O-pinion

Jacksonville GOP debate: Winners and losers

2012-01-27T08:55:00.001-05:00

In the last debate before the Florida GOP primary, Mitt Romney verbally thrashed Newt Gingrich last night in Jacksonville, stunning the former House speaker and reclaiming the momentum Gingrich had grabbed in South Carolina.

It was the kind of performance a fretted Republican establishment had been wondering if Romney could deliver, and it came just at the right time for his campaign. Polls late this week showed that Republican pushback against a potential Gingrich nomination had stunted his surge in Florida, just as it did in Iowa. (The most recent example: A Quinnipiac poll this morning shows Romney beating Gingrich 38-29 after leading by two percentage points just two days ago.)

But instead of playing it safe, Romney pounced on Gingrich from the beginning, calling Gingrich's remarks on Romney being anti-immigrant "repulsive" and asking for an apology. Gingrich was clearly thrown by the aggressiveness, as he was when Romney invited Gingrich to back up his campaign trail snarkiness about Romney's money being in off-shore accounts. From then on, even when Romney gave Gingrich clear openings - and there were a few - Gingrich was hesitant, almost afraid of a possible counterpunch.

Romney had his stumbles, including telling Santorum that health care wasn't something to get so upset about, but he was just the right mix of combative and eloquent about policies and issues. For Republicans worried about Romney sharing a debate stage with President Barack Obama, it was an encouraging performance.

Santorum, again, had a good night, clearly contrasting his conservative cred against the others on the stage. He continues to seem too alarmist about foreign threats, and that shrillness is made even more stark by Ron Paul's grandfatherly dismissiveness about the dangers facing the U.S. Paul had another fine debate, perhaps his best, mixing charm with more precise explanations about the reduced role government should play in domestic and foreign policy.

Gingrich? Well, he was just flat after a week of attacking Romney on the trail. We'll see today how he tries to compensate.

The pundits' consensus: Romney had his best debate.

*Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post agrees that Romney was the clear winner, although he noted some tone-deafness when Romney said he would "fire" anyone who told him a moon colony was a good idea, as Gingrich has suggested. Gingrich, says Cillizza, looked less prepared and "was just plain off his game."

*Time.com's Mark Halperin, who passes out grades after each debate, gives Romney ("sharp, commanding, wily") an A. Santorum ("still not dynamic enough") a B-, Gingrich ("unable to find his groove") a C-, and Paul ("failed to highlight his positions") a C-.

*The conservative Weekly Standard's John McCormack says that Romney and Santorum stood out - and that the pair provided the most substantial policy disagreements.

*The New Republic's Jonathan Cohn says that, as with candidate Obama in 2008, Romney has been made a better debater by his early poor showings.

-Peter St. Onge

A governor who could never quite connect

2012-01-26T19:22:00.004-05:00

Tomorrow's editorial today:

Gov. Bev Perdue’s statement Thursday about why she won’t run for re-election ironically illustrated one reason she’s so far behind in the polls: She frequently gives voters the uneasy sense that she’s not being fully straight with them.

Trailing in voter surveys, dogged by legal questions, forced to cut spending in a sluggish economy, pitted against an intransigent legislature, Perdue said her decision was all about helping children.

“The thing I care about most right now is making sure that our schools and schoolchildren do not continue to be the victims of shortsighted legislative actions and severe budget cuts inflicted by a legislative majority with the wrong priorities,” Perdue, a Democrat, said. “Therefore, I am announcing today that I have decided not to seek re-election. I hope this decision will open the door to an honest and bipartisan effort to help our schools.”

Does anyone really believe this stuff? Making herself a lame duck will suddenly persuade Republican legislative leaders to raise the sales tax she wants?

Perdue’s historic decision – she is the first N.C. governor not to seek re-election since that became allowed in 1977 – was surprising because it seemed to contradict her nature as a fighter unafraid of a challenge. It was that nature that made her North Carolina’s first female governor and lieutenant governor.

But this year’s campaign would have been her toughest yet. Republican Pat McCrory has led her in the polls by 10 or more points and her approval/disapproval numbers have at times been abysmal.

Some of that, to be sure, was rotten luck. Perdue was elected governor in November 2008 amid the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. She faced high unemployment and an unbending legislature, and presided over hundreds of millions of dollars in budget cuts. Few governors would emerge popular from that.

She deserves credit, by and large, for fighting for education, from pre-kindergarten to the University of North Carolina system. She cast many needed vetoes, including against a nationally unique anti-abortion bill and an overly austere 2011 budget, and she has been a better friend to Charlotte than most of her predecessors.

Even so, the questionable actions that undermined her reelection chances are too numerous to list here. Among them: Campaign finance irregularities that led to indictments against her supporters; the appearance of cronyism at the state Highway Patrol and the state parole commission; disappearances from the state at critical times; and a gaffe about her desire to suspend elections for two years.

Now she’s stepping aside, a move that could increase Democratic voter turnout in the May primary, altering the vote on a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. It will force the Democratic nominee to take a stand on the sales tax hike she will press. And it clears the way for other Democrats, including some who can present McCrory a tougher challenge.

Charlotte’s Erskine Bowles would have an outstanding chance of defeating McCrory, and also would have the potential to be an exceptional governor. Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx said Thursday he’s considering a run. He’d be smart to wait but wouldn’t violate any compact with Charlotte voters by jumping in.

Foxx and others won’t have long to decide. But one thing we know right now: Perdue’s departure, for whatever the reason, changes everything.

Republican expert: Dems better off without Perdue

2012-01-26T14:54:00.003-05:00

Gov. Bev Perdue’s decision not to seek re-election actually helps Democrats – which may be why she did it. Perdue’s “negatives,” meaning the percent of people who disapprove of the job she is doing, are very high and she was going to lose to Republican Pat McCrory unless a lot changed.

McCrory will still be ahead of just about any other Democrat who emerges. But that candidate will have a chance of catching up, whereas Perdue wouldn’t have, says longtime Republican strategist Carter Wrenn.

Perdue is just too unpopular, Wrenn said. Other potential Democratic candidates would trail McCrory initially not because the public doesn’t like them so much as the public doesn’t know them. And that’s a big difference, Wrenn says.

“There’s being behind and being behind,” says Wrenn, a strategist for Sen. Jesse Helms and other Republicans the past few decades. “Perdue’s behind because people disapprove of her policies and to some extent they question her ability. That’s a hard thing to overcome politically. Being behind just because you’re not as well known, a lot of people have overcome that. It’s a mountain, it takes money, but a lot of people have done it." He added: "Having a candidate without those negatives has to be a move in the right direction.”

Perdue’s withdrawal changes everything for McCrory, Wrenn says. McCrory vs. Perdue was going to provide a clear choice for voters. “Now,” Wrenn says, “he’s liable to be in a race where the differences between him and the Democrat are not so clear. That changes everything.”

Erskine Bowles, Wrenn added, “would be an incredibly strong candidate.”

Public Policy Polling, a Democratic firm in Raleigh, said Perdue has been one of the nation's most unpopular governors. "Democrats' chances of holding on are still less than 50 percent," PPP director Tom Jensen said. "But they're better than they were with Perdue."

-- Taylor Batten

Will Foxx run for governor?

2012-01-26T11:34:00.005-05:00

Updated at 1:30 p.m.

Gov. Bev Perdue's decision not to run for reelection could spark a scramble among Democrats eager to replace her. So who might step up?

Anthony Foxx? Maybe.

The Charlotte mayor and his administrative assistant have not yet returned our calls this morning, so we don't know his thinking. It's easy to dismiss the idea; Foxx is just starting his second term as mayor. So he could appear not seasoned enough to some voters. And he would of course have to wrestle with any anti-Charlotte sentiment that still lingers around the state. The N.C. political records are littered with Charlotte mayors who have failed in their run for statewide office.

More daunting than any of that, perhaps, are the odds Foxx would face. Former Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory has enjoyed a healthy lead over Perdue and he would certainly start with a sizable edge over Foxx as well.

But before eliminating Foxx from contention consider two things: 1) He's ambitious. His desire for higher office has rarely been questioned. And 2) The election is Nov. 6. That's two months after Foxx will be at the peak of his political career to this point. The Democratic National Convention, in Charlotte Sept. 3-6, will put the national spotlight on Foxx, who is leading Charlotte's convention efforts and who will almost certainly have a prominent speaking role in front of thousands of people and millions of television viewers. If he does well there, he could ride a wave of momentum that would boost him on Election Day.

1:30 p.m. update: Some readers today said that Foxx said last fall he would not run for governor this year. In fact, Foxx only said he would not challenge Perdue for governor. That pledge says nothing about what he would do if she's not running. Read our O-pinion blog post from that time.

The Democrats' strongest candidate, however, would be Charlotte's Erskine Bowles. The former UNC system president and Clinton chief of staff has been mentioned, wistfully but only half-jokingly, as a potential candidate for president. That won't happen this year, but Perdue's departure clears the way for him to run for governor. Bowles has the resume, the moderation, the political wisdom and the fundraising chops that a Democrat would need to have any chance in this race. No other potential Democratic candidate matches Bowles on all those measures. Bowles has not returned a call this morning.

Others in the wings: Rep. Bill Faison, D-Orange, who will almost certainly announce his candidacy in coming days. Attorney General Roy Cooper, who has long failed to live up to others' aspirations for him. Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton ranks No. 2 to Perdue in North Carolina's executive branch, but he would have little chance of beating McCrory. (1:30 p.m. update: News14's Tim Boyum tweets that sources tell him Dalton is getting in and could announce as soon as today.)

Public Policy Polling in Raleigh polled on this question last October. Bowles tied McCrory at 42 percent. Cooper trailed McCrory 42-39. Faison and Dalton trailed by double digits. McCrory's strength, PPP says, is with independents, who overwhelmingly like him. Those voters are crucial in this race, and Bowles would have the strongest chance of attracting them.

-- Taylor Batten

Perdue now a lame duck, but also free to crusade

2012-01-26T09:41:00.004-05:00

Gov. Bev Perdue's announcement expected later today that she will not seek reelection is stunning. Perdue has spent almost her entire adult life in politics and had not given any indication that she would not seek a second term as governor. No incumbent N.C. governor has ever declined to seek a second term since the constitution was changed in 1977 to allow that.

Perhaps Perdue, a Democrat, will shed more light on her thinking when she makes it official later today. She clearly faced a stiff test from Republican and former Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory. She has trailed him in every poll since shortly after taking office and her approval numbers have at times been abysmal. The continuing sluggish economy and shorter Obama coattails than she enjoyed in 2008 were going to make her reelection tough.

Even so, a loss was not such a foregone conclusion that many people expected her not to try. Perhaps her internal polling numbers are even worse than ones that have been reported. Perhaps she's just beaten down by the difficulty of the job. Perhaps there's another shoe to drop in investigations into her campaign and its fundraising and reporting.

Her announcement will surely set off a scramble by Democrats to replace her on the ballot. Rep. Bill Faison, D-Orange, will almost certainly run. He has been laying the groundwork for months. But Perdue's departure will attract many other Democrats who might have otherwise waited until 2016.

We guess Perdue had already made this decision last week when she called for raising taxes in an election year. That's typically political suicide. But if her campaign was already dead, no more harm could be done to her electoral prospects. She'll be a lame duck for the next 10 months. On the other hand, she'll also be free to crusade for everything she truly believes is right, with no political calculations required.

-- Taylor Batten

Dist. 6's Bill James a 'virtual commissioner,' a 'RINO'?

2012-01-25T15:33:00.007-05:00

The zingers thrown in the Republican presidential race have been hot and heavy. But firecrackers are already going off in a local race - the GOP District 6 primary for Mecklenburg County commissioner. It's hardly a surprise with incumbent Bill James in the mix. His blunt, often racially tinged comments have made him by his own admission an often polarizing figure. He hasn't faced primary competition in 10 years but Ed Driggs, a retired stock analyst and banker, announced Tuesday he would run against James.

On his website, Driggs' states his mission as this: “To promote Economic Opportunity by keeping government lean and efficient, investing wisely in our schools, and maintaining the rule of law. I am running to give the voters of District 6 a choice. It is time for more effective conservative government in South Mecklenburg!

The race, which is unofficial since filing isn't until next month, has gotten off to a fiery start with the two already trading accusations. James has attacked Driggs' voting record in local primary elections. Public records that go back to 2004 show Driggs voted in all of the general elections except 2009 but only voted in the 2007 primary."Republican primaries are made up of the faithful - they come out rain or shine," James said recently. "If a guy is going to run to represent the most Republican district of the county, he's got to be Republican enough to vote (in the primary)." James called Driggs "AWOL."

Driggs' campaign shot back with this: "In reply to my opponent’s comment on my voting record...

"Given the very low turnout in primaries, it is ridiculous to suggest that anyone who has missed them must be a Liberal or should not be a Conservative candidate for office. Is this the level of debate we can expect in this campaign?

"Since my opponent introduces the concept of AWOL, let’s take a look at his attendance record as a sitting Commissioner." Driggs then listed a series of events that he says James did not attend.

"The list goes on and on. The truth is, “Virtual Commissioner” James is almost never seen in public and is never going to win an attendance contest. Mr. James is the RINO…A REPRESENTATIVE IN NAME ONLY."

Virtual Commissioner? RINO? Ouch!

Driggs also responded to a charge that he was not a conservative since he did not vote for John Lassiter: "John Lassiter is on my Committee. He knows I have the greatest respect for him as person and a public servant. When he ran in 2009, I was not focused on the race because my 85 year old mother had had major surgery and was in very grave condition."

The Observer editorial board hasn't been a fan of James, whose inflammatory, demeaning words have been criticized even by his fellow Republicans. In 2008, 20 then current and former Republican officials even issued a statement that said they "fully and completely censure" James for comments he made. Among the signers were then Mayor Pat McCrory and former mayors Richard Vinroot and Ken Harris.

So we think competition for the seat is good news. If Driggs files, the voters will indeed have a choice. However they decide, the race promises to be a humdinger!

Posted by Associate Editor Fannie Flono

Obama: 'Fighting words' or 'unremarkable'?

2012-01-25T09:14:00.004-05:00

Good morning. Welcome to O-Pinion, the Observer editorial board's online center for commentary, discussion and debate. I'm associate editor Fannie Flono and I'll be your host today.

Of course, the president's State of the Union address is getting the lion's share of political buzz though it's getting upstaged a bit by news that just before President Obama gave the speech the Navy SEALs he praised in that talk had just conducted another successful clandestine operation - the rescue of two aid workers being held hostage by Somalians. The Navy SEAL group also conducted the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Obama didn't give a clue during his speech of the hostage rescue and that reminded folks of his unflappableness at a press dinner just before the Bin Laden operation took place. He's shown he is calm under fire and he can keep a secret.

But about that speech, liberals were deeming it "Fighting Words" as Obama touted "the state of our Union is getting stronger," and said, "as long as I'm president, I will work with anyone in this chamber to build on this momentum. But I intend to fight obstruction with action, and I will oppose any effort to return to the very same policies that brought on this economic crisis in the first place."

On the conservative side, the Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes had this to say about President Barack Obama in an item titled: "An Utterly Unremarkable Address": "There were some nice patriotic touches, a passel of small proposals, and old ideas like soaking the rich in President Obama’s State of the Union Address. But mostly the speech consisted of an effort to make a big deal out of not much."

The Standard's Bill Kristol took on Obama's military comparisons: "Let’s think about an America that looked more like the military. That America would have a culture that’s at times tough and even harsh. It would have a mode of organization that’s strictly hierarchical and at times unforgiving. It would feature a regimen that weeds out those not up to the task and subordinate individual comfort to the achievement of a difficult mission. But that isn’t the America Obama wants to bring within reach. That isn’t the kind of America Obama’s policies seek to produce. Obama’s America is soft, understanding, forgiving, and entitled."

The Republican presidential candidates took their shots at Obama too:
Former congressman Rick Santorum: "From beginning to end, the American people heard more of the same - empty promises and grand platitudes that will do nothing to help the millions of Americans who are unemployed or under employed find a good paying job."
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich called the speech "left-wing populist warfare": "The rhetoric was terrific. His actions haven’t been. I find the gap between President Obama's words and his deeds to be astounding. He ran on bringing us together, yet last night he seemed to set up a year of divisiveness, of getting nothing done.”

Did you miss the Tea Party response from former pizza mogul and GOP candidate Herman Cain who suspended his candidacy? A lot of people did. Here's the luffington Post's Jason Linkins' take: "Herman Cain improved on the performance of his predecessor, Michele Bachmann, and managed to deliver the standard Tea Party talking points against the Obama administration, but he didn't do much to prove the necessity of a Tea Party rebuttal."

Gov. Mitch Daniels got good marks for his Republican response even from a liberal pundit, Chris Matthews: "I really liked that speech," he said, saying that Daniels displayed "Midwestern conservatism of the best kind" and "recognized that the rich can't plunder the poor anymore." While dismissing what he called the "bromides and idiomatic crap that he threw in there to make everybody happy," Matthews said that he now understood "why people like Mitch Daniels."

There's some intriguing commentary on Gingrich out there. This one from Michael Hirsh in the National Journal, called "Contemplating a President Gingrich" is getting some eyes. In it, Hirsch says, "Almost anyone who's covered Newt Gingrich for any number of years -- I have since the '90s -- has found it difficult to imagine that the country is so pathologically bent out of shape that Newt could end up as president...But maybe we really should think about the prospect of a Gingrich presidency, simply by default. The first reason was the appearance of Calm, Reasonable Newt at last night's debate in Florida. Obviously Gingrich and his handlers have agreed he will need to suppress his true extreme self if he's to get to the White House. ... The second reason is that it's no longer deniable that Mitt Romney has a tin ear for the ages, and that what once seemed a golden resume has turned toxic...Among his fellow patricians, Mitt is so out of touch he makes George H.W. Bush look like a man who really did eat pork rinds and knew what it was like to stand on supermarket checkout lines."

Chris Yates in the National Journal weighs in on Gingrich's Freddie Mac connection in a piece called "Latest Freddie Mac Contract Describes Gingrich as a Hired Gun": "A contract released by Gingrich's former consulting firm shows that while he may not have been a lobbyist by Washington's definition, he was getting paid to be a political and policy heavy on the mortgage giant's behalf. The contract paid The Gingrich Group $25,000 a month and ran between May 1999 and December 2000. And Gingrich answered to Freddie Mac's senior vice president of government relations Mitchell Delk, himself a registered lobbyist. "

In the First Lady's box - a CPCC student

2012-01-24T14:16:00.013-05:00

Former Central Piedmont Community College student Jackie Bray will join about two dozen guests - and a long line of citizens throughout the years - in the First Lady's box at tonight's State of the Union address.

