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Entries for 'Carter Wrenn'
Carter Wrenn posted on February 27, 2013 12:01
Two years ago, Republicans controlled the County Commissioners and the School Board and were happy.
Then Democrats won the next School Board election – so they were happy and the Republican County Commissioners were unhappy.
Next the Republican Commissioners decided to redraw the Democratic School Board members’ Districts to get them out of office – which made the Democrats unhappy.
Then the Republican County Commissioners hired a lobbyist to lobby the General Assembly to pass their plan and the Democratic School Board members hired a lobbyist to stop them. Between them, the two boards spent $60,000 on lobbyists – which made taxpayers unhappy.
Next the two boards met to try to stop fighting long enough to agree to pass a $1 billion bond referendum. That made the Chamber of Commerce happy – until, in the middle of the meeting, a School Board member said the Republican Commissioners had ‘disrespected’ the School Board. Then Republican Commissioner Tony Gurley responded, I’m getting sick and tired of having this person whispering words like calling me a jerk into my ear as I’m trying to speak. And School Board member Susan Evans said, I didn’t say that. You told me 'tough luck' or something else.
Then they adjourned.
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Carter Wrenn posted on February 26, 2013 15:22
Back in 1980, Senator Helms’ political organization had won elections in 1976 and 1978. And after Reagan won, we figured the conservative millennium had dawned and we’d mastered the art of politics. Next election we lost five races.
Back in 1980, Jim Hunt had built the most powerful political machine ever seen in North Carolina and had never lost an election. He lost for the first time in 1984.
In 1980, when he was 32 years old, Bill Clinton was elected Governor of Arkansas – the youngest Governor in America. Two years later, after he lost the next election, he joked he was now the youngest ex-governor in America.
Hubris – thinking you’re smarter than you are – is a deadly vice.
Republicans in North Carolina have now won two straight elections. They worked hard and won the legislature in 2010 then kept it and elected a Republican Governor in 2012 – and they wouldn’t be human if they didn’t hear the genie of pride whispering in their ears.
But has a new Republican era dawned in North Carolina?
The polls don’t seem to say so. There’re still more Democrats than Republicans. And voters don’t see eye to eye with Republican legislation on Unemployment Reform, the Medicaid Expansion, or Tax Reform.
There’s no doubt it can be a good thing to pass an unpopular bill. But it’s a mistake to tell yourself voters agree with you when they don’t. And it’s an even bigger mistake (I know, I made it in 1982) to assume the good times will roll on and on – in politics that’s when the Good Lord throws you a curveball and you land on your backside in the dust, eyes wide open to a new kind of wisdom that comes with humility.
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Carter Wrenn posted on February 26, 2013 09:51
President Obama’s in full campaign mode with his eyes fixed on taking control of the House of Representatives next election. He’s put his campaign to work targeting Republican Congressmen and he’s telling voters because of the Sequester 7,450 children in Florida won’t receive vaccinations, 800 victims of domestic violence in North Carolina won’t receive care, and 1,200 teachers in California will lose their jobs.
Now the Washington Republicans could argue Obama’s wrong – the cuts aren’t that bad. Or that the tax increases Obama wants will do more harm to the economy than the cuts.
But they’re not doing either. Instead they’re agreeing with Obama that the cuts are terrible – then they add that the terrible cuts are all Obama’s fault – that it’s the Obamaquester.
Obama’s answer to that is to say – reasonably – that he hopes Republicans will help him avoid children losing vaccinations by passing a few tax increases on the rich and Republicans say, again, the terrible cuts are all Obama’s fault.
It’s a dead end.
I don’t understand why the Republicans don’t make a list of $85 billion in wasteful spending – like the government’s free cell phone giveaways – and put it in front of Obama and say, If you want to spare unvaccinated children in Florida – let’s cut this program.
That sure sounds better than Republicans saying, Sure the Sequester is terrible but we won’t raise taxes to stop it because it’s all your fault.
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Carter Wrenn posted on February 18, 2013 12:19
Like a bull seeing a red cape Karl Rove lowered his head and horns swinging, charged straight for Cole Porter’s adoring but unhappy wife;— as soon as actress Ashley Judd (who starred in De-Lovely) became a possible Senate candidate in Kentucky Rove had put out an ad out saying, “Ashley Judd’s an Obama-following, Obama-loving, radical Hollywood liberal and a carpetbagger who looks down her nose at hillbillies.”
Goring a hard-bitten politician is one thing – but goring a soft-spoken, doe-eyed actress is another. The same shoe doesn’t fit every foot. And Karl Rove’s been hollering ‘Obama-loving liberal’ for so long he’s now beginning to sound like a one-trick pony.
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Carter Wrenn posted on February 15, 2013 11:11
Cautiously holding their fingers to the wind most politicians avoid controversies like the plague – but State Auditor Beth Wood, a farm girl who put herself through East Carolina University, has a trait that’s all but extinct in politics: Grit.
Last year, after Wood audited the state’s new Medicaid Processing Computer System, she blistered fellow Democrat Beverly Perdue, saying Perdue had turned a $250 million project into a $500 million boondoggle that was two years behind schedule and hadn’t processed a single Medicaid claim.
Last week, she held a press conference with Governor McCrory, reporting her latest audit: This time she’d found the State Medicaid Department had spent $1.4 billion more than its budget over the last three years and has overhead costs that are $180,000 higher than the same costs in other states our size.
A long trail of wreckage (beginning with the benign neglect of Governor Mike Easley and compounded by Governor Perdue’s decision to appoint a lobbyist head of the Department of Health and Human Services) winds back across a decade to those two audits.
