Issues
Hoodoo
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…
Read MoreAlvin York
I didn’t see much sense in making a lady in Indiana (or anywhere else) cater a gay wedding if she didn’t want to, so I said the Religious Freedom Act sounded like a fine idea – which turned out to be like lighting the fuse to a stick of dynamite. Before I knew it I’d…
Read MoreFalse Equivalence
John Drescher of the N&O called foul on Governor McCrory’s public-records stonewalling. But will the media referees let McCrory manufacture a counterpunch against Roy Cooper? It’s called “false equivalence.” It’s a favorite media-manipulation trick. Let’s say your candidate has a big, fat negative. Like you haven’t fulfilled a public-records request dating back to last July.…
Read MoreWizards
If there’s a lonesome pilgrim out there hoping the recent Supreme Court decision will restore honor and fairness to redistricting… well, the Wizards have him surrounded. When Republicans dreams came true and, at long last, they got to draw their own districts, they set out to find a special kind of Wizard. Next…
Read MoreRecalculating…
A TAPster more knowledgeable than me offers a word of praise for one thing the legislature is doing: The legislature this week will continue its napalm assault on long-standing policies and practices in the civil war to create a conservative nirvana in North Carolina. And, while most Republican efforts have hurt the poor, the…
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