A tale of two recoveries
We’re about to learn a lot about economic recoveries. Back in 2009, Barack Obama, with a hefty Democratic majority in Congress, tried to pull us out of the Great Recession with a tepid relief program designed to attract Republican support. It led to a slow recovery,...
State of transitions
This weekend, a Republican asked why I believed pro-segregationist Democrats became Republicans in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement. Well, because it’s true. I’m not just a student of history, I’m a product of a rural North Carolina county that is half-Black and...
The NC GOP economic development strategy: Outdated and underperforming
We’ve now got a solid ten years of Republican rule in North Carolina and we can do some comparing. The GOP likes to portray North Carolina as a struggling state that had difficulty attracting industry and good paying jobs because of its lousy business climate. In...
Ignorant cancel culture
Up in Surry County, the local GOP leadership is making fools of itself. The county board of commissioners passed a ban on Coke machines on county property to show those bigwigs down in Atlanta that they weren’t taking lightly the company’s opposition to Georgia’s...
Voter suppression, not voter ID, is the big problem
Here’s my unpopular opinion for the week: Democrats should concede on voter ID and work to make them as accessible as possible and to make exceptions for those who have extreme difficulty getting them. Republicans are using voter ID as a screen and it’s working....
A decade of decline
A top scientist turned down a job at UNC-CH because the Board of Trustees refused to offer tenure to Nikole Hannah-Jones. Lisa Jones, a prominent chemist, turned down an offer at UNC, writing, “The news this week that Nikole Hannah-Jones was denied tenure was very...
It all started here
Yesterday, a group of 100 scholars issued a statement saying that our democracy is at risk. This weekend, Texas tried to pass a voter suppression law that would restrict access to the ballot and allow officials to overturn election results based on accusations of...
Dispatches from Memorial Day at the beach
I spent Memorial Day Weekend at the beach. I chose not to engage in the silly Twitter war over whether or not saying “Happy Memorial Day” is appropriate. Instead, I enjoyed my family and watched the Memorial Day concert from Washington and some documentaries about...
More dispatches from Bojangles
Yesterday, on a drive from Charlotte back to the Triangle, I stopped at Bojangles somewhere between Concord and Greensboro. I had planned to use the drive-thru window, but the line was backed up and there were plenty of parking spaces. I know it’s usually a mistake,...
Bending the arc
George Floyd died at the hands of police officers one ago yesterday. His death set off a wave national protests in a nation that had been locked down for two and half months. The reaction to Floyd’s death and the summer of protests and riots that followed laid bare...
