Long time no see. You may not remember me from Catawba College but I gave you a ride home a few times Sophomore year. I didn't vote for you for Class President or for Governor but I'm real happy to see you're doing so well. No surprise there.
I always tell anyone who asks, 'Pat's a really nice guy.' And pretty smart I'm guessing, surely intelligent enough to know you're surrounded by a bunch of numbskulls and crackpots who don't have the people's best interests at heart. Is that the price you pay for power, for a seat at those rarified tables, that you lose your soul in the process? Because it's difficult to imagine you can feel comfortable in your skin being the face of draconian policies that you have to realize are not going to make life better for the common folk. Of which I'm one. No surprise there either...
NC used to be number 2 in the nation for film production, employing thousands. After the cast of Hee-Haw took over the legislature they did a stellar job of chasing those jobs away and into the grateful arms of Georgia where TV and movie productions generated an economic impact of more than $6 billion dollars last year. Conservatives have been in total control now for a year and a half, legislative control for the two years before that, where are the glowing returns? Shouldn't we be seeing a revolution of economic activity now that the job creators got their massive tax cuts that we paid for by gutting public education and universities?
We were supposed to see some positive results, right? The third largest city in your state is the hungriest in the nation. Did you forget everything we learned about critical thinking, cause and effect, what works and what doesn't? Or has that been replaced with every man for himself and an eye for an eye?
As you travel our state looking to get reelected you're proposing a pay raise for North Carolina teachers. That's a great idea. Hey, I've got another crackerjack notion! Why don't you and the Republican houses in Raleigh call an emergency session and fucking do that. What's stopping you? You're the Governor, Republicans control both houses and Democrats like the idea too. Because otherwise you are saying this Bathroom Bill is more important than our hard working educators and the future of our kids.
About that Bathroom Bill hemorrhaging millions of dollars, hundreds if not thousands of jobs, along with what little respect North Carolina still possessed. Have you never met a transgender person? They aren't drag queens, they're men and women. The men have penises and the women boobs and vaginas, at least those who've completed that journey. It's a difficult concept to grasp, it was for me, that someone could be born a woman yet, for all intents and purposes, be a man. Harder to believe is that your wife wouldn't mind sharing a shower at the gym with a 200 pound hairy guy who's attracted to women because it says 'Female' on his birth certificate.
Maybe you didn't think that thing all the way through. See, those religious kooks and undereducated inbred millionaire hillbillies you associate with just made you their bitch. In the movie business we had a saying, "It's not how you fuck up it's how you fix it that counts." Someone needs to show some leadership right about now. Maybe it should be our Governor.
All the best, your pal, Billy Ingram
