Carter Wrenn
Gary Pearce
Well, Mayor Meeker cracked the whip, twisted a few arms and the City Council snapped back into line and voted for his roundabouts. It even voted to spend twice as much as he asked for. “It’s a new day,” Meeker proclaimed, “for Hillsborough Street.” But just a few blocks away it’s not a new day.…
Hollywood director James Cameron (Titanic and Terminator) has discovered proof that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and fathered a son – and you can watch it all on the Discovery Channel. Even the statistician who has proved beyond a scientific doubt that the ossuaries found in a tomb in Israel belong to Jesus, his…
The Democratsâ new poster boy for the pay-to-play scandals is State Treasurer Richard Moore. In a scalding exposé Forbes Magazine tells how Moore, who solely controls the stateâs $73 billion retirement fund, is bankrolling his campaign for Governor. Here’s a copy of the Forbes article. Mooreâs version of pay-to-play works like this: In effect he…
Richard Moore is about to become the new “pay to play” poster boy in Raleigh’s campaign-finance scandal. And he was fingered by no less than Forbes magazine, the capitalist tool. Moore – who is North Carolina’s State Treasurer and a 2008 gubernatorial candidate – has raised over $700,000 from investment firms that handle the state’s…
When Carter assessed Hillary and Obama last week, he identified a key factor in campaigns: the political skills of the candidates and the people around them. The first weeks have shown that Hillary – right now – has the best team when it comes to winning the weekly media wars. But it may not be…
It may be a sign of the apocalypse that the first real clash in the Democratic presidential race came not over Iraq or universal health care or taxes, but over a multi-million dollar Hollywood producer. Here’s a quick recap for those of you who were following the Anna Nicole Smith story instead: David Geffen, big-time…
Governors and Presidents usually start thinking about their legacies as their terms near the end. Mike Easley should start thinking. Because his legacy is at risk. The Governor has been roundly criticized for not mentioning the Jim Black scandal in his State of the State address. Perhaps he should have begun: “Tonight, members of the…
Robert Penn Warren said it best in All the King’s Men: “Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is always something.” There was something on Jim Black. And, as Warren’s Willie Stark would say, it stuck. So…
Political campaigns are built around six basic resources: 1) money; 2) time; 3) a candidate; 4) the people who work – or volunteer – in the campaign; 5) issues; and 6) demographics. Let’s compare Hillary’s campaign to Barack Obama’s. 1. Money – Hillary has more. 2. Time – Both started early; even playing field. 3.…
Senator Phil Berger was out of touch with voters in his district – and suffered the…
A reassuring lesson from our trip to Germany and Czechia is that dictators, despots and tyrants…
Gwyn and I just returned from a 12-day journey through 1,000 years of history in Germany…