Carter Wrenn
Gary Pearce
As the health-care battle resumes in Washington, some history may be just what the doctor ordered. Most people believe this battle traces back to Bill and Hillary Clinton’s failed effort to reform health care in 1993-1994. Actually, it goes back to 1991 – and a now-forgotten special election for the U.S. Senate in…
Read MoreIn 2008 while running for Governor, Bev Perdue said: Then, this year, she put a lobbyist in charge of health care, gave him the green light to spend $250 million to pass out no bid contracts (many to his former clients), then gave him her blessing to cut health care to thousands of…
Read MoreIt sounds un-American, but I’m adamantly opposed to New Year’s resolutions. First of all, all the media stories are tiresome: How to start a new exercise routine – or a new life. How to lose 20 pounds. How to change your diet. How to run that ultra-marathon across the Sahara that you’ve always dreamed…
Read MoreBack when Lauch Faircoth was running for Senate the first time ole’ Tom Ellis launched the campaign two years before the election and he had a good reason – the first time he took a poll and looked at the political chessboard what the pieces said back to him loud and clear was Lauch was…
Read MoreGo back 50 years in North Carolina. To 1960. The year Terry Sanford was elected governor. Tobacco was king in North Carolina – politically and economically. WRAL-TV started its broadcast days (after a devotional) with the Farm Report. The News & Observer had a regular farm reporter. And the health of the…
Read MoreA national Democratic Party reform that Jim Hunt pioneered nearly thirty years ago is under attack. And state Senator Dan Blue is defending the reform. There is some irony here. When Hunt was Governor and Blue was House Speaker in 1993-94, the two didn’t always get along. They clashed especially on Hunt’s crime…
Read MoreThe Teens may come to be Barack Obama’s decade the way the Eighties were Ronald Reagan’s decade. Ideology aside, the two Presidents have much in common. Both were outsiders who ran campaigns that upset conventional wisdom. Both had lives before politics – Reagan as an actor and union leader, Obama as a…
Read MoreRepublicans – including Senator Richard Burr – couldn’t wait to blame the Obama administration for the Christmas Day terrorist scare. In other words, to indulge in the kind of politics they called unpatriotic when Bush and Cheney were in charge. Let’s look at some facts. A. Burr agrees with the President that…
Read MoreAt breakfast the other day, a friend pointed to his mocha and cinnamon-crunch bagel. “I’m doing this today because starting January 1 I’m losing 20 pounds,” he vowed. I congratulated him. And wished him luck. That’s a hard resolution to keep; most resolvers fail. But Governor Perdue has done it. She recently…
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Senator Thom Tillis is a good politician. He may be good enough to preserve his image…
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No, Trump’s blitzkrieg hasn’t left Democrats hapless, hopeless and rudderless. Here’s one example of the immense…
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It’s a kind of mystery – will hitting Canada and Mexico with tariffs land us in…
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