Posts by Gary Pearce
Give now – before it’s too late!
If you ever gave a politician money – or your email address – your Inbox was flooded this weekend with desperate, pleading messages. Midnight Saturday was the end of the first-quarter fundraising period, and apparently there’s nothing like a deadline to motivate donors. Here are a few of the weekend pitches: “Big Deadline Looming: My…
Read MoreUnmitigated politics
Republicans thought they had Governor Cooper trapped on the Atlantic Pipeline mitigation fund. Now old Roy and his team are slum-dunking them – and exposing everything that’s wrong with this legislature. It started when the Governor’s Office got Duke and Dominion to put up $58 million for economic-development and environmental-protection projects in eastern North Carolina.…
Read MoreRebel Fell
As North Carolina debates the fate of Confederate monuments, ponder this perspective from Mitch Landrieu, the mayor of New Orleans, on why he pushed successfully to remove four Confederate monuments in his city. In “What I learned from my fight to remove Confederate monuments,” Landrieu (a potential Democratic presidential candidate) wrote: “The statues were not…
Read MoreTrump’s trysts and twists
Which is worse – that Trump hopped in bed with Stormy or that he’s still in bed with Putin? Stormy and Putin have a lot in common. Both show off their chests. Both stories involve thugs. Both might involve illegal campaign activities. And Trump hasn’t said a bad word about either Stormy or Putin. Stormy’s…
Read MorePeople, not politics
To paraphrase JFK, defeat is an orphan and victory has a thousand theorists. A thousand theories bloomed after Conor Lamb won in Pennsylvania last week. Democrats say, “There’s a 20-point anti-Trump wave. Just think of all the places we’ll win!” Or, “Lamb won because he ran away from Nancy Pelosi.” Or, “he won because he…
Read MoreGrant’s Tome
We need a break from Trump. So I’m reading and blogging about other, greater leaders. Monday, it was Nelson Mandela. Today it’s Ulysses Grant, always rated one of the worst Presidents. Until Trump. Ron Chernow’s thousand-page biography hasn’t done for Grant what Chernow did for Alexander Hamilton. Maybe Grant needs a Broadway musical. Before I…
Read MoreWhat great leaders do
Given what passes for leadership today, let’s look at what a real leader once said. This is from a speech by Nelson Mandela when he was rebuilding a country that had been torn apart by apartheid and racial hatred: “During my political career, I have discovered that in all communities, African, coloured, Indian and white,…
Read MoreFiring back
When companies like Delta, Dick’s, WalMart and Kroger adopt their own gun control laws, you can bet public opinion is changing. And you can count on the NRA and its wholly owned Republican politicians firing back. A TAPster offers these thoughts on what happened to Delta in Georgia: “It’s been a scary couple of years…
Read MoreShould I renew the N&O?
I can’t believe I’m even asking. I grew up with the N&O. When I was a year old, my parents moved here from Hertford County so my Dad could take a job in the N&O composing room. When I was 16, I went to work in the newsroom as a copyboy. I stayed there 10…
Read MoreDeadly serious politics
The best answer to a bad guy with political power is good guys and girls with political power. To beat the bad guys, you need to understand how political power really works. The NRA’s real power doesn’t come from the money it gives to politicians. The New York Times’s lead story Sunday spelled it out:…
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