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Entries for 'Carter Wrenn'
Carter Wrenn posted on November 20, 2012 09:56
Pat McCrory’s just captured the biggest tarbaby in North Carolina.
State government has never been a paragon of efficiency but after twelve years of Mike Easley and Beverly Perdue and pay-to-play politics it’s become an unusually broad and deep quagmire.
The state’s Medicaid claims processing contract is an example: Years ago when Mike Easley was governor his administration decided to put the contract – the biggest contract in state government – out to ‘bid.’ After mountains of lobbying it was awarded to the ACS corporation and then, almost immediately, one of the contract awarders (a former legislator and under secretary in the Easley administration) left the government to work for the company that won that contract.
Two years later the new data processing system was such a mess the state cancelled the contract, paid ACS millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money to go away, and started all over.
This time the former legislator and under secretary changed hats and went to work as a lobbyist for another firm and, on the eve of Governor Perdue’s inauguration, his new client was awarded the $287 million contract. And a few days later, Governor Perdue appointed him Secretary of the department that awarded the contract.
Three years passed and, for the second time, the new data processing system was the cyber equivalent of a hole in the ground, years behind schedule and hundreds of millions of dollars over budget. The Secretary-lobbyist-legislator solved the problem by extending his former client’s contract and agreeing to pay another $200 million dollars of taxpayers’ money.
That’s one example of what Pat McCrory is about to inherit. There’re dozens more. And Pat McCrory ought to throw them over the side. And get rid of the tarbabies. Otherwise, in four years, they’ll be his tarbabies.
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Carter Wrenn posted on November 20, 2012 09:23
The waitress nodded to a slender fortyish brunette at the next table and said, ‘This is Gwyn, she’s a Republican’ – then Gwyn leaned across the gap between our two tables and said, ‘Just look at those Democrats, they didn’t win anyone’s hearts or minds this election – all they did was change who voted. If this had been 1980 – if we’d had the same electorate we had them – Romney would have won even bigger than Reagan. Ted Kennedy started us down the road to being a third-world nation with his Immigration Bill in 1965 and now 57% of the immigrants are getting welfare and that’s why Obama won. That’s demographics. Demographics are destiny.’
I nodded politely and thought, You’ve been listening to the howl.
The howl is the voice of Republican radio personalities, TV personalities, book writers and columnists – in fact, Gwyn, saying ‘Demographics are destiny,’ was echoing one of Ann Coulter’s recent columns.
In a way it’s odd: The same pundits who told Gwyn that Romney was sure to win are now howling (and telling her) why Romney lost but she’s never stopped to wonder if they might be wrong a second time. She just joined the howl. In fact, it doesn’t look like Romney lost for one reason – it looks like it took half a dozen reasons floating through the ether and landing at just the right moment in just the right place for Obama to defeat Romney. About the only explanation I haven’t heard from the pundits is, ‘We Republicans screwed up and lost an election we should have won.’ With one exception. Dick Morris. To his unending credit Dick went on television the day after the election and said bluntly, ‘I was dead-wrong.’
Today the howl may be the most powerful force in Republican politics – it sells millions of books every year and draws millions of viewers to cable TV shows every night. But it doesn’t enlighten. Instead it’s left Gwyn ranting about Ted Kennedy stealing the election by introducing a bill forty-seven years ago.
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Carter Wrenn posted on November 15, 2012 13:41
Back before the election I wrote a lot about the importance of money in campaigns and how the Democrats were in trouble because of a lack of it.
The NC Free Enterprise Foundation has just published a report on campaign spending during the 3rd Quarter, which ended just before the election. There were a total of thirteen statewide races, for Governor, Lt. Governor, and eleven Council of State offices. In every one of them the candidate who spent the most won.
There were thirteen Congressional races. In twelve of them the candidate who spent the most won. The lone exception was Tim D’Annunzio, who lost to long term Democratic Congressman David Price.
In the State Senate, excluding ‘Safe’ Democratic or ‘Safe’ Republican districts, there were sixteen contested races. The candidate who spent the most won every time. Even more to the point, the only two Democrats who won outspent their Republican opponents.
In the State House, again excluding ‘Safe’ districts, there were twenty-nine contested races. The candidates who spent the most won twenty-one of them. In six of the remaining eight races the difference between the two candidate’s spending was minor.
Finally, according to the NCFEF’s report, there were fifteen ‘Swing Districts’ this election in the State House and Senate. The candidate who spent the most won twelve times.
So the candidates who spent the most won: 100% of the time in statewide races, 92% of the time in Congressional races, 100% of the time in State Senate races, 72% of the time in State House races, and 80% of the time in swing districts.
It’s a home truth. In politics money matters.
