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Entries for February 2010
Gary Pearce posted on February 09, 2010 10:07
Last fall’s Wake County school board elections followed The Golden Rule of Politics: Them that has the gold rules.
Bob Luddy and Art Pope – two of the biggest opponents of public schools – were the biggest contributors to school board candidates.
Luddy and Pope themselves contributed $38,000.
Here’s a place where the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on corporate campaign spending could have a big impact.
There are some big businesses in Raleigh and WakeCounty that care – or should care – about the public schools.
Time to ante up.
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Carter Wrenn posted on February 08, 2010 18:53
Last week a chill just stole out of the State Board of Elections and settled over the Republicans in the State House – Democrat Leader Joe Hackney filed his campaign’s financial report. And he has a healthy $418,000 in the bank – while Republican Leader Skip Stam has just $13,000.
Representative Stam made the best he could of a bad situation. “We’re on track,” he said, adding that rather than asking people to give to his campaign fund he’s urging them to give to another special fund to elect Republicans. He may mean the NCGOP’s House Republican Campaign Fund. It has $54,000 in the bank. Its Democratic counterpart has $152,000.
Up to now House Republicans have been pretty hopeful about the upcoming elections – but in politics dollar bills are the equivalent of soldiers. And Hackney and the House Democrats have 570,000 of them. While the Republicans have 67,000. Even General Lee couldn’t whip those odds.
This adds up to a tough picture for Republicans: Winning ten Democratic House seats (to take control of the House) with only $6,700 to spend on each election is going to be well-nigh impossible.
Democrats have given us the Easley scandal, the Tony Rand hustle, the Marc Basnight pier, a trillion dollar deficit and 11% Unemployment – but they’ve gotten one thing right: Money.
Funding a campaign is the hardest work in politics. A successful candidate spends a good part of his life asking for money – Jesse Helms served in the Senate 30 years and just about every day he asked someone for money. House Republicans don’t need any more issues but they do need cold hard cash. So, here’s a question for the Republicans in the House: Who did you ask for money today?
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Carter Wrenn posted on February 08, 2010 09:44
I have stumbled across a state agency that’s more mismanaged than Lanier Cansler’s.
The Virtual Public Schools agency is (theoretically) leading North Carolina into the New Age of Internet education; students in rural areas will be taught in ‘Virtual Classrooms’ where they can learn anything from Chinese to Sanskrit – it’s technological innovation at its highest and it’s happening right here in the Old North State except for one small problem: The agency has a computer glitch.
The problem’s unusual: Public school teachers are paid a monthly salary – the State writes them a paycheck once a month; other state employees are paid either weekly or bi-weekly; but Virtual Schools instructors are paid quarterly – which has led to a terrible mess.
For example, let’s say Jane is a ‘Virtual Classroom’ instructor earning $5,000 a quarter; when the state fed her salary information into its computer, instead of calculating that Jane was making $20,000 a year and withholding accordingly the computer jumped the tracks and decided she was making $5,000 a week or $260,000 a year – and withheld as if she were making a quarter million dollars.
Which came a shock to Jane.
The obvious solution would have been to pay Jane monthly like all the other teachers, but the folks at School Superintendant June Atkinson’s Department said that would require more paperwork than they could bear.
The other obvious solution was to reprogram the state computer but the folks in charge of that (who work for Governor Perdue) said it was too much trouble and would cost too much.
Eventually, the powers that be got together and came up with a solution: To lie.
They told the Virtual Schools instructors they should claim more deductions on their withholding forms than they really had – which in theory would fool the computer into withholding less from the instructors’ paychecks so say, Jane, would be paid the right amount.
That a bit sounded unorthodox and a little unethical (after all, they were lying to the IRS) but, at least, it had the virtue of convenience – until the poor instructors went on line to fill out their withholding forms.
That’s when they found out instead of telling one little white lie and claiming, say, ten dependents they also had to provide names and addresses and social security numbers for each of their fictional dependents – which, of course, seemed outright dishonest. The instructors balked.
At that point it surely looked like the best solution was to fix the computer glitch – but the logic of government bureaucrats never runs in straight lines; instead of fixing the problem they jury-rigged the computer so the instructors could claim the dependents without giving social security numbers.
Over in Secretary Cansler’s department the Governor’s cutting medical care to elderly and disabled patients while she and Cansler can pass out $250 million in no bid contracts and over in the payroll department the Governor’s minions are telling Virtual Schools instructors to claim false deductions to get paid. Maybe the Governor ought to try that herself – telling the IRS she has ten dependents that don’t exist on her tax withholding forms.
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Gary Pearce posted on February 08, 2010 09:05
Republicans have reason to be confident as filing opens for the 2010 elections. But I’m yet to be convinced this will be another 1994.
That year, Democrats – in Raleigh and Washington – were supremely overconfident, all the way to Election Day.
Not a problem this time.
Still, the cycle favors Republicans. Democrats have won big in the last two elections, so a change is due.
Also, Independents – the unorganized third party nationally and in North Carolina – tilt Republican. They’re unhappy, and they’ll probably take it out on the Ins.
But there are hopeful signs for Democrats.
President Obama is back in campaign mode. He challenged Republicans to a televised debate, in effect, on health care. Don’t underestimate him.
Statewide, while the cycle favors Republicans in the legislature, the money and the relative quality of the parties’ campaign teams favor Democrats. But will corporate money change that?
Locally, schools will dominate the Wake commissioners’ races, and the school board seems hell-bent on imposing its agenda, regardless of what parents said in the recent survey. That’s a sure-fire way to go over the cliff. Plus, three Republican incumbents are up this year, and only one Democrat.
On today’s money, I’d bet on Republican gains, but no replay of the ’94 revolution. And WakeCounty could be the outlier that goes Democratic.
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Gary Pearce posted on February 05, 2010 08:01
It’s the one thing you can count on in politicians: hubris.
Exhibit A: John Edwards.
Exhibit B may be the newly reenergized Republicans in Congress.
They’ve gone gaga over Scott Brown – and their new-found ability to block anything President Obama wants. They’re convinced the November elections will be a rerun of 1994.
Not so fast.
The Republicans may be headed over the same cliff as when they shut down the federal government – and left Raleigh without passing a budget – after 1994..
They look like nothing more than a collection of grim, grumpy old men.
Obama has this clearly in focus. And his biggest weapon is his own smiling, confident persona.
His strategy is taking shape. It will be Yes We Can versus Just Say No.
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Carter Wrenn posted on February 04, 2010 17:16
20/20’s story the other night about John Edwards and mistress Rielle Hunter was brutal; after watching Edwards die the death of a thousand cuts I thought, This fellow needs a break and if he doesn’t get one this may end more badly than anyone’s imagined.
You couldn’t make up what’s happened to Edwards: Sitting in a bar in New York a blonde yoga teacher turned New Age Spiritualist spots him across the room and is struck dumb because he’s bathed in ‘aura’ of light – or so she described it later. Next they end up in his hotel room.
A month later the blonde spiritualist is on Edwards’ payroll making a hundred thousand dollars and traveling to Africa with him and advising him on how to get elected President based on her reading of the alignment of his stars.
Edwards returns from Africa, receives the ‘Father of the Year Award,’ renews his wedding vows with his wife and his mistress gets pregnant.
He moves Rielle to Chapel Hill, gets her an alias, provides her a house and a BMW and in an act of unabashed audacity talks his thirty-three year old aide (who has a wife and three children) into saying he’s the one who got Edwards’ mistress pregnant.
Just before the Iowa Primary a National Enquirer reporter blows their cover and the mistress, aide, wife and three children go on the lamb dodging reporters, hiding out in a hotel penthouse in Hollywood, Florida, a $14 million mansion in Aspen and a rented $20,000 a month estate in San Diego.
With the bills adding up Edwards arranges for a ninety-six year old heiress to send checks of between $10,000 and $200,000 in chocolate boxes to pay to keep his mistress under cover.
The baby’s born, the New Age Spiritualist mother decides the infant’s destined to save the universe – and the father asks the aide and a lawyer friend to fake a paternity test to prove the child’s not his.
Next the aide finds a sex tape starring Edwards and his mistress, the mistress sues the aide to stop him publishing using the tape and the aide – with the checks from heiress Bunny Mellon no longer flowing – in effect uses the tape to blackmail Edwards for welching on a promise to support him for life.
John Edwards tops any character you ever read about in a novel: For a decade he lived for the limelight but now his world’s crashed down around him and he can’t turn on a TV set or open a newspaper without seeing himself being ridiculed. His wife’s given him the boot, who knows what his children are thinking, and he’s paying a battery of lawyers because a Grand Jury’s investigating the checks in the chocolate boxes.
Not long ago John Edwards was the Golden Boy of politics waltzing across the stage – now the music’s stopped but it hasn’t hit him yet the dance is over but it will and when it does he may just come apart in front of our eyes.
So before that happens let’s step back, give him room to breathe and hope he has enough sense to ride quietly off into the sunset or go into a monastery and make the most of obscurity.
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Carter Wrenn posted on February 04, 2010 16:53
The pictures of young Ruffin Poole being led into the federal courthouse hand-cuffed has sent Democrats into a frenzy to pass another round of Ethics Reforms – and it’s like ‘déjà vu’ all over again.
