Paul bearer
Well, Rand Paul jumped into the North Carolina GOP primary for U. S. Senate yesterday. He endorsed Dr. Greg Brannon, a Cary physician and self described Tea Partier. I couldn’t have been happier. Paul’s endorsement doesn’t automatically make Brannon a contender but it...
Cooper comin’
Roy Cooper is running for governor. More importantly, though, he’s filling a void that Democrats have felt for too long. He’s providing the party faithful a champion, somebody they can rally around. Over the past few weeks, Cooper has been moving around the state...
Freeloaders
Well, it looks like Aldona Wos got to kick some freeloaders off the dole after all. The News & Observer is reporting that North Carolina will stop Work First payments to poor families. Last week, Wos tried to stop WIC payments but, fortunately for recipients, Art...
Feeding fantasies
Last week, Rose Hoban of North Carolina Health News reported that employees at the Department of Health and Humans Services edited an audit-response submitted by the the previous administration. She provided copies of the edited pages with her report. Clearly, the...
Down the toilet
So I wonder which one of those McCrory staffers got the job to remodel his bathrooms? At $230,000, it must have been somebody on the Republican pay scale. It certainly wasn’t any of the rest of us because we wouldn’t just be fixing the toilet. We’d be buying a whole...
No brainers
The North Carolina Republicans' rejection of the Medicaid expansion and their failure to set up state exchanges under Obamacare should be reason for firing. Decisions by Phil Berger, Thom Tillis and Pat McCrory left 500,000 North Carolinians uninsured, cost the state...
Merritt pay
Over at the Department of Health and Human Services, audits are giving Secretary Aldona Wos headaches. Luckily, though, she's got former State Auditor Les Merritt on a $26,000 a month contract to help her sort out the mess. But the whole episode raises questions about...
A culture of deceit
One thing is clear. Pat McCrory came to Raleigh with an agenda for Medicaid and he wasn’t about to let pesky facts get in his way. He never has. He found a partisan ideologue to run the Department of Health and Human Services and got rid of all those mindless...
Eat your broccoli
Republicans in Congress have been trying to shift the blame for the shut down onto Democrats ever since they started it. It’s been a losing battle so far. Polls show people are increasingly holding Republicans responsible. They tried calling it the Harry Reid shut...
Shutting down leaf season
Leaf season in the mountains of North Carolina is big business. It’s the time of year when many businesses get out of the red and into the black as tourists flood western North Carolina to view the fall foliage. Experts estimate that the season brings in more than $1...
