Carter Wrenn
Gary Pearce
A TAPster follows up on the blog about many chiefs at the Department of Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention: “Look up the salaries of the executives. Look at the total payroll of those at the top level. The Department laid off the direct staff of those who serve juveniles, but many and most of…
The Department of Cultural Resources put on a nice lovefest for the presentation of Governor Hunt’s fourth volume of papers Tuesday. Governor Perdue was in excellent form, and the Southeast Raleigh High School vocal ensemble was outstanding. (One bit of news was missing from Under the Dome’s account: Governor Hunt said he had talked…
Democrats fear they’re watching another failed Presidency. Like with Jimmy Carter, they see a faltering economy and a President who seems unable to turn the political tide. It was telling that, throughout Carter’s four years in office, editorial cartoons pictured him growing smaller and smaller. In the few cartoons left today, Obama gets skinnier…
A TAPster takes on Republican gubernatorial candidate Pat McCrory over McCrory’s op-ed in the Charlotte Observer on voter ID: “I think there are some interesting facts that McCrory failed to share in his piece – and I’m surprised a paper like the Observer would publish without asking him some questions on his sources. Notably McCrory…
Linda Hayes, the secretary of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, is this monthâs winner of the Thom Tillis Bonehead Budget Award. Speaker Tillis, you recall, put state government on a diet, then gave his staff fat raises. Hayes wins for complaining about budget cuts and then, according to a TAPster, âclosing a couple…
A TAPster takes strong issue with the N&O’s reporting on the American Legislative Exchange Council, which is meeting this weekend in New Orleans. “The N&O’s Under the Dome blog reached a distressing new low in public affairs reporting with its story on the American Legislative Exchange Council. The blog reports on allegations by a liberal…
For those of you who don’t have a date Saturday night, Carter and I will be on WRAL’s “On the Record” show at 7 pm. If you have something better to do, you can watch the 30-minute program online. We’re talking about politics, of course: veto overrides, redistricting and the 2012 elections.
Public Policy Polling is bullish on President Obama’s reelection prospects. I’m not. Tom Jensen at PPP wrote this week: “A broad theme has been emerging in our state by state Presidential polling over the last couple months: if the Republicans nominate Mitt Romney it’s a tossup. And if they nominate anyone else it’s…
Democrats hoped the debt-ceiling narrative would play out like this: Tea Party extremists nearly drive America over the cliff. Instead, it went like this: Government is broken and doesn’t work. That’s a big problem for Democrats. Because voters see them as the government party and Republicans as the anti-government party. Democrats always…
The political sniping began even as chaos still reigned at the White House Correspondents Dinner. My…
A new nationwide poll shows that, if they could run against each other in 2028, Barack…
Senator Phil Berger was out of touch with voters in his district – and suffered the…