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Entries for 'Carter Wrenn'
Carter Wrenn posted on December 12, 2012 11:29
At breakfast the other morning Tom, who’s liberal, folded back the page of his newspaper and slid it across the table to Mike, who’s conservative, rapped the headline with his finger, and said, ‘Now, that’s what I call progress.’
Mike glanced down at the headline – West Point Chapel Hosts Gay Wedding. And laughed. ‘I reckon a battalion of ghosts all the way back to Winfield Scott are turning over in their graves.’
Last week an army chaplain conducted the first same-sex marriage in the Cadet Chapel at West Point for a lady who graduated from West Point in the first class to include women thirty years ago.
From Tom’s point of view that wedding is another small step toward enlightenment – following the three milestones of Minnesota, Maryland, and Maine voting in favor of gay marriage on Election Day.
But, if you think about it, Tom may have it backwards.
Because the Army is more than a collection of men and women in uniform – it’s an institution. It may well be the oldest institution in America – after all, the Continental Army was created before the Presidency, the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court or the public schools.
After we got drubbed by the British in the War of 1812, years ago, old General Winfield ‘Fuss and Feathers’ Scott, a sort of institution in his own right, decided a military academy was the cure to avoid future drubbings – so he founded West Point, and it gave birth to ‘the long gray line’ of cadets stretching from Robert E. Lee to Dwight D. Eisenhower.
West Point rests at the heart of one of the oldest and most respected American institutions – and if you share Mike’s point of view – the wedding last week in Cadet Chapel may be the real milestone.
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Posted in: General, Issues
Carter Wrenn posted on December 11, 2012 13:53
Gary’s progressive but he’s also old-fashioned so a year ago when he said, ‘You know, you ought to use Twitter’– he surprised me.
‘I expect,’ I said, ‘Twitter’s too young for my blood.’
‘Use it like an old-fashioned clipping service,’ he said.
Back in the old days, in the dark ages before Facebook and Google News, if you ran a campaign and needed to know what the newspapers were saying about a candidate you had to subscribe to a clipping service and say, Send me every newspaper article that mentions Jesse Helms – then every morning a manila envelope stuffed full of clippings that were two or three days old would arrive in the mail.
Now you can use Twitter like an old-fashioned clipping service. And it’s free. For instance, you can ‘follow’ Under the Dome or Rob Christensen or Joe Klein or David Brooks and a link to whatever they write appears on Twitter.
Last Sunday I read the News & Observer the old-fashioned way, sitting in bed, then meandered over to the office and turned on the computer and up popped a headline in Google News from the Los Angeles Times: Mitt Romney Pollster: Why we thought we would win.
The reporter, interviewing Romney pollster Neil Newhouse, sailed right past the philosophical and got down to brass tacks.
Why, he asked, did Romney’s polls show him winning Colorado and New Hampshire? Why did Romney’s polls show him in a dead-heat in Iowa? Why did Romney feel sure he would win Florida and Virginia?
Mr. Newhouse gave a pretty valid answer. He simply said, I’m not sure.
So much for brass tacks. Maybe the answer is philosophical.
In my world of older white Republican males hardly a soul could imagine Barack Obama winning the election. Men – and women – were certain Obama would lose. Republican pollsters and consultants had their own point of view: Anti-Obama voters, they said, were more intense and more likely to vote than pro-Obama voters. Plus, they’d add, undecided voters always vote against the incumbent. Once, sitting in a meeting, I said, That might not be so on Election Day if undecided voters dislike Romney as much as they dislike Obama – but only one person in the room thought that made any sense at all.
Now, a lot of times, the truth is ambiguous. But a lot of times not seeing the truth has nothing to do with ambiguity – it has to do with eyesight. Republicans didn’t lose because of demographics or Hispanics or Obama’s ground game. It was simpler. We lost, say, Florida and Virginia because we listened to one another and saw an election unfolding before our eyes that bore no resemblance to the election that was unfolding in Richmond and Miami.
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Carter Wrenn posted on December 10, 2012 11:20
When I read in the newspaper that the House Republican Leadership had given four Congressmen the boot, kicking them off their committees, for not loyally voting with the leadership I thought, Those guys must have been voting with the Democrats – but then I read one of the four Congressmen was Walter Jones the most conservative Congressman in North Carolina.