Presidents for the last 30 years have invited to the First Lady's box everyday Americans who exemplify themes in the State of the Union speech. It's one of the perks of being an incumbent - the invitations gets some press from lots of local papers, and the president gets to indirectly bask in successes he may or may not have much to do with.

Bray, who now works at the Siemens Charlotte Energy Hub, will presumably help President Barack Obama illustrate how innovative partnerships between education and corporate America can help create and fill jobs. CPCC, under President Tony Zeiss, has put an emphasis in recent years on training students to fill technical jobs. That focus has resulted in a health services center to serve the growing health industry and a partnership with Duke Energy to train workers in that burgeoning industry.

Bray is the product of one of those partnerships. According to the White House, she was laid off from her job as a high speed packaging mechanic last January. She enrolled in Central Piedmont Community College to prepare for Siemens pre-hiring test, took about 10 courses to prepare for work there, then was hired by Siemens last August. Bray, a single mother from Kings Mountain, now works as a process operator.

For CPCC, it's a well-deserved nod. The school is developing programs and partnerships critical to helping Charlotte provide the workforce it needs to attract a diversity of businesses. Charlotte's leaders have touted CPCC's programs and others like it. Tonight, the nation gets to hear about it, too.

Peter St. Onge

Mitt's tax returns: Why they've mattered

2012-01-24T11:13:00.010-05:00

So now we know how much Mitt Romney makes. It' s $42.6 million over the past two years, according to the fluttering of tax returns and estimates he released early this morning. A few clicks of the calculator tell us that's a little more than $80,000 each workday, or $10,000 an hour. Those kind of numbers would make some of the 1 percent envious.

But if you haven't previously had a problem with Romney's business successes - and we don't - then the returns won't introduce anything newly troubling. If you're uncomfortable with the size of his portfolio, then today's numbers will affirm that uneasiness.

There's nothing in the release, however, that hasn't already been explored in this campaign.

The returns show he tithes faithfully to his church, but we're past his Mormonism being a factor in the campaign, if it ever was.

The returns show he makes money from a continued affiliation with Bain Capital, the company he co-founded. But Americans have settled for now that Bain's brand of wealth building is a sometimes ugly but acceptable form of capitalism.

The returns also show that his effective tax rate is just under 14 percent, lower than many middle-class Americans. He confronted that discrepancy, finally, in Monday's debate in Tampa, saying that he'd like to overhaul the tax code so that more Americans are able to pay the rates he does.

All of which means the tax returns should do Romney little damage today - but that's mostly because he already allowed the discussions they prompt to get away from him. Instead of initially framing his time at Bain as free enterprise at work, he let it first be a debate over the jobs the company lost and gained. Instead of using his tax rate and returns to show how unwieldy and incomprehensible the tax code has become, he stammered at debates over what he'd reveal.

With each misstep, it's become more difficult to convince voters not to be uncomfortable with his wealth, because he clearly seems to be. Perhaps that stems from Romney's uneasiness with making personal details public, as his campaign has suggested. Perhaps it's more a product of the country's new bout of self-examination over income inequality.

Many Republicans will dismiss the latter as a liberal phenomenon, but the South Carolina primary showed again that might not be true. In Newt Gingrich, South Carolinians chose someone every bit as inconsistent as Romney on policy, but with far more personal and ethical baggage. It was a replay of sorts of most every primary Romney has entered. Republicans simply haven't connected to him - for lots of reasons, maybe, but one of them is this: While most Americans embrace capitalism, we can be a little uneasy with someone who's very, very good at it. And Mitt Romney, at least publicly, seems to be blushing, too.

Peter St. Onge

The Tampa debate: Winners and losers

2012-01-24T09:04:00.000-05:00

Mitt Romney attacked, Newt Gingrich bit his tongue, and not much changed in the Republican race for president in Monday night's GOP debate in Tampa.

Good morning and welcome to O-pinion, the Observer's spot for perspective and discussion. I'm Peter St. Onge, associate editor of the O's editorial pages, and I'll be your host today.

Last night's four-man debate was a more somber gathering, thanks to NBC asking the audience not to applaud after answers. The result was an event that didn't have the prizefight atmosphere of the South Carolina debates, but it resulted in some sharper, more thoughtful answers.

There was no clear winner, as each candidate accomplished what he'd set out to do. Romney got in his licks, doing what he'd previously relied on surrogates and superPACs to do - employ the Iowa strategy of reminding voters of Gingrich's troubling past. He didn't get much reaction out of Gingrich, but that wasn't the point. Romney will rarely win that kind of head-to-head exchange. All he needed was to plant seeds of discomfort, and he did.

Gingrich tried a more statesmanlike approach, resisting the temptation (barely) to go after debate questioners instead of answering their questions. There also were no Saul Alinsky references, no pining for three-hour Lincoln-Douglas debates with Obama. He was the right mix of wonk and thoughtful and, as a result, more presidential than in any other debate.

Rick Santorum, as he did in South Carolina, offered the clearest contrasts between himself and the other candidates. He was a bit shrill about the threats of Iran and Cuba, but he continued to position himself as the conservative alternative to a potential Newt implosion. Ron Paul fed off the insightful questioning of moderator Brian Williams and had perhaps his best debate, avoiding the rambling answers that force viewers to sift too much for meaning.

The winner, by a perfectly combed hair: Romney.

What did the pundits think?

Time.com's Mark Halperin also gives Romney the debate win, although no one particularly stood out in his grading. Romney ("dominated most of the night") got a B. Gingrich ("low-key, confident delivery") got a B-. Santorum ("solid isn't enough anymore") got a C. Paul ("his heart seemed less into the competition") got a C-.

The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne says Romney helped himself by showing he's no wimp, but he's undecided on the new, calmer Newt.

The conservative Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes says Romney clearly had the better moments.

His colleague, William Kristol, has a different debate winner: Mitch Daniels.

Says Kristol:

The only spectacle in American politics more off-putting than Newt Gingrich in self-righteous defense mode is Mitt Romney in self-righteous attack mode. I thought Mitt’s attacks were somewhat more dishonest than Newt’s defenses were disingenuous, but it was good to move on to the rest of the debate, where little further damage was done.

My conclusion: If Mitch Daniels’s effective tax rate is 30 percent rather than 15 percent, and if he was never paid $1.6 million by Freddie Mac, he can be the next president.

Gingrich grabs Fla. lead but some Republicans want... Mitch Daniels?

2012-01-23T10:58:00.008-05:00

The GOP presidential ground has shifted, according to two Florida polls released today: The latest Rasmussen Reports poll, a telephone survey of likely Florida Republican primary voters taken Sunday evening found Newt Gingrich the new front-runner with 41 percent of the vote compared to Mitt Romney's 32 percent. Less than two weeks ago, Romney had a 22-point lead in Florida. Gingrich's S.C. win Saturday changed that.

In the poll, former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum runs third with 11 percent, while Texas Congressman Ron Paul has eight percent. Nine percent remain undecided.

Romney still has this going for him: Florida allows early voting, and Romney leads among those voters by 11 points. Gingrich leads by 12 among those who have not yet voted. Fourteen percent have already cast their vote.

One-in-three (32 percent) say they still could change their minds before they vote in the January 31 primary. Fifty-nine percent are already certain of their vote, including 73 percent of Romney supporters and 62 percent of Gingrich voters.

The survey results giving Gingrich the lead are consistent with the trend displayed the InsiderAdvantage/Majority Opinion Research poll of Florida Republican voters, which was released earlier today. In the InsiderAdvantage poll, Gingrich gets support from 34.4 percent of Republican voters and Romney gets 25.6 percent.

The Weekly Standard blog said the poll could either be an outlier or the beginning of a big shift in the Sunshine State. The RealClear Politics average for Florida, with this InsiderAdvantage one included, has Romney at 36.7 percent, Gingrich at 26.0 percent, Santorum 13.7 percent, and Paul with 10.7 percent.

Democratic-leaning polling Raleigh-based Public Policy Polling, PPP, announced on Twitter Sunday night that it was currently polling Florida. "First night of our Florida polling: Romney and Gingrich are neck and neck," PPP announced. A few minutes later, came this one: "2 more people picked Mitt than Newt out of about 600 people we polled tonight...that's how close we're talking."

A still dominant player in the GOP race is this: "None of the above" is the answer some Republican voters are giving to the field of candidates as the four remaining declared suitors start mixing it up in Florida. That prompted William Kristol of the conservative Weekly Standard to recycle parts of a piece he wrote two months ago.

He noted Sunday that two months ago, he wrote an editorial headlined "Evitable" with the subhead: "It might not be Mitt. It could be Newt. It could be someone else."

He said the editorial concluded: “Or, if Iowa (January 3), New Hampshire (January 10) and South Carolina (January 21) produce fragmented results, and the state of the race is disheartening to Republicans, a late January entry [I'd now say an early February entry] by another candidate isn't out of the question, either..."

In the Sunday piece, Kristol then pointed a website runmitchrun.com for a possible late entry candidate: GOP Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels. The site says, "RunMitchRun.com is not connected to any candidate or campaign, current or prospective. The purpose of this petition, which was created by a single voter in Virginia, is to demonstrate to Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels that the number of Americans who would prefer him to the current field of candidates is more than sufficient to justify the effort." The site also says that as of Jan. 21, "2,504 Americans have signed" the petition.

OK. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie endorsed Romney and is now is attack dog against Gingrich (he called him “an embarrassment to the party,” citing his ethics violation and the fact that he was thrown out as speaker of the House by his own party on "Meet the Press" Sunday. But there's a draft Mitch Daniels site but not one for Chris Christie - really?

One bit of good news for Romney today. He got the endorsement of the Pensacola News Journal - if that means anything. John McCain got the paper's nod in 2008. It's northwest Florida’s most widely-read paper.

Posted by Associate Editor Fannie Flono

Newt as Lazarus? Romney as Dukakis?

2012-01-23T08:31:00.006-05:00

Good morning. Welcome to O-Pinion, the Observer editorial board's online center for commentary, discussion and debate. I'm associate editor Fannie Flono and I'll be your host for today.

The political buzz is still about how South Carolina scrambled the Republican presidential race, giving former House Speaker Newt Gingrich his first win. And now for the first time "since the modern primary system began," notes USA Today, "the GOP has a trio of victors from the early contests: Rick Santorum in Iowa, Mitt Romney in New Hampshire and Gingrich in South Carolina."

So many are looking to Florida, the next primary state, to be the tie-breaker. It still looks like the nomination is former Massachusetts Gov. Romney's to lose. He's still most well-financed candidate and the one many people believe has the broadest appeal to be able to beat President Obama but given his debate performance lately, his tone-deafness on some issues such as his tax returns and his middling poll numbers, he could fritter away his advantage.

Speaking of his tax returns, how difficult could it have been for Romney to say quickly and decisively what most people wanted to hear during the S.C. debate? That he would release his tax returns, as many other candidates have done or said they would do. Now that his reluctance has ratcheted up the calls, and seeing how it affected him in the S.C. primary - some voters said it moved them to vote for Gingrich - he said Sunday on Fox News he would release last year's and his estimate for this year (that's far less than the multi-years people expected but it's a start).

Yesterday was the 39th anniversary of the still controversial Roe v. Wade decision allowing the right to an abortion. The issue hasn't dominated Republican politics during this campaign season as it has in the past. But it has come up, most explicitly when Rick Santorum has challenged the other candidates on their conservative bonafides on the issue during the recent S.C. debates. If you missed it, there was a particularly sharp exchange between Santorum and Ron Paul in last Thursday's debate.

Santorum said Paul had voted for "right to life" legislation only 50 percent of the time. Paul responded that he and Santorum “have a disagreement on how we approach” the issue of abortion. Paul explained that in his understanding of the Constitution, oversight of “almost all the problems” now encumbering the federal government is left to the individual states, including the issue of abortion. “I see abortion as a violent act,” Paul said with some passion, but explained that “all other violence is handled by the states — murder, burglary — those are state issues. Don’t try to say that I am less pro-life because I want to be particular about the way we [protect the unborn] and allow the states the prerogative....”

In the New American, writer Dave Bohon said "in challenging Paul on his pro-life record, Santorum was capitalizing on the trend in recent months to paint Congressman Paul as the least pro-life of all the Republican presidential candidates."

On Sunday, the Huffington Post reported President Obama affirmed his support of Roe on his blog: "We must remember that this Supreme Court decision not only protects a woman’s health and reproductive freedom, but also affirms a broader principle: that government should not intrude on private family matters. I remain committed to protecting a woman’s right to choose and this fundamental constitutional right."

The issue could likely loom large in the presidential race once the Republican nominee is chosen.

So, who will that nominee be? Florida may help untangle the puzzle. But there were was plenty of punditry over the weekend on why Gingrich came out on top in South Carolina.

George Will had this view on "This Week with Christiane Amanpour" saying more about Mitt Romney than Newt Gingrich, calling Romney the Republican's Michael Dukakis.

Charles Krauthammer told Fox News Gingrich was like Lazarus: “But you know, you got Lazarus, except Lazarus only had to rise once. Gingrich has now risen twice, which makes you think there’s something going on here.” He said the Florida Primary is now up for grabs.

Asher Smith has this view in the Huffington Post: "Did Economic Populism Win South Carolina for Newt Gingrich."

Paul Hogarth has this take in San Francisco's alternative paper, Beyond Chron: "Why Progressives should be thrilled Newt won South Carolina."

J.D. Longstreet gives his opinion in "Was South Carolina a fluke?" in Right Side News.

S.C. debate No. 2: Winners and losers

2012-01-20T09:40:00.000-05:00

With one searing attack on media and CNN moderator John King, Newt Gingrich brought a raucous South Carolina crowd to its feet Thursday night and mitigated at least some of the damage from allegations that he once asked his second wife to participate in an open marriage.

Gingrich also denied those charges, and that two-part response will be the moment people remember from the South Carolina primary - and perhaps his campaign. For that, Gingrich was an obvious winner of Thursday night's debate in Charleston.

Rick Santorum might have actually had the better debate, but it's hard to win on points after someone else gets the first-round knockout. Santorum made clear policy contrasts between himself and his opponents all the way through his closing statement, and his plainspoken fret about Newt Gingrich's instability was something that surely had heads nodding across the state and country. A solid second place.

Mitt Romney had what might have been the worst of his debates. He inexplicably stumbled again when asked about releasing his tax returns, and he ineffectively tried to deflect questions about himself with criticism of President Barack Obama. Romney's best moment: Countering Gingrich's perpetual Ronald Reagan references by noting that in Reagan's diary, Gingrich was mentioned once - and it was unflattering.

Ron Paul was too often a bystander, in part because moderator King seemed to forget he was there (at one point the crowd had to verbally nudge King to include Paul in a question.) Paul escaped without having to talk about foreign policy, but he did little to make himself a factor Thursday or with Saturday's vote.

Gingrich, after that first moment, was at times subdued (for him), almost as if he worried about following up the opening blast with more passion. But he artfully let Romney trip over himself on taxes, and he finished with a strong closing argument about his leadership. It was a thoughtful bookend to that first, white-hot moment.

*The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza says Santorum and Gingrich were the debate winners. Santorum "took the fight" to Romney and Gingrich, says Cillizza, and by doing so lumped the pair together as "ineffective change agents in voters' minds."

Romney gets a split decision from Cillizza, who thought the former governor found a good message by not apologizing for his wealth, but "fumbled around" releasing his tax returns. Ron Paul was the biggest loser of the four, says Cillizza, but partly because he was excluded too often.

*Time.com's political expert Mark Halperin gives out his highest debate grade with an A+ to Gingrich, not only for the emotional surge at the top of the debate, but because he was "confident and engaged" all night.

Romney gets a B for being "self-possessed and upbeat" but not doing anything in the debate to slow Gingrich's momentum. Santorum gets a B for being steady, even and ultimately powerful. Paul gets a C-.

*Stephen Hayes of the conservative Weekly Standard also gives the nod to Gingrich, in part for what we thought might have been his better sound bite, on why he can effectively debate President Barack Obama on health care: “I can say: I was wrong and figured it out. You were wrong and you didn’t.”

Hayes, like the others, thought Santorum was forceful, although at times too much so. Romney, he thought, was off-balance in answering questions about his taxes.

*Wondering about those pesky facts? The Washington Post's solid Fact Checker goes over 15 debate claims. (Hint: No one emerges Pinocchio-free.)

Peter St. Onge

Romney, Gingrich send us their final appeals to S.C. voters

2012-01-19T17:54:00.004-05:00

The Observer's editorial board invited the Republican candidates for president to write pieces making their cases to S.C. voters before Saturday's primary. Front-runners Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich did.

Romney says he would undo what President Obama is creating: An entitlement society where Americans are dependent on government. Read Romney's op-ed here.

Gingrich says Ronald Reagan produced a good model for getting out of a recession, and spells out five things he would do as president. Read his piece here.

Reagan knew how to fix the economy, and so do I

2012-01-19T17:00:00.000-05:00

By Newt Gingrich
Special to the Observer

The recession “officially” came to an end two and a half years ago. President Obama and his Washington establishment tell us the economy has been moving in the right direction since June 2009.

But when I talk to families in South Carolina and across the country, few share the elite sentiment that everything is going just fine.

Dynamic recovery is possible. It has happened in many of our lifetimes. Remember that Ronald Reagan also inherited a blistering recession when he took office in 1981. But unlike the current administration, President Reagan had a clear plan, and he followed through: tax reform, a sound dollar, expanded American energy production, smarter regulations and faith in job creators.

If we restore these jobs and growth policies, within a year the American economy will take off on another historic boom.

When that recession officially ended in November 1982, almost 12 percent of South Carolinians were unemployed. But over the next two and a half years, the Reagan recovery roared in the Palmetto State – beginning the longest prolonged period of growth in American history.

While Reagan put his faith in American job-creators, President Obama has demonized them and looked to government for solutions: a wasteful trillion-dollar stimulus, a trillion-plus-dollar Washington takeover of the health-care system, a weakening dollar and an activist NLRB that tried to kill jobs in South Carolina.

America is suffering this nightmare because President Obama has pursued exactly the opposite of every jobs and growth policy undertaken by President Reagan.

