North Carolina – Democrats
Budget Injustice
A TAPster follows up on the blog about many chiefs at the Department of Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention: “Look up the salaries of the executives. Look at the total payroll of those at the top level. The Department laid off the direct staff of those who serve juveniles, but many and most of…
Read MoreGovernors’ Papers
The Department of Cultural Resources put on a nice lovefest for the presentation of Governor Hunt’s fourth volume of papers Tuesday. Governor Perdue was in excellent form, and the Southeast Raleigh High School vocal ensemble was outstanding. (One bit of news was missing from Under the Dome’s account: Governor Hunt said he had talked…
Read MoreThe Bonehead Budget Award
Linda Hayes, the secretary of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, is this monthâs winner of the Thom Tillis Bonehead Budget Award. Speaker Tillis, you recall, put state government on a diet, then gave his staff fat raises. Hayes wins for complaining about budget cuts and then, according to a TAPster, âclosing a couple…
Read MoreSmart ALECs
A TAPster takes strong issue with the N&O’s reporting on the American Legislative Exchange Council, which is meeting this weekend in New Orleans. “The N&O’s Under the Dome blog reached a distressing new low in public affairs reporting with its story on the American Legislative Exchange Council. The blog reports on allegations by a liberal…
Read MoreChickens**t
Front-page headlines and much gnashing of teeth greeted the news that a Ukrainian billionaire pulled the plug on the jobs of 1,000 North Carolina chicken plant workers last week. But the stories missed the irony that a TAPster caught: “If, instead, a Ukrainian billionaire announced he was building poultry processing plants in central…
Read MoreGOP Joblessness
Are Democrats asleep? Below are two news reports that ran a week ago. They are rich fodder for North Carolina Democrats to use against Republicans. But I haven’t seen them do it: “State cuts push up NC jobless rate – North Carolina’s jobless rate rose to 9.9 percent in June, the highest level since…
Read MoreExecutive Power Outage
President Obama and Governor Perdue may have gained political yardage by contrasting themselves to unreasonable, extremist Republicans. But – in light of what has happened to both of them in recent days – they may lose even more ground by looking weak. Weakness is a flaw voters will not forgive in an executive. President…
Read MoreBlue Dems
North Carolina Democrats are, truly, blue these days. My unscientific survey of party leaders and activists last week found mainly gloom about next year’s legislative and congressional races in the face of new, Republican-gerrymandered districts. Maybe the most telling sign is a phenomenon I haven’t experienced in all my years of politics: North…
Read MoreMoldova Mulled Over More
A friend emailed a good question about my earlier blog on Elaine Marshall and Moldova: “Did you attempt to contact Elaine Marshal to find out if her trip was paid for personally or by state funds?…Can you tell me what you did to check this out before publishing it? And what I am missing about…
Read MoreRx for Raleigh
Tom Fetzer must feel like the baseball scout who discovered Derek Jeter. Randall Williams looks like a consultant’s dream candidate for mayor of Raleigh. He’s an ob-gyn who’s done humanitarian work in Iraq, Afghanistan and Haiti. He’s a fresh face and a fiscal conservative. He has no political baggage (or, judging from the N&O…
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