For the first time in North Carolina history, a governor has vetoed a budget. That’s good news for the people of this state.

Republicans are screaming that this was her budget to begin with, but then she backed down.

The governor’s budget did have some deep cuts, but nothing as severe as what the Republican majority — along with five conservative Democrats — plan to put into place this week.

Those five Dems, all from the eastern part of the state, traded favors for deep cuts to education and a further shredding of the social safety net that civilized people recognize as humane and necessary.

The legislature has refused to maintain a one-cent sales tax that could prevent such deep cuts to education, and the majority of people in the state want the penny tax kept so children here can have a decent education. The legislature is refusing to listen, and I believe it’s at their own peril.

The fallacy they’re perpetuating is that we’re broke. We are not broke. Tax rates in this country are lower than they’ve been in decades; corporate tax loopholes are letting huge corporations like GE escape paying any taxes at all.

Republicans say if we tax corporations, they’ll move offshore.

I say, fine. Let them move and then tax the hell out of any business they do here. It’s time we stood up the the extortion of the corporations in America.  They’re not creating the jobs they could be creating — they’re sitting on nearly $2 trillion in revenues that they’re not re-investing in American jobs.

Meanwhile, our nation’s infrastructure is crumbling, while people who could be working to fix it sit idle, their unemployment benefits dwindling. They’re accused by the wealthy of being lazy because they’re not looking hard enough for work. People who lost $20-an-hour jobs with benefits are being forced to take $8-an-hour jobs with no benefits. This has been happening for 30 years as the right has attacked working people.

The wealthy have done fine through this recession — in fact, they have prospered beyond their wildest dreams — and they want more at the expense of the rest of us.

Wealthy individuals aren’t creating jobs with their tax breaks either; they’re spending all of it on their own selfish desires.

We are not broke. We do not need to deny children, people in poverty, who are ill or who have disabilities their very right to life so that some wealthy jerk can have another yacht or diamond-studded dog collar.

There’s plenty to go around; we just have to make the selfish bastards share a little more.