First, we must lower the corporate income tax rate, among the highest in the industrialized world, to 12.5 percent. We must eliminate the immoral and wasteful death tax, and zero out the capital gains tax, which now acts as a double tax on families and businesses.

We must allow immediate expensing (writing off the costs in one year) for investment in capital equipment so American workers can continue to be the most productive in the world using the latest and most advanced technology.

I propose an optional 15 percent flat tax, allowing those American taxpayers who prefer it to file on a postcard, saving close to half a trillion dollars in tax compliance costs each year.

These tax reforms are designed to maximize job creation, wages and economic growth. The massive growth in jobs and productive work, coupled with spending cuts, will be the key to balancing the budget.

Second, we must reestablish a stable dollar so that the purchasing power of a dollar is the same 30-40 years from today. Unstable money is a great threat to our return to prosperity. Part of our approach on the dollar will be to reestablish something Ronald Reagan did in 1981 and that is to have a Commission on Gold to look at the whole concept of how do we get back to hard money, which is a necessary component of stable growth.

Third, we must end the costly regulatory assault on American businesses and consumers, starting with the repeal of Obamacare with its job killing individual and employer mandates. We must also scale down the powers of many job-killing Washington-centric bureaucracies, such as the NLRB, and return decision-making powers to states and communities.

Fourth, we must tackle entitlement reform. We can strengthen Medicare and Social Security by offering the choice to expand personal savings, investment and insurance accounts until they ultimately finance all the benefits now financed by the payroll tax, eventually displacing that tax entirely. And we can save trillions by applying the highly successful 1996 welfare reforms to the 200 other federal means-tested programs, block granting them back to the states.

Finally, we must have an American Energy Plan that will free the energy industry to maximize production of all forms of American energy, including off the coast of South Carolina, assuring the reliable supply of low-cost gasoline, diesel, natural gas, coal and other energy sources essential to fueling a booming economy.

Getting Americans back to work and restoring our economic strength is only the start of the great and uplifting task of renewing America. Together we can make her once again the great and hopeful nation she has always been, a beacon to the world. And yes – from Pilgrim Father John Winthrop to President Ronald Reagan – that shining city on the hill.

If you give me the chance, together we will bring America back stronger and more hopeful than ever. We will rebuild the America we love.

I can undo the economic damage Obama has inflicted

2012-01-19T16:59:00.000-05:00

By Mitt Romney
Special to the Observer

“Hope” and “change” were the watchwords we heard repeatedly from Barack Obama back when he was a presidential candidate campaigning here in the Carolinas. Three years into his presidency, he hasn’t delivered much in the way of hope. But we’ve seen a lot of change.

The change has come in the size and shape and reach of Washington. Obama promised to fix our broken system. Instead, he has grown it massively.

We have thousands of new regulations, many of them job-killers. We have hundreds of billions in new federal spending. The government workforce has grown by tens of thousands of new workers. The national debt now totals a stratospheric $15 trillion. We have a brand new and enormously expensive entitlement program known as Obamacare.

With government swelling at a rapid pace, the private sector, unsurprisingly, has stagnated. Nearly 24 million Americans are out of work, struggling to find full-time work, or no longer even looking. In North Carolina, unemployment is an appalling 10 percent. In South Carolina it’s 9.9 percent. As I’ve traveled the South and traveled the country, I’ve heard story after story of heartbreak, of homes lost, of retirement plans replaced by jobs at minimum wage, of dreams shattered.

If we are going to undo the damage, this year’s election is critical. The destiny of our country is at stake. We can choose to live in the Entitlement Society that Barack Obama has been constructing, a society built around dependence on government. Or we can return to the merit-based Opportunity Society built by our Founding Fathers.

The drafters of the Declaration of Independence wrote that the Creator endowed us with unalienable rights, among them, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In America, we would be free to plot our own course. Ours would be the land of opportunity, where people achieve their dreams through hard work, education and daring.

Nearly two-and-a-half centuries of American history demonstrate the brilliance of our founding principles. America has produced pioneers and inventors of distinction in every field. We have excelled in science and industry. We have built an Opportunity Society that is prosperous and free and strong.

Barack Obama has taken us on a detour away from our founding philosophy. He has mismanaged our economy, weakened our military, and apologized for America around the world. In October, I spoke at The Citadel, where patriotism is a passion. The spirit of sacrifice I found there, the love of our country and everything we stand for, only reinforces my belief that we need change in Washington, D.C., and change in the White House. I want America to be respected around the world. I want to return America to the path of greatness and I know how to bring us where we need to go.

I’ve spent most of my life in the private sector. I’m not a career politician. I know how misguided government policies can choke off investment and kill jobs. I also know how government can get out of the way to foster economic growth.

My administration will make America the best place in the world for entrepreneurs, inventors and job creators. I’ll lower and simplify taxes, especially for middle-income Americans. I will repeal every unnecessary Obama-era regulation that kills jobs or hurts economic growth. I will fight the union bosses who build their power at the expense of the very workers they purport to represent.

I’ll open up new markets for American goods. I’ll press to exploit fully our abundant energy resources. I will cut and cap spending, and lead us toward a balanced budget. And I will repeal Obamacare. On my first day as president, I will direct the Secretary of Health and Human Services to grant waivers from Obamacare to all 50 states.

Let’s not be under any illusions that change of the sort I am proposing will be easy. Obama, the Democratic machine, and the entrenched interests behind them are going to fight to retain their power and their privileges at every step of the way. We need to fight back. Fortunately, we have a simple tool at hand: It’s called the truth. And the truth is that President Obama has failed, and his vision for America is wrong. Reversing that failure, and correcting our course, is what the election of 2012 is all about.

How Gingrich's bitter ex-wife could shape tonight's debate

2012-01-19T10:49:00.006-05:00

Updated with new poll results at 4:35 p.m.

The Republicans hold their last debate before the S.C. primary tonight, and breaking news this morning will directly shape it.

First up: There will be only four candidates on the stage in North Charleston. Texas Gov. Rick Perry dropped out of the race this morning and endorsed fellow anti-Romney candidate Newt Gingrich.

The big question, though, surrounds whether Gingrich will have to field questions about a new interview his ex-wife, Marianne, is doing with ABC News on Nightline tonight. She’s expected to say some nasty things about the man who admitted to cheating on her. But there are mixed signals coming out of the Gingrich campaign on how he’ll handle it. Some say he’ll fight back. Others say he’ll ignore it.

“It is pretty nasty to use personal tragedy for political exploitation,” senior Gingrich adviser Bob Walker tells the National Review. “That was a very bitter divorce, and you’re talking about somebody who is still, probably, very bitter.”

It will be interesting to see how Gingrich, needing to win a socially conservative state, handles it if questions about his infidelity come up. He said today he won't talk about Marianne. His two daughters, in a letter to ABC news, are defending him.

As for the Perry endorsement, we think it will give Gingrich a bounce. Perry was winning only 6 percent of the vote in Public Policy Polling’s most recent S.C. poll. But his impact could be greater than that because he’s dropping out so close to the primary and creating buzz. Gingrich was rising in the S.C. polls after Monday's debate anyway, so this will add to the momentum. A new Rasmussen poll has Gingrich trailing Romney only 30-27. But the Christian Science Monitor says that it’s not clear what’s going on with polls in the Palmetto State.

Update: Nate Silver of the New York Times summarizes six different S.C. polls that have all come out today. Three of those have Gingrich ahead slightly; two have Romney up by 7 and 10 points; and one has it as a virtual tie. Looking at the different polling methodology and other factors, Silver concludes there is "substantial momentum for Mr. Gingrich in South Carolina, giving him at least as strong a tailwind as Rick Santorum had in the closing days of the campaign in Iowa." Silver's model says South Carolina is now a toss-up.

One big question will be whether Marinanne's last-minute interview with ABC will slow Gingrich down.

CNN’s John King will moderate tonight’s debate. He tells the Boston Globe that “South Carolina gets their chest puffed out” for this primary.

South Carolina, and the Republican nomination, is still Romney’s to lose, despite Gingrich’s late surge. Pressure continues to build on Romney to release his tax returns, and you can be sure it will be an issue against Obama, especially if Romney doesn’t clear the air quickly. We at the Observer are less concerned about seeing his papers, we said in this morning’s paper, than we are about closing the “carried-interest” loophole that lets hedge fund managers and private equity executives have their fees taxed at 15 percent.

Taylor Batten

An unfair loophole for America’s richest

2012-01-18T19:30:00.004-05:00

Tomorrow's editorial today:

Mitt Romney is a rich man. He has made millions from investments and business ventures, most notably the private equity firm he co-founded, Bain Capital. He has made so much, in fact, that in South Carolina this week, he described the $374,327 he was paid in speaking fees last year as “not very much.”

Good for him. Romney shouldn’t feel shame – nor should voters reflexively be wary – at the heft of his financial portfolio. But on Tuesday, the Republican candidate for president also revealed that his effective tax rate is well below what many Americans pay – “probably closer to the 15 percent rate than anything,” he said. It’s an admission that’ll intensify calls for Romney to release his income tax returns, but we don’t need his paperwork to understand how some of the wealthiest Americans have found even more riches thanks to changes in federal tax policy.

Romney acknowledged this week that most of his income comes from investments, which are taxed at a rate significantly less than the top rate of 35 percent for individual wages. That’s a product of decades of capital gains tax cuts, beginning with President Bill Clinton, who lowered that tax rate from 28 to 20 percent, followed by George W. Bush lowering it to 15 percent.

Many economists and most Republicans argue that capital gains tax cuts help rev the economy by putting more income in the pockets of people who make investments and create jobs. That’s logical but disputed. Last year, a report from the non-partisan Congressional Research Service said that reducing capital gains tax rates does little to stimulate economic growth – and ultimately is a drag on federal revenues.

Romney, however, also has benefited from an objectionable tax break – one designed to benefit hedge-fund and private equity managers. Those managers deduct a percentage – typically 20 percent – of the profits their investors make, but instead of declaring it as a fee, the managers call it investment income – or “carried interest.” That income can be taxed as a long-term capital gain at the 15 percent rate.

A New York Times report last month revealed that although Romney left Bain Capital in 1999, he still receives a share of the firm’s “carried interest” profits – taxed at the same low rate. It’s completely legal, and there’s no indication that Romney has inappropriately dodged any taxes.

But while there’s at least an arguable premise that capital gains tax cuts reward and encourage risk-taking, the carried interest loophole gives the same benefit to hedge fund and private equity managers simply for making profits off of others’ investment risks. It’s a gift for the extremely wealthy, so they can become wealthier.

President Barack Obama has proposed taxing “carried interest” at ordinary income tax rates when the Bush-era tax cuts expire in 2013, and even House majority leader Eric Cantor has entertained the possibility of scrapping the egregious loophole. While many Americans might not understand the intricacies behind “carried interest,” they know what 15 percent is – a lower tax rate than someone who makes $75,000 pays. It’s unfair. It costs the country revenue. And it’s yet another example of how America is in need of serious tax reform.

Is there magic in N.C. schools superindent title?

2012-01-18T15:56:00.006-05:00

N.C. schools' superintendent June Atkinson has proved she's a scrapper. But she might have to scrap mightily to return as superintendent for four more years now that she has belatedly decided to seek the job again. Word was out that she wasn't going to run again after two terms but today she threw her hat back in the ring.

She caught two Democratic colleagues off-guard when she changed her mind. Both Mecklenburg's own Tricia Cotham, a state House member, and Rick Glazier, a House member from Cumberland County, had said they planned to run. Glazier said he still will. But I talked to Tricia Cotham today and she said: "I'm keeping my word." That word was her promise not to run if Atkinson decided she would.

Cotham had said a few months ago that she thought the superintendent's job was a good "bully pulpit" to talk about and fight for education issues. We said then that she had great credentials for the job, having been a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools former teacher and assistant principal. The youngest female to ever hold public office in North Carolina, she is vice-chair of the education committee and has co-sponsored or sponsored several pieces of legislation on education and children's welfare over the years.

Atkinson seemed unlikely to run. She hasn't raised any money and hasn't really been around touting a campaign. Her fellow Democrats have been disaffected with her performance. It was reported that Progress North Carolina, a liberal advocacy group, was ticked off at Atkinson about her silence on Republican-driven education budget cuts the past year. When Atkinson appeared before a legislative committee, Progress NC sent a statement critical of her. "As state superintendent, it’s her job to be the state’s biggest advocate for public schools," said Gerrick Brenner, the group's executive director. "Right now, June Atkinson is failing teachers and students, by not standing up to lawmakers who continue to hide behind false rhetoric after they slashed school budgets."

Atkinson apparently loves a fight though. She hung in through seven months of litigation when she was first elected in 2004. A Republican challenger contested the close election results. She also fought back in court when Gov. Bev Perdue tried to usurp her position by elevating school board chairman Bill Harrison to CEO of North Carolina's school and relegating her elected superintendent job to a largely ceremonial role. Atkinson sued on constitutional grounds, arguing that Perdue did not have the authority to put Harrison in charge of schools. She won that case, but Harrison remained as chairman of the state school board.

Rumor has it that there is no love lost between Atkinson and Perdue. And with some Dems not too pleased with her work performance, Atkinson might find it a battle royal to get reelected this time. At least three Republicans also have said they want the job.

All the interest in the job is surprising, given that the position, at least under Atkinson, has had a low profile and not very much clout. Most education policy is done by legislators and the governor who has control over millions in federal dollars through Race to the Top and other grants. And Harrison as chair of the Governor’s Education Transformation Commission still manages to rival the state education superintendent in power despite the court ruling.

Is there some magic in the title? This election season promises to be a lively one in many ways.

- Posted by Fannie Flono

Perdue pushing N.C. tax amnesty? Kinda

2012-01-18T10:03:00.004-05:00

Good morning. Welcome to O-Pinion, the Observer editorial board's blog of commentary and public discussion. I'm associate editor Fannie Flono, your host today.

Before we get to "tax amnesty," let's talk about the big political news in the Carolinas: the upcoming South Carolina GOP primary where the remaining Republican candidates are still battling it out.

An article in the conservative Weekly Standard has an intriguing take on why "A Gingrich Win Could Benefit Everyone - including Romney. In it Jeffrey H. Anderson contends that if Newt Gingrich wins, it will provide an opportunity for more substantive debate from the Republicans so the party can get its true message out on issues. "Romney should actually welcome additional chances to hone his skills," Anderson said. "After all, if he isn’t confident that he can beat Newt Gingrich without a Mike Tyson-style early round knockout — secured mostly through a huge advantage in cash and a resulting barrage of negative advertising in Iowa — then what chance does he really have of beating Obama?" All right. Let's keep those gloves on.

The Standard also had an interesting story dissecting new polls showing President Barack Obama's approval ratings ticking up. In a blog piece called "Morning Jay: What to Make of Obama's Approval Bounce?" Jay Costa attributes the change to "marginal Democrats" coming back to the Obama fold.

On the liberal side, the Huffington Post takes on Gingrich for continuing at Monday's S.C. debate in Myrtle Beach "to promote his controversial strategy to fight both child poverty and the jobs crisis." That plan being to hire poor children to be janitors in schools. Lila Shapiro writes that "the idea captures Gingrich's spin on two popular right-wing economic claims: Union workers are overpaid and the poor simply need to work harder to improve their lives." She then debunks his contention, saying he got facts wrong. She says he incorrectly said that an entry-level janitor gets paid twice as much as an entry-level teacher. Not only do Gingrich's calculations assume janitors earn much more than they actually do, his theory is deeply flawed, and would likely harm impoverished communities, not help them, she said researchers say.

TAX DEBT PAYMENT PLAN
Here in North Carolina, the battle is at the state level with Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue taking on Republicans by publicly arguing that they should restore part of state sales tax the Republican-controlled legislature let expire last year. Republican Senate leader Phil Berger said predictably that the proposal was "dead on arrival in the General Assembly."
But we wonder what Repubs think about this: Perdue announced today that the North Carolina Department of Revenue is launching the Individual Income Tax Debt Payment Program to help individuals catch up on unpaid taxes.

According to a press release, "This time-limited program will help individuals resolve unpaid taxes and get back on their feet financially by waiving certain penalties and fees and offering payment plan options. Participating taxpayers can avoid forced collections such as garnishments, liens, and levies.

This sounds like somewhat like a back-door tax amnesty program. We said last May that N.C. lawmakers and the governor should both agree to a tax amnesty plan to bring in money to state coffers. At the time, GOP Rep. Tim Moffitt of Buncombe County was sponsoring a bill. Moffitt said then his bill could bring in as much as $200 million during a grace period between July 1 and June 30, 2012. The bill would have allowed taxpayers in arrears to settle their accounts by paying all of their taxes plus half the interest. The state, in turn, would drop penalties and criminal charges.

The bill got nowhere but Moffitt said it was a good one because North Carolina shouldn't impose penalties on tax delinquents at a time when many people can't find a job."There is no reason for the state to rub salt into people's wounds, " he said.
In announcing her plan today, Perdue said: "This is exactly the type of program we need to help our fellow North Carolinians down the path to economic recovery. We are making it easier for our citizens to work with state government.”

Are Republicans and Democrats, gasp, on the same page?

Commission gives silliness a prime seat

2012-01-17T11:24:00.007-05:00

We've spent some time recently fretting about folks potentially not getting along on the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Board of Education. We have no similar worries about the Mecklenburg County Board of County Commissioners; we already know how dysfunctional that group is.

Your latest example is Item 8a on Wednesday night's meeting agenda, courtesy of commissioner Vilma Leake: "Seek clarity from Chairman (Harold) Cogdell regarding procedure and effective date for seating of commissioners around the dais at the meetings held in the meeting chamber."

Leake is unhappy at her new seating assignment, which is one of the seats at the far edge of the dais. That assignment came from Cogdell, who gets to make those calls now that he's the board chair. Leake complained about the seat back in Demember, but nothing changed, so she's back at it again, this time more formally.

If Leake wanted to know about procedure, however, she could've simply contacted county attorney Marvin Bethune, as we did this morning. Bethune's response, via email:

The only Board policy on seating arrangements is the attached 1979 policy, which reads: “There shall be adequate seating arrangements for the Board, staff, public, and media at all regular and/or special meetings of the Board.

Bethune and others say that as long as they can remember, the practice has been for the chair to determine where commissioners sit.

Leake also could've spoken with Cogdell if she wanted to know why he did what he did, but she clearly wants her complaint aired in public, not private. The board has protocol designed to limit silliness like this - specifically, a rule that requires any agenda item to be co-sponsored by two board members. In this case, that's former chair Jennifer Roberts and George Dunlap, who each should've known better than to allow this to move forward.

