Duke’s PR Outage

Once upon a time, in the Shire of Raleigh, there was a company called Progress Energy, nee CP&L. The residents of the Shire oft complained about the company, but with affection. After all, its employees and managers and overlords and even its King lived amongst the people and even walked amongst them. The people knew…

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Politics Gone Wild

A snow-day deep-dive into current political commentary finds three things. One, Republicans are becoming more and more deranged. Two, Democrats are falling deeper and deeper into despair. And, three, it’s all about President Obama.   Politics has come unhinged since Election Day 2008 and the election of a black President. It just gets worse as…

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Shuttering the Center

The fur’s flying over in Chapel Hill – Dean Boger (at the Law School) along with a cohort of professors have lit into the Board of Governors saying closing the Law School’s Anti-Poverty Center leaves them with only one conclusion: The Board is for poverty.   The Dean lamented the Board was guilty of every…

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Snow Day MIAs

Something was missing from the usual snow day TV fare. Bill and Renee ran down the shutdowns. Elizabeth and Greg kept predicting the snow would end any minute. Gilbert was giddy. Various teams showed us various roads. But…something just wasn’t there.   Oh yes! The Governor’s snow briefing! Where was Governor McCrory warning us not…

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Feed the Birds

 A TAPster reminded me of a snow day blog I did once in memory of my father. It’s apropos today. My dad, Jim, was a printer and, at one time, foreman of the N&O composing room. In those hot-type days, printers used house ads to fill in columns of type. The ads would tell you…

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Money Talks

We’re in the Great Mentioner season of the political cycle, when the names of potential 2016 candidates start floating through the rumor mills, media and blogosphere.   And nothing talks like money.   An enterprising TAPster looked at the year-end cash-on-hand numbers for potential statewide candidates and Council of State incumbents.   Not surprisingly, at…

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A Carolina Gentleman

I was barely eighteen when, my first night in Chapel Hill, they herded all the male freshmen into an auditorium and an aging Dean stepped up to a podium, perched his half-glasses on the end of his nose, and explained genteelly from here on – for the next four years – we were expected to…

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Tata Tweets

Yesterday we talked about Senator Jeff Jackson’s tweets. Today’s Twitter topic is Tony Tata.   Specifically, his two Twitter identities: DOT Secretary Tata and Thriller-Novelist Tata.   This week, Thriller Tata posted tweets touting his books while DOT Tata backed up Governor McCrory at snow-emergency briefings. Earlier this month, Thriller Tata tweeted while DOT Tata…

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Valentine’s Day

When the State Ethics Commission ruled that a lobbyist having sex with a legislator didn’t violate the ban on gifts to legislators because sex acts do not constitute “things of value,” it got the attention of the redoubtable Ira David Wood, who’s surely NC’s most respected artist.   Woods posted the entire newspaper article on…

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#JustOneLegislator

While Governor McCrory was doing what politicians usually do to get snow-day news coverage, state Sen. Jeff Jackson was showing how it’s done in a new media world.   Tuesday morning, Jackson (D-Mecklenburg) showed up at the Legislative Building at 8 am and tweeted: “No problem getting a great parking space this morning.”   While…

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