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Entries for 'Gary Pearce'
Gary Pearce posted on March 08, 2013 11:30
Governor McCrory and Republican legislators were against incentives before they were for them.
McCrory is clearly for them when he can bask in the announcement of 2,600 new jobs by MetLife. (Hello, Snoopy!)
Or maybe he’s for them when they are negotiated by Moore & Van Allen, his old law firm.
But his spokeswoman assures us, “There was a complete firewall and no interaction.”
And a Moore & Van Allen’s spokesman chimes in that the Gov’s old job was “not part in any way, shape or form” with the firm’s economic development team.
Conveniently enough, that spokesman is Brian Nick, identified by the N&O as “a former top McCrory campaign adviser.”
Does that mean the Governor deserves no credit whatsoever for what apparently was an eight-month courtship? He just showed up for the cameras?
Senator Phil Berger, who once questioned the Perdue administration’s $45 million incentive package for Continental Tire, “dismissed questions” about this one, which has an eye-popping price tag of $94 million.
Berger says, “I think it’s a whole different circumstance.”
Like how, exactly?
Give Rep. Skip Stam credit for consistency. He said of the MetLife deal, “I oppose picking one company over another company.”
The N&O noted: “The state GOP platform calls incentives “contrary to the free enterprise system.”
Expect, apparently, when Republicans can claim credit for creating jobs. That’s called incentive.
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Gary Pearce posted on March 07, 2013 09:46
While Governor McCrory prepares a “very, very tight budget” and blocks Medicaid expansion, the Republican governor of another purple Southern state is going in the opposite direction.
Governor Rick Scott of Florida was a Tea Party poster boy when he got elected in 2010. Now a Miami Tea Party leader has sent the governor a “breakup note.”
Scott signed off on Medicaid expansion in his state. He proposed a $2,500 across-the-board pay increase for teachers. The New York Times says he “has crisscrossed the state advertising his enthusiasm for education, state workers, highways, commuter rails, early voting, the disabled, environmental protection and jobs.”
Democrats ask: “Medicaid expansion, Obamacare, teacher bonuses — who is this guy?”
A Republican consultant explains: “If he is going to get re-elected, he needs to rebrand, reboot and repackage.”
In North Carolina, Governor McCrory has entrusted his immediate political fate to Art Pope, his budget director. For more than 20 years, Pope has spent, strived and struggled to get control of the budget. Now that he has it, he is going to put his ideological stamp on it.
The question is what the political impact will be of, say, deep cuts in education, the universities, community colleges and various economic development programs. All of them have constituents and supporters, including Republicans.
While Scott tacks to the center in Florida, McCrory is heading right in Raleigh. Soon he may hit high winds and rough waves. Then we’ll see if he follows Scott’s course.
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Gary Pearce posted on March 06, 2013 10:34
With Carter’s help, George Holding had a simple message last fall that boiled down the Republican mantra: “Cut spending now.”
It’s the one message that unites Republicans as they splinter over immigration, gay marriage and guns in the wake of Mitt Romney’s loss.
Here’s the challenge for Democrats: What’s your alternative?
House Republicans’ fervent faith in cutting spending led to the much-ballyhooed “sequestration” budget cuts. First Republicans said those cuts are no big deal. But now Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler and Governor McCrory say the cuts could cause an “emergency” by shutting down North Carolina’s multibillion-dollar hog and poultry industry.
Thanks to the determination (or obstinacy) of the House GOP, cutting spending dominates the debate today. Speaker Boehner went so far as to call taxes “stealing” from the American people.
That was the philosophy underlining Romney’s “47 percent” comments, which cost him the election. He complains now it was distorted. No, Mitt, it was clear and it was what you and Republicans believe: A significant percentage of Americans are moochers who gang up on the producers to steal their money.
Carter has written before that the Founding Fathers foresaw that risk, and that it’s part of the risk of democracy. But, in fact, that hasn’t happened. Since the high-tax 1950s, we have cut taxes on people at the top.
But the issue is before us, and Democrats have to answer. They have to define what they believe constitutes the right level and the right kind of government spending – and taxing.
