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Carter Wrenn posted on March 13, 2013 10:54
Washington may be about to give us an answer on one of the longest running philosophical debates since Eve bit the apple: Are humans rational creatures?
For months, just about every politician in Washington – Republican Congressmen, Democratic Senators, President Obama, Speaker John Boehner – has been talking about how much they want to cut spending. They’re all for cuts.
Last month the Post Office weighed in, saying it was going to save taxpayers $2 billion by ending Saturday mail delivery – which, if you think about it, isn’t a terribly painful cut: No one will go hungry. The sick will still receive care. And, if worse comes to worst, you can always send an email on Saturday.
It all sounded sensible until Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid weighed in and said the Post Office was way out of line – that it couldn’t end Saturday mail delivery without Congress’s approval and, speaking for the Senate, he didn’t approve.
That riled up some House Republicans who, just naturally, pushed back – saying Reid was all wet and the Post Office could end weekend mail anytime it wanted.
Then an odd thing happened.
It’s a little-known fact, but it turns out, in budgets going back for thirty years, Congress has included a law that requires the Post Office to deliver mail on Saturday – and last week when the House passed the continuing budget resolution it included the same law.
As soon as the bill passed, a Democrat Congressman merrily hopped up and announced (in the New York Times) that Saturday mail delivery was safe for another year. Then an unhappy Republican Congressman hopped up and announced the Democratic Congressman was dead wrong: The wording of the law Congress had just passed, the Republican conceded, was a bit vague – but then he added adamantly he didn’t have one scintilla of doubt the Post Office can stop delivering the mail on Saturday. Period.
So, here’s the status of clarity in Washington: The Post Office says it can end Saturday mail. The Democratic Senate Leader says it can’t. The House passed a bill with a thirty-year-old law in it – which both a Democratic Congressman and a Republican Congressman voted for. The Democrat says the law means one thing. And the Republican says it means the opposite.
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Gary Pearce posted on March 13, 2013 07:57
Two months in, two things are striking about the Republican regime in Raleigh: how fast they move and how mean they seem.
This is a recipe for a Democratic revival, if – and it’s a big if – Democrats get their act together.
Too many politicos – Democrats and Republicans – assume that little will change in Raleigh for a long time, because of gerrymandering and money.
But politics moves fast. Public opinion is a powerful tide, and it can turn suddenly. After almost every election, the so-called experts look back and say: “Wow, I didn’t see THAT coming.”
The Republicans’ mistake is to assume that their present power stems from solid public support. As the presidential election showed, they can be sorely out of touch with the public.
Like Mitt Romney, hard-core Republicans assume that most good Americans – or at least 53 percent – believe the rest are moochers and takers.
But the Great Recession has had a different impact on many people’s opinions. It was summed up the other day by an older fellow, white and somewhat conservative, who said: “I don’t believe in giving things away, but there are people hurting out there.”
Or the comment of a Raleigh professional, also male, who said: “The Republicans just don’t seem to care about people who need help.”
Add that to the seeming callousness toward women, young people and anyone who’s not old, white and male, and you have a recipe for more rapid political change that anyone anticipates.
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Carter Wrenn posted on March 12, 2013 15:13
Congressman Walter Jones is an old-fashioned soft-spoken Southerner – so when I saw he’d put a statement on Twitter, I thought, What the heck? I clicked and landed on a statement (Walter had made) that explained just about everything anyone needs to know about the Sequester in one-page.
Last month up in Washington President Obama made his case against the Sequester by telling everyone who’d listen that the $85 billion in cuts meant teachers would be laid off, children would go without vaccinations and abused women would go without care.
Then, five days after the Sequester, President Obama asked Congress to send $65 billion to the IMF (International Monetary Fund) – which has been busy bailing out troubled European countries like Greece.
The question is obvious: Whatever happened to the needs of those teachers and children and abused women? Are they less important than the IMF? Or was the President, maybe, exaggerating the pain of the Sequester cuts?
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Gary Pearce posted on March 11, 2013 13:53
Why does a university with so many journalism and PR grads get such bad PR in media outlets where lots of UNC grads work?
And Republicans writing UNC’s budget in Raleigh might ask: Why did they hire a Bill Clinton guy? (Yes, it’s foundation money, not taxpayer money. Tell it to the legislature.)