We haven't heard back from Roberts, who may still be smarting from Cogdell's unseemly unseating of her as chair. Dunlap, in a note to fellow commissioners today, said that Leake was upset at a remark Cogdell apparently made to media about no one wanting to sit near Leake.
Dunlap hadn't heard that remark, and neither have we.

Cogdell tells us this morning that he doesn't remember saying that "no one" wanted to sit next to Leake, but he said that the Republican members of the board requested to be placed elsewhere. Cogdell also says he remembers Dunlap telling him more than once that he didn't want to be beside Leake "because he would have to explain everything to her and that she talks during the entire meeting."

Cogdell says, and Dunlap agrees, that the board's time is better spent addressing other issues. But, says Dunlap of Leake: "Let her have her say and move on."

Leake already had that say at December's meeting. Wednesday's agenda item is nothing more than pettiness and preening, and it affirms once again that the board - at least three members, anyway - don't mind giving foolishness a prime spot on the dais.

Peter St. Onge

GOP debate in S.C.: Winners and losers

2012-01-17T08:10:00.006-05:00

Good morning and welcome to O-pinion, the Observer's place for discussion and perspective. I'm Peter St. Onge, associate editor of the Observer's editorial board, and I'll be your host today.

What are people talking about this morning?

Republican candidates for president held the first of two S.C. debates last night in Myrtle Beach, and frontrunner Mitt Romney took an unsurprising pummeling from his fellow debaters, none of whom has been able to grab and keep the title of Mitt Alternative. At this point, that title means little, however, because unless Romney makes a severe misstep, the other GOP candidates seem to be fighting merely for a good speaking spot at the Republican National Convention.

Still, pundits agree that one candidate clearly had the best night in Myrtle Beach. The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza says Newt Gingrich was the clear winner of the debate, showing that when he's on, he's the best debater in the field.

Cillizza's other winners include Rick Perry and Barack Obama, who benefits from Romney's conservative answer on immigration, which won't play as well in a general election, along with Romney grudgingly saying he will probably release his income tax returns.

Cillizza's big loser: Ron Paul, who was booed by the audience and mocked by Perry. Said Cillizza: "If Paul would deflect all foreign policy questions and turn every answer into something about his economic views, he could be a real contender for the nomination. He won’t do that, so he isn’t."

Time's Mark Halperin also gives the nod to Gingrich in his post-debate report card. Gingrich got an A- from Halperin, who said the Georgian was "At his best: funny, lively, tough, brash, challenging."

Perry ("clear, consistent and relaxed") and Romney ("less dominant") each received a B from Professor Halperin. Santorum, who was overshadowed by Gingrich, got a C+, and Paul ("marble-mouthed on defense") got a C.

Stephen F. Hayes of the conservative Weekly Standard said Gingrich was a clear winner, with a "a performance Monday night that reminded people why he was once the Republican frontrunner for the Republican nomination." Romney was "less sure-footed," says Hayes, but the clear loser was Santorum, simply because his biggest not-Mitt opponent did so well.

Politico's Maggie Haberman agrees that Gingrich got his groove back and said that the pummeling Romney took from his fellow debaters shows that he's in for a hard week in South Carolina. But, like the others, Haberman didn't see any lasting bruises on Romney from last night.

Romney, she said, is "one step closer to the finish line."

Which Carolinian will become president?

2012-01-12T13:56:00.009-05:00

Barack Obama vaulted to the presidency just four years after being a state senator in Illinois. Jimmy Carter was an unlikely future president when he was governor of Georgia. Michele Bachmann, who led this year's race at one point, is a representative from Minnesota. And Rick Santorum is a legitimate presidential candidate just a few years after Pennsylvania voters threw him out of his U.S. Senate office.

It all goes to show: Presidential candidates can spring from anywhere. And it got us to thinking: Which Carolinian is most likely to make a serious run for the White House in the future?

No one who lived much of their life in North or South Carolina has ever been president. Andrew Johnson and James K. Polk were born in Raleigh and just outside Charlotte, respectively. But both left when young and mostly lived in Tennessee. Andrew Jackson was born near the N.C.-S.C. border but also mostly lived in Tennessee.

So a true Carolinian as president would be a first. Who might it be? Any suggestion seems far-fetched right now, but so would have Obama before he gave his speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and so would have Sarah Palin, who would have been a heartbeat away.

N.C. Gov. Bev Perdue? She'll be fortunate if her political career isn't over in 10 months.

Former Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory? Highly unlikely, but if he beats Perdue and serves two terms as governor, who knows?

S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley? She's unseasoned, to put it mildly, but she has cred with the tea party and has shown she can pull the upset.

U.S. Sens. Richard Burr or Kay Hagan? We'd give the edge to Burr, if only because he's in the running to be the vice presidential nominee this year.

U.S. Sens. Jim DeMint or Lindsey Graham? Now we're getting warmer. DeMint was frequently mentioned as a tea party favorite and might have considered a run this year. Graham would have little shot.

Hard to imagine any of North Carolina's current U.S. House members. Heath Shuler, maybe, if moderation ever comes back into vogue? Patrick McHenry if it doesn't?

No one in South Carolina's delegation seems likely. Mick Mulvaney? Tim Scott? Joe Wilson? You lie!

John Edwards? Ha, just seeing if you're paying attention.

Maybe we need to look more locally. You may laugh at the idea of Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx. But he has made the right moves so far, and will raise his profile when the DNC comes to town. Give him 15-20 years of seasoning, and who knows?

Tell us who you think by voting in the poll at upper right.

-- Taylor Batten

Fair vote is too sacred for rushed judgment

2012-01-11T21:33:00.001-05:00

It’s hardly surprising that Democrats would complain about North Carolina’s new congressional and legislative districts. They were drawn by Republicans and are shaped in a way that almost guarantees the GOP will do better than it did under the old maps.

If that were all there was to it, Democrats should be told: Too bad. Republicans won control of the General Assembly in 2010, and to the victors go the spoils. Of course Republicans would draw lines that help them. It was their first shot at drawing the maps in over 100 years. Democrats did the same thing for decades when they were in power.

But that’s not all there is to it. Challenges to the new districts, which will be considered at a court hearing in Raleigh today, are built on statistical evidence that says mapmakers used race as a predominant factor, and to an extent that they violated the U.S. Constitution.

Such concerns seemed to be undercut when the Obama Justice Department approved the N.C. maps in November, indicating that they did not illegally dilute blacks’ voting power. Sen. Bob Rucho, a Mecklenburg Republican who co-chaired the redistricting effort, and others pointed to that as proof that the districts were fair and legal.

The courts, however, have disagreed with the Justice Department frequently over the years. And opponents have now presented voluminous statistical analysis that suggests the courts should take a closer look.

Among the most notable: An affidavit filed last week by Ted Arrington, a former UNC Charlotte political science department chairman and a nationally recognized expert on redistricting.
Arrington dove into a block-by-block, precinct-by-precinct analysis of the maps. He determined that mapmakers systematically packed blacks into heavily black districts, leaving other districts safer for whites and Republicans. Rucho and co-chair Rep. David Lewis led an effort to split hundreds of precincts, siphoning black voters off with other black voters, and white voters off with other white ones, Arrington found.

“The General Assembly has created in all three plans a kind of political apartheid,” Arrington wrote.

He called the precinct-splitting patterns “a direct attack on black political participation.”
This can hardly be dismissed as the whining of some out-of-sorts liberal. Arrington was a long-time Republican and has been retained as an expert witness in 41 voting rights cases all over the country. His findings over the years have helped each party.

If you’ve read this far, you probably already appreciate why this is all vitally important and not just inside baseball. Election results hinge largely not on who’s the best candidate but how the lines are drawn. A well-qualified Republican almost certainly won’t win in a heavily Democratic district, and vice-versa. So fair, legal redistricting is essential to a healthy democracy.

A three-judge panel in Wake County Superior Court today will hear the state’s request that the case be thrown out and elections held under the disputed maps. That would be premature. The questions raised by Arrington and others are significant, and deserve a full hearing. The court should deny the state’s motion and lay the groundwork for making a decision based on the merits of both sides.

What cities can do about pedestrian accidents

2012-01-11T13:47:00.017-05:00

If you've spent much time walking in uptown Charlotte, you're likely troubled but not surprised by the pair of pedestrian accidents this week at the intersection of College and Stonewall.

Most of us have seen our share of close calls, heard the honking of drivers' horns, chuckled at the subsequent gestures flung back by pedestrians. But what's happened at College and Stonewall is a sobering reminder of what busy urban traffic can bring.

On Tuesday, Wells Fargo executive Brett Morgan was walking legally in the crosswalk across South College Street when he was struck and killed by a dump truck turning right in the rain and fog. This morning brought the same kind of accident, again in rain and fog, though thankfully without serious injuries.

Almost 5,000 pedestrians a year are killed in accidents across the United States, and tens of thousands more are injured. Some of the incidents come from cars not stopping - or even slowing - to see a pedestrian with the right of way in the crosswalk. Sometimes, pedestrians are to blame for scooting through crosswalks even when the traffic signal blinks no.

Charlotte Department of Transportation spokeswoman Linda Durrett tells the Observer today that city engineers are meeting to discuss the Stonewall/College intersection, which the city has studied after looking at crash data over a number of years. She said she'll have an update later today.

What can cities do? If the crosswalk has the appropriate signals, as Stonewall/College does, the U.S. Department of Transportation recommends looking at intersections for potential design improvements. The crosswalk in question is more angular than most - does that create potential vision issues for approaching cars? If so, the stop line could be moved further back from the intersection to give drivers a better look.

U.S. DOT also recommends signs at or before crosswalks to remind drivers that pedestrians have the right of way. For particularly dangerous intersections, cities can consider in-pavement lights to alert motorists that a pedestrian is crossing. That's an expense, but given the heavy pedestrian traffic coming from the Stonewall rail station, it could be a worthy investment for the city.

Other cities with similar problems have embarked on public information campaigns about crosswalk dangers. A recent example is Chicago, which kicked off a "One of 32" campaign in December by placing black mannequins at 32 spots across the city to remember 32 pedestrians killed in the previous year. The city also is installing bright red street crossing flags at intersections that pedestrians can grab and display when crossing a street, then place in a bin on the other side.

All of which may not matter, of course, if a rushed or careless driver turns into a crosswalk without looking. We've asked Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police if they'll be putting an increased emphasis on the College and Stonewall intersection - or any other uptown intersections. We hope so. We'll let you know what they say.

Until then, the best advice is the most obvious: Whether you're behind the wheel or walking the pavement, be attentive out there.

Peter St. Onge

Why do we loathe John Edwards? A brainy explanation

2012-01-11T11:41:00.004-05:00

Interesting examination today by Time Magazine about why Americans feel such hostility toward John Edwards.

It's partly self-evident. The North Carolina senator cheated on his wife and fathered a child outside of marriage, all while Elizabeth Edwards was battling the breast cancer that ultimately took her life.

But, as writer Jeffrey Kluger says:

There's a certain deliciousness to the way we loathe Edwards. We dismiss a mass killer like Osama bin Laden with a simple "rot in hell." We dismiss O.J. Simpson with a simple "rot in jail." And before you say that the difference is that both of those thugs have at least been dealt with, consider that the thrice-married and repeatedly unfaithful Newt Gingrich behaved nearly as despicably as Edwards, yet even now he is making a credible, if fading, run for the White House. Edwards, by contrast, can't walk into a restaurant without the risk of getting pelted by dinner rolls.

Why is that so? Kluger says a big factor is our brains. Studies using functional magnetic imaging have shown researchers there's an overlapping circuitry that governs morality and disgust. Our brains are triggered by different manifestations of that disgust - personal betrayal, the feeling we have when we see others cheated, and the pragmatic consequences of bad behavior.

Edwards, with his bad behavior, essentially played pinball with that circuitry - setting off all of our disgust triggers. Not only were we repulsed by him cheating on a sickly wife, that action brought potential consequences to his party and, perhaps most of all, was a surprise to many given his public choirboy persona. With Gingrich and Bill Clinton, we were disgusted - but not particularly surprised - at their infidelities.

Could our brains actually forgive him? You might be surprised at what science says. Give it a read.

Peter St. Onge

N.H. primary: The aftermath

2012-01-11T07:49:00.004-05:00

The sift continues.

The New Hampshire primary did about as much to shake up the Republican race for president as it did to energize New Hampshirites. Citizens trudged dutifully to the polls but didn't reach predicted turnout levels, despite uncharacteristically clear roads and non-snowy driveways. The state just didn't get jazzed up for this one - a reflection, maybe, of the inevitability of a Mitt Romney win.

But New Hampshire, like Iowa, helped eliminate one candidate from the race - even if the candidate won't admit it yet. Jon Huntsman did everything Rick Santorum did in Iowa - pledging his heart to every corner of the state - but he didn't produce the result he needed, finishing third behind Romney and Ron Paul. Huntsman's strategy is to let South Carolina, up next on Jan 21, knock everyone else out and leave him and Romney to fight it out. But Huntsman has neither the money, organization or, as New Hampshire showed, the support to make that happen.

Onward to South Carolina. If Romney, the elite, Mormon, northeastern, establishment candidate, can win in an evangelical, southern, Tea Party state, the nomination is sealed. Paul has put together two impressive second-place finishes, outperforming expectations of everyone but his passionate supporters. But polls show he isn't the second choice of enough voters to take advantage of other candidates falling away.

That leaves the conservative alternatives - Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum - who will go hard at Romney and each other with the kind of harsh politicking that doesn't fly in genteel Iowa and reticent New Hampshire. South Carolina, well, it's different. Says the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza: "The state has a history of, how should we put this, contentious campaigns. (Think John McCain vs George W. Bush in 2000.)"

The NYT's Jim Rutenberg is a little more lyrical - and pointed about the Palmetto State, which he calls: "A place famous for surfacing the dark undercurrents of American politics."

Other New Hampshire reaction:

Politico's Maggie Haberman has six takeaways, including that the GOP will grudgingly have to acknowledge Ron Paul in a big way at its convention.

Her colleague, Dylan Byers, says the media's favorite narrative went splat with Huntsman's third-place finish.

The Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes says history is on Romney's side.

And finally, RedState's Erick Erickson wishfully reminds us not to count out Rick Perry.

N.C. legislature's actions keeping lawyers busy

2012-01-10T13:13:00.008-05:00

Job growth across the state may be lagging but N.C. lawmakers are at least keeping state (and other) lawyers busy. Another change by the Republican-controlled legislature is now in the courts.

A Wake County judge on Monday temporarily blocked lawmakers from instituting a law that prohibits members of the state teachers association from having their dues automatically deducted from state paychecks. The N.C. Association of Educators sued the state on Monday. The group is challenging the constitutionality of the move lawmakers made in a surprise session at nearly 1 in the morning last week.

This court challenge follows a series of others to legislative moves during the perpetual legislative session:

Planned Parenthood filed suit in the summer seeking to prevent the enforcement of the Planned Parenthood defunding amendment passed as part of the North Carolina budget during the 2011 legislative session. Planned Parenthood said the move cuts the group from federal money that comes through the state and is unconstitutional. A judge in August blocked the move and said funding must stay intact until the lawsuit is settled.

A judge in November also granted a preliminary injunction blocking the state's Division of Motor Vehicles from issuing the license plates, which say "Choose Life." The state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union is suing to block the plates, saying they violate the First Amendment because there's no specialty plate for supporters of abortion rights. Twenty-nine states either already make "Choose Life" plates available or have approved such plates but have not manufactured them. But the plates have a mixed record when it comes to court challenges, with some judges ruling states can sell them and others siding with challengers who say the plates are unconstitutional.

The legislature, faced with a huge budget shortfall this summer, also cut the state's pre-kindergarten program (then known as More at Four) by 20 percent. That meant no space for 6,000-plus at-risk kids. But in June, Wake County Superior Court Judge Howard Manning declared that cut violated the state Constitution's guarantee of an equal, basic education for all. He ordered the state to provide pre-K to any at-risk 4-year-old who applied. (The Supreme Court appointed Manning to oversee its earlier ruling in a school-funding case known as Leandro.)

And as you read here Monday, lawmakers' redistricting maps are under fire. Democrats and the NAACP have filed suit to block them, and former UNC Charlotte professor Ted Arrington, an independent and respected expert on redistricting, filed an affidavit saying Republicans used race as a predominant factor in drawing new maps for congressional and legislative districts. A hearing is set for Thursday.

Elections have consequences. And wherever you sit politically in North Carolina, the changes and court actions show that. Politicians and interest groups have been aggressive about striking back over the last few months against changes don't like.

UNHAPPY CHRIS CHRISTIE: 'I'll change the court'
Republican N.J. Gov. Chris Christie has taken a truly aggressive stance to striking back against something he doesn't like. The Wall Street Journal reports he plans a new challenge to a court-ordered state education funding formula that has provided billions of dollars in extra funding to poverty-stricken schools. In an interview with The Journal, Christie said that he would nominate two state Supreme Court judges this spring who won't "grossly" overstep their powers - something he contends the state's high court did in ordering more school funding after he slashed state funding for schools. "Eventually, the court is going to admit it was wrong or I'm going to be able to change the court so that the new members are not as tethered to [that] decision," Christie said during a 45-minute interview with the Journal ahead of his State of the State speech.

In May, in a 3-2 decision, the state Supreme Court ruled that the governor's cuts to education funding were unconstitutional. The court ordered him to send about $500 million more to 31 of New Jersey's poorest and most underfunded school districts. The Supreme Court ruled that Mr. Christie's budget violated the state constitution by shortchanging the school funding plan adopted by the Legislature in 2008 and affirmed by the court in 2009.

We've noted in the past the similarities between the New Jersey school funding case and North Carolina's Leandro case. We don't expect Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue to try to get around this state's school funding case. She's been pushing the legislature to restore funds for the state's pre-kindergarten that Republican lawmakers stripped last summer. She now says she wants to use higher than expected state revenues to restore funding. But there might be some Republican lawmakers yearning for Christie's way of handling the situation eventhough the judge who's overseeing the N.C. case - Judge Manning - is a Republican.

- Posted by Fannie Flono

Independents equal good news for GOP?

2012-01-10T10:34:00.003-05:00

Hello. Welcome to O-Pinion, the Observer editorial board's blog. I'm associate editor Fannie Flono, your host for today.

