Mark Robinson- The Christian Nationalist North Carolina deserves
If Robinson's a follower of Jesus Christ, I'm the Queen of Denmark
AP: North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson (R) is a hypocritical, pseudo-Christian, anti-Semitic, rage-addicted, Liberal-hating, black-hearted, compassion-deprived, classless asshole whose definition of Personal Responsibility © involves him getting help from the government.
North Carolina’s Republican Voters: Who gives a flying fuck?? WE LOVE HIM!! He’s not like us, but he hates everyone who isn’t like us!!
I’ve been to North Carolina a few times, and Erin and I will return to visit friends in Raleigh and Charlotte next month. I love the Tarheel State and have often said I could easily live in Chapel Hill. But I’ll be damned if I can understand the state’s politics, which is threatening to make Texas and Floriduh look positively sane.
I long ago learned not to expect rational, easily explainable actions from Republicans, but Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson? Seriously? WTF is up with him, and how is he, in any sensible scenario, a serious candidate for Governor? In virtually any other state that has reasonable expectations and a grip on reality, Robinson would be on the highest legally allowed dose of Thorazine and wrapped in a straitjacket 24/7/365.
Instead, he’s running for Governor of North Carolina and, at least insofar as I understand it, has a decent chance of winning. I can think of no conceivable circumstance under which Mark Robinson should become Governor of North Carolina. Not only is Robinson patently batshit crazy, he wants to turn the Tarheel State, and eventually America, into Gilead.
But he’s so much more than just a crazy, power-mad, hyper-religious, rage-addled asshole:
It sure would be nice if life were at least occasionally like an old movie. Especially those old-fashioned political stories like A Face In the Crowd, where all it takes to get rid of a slimy fraudulent political figure is (spoiler alert) leaving a mic open so the baddie’s adoring fans realize what an awful hypocrite they’ve been supporting, and they all reject their former idol.
But as we learned from the 2016 campaign and the “presidency” of Donald Trump, simply exposing the awful truth is no longer a surefire way to end their populist appeal. “Hey, he says what he thinks! He’s not afraid to be a little rough around the edges! I too think children should be taken from their parents at the border! Who doesn’t?”
I’m not sure I like where this is leading.
What we’re saying is that we really hope yesterday’s jaw-dropping Associated Press exposé on North Carolina Republican gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson will lead voters to reject him, but we’re not getting our hopes up.
Robinson, the current North Carolina lieutenant governor who hopes to become the state’s first Black governor, regularly says government safety net programs create a “‘plantation of welfare and victimhood’ that has mired generations of Black people in ‘dependency’ and poverty.”
Pretty standard GOP bootstraps macht frei talking points as far as it goes, until the story drops not just another shoe but a whole freakin’ Timberland outlet store on the reader, boots, straps and all.
Robinson also demonizes LGBTQ+ folks whenever he can, loves to “joke” that Michelle Obama is a man, and used to post antisemitic crap online before people were paying attention to him. Big surprise: Donald Trump calls Robinson “Martin Luther King Jr. on steroids.” Like King, Robinson is Black, after all.
So, let’s—for the moment, at least—set aside the oddity of Robinson being a Black Republican. And the homophobia. And the offensive jokes about Michelle Obama. It turns out that Robinson has done quite well for himself by—wait for it—getting rich off government largesse.
NO!!
Who coulda seen that coming, eh?
Turns out that while Mark Robinson may play an enemy of public assistance on the campaign trail, Robinson and his family have done very well for themselves by running a nonprofit that distributed taxpayer-funded free lunches to needy kids in North Carolina, presumably making the poor kids dependent plantation residents.
The nonprofit, Balanced Nutrition, Inc., was founded by Robinson’s wife, Yolanda Hill, and gets all its funding — some $7 million since 2017 — from federal and state taxpayers. And as the AP’s dig into tax filings and state documents found, the nonprofit has in that time paid “at least $830,000 in salaries to Hill, Robinson and other members of their family.”
Thank goodness big government assistance helped at least one family improve its situation, hooray!
I am shocked—SHOCKED!!—that there might be hypocrisy taking place here.
And Robinson seemed like he had the potential to be a lovely tyrant, didn’t he??
