The 24-Hour News Cycle

With the dawn of 24-hour news cycle and the instant ‘Tweet’ reporters need a new story every five minutes and, it turns out, even a Republican Primary with nineteen candidates and Donald Trump, all talking at once, can’t fill the bill. The reporters need more so they’re straining to turn Hillary versus Bernie Sanders into…

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The great Mt. McKinley freakout

At this point you suspect President Obama is just messing with Republicans’ minds: “How can I drive the crazies crazier?” You can see him relaxing on the Truman Balcony one evening, nursing an extra-dry Grey Goose martini and looking forward to his Alaska trip. Suddenly it hits him: “I’ve got it! I’ll change the name…

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The Capitator

Back when the legislature came to town, State Senator Ralph Hise announced Medicaid spending was out of control but he had a solution – Capitation – which worked like this: He was going to hire MCOs (Medicaid HMOs) to run Medicaid then he was going to tell them: This is all you get to spend.…

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How the State Senate Works

A handful of Senate leaders sit down in backrooms and make plans then come out of the rooms and a bill pops into a committee then they march over to the Senate Chamber and pass it in the blink of an eye. The same Senate powers-that-be made a plan to ‘transfer’ millions of dollars in…

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Trump masters the media universe

Ever since FDR gave his fireside chats on radio, successful Presidents have mastered the dominant new media of their time. Donald Trump masters today’s media by providing what the media wants above all: constant controversy. JFK won on TV in 1960 and kept winning with live televised news conferences. Roger Ailes orchestrated Nixon’s win in…

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The Uber-Alpha-Male

Long ago, in the land we live in today, when enemies threatened, men named Douglas MacArthur, George Patton and John Wayne killed them – whether the enemy was named Hirohito, Hitler or Liberty Valance. Times changed. Small towns with old-fashioned values vanished, devoured by booming secular cities. Newspapers were replaced by Facebook, Twitter, and Internet…

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Where Dollar gets his dollars

Do we want political consultants running our government? We got one: Rep. Nelson Dollar, the chief House budget writer. The N&O reported: “Dollar, 54, is a longtime political and public relations consultant who helps coordinate campaigns for fellow House Republicans and other GOP candidates. His firm, J. N. Dollar & Associates, booked nearly $150,000 of…

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A Democrat’s Dollar dilemma

A diehard Democrat faced a dilemma after reading about House budget leader Nelson Dollar in the N&O. “Should we be helping him?” she wondered. What caught her eye and caused her soul-searching was Dollar saying the Senate budget “makes it difficult to pay for…a 2 percent raise for state employees, additional money for teacher pay…

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Back to school

Seventeen years ago, our daughter went to her first day of kindergarten in the Wake County public schools. This week, she went to her first day as a student teacher in the Wake County public schools. Seventeen years ago, Jim Hunt had just been elected to his fourth term on a promise to raise teacher…

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Government in inaction

A now-retired lobbyist who observed the legislature for many years offers this take on the current session: The revelation that the General Assembly needs more time to agree to a state budget is not startling and, frankly, shouldn’t be troubling. Sure, the school systems are in a knot about drivers’ ed and teachers assistants, and…

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