Lanier Cansler, the lobbyist, served as a Republican legislator from Asheville in the 1990’s, then, in 2001, Governor Easley appointed him Deputy Secretary of the DHHS; a couple of years later Cansler left government to become a lobbyist and one of his first clients was a company bidding for the biggest contract in state government – the State Medicaid Claims Processing Contract.
Cansler’s client won the contract but the new computer system never got off the drawing board – two years later (and twenty million dollars poorer) the state cancelled it. Then Cansler began to lobby for another company that was bidding to get the next version of the same contract and succeeded again. The state awarded his client the $250 million contract.
Then Governor Perdue appointed Cansler head of the DHHS and three years later, when Wood did her first audit, Cansler’s former client was two years behind schedule and $200 million over budget – which Cansler explained to legislators by saying, Yes, there was a problem – but on the other hand the federal government was paying 90% of the costs so the problem wasn’t as bad as it seems.
For years, Cansler had also praised another DHHS project, Community Care of North Carolina, calling it a paradigm of efficiency and a money saver. But, according to Wood’s latest audit, that was another illusion: She reported, “North Carolina’s Medicaid cost per eligible (person) is higher than any other state in Region IV and is higher than the national average. The question should arise, if Community Care of North Carolina saves significantly on Medicaid expenditures, why does North Carolina spend so much more on Medicaid than comparable states?”
Now Governor Pat McCrory has to figure out how to plug a $1.4 billion three-year old hole in the Medicaid budget, and figure out how to do the impossible: Turn a brother-in-law contract into an overnight success.
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Carter Wrenn posted on February 14, 2013 14:20
I settled into my chair, rocked back, opened a book, and a few minutes later Obama’s measured voice floated across the room saying John Boehner ought to delay the Sequester, then Obama explained how government ought to do more for people with less and it’s only fair the well off pay a little bit more – and whether you agree with him or not Obama’s voice sounds reasonable and logical.
Then the voice of a Republican Congressman speaking in short clipped sentences floated across the room saying Obama invented the Sequester, calling it the Obama-quester three times and it was like listening to a teenage child or Sean Hannity during a rant.
It’s odd: Even as I disagreed with Obama he sounded reasonable. While the Republican Congressman sounded petty and mean.
The next morning in the News & Observer there was a poll about Obama’s soaring approval ratings and Congress’s sinking popularity and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal – explaining the Republicans’ demise – said, It’s time Republicans started sounding like adults.
As the Lord told St. Peter, The things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart: Obama’s got an old-fashioned liberal’s heart and words like ‘saving the middle class’ roll off his tongue like honey. Obama-quester is a kind of vision too but when the word rolled off the Republican Congressman’s tongue it sounded like a howl.
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Carter Wrenn posted on February 13, 2013 10:48
After Tea Party candidates rolled to victory in 2010 they headed for Congress to cut spending, and late one night, six months later, President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner announced they’d made a deal to pass the biggest annual spending cut in history.
Now, two years later, it turns out the cuts were an illusion: Most of the spending that got killed, the Washington Post reports, was already dead – because President Obama and Speaker John Boehner cut money that was never going to be spent. They ‘cut’ $14.6 million that had been authorized to build the Capital Visitor Center – which had already been built. They ‘cut’ $375,000 that had been authorized for a road that didn’t exist. And cut $6 billion that had been authorized to pay for the Census in 2011 – but the Census ended in 2010.
A former Obama official also told the Post that both sides, both the President and the House Leaders, knew what they were calling cuts were simple authorizations that were never going to be spent.
The Tea Partiers got fusselled.
As Congressman Mick Mulvaney ruefully explained, looking back, “Many of the cuts…were smoke and mirrors. That’s the lesson from April 2011: That when Washington says it cuts spending, it doesn’t mean the same thing that normal people mean.”
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Carter Wrenn posted on February 12, 2013 09:54
War’s broken out in Raleigh.
The Republican County Commissioners launched a blitzkrieg, hiring a lobbyist (for $25,000) to get the Republican legislature to redraw the districts of the Democratic School Board members – then the Democratic School Board struck back (to keep their districts) by spending four times as much ($100,000) to hire their own lobbyist.
Politically, it’s an all-out war. But, so far, the only casualties are taxpayers.
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Carter Wrenn posted on February 11, 2013 17:19
There’s a full throated debate going on in Washington – Republicans are saying ‘the Sequester’ wasn’t their idea, it was Obama’s idea, and the White House is saying, ‘Obama’s idea! John Boehner not only voted for the Sequester, after it passed he bragged he’d gotten 98% of what he wanted.’
Meanwhile the Republicans, after frantically searching for a way to match the President’s bully-pulpit, at last have found one by whacking Obama with the Twitter hashtag #Obamaquester.
So here’s where we stand: Two years ago, Obama invented the Obamaquester to cut spending, and, two years ago, John Boehner was for it (98%). But now Obama’s against it. And so are the Republicans. And the whole thing’s clear as a bell on Twitter.
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Carter Wrenn posted on February 11, 2013 13:36
After three days on a retreat at a spa near Washington, and after meeting with President Obama, House Democrats headed home ‘billing and cooing’ like reconciled brides because they’d built a ‘closer relationship’ with the President.
But in this case the path to reconciliation wasn’t romantic: It was money.
To sooth the Congressmen Obama promised to hold eight fundraisers, so, as he put it, ‘Nancy Pelosi will be Speaker again – pretty soon.’
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