Archive for August 2013
Good Night Ann
Why do Republicans feel compelled to insult, dismiss and condescend to women in North Carolina? The latest: Governor McCrory dismissing Ann Goodnight’s pointed and powerful letter to the N&O (reprinted in full at the end of this blog). The Governor sniffed at the letter to Al Hunt of Bloomberg News: “Ms. Goodnight, he…
Read MoreWoe is Wos
Last week, “a bodyguard prevented a News & Observer reporter from asking (DHHS Secretary Aldona) Wos any questions” after a speech. This week, when questions arose about DHHS paying $85,000-plus salaries to young campaign aides to Governor McCrory, “the governor’s spokeswoman, Kim Genardo, referred questions” to Wos. “Wos could not be reached.” Hold…
Read MoreBack to the Dark Ages
It’s a bleak landscape. A nightmare vision of a counter-revolution roaring down the tracks, turning back the hands of the clock, rolling back progress to the days before indoor plumbing, air-conditioning, and daylight savings time. Republicans, Reverend William Barber howls, are turning back the clock to the days of Jim Crow. Republican tax…
Read MoreThe ‘Voting Rights’ Foo-Fa
This isn’t a story of sin begetting sin but of foolishness begetting foolishness. Years ago, somewhere, some Democratic political guru sat in a room with reams of demographics of people who never had voted and when he finished studying those pages of statistics one fact was clear as a bell: If those folks started…
Read MoreA Major League Blunder
Governor McCrory increasingly looks like a modest Triple-A ballplayer who is befuddled by big league pitching. His latest whiff is defending the DHHS salary debacle. McCrory should have put as much distance as possible between himself and the decision to give 24-year-olds who worked in his campaign senior jobs paying $85,000 and $87,500 in…
Read MoreNewt Nails It
Yes, Newt Gingrich is nuts. But sometimes even a nut sees reality. And last week he summed up why the Republican Party is on the road to disaster: “We are caught up right now in a culture – and you see it every single day – where as long as we are negative, as…
Read MoreWar on Teachers Update
Governor McCrory believes it’s OK to pay a beginning teacher $25,000, but $65,000 isn’t enough for a 24-year-old state government appointee who worked in McCrory’s campaign. So he got a raise to $87,500. That’s three times what a starting teacher gets in North Carolina. Another campaign staffer got a $23,000 raise to $85,000,…
Read MoreThe N&O at 119
The News & Observed marked its 119th birthday this week. But will it see 125 – or 130? It’s part of a century-old industry that last week was invaded – to be saved or razed? – by the billionaire owner of a brand-new industry, Amazon. Executive Editor John Drescher wrote in his front-page…
Read MoreVotes and Power
Let’s be honest: The voter ID law that Governor McCrory signed is about political power, not fraud. A letter-writer to the N&O got it right where the Governor got it wrong. McCrory said: “Common practices like boarding an airplane and purchasing Sudafed require photo ID, and we should expect nothing less for the protection…
Read MoreDissing Teachers
Republicans are turning mathematical somersaults denying they did what they did in this legislature: take a chainsaw to public education in North Carolina. Clearly, they don’t have the courage of their convictions. They ran for office saying they’ll cut government. Now they deny they did it, and they run for cover. They say:…
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