Here’s some free PR advice from an N.C. State guy who, believe it or not, values UNC and what it means for North Carolina: Take the $180,000 and hire a bunch of recent J-school grads who can’t find jobs. Put them to work catching up on all the public-records requests. While they’re at it, have them write up what they find.
You’ll get good PR for being responsive. And you might learn something that the half-million-dollar Martin report didn’t tell you.
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Gary Pearce posted on March 09, 2013 09:33
If you want to know how local and state politics, TV news and Raleigh’s whole media/political world got to be the way it is, here’s the book for you.
It’s “I Never Promised Not to Tell,” a tell-almost-all by Grady Jefferys, a veteran writer-ad man-journalist-consultant who was there, as he says, “When Television and a New Era of Politics Came to a Southern City.”
Full disclosure: Grady is an old friend of mine. And a treasured one. I met him when he was working part-time at the N&O and I was working my way through college.
At 78, Grady is going strong, with the help of a strict regimen of healthy eating and 45 minutes a day “slogging” (not jogging) along the Neuse River near his farm.
His book is an eyewitness account of, among other things, the death of WNAO television, the birth of WRAL-TV, the rise of Jesse Helms, the painful beginnings of a thriving local advertising industry, the early days of political consulting, the election of Governor Dan Moore in 1964, the failure of Mel Broughton’s 1968 gubernatorial campaign, the rise and fall of Nick Galifianakis, the emergence of a young Jack Hawke, the failings of the FCC and local TV news, the racial tensions of a city and county torn between old ways and new realities and…well, you get the drift.
It’s about almost everything important and interesting in the changes Raleigh and Wake County have gone through since 1950. Through the wry and wise eyes of someone who was not only there, but in the thick of it.
You’re not going to find a more interesting read – or learn more – for $12.95. You can order Grady’s book on Amazon, or you can write Newsbook Publishing, 2846 Auburn-Knightdale Rd., Raleigh, N.C. 27610.
Get it, sit back and enjoy.
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Carter Wrenn posted on March 08, 2013 12:42
President Obama just announced the Sequester spending cuts are so terrible he has no choice but to cancel White House tours;---that upset House Speaker John Boehner who immediately cried foul, saying Obama was grandstanding and he (Boehner) had kept the Capitol tours running and Obama could have done the same thing – which is no doubt true but misses the point.
Obama made a cut. And a pretty painless cut. No one will go hungry. No one will go without medical care. No great harm will be done to anyone. So why didn’t Speaker Boehner simply shrug and say, Well, that’s unfortunate but the world won’t end without White House tours.
Floating beneath all this Washington chatter is a simple question: Is it possible politicians will be voted out of office for cancelling a tour – or is this a sign politicians are so weak-kneed they can’t take even a little ‘heat’ over a painless cut?
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Gary Pearce posted on March 08, 2013 11:30
Governor McCrory and Republican legislators were against incentives before they were for them.
McCrory is clearly for them when he can bask in the announcement of 2,600 new jobs by MetLife. (Hello, Snoopy!)
Or maybe he’s for them when they are negotiated by Moore & Van Allen, his old law firm.
But his spokeswoman assures us, “There was a complete firewall and no interaction.”
And a Moore & Van Allen’s spokesman chimes in that the Gov’s old job was “not part in any way, shape or form” with the firm’s economic development team.
Conveniently enough, that spokesman is Brian Nick, identified by the N&O as “a former top McCrory campaign adviser.”
Does that mean the Governor deserves no credit whatsoever for what apparently was an eight-month courtship? He just showed up for the cameras?
Senator Phil Berger, who once questioned the Perdue administration’s $45 million incentive package for Continental Tire, “dismissed questions” about this one, which has an eye-popping price tag of $94 million.
Berger says, “I think it’s a whole different circumstance.”
Like how, exactly?
Give Rep. Skip Stam credit for consistency. He said of the MetLife deal, “I oppose picking one company over another company.”
The N&O noted: “The state GOP platform calls incentives “contrary to the free enterprise system.”
Expect, apparently, when Republicans can claim credit for creating jobs. That’s called incentive.
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Gary Pearce posted on March 07, 2013 09:46
While Governor McCrory prepares a “very, very tight budget” and blocks Medicaid expansion, the Republican governor of another purple Southern state is going in the opposite direction.
Governor Rick Scott of Florida was a Tea Party poster boy when he got elected in 2010. Now a Miami Tea Party leader has sent the governor a “breakup note.”
