Archive for 2013
Wos-ectomy?
That’s what one TAPster suggests Governor McCrory needs. The question is whether the legislature will perform the procedure. When the legislature adjourned, the Governor worried that the honorables were dragging down his approval ratings. So he vetoed a couple of bills. That didn’t work out. Now, GOP legislators worry that the Governor and…
Read MoreSkating Across Ice
A few days ago I wrote how Secretary Aldona Wos, who’d landed in the briar patch, would be wise to step up and start telling her side of the story. Last Friday she did. Now, listening to Dr. Wos is interesting. One moment she’s skating effortlessly across a sheet of rhetorical ice using…
Read MoreWos in Charge
Governor McCrory has to hope that Aldona Wos and the high-paid operatives around her pull off a miracle at DHHS. Because he clearly can’t fire her. Wos is the most powerful person in Raleigh today. Back in January, it looked like Budget Czar Art Pope was. Then, during the legislature, it was Senator Phil…
Read MoreMy Man Dan
I’m always looking for something nice to say about a Republican. But Dan Forest? Sorry, I’ve got to do it. Monday, I posted a blog (Let Teachers Teach) saying we should pay teachers $100,000 a year. Then, on Wednesday, Lieutenant Governor Forest called for North Carolina to pay the nation’s highest teaching salaries. Asked…
Read MoreA Story to Tell
No matter how many hours she works each day or how hard she tries Aldona Wos can’t seem to catch a break. Almost as soon as she took her job (as Secretary of Health and Human Services) she got flattened by two budget overruns. Then she got run over by two more multi-million dollar…
Read MoreHardball
Governor McCrory has learned one thing about his new job: He’s not in Charlotte anymore, Toto. And he doesn’t like it. At a news conference, the Governor vented thinly veiled frustration at how politics is played in Raleigh. WRAL reported: “Asked if he was concerned about the scrutiny DHHS has faced, McCrory said…
Read MoreA Good Reason Nobody Knows?
It must be the Governor’s nightmare – opening the newspaper and seeing the acronym ‘DHHS.’ The other morning one headline roared DHHS (the Department of Health and Human Services) had hired another former campaign worker (not from his campaign this time but from the Republican Party) and another headline roared it had fired a…
Read MoreDHHS Is the New DOT
A great investigative reporter once said, “DOT is God’s gift to investigative reporters.” Make way for DHHS. Doesn’t anybody there realize how much political damage they are doing to Governor McCrory? Doesn’t anybody around the Governor? Or McCrory himself? He based his campaign for Governor on ending Raleigh’s “culture of corruption and cronyism”…
Read MoreTrapping an Elusive Varmint
A while back a candidate running for office for the first time sat down in my office and said, What should I do? and I said: Take a poll. For a moment he didn’t say a word then he smiled and said he already knew what voters in his district thought – which is…
Read MoreOn TV Ads, Pelion and Ossa
Carter made a great point in his blog about the McCrory TV ad. And he made a wonderful classical allusion that greatly elevated the intellectual level of this blog. First, the allusion, “piling Pelion on Ossa.” It’s from Greek mythology. I had to look it up. Here’s the Wikipedia link. As for the…
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