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Entries for June 2009
Carter Wrenn posted on June 30, 2009 21:34
In his State Senate Committee Berger cut home care for 20,000 patients on Medicaid. The reason he gave was simple: He said he had a ‘study’ by a state vendor (named CCME) that proved 45% of the patients in home care were ineligible.
Unfortunately for Senator Berger it turned out the study didn’t say that. In fact, it didn’t say anyone was ineligible. Not one patient. Because it didn’t include an examination of a single patient. So Senator Berger cut home care for 20,000 patients (who were eligible) based on a report he misread.
Read my blog series:
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Gary Pearce posted on June 30, 2009 14:10
It’s been a rough couple of elections for Republicans, so I can understand how happy today’s news is making Carter (see his blog below).
But how can you blame him?
Just when you thought the John Edwards affair could not sink lower, here comes Andrew Young.
Just when you thought Mark Sanford had cornered the market on lovesick middle-aged male crises, here comes news there may be a sex tape. Buried in the last graf of the N&O’s front page story.
Talk about leaving readers hanging.
It all is just a reminder that the best book ever written about politics remains Robert Penn Warren’s All The King’s Men. From the stink of the diaper to the stench of the shroud, there is always something.
I wish I could just dismiss it all as tawdry twaddle.
But I have a feeling that the still-running Edwards saga – now competing for headlines with the continuing Mike and Mary Easley saga – is bad news for North Carolina Democrats.
I remember in 2006 and 2008 how Republicans insisted that the string of scandals, sexual and otherwise, involving various GOP officials around the country should have nothing to do with how people voters on the issues of the hour.
But it did anyway.
Is it possible that, in 2010, the main thing voters may have on their minds is how the two former stars of the North Carolina Democratic Party went so far wrong?
Surely that wouldn’t be fair to all the honest, hard-working Democrats laboring to balance budgets and do good things in the legislature and Congress, would it?
But, as that great Democrat John Kennedy said, life isn’t fair.
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Carter Wrenn posted on June 30, 2009 14:03
Well, even a blind hog finds an acorn now and then; a year ago Republicans couldn’t buy a break and now gifts are falling out of the sky – of all things, Mrs. Easley is going to contest her dismissal from NCSU.
It’s amazing: After her ‘wooden Indian’ press conference it seemed a safe bet the Governor and Mrs. Easley would enjoy a spell staying out of the headlines and just lay low; but, instead, it looks like Mrs. is going to shoot it out with the professors at State over a ‘severance package – the whole thing is beginning to sound like ‘Ahab and The Whale’ and may end up the same way: Ship sunk. Crew drowned in Indian Ocean.
And, as if one gift isn’t enough, John Edwards is back on the headlines;¾it turns out (back during his political career) North Carolina’s world class poverty fighter begged twenty-something aide Andrew Young to take a spear for him and say Young (not Edwards) was father of maven Rielle Hunter’s child. ‘I’ll take care of you for life,’ Edwards added. And it gets better: Young reveals Edwards participated “in the production of a sex tape with Hunter.”
Imagine that: A fellow crazy enough to run for President, get tangled up with a blonde and produce a sex tape.
It’s only Tuesday but what with Argentine girlfriends, pugilistic Governors wives and a new fandango courtesy of John Edwards it’s already been a crazy week.
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Carter Wrenn posted on June 27, 2009 18:15
My guess is hardly anyone reading this blog remembers when the movie Deep Throat came out 37 years ago – but there was an article about it in the paper last Saturday.
Some sleuth has figured out that back in 1972 (when I was nineteen) the FBI moved heaven and earth to keep the movie out of theaters;—as the newspaper put it the FBI fought a determined rear-guard action to “roll back what became a cultural shift toward more permissive entertainment” – and lost. Big time.
“The story of Deep Throat,” a constitutional law professor at Rutgers says, “is the story of the last gasp of the forces lined up against the cultural and sexual revolution and it is the advent of the entry of pornography in the mainstream.”
No one can argue with that.
