North Carolina – Republicans
Teachers and Taxes
While Governor McCrory and his patrons at the John Locke Foundation were bragging about tax cuts on Tax Day, Republicans in the Legislative Building were digging an even deeper teacher-pay hole for themselves and McCrory. The N&O’s page one headline said: “Broad teacher raises unlikely.” McCrory proclaimed, “we’re leaving a little extra money in…
Read MoreTillis, the GOP and God
Thom Tillis is a lot like Mitt Romney, and he learned one big thing from Romney’s 2012 campaign: Don’t get on the same stage and same page with the nuts in his party. So Tillis may be making the right strategic decision by ducking the WRAL debate. It’s better to look chicken than to…
Read MoreSon of Speaker Ban
“Will no one rid me of this troublesome professor?” (Paraphrasing King Henry II on Thomas Becket.) Fifty years ago, the legislature brought shame on North Carolina, dishonor on themselves and harm to UNC when the honorables passed the Speaker Ban Law to protect college students from a feared invasion of pro-Communist speakers. Eventually, wiser…
Read MoreDeadly Politics
Misery loves company and right here, in Raleigh, it’s led to a pretty strange alliance. Governor McCrory’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources and President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency have joined arms. To whip the ‘coal ash’ problem. According to the newspaper reports the Governor is “pleased” but, so far, the EPA hasn’t…
Read MoreStraw Polls
When it comes to straw polls, from cradle to grave, there’s a whiff of deception in the air. Hardly anything is what it seems. For instance, political groups don’t take straw polls to measure voters’ opinions or candidates’ strengths – they take them to gin-up attendance for meetings. By telling a cash-strapped candidate, We’re…
Read MoreIs Good Money Bad Too?
This is a story about how even “good” money – that is, money spent for candidates and causes I like – can be bad. It’s a story about how outside donors and independent campaigns, not candidates and office-holders, are setting the political agenda. You can walk, and run, but money talks. Most every…
Read MoreThe Cape and not the Bull
Long ago and far away, in bygone days, during Jim Hunt’s first incarnation as Governor, we (Jesse Helms’ political organization) lit on what we thought was a grand idea: We ’d do a TV ad attacking Governor Hunt for giving AFL-CIO boss Wilber Hobby government CETA grants. We made the ad, tore into Wilbur…
Read MoreThe Law of Unintended Consequences
A doctor is a simple creature. He measures achievement by a straightforward standard – the Hippocratic Oath. A businessman also measures success by a simple standard – money, income and outgo. But a bureaucrat has the misfortune of breathing and walking in the murky world of insider politics. Which is like no other…
Read MoreGot Something to Hide?
It’s amazing how fast politicians go from being all for openness and transparency to all-out for keeping public information from the public. Take the Republican legislators’ fight to keep secret their emails about redistricting. Hmmm, wonder what they might be hiding there? Then take DENR. Last Friday at about 5 pm, the department…
Read MoreCoal Ash
I don’t know why but I’ve become absorbed by the machinations of bureaucrats – it’s a bit like watching Alice in Wonderland: Down is up, and up is down. Take hard work. Businessmen work hard to get ahead. Students work hard for better grades. But who joins a bureaucracy to work…
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