Issues
Special EdNC
As newspapers shrink coverage and bleed talent, alternative forms of media pop up. Blogs like ours (“Wise and Balanced”), websites catering to the left and right, and even, occasionally, a responsible, informative and well-done news source like EdNC. EdNC is a daily online newspaper about education. That’s a short, clear and concise mission statement. Every…
Read MoreA Little Devilment
Just about every morning a group of MCO promoters (the Carolina Partnership for Reform) drop an email into legislators mailboxes and the other morning they gave legislators a list of 15 states and told them, Look. See. North Carolina spends more on Medicaid per enrollee than states that have MCOs. It looked logical. And sounded…
Read MoreThe Power of the Veto
Give Governor McCrory credit. He did the right thing by vetoing the magistrates/same-sex marriage bill. And it’s good politics. This should be a wakeup call for Democrats who think he’ll be a pushover next year because he’s a doofus or because the legislature is too far right. Take it from me. An incumbent has a…
Read MoreCrossing the Line
Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether Bad Bob Rucho is a Bull Moose or a bull in a china closet but there’s no doubt he sincerely loathes tax loopholes so it’s a shame in his enthusiasm to gore a corporate ‘incentive’ he crossed the line. When a bill landed in Rucho’s committee to kibosh a…
Read MoreHoodoo
MCOs (Managed Care Companies) are a species of corporate locust but a cohort of silver-tongued Super PAC Managers and I.E. Campaign Managers are hard at work to convince legislators MCOs can heal by touch and walk on water – and save the state a billion dollars on Medicaid. But here’re two facts from the General…
Read MoreArtful Lies
Little White Lies. Outright Lies. Artful Lies. Once a bartender told a sailor on leave for the weekend, There’re a lot of prostitutes down at the bus station. Say hello to Anna if you see her. Listening you’d think Anna was a prostitute but you’d be wrong: She was the sixty year-old clerk working behind…
Read MoreA Misunderstanding, Chapter 1
The Governor’s biggest challenge, a Republican consultant explained to the newspaper, is coming up with a way to overhaul Medicaid and stopping its persistent cost overruns – if the Governor can do that, the consultant said, it “practically will insure his reelection.” Which sounds fine – except for a misunderstanding. Six years ago, back in…
Read MoreIn Sambisa Forest
The soldiers slaughtered her husband, dragged her away from her children, then took her to their stronghold in Sambisa Forest. In their camp, when they learned she was pregnant, they told her that a week after her child was born she would be married to one of their commanders – one of the men who’d…
Read MoreWhy is School Out?
Republican legislators keep undermining public schools. Education goes all but unmentioned in Governor McCrory’s agenda. But Democrats seem to have retreated from the battlefield. In the 2014 campaign, education was the top issue for North Carolina Democrats – in races for county commissioner, the legislature and even U.S. Senate. National issues and President Obama’s…
Read MoreA Strange Wickedness
We don’t know much about her. She was a nun around thirty years old who taught English and lived in a convent in Qaraqosh near the ruins of ancient Nineveh. When ISIS attacked the town, soldiers from nearby Kurdistan beat back the first assault then ISIS cut Qaraqosh’s water supply and, the night the Kurdish…
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