(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To This Post)

Being our semi-regular weekly survey of what's goin' down in the several states where, as we know, the real work of governmentin' gets done, and where they build a fire on Main Street and shoot it full of holes.

We begin this week in the newly insane state of North Carolina, where flying pig shit is more than merely a metaphor. From The Port City News:

House Bill 467, filed in the House by primary sponsors representatives Jimmy Dixon of Warsaw, Ted Davis Jr. of Wilmington, David Lewis of Dunn and majority leader John Bell IV, would limit the compensation a person could seek in private nuisance lawsuits against agricultural and forestry operations. According to the bill, this is "an act to clarify the remedies available in private nuisance actions against agricultural and forestry operations."

OK, sounds like your basic political fight. Except when you realize that North Carolina has 10 million people and nine million hogs.

According to a 2014 study by the University of North Carolina, the types of farms in question "house animals in confinement, store their feces and urine in open pits, and apply the waste to surrounding fields. "Air pollutants from the routine operation of confinement houses, cesspools, and waste sprayers affect nearby neighborhoods where they cause disruption of activities of daily living, stress, anxiety, mucous membrane irritation, respiratory conditions, reduced lung function, and acute blood pressure elevation," the study states. "Prior studies showed that this industry disproportionately impacts people of color in NC, mostly African Americans." Burdette says that these farms affects between 100,000 and 300,000 people in North Carolina. According to a study by the EWG and The Waterkeeper alliance, Pender County alone has 96 animal feeding operations, producing over 289,000,000 gallons of wet waste per year. Brunswick County operates 15 animal feeding operations, resulting in over 66,000,000 gallons of wet waste produced per year. Data from New Hanover County was not readily available.

Yes, they liquefy the waste and then spray it on the fields and, wind being what it is, sometimes the spray takes wing and people's houses get a primer coat of pig shit.

"It doesn't matter if it's a hog or poultry farm, they smell horrible either way," Burdette said. "Not only that, but some of these homes are as close as 50 feet from these farms. You could be sitting on your back porch, and depending on the wind, have hog (expletive) sprayed on your kids."

And, as you might imagine, this is less of a problem in the better neighborhoods. From The Observer:

Twenty-five percent of Duplin County residents are black, and over 20 percent are Hispanic. An analysis conducted by WaterKeeper Alliance found that out of 2,246 pig concentrated animal feeding operations in the state, only 12 have been required to obtain permits under the Clean Water Act. The rest operate under lax state permit guidelines. A 2014 study conducted by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that black people are 1.54 times more likely to reside near these hog operations in North Carolina than white people, Hispanics are 1.39 times more likely, and Native Americans are 2.18 times more likely. A class action lawsuit was recently filed by nearly 500 residents, mostly members of affected African American communities in eastern North Carolina, against Murphy-Brown, North Carolina's largest hog producer, for disposing pig waste by spraying it untreated into fields near those communities. The lawsuit is making its way to federal court at the same time North Carolina's state legislature has been pushing through a bill to further ease regulations on hog operations. "I'm not surprised there's been a lawsuit," said Duke University Law Professor Ryke Longest. "I'm surprised it took so long for one to be filed."

Breathing apparatus in place, we head north to Wisconsin, where we will linger for most of the balance of this week's tour because Daniel Bice, a top-notch reporter for The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, got his hands on a cache of internal documents from the Bradley Foundation, a long-standing Milwaukee-based fount of wingnut welfare. The documents detail the reach of the Foundation, its relationship with similar intellectual chop shops, and its place in the ongoing effort to change Wisconsin into something else and then to turn the rest of the country into whatever it is that Wisconsin becomes. The political ambition is astounding and it's awfully close to being fulfilled.

The records make clear the Bradley Foundation no longer simply favors groups promoting its signature issues: taxpayer-funded school choice and increased work requirements for welfare recipients. It now regularly funds nonprofits that are, among other things, hostile to labor unions, skeptical of climate change or critical of the loosening of sexual mores in American culture. More important, the foundation has found success by changing its fundamental approach to putting policies into reality. The Bradley Foundation is paying less attention to Washington, D.C. Instead, it is methodically building a coalition of outside groups aimed at influencing officials in statehouses from Pennsylvania to Arizona. "Many say Washington is 'broken.' Whatever this might mean, it does not mean conservative policy advancement," said one internal Bradley memo from August 2014. Instead, it continued, "there has been a recent increase in state-level receptivity to meaningful conservative policy reform." The result: Bradley Foundation, worth nearly $900 million, is underwriting local think tanks, opposition research centers, candidate recruitment groups, conservative media, bill-drafting organizations and litigation centers around the nation — what some critics call "shadow governments."

For example, the newly-insane state of North Carolina, where the pig shit flies at dawn, has been a particular target of this effort. According to the documents, N.C. gets a 38 score out of 40 on a scale devised to measure conservative activity. (By comparison, Texas is a 37.) According to the documents, the Bradley Foundation has awarded over $1.5 million to entities in North Carolina to "create a comprehensive communications infrastructure."

Bradley Foundation officials are giving $1.5 million over three years to two organizations in North Carolina, another swing state, to "create a comprehensive communications infrastructure around four primary elements: radio, online content aggregation, mobile applications and an AP-style news service for local newspapers." One group has acquired a Drudge Report-style website called Carolina Plott Hound.

The Bradley Foundation also wired itself into thought leaders. Newly hired MSNBC political analyst George Will was on the Foundation's board, as was the spouse of MSNBC political analyst Charlie Sykes, a Milwaukee talk-show host.

"From that group, there were 651 new leaders in state or local office, including whole cohorts of candidates who, together, overturned school boards and county boards, and village boards, and made them newly accountable to the citizens," wrote Janet Riordan, then a Bradley staffer in 2015 and the spouse of former conservative talk show host Charlie Sykes, theeditor of WPRI's "Wisconsin Interest" magazine.

Read the whole thing. You will understand that, while the current president* is a particularly exotic flower, the root system that produced him is deep and strong. The spraying of pig-shit is now a metaphor again, and the Bradley Foundation is deluging state governments with it.

And we conclude with our vacationing Official Blog Two-Gun Norseman Friedman of the Fjords, who is checking in from Iceland, where he is entertaining Viking maidens three at a time. He brings us the tale of a local public health initiative from the Tecumseh P.D. From KFOR-4.

Monday morning, the department posted to Facebook, asking people to bring their meth to the Tecumseh Police Department to be tested for gluten. "Public Services Announcement – The Tecumseh Police Department is offering FREE testing for gluten laced meth. Please bring your meth to the Tecumseh Police Department for your FREE test."

Please tell me this actually worked. "You there, with the gold spray-paint around your mouth, you're first." Next: testing your cocaine if you're lactose intolerant.

This is your democracy, America. Cherish it.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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