Congressman Jones routinely gets elected every two years, goes to Washington, keeps his promises, votes his conscience, is unfailingly polite and won in the biggest landslide of any Republican Congressman in North Carolina last fall.
So how did he get crossed-up with the Republican Leadership in Washington? Well, it turns out, by voting to cut spending too much – for instance, by voting against the Leadership’s 2011 Budget Deal with Obama to raise the debt ceiling.
So, now we have Republican Leaders in Washington unhappy with Walter Jones because he voted to cut spending too much.
What’s wrong with this picture?
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Carter Wrenn posted on December 07, 2012 12:26
Up in Washington, right after Obama won reelection, House Speaker John Boehner held a press conference to announce he’d seen the light and was ready to compromise and accept more tax revenues (which translated from political speak into plain English means higher taxes).
Next the House Republicans set off in hot pursuit of Hispanic votes, passing a bill that, as Arizona Republican Jeff Flake put it, “staples a green card” to the diploma of immigrants who graduate from colleges in the United States with degrees in Math or Science.
House Republicans also proposed allowing immigrants who are working here to bring their spouses and children to the United States without having to endure the wait for additional visas or green cards – then, as a fig leaf, to cover their flanks with less open-minded Republicans they proposed to end the Diversity Visa Lottery Program – a long-standing program that grants visas to immigrants from Africa and Asia.
None of this troubled the Democrats in Congress.
They simply said, That’s not a big deal. We’ll do all that – plus we’ll pass the ‘Dream Act’ and keep the “Diversity Visa Lottery Program.”
Republicans placed a bid to buy Hispanic votes.
The Democrats said, We’ll see you and raise you.
And the bad news is – in this poker game – the sky’s the limit.
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Carter Wrenn posted on December 06, 2012 17:09
It was like watching the rerun of a bad old black and white movie: Obama won reelection then, the next day, at a press conference in Washington John Boehner stood up and announced he was ready to compromise and accept new taxes – but only on one condition. Obama had to accept big spending cuts.
Then Obama departed Washington to give a speech at a toy factory in Pennsylvania and, the same day, his Treasury Secretary traipsed over to Capitol Hill and plopped a counter-proposal on the table in front of Boehner: The President wanted a $1.6 trillion dollar tax increase, more spending, eliminating debt ceiling votes, and proposed kicking the can down the road on spending cuts by deferring the sequestration for a year.
Boehner grimaced and said, We’re getting nowhere.
And Obama fired a broadside at Boehner, saying Boehner was against a tax cut for middle class families because he (Obama) wouldn’t give one to millionaires too.
A couple of days passed and Boehner came back with his own proposal: A ‘compromise’ that also included a big tax increase – which started a conflagration among conservatives. By sundown Boehner was catching it from Obama on one side and Jim DeMint to Rand Paul on the other.
So with the ‘fiscal cliff’ days away here’s where our political leaders in Washington stand:
The Democrats won’t cut spending because they’re afraid their supporters will go berserk.
The Republicans are for raising taxes and their supporters are going berserk.
So there’s only one way to escape the briar patch: More debt.
It’s like déjà vu all over again.
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Carter Wrenn posted on December 05, 2012 16:19
Back in 2005, Governor Mike Easley pulled strings and got his wife a job at North Carolina State University running what he called a ‘speakers series;’ then the Governor pulled more strings and got his wife a new job paying more, $170,000 a year; then the Governor’s string-pulling landed on the front page of the News & Observer, a scandal erupted, the chancellor at NCSU resigned, and the Board of Trustees fired Mrs. Easley.
Mrs. Easley ‘retired,’ began drawing a $37,000 per year state pension, then sued the university for a million dollars for breach of contract (because they fired her a year into her five year contract).
Last August, the university quietly settled with Mrs. Easley. Last week the settlement landed on the front page of the News & Observer. Here’s how it worked: The university agreed to ‘unretire’ Mrs. Easley (for the last three years), recalculated her pension as if she’d actually been earning $170,000 a year, and, voila, Mrs. Easley’s pension doubled to $80,000 per year.
The News & Observer says given Mrs. Easley’s life expectancy she just won a million dollar settlement. The new chancellor at NCSU says that’s a good deal. And here’s how politics works: The Governor pulls strings, his wife gets a $170,000 a year job, a scandal erupts, she gets fired, the old chancellor resigns, three years later Mrs. Easley comes out of retirement, doesn’t work another day, retires again, doubles her pension, and the new chancellor says that’s a good deal.
