Every child knows just before Christmas is the time to be ‘as good as you can be’ – so you might think after the mischief it’s been up to this year Congress would be rolling up its sleeves and planning to work straight through the holidays to pass the farm bill, a jobless benefits bill,…
Read MoreBoth President Obama and Governor McCrory are learning that reforming health care can be harmful to your political health. Their politics are different, but their experiences are strikingly similar. Both are trying to make big changes in the health care system, Obama with the Affordable Care Act and McCrory with Medicaid privatization. Both…
Read MoreDecember brings “Best of 2013” Lists, and here’s one about Governor McCrory, courtesy of the website Buzzfeed. (Like President Obama. I thought buzz feed was something you did in college at 2 a.m.) The Governor has acquired a reputation as the unwitting source of unintentionally funny and baffling statements – and misstatements. This is…
Read MoreSo, according to the newspaper, a varmint in Fayetteville shanghaied two teenage girls, held them hostage for months, beat them, threatened to kill their families, raped them, turned them into prostitutes, videotaped them having sex then a high judge gave him 45 years in prison. These days we’re civilized and enlightened but given some…
Read MoreThis from our Shameless Self-Promotion Department: Carter and I did an interview with Don Gonyea, National Political Correspondent for NPR. Part of it ran in a story about Senator Kay Hagan’s reelection race. And I was interviewed on Chris Fitzsimon’s News & Views on WRAL-FM. It’s on the NC Policy Watchwebsite.
Read MoreNelson Mandela lived half a world away, but North Carolina has a history with South Africa and the apartheid system he destroyed. Go back more than 50 years. Jim Hunt, a student at N.C. State in the late 1950s, heard Allard Lowenstein speak to a National Students Association meeting about “the terrible injustices and cruelties” of…
Read MoreChapel Hill-bashing may play well on the Outer Banks, but it’s not helping people who live or work south of Bonner Bridge. DOT Secretary Tony Tata sounded like the Fox News commentator he once was when he blasted “ivory tower elitists (who) file these lawsuits from their air-conditioned offices in Chapel Hill…with their lattes…
Read MoreGovernor McCrory’s response to the now-famous Taylor Batten column is worth a close read. After all, it was headlined: “Here’s where my attention really is.” First off, there is not one word in his 397-word essay about public schools or teachers. Then, he said, “North Carolina is poised for an economic revival” and noted the…
Read MoreA TAPster who is a veteran of corporate America and the Raleigh political scene offers another take on Governor McCrory and the Charlotte Observer column: “Gary’s blog ‘McCrory under siege’ and the Observer story that prompted it are revealing, but the governor’s thin skin and ego are not the weaknesses that doom the McCrory administration. “Being…
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