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Entries for October 2010
Gary Pearce posted on October 20, 2010 15:32
I don’t care for Paul Coble’s politics, but I like him personally. So I’m giving him some advice about his TV ads: lose the rich furnishings.
I regret I don’t have a link to the ads. Couldn’t find it anywhere.
The ads are short – maybe 10 or 15 seconds. Paul is talking to camera in what looks like his den or living room.
Unfortunately, the furniture, paintings, etc. fairly scream: “I’m a rich guy!” They all have an old-money feel to them.
Great setting for a Ralph Lauren commercial. Not so good for today’s political climate.
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Gary Pearce posted on October 20, 2010 13:15
I love polls. When I did campaigns, I spent hours digging through them. Numbers don’t lie, and they tell you what’s obscured in the political blather.
The headline is that voters prefer a Republican Congress over a Democratic one by 50-43 (up from 46-43 a month ago).
But why?
One number explains it: By 59-32, voters think the country is on the wrong track, instead of the right direction.
And the so-called enthusiasm gap is obvious.
The 50-43 preference for a Republican Congress is among Likely Voters. Among all Registered Voters, it’s closer: 46-44.
In other words, the Democrats aren’t voting. And voters are pessimistic about the future.
That’s the story of this election.
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Carter Wrenn posted on October 19, 2010 17:42
There’s a scene in the movie Erin Brockovich where Julia Roberts runs head on into the epitome of an oily corporate lawyer who represents Pacific Gas and Electric.
In real life the lawyer who represented PG&E was Rene Tatro, who’s known as ‘The Darth Vader of the environmental movement.’ Attorney Tatro is now participating in a strange trial in Raleigh.
The Department of Environment and Natural Resources is the state agency that (in theory) works to defend citizens from corporations like PG&E. But hardly anything in state government works like it’s supposed to and DENR’s an example.
About a year ago DENR gave Alcoa Corporation, the giant aluminum conglomerate, the green light to run four dams by its old smelter in Stanly County for another 50 years. What DENR ignored was, a few months earlier, the Stanly County Commissioners had decided it was past time Alcoa – which had been dumping toxic waste in Badin Lake for eighty years – cleaned up the mess around its smelter.
That, of course, led to a brouhaha and when DENR wouldn’t budge the County Commissioners sued the state saying the folks who were supposed to be protecting the environment were asleep at the switch.
When that happened Alcoa rushed out to Los Angeles and hired Mr. Tatro and sent him to Raleigh – so now, while technically representing Alcoa, for all practical purposes he’s representing DENR, trying the state’s case against Stanly county. Which, of course, is fine with the folks at DENR since like many state bureaucrats they’re happy to have someone else do their work for them.
As a result, today, in a Raleigh we have a trial no one ever dreamed of: Where the ‘Darth Vader of the Environmental Movement’ is representing the state department in charge of protecting the environment.
It could only happen in North Carolina State government.
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Carter Wrenn posted on October 19, 2010 17:21
So here’s what has happened: Secretary Lanier Cansler promised legislators he could cut the Medicaid Home Care $50 million (because, he said, the 45% of the patients were cheats) – if they’d let him give out a no bid contract to one of his former clients.
Cansler got around that problem by taking away patients’ right to appeal – so he could rule a patient wasn’t sick and didn’t need care and there wasn’t anything the patient could do about it.
Next his former client CCME Corporation (which Cansler gave a $25 million no bid contract) starting cutting patients’ care but it proved to be so inept it turned home care into a massive train wreck. Patients whose doctors said they needed care – for example, after a hospital stay – couldn’t get it because CCME couldn’t find time to examine them. New patients who needed care didn’t get it. And sick patients care got cut which left them one choice: The only way to get care was to go into a Rest Home.
So, so far, the only winner is the Rest Home Lobby (which gains patients), which means the taxpayers lose (because they’re going to pay three times more to care for the patients in Rest Homes), and all that happened because Secretary Cansler misled legislators by telling them, I can cut home care $50 million – if you let me give a $25 million no bid contract to one of my former clients.