The first votes in the New Hampshire Primary were cast just after midnight Tuesday, and if you haven't heard, it was a tie. According to the Huffington Post, of the nine registered voters in Dixville Notch, Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman each got two votes! Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul each got one. And three Democratic ballots were cast for Barack Obama. Let's see how the rest of the primary unfolds. The Associated Press handicaps the race with a few tips on what will be factors: How independents will vote (Huntsman is counting on them), the impact of super PACs that are pouring money into TV and radio ads targeting certain candidates, and Mitt Romney's "slip" of the tongue in saying to a group of voters he liked "firing" people (Romney said it was in reference to businesses that gave him poor service; his opponents said it was in relationship to how he ran a former business.)

The latest Suffolk University tracking poll released this morning confirms what many expected: Mitt Romney, it says, is "primed to complete the political perfecta of winning both the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary, according to the final two-day tracking poll of likely voters in New Hampshire. "

Romney (37 percent) led Ron Paul (18 percent), Jon Huntsman (16 percent), Rick Santorum (11 percent), and Newt Gingrich (9 percent), while Rick Perry and Buddy Roemer each had 1 percent, with 7 percent undecided.

Huntsman, though, is positioned to overtake Paul for second place if his movement up over the last few weeks is an indication. He made a strong showing in the debate Sunday, which also has helped him, said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center in Boston. “The battle for second place will be determined by which candidate has the best field organization to bring out the votes today,” Paleologos said. “A good get-out-the-vote-operation accounts for up to 5 points, which can impact an expected outcome.”

Although Huntsman polled quite well among independents (26 percent), he had a poor relative showing among registered Republicans (9 percent).

GALLUP POLL FINDINGS

Closer to home John Hood of the John Locke Foundation based in Raleigh has a column today in the Carolina Journal called "Gallup's Good News for the GOP." As you can deduce, he finds new Gallup poll findings favorable to Republicans.

This contradicted what he said was "mainstream media outlets and political commentators" assessments. Hood said they "seized on the Gallup release to spin the upcoming 2012 elections. Some argued that the data predicted Democratic triumph. Some argued that the data made the case for Mitt Romney over his GOP rivals, on the grounds that he would have the easiest time wooing moderate swing voters. Some concluded that the Republican brand had been seriously tarnished by Tea Party intransigence. And some conservatives blasted Gallup and the media for partisan bias, because the 2010 GOP wave proved it was impossible for the Republican brand to have been as badly tarnished as the survey suggested."

He said the truth was down further in the Gallup poll release: "If they had (read to the end of the release), they would have read another passage from Gallup that also accurately reflected its survey findings: 'Despite the Democratic advantage in party identification, proportionately more American independents lean to the Republican Party than to the Democratic Party. Thus, when independents’ party leanings are taken into account and combined with the party’s core identifiers, the parties end up tied.'

..."The real news is that independents are leaning Republican, fully offsetting the Democratic edge in party affiliation," Hood said. "When that happens, the GOP usually has a good year."

Super PAC ads headed our way

2012-01-09T19:30:00.001-05:00

Tomorrow's editorial tonight:

Voting is Tuesday in New Hampshire for the Republican presidential primary, but the politicians and pundits have already turned their energies to South Carolina. That’s probably as it should be. South Carolina’s deep conservativism may be a better barometer of the GOP’s voting base, and since 1980 the state has consistently picked the Republican nominee.

We welcome the attention and influence that this part of the country will have on picking the Republican nominee for president. But we don’t welcome or relish this: the onslaught of attack ads that are coming this way, starting Wednesday. Those ads are the work of a “super PAC” that, thanks to a wrongheaded U.S. Supreme Court ruling, can raise unlimited amounts of money for candidates with very few restrictions.

These particular attack ads airing on TV and radio are anti-Mitt Romney ads. They are from a group supporting Newt Gingrich called Winning Our Future. The super PAC got the $1 million for this initial buy from a billionaire casino owner in Las Vegas. He gave $5 million in all.

The ads are in response to ferocious ads from a Romney super PAC (Restore Our Future) against Gingrich during the Iowa caucuses last week. The ads infuriated Gingrich, who blamed them for his fall to a disappointing fourth-place finish.

Rick Tyler, senior adviser to the pro-Gingrich super PAC, predicts the ad buy and an anti-Romney film that the group has bought could be a similar “game-changer” for Gingrich. That’s something he desperately needs, having dropped below Romney, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum in recent polling for the GOP presidential nomination.

Political observers are calling this unrestricted largesse “the Wild West of spending.” It’s the kind of spending to influence the election process that many expected after the Supreme Court in a 5-4 vote imprudently upended the bipartisan McCain-Feingold campaign spending law, removing restrictions on political ads funded by corporations and unions. Experts expect that of the $5 billion or so being spent on the 2012 federal elections, nearly $1 billion is likely to be of this unlimited type.

Campaign spending rules don’t even require disclosure of who’s donating money for these candidates unless it’s for a specific ad. The Federal Election Commission had an opportunity last month to change that. But in a 3-3 party line vote, they chose not to require groups that air political ads to disclose their donors.

Romney and Gingrich aren’t the only GOP candidates with super PAC backing. Rick Perry’s been supported by Make Us Great Again and Jon Huntsman has the backing of Our Destiny. And these super PACs aren’t just in the Republican fold. Democrats have them, too. Priorities USA Action is a pro-Obama super PAC. Last year more than 300 groups not affiliated with a political party spent $266 million to influence the midterm congressional elections. They included 84 super PACs.

This outsized influence on the election process, especially without transparency, is wrong. Congress and the FEC can do something about that. We as citizens should demand that they do.

Expert: GOP launched 'direct attack on black political participation'

2012-01-09T15:57:00.002-05:00

A surprising development has emerged in a fight that will help determine the outcome of elections this year.

Former UNC Charlotte professor Ted Arrington, an independent and recognized expert on redistricting, filed an affidavit saying Republicans used race as a predominant factor in drawing new maps for congressional and legislative districts.

The Republicans “systematically moved blocks in or out of their precincts on the basis of their race. No other explanation is possible given the statistical data,” Arrington wrote in an affidavit filed in Wake County Superior Court last week.

Democrats and the NAACP are asking the court to block the maps from being used until a trial can be held. The state is asking the court to throw out the suit. A hearing is scheduled for Thursday.

The maps are marked by large numbers of split counties and split precincts, mostly in minority communities. Arrington says the split precincts could confuse voters and hurt voter turnout, especially among black voters.

Arrington said that the GOP packed minority voters into the same districts beyond what they would need to elect minority candidates. That makes other districts safer for whites, and Republicans.

“The General Assembly has created in all three plans a kind of political apartheid,” Arrington wrote. He called it “a direct attack on black political participation.”

Arrington’s affidavit is important because he has been widely regarded as an expert in districting, reapportionment and other voting behavor for decades. He has been an expert witness in more than 40 voting rights cases and his testimony has been cited in a number of precedent-setting cases. He was chairman of the Political Science Department at UNC Charlotte for 18 years and was faculty president. His testimony has helped both parties over the years. He was an active Republican for many years before joining the Mecklenburg County Board of Elections in 1979.

Elections have consequences, and Republicans took control of the legislature in November 2010. Democrats drew district boundaries to benefit their party for decades; Republicans did the same this time. A judge will decide whether they crossed the line from strategic to unacceptable.

Arrington’s affidavit sure won’t help them. We hope the challenge is settled quickly, so that candidate filing can begin as scheduled Feb. 13 and the primary can be held on time, on May 8.

-- Taylor Batten

How far should government go for safety?

2012-01-09T12:07:00.009-05:00

Charlotte's City Council must tiptoe along a fine line when deciding the rules that will govern protesters during the Democratic National Convention. Council members must fully respect protesters' First Amendment rights while also preventing any kind of violence or disturbances that infringe on the rights of other citizens.

The council will hold a public hearing at 6:30 tonight on several proposed changes to city ordinances. Observer reporter Steve Harrison details the changes well in a story this morning.

Most of the proposed rules look sensible to us: It's certainly reasonable to ban protesters from having paint guns, bars, chains, pipes, handcuffs, bricks, fireworks and the like.

We like that the city is considering a designated "protest zone" but also would allow picketing on city sidewalks, as long as those protests don't obstruct cars or pedestrians. It's important, though, that the designated zone be somewhere near the action, not banished to Lancaster.

The City Council needs to look closely, though, at at least two changes that could quickly be abused. Under the new rules, Section 19-313, subsection (g) (6) would prohibit "a backpack, duffle bag, satchel, cooler or other item carried with the intent to conceal weapons or other prohibited items."

And subsection (g) (12) would prohibit "A mask or scarf worn with the intent to hide one's identity while commiting a crime."

This could open the door for even innocent bystanders to be forced to hand over their personal bags. There's no way for a police officer to distinguish a backpack with a student's books in it from one used to conceal a weapon. And what distinguishes a fashionable scarf from one that might be pulled up at any moment to cover one's face during a crime?

And these rules would be in place for other big events, not just the DNC.

The City Council and City Attorney Bob Hagemann are doing a lot right here, but need to look at each provision closely to consider how it could be abused.

What do you think? Take our poll at the top right of this page.

-- Taylor Batten

N.C. education is broken, not broke, legislator says

2012-01-09T10:16:00.004-05:00

The N.C. Democratic Party on Friday sent out a press release hammering state Rep. Tim Moffitt, a Republican from Asheville, for saying this in an early childhood education committee meeting:

“I am very suspect of early childhood education,” Moffitt said. “I am very suspect of education in general.”

We asked Moffitt what he meant by that (and included his original quote in an editorial in Saturday's paper). Here's his response. What do you think?

January 7, 2012

Taylor Batten
Editorial Page Editor
Charlotte Observer
600 S. Tryon St.
Charlotte, NC 28202

Taylor,

Thank you for your call. I am aware of my comments, however, I was not aware of the fact that the progressive Democrats are trying to make political hay of them. I appreciate your request for my side of the story.

First and foremost, I am a tough audience and question everything. The legislature’s primary responsibility is to protect the integrity of the relationship between the taxpayers and the government that serves them. As a parent, private citizen, employer and citizen legislator, I am frustrated with what I hear versus what I see and my concerns are not limited to education, but since that is the topic of your article, here is my point of view.

As a new legislator, what I hear constantly is how great our education system is and something just doesn’t feel quite right about it. What I see are kids who have graduated from our high schools having to take remedial classes in our community college system just to qualify for our University system or worse they are so disheartened by their experience in public school they are not even interested in furthering themselves. At that point they move into the workforce or become dependent on the state or generosity of others for their existence (which is not good for them or for society in general).

Small businesses who are the largest employers as a group state wide are faced with hiring needs and are very interested in hiring our young people as we were all young at one point and can remember vividly our first jobs because someone took a chance on us and thus our professional lives began. However, today’s group of publicly educated kids is more expensive to hire compared to my generation of publicly educated kids. Basic critical thinking skills and math skills are absent and their communication skills both verbal and written are sadly inadequate. Although there are wonderful success stories that can be pointed to in every generation of publicly educated kids, it is not sufficient and certainly not okay for us to ignore the realities or have them overshadowed by said successes. Success stories by and large are the things that give us hope and encouragement yet it is not representative of the vast majority.

As I wade into the debate on education I have lots of questions and they are not only appropriate they are years behind in the asking. When our education budget represents 55-60% of our entire States budget, there must be accountability and results. To suggest that more money would solve the problem simply ignores the truth and history. Our education system is not broke, it is broken and our kids are paying the price. That is not good public policy and it is irresponsible to sweep these realities under the rug and not seek a solution.

For the progressive Democrats to make this a political issue and attempt to embarrass me or mock me for my questions is sad but understandable as they are the chief architects of everything in our State including public education and they must defend what they have created. I would ask that they set politics aside and join me in finding meaningful solutions for our kids, our teachers and society as a whole. Until that time, I will continue with my public responsibility and ask the uncomfortable questions and my private responsibility of taking chances on our youth of today and help to give them a start to their professional lives. Someone has to….

Best,
Tim

Timothy D. Moffitt, Member, NC House of Representatives, District 116

Romney surges in new S.C. poll

2012-01-06T12:17:00.004-05:00

The state that helped bury Mitt Romney in 2008 is apparently willing to give him another chance.

Romney took a commanding lead in South Carolina in a Time/CNN/ORC poll released moments ago. The survey of likely primary voters has Romney at 37 percent, Rick Santorum at 19 and Newt Gingrich dropping 25 points since December to sit at 18 percent. Ron Paul placed fourth with 12 percent, with Rick Perry at 5 and Jon Huntsman 1.

Romney 37 percent is a 17-point gain since early December, with Santorum gaining 15 percent. There's still plenty of potential for more swings, with 49 percent of those surveyed saying they might change their minds.

Romney finished a distant fourth in South Carolina in 2008 before dropping out three weeks later, and the conservative state is likely a last stand for the Mitt alternatives. A convincing Romney victory here would pretty much cinch his nomination.

Photo: Mitt Romney was joined by U.S. Sen. John McCain and Gov. Nikki Haley at a rally at Charles Towne Landing in Charleston on Thursday. TIM DOMINICK - tdominick@thestate.com

Peter St. Onge

Another N.E. newspaper snubs Mitt Romney

2012-01-06T08:08:00.005-05:00

In November, New Hampshire's largest newspaper, the conservative Manchester Union-Leader, endorsed Newt Gingrich over Mitt Romney, noting pointedly that it endorses conservatives who are grounded in their core beliefs.

Now, the Boston Globe - New England's biggest newspaper - has endorsed Jon Huntsman over Romney, saying Thursday that Huntsman is the Republican who has been unafraid to articulate specific and far-sighted goals and ideals, while Romney has allowed himself to be pushed to the ideological right by concerns about his appeal to conservatives.

What impact does a Massachusetts newspaper have in the New Hampshire primary? Boston media have long held significant sway in Southern New Hampshire, which is less than an hour away and contains the bulk of the state's population. The Globe has a significant subscriber base there - including one St. Onge home - and many who live at or near the N.H.-Mass. border commute to Boston or its nearby technology corridor.

You can cue the conspiracy theories, such as the left-leaning Globe wanting to stretch out Republican primary for as long as possible to benefit President Barack Obama. But the Globe also snubbed the former Mass. governor in 2008, endorsing eventual nominee John McCain, and this endorsement illustrates the problem Romney not only has connecting with the far right of his party - but the overall electorate. While the far right frets that he's not a true conservative, moderates also have long had issues warming to him, in part because he's not offered a consistent philosophy or narrative through the years that they can connect to.

Said the Globe:

Romney’s ultimate intentions aren’t clear. Is this for real? Both his supporters and detractors suspect that behind the conservative scaffolding is a data-driven moderate who will make practical compromises. But the way Romney has run his campaign, it’s impossible to tell.

Romney will romp in New Hampshire regardless of endorsements. He'll also likely have time to convince the country in the general election that as the Republican governor of a liberal state, he was necessarily pragmatic, and that same pragmatism could serve America well in difficult times. First, he'll have to convince the conservatives in his party - and that will continue Saturday at what promises to be a contentious New Hampshire debate.

Peter St. Onge

North Carolina to decide Obama-Romney winner?

2012-01-05T15:17:00.002-05:00

The presidential election could hinge on North Carolina and a handful of other states, a Raleigh-based polling firm says.

Public Policy Polling compiled all its 2011 polling in 15 major swing states to assess how the presidential race is shaping up. The numbers suggest the nation is headed for a very close race if it’s a Barack Obama-Mitt Romney contest.

Obama is doing worse than polls suggest, PPP says, because Romney will probably pick up most of the voters who currently favor a different Republican for the nomination. PPP spells out why Romney is probably about four points better in each state than current polls suggest. If so, there are about 10 battleground states, with the largest being North Carolina, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida.

With Romney four points better than current polling, he wins 283-255, PPP says. If North Carolina or any other large state goes for Obama, it could swing the outcome to him.

Perhaps PPP’s most interesting finding about North Carolina? Obama’s level of support has held up better here than in any of 15 swing states. Obama won North Carolina by the slimmest of margins in 2008 and PPP’s 12 polls here in the past year average to Obama being up by two points here (or down two if you give Romney the four extra points). He has fallen by more than that in each of the other 14 major swing states.

In other words, get ready for a lot of attention from the presidential candidates this fall, and not just because the Democratic National Convention will be in Charlotte.

See PPP’s full analysis here.

-- Taylor Batten

Midnight madness: N.C. Republicans go bump in the night

2012-01-05T10:55:00.005-05:00

Republican leaders of North Carolina’s legislature acted unethically – if not unconstitutionally – in the middle of the night last night.

Led by House Speaker Thom Tillis of Mecklenburg County, Republicans voted to stop teachers who belong to the N.C. Association of Teachers from having dues automatically deducted from their paychecks.

Aside from whether it’s good policy to single out one organization for different treatment from all others, the dark-of-night vote was exactly the kind of disregard for transparency that fuels voters' disgust with politicians.

Gov. Bev Perdue called legislators back into session to consider her veto of a bill gutting the Racial Justice Act. Article III, Section 5 of the N.C. Constitution spells out that at such a session, “the General Assembly may only consider such bills as were returned by the Governor to that reconvened session for reconsideration.”

In other words, the legislature could only vote on Perdue’s veto of Senate Bill 9, the bill undoing the Racial Justice Act. Republicans didn’t have the votes to override that veto, though. So they adjourned Perdue’s veto session and called for another extra session to start at 12:45 this morning. At 1:12 a.m., they voted on the teachers’ dues veto.

If that’s not unconstitutional, it’s certainly an affront to the citizens of North Carolina, who don’t need the public’s business being done in the dead of night with no notice.

Tillis defended the vote. “Some people probably don’t like the fact we’re here tonight. But the fact of the matter is we got it done, we’re out of here, we’re saving money and going back home,” WRAL reported.

He argued that the public should have known Republicans could force votes at 1 a.m. But unless you’re tracking legislative doings at that hour, it’s not clear how the public could have known. The Racial Justice Act bill was the only one on the agenda.

The whole affair should be “a learning experience,” Tillis said.

It’s a learning experience, all right. The voters of North Carolina have learned a lot about how underhanded this particular crop of legislative leaders can be, and that they scoff at the notion of transparency.