The FBI standing for less sex back in 1972 proved to be a losing proposition – so, since, we’ve progressed from Leave it to Beaver to Sex and the City and the roots of enlightenment now run so deep just the other day, according to another newspaper story, a ‘lady of the evening’ in Denver placed an ad on ‘Craig’s List’ then flew to Raleigh to ply her trade.
Somehow, in the midst of all this progress, it’s hard not to feel a little nostalgia for the good old days of I Love Lucy and wonder if enlightenment isn’t what it was cracked up to be – but, then, I’m not nineteen anymore.
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Gary Pearce posted on June 26, 2009 09:18
That old Watergate adage may dictate the 2010 elections. Democrats – both in Raleigh and Washington – may follow the money straight to big-time mid-term defeats.
Sometimes at the beach, two waves merge together to make a big wave that about drowns you. That may happen next year.
Nationally, the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll suggests that moderate and independent voters are becoming more and more concerned about the level of federal spending. And health-care reform could add another $1 trillion. Obama is still popular, but the poll numbers should worry the White House and Congress.
In North Carolina, Democrats are about to walk the plank on $1 billion-plus in new taxes. All my Democratic friends say legislators need to show some “courage,” raise taxes and protect education and health care.
Well, who’s going to protect education and health care if Republicans win the House or Senate – or both – next year?
One perceptive Democratic legislator took issue with my analysis that the party – and Governor Perdue – have to choose between making Democrats mad over budget cuts or Republicans and Independents mad over tax increases. Actually, he said, we’re probably going to make both sides mad.
That – on top of the continuing Easley saga – could spell trouble next year.
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Carter Wrenn posted on June 25, 2009 23:56
Senator Doug Berger’s blooper is going on television.
When Senator Berger passed a bill to cut the home care of 20,000 elderly Medicaid patients, he said he had a study that proved they weren’t eligible for care. Period. Well, it turns out, over a month ago the Department of Health and Human Resources told Senator Berger he had his facts all wrong – that the ‘study’ didn’t show what he said.
Next, when The Association for Home and Hospice Care pointed out his mistake, Berger gave them a pretty blunt answer;—he tried to cut the elderly and disabled patients’ care even more – a whopping $77 million. All but eliminating the program. And leaving even patients Berger, himself, has acknowledged are eligible without care.
Finally the Home and Hospice Care folks, who have been working with other legislators to straighten out Berger’s mistake, decided the people who most needed to know what Berger is doing – are the voters in his district. So they’re taking to the airwaves and here’s their first television ad “Hard to Believe:’
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Carter Wrenn posted on June 25, 2009 19:15
No one seems to drive a true-blue liberal up the wall like Dick Cheney;—just about all Cheney has to do is walk into a room and say, Hello. How are you? and folks like columnist Rick Horowitz go wild-eyed and lose control.
The other day Horowitz lit into Cheney, first giving former President Bush the brush back saying Bush had ‘slunk’ back to Texas, then going into a full fledged tirade saying Cheney just ‘won’t go… he just won’t shut up.’
In the blink of an eye Horowitz filled half a page with invective calling Cheney every name in the book, saying Cheney’s greedy...jealous…angry…vain... scared…and lusting after a six figure book deal but nobody wants to publish the memoirs of a ‘leper’ – so Cheney’s ‘dishing the dirt’ hoping to make himself saleable.
Now what Horowitz calls ‘dirt’ is Cheney opposing President Obama closing Guantanamo Bay. President Obama and Nancy Pelosi say we’ll be just as safe after granting terrorist Civil Rights – as we are now, locking them in Gitmo as prisoners of war.
Cheney argues that is a pipedream – and he does seem to have common sense on his side: After all a terrorist can’t get in much mischief in Guantanamo Bay – but Lord knows what one could do in a federal court.
But in columnist Horowitz’s intellectual world anyone who raises a practical point like that, in Horowitz’s words, Ought to just shut up and go away.
But Cheney does have a point – not a pleasant point but a point. And President Obama and Ms. Pelosi saying we can have our cake and eat too avoids the real question. It’s pretty easy to see reading terrorists their ‘Miranda Rights’ does come with a risk – so the question is: Are we willing to take it?
