UNC PR

Why does a university with so many journalism and PR grads get such bad PR in media outlets where lots of UNC grads work?   After Dan Kane’s report in The News & Observer Sunday – not to mention this weekend’s games – those grads might ask: Why did they hire a Duke guy for…

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A Good Read

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…

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White House Tours

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…

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Incentivized

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…

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A Tale of Two States

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…

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A Master Salesman

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…

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Cut Spending Now?

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…

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Round Three Begins

After the bell rang ending the Second Round of the Obama versus Boehner Fiscal Cliff-Sequester match-up, Obama danced around the ring arms raised as John Boehner staggered back to his corner wobbly-kneed.   Just six weeks ago, at the start of round two, the prim and proper Speaker was popular – viewed favorably by 29%…

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Earth to Buck

“I really don’t see it as an issue,” said Senator Buck Newton. “If it went from County A to County B, I’m not sure why County B would have a major objection to that.”   “It” is waste brines and toxins from fracking, which – John Murawski reports in the N&O – could end up…

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Home Alone

A TAPster says this legislature is like a 15-year-old boy whose parents leave him home alone for the weekend.   If a couple of friends come over and they drink a six-pack, he probably gets away with it.   If he invites the whole high school to a drunken bash that wrecks the house, wakes…

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