Carter Wrenn
Gary Pearce
Let others talk about what Marc Basnight did for the university system, clean water, open records, the Democratic Party, etc., etc. Those of us who love and live on the Outer Banks have selfish reasons to thank him. When Governor Hunt put Marc on the Board of Transportation in 1977, getting to Nags…
Read MoreWe’ve waited nearly 30 years, but it’s finally here. Thirty years ago this month, Ronald Reagan was inaugurated. He said government was the problem, not the solution. He promised that – finally – someone would really, really cut government spending. We’ve waited. And waited. And waited. Reagan didn’t cut anything big. Nor…
Read MoreThe N&O front-pager about “North Carolina’s three conservative Democrats” – Congressmen Heath Shuler, Larry Kissell and Mike McIntyre – asks whether there’s a place for Blue Dogs in today’s Democratic Party. For perspective, I turn as always to my work on Jim Hunt’s biography. (I can’t help it; I spent four years on it.…
Read MoreMrs. Edna Street is an elderly lady and a double amputee; last May when she was in the hospital her doctor sent a form to the Department of Health and Human Services asking that she be provided – under Medicaid – in-home care when she went home to convalesce. The doctor never heard back.…
Read MoreEven Republicans are giving up gay-bashing. But, as always, and to paraphrase Rob Christensen, paradox rules North Carolina politics. In the last 10 years, North Carolina went from a Republican Senator, Jesse Helms, who bashed “queers” and “the homosexual lobby” to a Republican Senator, Richard Burr, who surprised people by voting to abolish Don’t…
Read MoreOf course Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour doesn’t remember race relations “being that bad” in the 1960s; he’s a white guy! I grew up in the 60s in North Carolina, and I don’t remember race relations being bad at all for us whites. We could go anywhere we wanted and do anything we wanted. …
Read MoreGeneral Tata better bring his helmet. The new WakeCounty schools superintendent is already taking incoming. He might be starting the job with half of WakeCounty mad at him. People who don’t like the board’s (sometime) majority welcome his selection like a poke in the eye with a stick: a Fox-commentating, Sarah Palin-admiring, conservative-blogging…
Read MoreNorth Carolina’s own Senator Kay Hagan climbed up on her high horse in the Charlotte Observer the other day and denounced the fiscal irresponsibility of the $858 billion tax-cut bill – which she voted against. In her op-ed lambasting government spending Hagan thundered: “On Dec. 1, the bipartisan debt commission released its…
Read MoreOne of my favorite questions to ask people when I’m speaking about my Jim Hunt book is: “How many of you were living in North Carolina in 1960?” I use 1960 because it was a seminal year in Hunt’s life – and North Carolina’s. It marks a neat half-century, for one thing. It was…
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