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Entries for 2010
Gary Pearce posted on May 14, 2010 09:25
I admire Roddy Jones, John Prestage and the 800 business and civic leaders they say have “responded to an invitation from former U.S. Sen. Robert Morgan and Democracy North Carolina to form Campaign Donors for Campaign Reform.”
They write:
“Together, we have endorsed a new "voter-owned" approach to campaign financing: Offer qualified candidates a set amount of public campaign money if they agree to limit their spending and fundraising and if they demonstrate broad support among ordinary voters.”
Their intentions are admirable. The consequences could be disastrous.
Let’s say we go to public financing for Governor. Let’s say the spending limit is $1 million. Or more.
To start with, voters will hear about as much from those candidates as you do today from candidates for a judgeship or Insurance Commissioner.
Even worse, suppose a business owner – on the left or the right – decides to spend corporate money on TV ads in the race. Five million dollars, maybe. Or more. Enough to overwhelm what the candidates spend.
They can do that, remember, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Is that the campaign-finance system we want?
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Posted in: General, Issues
Carter Wrenn posted on May 13, 2010 13:39
While Democratic Senate Leader Martin Nesbit was dancing a two-step with reporter Mark Johnson, Governor Perdue was having her own duel with the News and Observer’s Andrew Curliss – and she wasn’t doing as well as Nesbit.
Curliss set about grilling the Governor on what she’s doing – and not doing – to clean up corruption and the Governor waxed elegant saying she’s going to make her appointees to state boards go to their meetings, remove anyone who gets indicted and have Ethics Forms to be filed electronically.
Then – from Perdue’s perspective – the interview turned nasty.
Because Curliss started asking about the reforms the Governor’s not passing.
For instance a donor can only give $8000 to Perdue’s campaign – but he can give an unlimited amount to the Democratic Party which, in turn, can give an unlimited amount to Perdue.
How did Perdue feel, Curliss asked, about closing that loophole?
That, Perdue replied, will have to wait for later.
What about, Curliss asked, Special Grand Juries? Did the Governor support setting up special Grand Juries to investigate corruption and did she support making it a crime to lie to an SBI agent, like it’s a crime to lie to an FBI agent?
Now back around the time that proposal – about the Special Grand Juries – was sitting on Perdue’s desk waiting for her approval one of her donors in Wilmington was being investigated by the District Attorney for making illegal corporate donations (and as a result, Perdue had to return $50,000 in donations).
Bottom line: The Governor decided setting up Special Grand Juries ought to wait until later too.
Finally, Curliss asked the Governor why she wasn’t going to make her appointees to State Boards and Commissions disclose how much money they raised for her.
Perdue looked at her two staffers.
“Didn’t we do that?” she asked.
No ma’am, one of the staffers said. We put it off to next year.
Perdue looked back at Curliss.
Well, she said, nothing is off the table.
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Gary Pearce posted on May 13, 2010 12:03
Josh Stein is the hottest freshman from Raleigh since John Wall.
I’ve known Josh for more than a dozen years, and I feel like I helped raise him in politics. So permit me to brag.
The N.C.Center for Public Policy Research ranked Josh the most effective freshman in the 2009 General Assembly: 19th among the 50 Senators.
That makes Josh is the highest-rated freshman Senator in a decade. And no true freshman (that is, one who was not appointed to fill a vacancy in a prior session) has ranked higher in the survey’s 34 years.
Highly ranked freshmen in the past included Tony Rand, Herbert Hyde, Howard Lee and Don Clodfelter.
Good company.
And Josh, unlike John Wall, probably will be around for a while.
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Gary Pearce posted on May 12, 2010 09:41
You can’t have a temperance meeting in a bar. And a group that wants to reform lobbying and fund-raising can’t have a fundraiser sponsored by lobbyists.
But that’s what the N.C. Coalition for Lobbying and Government Reform is doing.
The result: Governor Perdue – who, hard as she tries, can’t satisfy the N&O on ethics – says she won’t go. The coalition gets embarrassed on the front page –and looks hypocritical.
Now skeptical legislators can challenge the reformers: Why should we outlaw things that you do?
This comes under the heading: What were they thinking?