-- Taylor Batten

Michele Bachmann leaves a "quote" legacy

2012-01-04T15:28:00.007-05:00

So Michele Bachmann is the first casualty of the Iowa GOP presidential caucus - if you don't count Rick Perry, who now says that just because he proclaimed Tuesday night he would return home to Texas "to determine whether there is a path forward" for his presidential bid doesn't mean he's bowing out. Bachmann, who canceled her trip to nearby Fort Mill today, said she was suspending her campaign. She had said Tuesday night she was staying in the race as the only true conservative despite her nearly last place finish. Only Jon Huntsman, who did not really campaign in Iowa, instead focusing on New Hampshire's primary next week, finished lower.

There have been and will be many assessments of Bachmann's campaign. But Foreign Policy magazine's blog, Flagship, has an interesting look back through what they call her "outlandish" foreign policy quotes.

Example?

“With all the money we owe China, I think we might rightly say, ‘Hu’s your daddy!’”

"We saw President (Hosni) Mubarak fall while President Obama sat on his hands."

Other quotes were captured by BuzzFeed in its "The 10 Craziest Michele Bachmann Quotes." Among them:
"If we took away the minimum wage... we could potentially wipe out unemployment because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level."

The Christian Science Monitor took note of her other gaffes in assessing her campaign's implosion. Notes staff writer Peter Grier: "OK, Bachmann did not scramble the events of Paul Revere's ride, as Palin famously did last summer. But she did place the opening battles of the Revolutionary War in New Hampshire. She mistakenly claimed John Wayne had been born in her Iowa hometown of Waterloo. (It was John Wayne Gacy, the notorious serial killer)."

He also noted that Bachmann, the only female candidate in the GOP race, couldn't even best her competitors in getting the female vote. "According to an Iowa State University poll taken in late December, her vote share was about 7.2 percent with both genders. In contrast, third-place finisher Ron Paul (in the Iowa caucus) had a huge gender gap in that same poll, with 32 percent of women saying they would support him, and 22 percent of men. (He finished with 21.4 percent of the actual vote.)"

The Week harnessed opinions from various sources and came up with six factors in Bachmann's campaign's demise: 1. She was overtaken by other non-Romneys.
2. Bachmann failed to find a winning message.
3. She told too many whoppers.
4. And made too many gaffes. (This quotes Grier from the Christian Science Monitor. Will no one forget a few mistakes?)
5. She failed to win over women.
6. Her campaign was dysfunctional.

On the overall Republican Iowa caucus results, where Mitt Romney bested Rick Santorum by just eight votes to take the win, Guy Benson of Townhall.com has interesting insights, including this about fourth place finisher Newt Gingrich: "If his speech tonight was any indication, Newt is an embittered candidate who's ready to unleash some pent-up frustration on Mitt Romney in the coming weeks." And he already started with this ad comparing himself and Romney in Saturday's New Hampshire Union-Leader, which has endorsed Gingrich.

On the other side of the political aisle, President Barack Obama stirred up some dust with his recess appointment today of Richard Cordray as new head of the controversial Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Republicans had blocked the appointment last month saying it had too much power. Townhall.com's Kate Hicks called the move "another presidential power grab." Other conservatives agree. What do you think?

Posted by associate editor Fannie Flono

CMS candidates: The Good and what's 'Crappy'

2012-01-04T08:30:00.002-05:00

Good morning. Welcome to the editorial board's O-Pinion blog. I'm associate editor Fannie Flono, your host for today.

It will be interesting to see who the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board chooses Thursday to fill the District 6 seat left vacant when Tim Morgan was elected at large last November. Twelve people interviewed for the job Tuesday, and several were good candidates. That confirmed what I've observed before when the school board selects replacements for vacant seats - many informed, articulate, passionate and highly qualified people will throw their hats in for public office when they don't have to run a campaign to get elected.

In fact, I dare say, the range of good candidates (in age, occupation, ethnicity) seems to be broader among candidates in the cases where the board chooses as opposed to cases where the voters choose. I saw it both when Democratically leaning districts had vacancies and when Republican leaning districts had vacancies. District 6 is a heavily Republican suburban districts.

That means school board members shouldn't have any trouble picking someone who could perform well on the board. The challenge for the community is to get some of the people who are willing to vie for public office when politicians are choosing to consider taking the plunge before the voters too. Their service is needed.

What's that about crap?
Most of the candidates steered clear of antagonizing the school board, seeing as how each wanted to get enough votes of the members to actually get appointed to the District 6, to fill out the nearly two-year unexpired term. Not so for perennial candidate Larry Bumgarner. He derided the questions that the board asked, saying they were only questions designed to see how much candidates agreed with board members. He told the board they should serve for free because that's what he would do. He asked about getting his parking ticket validated in the midst of the interview.

His most intriguing idea was related to what I'll call the "crappy car test." He said he'd observed that most teachers drive crappy cars which is an indication they're not paid well enough. He said students drive better cars than teachers. He suggested finding a way to help teachers get a 1 percent car loan. Not a bad idea, and school boards of the past have considered and urged similar help for educators with home mortgages. But I'm betting that many teachers, who've been without raises for the last three years, would prefer the money.

Occupy Charlotte - in 1840
One of the things that stand out Former Observer editorial board member Lew Powell pointed our way to this nugget. It's from the blog, North Carolina Miscellany, and it's about Charlotte "occupiers" - from 260 years ago!

The piece from Nicholas Graham, called "Occupy Charlotte, circa 1840s," opines at the start, "Does this sound familiar?" Then it quotes the following:

"The most odious feature in this system is that it robs the MANY, imperceptibly, to enrich the FEW; – It clothes a few wealthy individuals with power not only to control the wages of the laboring man, but also at their pleasure to inflate or depress the commerce and business of the whole country – exciting a spirit of extravagance, which it terminates in pecuniary ruin and too often the moral degradation of its victims. This system must be thoroughly reformed, before we can hope to see settled prosperity smile alike upon all our citizens."

That quote, Graham notes, is from the first issue of the Mecklenburg Jeffersonian, a Democratic paper published in Charlotte in 1841. Issues of the Jeffersonian from the 1840s are now online as part of the North Carolina Newspapers collection on DigitalNC.org.

Yep, things that seem new and fresh to some - sometimes aren't.

Time for talk is over; let's act on housing

2012-01-03T21:27:00.003-05:00

Wednesday's Observer editorial:

Anyone who truly wants to fix the problems of homelessness and affordable housing in Charlotte had to be feeling two conflicting emotions during an event on Tuesday: Hope and dread.

Hundreds of people gathered uptown to hear Mayor Anthony Foxx read a resolution declaring 2012 “The Year of Our Neighbors” and committing to making progress toward ending homelessness. They also watched a new documentary – “Souls Of Our Neighbors: Fears, Facts and Affordable Housing” – that highlighted six hard-working Charlotte families whose lives have been stabilized by affordable housing.

It was an uplifting event. The documentary was inspiring – and persuasive. It illustrated what housing experts have long known: Affordable housing (meaning, spending not more than 30 percent of one’s income on housing) is a basic building block for successful families. With roofs over their heads, lower-income people can focus on work and health. And, significantly, lower-income children can focus on their educations, and have a feeling of security that’s vital to their development into successful adults.

Thus, the hope: Hundreds of smart, hard-working, well-intentioned Charlotte residents, coming together to raise awareness about a quiet scourge of this community. An estimated 6,000 Charlotteans are homeless, and many hundreds are chronically homeless. The situation is only getting worse. The number of homeless families in Charlotte jumped 36 percent in 2010 and 21 percent in 2011, according to the U.S. Conference of Mayors. The numbers are expected to continue to rise this year.

Still, for many in attendance Tuesday, there was a strong sense of déjà vu. Nonprofit and government leaders have been talking about ending homelessness for years now. There have been summits and panels and documentaries and plans. Those have yielded some progress (notably, Moore Place will open this month with 85 beds for the chronically homeless), but nothing on the scale needed to solve the problem. Tuesday had the feeling of another pep rally for those who are already pepped.

Thus, the dread. This is not to minimize the importance of awareness, nor the difficulty of the problem, nor the passionate hours so many devote to it. But Charlotte has been talking about the issue for a long time. There’s considerable danger that Tuesday’s renewed public commitment to ending the homeless problem will, like similar instances, fizzle when it comes to translating it to actual homes.

Maybe this time will be different. Maybe 2012 really will be the Year of Our Neighbors. Maybe Mayor Foxx really will help lead more than proclamations this time. To be sure, Tuesday was intended to be only a kickoff to a year of progress, and it did a good job of that.

Now it’s time to act on it. It will require government agencies; might the City Council finally consider inclusionary zoning, in which developers mix affordable units with market-rate ones? And it will require help of others, including nonprofits, businesses and faith communities.

Organizers of the Souls Of Our Neighbors event use the acronym SOON. But soon isn’t good enough. How about now?

For the Record: A flag burner's perspective

2012-01-03T11:55:00.011-05:00

For the Record offers perspectives on issues from Charlotte and elsewhere. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the Observer's editorial board. Readers can send For the Record submissions, which appear regularly in the print Observer, to opinion@charlotteobserver.com.

The writer is from Charlotte:

My name is Jason Bargert. Myself and three others set fire to the United States flag on the lawn at 600 E. Trade Street in front of the Occupy Charlotte camp. Though I have been openly involved with Occupy Charlotte, I did not provide notice or acquire approval for my actions, as is the policy of Occupy Charlotte. In this protest we acted as individuals, not as occupiers.

The symbolism of our display has been a long and heated debate for nearly a century. Over the last few days I have seen my own thoughts, feelings, and motives discussed on a large scale without my participation. I would like the opportunity to tell you what we did and what it meant to me.

First I would like to express that I intended no disrespect to the individual enlisted men, women, and veterans living and deceased. These people have entered service to the people of their nation and take a vow to protect their loved ones and countrymen from all enemies, foreign and domestic. I hold our veterans in the highest regard knowing that their motives were not always the same as those who send them into battle.

The flag symbolizes many different things to many different people. To the people who defend our homeland and stand united in service to the safety of our people - the flag that I burned was not a symbol of your efforts and convictions or a display of disrespect to you. The flag I burned was an effigy to the aggressive colonialism, destructive corporate policy, and utter negligence that the United States government has shown for the people's welfare and well-being on a global scale.

These behaviors are widely agreed to be present and unacceptable. We as a nation seem to only be divided on the source and solution to these problems that have come to represent our government worldwide. It is a government that proudly touts itself to be "For the people, by the people" as its continuing credo. This statement implicates every American with responsibility for our government's actions. This hypocrisy is not why men and women enlist, and I am very aware of that. I stand respectfully in solidarity with Occupy Marines, Army, Police, and all the people who have put their lives, pensions, badges, businesses, families and personal well being on the line to support the cause of true freedom at home and abroad.

I will apologize for the difficulty that my wife, family, and Occupy Charlotte must endure in the shockwave of my actions. My home and social life are in shambles, and I am aware that no one is responsible for this but myself. I only hope that they will show understanding and compassion while I too must endure the consequences of my actions.

I do, however, without remorse set fire to the hypocrisy, negligence, puppetry of our system, and adherence to flags and nationalism in the place of rational governance and compassion. The burning of the flag (to me) is an act that asserts the right of the people over the government. America is ruled by the people, not the government. I believe that it is our patriotic duty at this juncture to make that assertion. Flag burning is a patriotic act carried out by people who care deeply enough about our freedoms to challenge directly the government when it becomes a threat to the people. Patriots who love America burn flags.

Some will say the flag symbolizes everything good about America, and it should be respected and cherished as we strive to gain back its proper meaning. I respect that ideal. On the other hand, some would argue that it is symbolic of the corruption and greed within the system and no longer represents our people. We must understand that these are emotions and ideas that vary from person to person. The symbolism of the flag is very broad and only defined by the individuals who use it to make a statement.

My personal feelings regarding Occupy Charlotte, like most, are in constant evolution. I have received an outpouring of support from other occupiers, occupations, and individuals who understand the symbolism of my action. The local movement was unified in their contempt for the event that took place. They were, on the other hand, divided on the issue of whether or not those who participated should be banned. Most who seemed resolved to my removal had been working with the Charlotte City Council and local church groups to build a relationship in order to stop or postpone the ordinance that will remove the encampment. The encampment itself voted not to expel me and the those who demanded my expulsion blocked, and walked. This group also included the Occupy Charlotte legal and financial team.

I feel that Occupy Charlotte has walked on eggshells to not inflame the city council. This is because we knew they have had this ordinance drafted and awaiting a vote. I feel that the local movement has been sedated by this knowledge from nearly our beginning. The city council has postured against the movement by drafting this ordinance in the first place. They have shown that they will, with full knowledge of the facts, welcome a corrupt corporation with an endless list of human rights violations into our community, and pay their moving expenses and taxes (Chiquita). To placate this council in order to keep the camp on grounds is not a victory. I hope that Occupy Charlotte will move away from a focus on public image and welcome an era of action for the new year.

I have been encouraged to by many others to say many things within this statement to ensure "damage control" is handled properly. I can only speak my true feelings and live in good standing with my own convictions. I am hurt that my free speech is not so welcome as others. My statement was inflammatory, but it was protected and free. I feel that the initial reaction of many was fueled mostly by emotion and not understanding. I know that public outreach is important to the Occupy movement. I know it is striving to be all-inclusive and many feel my actions pushed more people away than those who have already openly backed out. I too feel pushed away. I too have shed tears for this action. I would like to thank Occupy Charlotte for all the things I have learned while participating, all the (remaining few) friendships forged, and insight I have gained in my experience with this movement locally.

I am very grateful for the movement's decision not to ban me. I am, however, saddened both by the divide my actions have sealed and the lack of support I have received locally and at home. This being considered, I respectfully, and with overwhelming sadness resign my direct participation with Occupy Charlotte. I remain open to dialogue with its participants and wish them the very best this new year. This is by no means a resignation from my duties as an activist and active participant in the cause of freedom.

Iowa caucuses: The predictions

2012-01-03T09:54:00.004-05:00

More than 100,000 voters will head tonight to 1,774 precincts across Iowa and make their case to fellow caucus-goers about who should be the Republican nominee for president. Everyone then votes, and the results are called in to party headquarters and the media, which will declare their own winners and losers.

Who will be that winner tonight?

The latest polls say those winners will come from a top tier of candidates: Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and the surging Rick Santorum.

The New York Times offers 5 things to watch, including the evangelical vote, Ron Paul's fade and Mitt Romney's margin. Romney doesn't have to win, Michael Shear says. A second-place finish - or even third - will be enough.

Politico says third will be disappointing for Romney. He needs a second-place finish - and 28 percent of the vote - or pundits will start the no-passion-for-Mitt talk again.

Romney, meanwhile laughs at second-place talk. "We're going to win this thing," he predicted to an Iowa crowd last night. After sleeping on it, he's not so bold: "I don't think I quite said that," he told MSNBC this morning.

What are pundits predicting?

American Spectator says Romney will win, followed by Paul and Santorum.

ABC News polled its political staff. The result: 6 predict a Romney win, 2 say Paul and one says Santorum.

The conservative blog Red State says Romney, then Paul, with Santorum and Perry fighting it out for third.

The Washington Post's political staff and columnists are split between Romney and Santorum: Romney gets 7 predictions, Santorum 5, Paul 1 and Gary Johnson 1.

Our view: polls and caucus results are often at odds in Iowa, but the top three of Romney, Paul and Santorum seems a good bet. Paul has the most enthusiastic supporters. Santorum has the not-Mitt momentum (without the scrutiny that comes with it - at least in time for tonight's voting). Romney has the resources to get people out to caucus.

Expect a Romney win, with Santorum surging into second and, for now, claiming status as the conservative alternative heading into New Hampshire and, more importantly, South Carolina, which will offer non-Mitts their possible last stand.

Peter St. Onge

Our Thanks to eight for their good works

2011-12-30T17:42:00.003-05:00

On Saturday's Opinion pages, the Observer editorial board thanks eight people for their good works and commitment. We've done this at the end of the year for more than two decades. Those we thank are more than worthy but they are examples of the thousands of people who give their time, money and talents to make this area a more compassionate, prosperous and livable place. Several work with organizations that could use public support. Here is a list of them all and where you can get information about their groups (find the full articles on each in the print paper or at www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion:

Thelma Reynolds works with Charlotte Family Housing, a group that helps the homeless. Reach Charlotte Family Housing at http://www.charlottefamilyhousing.org/ or by calling 704-335-5488. You can donate online.

Cate Martin is president of the Merry Oaks Neighborhood Association, and does dog rescue work, fostering does for the North Mecklenburg Animal Rescue. Reach North Mecklenburg Animal Rescue at http://www.northmeckanimalrescue.org/ or email nmeckanimalrescue@yahoo.com.

Candace Curlin Vance established a book club for the homeless called Turning Pages Book Club. It meets Tuesdays at the uptown branch of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library. Go to http://turningpagescharlotte.blogspot.com for information on the club and how to donate.

Ron Leeper founded Men Who Care Global, a group reaching out to young black males. Reach the group by email at mwcglobal1@gmail.com or call 1-855-692-4562.

Ashley Armistead and Lori Klingman are president and vice president of Let Me Run, a running club for fourth-grade through middle-school-age boys designed to build self-esteem as well as physical health. Reach them at http://www.letmerun.org/ Their mailing address is Let Me Run, P.O. Box 473314, Charlotte, NC 28247. Donations can be made online or by mail.

Clair Lane founded Our Foundation for Children which aims to help keep families together by providing books, food, clothing and toys for needy families. Reach the group at www.ourfoundationforchildren.org or by phone at 704-503-3996 or 704-503-4964.

Jerry McGee is president of Wingate University in Union County and first chairman of the Union County Partners for Progress. Reach him by email at mcgee@wingate.edu.

Aimee Norman is head of outreach at Christ Episcopal Church. Reach the church at http://www.christchurchcharlotte.org/www.

Posted by Fannie Flono

Email threat deserves stern rebuke

2011-12-26T21:37:00.001-05:00

Tuesday's Observer editorial:

Tracy Montross, special assistant to Mayor Anthony Foxx, embarrassed her boss and demeaned his office when she threatened leaders of Charlotte’s International Cabinet in November for failing to upgrade the mayor to first-class on a trip to China.

Montross told CIC officials in an email from China on Nov. 14 to “please expect hell” with upcoming budgets after she requested in vain that the CIC reimburse Foxx for the cost of his first-class ticket, the Observer reported last week. Foxx, who apologized to CIC’s executive director Sharon Reed in an email Friday, was apparently aware of the reimbursement requests, but not the threat that accompanied them.

