North Carolina – Republicans
The 1 Percent
Republican pay policies are the same as Republican economic policies: For the top 1 percent, lobster and champagne! For everybody else, crumbs. Cookie crumbs, I presume. The N&O reported that DHHS (Department of High High Salaries) “has created new high-salaried positions in its central office this year and is paying some top executives more…
Read MorePat’s Hot Summer
Governor McCrory is having a bad summer. He probably thought life would be better with the legislature gone. But that just put the heat right on him. And he doesn’t look like he’s having fun. People in the know say the Governor is sensitive about his media coverage. If that’s so,his blood pressure must…
Read MoreDemocratic Morale
Last Thursday a tiny cloud appeared on the horizon, and instead of dissipating, by Friday it was hovering right over Governor Pat McCrory’s head. If you want to see how Democrats’ morale is fairing, just read Gary’s or Thomas Mills’ commentaries. This week they’re happy folks. Because last week Governor McCrory said it…
Read MoreWoe is Wos
Last week, “a bodyguard prevented a News & Observer reporter from asking (DHHS Secretary Aldona) Wos any questions” after a speech. This week, when questions arose about DHHS paying $85,000-plus salaries to young campaign aides to Governor McCrory, “the governor’s spokeswoman, Kim Genardo, referred questions” to Wos. “Wos could not be reached.” Hold…
Read MoreBack to the Dark Ages
It’s a bleak landscape. A nightmare vision of a counter-revolution roaring down the tracks, turning back the hands of the clock, rolling back progress to the days before indoor plumbing, air-conditioning, and daylight savings time. Republicans, Reverend William Barber howls, are turning back the clock to the days of Jim Crow. Republican tax…
Read MoreThe ‘Voting Rights’ Foo-Fa
This isn’t a story of sin begetting sin but of foolishness begetting foolishness. Years ago, somewhere, some Democratic political guru sat in a room with reams of demographics of people who never had voted and when he finished studying those pages of statistics one fact was clear as a bell: If those folks started…
Read MoreA Major League Blunder
Governor McCrory increasingly looks like a modest Triple-A ballplayer who is befuddled by big league pitching. His latest whiff is defending the DHHS salary debacle. McCrory should have put as much distance as possible between himself and the decision to give 24-year-olds who worked in his campaign senior jobs paying $85,000 and $87,500 in…
Read MoreWar on Teachers Update
Governor McCrory believes it’s OK to pay a beginning teacher $25,000, but $65,000 isn’t enough for a 24-year-old state government appointee who worked in McCrory’s campaign. So he got a raise to $87,500. That’s three times what a starting teacher gets in North Carolina. Another campaign staffer got a $23,000 raise to $85,000,…
Read MoreVotes and Power
Let’s be honest: The voter ID law that Governor McCrory signed is about political power, not fraud. A letter-writer to the N&O got it right where the Governor got it wrong. McCrory said: “Common practices like boarding an airplane and purchasing Sudafed require photo ID, and we should expect nothing less for the protection…
Read MoreDissing Teachers
Republicans are turning mathematical somersaults denying they did what they did in this legislature: take a chainsaw to public education in North Carolina. Clearly, they don’t have the courage of their convictions. They ran for office saying they’ll cut government. Now they deny they did it, and they run for cover. They say:…
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