the Cooper administration: