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Entries for the 'Raleigh ' Category
Gary Pearce posted on August 06, 2010 10:20
The Raleigh buzz is that three of the finalists for UNC System President are AG Roy Cooper, Greensboro super-lawyer (and Board of Governors Chair) Jim Phillips and Bill Roper of UNC Health Care.
Cooper and Phillips, interestingly, are long-time friends and political allies.
For Cooper, the N&O’s much-hyped series on the SBI could not be coming at a worse time.
Part of Phillips’ appeal is that – as a former aide, campaign finance head and legislative lobbyist for Governor Jim Hunt – he can help the universities in the legislature’s budget battles.
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Carter Wrenn posted on August 02, 2010 17:53
Over the years I’ve watched Southern Politics and Irish Politics (in New York) and once even had a dose of Chicago politics but none of them were as byzantine as Italian Politics in Raleigh – for a week I’ve been trying to figure out if the Italians are surrendering or if they’re about to sneak up on the Progressives and attack them from the rear.
The Italians have ignited a ‘cultural war’ in Raleigh over what everyone calls ‘diversity’ – which is a political euphemism (like powder room) for a word no one ever speaks. For example, if you ask a Progressive what ‘diversity’ means he’ll tell you he’s fighting for economic ‘diversity’ – a socio-economic blend of rich and middle class and poor students in schools.
But that’s all baloney. What every Italian and Progressive knows but none will say is ‘diversity’ really only means one thing: Race. That the student body in a public school in Raleigh cannot be more than 40% African-Americans. Period.
Up until a week ago reading the newspaper I thought the Italians were dead-set against diversity. And busing. And forced integration. And they were 100% for returning to neighborhood schools. Then out of a clear blue sky School Board Chairman Ron Margiotta announced he had no intention of going back to ‘high poverty’ schools – meaning he had no intention of going back to schools where more than 40% of the students were African-Americans. Which sure sounded like the Italians had struck the flag and surrendered to the Progressives.
Next the political master-mind of the Italians, Republican Chairman Claude Pope, wrote an op-ed in the newspaper announcing the Italians had never, ever opposed diversity; then Italian School Board Czar John Tedesco chimed in and said he’d been for ‘diversity’ all along too, then Pope adroitly turned the tables on the Progressives saying they were fighting not against a return to segregation but against the Italian’s newer – and better – ‘diversity’ policy.
That led to a tough question: If the Italians had really been for ‘diversity’ all along why hadn’t they just said so months ago and spared everyone in Raleigh a lot of rhubarb, including having to read about NAACP Chairman Reverend Barber being handcuffed and led off to jail twice for leading demonstrations.
Anyway, for a couple of days there wasn’t anyone in Raleigh who wasn’t for ‘diversity’ and somehow ending busing and returning to neighborhood schools and ‘diversity’ were all going to happen at once which had never been seen before anywhere in the South or at least in North Carolina.
Then in the morning paper Chairman Margiotta announced the School Board’s priorities do not include ‘diversity.’
Which leads to a last crucial question: What on earth are the Italians up to?
Did they have a moment of weakness – followed by a change of heart and a stiffening of backbone? Were they bluffing? Creating a diversion? Was there some complex stratagem at work no one could fathom? It’s a mystery.
But one thing’s for sure: If they meant to befuddle the Progressives they succeeded brilliantly – the Reverend Barber hasn’t been arrested all week and there hasn’t been a single demonstration protesting Raleigh’s return to the days of Jim Crow.
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Gary Pearce posted on July 29, 2010 08:16
So let’s talk about what Raleigh’s buzzing about this week:
Is there some kind of statutory deadline in the Mike Easley case this month – that is, tomorrow?
Is something coming from the U.S. Attorney?
Is this investigation ever going to end?
Is George Holding holding on until President Obama’s second term?
Is Washington getting impatient with the timing and scope of the investigation?
Is there some kind of negotiation going on between Holding’s office and Easley?
Is Easley’s fabled Irish luck going to hold out one more time?
Capital buzzers and buzzards long to know.
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Gary Pearce posted on July 28, 2010 07:40
“Controlled choice” is all the buzz now in the Wake schools debate.
This has the whiff of one of those oxymoronic (with the emphasis on “moron”) political/policy phrases that sounds great but never quite works out in practice.
Remember George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism”?
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Gary Pearce posted on July 27, 2010 10:16
My blog about the capital press corps – and how its coverage of the Alcoa story might have been influenced by UNC-TV’s Eszter Vajda – brought this response from Scott Mooneyham of The Insider/Capitol Press Association. I think it’s worth reprinting in full.
Background: I had quoted a blog by Laura Leslie about how the depleted numbers of the press corps required them to work together.
Gary,
You should know that Eszter Vajda does not and has not ever worked in the leg building press room, which is where the cooperation of which Laura was referring takes place. The eight press corps member of whom she speaks does not include anyone from UNC-TV, which maybe further makes the point that I have made -- you can't be called a journalist while on the gov't payroll.
Suggesting that Eszter influenced press corps coverage of Alcoa is akin to saying, "Look at that tail chasing his dog." I don't think anyone in the press corps even knew about Eszter's "documentary" or that she was working on something associated with Alcoa until Fletcher Hartsell issued his subpoena. I and others have been writing for roughly two years on the issue of FERC relicensing and attempts by Hartsell, Gov. Perdue and Stan Bingham to block it. I've had many conversations with many people about it -- Hartsell, Bingham, Bruce Thompson, Chuck Neely, Gene Ellis, Angie Harris, Larry Jones. I haven't spoken once to Eszter Vajda about it.
As for press corps cooperation, I suspect what Laura means is that the people in the press room generally help each other keep track of things like votes, quickly called committee meetings to hear important pieces of legislation, and share information about bills that might have been stripped and become something new. So, for example, the video poker bill is being debated, the debate has gone on for an hour, and some press corps members have tuned out the debate temporarily to talk briefly with a lobbyist about where some other bill is going, etc. Joe Hackney says, "Further comment, further debate? The question before the House is .." And someone who is still listening yells, "VOTE!" Or, Laura will play back on her audio equipment some quote or exchange that we all heard, but wanted to make sure we got correctly. Or, some press corps member will say, out loud in the press room, "Why are they taking up a bill to regulate funerals, now?" And someone will respond, "They stripped that. It's a $500 million incentives bill now."
That doesn't mean that the press corps holds a staff meeting to decide how coverage will go for the day. It doesn't mean that Mark Binker shares with me that he's learned that banking commissioners are set to get bonuses, or that I share with him that I've found out that Fred Steen is the legislator who filed an ethics complaint alleging attempted bribery.
Laura may be right that there is more cooperation today than in 2004, but I don't think it is something new either. I believe there is more cooperation in 2004 than there was in 2001 and more in 2001 than in 1998, when I started there. If the point of that cooperation is accuracy, what's the problem?
Regards,
Scott Mooneyham
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Gary Pearce posted on July 26, 2010 16:22
Have I missed it? Or has somebody done – and released – a poll of Wake County voters on the school debate?
Most people I run into take it as a matter of faith that the board’s new direction reflects a minority opinion in the county.
True, it was the election for just four board seats that turned things around so dramatically.
But I have a feeling that there is a swing bloc of voters in the middle of this issue. They agree that resegregated schools would be bad. And they share the frustration over school assignments. What they don’t get is whether the two views can be squared.
The opponents of the new board need to understand those voters, because that’s who will ultimately decide what happens.
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Gary Pearce posted on July 23, 2010 09:40
There are two kinds of political leaders: uniters and dividers.
Barack Obama is a uniter; Sarah Palin, a divider. Jim Hunt was a uniter; Jesse Helms, a divider. Ronald Reagan was a uniter; George W. Bush, a divider.
Dividers can succeed in politics. But they don’t leave lasting legacies of accomplishment.
The leaders of the WakeCounty school board, Ron Margiotta and John Tedesco, don’t get this.
They don’t realize that if they talked to their critics, instead of arresting them, they might achieve their goals – or at least move in that direction.
One of the most valuable lessons Jim Hunt taught me is never burn your bridges. You never know when today’s opponent might be tomorrow’s ally.
Margiotta and Tedesco are sowing the seeds of their own failure. The disruption they’ve fueled could well hurt the schools’ performance. What truly qualified professional educator would want to be superintendent in this environment?
If the Wake schools fail, Margiotta and Tedesco will get the blame. They’ll be out of power, out of office and in for years of infamy.
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Gary Pearce posted on July 21, 2010 13:30
Laura Leslie of North Carolina Public Radio-WUNC is a great reporter and one of my favorite bloggers. She recently had a post about the capital media that is worth attention.
Since 2004, she wrote, the legislative press corps’ ranks have dropped from 20-something to, at the end of this year’s session, eight. That brought a sea change in how those reporters work:
“The competitive urge is still there in spades, but it’s different these days. We’ve learned to work together because, after round after round of cuts in the industry, we have to. Cooperation is the only way 8 people can keep tabs on 170 legislators, ad hoc committee meetings, and the dozens of floor amendments that fly by in a 19-hour session.”
This raises a question: Was the entire press corps’ approach to the Alcoa story influenced by UNC-TV's Eszter Vajda, whose unedited reports were critical of the company?
Will Alcoa’s FOIA request unearth communications between Vajda and other reporters? The press corps might learn the hard way what it’s like when your emails go public.
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Gary Pearce posted on July 21, 2010 09:44
Forty years ago, I took part in an antiwar protest at the State Capitol after Kent State. Yesterday, my 17-year-old daughter took part in the Wake schools protest at the Capitol.
So I’ve been amused by Carter’s blogs about teenagers being “used” by adults angry at the new school board’s assignment policy.
My experience raising teenagers is that you can’t “use” them to do anything. Or make them do much of anything they don’t want to do.
The real message here is that the new board’s steamroller has run into a wall of anger and protest – which may show up on Election Day in November.
I don’t believe the board’s new leaders – Carter calls them “the Italians” – are evil people. And I don’t buy bashing them as outsiders “not from here” who “don’t understand our values.”
But there’s an underlying truth to that criticism. Margiotta & Co. clearly haven’t made the effort to know their audience – black and white Southerners who remember the civil rights and school desegregation battles of 50 years ago.
And teenaged students who have learned what those battles meant.
Republicans take note: The 16- and 17-year-olds who were being “used” at yesterday’s protest will be voting to reelect Barack Obama in two years.
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Carter Wrenn posted on July 20, 2010 10:11
Everyday the bru-ha-ha between our local Progressives and the Italian transplants on the School Board gets more entertaining – the whole thing’s turned into a microcosm of modern life with far-left Liberals, Democrats, Progressives, Italians, Southerners, far-right Republicans, NAACP Reverends, a Duke Professor and a liberal Baptist Church all going at one another tooth and nail and now the caldron is complete – the teenagers have joined the fray.
By forming their own coalition – H.E.A.T – or Hero’s Emerging Amongst Teenagers to march arm-in-arm with the Progressives and the NAACP at their demonstration today.
The young people held their first meeting the other night at the local anti-Italian headquarters (at Pullen Park Baptist Church) and without wasting a second ripped into the Italians saying the new School Board leaders are out to “destroy public education.”
A young lady explained how grateful she is to the old School Board for busing her “forty minutes to Apex for diversity reasons when she was younger” and another student – who clearly has a future in politics – told the crowd the students were “fighting the oppressors of Wake County;” the next morning it all landed in the News and Observer, bringing back fond memories of being seventeen and fighting oppression which in the days of my youth (circa 1970) meant fighting the local draft board.
Leaving aside stopping for a moment to contemplate the possible results of letting sixteen year olds set school policy, I have to say this all looks helpful to the Italians – because even if they are Yankees they haven’t dragged young people into this fight as schills to get favorable publicity in the newspaper – which our good southern ‘Progressives” and NAACP Reverends have done without a qualm.
This is politics and it’s the modern age and it’s for sure anything goes but using sixteen year olds to deliver rhetorical bombs in the press does seem stooping a little low.
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