The income offered the Robinsons a degree of stability after decades of struggle that included multiple bankruptcies, home foreclosure and misdemeanor charges — later dropped — for writing bad checks. In Robinson’s telling, the financial turnaround provided by the organization also allowed for his ascent into the North Carolina government.
“Yolanda’s nonprofit was providing a salary for her that was enough to support us,” Robinson wrote in his 2022 memoir, noting its growth gave him the freedom to quit his furniture manufacturing job in 2018 and begin a career in populist conservative politics.
Yeah, it’s easy to be a man of the people when you’re sucking at the public teat and living off their tax money.
Of course, this is hardly the first example of someone inveighing self-righteously against the system that’s lined his (and his family’s) pockets, but he’s arrogant enough to think his past would remain just a good story.
You know, a hard-working man pulls himself up by his own bootstraps—with a little help from North Carolina’s taxpayers. It’s a Conservative passion play come to life.
Why, it’s an even more impressive story about how conservatives live out their values than that time when Craig T. Nelson went on the Glenn Beck program to say he might just stop paying taxes because Barack Obama was throwing too much money at poor people who didn’t deserve it. “They’re not going to bail me out,” Nelson lamented. “I’ve been on food stamps and welfare. Anybody help me out? No. No.”
Robinson has made a point of telling voters that he “grew up poor,” the son of an alcoholic father (like mine!) who died when Robinson was still in elementary school (again, like my own adoptive father!). He talks often of how he went bankrupt and lost jobs, because life is a struggle. But you know what? He persevered and triumphed without any government help!
Apart from the help his wife’s nonprofit distributed to lazy takers, at least.
But, good news!! The Robinsons are YUUUGE fans of Personal Responsibility ©:
The couple declared bankruptcy three times from 1998 to 2003 and failed to file federal income taxes for five years until compelled to do so during bankruptcy proceedings.
They’ve left behind a trail of aggrieved creditors, including the Girl Scouts, court documents show. Among them was a former landlord whose wife was dying of cancer when the Robinsons shorted him $2,000 in rent, according to local news accounts and documents from a 2012 case.
A bankruptcy judge rejected their 2003 bankruptcy case after the Robinsons failed to make payments to their creditors that they’d agreed to in court. The case ended with Robinson and Hill having paid about $9,000 on about $71,000 in debt payments negotiated in bankruptcy court.
No wonder Donald Trump loves him, yeah? Mark Robinson’s practically the Black Messiah Trump!!
Ms. Hill, being the enterprising type, went right back to work and started her nonprofit, Balanced Nutrition, in 2015. It wasn’t losing before her venture was approved to run a “joint state and federal program that reimburses day cares for feeding low-income children.”
The Robinsons were working hard, but there was just one wee problem. In 2020, North Carolina state regulators noticed that the nonprofit’s books were so messed up that they couldn’t make sense of them. Regulators considered placing Balanced Nutrition on their “seriously deficient” list.
Some of the problems highlighted in documents obtained by AP included “missing menus, timesheets, prior approval for some expenses and confirmation of income eligibility for children receiving aid.”
Another issue flagged in those emails: $134,729.23 in spending from last year that was not explained in documents Hill submitted to the state as part of annually required paperwork.
You might think Ms. Hill would want to defend her integrity and protect Balanced Nutrition by explaining what happened, cleaning up the mess, and taking other positive steps to restore confidence in her nonprofit’s nutrition.
Then again, this is Mark Robinson’s spouse whom we’re talking about, so she did none of those things. She decided to play the “mean ol’ Liberals” card and blame the whole thing on the state of North Carolina being up to “some type of vendetta, be it personal or political.”
Yeah, because the state hates them just that much.
How arrogant does one have to be to believe that the state of North Carolina has it out for you personally? I don’t know, but all you really need to be is married to Mark Robinson.
But it’s OK—because he’s a man of the people, yeah? What do you do when things aren’t working out? You go on the attack and prove to the people that you won’t let the evil guv’mint push you around.
I could go on at length, but you get my point. Still, if you want to go even deeper into what a corrupt and hypocritical creep Mark Robinson is, read the Associated Press story, and prepare to be left slack-jawed by the sheer audacity of the assholery that Robinson brings to bear.
It’s something to behold. Of course, Robinson’s a Christian, so he’s not perfect—just forgiven.
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