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Issues
Gary Pearce posted on October 06, 2012 14:56
A country lawyer – and conservative Democrat - says Mitt Romney may have made a big mistake in the first debate, despite the quick boost he got.
“Whatever you say in your opening argument, you’d better back it up when you present your case,” the lawyer said.
To wit: Did Romney lie when he said he wouldn’t cut taxes 20 percent?
Obama’s campaign already has an ad up saying, yes, he lied. If that ad works – and Obama exploits the opening – Romney’s strong showing Wednesday night could end up hurting him.
Voters, like juries, don’t like being misled.
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Gary Pearce posted on October 05, 2012 09:45
Walter Dalton’s feisty debate performance gave his campaign a spark and got under Pat McCrory’s skin. That’s a weakness that would hurt McCrory in the Governor’s office.
If McCrory didn’t like Dalton’s questions and attacks, wait until the media gets after him. And that’s just a matter of time in a media culture that prizes fact-checking and investigations.
Wait until the legislative leadership decides to show him who’s boss. Wait until a couple of really, really conservative Republican legislators squawk when McCoy makes a moderate peep. Wait until the entrenched bureaucracy protects itself by leaking some juicy tidbits.
And wait until he is finally forced to answer the question of how he’s going to close the $2 billion to $11 billion from cutting or eliminating personal and corporate income taxes. The debate panel led him slide by that one Wednesday night. He’ll have to answer if he is elected, and the answer is clear: Either raise some other taxes, or cut education even more.
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Carter Wrenn posted on September 28, 2012 18:12
Amid the turmoil and hard times, when 47% of the Americans depend on government for support, it came as a surprise to open the newspaper and read Raleigh is spending $60 million on a train station.
Medicare is, with mathematical certainty, heading to bankruptcy. Social Security is not far behind. And the government in Washington can only continue to function as long as someone is willing to loan it 40 cents of every dollar it spends.
But the federal government, state government and city governments are uniting to build a train depot.
Does that make any sense at all?
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Carter Wrenn posted on September 26, 2012 17:17
If Mitt Romney feels like he’s up to his hips in alligators – he ought to consider the alligators that have chomped down on poor Tony Tata.
Two years ago, the newly elected Republican School Board made short shift of the old School Superintendent and hired Tata. Then the Democrats won the next election and their School Board set out to give Tata the boot.
Elections do have consequences.
Next, proclaiming it the “War at the School Board,” Wake County’s Republican Chairman Susan Bryant blasted the Democrats and emailed a call to arms to local Republicans, saying, ‘The radical extremists… are preparing to fire our great Superintendent, and we have to stop them.’
Unfortunately for Mrs. Bryant she ran head-on into a deadly foe: A sense of humor – which the News & Observer’s Barry Saunders has in abundance. Gently poking Mrs. Bryan in his column Saunders wrote: Chill, sisterwoman. ‘Radical extremists’ are those people who stormed our embassy and killed our ambassador and others in Libya…’
Anyway, it’s all over now. Yesterday the Democrats removed Tata.
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Gary Pearce posted on September 26, 2012 17:05
Even strong Democrats believe the Wake school board flunked this test. The board majority may have done the right thing, but they sure did it the wrong way. And Democrats may pay the price.
It was a mistake to fire Tony Tata without first setting out a bill of particulars. You can’t fire a superintendent, then refuse to say why because “it’s a personnel matter.”
Board members finally began explaining themselves today. That was a day late. They gave the public stage over to their Republican critics yesterday. At the start of the evening news broadcasts, no less.
John Tedesco, Paul Coble & Co. were happy to take the stage.
Tedesco may be the big winner here. He may stir up enough votes in Wake County to get elected State Superintendent of Public Instruction.
Coble now has an excuse not to give the schools more money.
And Tata gets a years’ pay so he can start (some critics theorize) running against Senator Kay Hagan in 2014.
But keep one thing in mind. This board didn’t do what Tedesco’s board did. His crowd forced Tata’s predecessor out immediately. This board gave Tata a chance. But Tedesco and his colleagues are shocked, shocked!
As Bill Clinton would say, it takes brass to attack a guy for doing what you did.
Still, the board botched this. They now get blamed for anything bad that happens in the system. They may pay the price next time they run. And the debacle may hurt Democrats in this election – all the way up the line to President Obama, who carried North Carolina in 2008 with the help of a huge majority in Wake County.
This is not acceptable work. See me after class.
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Gary Pearce posted on September 24, 2012 12:14
I’m just back from several days in Northern California: spectacular rocky coastlines, innumerable wineries, gut-wrenching mountain roads, falling-apart expressways, low humidity, bohemian lifestyles – and no presidential election.
That’s an exaggeration. They have an election, too. But no suspense. California’s 55 electoral votes are already counted toward Obama’s goal of 270. He and Mitt Romney go there only to raise money.
There are no candidate visits, no surrogate visits, no get-out-the-vote drives, no grassroots offices, no candidate ads, no superPAC ads, no ads about Romney and the 47 percent (which, the way he’s going, will be the vote he gets in November), no ads attacking Obama, nothing.
We did run into a street-side Romney booth in San Francisco. “We need to get rid of this guy Obama,” one of the young workers said. He didn’t have many takers. It seemed about as productive as hawking anti-Roy Williams petitions on Franklin Street.
Today, we have a system in which only a handful of states – this year, about nine – matter in the presidential race. North Carolina used to be like California: ignored. But now we’re a battleground. Our votes actually will decide who becomes President! What a concept.
