Raleigh

Back in the throes of winter the State Auditor audited the North Carolina Medicaid Department and reported it had the highest administrative costs of just about any state Medicaid Department around – which sure sounded right because, as just about everyone knows, North Carolina’s Medicaid program has been a bollixed mess for years.   But…

A few days ago I wrote how Secretary Aldona Wos, who’d landed in the briar patch, would be wise to step up and start telling her side of the story.   Last Friday she did.   Now, listening to Dr. Wos is interesting. One moment she’s skating effortlessly across a sheet of rhetorical ice using…

A veteran political hand once gave me this insight into how political people overestimate how much attention voters are paying: “The voters listen a lot slower than we talk.”   Two pieces of recent evidence: John Frank’s fascinating set of articles in the N&O about voters in swing districts and a new poll on the…

When Charles Meeker let fly his Governor-in-2016 trial balloon, you saw two things about where the political winds are blowing today.   First, Democrats sense Governor McCrory is vulnerable. That’s no news flash. Everybody has concluded that over the last month. Including McCrory and his allies. That’s why they’re denouncing the media, promising to whack…

Do Republicans want America – and North Carolina – to fail? That’s the only explanation that makes sense.   If they starve public schools, they can say public schools don’t work – and abandon them. If they derail Obamacare, they can say it’s a train wreck. If they kneecap cities, they can say cities aren’t…