After every scandal (from Jim Black fixing the Lottery Commission to Mike Easley’s wife getting a $170,000 a year job at State University) the poor Democrats have reformed but none of their ‘reforms’ work and there’s a reason: The Democrats reform the wrong things.
Mike Easley gives tax breaks and state contracts to campaign donors and the Democrats’ solution is to ban lobbyists buying legislators dinner.
What Easley (and Ruffin Poole) pretty clearly were doing this time was swapping State environmental permits for donations to the Democratic Party to elect Easley.
So what are the Democrats going to do to stop that? Limit contributions candidates give each other. The Democrats are dead-set on reforming – the wrong thing. All they really need to do is pass one simple law that says: No one doing business with the state can give contributions or gifts to elected officials. Period.
So why won’t Democrats do it?
Because they raise millions from people doing business with the state.
And one thing Democrats aren’t about to do is vote for a ‘reform’ that leaves them poor as Republicans when it comes to campaign cash.
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Gary Pearce posted on February 04, 2010 08:55
Now we know why Mike Easley was so, well, weird. He wasn’t just Governor. He was Secret Agent Man.
Instead of a number like 007, he had a nom de guerre: Ckin Regnad.
This explains the need to keep his whereabouts secret and constantly change his schedule. It’s why he had to conduct much of his work in the middle of the night, leaving furtive phone messages for even his closest aides. And have a secret email account.
To further confound nefarious foes, he wrote backwards. Of course!
One mystery remains. It’s the Firesign Theater connection. Back in the day on campus, listening to Firesign Theater was a favorite pastime of those who, as they used to say, “experimented” with drugs. And not the kind of experiments that went on in chem lab.
I’m just saying.
But it’s a relief to have everything else explained.
Case closed.
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Carter Wrenn posted on February 03, 2010 12:24
I’ve been reading about the recent Supreme Court decision that says corporations can spend as much as they want to elect politicians.
Now, pragmatically, there’s not much to doubt this ruling is going to be a financial windfall to anyone in the political consulting business. And, theoretically, I’ve got to say more freedom of speech is almost always a good idea.
But I’ve begun to suspect there’s a missing piece here. It seems the court approached this case as a choice between two views: First that corporations are amalgamations of individuals and so it naturally follows restricting their freedom of speech restricts individuals’ freedom of speech – versus – Second that the public harm of allowing Wall Street corporations to spend millions to elect politicians beholden to them is just too horrible to contemplate.
But it seems to me this choice – between logic on one hand and common sense on the other – sidesteps a fundamental question: What is a ‘Right’?
Looked at that way the case changes completely. For two reasons: Because the Declaration of Independence says ‘Rights’ flow from God, and because it’s clear in Genesis God created man but nowhere in the six days of creation did He say, Let there be corporations.
So it seems like automobiles and flying machines and the Pyramids corporations were created by man (not God) and have no more rights than say a Chevrolet – which means the Supreme Court in its wisdom has just given an Impala freedom of speech.
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Posted in: General, Issues
Gary Pearce posted on February 03, 2010 11:41
People who care about North Carolina’s economy are closely watching Governor Perdue on an issue that will say a lot about her leadership.
It’s the proposed Titan concrete plant near Wilmington.
Fans say Titan, based in Greece, is one of the best companies in the world, ranking high on corporate accountability, environmental responsibility and as a good place to work.
The plant will employ 160-200 people at $70,000 a year. It will pay a lot of taxes. It will generate other jobs, like at the state port. And there will be construction jobs building the plant.
But Titan is bogged down by environmental complaints. And opponents are trying to taint it by association with Mike Easley.
Perdue’s Commerce Department supports the project. Commerce leaders worry that stopping the plant will send a bad signal to international companies – and hurt North Carolina when it tries to recruit other industries.
But Perdue’s environmental officials apparently want to kill it.
The governor’s job is to referee this dispute. She has to decide who is right. She has to lead.
If she thinks the plant is unacceptable environmentally, she should say so.
And if not, she should stand up and say we need the jobs.
Right now, Perdue seems to be letting the project die slowly by a thousand cuts, hoping it will go away and spare her the burden of making a decision that makes somebody mad.
North Carolina’s unemployment rate is at its highest level since the 1970s. Too often, people think we can get all the jobs we need from pristine companies like Dell and Apple. But you see how well that works out.
America’s economy – and lots of jobs – has always been based on making things. Concrete is one of the things we need to make a lot of, especially for roads and other projects supported by federal stimulus money. And it would be cheaper to make the concrete here, rather than shipping it in.
When Jim Hunt was governor, he had to make this call again and again. When a project satisfied the state’s environmental requirements, he would put everything he had behind getting the jobs for people.
This is an important test for Perdue. She can either let things happen, or she can lead.
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