Carter Wrenn
Gary Pearce
The N&O headline said “Tax plan creates more losers than winners,” but the only real winners and losers from the Senate tax proposal will be Phil Berger and Thom Tillis. As a wise Raleigh vet observed over breakfast, the plan won’t pass. Too many special interests gored, too many lobbyists working and too much…
Read MoreA group of Democrats was decrying the blizzard of bad bills they see from the legislature: cutting education, attacking renewable energy, making it harder for teens to get health care, loosening gun restraints, on and on. They were talking about what could be done to slow down the storm or persuade Governor McCrory to exercise…
Read MoreThis week’s headlines tell a tale of the priorities and problems of North Carolina’s top three Republicans. Governor McCrory, like all new governors, is focused on getting his cronies into state jobs and frustrated that he can’t fire current state employees fast enough. (A TAPster noted that McCrory’s off-with-their-heads story came out on State…
Read MoreThe trouble with South Carolina, Robert E. Lee supposedly said, is that it’s too small to be an independent nation and too large to be an insane asylum. Which helps explain why Mark Sanford may win his congressional race tonight. The other explanation is our politics today. We are so deeply and bitterly divided…
Read MoreGovernor McCrory went to Texas to push for off-shore drilling, but where does he stand on deep-sixing renewable energy? His old boss at Duke Energy opposes the bill. So do some legislative Republicans. But McCrory, the jobs and energy governor, is silent. Does he agree with the argument made by Republican Rep. Mike…
Read MoreWho’d have thought it was possible – the Internet sweepstakes poker parlor folks have offered ‘to put $500 million’ in the state treasury – if the legislators will just see the light and let them stay in business. Whoever heard of anybody volunteering to pay half a billion dollars in taxes? You have to…
Read MoreChairman Randy Voller continues to embarrass himself and the North Carolina Democratic Party. Now it’s for saying Republicans are “raping” North Carolina. After numerous Republicans committed political self-immolation last year by talking loosely about rape, you would think any man in politics would have the good sense to avoid the word. Not Voller. …
Read MoreRaleigh Republicans’ once-united front is fraying. There was Rep. Larry Pittman’s non-apology apology to Speaker Tillis (“I’m not sorry I said it; I’m sorry I got caught.”) One wit noted that it read like a hostage letter. Was he waterboarded? Then there’s renewable energy. Some Republicans chafed at the pressure behind the bill to…
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