It reminded me of a California-based group – National Popular Vote – that devised an ingenious, if somewhat hard to explain, way of making sure the national popular vote decides presidential elections. It still retains the electoral college system, and it avoids the insuperable hurdle of a constitutional amendment.
Their bill got some traction here before 2008. Carter and I worked with them, and we were intrigued. But it was hard to overcome partisan suspicions about who would benefit. The effort fizzled.
You should check out their plan. NPV is about halfway to the goal of making it happen – and fundamentally changing presidential elections in America.
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Carter Wrenn posted on September 21, 2012 18:09
From Singapore to Casablanca outside our embassies Muslims are rioting – so, exactly how much of the Muslim world is mad at us? Ten percent? Half? Ninety percent? Or, more to the point, how many Muslims agree that taking revenge for a YouTube video by murdering a diplomat who never saw or heard the video is wrong? A handful? A lot? Almost all?
Last Sunday, President Obama’s Ambassador to the U.N. told us the attack on our embassy was spontaneous. It wasn’t a terrorist attack. But whoever heard of a demonstrator showing up at a riot carrying a grenade launcher? So who attacked our embassy? If it was terrorists – who were they? Where are they? We’ve tried attacking whole nations (two of them) to stop groups of terrorists and that hasn’t worked out too well – so, this time, how do we tell the terrorists from the Muslims who bear us no ill will?
And, finally, the biggest question of all: Who is going to answer these questions? President Obama? Secretary Clinton? Congress? Lord, help us, is there someone else? How about the Mossad?
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Carter Wrenn posted on September 21, 2012 11:32
Mitt Romney’s getting pummeled for saying 47% of the voters will not support him because no one getting a check from the government’s going to vote for him over Obama.
Even the conservative pundits are giving Romney the blazes.
But while Romney was fumbling the facts he may also have put his finger on our Modern 21st Century Third Millennium Democracy’s biggest dilemma.
David Brooks wrote this about Romney’s faux pas: ‘In 1980, about 30% of Americans received some form of government benefits. Today about 40% do...In 1960, government transfers to individuals totaled $24 billion. By 2010, that total was 100 times as large… entitlement transfers have grown by more than 700% over the last fifty years… and this spending surge has increased faster under Republican administrators than Democratic ones.’
It’s a hard fact in our democracy: A majority can vote to reach into the treasury and help themselves to other people’s money whenever it wants. It’s redefined the meaning of ‘Majority Rule.’ And it’s not a new phenomenon.
Back during the 1820’s, Congressmen from the North (who wanted to protect manufacturers in New England from imports) and Congressmen from the West (who wanted Washington to build roads in their states) got together and passed tariffs – that were primarily paid by Southerners.
After the Civil War the railroad tycoons corralled enough votes in Congress to get the federal government to give them free and clear title to 12,000 acres of public land for each mile of track they laid – and, in the end, the tycoons ended up owning more land than there is in all of Germany.
Social Security and Medicare started out with the best of intentions but, today, unless you have the misfortune of dying young, when you retire the government is going to pay you a lot more than you ever paid into either program – whether you need the money or not.
And there seems to be no solution to the problem – instead it looks like once a democracy gets itself good and organized (which takes around 200 years) this is where it ends up.
So, maybe, instead of backpedaling Romney ought to let fly and say: I know pointing out our government has become a system for plunder is unpopular – but here’s an even harder fact: An economy based on plunder won’t work and it’s just a matter of time before the plunder gets so out of hand the economy collapses. So do we fix the problem now or do we wait for the collapse?
It would probably cost Romney the election but that debate is coming sooner or later.
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Gary Pearce posted on September 21, 2012 09:14
Watching the Dalton and McCrory TV ads, you see the opening that Dalton could exploit if he has enough time and money.
McCrory’s ads are content-free. Apparently, he’s going to solve unemployment and $4 gas by drilling everywhere under our feet and off the coast. And he’s responsible for Charlotte’s success. How would he do in a public setting where he’s forced to defend both claims?
A Republican friend had a negative reaction to McCrory’s appearance in the ads: “He looks smug,” like a college frat’s rush chairman. Where McCrory is squinty-eyed and maybe city-slick, Dalton has a down-home openness and sincerity.
Dalton has some jobs ideas that, presented right, would be a strong positive message. And he could raise questions about McCrory’s tax plans just as Obama has with Romney.
Polls show Dalton can pick up votes with Democrats and Independents, and he could draw blood by tying McCrory to an unpopular Republican legislature.
With enough time and money, you can see Dalton’s path to victory. But time and money are the problems. Bottom line: Governor Perdue’s late decision put him in a hole.
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Gary Pearce posted on September 20, 2012 09:42
Here’s betting that, whoever wins the presidential race, Erskine Bowles ends up in Washington.
He’s being mentioned as Obama’s Secretary of Treasury. And wouldn’t Mitt Romney be smart to put Bowles – a Southern, Clinton Democrat – in a top position? Maybe Treasury, Budget Director or something out of the box like Defense?
Bowles’ work on the Bowles-Simpson budget commission makes him the gold standard in America today when it comes to rising above partisanship. And they’re getting set to spend $25 million selling that plan.
He already balanced the federal budget once, so maybe he could do it again. Or make an even deeper mark on the country.
Good thing he lost those Senate races. He would have been wasted among those 99 fools.
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