And what Mr. Horowitz should do – rather than pillorying Dick Cheney – is make his case why taking that risk is worth it.
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Gary Pearce posted on June 25, 2009 10:18
What are they serving these days at governor’s conferences and Senate caucuses? Viagra?
Eliot Spitzer, John Edwards, David Vitter, John Ensign and now Mark Sanford.
One story has it that Sanford’s staff merely misunderstood him. They thought he said he would be “on the Appalachian Trial,” but he actually said “on some Argentine tail.”
A wag from North Carolina emailed CNN last night: “Why are South Carolinians so upset that their governor was missing for seven days? Our last governor was missing for eight years.”
Of course, it may be that Sanford was just trying to live up to the romantic example set by that South Carolina Republican hero Strom Thurmond.
And Sanford’s emails certainly make more interesting reading than the ones we get from N.C.State. Of course, we don’t know what’s missing here.
All this just goes to prove the wisdom of what Robert E. Lee is reputed to have said about South Carolina: It’s too small to be an independent country and too big to be an insane asylum.
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Carter Wrenn posted on June 24, 2009 02:38
Mrs. Easley’s lost her scholastic robes and left the stage at NCSU to a communal sigh of relief;—but there’s an important question left unanswered: Who pulled the strings to get her the job?
After all, when someone robs a bank, gets caught and gives back part of the money they don’t get a medal for good citizenship. It’s a safe bet the professors over at North Carolina State University didn’t dream up with hiring Mrs. Easley (or paying her $875,000) on their own. So the question is, Who did?
And from reading the newspapers it looks like one answer may be: Former Governor Easley. Himself.
Which – if we really mean to clean up corruption in state government – is a question that needs to be answered.
Unfortunately, the states Democratic political leaders don’t seem to want to answer it. Governor Perdue put the kibosh on naming a Special Prosecutor. The Attorney General has all but vanished into thin air. And the Democrats in the House and Senate won’t hold hearings – or let Republicans hold one.
For better or worse, the Democrats have closed ranks behind Mike Easley: There will be no state investigation.
But down the road that may be a problem for the Democrats. Right now there’s not one shred of evidence Governor Perdue, Attorney General Cooper or any other elected Democrat did one thing improper. But by not appointing a Special Prosecutor and instructing him or her, Go on. Have at it and let the chips fall where they may, Democrats like the Governor risk taking part-ownership in Easley’s mistakes.
In effect the Governor and Attorney General have agreed to ride shot-gun on a wagon where everything hinges on Mike Easley’s innocence – and if it turns out Easley did wire up his wife’s job, Perdue and Cooper are going to have to explain why no one in state government has done one thing about it.
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Gary Pearce posted on June 23, 2009 11:55
Richard Vinroot is right: How can the legislature tax the services of mechanics and hairdressers, but not lawyers?
Of course, lawyers write the tax legislation.
But Democrats are getting themselves into enough political trouble without being elitist, too.
Governor Perdue is on her “Save the Schools – and My Poll Ratings” tour. Democrats in the legislature are worrying about the price they’ll pay next year. And Republicans are salivating. (Read Carter’s blog about me being a prophet – or “profit,” which I would prefer.)
To be fair, Perdue’s poll ratings are inversely proportional to the size of the budget deficit. And the legislative leaders are trying to thread a needle: protect education and health care without committing political hari-kari.
But – just as I told Carter not to worry, because we Democrats will screw it up – I now reassure Democrats: Not to worry, the Republicans will find a way to screw up this opportunity.
Could there be a more clumsy and clueless group in the world, with the possible exception of the mullahs in Iran?
Just look at this lineup: Stam, Berger, Allred, Newt, Palin, Rush, Cheney. You almost miss W.
And how about that Mark Sanford? Has Governor ET phoned home yet?
I won’t worry until they come up with someone who’s a credible leader. Like a Richard Vinroot. He scared the hell out of me in 1996. Fortunately, he wasn’t right-wing enough for the Republicans. Hunt got Robin Hayes as an opponent, and we cruised.
Democrats may need the same kind of luck in 2010.
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