North Carolina – Republicans
How Did We Come to This?
There’re some strange doings going on over in the General Assembly. For decades, free markets have been an article of faith with Republicans. We don’t like government manipulating markets to pick ‘winners and losers.’ But when Tesla Motors sold eighty fancy electric cars over the Internet in North Carolina, the Automobile Dealers Association…
Read MoreSqueal Like a Pig
Thirty-four years ago, in 1979, I tagged along on Governor Jim Hunt’s trade mission to China – the first for a North Carolina governor. The goal: get the Chinese to buy more North Carolina products, like pork. Now, we’re selling them more than pork; we’re selling them Smithfield Foods. “We’ve gone whole-hog,” Ferrel Guillory…
Read MoreIt’s the Education, Stupid
In today’s superheated politics, a bit of understatement can be a powerful thing. Exaggeration and overstatement get you headlines, but they don’t necessarily win the hearts and minds of swing voters. Democrats might remember that as they rail at the Republican-run state government. Crying wolf at every outrage – and there’s a new one every…
Read MoreThe Democrats Awaken – Round 2
The same day the Democrats tore into Crime Control Secretary Kieran Shanahan they also let fly at Secretary of Health and Human Services Dr. Aldana Wos. Now doctors are a complex group of highly intelligent people who labor under a singular handicap: They’ve mastered one incredibly complex subject (say, neurosurgery) no one else can…
Read MoreThe Democrats Awaken
In the world of Raleigh politics being appointed a Cabinet Secretary is somewhat akin to being a Grand Duke or a Marquis – you get power and respectability and folks you never heard of start singing your praises. But then, usually, just when a new Secretary is getting comfortably settled into his new office,…
Read MoreGOP Ethics
Attention must be paid when the Republican legislator who wants to roll back ethics laws questions Speaker Tillis’ ethics. It could just be sour grapes. But someone needs to pursue Rep. Robert Brawley’s written statement about Tillis “slamming my office door shut, standing in front of me and stating that you have a business…
Read MoreThe Money Changers
Republican legislators, for years, have stood up and spoken up for free markets. It’s part of their creed. They don’t like government picking ‘winners and losers.’ But when a group of Republican legislators in Raleigh decided to sponsor a bill to break the hospitals’ monopoly on outpatient surgeries and put the free market to work…
Read MoreWhat Happens in Vegas…
A good Democratic Party chairman would be blasting the McCrory administration’s budding ethics scandals. But that’s hard to do when you’re in Vegas putting $3,327 on the party’s American Express Business Gold Card. Michael Biesecker with AP reported that Randy Voller “said he believes a portion of the Vegas charges, including a $557 dinner…
Read MoreA Thing You Rarely See
There’re a lot of clever politicians and smart politicians but there’re not many politicians with the courage to take a stand they know is unpopular. The other day, baffled by the raft of tax reform plans floating around the State Legislature, I asked an economist to explain the virtues of ‘consumption taxes’ to me…
Read MoreWhose Victory?
One word can say a lot. So it was with last week’s heated meeting between the Wake County commissioners and school board. Joe Bryan, chairman of the commissioners, told the N&O: “You’ve got some lingering tension over the victory we had in the Senate yesterday.” That “victory” was Senate passage of a bill…
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