North Carolina – Democrats
The Verdict
John Edwards wasn’t found guilty, but the federal government certainly was – of overreach, incompetence or both. Here’s how bad the U.S. Attorneys Office and Justice Department bungled: They indicted the most despised politician in America – a man a jury might want to convict just on general principle. The government throws at him…
Read MoreThoughts
A Tapster submitted this blog about the John Edwards verdict.: The John Edwards verdict hopefully ends a decade-long parade of Democrats doing the perp walk to federal and state courthouses to atone for political and financial misdeeds. Our ears ring from the sound of judges’ gavels banging down on the careers of Mike Easley,…
Read MoreWired Up
Before the legislators trooped back to town the News and Observer ran an ‘expose’ about how public hospitals receive millions of dollars in tax breaks to help them care for the indigent but how those tax breaks put millions more in the hospitals’ pockets than they are spending on the poor. Governor Perdue, when…
Read MoreEviscerating Politics
Political consultants have a way of getting carried away and saying things they quickly regret. Believe me, I’ve been there. So it was with Dustin Ingalls, assistant director of Public Policy Polling, who told a Cumberland County Democratic group: “We have to absolutely eviscerate McCrory….It’s going to have to be a very negative…
Read MoreRe-Wired
Back in the old days when Marc Basnight and Tony Rand ran the General Assembly a cohort of Democratic lobbyists who controlled scads of money their clients could give candidates had the legislature wired up;–though no one quite realized it at the time that world came crashing down on Election Day in 2010 when the…
Read MoreMcCrory and the Media
Carter pointed out (“Counting His Luck Stars,” below) how Pat McCrory unwisely opened himself up to a counterstrike by Democratic lawyers. In that same press conference, McCrory unwisely picked another fight: with the media. The N&O reported that “McCrory chastised reporters at his news conference, saying their stations should pull the ad.” He…
Read MoreDemocratic Spin?
Not all the spin in politics comes out of the mouths of politicians;―just about every day or so there’s a poll in the News and Observer and the N&O is pretty careful to identify PPP as a ‘left-leaning’ pollster but PPP’s pollsters will also argue their politics don’t interfere with their polling or, in other…
Read MoreCounting His Lucky Stars
Last week McCrory got up at a press conference in Raleigh, lambasted Walter Dalton’s negative ads, then said he’d sued two of Dalton’s Democratic supporters for slander, but, then, it turned out McCrory hadn’t sued anyone – all he’d done was file a two page form called an ‘Intent to Sue’ which to any attorney…
Read More166 Hours a Day
WRAL News received a tip about Medicaid fraud in Governor Perdue’s mammoth Department of Health and Human Services, then spent weeks pouring over stacks of Medicaid bills, then reported the department had run amok again. For instance: WRAL found one licensed therapist, a psychologist, whose name was “linked to 22,984 hours of therapy last…
Read MorePity the Jurors
A TAPster wrote to express his rage over news that John Edwards took in a ball game while the jury deliberated this week: “Law-abiding citizens are summoned away from their jobs and families to be sequestered for weeks on end to decide if John Edwards has committed campaign fraud, in addition to the other…
Read More