The one year anniversary of Governor Pat McCrory signing HB2 – the “bathroom bill” – into law is today, so what better time took look over the past year and survey the devastation to this beautiful state, as predicted by President Obama, his Department of (social) Justice, liberal activists, Human Rights groups, and North Carolina Democrats.

If you listened to anything any of these people were saying, North Carolina should be in utter ruins, by now. The boycotts and fleeing businesses should have turned the state on its head.

Except they didn’t, and we’re not.

The Washington Times looked back at the past year and measured the aftermath. And to quote an old song:

Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina…

To begin, those industries predicted to be hit hardest by HB2 and the ensuing boycotts by sporting events and concerts that were pulled would be the service industries.

Tourism has thrived: Hotel occupancy, room rates and demand for rooms set records in 2016, according to the year-end hotel lodging report issued last week by VisitNC, part of the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina.

The NCAA relocated seven championships, including two — the Division I women’s soccer championship and the Division III men’s and women’s soccer championship — that were held in December. The other five were slated for this year.

Even so, hotel and motel occupancy increased last year by 3.4 percent over 2015, and “each month of 2016 experienced the highest occupancy on record,” according to the lodging report.

The average room rate of $98.88 per night represented a 3.6 percent jump from 2015, which also set a state record and exceeded the national increase of 3.1 percent.

Maybe it’s because tourists feel they can go into a bathroom in North Carolina and not have to worry about who’s going to walk in on them?

The Old North State pulled a fourth-place rank out of 50 states for attracting and expanding businesses, and seventh place in projects per capita. This was the same as in 2015 – pre-HB2.

North Carolina finished first for drawing corporate facilities in the eight-state South Atlantic region, said Site Selection, which uses figures tracked by the Conway Projects Database.

And in November, both Forbes and Site Selection magazine ranked North Carolina the No. 2 state for business climate.

It’s almost like real people aren’t buying the unicorn farts being passed off as human rights issues by the left!

The unemployment rate has held steady at 5.3 percent.

People are working in North Carolina. People are still feeding their families in North Carolina. The sun still shines and the shadow of devastation, perpetuated through liberal wishcasting just didn’t occur.

The only real damage felt to the state in the past year was the loss of a really good governor.

There are 16 other states that are considering similar bathroom legislation. North Carolina’s success has started something. People are beginning to push back against the nonsense of the liberal worldview that would put everyone else in danger, all for social engineering.

North Carolina’s Lt. Governor Dan Forest, a very vocal supporter of HB2, recently visited Texas to discuss the bill with their legislators, telling them that the economic damage to the state was less than one-tenth of one percent.

“Suffice it to say, our economy is doing well,” said Mr. Forest, a Republican. “Don’t be fooled by the media; this issue is not about the economy. This issue is about privacy, safety and security in the most vulnerable places we go. This is about doing the right thing. And I will never trade the privacy, safety and security of a woman or a child for a basketball ticket, and neither should you.”

Liberals, of course, want to talk about the “what ifs” rather than the “what is.”

Taking issue with that assessment was Chris Sgro, a former Democratic state legislator who now heads EqualityNC. He said the figures fail to take into account what would have happened without the so-called bathroom bill.

“It is a universally agreed-upon fact at this point that HB2 is hurting the state of North Carolina economically,” Mr. Sgro said.

Except it’s not universally agreed-upon, nor is it fact, once you look at the actual numbers that are coming in.

Looking at it from the angle of those who have tried to bully the state into compliance with dangerous ideologies, the NBA moved its All-Star game from Charlotte to New Orleans. As of a week before the game, ticket sales were the lowest in All-Star history.

The ACC moved their championship football game to Orlando.

Yeah. Lowest attendance for an ACC championship football game in history.

Loss.

As for the company that kicked off the boycotts:

While PayPal canceled plans last year to construct an operations center in Charlotte that would have employed about 400, other companies have stepped in. Already this year, Moen, Corning and Alevo have announced in-state expansions, bringing in about 650 jobs over the next several years, according to the partnership.

There have actually been efforts to repeal HB2, in a way that is agreeable to both sides of the argument. To date, Democrats are obstructing, just as they did in 2016, because they want to wrest control of the General Assembly out of the hands of the Republican majority.

If they can keep this an issue until the midterm elections in 2018, claiming damages to the state that don’t actually exist, and somehow conning the public into believing it, they have control of the state again, and can begin dismantling all the positives that the General Assembly and Governor Pat McCrory did over a four-year span.

But, hey, social justice, right?