It’s an honest debate that America deserves.
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Gary Pearce posted on March 05, 2013 08:42
“I really don’t see it as an issue,” said Senator Buck Newton. “If it went from County A to County B, I’m not sure why County B would have a major objection to that.”
“It” is waste brines and toxins from fracking, which – John Murawski reports in the N&O – could end up being injected into deep wells in coastal North Carolina.
Believe me, Buck: “County B” will object. County B always objects when someone proposes dumping waste there from County A.
Ask Governor McCrory. Voters down east dumped him in 2008 when the Perdue campaign ran an ad that said he supported dumping New York City’s garbage in Eastern North Carolina.
Ask Governor Hunt. He caught hell in Halifax County when he pushed for a landfill to store PCB-contaminated soil.
Ask Governor Martin. He went radioactive in Northampton County when he proposed dumping low-level nuclear waste there.
Or just ask your Republican colleagues in the legislature. Like Rep. Rick Catlin, a Republican from Wilmington who is a hydrogeologist and environmental engineer. He said: “It’s going to be very controversial…You’re basically contaminating an aquifer forever. Please don’t inject any down here.”
Sounds like it’s an issue.
Tyler Clark, a former state geologist, warned: “Once you put it in the ground, it’s not going to stay there, it’s going to go somewhere. It would be hard to predict where it could travel.”
Of course, that may explain why the legislature threw the state geologist off the fracking commission.
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Gary Pearce posted on March 04, 2013 11:21
A TAPster says this legislature is like a 15-year-old boy whose parents leave him home alone for the weekend.
If a couple of friends come over and they drink a six-pack, he probably gets away with it.
If he invites the whole high school to a drunken bash that wrecks the house, wakes up the neighbors and attracts the police, he probably never gets trusted with the keys again.
This legislature is headed down the latter path.
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Gary Pearce posted on March 01, 2013 10:24
What did we learn during the Republican legislature’s “Education Week”? That North Carolina ranks 48th in education spending.
Legislative leaders bragged that this was the first time all school superintendents were invited to tell the legislature their concerns. The superintendents promptly warned against taking more money from the public schools and giving it to private schools. Which the legislature is going to do anyway.
What will the quintessential swing voter – a moderate woman and mother living in the suburbs of North Raleigh – think?
She doesn’t like Governor McCrory raising his Cabinet’s salaries while cutting assistance for people who can’t find jobs. She doesn’t like raising taxes on working people at the bottom while cutting taxes for people at the top. She doesn’t like blocking half a million people from getting Medicaid and health care.
Now she sees the public schools at risk.
Rep. John Blust, R-Guilford, warned his party about hubris Thursday, although he was talking about another bill – the Great Boards and Commissions Power Grab.
Blust said: “I don’t like this idea, 'Well, we have the power, let’s go ahead and do it.’ Just because we have power we need to be judicious with it. I wish we would be more careful with it. The people have the right to yank us in two years and put someone else in."
The question is whether Democrats have the will and the wherewithal to exploit this rush to the right.
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Gary Pearce posted on February 28, 2013 10:49
Now that the Case of the Not-Blueprint Memo has been solved, Democrats and progressives can move on to important issues like what Republicans are doing on education, Medicaid, unemployment assistance, tax reform and … hold on, what’s that?
Never mind. Apparently, we will move on to the new state Democratic chairman owing almost $290,000 in unpaid taxes and penalties.
Here’s some advice to Randy Voller: The best thing you can do for your party, state and country is resign, go back to work and pay off your taxes.
It’s admirable that you owned up to the problem and are paying off what you owe. But it won’t wash to say: "That's why I feel that as party chair I have a real good insight into what a lot of folks are dealing with here in North Carolina."
No, Mister Chairman, most folks in North Carolina don’t owe $290,000 in unpaid taxes and penalties.
Please go. There are more important things to talk about.
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Gary Pearce posted on February 27, 2013 08:15
Being mean is not a formula for success in politics, and Governor McCrory may learn that lesson the hard way.
