(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . North Carolina Open Thread: Blue Cross and hog farms’ cozy relationship, Cooper veto, Triangle music [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-06-16 Welcome. This is a weekly feature of North Carolina Blue . The platform gives readers interested in North Carolina politics a place to share their knowledge, insight and inspiration as we take back our state from some of the most extreme Republicans in the nation. Please stop by each week. You can also join the discussion in four other weekly State Open Threads . If you are interested in starting your own state blog, weekly to occasionally, I will list your work below. Colorado: Mondays, 7:00 PM Mountain Michigan: Wednesdays, 6:00 PM Eastern North Carolina: Sundays, 1:00 PM Eastern Missouri: Wednesday Evenings Kansas: Monday Evenings Please jump the fold for links to a few North Carolina stories and editorials I found useful this week. A Blue Cross employee told the filmmaker in an email that the screening was called off by the health insurer, which counts the North Carolina Farm Bureau as a major customer. René Miller rests in a recliner in a darkened room, gasping through a nebulizer to ease her asthma. On days like this, the air smells so acrid it feels like her lungs are filled with shards of glass. Miller lives across the road from a factory farm in rural eastern North Carolina that raises thousands of hogs, and whose waste fills an open-pit lagoon that is as large as a football field. The farmer routinely sprays the waste as fertilizer using a high-pressure irrigation system onto nearby pasture. Depending on how the wind blows, sometimes it rains urine and feces on Miller’s property. “That sprayer over there—it comes on my house,” Miller said. “It comes on me.” This is a scene from “The Smell of Money,” an award-winning documentary released in 2022, that tells the story of Black residents in Duplin County who live under the thumb of North Carolina’s powerful hog industry. Many of the residents in the film, including Miller and Elsie Herring, successfully sued Murphy-Brown and Smithfield Foods in federal court, arguing the companies’ hog farms constituted a nuisance that harmed their quality of life. There are 9 million hogs being raised on factory farms in North Carolina, nearly one for each of the state’s 10 million residents. Not only do these farms stink, but they also attract swarms of flies and buzzards, pollute the groundwater and emit air pollutants, including fine particulate matter, all of which can harm neighbors’ health. Governor Roy Cooper issued a veto late Friday of a bill that would modify the definition of “delinquent juvenile” and send more 16- and 17-year-olds to the adult court system. “Most violent crimes, even when committed by teenagers, should be handled in adult court. However, there are cases where sentences would be more effective and appropriate to the severity of the crime for teenagers if they were handled in juvenile court, making communities safer,” said Cooper in statement released by his office. Cooper said he worried the legislation is a step toward eroding the bipartisan “Raise the Age” law passed just four years ago. “While a number of Senators worked to make this legislation better than the original bill, I remain concerned that this new law would keep some children from getting treatment they need,” Cooper explained. Senator Mujtaba Mohammed, D-Mecklenburg, said during a committee hearing last month kids are actually punished in juvenile court. “The great thing about juvenile courts is that you get one judge, you get that one kid, you get the same prosecutor, you get the same juvenile defender, and the most important piece, it’s the only jurisdiction where you get to hold parents accountable,” said Mohammed. More than 400 teens were transferred to adult court from juvenile court last year. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/6/16/2246943/-North-Carolina-Open-Thread-Blue-Cross-and-hog-farms-cozy-relationship-Cooper-veto-Triangle-music?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/