Foxx led an 11-member delegation to China to meet with business and political leaders. The trip came two days after Foxx’s mayoral re-election campaign, and he understandably wanted to fly business class during the lengthy flight so as to be more physically and mentally ready for the 20 or so meetings he faced with Chinese leaders. The International Cabinet, which receives city funding, was not bound by city policy that reimburses only economy airline tickets, but CIC declined the requests, anyway.

Foxx paid for his upgraded flight out of his pocket before the trip. On Dec. 15, CIC’s executive board voted to reimburse Foxx $2,321, the difference between an economy and first-class ticket. When asked by the Observer if Montross’ threat had resulted in the reimbursement, CIC vice chair Charles Lansden said: “I can’t comment on that.”

In a letter to Foxx last Thursday, Montross was appropriately regretful that her actions “could bring into question your leadership and commitment to our community.” She neglected to add that those actions could undermine the public’s trust that city business isn’t conducted amid a culture of coercion.

We’re also skeptical about the depth of regret Montross feels, given that she sent her apologetic letter to Foxx more than a month after threatening the International Cabinet but shortly before a report on her actions was scheduled to air on a Charlotte TV station.

While Montross works for Foxx, she technically reports to City Manager Curt Walton. In an email to the Observer, Walton said he would not discuss an employee’s performance issues in public. He did say, however, that Montross “is an extremely talented employee that I look forward to working with for years to come.”

That seems to indicate that Montross will not be fired over this mistake. Fair enough - a singular error in judgment shouldn’t cost an otherwise valuable employee a job, unless that mistake is a whopper. Montross came close, in our opinion, and we hope the discipline she gets sends that message.

Why do more Democrats dislike Tim Tebow?

2011-12-21T18:07:00.006-05:00

Public Policy Polling has taken a break from Election 2012 to bring us the important news that the Green Bay Packers have surpassed the Dallas Cowboys as America’s team, according to the latest PPP survey. This is big, we think, because we like the Packers more, too.

The numbers: 22 percent of voters said the Packers were their favorite team, while only 11 percent named the Cowboys. The Bears, Steelers and Giants had 8 percent. Just two percent admitted to liking the Jets.

Another interesting tidbit, from PPP:
Tim Tebow is viewed favorably by 68% of Republicans but only 39% of Democrats. Just to put those numbers into some context, none of the Republican Presidential candidates are even seen positively by 68% of Republicans. He's more popular than any of them.
Just four out of 10 Democrats like Tebow, compared to seven in 10 Republicans. Why is that? After all, he spreads the wealth around selflessly in the Denver offense. Plus, you know, he’s a lefty.

Yes, we understand what’s behind the numbers. People are uncomfortable with Tebow’s overt faithfulness. Some dislike him instantly because he is against abortion - doctors recommended his mother have the procedure because pregnancy complications with him, but she declined.

Many don’t know that story, however, but they see such fervent belief from Tebow and assume it likely is accompanied by other things, such as the bigotry toward gays and Muslims displayed by the radical Christian right. It’s unfortunate, as always - not only because Tebow has indicated none of that, but because Christians (and Muslims) shouldn’t be defined by their extremes.

Nor should Democrats and Republicans, of course.

Back to the primaries.

Peter St. Onge

Time to investigate Beverly Perdue's flights

2011-12-21T14:32:00.003-05:00

The Raleigh News & Observer offers an easy way today to ease the regrets of N.C. Board of Elections chairman Larry Leake, who has expressed misgivings for prematurely shutting down an investigation into Gov. Beverly Perdue's campaign flights.

Says the N&O's editorial board: Schedule a round of hearings.

Leake, a Democrat, told the Associated Press earlier this month that he regretted shutting down the investigation before it reached the hearing stage. We noted then and since that the smoke was certainly there if the Board wanted to look harder for wrongdoing. Sure enough, a Wake County grand jury has subsequently indicted Perdue's campaign finance director and another campaign employee, alleging a scheme to let a Morganton businessman give the campaign $32,000 more than state law allows. That follows the February indictment of another Morganton man alleging he hid money used to pay for a 2007 flight.

What would new Board of Elections hearings accomplish? Says the N&O:
The first time around, campaign figures were spared the potential awkwardness of having to answer questions from the elections board under oath. Perhaps the investigation's outcome would have remained the same if those folks had been heard from. But it's also conceivable such testimony would have generated more interest from Wake County District Attorney Colon Willoughby, who has declined to prosecute campaign insiders over how the flights were handled even while moving against people who arranged or bankrolled the candidate's travel on private aircraft.

Another reason: The Board of Elections happens to be looking into Perdue's past and future opponent, Pat McCrory, because of old complaints about his 2008 gubernatorial campaign. That probe, couple with the early shutdown of the Perdue investigation, doesn't look good.

Let's hope Leake shows he has more than hollow regrets.

Peter St. Onge

Who's to blame for the payroll tax cut uncertainty?

2011-12-21T09:25:00.006-05:00

U.S. House Republicans are getting assailed this morning for rejecting a bipartisan Senate compromise to extend the payroll tax cut.

As of this morning, the cuts are in jeopardy. House Republicans are ready to talk to the Senate about how to extend cuts for a full year, rather than the two months the Senate approved 89-10. That was rejected by the House on Tuesday, and the Senate and White House have said that there will be no more negotiating.

The Republicans are clearly betting that Americans will wonder why the Senate can't come back to work between now and Jan. 1 to work on improving the legislation. Senate Democrats and the White House believe that the public believes this is another obstructionist move by conservative Republicans.

Thus far, the Democrats are right. Opinion from the left and right is overwhelmingly against the House. Tell us what you think in our unscientific poll to the right.

First, our view: We can't vouch for the purity of Republican motives, but as our editorial says this morning, we think the two-month extension is bad policy. If the choice is that flawed legislation or no tax cut extension, we'll take the two months. But we think the Senate can and should try to do better.

What does everyone else think? A sampling:

A bad sign for the House: It has lost the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board, which lashed out at the GOP's "circular firing squad." Said the WSJ editorial:

The GOP leaders have somehow managed the remarkable feat of being blamed for opposing a one-year extension of a tax holiday that they are surely going to pass. This is no easy double play.
Republicans have also achieved the small miracle of letting Mr. Obama position himself as an election-year tax cutter, although he's spent most of his Presidency promoting tax increases and he would hit the economy with one of the largest tax increases ever in 2013. This should be impossible.

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank thinks the Republicans are more false-hearted than Bravehearts. (Post readers agree - 93 percent vote that the payroll tax uncertainty is John Boehner's fault.)

The Post's Ezra Klein, often the most sensible voice in the room, examines why Boehner has sent the bill to conference committee. Klein hints that Boehner is positioning himself to ultimately cave in to the Senate agreement.

Guy Benson of the conservative Town Hall says that Washington's dysfunction is on full display. He says there's plenty of blame for both parties to share.

The Hill has video of John McCain telling CNN that the House's move is "harming the Republican Party," plus a comment from GOP Senator Bob Corker urging the House to resolve the issue.

Finally, Time's Adam Sorenson says four things can happen from this point on:

Either the House swallows bile, bends to the will of the Senate and passes the two-month bill unconditionally. Senators return from their vacations to negotiate a new deal with the GOP. Democrats and Republicans simply let the tax cut expire and jostle for the coveted position of slightly less reviled political party while the economy suffers–a tax hike on 160 million Americans, the loss of unemployment benefits for millions of others, a 27% cut to doctors’ Medicare fees– in the aftermath. Or the two parties manage the kind of 11th-hour, mutually unsatisfactory, gimmicky deal that’s already inspired so many ill feelings this year, either through conference committee or some provision attached to the two-month extension that would set the stage for a new agreement when Congress returns in January. Happy holidays.

Tell us what you think.

Peter St. Onge

Get back to work on payroll tax cut bill

2011-12-20T18:38:00.001-05:00

Wednesday's editorial tonight:

We don’t often appreciate the obstinacy of the tea party, but U.S. House Republicans were right this week to call on the Senate to do better than produce a two-month extension of a payroll tax cut. Was the House right for the right reasons? We’re not so certain of that.

The House rejected on Tuesday a bipartisan Senate bill that would have extended the tax cut and unemployment benefits for two months instead of allowing them to expire on Jan. 1. Senators had approved the measure with an 89-10 vote before scooting home for a holiday break and promising to tackle a longer extension when they return.

House Republicans objected, however, saying that the solution really wasn’t much of one. We agree. This payroll tax cut and the extended unemployment benefits that are part of the package need to be extended for a year. A two-month extension is bad policy because its brevity doesn’t accomplish what the tax cut intends – giving consumers and businesses enough comfort that they’re emboldened to use the extra money to spend and hire and stimulate the economy. Compromise is laudable, but not so much when it results in a poor product.

Not that there aren’t items to build upon in the compromise bill – specifically, that lawmakers are paying for the tax cut extension. (It would be largely covered by an increase on the fee that government-backed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac charge to insure new mortgages and refinancings.) But one House member told the Washington Post that “at minimum,” the extension should be 90 days to match the quarterly schedule on which many corporations pay taxes. Other House Republicans noted rightly that on principle, Washington shouldn’t nudge another important decision down the road.

Skeptics might argue that previous episodes of legislative can-kicking this year were due primarily to House inflexibility on debt reduction – and that this week’s principled stand is really about political maneuvering. What House Republicans really want, some believe, is to avoid a payroll tax cut they privately oppose while putting blame on a Democratic-led Senate for refusing to hammer out a solution.

All of which might be true. But if that gambit forces senators to come back to Washington and build on the two-month extension, we’re all for it. Last we checked, there’s still more than a week left before the new year. Most Americans are scheduled to work between now and then; we welcome the Senate to do the same.

Still, Republicans in the House are taking a significant risk. If senators choose not to open new payroll tax cut talks – or if they return to face House proposals as rigidly ideological as their debt proposals this summer and fall – then Americans will likely blame Republicans for the average of $1,000 that won’t appear in paychecks next year. Democrats will encourage that kind of thinking, as President Barack Obama previewed Tuesday. “Let’s be clear: the bipartisan compromise that was reached on Saturday is the only viable way to prevent a tax hike on January first – the only one,” he said at the White House.

If the choice facing Americans is a flawed two-month compromise or no payroll tax cut extension, the compromise sounds good to us. But Congress can do better than that. We sure hope it doesn’t do worse.

Free checked bags on all airlines?

2011-12-20T12:01:00.002-05:00

Remember the popular outrage when Bank of America proposed a monthly $5 debit card fee? It should come as no surprise, then, that U.S. Rep. Larry Kissell, D-N.C., thinks government should be able to tell airlines what they can and can’t charge.

Kissell, who is expected to face a tough reelection bid in the coming year, has introduced a bill that would guarantee airline passengers one checked bag at no additional cost. This might be hugely popular with the traveling public. Airlines are down there with banks and Congress in public perception, and those baggage fees drive travelers nuts.

But should the federal government be able to block companies from operating in a free market? Instead of that heavy hand, how about letting passengers decide whether they’re willing to pay the fees? We bet Southwest Airlines, which is making hay over its lack of baggage fees, thinks competition is a good thing. Maybe Kissell will next require that the airlines can’t charge more for premium seating, or that they have to serve free meals on board.

Besides, we wonder if such a ban would even save passengers money. Wouldn’t the airlines just bake those fees into higher fares, or find other ways to recoup it? And if they couldn’t, might Kissell’s legislation spark bankruptcies and job losses in the airline industry?

“Hidden fees and charges are unfair to passengers, and it’s time we stand up for all Americans by ensuring these basic minimum standards for air travel,” Kissell said. Except the baggage fees aren’t hidden at all. In fact, banning them would probably prompt fees that actually are hidden.

We love the idea of free bags. But we love the idea of a free market even more.

-- Taylor Batten

Don't limit probe into Cogdell hiring

2011-12-19T21:11:00.001-05:00

Tuesday's Observer editorial:

When Democrat Harold Cogdell first considered, then reconsidered, ousting Jennifer Roberts as chair of the Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners a year ago, we worried about the implications of his move.

Cogdell’s maneuvering, the Observer editorial board said then, “raises fears of two years of dysfunction, with politics and personal ambition a strong undercurrent.”

Fast forward to tonight. Politics and personal ambition helped Cogdell finish the job on Roberts this time. His rise prompted a jilted fellow Democrat to raise questions about his ethics. Those questions are important and demand answers. But if commissioners don’t handle things well tonight, the public’s distrust of Cogdell could deservedly creep over to the whole board.

Cogdell contracted with C.W. Williams Community Health Center for legal work last summer just two months after successfully arguing for a 39 percent boost in county money for the nonprofit. That had, at a minimum, the appearance of a possible impropriety. An independent investigation into Cogdell’s hiring is needed, and Cogdell tonight will ask commissioners to authorize exactly that.

Cogdell, though, also wants the probe to determine what other commissioners knew and when they knew it. If fellow Democrats were aware of Cogdell’s arrangement for months and raised concerns about it only when he broke up with them, that too would be unethical. (And if they didn’t know about it previously, who leaked it to them days before the chairmanship vote?)

Dumont Clarke, a Democratic commissioner, said Monday his “jaw dropped” when he saw Cogdell’s proposed investigation. Clarke said the most important question is whether Cogdell did anything improper and that Cogdell is trying to “muddy the waters” by also delving into what other commissioners knew. That’s a secondary question that can be answered later, Clarke said.

Clarke told the editorial board Monday that he first heard of Cogdell’s ties to C.W. Williams from commissioner George Dunlap the Friday before the Tuesday vote for chairman. Dunlap told us he first learned of it around that time when a source, whom he won’t name, told him about it.

Dunlap added that even if he suspected Cogdell had done something unethical, it would be OK for Dunlap not to report that because there is, apparently, no explicit board policy that would require him to. That is a puzzling take on ethics indeed.

Cogdell may very well be trying to push some of the spotlight off of him and on to other commissioners. But the public deserves a complete report on all aspects of this episode. Any effort by Clarke and fellow Democrats tonight to delay a full investigation will leave doubts in citizens’ minds about what’s not coming out. Better to have the probe cover all facets, draw its conclusions and put the matter to bed.

Courageous Cooksey

Republican commissioner Neil Cooksey, who is serving his second term, announced Monday that he won’t seek reelection next year. We haven’t always agreed with Cooksey on policy, but he has been a solid contributor to the board who asks good, tough questions. The courage he has demonstrated in his fight against pancreatic cancer has been inspiring, and we wish him the best.

Second thoughts about Gingrich in Iowa

2011-12-19T07:58:00.003-05:00

Good morning and welcome to O-pinion, the Observer's place for perspective and discussion. I'm Peter St. Onge, associate editor of the O's editorial board, and I'll be hosting today.

We'll be watching the developing chaos surrounding a two-month extension of a payroll tax cut, which has stalled after Republican House members objected Sunday to a Senate agreement to extend the cut for two months. We're in favor of a payroll tax cut extension, if it's paid for, although a two-month extension is too temporary to prompt the consumer spending and business hiring that advocates have said a full-year extension would bring. It would be a stunner, however, if Republicans, despite their misgivings about the extension, handed Democrats a political gift by allowing the tax cut to expire at the first of the year.

The other big buzz this morning? The maligning of Newt Gingrich from within his own party is finally taking a toll.

A new Public Policy Polling survey in Iowa shows Gingrich sinking suddenly - "imploding," says PPP's Tom Jensen - with Ron Paul now taking the lead in the state and Gingrich sliding to a distant third.

Paul leads with 23 percent in the poll, released this morning. Mitt Romney has 20 percent, with 14 percent for Gingrich, 10 percent each for Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann, and Rick Perry, 4 percent for Jon Huntsman, and two percent for Gary Johnson.

That's a 13 percent drop in the past two PPP polls for Gingrich, and Jensen says that negative ads have taken their toll: Gingrich's personal favorability numbers have gone from 62 percent positive to 52 percent, with respondents who have an unfavorable impression of him rising from 31 to 40 percent.

The polls in Iowa and elsewhere continue to be volatile as Republicans search for a candidate not named Romney. But, says Jensen, Paul's rise is a sign that campaigns actually do matter some in Iowa. Says Jensen:

22% of voters think he's run the best campaign in the state compared to only 8% for Gingrich and 5% for Romney. The only other candidate to hit double digits on that question is Bachmann at 19%. Paul also leads Romney 26-5 (with Gingrich at 13%) with the 22% of voters who say it's 'very important' that a candidate spends a lot of time in Iowa.

There's still two weeks of campaigning left before the Jan. 3 caucus, but historically, candidates that begin to decline in Iowa don't recover. A Gingrich loss - especially if he finishes third behind Romney - would clearly be a blow to his campaign. Given Romney's likely victory in New Hampshire, Gingrich would be reeling as the primaries move to South Carolina, where Newt would have to get a win.

Liberals are gleeful about the chaos. Says Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne: "The establishment was happy to use Gingrich’s tactics to win elections, but it never expected to lose control of the party to the voters it rallied with such grandiose negativity."

The New York Times Frank Bruni adds that while most politicians are full of themselves, Gingrich is overstuffed.

The Weekly Standard's William Kristol wonders if the volatility among Republicans could lead to a convention in which delegates didn't merely rubber-stamp what the primaries gave them. That might be a good thing, Kristol says.

Who won the final Iowa GOP debate?

2011-12-16T08:27:00.002-05:00

The Republican debates have been the surprise hit of the fall political and TV season. They're entertaining and revealing. They've helped doom Rick Perry and launch Newt Gingrich, and they've given Ron Paul a new shot at exposure that pundits largely wouldn't give him.

Last night, the FOX News debate in Iowa offered voters a final chance at sifting before that state's caucus on Jan. 3.

Who did best?

Time's Mark Halperin says Mitt Romney, who gets an A- in Halperin's grading for how each candidate performed and improved their standing in the race. Romney recovered from a shaky performance in the last debate and was "smart, focused, big-brained and cool," said Halperin.

Other grades: Michele Bachmann B+, Rick Santorum B, Newt Gingrich B-, Ron Paul B-, John Huntsman C-, Rick Perry C-.

The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza picked a few winners, led by Bachmann, who "was forceful — and effective — when she lashed out at Gingrich for repeatedly acting dismissively toward her. A nice night for Bachmann," says Cillizza.

His other winners: Perry and Romney. His losers: Ron Paul ("spent WAY too much time defending his isolationist foreign policy views") and Gingrich, who "got caught in a philosophical discussion about government sponsored enterprises — GSE’s — that allowed his opponents to swing away on him taking lots and lots of money from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae."

