Posts by Carter Wrenn

Instead of one of those periodic calamities where the economy stumbles then rights itself it looks like this time America’s economic engine may have ruptured and faces a long, slow convalescence. That takes a decade. Or, maybe, doesn’t happen at all.   At a meeting of economists and businessmen and politicians this week UNC-President Erskine…

Bev Perdue’s poll numbers have been upside down – meaning her ‘unpopularity’ is greater than her ‘popularity’ – almost since the day she took office.   Twenty-seven years ago Jesse Helms faced similar ‘upside down’ poll numbers; his pollster Arthur Finkelstein gently explained the root of the problem was what he called a ‘character issue.’…

Mrs. Edna Street is an elderly lady and a double amputee; last May when she was in the hospital her doctor sent a form to the Department of Health and Human Services asking that she be provided – under Medicaid – in-home care when she went home to convalesce.   The doctor never heard back.…

  North Carolina’s own Senator Kay Hagan climbed up on her high horse in the Charlotte Observer the other day and denounced the fiscal irresponsibility of the $858 billion tax-cut bill – which she voted against.   In her op-ed lambasting government spending Hagan thundered:   “On Dec. 1, the bipartisan debt commission released its…

Twenty-six years ago after the fourth Helms-Hunt debate I walked up onto the back of the stage and stood waiting for Jesse – as he talked to reporters – and suddenly the crowd shifted and I found myself standing face to face with Jim Hunt in the flesh – for the first time.   To…

Gary and I have a bit of grit in the gears of our now going on decade long friendship and I’m afraid I’m the one who caused the problem.   Sometimes, if it’s a good story about how government works (or doesn’t work), I write about what I see or learn while working with a…