Posts by Carter Wrenn
The Capitator
Back when the legislature came to town, State Senator Ralph Hise announced Medicaid spending was out of control but he had a solution – Capitation – which worked like this: He was going to hire MCOs (Medicaid HMOs) to run Medicaid then he was going to tell them: This is all you get to spend.…
Read MoreHow the State Senate Works
A handful of Senate leaders sit down in backrooms and make plans then come out of the rooms and a bill pops into a committee then they march over to the Senate Chamber and pass it in the blink of an eye. The same Senate powers-that-be made a plan to ‘transfer’ millions of dollars in…
Read MoreThe Uber-Alpha-Male
Long ago, in the land we live in today, when enemies threatened, men named Douglas MacArthur, George Patton and John Wayne killed them – whether the enemy was named Hirohito, Hitler or Liberty Valance. Times changed. Small towns with old-fashioned values vanished, devoured by booming secular cities. Newspapers were replaced by Facebook, Twitter, and Internet…
Read MoreThe Cure
To hear the good ole boys in the State Senate tell it they’re going to cure all our Medicaid ills: No more soaring costs. Better care. Budgets that balance. No more meltdowns. MCOs, they say, will heal our wounds and stop our hemorrhaging. If that sounds too good to be true, well, take a look…
Read MoreA Mystery
The Senate Leaders said it was terrible, just terrible that when people who live in rural counties shop in Charlotte, the sales taxes they pay stay in Charlotte to build schools and roads in Charlotte – and introduced a plan to cure the devilment. By changing the way the state allocates sales taxes between counties…
Read MoreSentimental but Thin-Skinned
The editorial made Governor McCrory so mad he sat down and wrote the editors a letter telling them they had a choice: They could continue to malign an outstanding public servant – the Governor was talking about his legal counsel – or they could admit they were elitists who lacked journalistic standards. It’s an odd…
Read MoreSauce for the Goose
Right there in the middle of the page on the News and Observer’s website was an article with the Governor ripping into the newspapers for suing him for violating the ‘public records’ law – and right next to it was a second article about the Republican Party suing Roy Cooper for violating the same law.…
Read MoreThe Flying Insult
John McCain said Donald Trump’s supporters were ‘crazies;’ Lindsey Graham said Trump was a ‘jackass;’ Trump called Graham an ‘idiot’ and McCain a ‘dummy’ and said McCain ‘wasn’t a war hero.’ Then, a couple of days later, when the Last Socialist (Bernie Sanders) and Democratic Governor Martin O’Malley got up to speak at the National…
Read MoreSentiment and Respect
Senator Tom Apodaca who’s gregarious and jovial and hard-nosed told the reporters, “The House went a little crazy with its budget” – then they asked about the Governor and he said, “The Governor doesn’t play much of a role in anything.” He probably didn’t mean it unkindly – it probably read a lot meaner in…
Read MoreThe Press Event of the Year
It’s about the last thing President Obama needed: At the end of his Presidency he’s on a sentimental journey to Kenya to visit his father’s homeland and, when he arrives in Nairobi, he’s going to be greeted by 5,000 naked anti-gay Kenyan protestors. Now there is a right way and a wrong way to do…
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