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Carter Wrenn posted on November 13, 2012 17:46
The day after the election House Republican Leader John Boehner faced a tough question: Would he compromise with Obama or not? It was a Hobson’s Choice. Either way he was walking into a political minefield.
In the end Speaker Boehner threw what looked like a compromise on the table – in effect, saying to Obama, Okay, here it is: We’ll go along with raising revenues (meaning taxes) but you have to go along with tax reform and spending cuts – then the Speaker explained what he had in mind was like the 1986 tax reform compromise between Reagan and Tip O’Neal (that raised taxes).
In a way that did sound like a wind change – as if Boehner was saying to Obama, We Republicans can’t go along with outright repeal of the Bush tax cuts – which is what you want – but if we can dress tax increases up a bit and call it loophole closing then there’s an agreement to be had providing you offer us a big spending cut in return.
Of course, we can’t be sure that’s what Speaker Boehner had in mind at all. After all, this is politics and things are not always what they seem – it could be the cloud floating down Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capital to the White House isn’t a compromise at all – it’s a political two-step, with John Boehner trying to put Obama in a corner so Obama’s the one to say, No deal.
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Carter Wrenn posted on November 13, 2012 11:17
Over on The Atlantic magazine’s website the liberal reporters were having a happy day after the election but not, as you’d expect, by celebrating Obama’s victory – instead, they were having a fine time ribbing conservative pundits from Ann Coulter to Karl Rove because they had said the polls that showed Obama leading Mitt Romney were dead-wrong.
For years, the reporters said, Conservatives have been calling the media biased but, in fact, this election when it came to reporting the facts wrong the most biased media wasn’t ABC or CBS – it was The Conservative Media.
The way the liberals see it, it’s a peculiar irony: People watching Fox News saw the election through the eyes of stars like Sean Hannity – they saw Hannity’s skewed version of the Presidential campaigns but never saw the election other people were seeing so, in the end, The Conservative Media did a better job misleading conservatives than the liberal media ever did.
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Carter Wrenn posted on November 12, 2012 17:26
Last Tuesday, nationally, was a pretty fine day for Democrats: President Obama not only won, Democrats gained Senate seats, House seats, four states voted for gay marriage and two states voted for legalizing medical marijuana.
Since the morning after the election the TV and newspaper pundits have been gesticulating furiously over who’s to blame for the Republicans loss and everyone with an agenda had a say – one pundit roared the villain was ‘The Tea Party.’
Another snorted the culprit was ‘The Beltway GOP Establishment’ and added ‘No more Romneys. No more Bushes. No more McCains.’
Ann Coulter shot back, ‘Don’t blame Romney…Romney was the perfect candidate.’
Other pundits blamed ‘two idiots who came out against abortion in cases of rape,’ nominating ‘a millionaire big government establishment Republican’ and ‘the hurricane.’
Others declared, ‘Romney was too moderate,’ ‘Romney was too conservative,’ and ‘Obama aimed a billion dollar howitzer at a single target: Mitt Romney.’ A lot of pundits blamed demographics and one blamed magic saying, Obama pulled a rabbit out of the hat and magic-ed himself back into the White House.
But not one person mentioned silly rhetoric.
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Carter Wrenn posted on November 09, 2012 15:26
Back in the enlightened 1970’s when I was in college the powers-that-be at UNC gave me a hard choice: They told me I could take either a foreign language or math, but I had to learn one or the other. It was a choice between two poisons. I took foreign language and promptly failed French, Spanish and German.
Two years later I wandered into a required Physics class and learned something that had evaded me through fourteen years of public education: Mathematics was actually interesting. It measured all kinds of phenomenon – like gravity – that otherwise were mysteries. So here’s a look at the mysteries of this election through the lens of mathematics:
4.5 million North Carolinians cast votes.
1.4 million of them – 31% of all voters – voted a straight Democratic ticket.
Another 1.1 million – 24% – voted a straight Republican ticket.
That gave Democrats a 7 point advantage in ‘straight party’ or ‘base vote.’
The rest of the voters, 2 million (or 45%) of the people, ‘split’ their tickets.
Now, Mitt Romney received a total of 50.5% of the vote statewide – so do the math: Out of Romney’s 50.5%, 24 points came from those straight ticket Republican voters and the rest, 26.5 points, came from ticket splitters. So Romney won an overwhelming 59% (26.5 out of 45 points) of the ticket splitters – while Obama won 40.5%.
Pat McCrory defeated Walter Dalton by 55% to 43% – so doing the same math McCrory did even better, winning ticket splitters by 69% to 27%.
Now, when the Republicans in the State House and Senate redistricted they created three kinds of districts:
. Type A Districts crammed full of Democrats where the Democratic base vote, the Democratic ‘straight party’ voters, margin over Republicans wasn’t 7 points – it was 14 or 20 points.
· Type B Districts crammed full of Republicans where instead of the Republican margin being –7 it was +7 or +10.
