Higher education matters
To hear Republicans tell it, North Carolina duped the rest of the country for almost 50 years. We sold ourselves as an enlightened state that valued education, nurtured our cultural heritage, and supported the arts. We convinced people that our mountains were...
Another power grab
Rep. Mike Hager, the House Majority Leader, is the latest big government conservative to try to strip power from local governments and give it to the legislature. Hager introduced a bill that would take away local appointments to the Isothermal Community College Board...
Scandals themselves won’t bring down Hillary Clinton, but the drama surrounding them might
The current email scandal won’t bring down Hillary Clinton. Nor will Benghazi or whatever “scandal” crops up next. And one will almost certainly crop up. Petty scandal is the natural environment of the Clintons. Some are self-inflicted. Some are contrived. All are...
Orwellian dishonesty
The bills are bad enough, but the Orwellian dishonesty behind them is the real damage. Sen. Chad Barefoot says he’s redrawing the Wake County Commission districts to provide more representation to rural areas and partisan representation has nothing to do with it. Sen....
Showing they can govern
Speaker Tim Moore is off to an impressive start. In less than two months, he’s passed bipartisan legislation and struck a tone remarkably different than his predecessor. He may prove to be the balance that keeps the Senate’s most extreme impulses in check while...
Selma and the forces of reaction
Saturday was the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the march in Selma, Alabama that propelled the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. President Obama and President George W. Bush both attended. So did more than a hundred members of Congress. Only one member of...
Big government conservatives
In a column this week, John Hood of the John Locke Foundation wrote, “Modern Conservatives...believe that fiscal and policy decisions ought to be made as close to local communities as necessary.” That certainly doesn’t describe the Republicans in the legislature....
Spring Break!
The House is going on Spring Break! That’s right. Speaker Tim Moore announced Monday night that the House will be in recess for the week of April 6-9. The legislators may have missed a couple of weeks of productivity due to lousy weather but that’s no excuse to...
Middle class squeeze
Republicans in North Carolina have been pushing a narrative that the state is on an historic comeback and their tax reform plan is responsible. By their reckoning, North Carolina’s recovery has been more robust than other Southern states as result of the largest tax...
Ideologues driving the train
The GOP’s makers-and-takers narrative is alive and well in North Carolina. Ned Barnett’s profile of state Senator Bob Rucho (R-Mecklenburg) highlights the victim mentality that defines the modern Republican Party. We saw it in the Tea Party protests and now we see it...