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Carter Wrenn posted on May 12, 2010 08:45
There is no political spectacle quite like watching a politician duke it out with a reporter; like when Charlotte Observer reporter Mark Johnson interviewed Senate Democrat Leader Martin Nesbit about cleaning up corruption in state government. Only Nesbit wasn’t punching. He was floating like a butterfly. Like Mohammed Ali.
Johnson took the bull by the horns, asking Nesbit bluntly: Do you support Ethics Reform to clean up corruption in state government?
Yes, of course, Nesbit said. But then he added, Except I’m worried about the unforeseen circumstances.
Johnson: How about banning political donations by state contractors?
Yes, Nesbit said. Then he added, But exactly how you do that, I don’t know.
Johnson: How about a one year cooling off period before high ranking state officials can go to work as a lobbyist?
Yes sir, Nesbit replied, But I don’t know if I ought to regulate people when they go back into the private sector.
Johnson: How about banning gifts to state employees?
Nesbit: That’s a good idea – as long as it’s well defined.
Johnson: When the Senate convenes will you pass the reform bills the House passed last year?
Nesbit: Yes. I’ve promised they’ll get a hearing – but there are problems with each one.
Johnson: What about requiring appointees to State Boards and Commissions to disclose how much money they raise for candidates?
Nesbit: Yes, of course. But how do you determine who raised what at large fundraisers?
Johnson: Did your personal experience – being cited for failing to disclose Blue Cross and Blue Shield sponsoring your son’s race car team – affect your views on Ethics Reform?
Nesbit pirouetted adroitly.
No, sir, he said. Absolutely not.
Mohammed Ali couldn’t have handled it better.
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Carter Wrenn posted on May 11, 2010 09:30
Ms. Kathleen Parker doesn’t like Reverend Franklin Graham one bit and she let him have it with both barrels in her column Sunday saying she’s delighted Graham had to do his praying in the Pentagon parking lot – on National Prayer Day – while the respectable religious leaders were doing their praying inside.
What set off this brawl?
“Graham’s offense,” Ms. Parker let fly in her column, “is expressing his belief that only Christians have God’s ear, that Islam is evil and that Muslims and Hindus don’t pray to the same God he does.”
Reverend Graham, for his part, got pretty explicit too. “No elephant with 100 arms can do anything for me,” he said, referring to one of the five main Hindu deities. “None of their 9,000 gods is going to lead me to salvation. We are fooling ourselves if we think we can have some big Kumbaya service and all hold hands and it’s all going to get better in this world. It’s not going to get better.”
In other words, Franklin Graham’s belief the Hindu Elephant is a fraud got him exiled to the parking lot and Ms. Parker couldn’t agree more.
“If the whole world,” she says earnestly, “prays for a common good, will no good come of it?”
Plus, she adds, she’s got science on her side.
The neuroscientists, she says, using brain scanners have discovered “whether you’re a Sikh, a Catholic nun, a Buddhist monk or a Sufi Muslim” the same parts of your brain light up during prayer. Which, of course, leads to two obvious conclusions: 1) One man’s prayer is as good as another’s; and, 2) We have a “God Gene” – meaning what we once thought of as a spiritual experience is simply a genetic human phenomenon.
Of course, all this focus on genes begs one question: Who’s listening to those prayers? Or to put it another way: How many Gods are there? One? A dozen? Or is there One God who wears a hundred different disguises and preaches a hundred different gospels – telling Christians there’s One God and at the same time telling Hindus they’re 9,000 deities?
This is no esoteric exercise in theology.
Because if Ms. Parker is right the religious leaders inside the Pentagon praying for our soldiers – to Mohammed, the Hindu Elephant and Christ – as their brains light up may all have their prayers answered.
But if Reverend Graham – for all his political insensitivity – is right then no matter what color the brain turns on an electronic imager the One God just got exiled to the Pentagon parking lot by the U.S. Army.
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Posted in: General, Issues
Gary Pearce posted on May 11, 2010 08:29
I spoke Monday night to the Wake County Democratic Men’s Club – which, I learned, also has women members.