So now we have a pair of multi-million dollar health care train wrecks in North Carolina: The mental health care train wreck and the Home Care train wreck.
But at least, Cansler can say to legislators, See. Look. It worked just like I said it would. I’m cutting in-home care 45% – which is an example of how government really works.
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Posted in: General, Issues
Gary Pearce posted on October 19, 2010 13:48
D.G. Martin was interviewing Carter and me for “Who’s Talking” on WCHL radio when we began discussing the topic that soon will dominate political debate: WOWW – Where Obama Went Wrong.
Was it the policy or the politics (see “Blaming the Messenger” below)? Was it the economy? Was in getting in bed with Congress? Was it a failure to communicate?
It occurred to me that this is where Obama’s relative inexperience in politics hurt him.
He went from community organizer to back-bench state legislator. He sailed into the U.S. Senate without a negative ad being run against him. While he became a media superstar, he never was a real player in the Senate.
And he got crushed in his first race for Congress.
In truth, Obama has been a great politician when he has a foil a Hillary Clinton or a John McCain.
He hasn’t had a foil as President. Instead, he is compared to Candidate Obama. And he comes up short.
But soon he may have a foil: a John Boehner. Other Republicans in Congress. And then he’ll have all the Republicans running for President.
Maybe then he’ll get his mojo back.
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Gary Pearce posted on October 18, 2010 15:50
There’s only one way Democrats can interpret the early results from early voting in North Carolina: It’s bad.
According to Democracy North Carolina, “one-stop early voting is off to a record-shattering pace for midterm elections and the largest group casting ballots are white Republican men.”
Another way to look at it: So far, about equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans have voted. In 2008, Democrats had about a 20-point advantage in early voting.
Yikes!
I can predict the Democratic spin: (a) This is only three days. (b) Most early-vote sites haven’t opened. (c) Our turnout program hasn’t kicked in yet.
True, true and true. But it better kick in soon – and big.
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Carter Wrenn posted on October 18, 2010 11:57
Here’s a caricature of how government works North Carolina style: The Chairman of the Wildlife Commission, who naturally got his job by giving money to Governor Perdue, orders the Commission’s CEO to write a nice article about the Governor and publish it in the next edition of their magazine and mail it out to hunters and fishermen.
The CEO has a glowing article written, sends it out and back comes a disgruntled letter from an unhappy hunter who in effect says, ‘What’s this bull – this one fails the ‘smell test’ – and then adds some unflattering comments about the Governor.
The magazine’s editor (who obviously is new to the ways of North Carolina politics) then publishes the hunter’s ‘Letter to the Editor’ in the next edition of the magazine. And all hell breaks loose.
As soon as Governor Perdue’s Donor/Chairman sees the letter in his magazine he has heart-lock; when he recovers he orders the CEO to ‘recall’ every copy of the magazine he can lay his hands on.
But, before the recalled magazines can be shredded or burned, the News and Observer gets wind of what’s going on, calls the Governor and asks a question that must have gone something like this: How much is it costing taxpayers to shred that magazine because it had one letter in it criticizing you?
The order goes out immediately from the Governor’s office: The press is on our heels, don’t shred the magazine, go ahead and send it out.
Next the Chairman and CEO tell reporters with straight faces that neither of them ever had one qualm about publishing that letter lambasting that Governor. Then – still without blushing – they tell the press the real reason the magazine was recalled was an unrelated mistake made by the Editor.
And what happened to the poor editor? Who’s now, no doubt, a wiser man – having learned stepping on Governor Perdue’s toes is no way to pursue a career in North Carolina state government.
He hasn’t been seen or heard from.
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Gary Pearce posted on October 18, 2010 10:11
I feel Robert Gibbs’ pain.
In a New York Times magazine article Sunday, President Obama said, “We probably spent too much time trying to get the policy right than trying to get the politics right.”
Gibbs, the White House press secretary, noted ruefully in the article, “I haven’t been at a policy-problem meeting in 20 months.”
