Business climate is more than just taxes
The state senate’s budget is chock full of tax cuts while continuing to underfund our schools and universities. But tax cuts are what really matter to the GOP. Activists and legislators perpetually tout the Tax Foundation’s business climate ranking as evidence that...
Fortress Liberalism: The Problem of Elitism
The charge of liberal elitism has undoubtedly been exaggerated and weaponized to exploit natural human insecurities for a cause that serves working people poorly. On an individual level, many upscale progressives hold no enmity toward downscale cultural conservatives...
Reflections
Every morning for the past couple of weeks, I’ve been awakened by a cardinal attacking the window in my bedroom. When I scare him off, he goes to another window. Every day, all day, he attacks his reflection. It’s endless. I Googled it. Apparently, cardinals are very...
Pat McCrory’s stupid dog whistle
I can’t wait to watch Pat McCrory lose again. McCrory is on twitter making asinine statements and parroting childish right-wing talking points. While he might not be as smart as Thom Tillis, he has just as little substance. I don’t know what’s wrong with Charlotte...
The Key To A Democratic Senate Victory: Candidate Quality
United States Senate races are heavily determined by the national political environment. In a good year for Democrats, any nominee will have a solid chance of becoming the first member of the NC Donkey Party to win a U.S. Senate race since Kay Hagan in 2008. A good...
Senate update
North Carolina’s US Senate election in 2022 promises to be one of the most watched races in the country. A map I saw yesterday had the state as one of only two in the nation that is considered a toss-up, the other being Pennsylvania. Democrats need the state if they...
Two Visions of History, Two Visions of How To BE An American
The United States is the only country on Earth whose identity is bound up in documents. Since the Founding era, Americans have referred to the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and other seminal texts as lode stars for what it means to be a member of this...
Villains, not heroes
When I was in about third grade, I read the same three books over and over. One was a biography of Babe Ruth. One was a biography Jim Thorpe. And one was biography of Robert E. Lee. These books were not nuanced pictures of these men. They were designed to reach eight...
Thoughts on Politics, Hope, and the South
From the perspective of today, The Strange Career of Jim Crow is an odd book. C. Vann Woodward's slim volume was groundbreaking at the time, changing our understanding segregation's origins on a fundamental level. Its main thesis was that Jim Crow as not inevitable,...
Catherine Truitt Goes Full Trump
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Catherine Truitt's old boss Pat McCrory once admonished North Carolinians not to "put your stupid hat on." Opinions may differ as to whether Truitt sported that particular variant of chapeau in her Trumpist rant before Orange...
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...