Issues
Three Egyptian Mobs
The first Egyptian mob chanting and demonstrating a month ago on CNN was out to get rid of Hosni Mubarak and President Obama, figuring the mob was a sign of a ‘fledgling new Democracy’ being born in front of his eyes, gave Mubarak a shove. The second Egyptian mob about a week ago wanted…
Read MoreA River in Egypt
Like the British Empire before us and the Roman Empire before them we’ve been living high on the hog for so long it’s hard to imagine the good times ending. But, right now, there are a fair amount of economic prognosticators who say our current Recession isn’t a hiccup or another one of our…
Read MoreBack Benchers…
There’s a story floating around the legislature: A couple of weeks ago when the House budget writers sent their budget over to the Senate Leadership the minute Senator Richard Steven’s saw it he saw red. Stevens, the rumor says, erupted over how much the House was cutting UNC’s budget and grabbed Speaker Thom Tillis…
Read MoreClosing the Post Office
Congress is in debt up to its eyeballs and if the government isn’t quite flat-broke it’s just a couple of steps from being flat-broke but it looks like most Americans (and almost all Congressmen) have gotten so addicted to spending it puts Charlie Sheen on a bender to shame. Take the latest flap here…
Read MoreAfraid of the Voters
It’s revealing when politicians – specifically, Republican legislators – clearly believe they are better off when fewer people vote. That’s the conclusion you have to draw from their efforts to suppress early voting in North Carolina. (See Jim Morrill’s story in the Charlotte O and N&O.) Actually, the Republicans are right. The GOP…
Read MoreMaureen Dowd Dancing in the Streets
Maureen Dowd the doyen of liberal columnists, the epitome of kindhearted tolerance, emoting sensitivity from her fingertips, let out a screech like a loon the other day – howling about anyone who dared to criticize the demonstrators dancing in the streets celebrating Osama bin Laden’s death, roaring like an enraged Cassandra, “I don’t want closure.…
Read MoreLoophole Closing
I said: Who ever heard of Republicans saying increasing fees $150 million isn’t a tax? And the former legislator sitting across the table said: You missed the real tax increase. I blinked: Come again? It turns out for years private colleges – like Campbell and Queens and Peace and Meredith – haven’t…
Read MoreThe WakeMed Wars
The lobbying war between WakeMed’s Plebes and UNC Hospital’s Aristocrats in the legislature just took a wild turn at the Aristocrats’ expense. So far the Plebes have been set on cutting UNC’s $44 million state tax subsidy but then, last week, Plebe chieftain Bill Atkinson surprised everyone by announcing he wanted to buy Raleigh’s…
Read MoreInmate Labor Pains
What would Jim Gardner say? The silver-haired, golden-tongued GOP gubernatorial candidate had a great issue in 1992, when he was running against Jim Hunt: “Make prisoners work – and work hard,” he said in his TV spots. He was outraged that hardened criminals were idling away their time “watching TV and working out.”…
Read MoreThe WakeMed Wars
Back in the salad days of the Roman Republic every now and then an absolutely vicious war would break out between the Roman Aristocrats and the Plebes and it looks like we’ve got a similar tussle on our hands here in Wake County. Between two hospitals. Heart surgeries are among the most profitable…
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