Scott signed off on Medicaid expansion in his state. He proposed a $2,500 across-the-board pay increase for teachers. The New York Times says he “has crisscrossed the state advertising his enthusiasm for education, state workers, highways, commuter rails, early voting, the disabled, environmental protection and jobs.”
Democrats ask: “Medicaid expansion, Obamacare, teacher bonuses — who is this guy?”
A Republican consultant explains: “If he is going to get re-elected, he needs to rebrand, reboot and repackage.”
In North Carolina, Governor McCrory has entrusted his immediate political fate to Art Pope, his budget director. For more than 20 years, Pope has spent, strived and struggled to get control of the budget. Now that he has it, he is going to put his ideological stamp on it.
The question is what the political impact will be of, say, deep cuts in education, the universities, community colleges and various economic development programs. All of them have constituents and supporters, including Republicans.
While Scott tacks to the center in Florida, McCrory is heading right in Raleigh. Soon he may hit high winds and rough waves. Then we’ll see if he follows Scott’s course.
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Carter Wrenn posted on March 06, 2013 12:27
Taking a deep breath, inhaling a lungful of the highly oxygenated Washington air, celebrity, intellectual, and poo-bah Newt Gingrich announced he, himself, personally, was about to deliver a ‘very-direct, no baloney’ manifesto on Republican politics – then lit into Karl Rove, saying Republican political consultants were arrogant idiots and that the country was better off in the old days when a candidate did his own thinking (rather than hiring a two-bit consultant to tell him what to think).
Then, just as he had landed on a serious idea, Newt changed directions and announced that anyone who wanted to see a real leader doing his own thinking ought to buy Gingrich Productions’ film, Ronald Reagan: Rendezvous with Destiny – and I thought, I’ll be darned – the whole thing was the lead-in to a pitch to sell a movie.
Taking another breath, Newt lit into Rove again, saying he was absolutely ‘unalterably’ opposed to a bunch of billionaires giving Rove’s Super PAC millions so that a political boss (Rove) could handpick candidates he liked in Republican primaries and destroy candidates he didn’t like.
Rove, Newt added, had been dead wrong about the Presidential Race last year and dead wrong about the Senate races Republicans lost then he changed directions again and said anyone who really wanted to know why Republicans lost the 2012 election ought to sign up for Gingrich Productions’ ‘Lessons to be Learned Reports’ – and I thought, He did it twice.
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Gary Pearce posted on March 06, 2013 10:34
With Carter’s help, George Holding had a simple message last fall that boiled down the Republican mantra: “Cut spending now.”
It’s the one message that unites Republicans as they splinter over immigration, gay marriage and guns in the wake of Mitt Romney’s loss.
Here’s the challenge for Democrats: What’s your alternative?
House Republicans’ fervent faith in cutting spending led to the much-ballyhooed “sequestration” budget cuts. First Republicans said those cuts are no big deal. But now Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler and Governor McCrory say the cuts could cause an “emergency” by shutting down North Carolina’s multibillion-dollar hog and poultry industry.
Thanks to the determination (or obstinacy) of the House GOP, cutting spending dominates the debate today. Speaker Boehner went so far as to call taxes “stealing” from the American people.
That was the philosophy underlining Romney’s “47 percent” comments, which cost him the election. He complains now it was distorted. No, Mitt, it was clear and it was what you and Republicans believe: A significant percentage of Americans are moochers who gang up on the producers to steal their money.
Carter has written before that the Founding Fathers foresaw that risk, and that it’s part of the risk of democracy. But, in fact, that hasn’t happened. Since the high-tax 1950s, we have cut taxes on people at the top.
But the issue is before us, and Democrats have to answer. They have to define what they believe constitutes the right level and the right kind of government spending – and taxing.
It’s an honest debate that America deserves.
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Carter Wrenn
Gary Pearce
The Charlotte Observer says: “Carter Wrenn and Gary Pearce don’t see eye-to-eye on many issues. But they both love North Carolina and know its politics inside and out.”
Carter is a Republican.
Gary is a Democrat.
They met in 1984, during the epic U.S. Senate battle between Jesse Helms and Jim Hunt. Carter worked for Helms and Gary, for Hunt.
Years later, they became friends. They even worked together on some nonpolitical clients.
They enjoy talking about politics. So they started this blog in 2005.
They’re still talking. And they invite you to join the conversation.
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