Carter Wrenn
Gary Pearce
Maybe I’ve got this wrong but it seems like for years state government was bumbling and fumbling, but basically – except for the occasional road building scandal – honest. Now, times have changed. State government is still bumbling but its also learned chicanery and sleight of hand. Follow this story from the newspaper the…
Can Erskine Bowles save America? Can history repeat itself? I was about halfway through the book The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History With the President, by Taylor Branch, when I heard that President Obama will name Erskine and another Great Compromiser, former Senator Alan Simpson, to lead a national commission on the budget deficit. …
Last summer, Governor Perdue promised legislators huge spending cuts in Medicaid if they’d let her pass out $250 million in no bid contracts – which she said would bring cost saving efficiencies. They did. She did. But no savings materialized. Instead, the Department of Health and Human Services is $250 million over budget.…
Something rings wrong about Evan Bayh’s ostentatiously principled withdrawal from the Senate. Maybe it’s the picture-perfect posing of his family at the press conference. Somehow you wonder if there’s a National Enquirer scoop lurking in the wings. Maybe Bayh fears the same fate his father met exactly 30 years ago – losing a…
Tiger Woods ought to offer John Edwards a free golf lesson – a thank you for knocking him off the front pages of the newspapers. Last week there was a new twist in the saga of John and Liz and Andy and Rielle – and, surely, after this development the announcement the four of…
Back in her days in the General Assembly the Governor developed a sure-fire way to deal with legislators: Bumfuzzle ‘em. For instance: The Governor’s biggest department, the leviathan Department of Health and Human Services, has already plowed through its $200 million budget increase, plus spent another $250 million on no-bid contracts (a lot of…
It must drive The News & Observer’s editors crazy. Every time the National Enquirer publishes a sensational new twist in the John Edwards soap opera, the N&O editors – like the rest of the mainstream media – have to decide whether to ignore it or check it out. Last week, they checked out…
The other night, snowbound, I turned on the television: The Grammy Awards started with a gentleman dragging a blonde – I think it was Lady Gaga – across the stage. Then wearing pink glitter eye make-up and a kind of show girl costume with lime green wings the blonde went to bumping and grinding. Then…
Several readers pounced on my blog about Obama’s favorable ratings in North Carolina: “Hope that kool-aid tastes good,” one posted. Another: “Wow. Keep spinning, Gary.” OK. How about the latest New York Times/CBS poll: “At a time of deepening political disaffection and intensified distress about the economy, President Obama enjoys an edge…
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…