Get the recovery right for the kids
A friend who has been traveling around Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee came into town this weekend for a visit. His first observation was, “Carrboro is the only place I’ve seen where people are wearing masks just walking down the street.” It’s true. The whole...
Thoughts on Twitter, Trump and the ReStore
My attention to Twitter has been sporadic for the past several weeks and, man, has that been good. The less I’m on it, the less tolerance I have for its hot take mentality. Too many tweets are designed to outrage or incite. Too many people distort or lie with relative...
Believe Mitch McConnell and then scrap or reform the filibuster
Earlier this week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made one of his threatening speeches about the dire consequences Democrats would face if they scrapped the filibuster. He listed a litany of conservative policies he would ram through the Senate the next time...
The Uninformed
When I began working in politics, Republicans had a get-out-the-vote strategy in the rural South that focused on evangelical churches. It centered on opposition to abortion and relied on “voter education cards” to motivate the electorate. Occasionally, they supported...
The ghost of Reagan stands down
With a single vote, Democrats finally banished the ghost of Reagan. The American Rescue Plan is not the first time that Congress has expanded the welfare state since Ronald Reagan left office, but it is arguably the first time that Democrats have passed an expansion...
Transformational
Democrats passed the American Recovery Act without a single Republican vote. The party that spent the past four years giving tax cuts to the rich and running up unprecedented deficits is suddenly concerned about the debt and deficit again. It was predictable as...
This book brilliantly takes on the Wilmington coup
Ran Coble served in the legislature’s Fiscal Research Division and then as legal counsel for what is now the NC Department of Health and Human Services from 1977-81. From 1981 to 2014, he served as the director of the nonprofit NC Center for Public Policy Research, a...
The case for conservative voices
Not too long after I first started PoliticsNC (eight years ago this month), I brought on a young writer named John Wynne . John provided a thoughtful conservative perspective because I wanted this blog to be a place of respectful debate in an increasingly...
Hooray for governing
Kudos to the governor and the legislature, both Democrats and Republicans. Yesterday, they announced a compromise to get our schools open while protecting school personnel. After rancorous debate that included the veto of an earlier bill and failed override vote, the...
Your daily read
Today, I’ve read several articles that I believe are worth sharing. Instead of a blog, I’m going to post them. They are worth your time. I encourage you to take time to read them. First up, an article about how we remember history. It centers on a fight almost...
COVID Relief is succeeding. Now pass H.R. 1.
With broad vaccination efforts and the imminent passage of the president's COVID-19 relief bill, the Biden administration is sailing toward a successful start. But President Biden's first 100 days will be incomplete unless his party manages to pass H.R. 1, a sweeping...
betting on competence
Democrats are about to try something radical. They are going to run on competence instead of ideology or demagoguery. Joe Biden told the American people he would pass a COVID recovery act and get more than 100 million people vaccinated in the first 100 days of his...