I talked about the two groups that have always competed for political dominance in North Carolina: the “Just Say No” crowd of Jesse Helms, Richard Burr and the Tea Party and the “Go Forward’ crowd of Kerr Scott, Terry Sanford and Jim Hunt.
“Go Forward” was the name of Kerr Scott’s program as governor from 1949-1953.
I was invited and introduced by Boyd Bennett, retired director of state prisons and first vice president of the club.
Boyd is distantly related to a key figure in the history of the “Go Forward” crowd: Bert Bennett. I believe Bob said his father and Bert are second cousins.
Bert is a legendary figure. He was Sanford’s campaign manager in 1960 and Hunt’s political mentor.
We talked during the meeting about the tough outlook for Democrats this year. And I was reminded of a story Bert likes to tell about Sanford.
After Sanford win in 1960, he named Bert chairman of the state Democratic Party. Bert had to go to the kind of political dinners he hated.
As Bert tells it, “We’d won, and there was some damn speaking thing, you know. I had to go. I had to sit at the head table.”
As the dinner dragged on and the speakers droned on, Bert took a napkin and wrote a note to Terry. He knew that Terry’s wife Margaret Rose was unhappy because Terry was gone so many evenings, away from the family and their kids.
Bert wrote: “Terry, why do you stay in this business?
Right away, the note came back. Sanford had written: “To keep the SOBs out.”
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Gary Pearce posted on May 10, 2010 08:23
One overlooked factor in the Democratic Senate primary: Did being the Washington pooh-bahs’ pick hurt Cal Cunningham?
The DSCC heavies got behind Cunningham only after a long and frustrating courtship of Bob Etheridge. Cunningham got so frustrated he dropped out of the race, then got back in when Etheridge finally said no.
So you had white male big shots in DC recruiting a white male candidate in NC to run against a female and an African-American – both of whom had the pluck to got into the race on their own.
Maybe the hard core of the Democratic Party showed some anti-Washington anger right here.
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Carter Wrenn posted on May 07, 2010 18:03
With a new budget looming the Governor is once again off in hot pursuit of billions from the Obama Administration and, since the President’s a fan of Charter Schools, North Carolina’s Charter School parents saw their opportunity and took it.
They went to a recent State Education Board Meeting and suggested to Chairman Bill Harrison if he and the Governor really wanted to get a couple of hundred million dollars out of President Obama for education it might help if they’d lift the cap on the number of Charter Schools in the state.
Now the Education Board and Governor Perdue just plain don’t like Charter Schools. Nor do the Democrats in the legislature. Or the teachers union. Which is why there’s a cap – limiting the number of schools – in the first place.
But since President Obama likes Charter Schools the parents had a point.
Chairman Harrison sagaciously weighed his desire for a couple of hundred million dollars (of President Obama’s money) against his dislike of Charter Schools and decided the game wasn’t worth the candle. He couldn’t possibly go along with lifting the cap because, he said, “we get Charter Schools that are more about employing relatives than educating kids.”
Now there’s a nugget of truth in his charge. There was a report in the newspaper a while back about a Charter School principal who hired his nephews and cousins and relatives.
On the other hand follow Chairman Harrison’s logic: He’s willing to risk a bit of nepotism as long as he can limit it to one hundred schools. What kind of sense does that make? Why can’t the Chairman both root out nepotism and lift the cap? Is that too tough a job?
Telling well meaning parents who want to start charter schools they can’t because someone else is dishonest is like punishing the virtuous (or, at least, the innocent) rather than the culprits. If Chairman Harrison applied that same logic to DMV, DOT, and DHHS most of State government would shut down.
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Gary Pearce posted on May 07, 2010 11:30
Tom Fetzer is so outraged about Rusty Carter’s illegal campaign contributions he called another press conference.
Governor Perdue and Senator Basnight are so embarrassed they think it should be a felony.
Soon Joe Lieberman probably will try to take away the citizenship of anyone who does such a heinous thing.
Now, I don’t minimize what Carter did. It was illegal.
But, as I understand it, he funneled corporate money to candidates through his employees.
And, as I further understand it, the United States Supreme Court now says it’s okay to spend corporate money on campaigns.
So, next time, Carter can just use his company’s money to run campaign ads or do whatever he wants, right?
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