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Carter Wrenn posted on December 05, 2012 09:38
Well, Governor Perdue’s stepped in another mess. She’s announced she’s going to sidestep the normal nominating process (she set up) to pick a new Supreme Court Judge before Pat McCrory takes office.
Perdue explained how her plan made sense, saying, I can’t imagine that the person I select will be anything but the finest jurist in North Carolina, or that anybody will have any problem with it.
Uh-huh.
She added, I’m going to make the appointment on paper, in my mind, and I’m going to pick up the phone and call them [the nominating committee]…
So, here’s the Governor’s plan: The nominating committee doesn’t have time to vet a candidate so she’s going to pick someone on paper, in her mind then run it by the committee (that didn’t have time to vet a candidate) to be sure the finest jurist in North Carolina doesn’t have any flaws.
It was more temptation than Senate Leader Phil Berger could resist. He pointed out, well, politely, that there was a flaw in the Governor’s logic.
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Carter Wrenn posted on December 04, 2012 14:35
For Republicans it was like old times – just when they were getting into a funk because they won’t have Governor Perdue fumbling through press conferences anymore, instead of riding quietly in the sunset the Governor held one last press conference. And it was like manna from heaven. Senator Phil Berger (meta-phorically) let out a whoop of joy.
The Governor announced she wants the Council of State to approve a deal she’s made to turn the Dix Hospital property (300 acres worth $58 million) over to the City of Raleigh so it can turn the state mental hospital into a tourist theme park – before Pat McCrory takes office.
McCrory, of course, immediately said, Hold on.
Senator Berger was more candid. Without beating around the bush he said the Governor’s proposal was out of bounds.
Then Perdue fumbled again. She explained giving away 300 acres in downtown Raleigh was a great deal because it was only going to cost $90 million dollars to move the state health department from Dix to a new site near the Research Triangle Park. Lt. Governor Walter Dalton and Attorney General Roy Cooper both immediately agreed with Perdue.
One amazed Republican legislator offered an alternative. He said, We’re about to raise unemployment taxes on every business in North Carolina – so why not just sell the 300 acres and use the $58 million to make a down payment on the $2.5 billion we owe Washington for unemployment claims?
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Carter Wrenn posted on December 03, 2012 11:31
There’s a lot of talk up in Washington these days about compromise: President Obama’s ready to compromise and John Boehner’s ready to compromise but, so far, amid all the cooing no one’s laid a deal on the table so it’s hard to tell if Congressmen and Senators are going to say, Gosh, that compromise is swell – or – There’s no way on earth I’ll vote for that.
There’s also a fair amount political rhetoric camouflaging exactly what the politicians are compromising about.
Way back in 1990, when Harvey Gantt was running against Jesse Helms, at a press conference a reporter quizzed Gantt’s campaign chairman Mel Watt (who’s now a Congressman) about Jesse blasting Gantt for supporting tax increases when he was Mayor of Charlotte. Watt shot back, Harvey didn’t support any tax increases, those were revenue increases.
There’re a lot of Republicans (like Speaker Boehner and Senator Graham) who’re now saying they’re open to revenue increases – but then they turn around and add there’s no way on earth they’ll support raising tax rates. That’s a political fig-leaf of sorts – but not much of one. In the end, whether it’s a revenue increase or a rate increase taxes go up.
There may, perhaps, be a new spirit of compromise afoot in Washington – but the old spirit of who-doo is alive and well too.
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Carter Wrenn posted on November 27, 2012 14:03
Tom sues Dick. Dick spends $2 million to elect Harry judge. Harry wins. And rules in Dick’s favor in the lawsuit. Sound rotten? Try this:
The Democrats sue the Republicans to stop redistricting (and name Republican House and Senate leaders Thom Tillis and Phil Berger as defendants). The Republicans raise $2 million to elect Paul Newby. Newby wins. And will cast the deciding vote (on the Supreme Court) in the Democrats’ lawsuit.
The Democrats cry foul. Which sounds sensible. But there’s a catch: They did the same thing. The Democrats raised money to elect their own judge – Sam Ervin. Who lost.
So, now, Democrats are saying, Look at the rotten thing Republicans did.
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