Hold on, you say. What about Jesse Helms? He made a 30-year career out of being mean and picking on politically weak victims.
Glad you asked. Here’s the difference: What works for a Senator doesn’t work for a Governor.
With Helms, people thought: “There are 99 SOBs in the Senate. Let’s send them a real SOB.” After all, nothing really gets done in the Senate.
But voters know that a Governor makes decisions that can help – or hurt – real people.
Like not extending Medicaid to 500,000 people who don’t have health insurance – and might not get life-saving health care.
Like cutting unemployment assistance to people who can’t find a job and may have trouble providing for their families, while raising your Cabinet secretaries’ pay.
Like stigmatizing immigrants on license plates and making it hard for them to get an education for their children.
Now, the Governor is a likeable, affable fellow. But he needs to consider how politically vulnerable he might become if he starts looking like Jesse Helms with a smile – especially among moderate Independents.
Of course, this assumes those voters know what the Governor is doing. That’s the Democrats’ responsibility.
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Gary Pearce posted on February 26, 2013 10:28
Why do congressional Republicans keep jumping off the cliff – and taking the country with them? Don’t they see the political trap that President Obama has sprung on them?
You could enjoy what they’re doing to themselves politically if you didn’t hate what they’re doing to the country economically.
Here’s just part of the sequestration toll in North Carolina, according to theCharlotte Observer and News & Observer: “Hundreds of North Carolina teachers would lose their jobs, many families across the state would no longer get help with preschool or day care for their children, and 22,000 civilians who work for the military in the state would face pay cuts.”
Nationally, unemployment will go up. Economic growth will go down. The recovery from recession will be slowed.
Worst of all, lines at airports will get longer and slower. Now you’re talking a real crisis.
Republicans have convinced themselves – again – that their strategy is a winner. They are blinded by ideology. They hate government so much they thinks everybody hates it. They’re already forgotten how Obama won an election they were certain he would lose.
So Obama just goes up to bat every day and hits another one out the park on them.
One of two things is certain to happen at this rate: Republicans will eventually wake up and change, or they will get their brains beat in at the ballot box, and it won’t matter.
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Gary Pearce posted on February 25, 2013 10:46
Kim Genardo of NBC-17 is following a well-trod path from capital reporter to Governor’s communications director. Most every governor hires a capital reporter to tame the savages. I made that switch from the N&O to then-Lt. Governor Hunt in January 1976 – 37 years ago! (As I recall, I was about 13 years old.)
Two issues arise here – one past and one prospective. First, the past: Was she talking to the Governor about the job when, as the N&O noted Saturday, “she did a one-on-one interview with McCrory for WNCN 10 days ago”? If she was, she shouldn’t have done the interview. It puts her coverage in question.
Second, looking ahead: Which master will she serve – Governor or media?
It’s a tricky task. Some Governors think that, since you were one of them, you should have some kind of mojo that insures positive media coverage. But some journalists think you’ve sold out and gone over to the dark side.
Some hacks-turned-flacks turn into media scourges. They block reporters’ access to the great man, yell and scream at reporters who write tough stories and thereby poison the relationship.
I made my share of mistakes, but learned one big lesson: Your job is, in fact, to serve two masters. Yes, you work for the Governor, but your paycheck comes from the taxpayers of North Carolina and you have a unique responsibility to serve the public.
So you have to respect the role journalists play in getting information to the public, even if your boss and the people around him get mad. You have to help both sides: help the governor tell his story and help the reporters write their stories.
Fortunately, I had a boss who understood the role of the media, liked to read newspapers and watch the news and – most of all – didn’t hold a grudge. Oh, he got mad about stories. But he vented his anger with me, not them, and he was willing to talk to the reporter again. After all, there will be another paper and another broadcast tomorrow.
Governor Hunt also found that reporters’ questions alerted him to problems his own people wouldn’t tell him about. Never in history has a gubernatorial appointee volunteered: “Governor, you know that assignment you gave us? Well, we have made a total hash of it.”
So good luck, Kim. All you need is a cool head, a thick skin and a sense of humor.
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