· Type C Districts, swing district where Republicans and Democrats (as far as straight party voters went) were roughly even.
Now, this election, if you were a Republican candidate running in a swing district Mitt Romney winning 59% of the ticket splitters’ vote was real good news. Because it meant those same ticket splitters were likely to vote for you.
George Holding’s Congressional District is an example. There were about the same number of Republican and Democratic straight ticket voters but the ticket splitters were voting over 60% for Romney – so they were inclined to vote for George too.
That’s one reason Richard Hudson, Mark Meadows and George won their races for Congress. And it’s a big reason Republicans swept almost every swing district in the State House and Senate. More important, it’s an example of how mathematics clarifies mysteries
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Carter Wrenn posted on November 09, 2012 09:13
Democrats lived through about their worst election ever Tuesday night: Republicans whipped them in the races for Governor, Lt. Governor, elected three new Congressmen and gained seats in the State House and Senate – so how, post election, are Democratic pundits explaining their world falling apart? Here’s what they’re saying:
‘That darn Art Pope with his boat loads of money is the villain.’
Now for Democratic pundits Art Pope’s a boogieman out of their nightmares, but, with all respect to Art, I’d say the person most responsible for Walter Dalton’s defeat was Beverly Perdue. The Democratic pundits also said:
‘Chad Barefoot raised three times more than Doug Berger; Neal Hunt raised four times more than Sig Hutchinson; Republicans spent $2 million to elect Paul Newby. Republicans bought the election. That’s why they won pure and simple.’
And, of course a lot of Democratic pundits are adding: ‘The Republicans’ perfidious redistricting plan undid us.’
Now, all that’s fine and true but it’s also good old-fashioned woe-is-me-blame-someone-else handwringing. Blaming Art Pope for Walter Dalton, Linda Coleman, Sam Ervin and thirty or forty Democratic legislators losing is probably emotionally soothing for a grieving pundit – but wasn’t there anything Democrats did wrong to land themselves in this soup?
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Carter Wrenn posted on November 06, 2012 18:01
Albert, arguing, said, You’re wrong. Folks don’t care if politicians lie and steal – they expect them to do that. What’s more, they’ll vote for a crook who can fix the potholes in their street over a bungling saint every time.
I chalked that up to an otherwise garrulous man’s streak of skepticism but Eric the lawyer said, You took a couple hundred polls this year and your conclusion is we prefer crooks to saints – that’s discouraging. It looks like folks would at least be a little worried about what else the crook might steal.
Albert grinned. Shrugged. Said, They all steal.
Up in New York, the bluest of states, last week an Obama supporter published an editorial in the New York Times saying Mitt Romney is the most dishonest candidate ever to run for President. At the same time, across the country, a Romney supporter in red-state Indiana called Barack Obama spiteful, petty and second rate in Real Clear Politics.
During the summer Obama’s folks ran an ad saying a man’s wife died of cancer because Romney closed his mill, leaving him without health insurance – and Republicans ran an ad with Obama saying what sounded like, ‘If you own a business, you didn’t build it.’
There wasn’t a lot of truth in either ad but if you try telling that to either a Romney or Obama supporter – you’ll run head-on into a stone wall.
It’s hard to tell if politicians are more dishonest now than, say, a hundred years ago but it does seem clear this is one election where regular folks aren’t letting a little duplicity stand in their way – as long as the potholes get fixed.
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Carter Wrenn posted on November 06, 2012 17:29
I woke up yesterday feeling Romney would win but after a dozen calls from people asking about polls in Ohio (not one of which shows Romney leading) I went to bed thinking, Every single poll can’t be wrong.
This morning, at the crack of dawn, I got Dick Morris’ predictions saying all the polls were dead wrong and Romney will win ten swing states plus Pennsylvania and Minnesota and clobber Obama 325 to 213 in the Electoral College – and I thought, Dick wouldn’t say that unless he took his own poll. And he’s a good pollster.
Then, after I got to the office, I opened the newspaper and read about three new polls by NBC/Wall Street Journal, ABC/Washington Post and PEW Research – all showing Obama winning.
At lunch Mike, the twenty-something young Republican political consultant, who’d spent all morning furiously ‘tweeting,’ stopped punching buttons on his iPhone and blurted out, This uncertainly is driving me crazy.
Eric who’s Scottish and a lawyer and theologian to boot looked up from his plate.
Well, he said, You could look on it as a test of faith.
Mike plopped down his phone. The last thing I need is some kind of test – I just want to win and get it over with.
Then, Eric said, You might as well rely on the Redskins Rule.
The Washington Redskins final game before the election has predicted who would win the White House in every election since 1940 – except once.
If the Redskins win the incumbent wins. If they lose, the challenger wins.
This year they lost.
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