Raleigh
Dickie’s dodge
Raleigh City Council candidate Dickie Thompson tried to pull a classic politician’s dodge last week. J.B. Buxton, also a District A candidate, held a press conference to blast what Indy Week called “one of the worst provisions in the new state budget: the sales tax on auto repair, maintenance and installation services that will go…
Read MoreThe Capitator
Back when the legislature came to town, State Senator Ralph Hise announced Medicaid spending was out of control but he had a solution – Capitation – which worked like this: He was going to hire MCOs (Medicaid HMOs) to run Medicaid then he was going to tell them: This is all you get to spend.…
Read MoreHow the State Senate Works
A handful of Senate leaders sit down in backrooms and make plans then come out of the rooms and a bill pops into a committee then they march over to the Senate Chamber and pass it in the blink of an eye. The same Senate powers-that-be made a plan to ‘transfer’ millions of dollars in…
Read MoreSentimental but Thin-Skinned
The editorial made Governor McCrory so mad he sat down and wrote the editors a letter telling them they had a choice: They could continue to malign an outstanding public servant – the Governor was talking about his legal counsel – or they could admit they were elitists who lacked journalistic standards. It’s an odd…
Read MoreSauce for the Goose
Right there in the middle of the page on the News and Observer’s website was an article with the Governor ripping into the newspapers for suing him for violating the ‘public records’ law – and right next to it was a second article about the Republican Party suing Roy Cooper for violating the same law.…
Read MorePlaying with Fire
Like him or not, Phil Berger’s about the most powerful politician around; last year, just so no one got confused about who rules the roost in Raleigh, he and the Senate Bull Mooses put the kibosh on the Governor’s pet ‘puppy mills’ bill and, this year, they’re creatively discovering ways to expand their power no…
Read MoreOld-Fashioned
Four separate reports – two done for the State Medicaid Department, one done for federal Medicare, and one by the non-profit Community Care of North Carolina filed with State Medicaid – all said CCNC saved taxpayers millions of dollars by reducing Medicaid costs. So what did the Old Bull Mooses in the Senate do? They…
Read MoreWake Commissioners Split
Democrats may have 7-0 control of the Wake County Commissioners, but they are far from unanimous on school funding. In fact, they are engaged in a classic political debate: Do you move fast when you’re in control, at the risk of losing the next election? Or do you play a long game, moving slower now…
Read MoreCrossing the Line
Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether Bad Bob Rucho is a Bull Moose or a bull in a china closet but there’s no doubt he sincerely loathes tax loopholes so it’s a shame in his enthusiasm to gore a corporate ‘incentive’ he crossed the line. When a bill landed in Rucho’s committee to kibosh a…
Read MoreHoodoo
MCOs (Managed Care Companies) are a species of corporate locust but a cohort of silver-tongued Super PAC Managers and I.E. Campaign Managers are hard at work to convince legislators MCOs can heal by touch and walk on water – and save the state a billion dollars on Medicaid. But here’re two facts from the General…
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