It was a refrain I heard every Monday morning when I was Governor Hunt’s press secretary in his first two terms. At every Cabinet meeting, every Cabinet secretary would brag about the tremendous progress being made on every single initiative in their departments. They – and the Governor – would conclude: “We’re not getting the story out.”
Then they would all look at me. The message was clear: If we could just communicate better, all would be well.
So it is with the Obama administration as it faces electoral disaster in two weeks.
After 1994, Bill Clinton decided he had got the policy wrong. So he moved right.
Of course, he was a much more flexible – or, you might say, less principled – politician than Obama.
Obama & Co. are kidding themselves if they think their only problem is a failure to communicate. Americans have a pretty good sense of what the policy is.
Here’s the question: Are Americans rejecting the policy because the economy is still in the dumps? Or do they oppose the policy – period?
My guess: the voters in the middle – the ones Obama has lost since 2008 – are more practical than ideological. If the economy comes back, he will too.
The question he needs to ask: Am I doing what it takes to get the economy back?
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Carter Wrenn posted on October 15, 2010 17:28
The Rest Home lobby must have one of the most powerful – or lucky – lobbies in North Carolina.
A few years ago, Congress passed a bill to give states the flexibility to care for elderly Medicaid patients in their homes instead of in Rest Homes and almost every state jumped at the opportunity – except North Carolina. Under Secretary Lanier Cansler, North Carolina is the only state that prefers putting patients in Rest Homes.
Why Cansler prefers Rest home may be illogical. But how he did it was straightforward: He just said to get care in his home a patient had to have three physical handicaps, but the same patient could get care in a Rest Home if he only had one handicap.
Cansler also told legislators requiring a patient to have three handicaps to receive home care would allow him to drop 22,000 patients from the Medicaid Home Care program – which he said would save $50 million. But what he didn’t tell legislators was it also created 22,000 new patients who could only get care in Rest Homes – which would cost $150 million.
Disability Rights, the non-profit, described Cansler’s plan this way: “Congress enacted…the Affordable Care Act…to give states more flexibility to provide home and community-based services and decrease institutionalization. Instead, NC is using the authority to encourage institutionalization.” Disability Rights went on to explain that by making it three times harder to get in-home care as opposed to Rest Home care Cansler’s Department was steering patients straight to Rest Homes and concluded, “Typically, it costs three times as much to support an individual in an Adult Care Home (Rest Home) than it does to support him in his own home...DHHS myopic goal of cutting PCS…will ultimately cost the state and federal government money.”
To be continued…
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Posted in: General, Issues
Gary Pearce posted on October 15, 2010 10:54
Rick Martinez, news director with WPTF radio (680AM), taped an interview with me this week about my biography of Governor Jim Hunt. It airs on Carolina Newsmaker Sunday at 7 am (which he said is one of their highest-rated shows. Go figure).
I confess I had some reservations before the interview. I had never met Rick, but I know his politics from his op-ed column in the N&O.
But his interview was more than fair. It was insightful, informed and informative even to me.
First of all, he clearly had read most all the book, even though he had it only one day. That impressed me.
Then he began by asking about the role of race in North Carolina politics back in the 50s and 60s, especially the 1950 Senate race between Willis Smith and Frank Porter Graham.
He quoted an infamous flyer from the Smith campaign, which I wrote about in the book to portray what North Carolina politics was like when Governor Hunt was growing up:
“White People Wake Up - Before It’s Too Late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and daughters in your mills and factories? Negroes sitting beside you in all public eating places? Negroes riding beside you, your wife and your daughters in buses, cabs and trains….”
And on and on.
Rick said that, as a 15-year transplant in North Carolina, he didn’t know that history. And he doubted young people today knew it.
Throughout the 45-minute interview, he asked a series of questions that went to the heart of the story I tried to tell in the book.
His questions were probing and thought-provoking. It was a rewarding experience for me, and I hope it’s one you’ll enjoy listening to.
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