Conservative blogger Erick Erickson said Romney had a good debate, but "he continues to have little humor with handling his flip-flops, which will make the Democrats all the more eager to go after him on those."

Gingrich, said Erickson, held his own, but Ron Paul "proved yet again that while he can hit all the right notes on economics and spending these days, he is too nuts on foreign policy to be trusted with the Presidency."

We had Romney and Bachmann as our winners. Romney made the right choice in letting others, including Bachmann, go after Newt on his GSE "consulting." That allowed Romney to offer an affirming presence while turning questions into big-picture monologues that contrasted his policies with President Barack Obama's failures.

Gingrich took a beating from Bachmann and Paul the first half of the debate, and his body language and peevish, professorial responses didn't serve him well. He recovered in the second half with several crowd pleasers, although we're not sure viewers at home got quite as caught up in the crowd's approval at Newt's suggestion that Congress change the balance of power by reining in federal judges - including eliminating the 9th District Court of Appeals. Paul, and later Romney, offered a sobering whoa to that concept. Call it a wash for Gingrich.

Want a debate fact checker? Here are two: The New York Times takes a look, as does Politifact.

Peter St. Onge

Will new Charlotte curfew make a difference?

2011-12-15T12:49:00.007-05:00

There's little reason anyone other than youngsters out late would object to Charlotte's new curfew rules, in effect beginning today. The new rules require children 12 and under to be in by 10 p.m. each night if they're not with an adult, with children 13 to 15 getting an hour longer to make it home. Sixteen and 17-year-olds have no curfews, because state laws require them to be tried in adult courts, which would make it difficult for Charlotte to classify them as juveniles.

Those changes are slightly more restrictive than the previous curfew rules, which were first implemented in 1995. Nothing wrong with that.

But we're skeptical the new rules will result in much change in Charlotte, because Charlotte-Mecklenburg police didn't place a great deal of emphasis on enforcing the old rules. Through November, only 72 juveniles were arrested for curfew violations this year in Charlotte, just more than one a week, according to numbers CMPD provided me. Only 10 parents in 2011 were made subject to fines because their children were caught out late. Each of those numbers is up slightly from 2010.

That doesn't mean police aren't doing their job. Mayor Pro Tem Patrick Cannon pushed the revised curfew after a late-night uptown shooting followed uptown's Food Lion Speed Street celebration in May. A subsequent uptown event, the annual July 4 festivities, didn't have similar problems, but the improvement came from a significant police presence that discouraged trouble before it began.

I asked CMPD spokesman Rob Tufano if the low number of curfew citations means that police believe other methods of policing better deal with youth issues. Could it be that arresting juveniles or finding and fining adults isn't the most effective use of police time?

Tufano's telling response: "This stricter ordinance isn't a be all to end all, but rather another tool we have to keep children safe."

Peter St. Onge

An extraordinary non-endorsement

2011-12-15T10:04:00.008-05:00

The conservative National Review published an extraordinary editorial last evening, urging Republican voters not to cast their primary ballot for Newt Gingrich.

The reasons cited for the non-endorsement are nothing voters haven't heard already: "His impulsiveness, his grandiosity, his weakness for half-baked (and not especially conservative) ideas," the editorial offered, all of which led to a larger point - that Gingrich would cost Republicans a chance at a 2012 sweep of the White House and Congress, with all the conservative policy achievements that could follow.

Said the editorial:

If he is the nominee, a campaign that should be about whether the country will continue on the path to social democracy would inevitably become to a large extent a referendum on Gingrich instead. And there is reason to doubt that he has changed.

What's extraordinary isn't that the National Review is putting ink to the widespread frets of Republicans. It's the risk the editorial takes - that if Gingrich wins the nomination despite so many conservative pleas similar to this one, Republicans will be left with a candidate so many in the party have gone on the record as fearing.

Certainly, many conservatives would vote for nominee Gingrich anyway in the general election, given the alternative. But elections are won in part on enthusiasm, and Gingrich would be hitting November with a clearly conflicted base. It's hard for the National Review to walk back from this on Gingrich: "He appears unable to transform, or even govern, himself. He should be an adviser to the Republican party, but not again its head."

Are the conservative attacks on Gingrich just part of primary politics? To a degree. Hillary Clinton supporters were hard on Barack Obama in 2008, but in the end, prominent liberals didn't cross the bridge from calling Obama an "uncertain commodity" to "unfit leader." That's what we're seeing with conservatives and Gingrich.

Peter St. Onge

Another Washington stalemate? Sigh.

2011-12-15T07:22:00.005-05:00

Good morning and welcome to O-pinion, the Observer's place for discussion and perspective. I'm Peter St. Onge, associate editor of the O's editorial board, and I'll be your host today.

What's everyone talking about this morning? Politics, of course, but let's take a temporary break from the GOP presidential race to see how things are moving along on critical legislation in Washington.

They're not? OK, back to the primaries.

Unfortunately, the payroll tax/government shutdown tug of war is likely your story of the day. Less than two days remain until the federal government shuts down because the latest in a series of stopgap spending bills is about to expire. Most everyone in Congress wants to pass a new spending bill, just as most in Congress want to extend the payroll tax cut. But because this is Congress, no one wants to give the appearance of doing what the other side wants, even if it's kinda maybe what you want, too.

Specifically, here's what's at stake: The Senate Appropriations Committee has produced a sweeping $1.043 trillion spending package to fund Cabinet operations and war spending. Given that the agreement was the product of weeks of bipartisan work, the package has a decent chance of passing with few tweaks by Friday night to avoid an embarrassing (if that's still possible for lawmakers) Washington shutdown.

But because President Barack Obama and Democrats want Republicans to extend or expand a payroll tax cut before the current version expires at the end of the month, they have refused to let the spending package come up for a vote. Republicans, as you might guess, won't let a payroll tax cut vote happen until the spending package is voted on.

We think a payroll tax cut extension is a good idea, if it's paid for. We also like the concept of not shutting down the government. What's going to happen? Both will get passed. It might happen right before Friday night, or government might get shut down for a few hours or a day until lawmakers realize, again, how silly they've become, again. Everyone knows this eventuality, including Congress. Which is what makes this taffy pull that much more maddening.

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank, who spent Wednesday watching members of the Senate insult each other in the name of legislating, searched and found the better word for it all: Moronic.

Politico's David Rogers offers even more details (if you dare) on the battle and how it fits into 2012.

A bigger legislative deal, perhaps, is a bipartisan plan introduced yesterday to overhaul Medicare. The plan was co-authored by Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Republican Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. The plan will go nowhere this election year, but Wyden's participation surely will infuriate Democrats, who planned to spend 2012 informing voters how Republicans wanted to gut Medicare. Having a Democrat's name on the legislation takes that hammer out of the party's hands as the election approaches.

Closer to home

The O's editorial today says that the proposed Red Line commuter train from Charlotte to points north may sound too good to be true - but it brings good-enough possibilities that it should be vetted thoroughly by all involved.

Don't put up red light yet on Red Line plan

2011-12-14T19:30:00.001-05:00

The Observer's Thursday editorial:

After 10 years of starts and stops on building a 25-mile passenger rail line from Charlotte to Mooresville, transportation planners have an idea that sounds too good to be true.

Under the proposal, which state DOT officials and others started selling hard this week, trains would start running in 2017, commuters would make it through rush hour faster than in a car, new development (and jobs) would be burgeoning around 10 stations and most taxpayers would be on the hook for a fraction of the project’s cost.

If this vision sets off alarm bells, we understand. It does sound optimistic. Even so, the plan has promise and we hope the elected officials and other decision-makers who will decide its fate will give it a fair and thorough examination in the coming months. It surely needs exhaustive vetting, but at its best, it could create jobs, slow worsening traffic congestion and serve as a model for the kind of extraordinary regional cooperation that will be needed to solve this area’s challenges for years to come.

About 150 elected officials and staff from north Mecklenburg and Iredell counties gathered for four hours Tuesday to learn about the plan. Here’s how it would work: The Red Line, as it would be known, would cost $452 million (in 2018 dollars) to complete. The state would pay one-fourth of that ($113 million) and the Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS) would pay one-fourth.

The other half would be paid by special assessments and taxes paid by businesses and other commercial developments around the new stations. The thinking is that the rail line would spark new development ($4.9 billion worth in 30 years) and increase property values close to the line.

Much of the higher property taxes generated from those higher values would be used to help pay for construction costs. Separately, area businesses, attracted by the new business opportunities, would agree to pay a fee that would help pay for the line. The higher taxes and the fees would each generate more than $100 million over six years or so, DOT officials say.

The Red Line would take 5,000 or more people off I-77 and other roads each day and, theoretically, spark economic development up and down the route, including in places that badly need it such as Derita and other parts of north Charlotte. With federal money for commuter rail dried up and the state and CATS pinched as well, the latest plan hatches some much-needed innovation. That’s why elected boards in Charlotte, Huntersville, Cornelius, Davidson, Mooresville and Mecklenburg and Iredell counties should study the proposal, improve it and decide whether it deserves their support next spring.

They should also ask a lot of hard questions, including:

What if the anticipated development doesn’t come, or comes very slowly?

What protections do taxpayers have, and how bulletproof are they, if the state has to temporarily step in to cover shortfalls?

How will CATS come up with $113 million without failing to meet many other transit demands around Charlotte?

How do you protect residents on a fixed income who see their property values, and thus their property taxes, balloon?

Residents and elected officials would be wise to reserve judgment. They would also be wise to see if they can responsibly pull off this major transportation and economic development plum.

Obama in Carolina: Political or patriotic?

2011-12-14T15:22:00.004-05:00

President Obama's (with First Lady Michelle Obama) visit just hours ago to Fort Bragg to mark the ending of the U.S. war in Iraq lured commentators worldwide and had some pointing to political views for his geographic choice of North Carolina for commemorating the war's finale. So the question is was it more political than patriotic?

For most journalists covering the event, it was news regardless. The BBC News was on hand with their reporters pointing to the fact that as a state senator Obama had once called the war "dumb." The Guardian was on hand also calling the idea "that the Iraq war is over attractive but deeply misleading."

Most news reports noted that the president made very few references to the divisiveness among Americans over the war and pointed out that he didn't mention his own opposition. Instead the speech was chocked with praise for the returning troops, those who were casualties of the war and the U.S. military in general.

But the New York Times and others took note of the probable political nature of his trip. This was Obama's first to the N.C. army base, and pundits said it is an especially meaningful one because of the president's potential path to reelection in 2012, which could include winning Virginia and North Carolina, a typically red state that Obama turned in 2008.

"But Fort Bragg and neighboring Fayetteville, with its large African-American population full of veterans of both Iraq and Afghanistan, will need to join urban areas like Charlotte, Greensboro and Raleigh-Durham in turning out for Mr. Obama if the president is to have a chance of repeating that unlikely win next year," says the Times. Mitt Romney has also acknowledged the significance early on, and is already running anti-Obama ads locally.

Speaking of Romney, the GOP presidential contender tried to steal some of the president's limelight by writing a letter to the Fayetteville Observer that appeared in the morning's edition criticizing Obama's economic policies. In the letter, he also joined the president in "expressing our nation's gratitude" toward the returning troops.

The National Journal pointed to the fact that Gov. Bev Perdue was there with Obama and alluded to the notion that she tried to avoid him the last time he was in the state. She was overseas on a trade mission to Asia. The Journal said: "North Carolina will be an important swing state for the president's reelection team and the Democratic National Convention will be held in Charlotte next year. So it's difficult to imagine how Perdue can, in any effective way, dodge the president. Opponents will tie her to the president no matter what she does, so she's best served to appear with him when she can, especially since he has a fighting chance in the state."

Obama's fighting chance might be better against Newt Gingrich, who has surged recently in the polls among Republican presidential candidates, than against Romney. That's what N.C. registered voters said in a survey by Public Policy Polling of Raleigh. Obama wins against Gingrich, 49 percent to 45 percent, in a hypothetical matchup put before 865 registered voters.
Obama was tied against Romney with each getting 46 percent of the vote in the survey.

- Posted by Fannie Flono

CMS board's new leadership is not so novel

2011-12-14T09:24:00.008-05:00

Hi there. Welcome to O-Pinion, the Observer editorial board's blog. I'm associate editor Fannie Flono, your host for today.

There's a lot of buzz locally on the leadership change for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board. Newly-elected at-large board members Ericka Ellis-Stewart and Mary McCray were voted in by colleagues on the nine-member board as chair and vice-chair of the board. They made a little history but not in the way many might think.

This is not the first time a first-time politician has been chair. Eric Davis, who Ellis-Stewart replaced, was a novice too. It's not the first time two African Americans have been chair and vice chair. Arthur Griffin and Wilhelmenia Rembert did so more than a decade ago. And neither McCray nor Ellis-Stewart is the first woman or African American - or African American women - to hold their posts.

Phillip O. Berry was the first African American to chair the board. Winthrop University's Rembert was the first African American woman to be vice chair and later to become chair.

The two aren't even the first two women to hold the both leadership roles in the same year. That happened in 2002 when Rembert and board member Louise Woods were chair and vice chair respectively.

So what's the history? They are the first two African American women to hold both leadership roles at the same time.

The vote for Ellis-Stewart and McCray follows a tradition in Mecklenburg politics where the general election's top vote-getters of the majority party are usually elected by their peers to lead the body. That's one reason so many people were irked by Democrat Harold Cogdell last week when he ousted fellow Democrat Jennifer Roberts who was the top vote-getter for the majority party for the Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners.

The CMS board has broken with tradition in the past, most recently with Eric Davis' elevation to board chair. And it wasn't clear until late Tuesday what would rule the day this year either. Board members were in talks and undecided for most of the day. But in the end they came out publicly unified behind Ellis-Stewart and McCray in an 8-0 vote (Tim Morgan's District 6 seat is vacant since he was elected to an at-large seat in November.) Such unity was not on display back in 2002 when Rembert and Woods were elected to lead the board. They got a bare majority of five votes.

Hopefully, the unified vote Tuesday night signals that this CMS board will work cooperatively with each other to tackle the serious challenges facing the schools.

Lowe's misses chance to turn away bigotry

2011-12-12T17:30:00.003-05:00

The Observer's Tuesday editorial:

Corporations are notorious fence-sitters on public issues, and understandably so. They’re in the business of making money, not taking moral stands, because you don’t want to take sides on topics that might divide your customers. But sometimes an issue confronts you, and like it or not, the fence disappears.

Lowe’s Inc. missed an opportunity to make the right choice this week when faced with outrage over advertising it pulled from a weekly cable TV series about Muslim-Americans. Instead, it issued a sorry-but-not-really apology, and in doing so, the Mooresville retailer has appeared weak-kneed in the face of bigotry.

Lowe’s stopped advertising on TLC’s “All-American Muslim” after complaints from the Florida Family Association, a conservative group that’s well practiced in getting advertisers to flee from shows that don’t fit the group’s worldview. “All-American Muslim,” if you haven’t seen it, chronicles the lives of five families from Dearborn, Mich., a Detroit suburb with a substantial Muslim population. The show touches on the discrimination and profiling Muslims face in the U.S. because of their faith.

That message is lost on the Florida Family Association, which says on its web site: “The show profiles only Muslims that appear to be ordinary folks while excluding many Islamic believers whose agenda poses a clear and present danger to liberties and traditional values that the majority of Americans cherish.”

Lowe’s, after receiving emails from FFA members, decided to yank its advertising, which prompted Ted Lieu, a state senator from California, to threaten his own boycott last week. Lieu called the Lowe’s decision “un-American.”

Cue the hollow apology. Lowe’s issued a statement Sunday saying it was sorry for having “managed to make some people very unhappy.” The statement explained that people had strong views about “All-American Muslim,” and that Lowe’s believes “it is best to respectfully defer to communities, individuals and groups to discuss and consider such issues of importance.”

Translation: This Muslim thing isn’t our fight.

The company said Monday it’s not going to resume advertising on the show. Certainly, corporations can choose to advertise how they want, and it’s likely that marketing folks at Lowe’s saw “All-American Muslim” as intriguing but benign – a show that thoughtfully asks its viewers to examine their preconceptions on Muslims. It’s possible Lowe’s didn’t know its ads were running on that specific show.

But when faced with the demand to pull the advertising, Lowe’s became part of the fight, like it or not. What to do then? The company could have said: “Advertising buys have finite runs, and when this one concludes we’ll evaluate where our advertising is most effective.” Maybe that wouldn’t have satisfied the Florida Family Association, but it would’ve allowed Lowe’s to nod to the group’s concerns, yet maintain the values it trumpets on its web site, which says: “Lowe’s is committed to treating each customer, employee, community, investor and vendor with respect and dignity.”

Instead, Lowe’s made a decision to side with a group that encourages discrimination by declining to distinguish peaceful Islam from extremism – a group that promotes bigotry Lowe’s surely doesn’t condone. It’s not too late for the company to show us that.

In 1980, first woman Meck chair was ousted

2011-12-12T14:02:00.008-05:00

Former Mecklenburg County commissioner Liz Hair puts a historical spin on Jennifer Roberts' ouster last week as chair of the Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners. It happened before - to Hair, who was the first female to serve on the county commission board in 1972 and became its first female chair two years later. Says Hair in Tuesday's Forum on the Opinion page, "I served six years as chair and top vote-getter, then was unseated by two Democratic, male board members (who wanted to be chairman). Both were defeated in the next election. Caveat emptor!"

Ah, the payback.

Look out, Harold Cogdell. Even the most recent other time a Democrat teamed with Republicans to oust a Democratic chair in 1997 brought defeat for the person colluding with the opposing party. Democrat Hoyle Martin joined forces with Republicans to dethrone Parks Helms for Republican Tom Bush. Martin, too, got the boot from voters a year later though he'd done so many crazy things as a member of the infamous "Gang of Five" his failed reelection bid could be attributed to any number of actions.

But Liz Hair's letter is a reminder of just how recent women began holding leadership roles in local politics in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County. Republican U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick became the first and so far only female mayor of Charlotte when she was elected in 1987 serving through 1991.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg School board could be poised to elect a female chair. The last time a woman was elected to that chairman's job was in the 2009, when Molly Griffin got the nod. Before that it was Wilhelmenia Rembert in 2002. Newly-elected member Ericka Ellis-Stewart, a Democrat, was the top votegetter in the at-large race in November. Eric Davis, an independent, is current board chair. Tom Tate, a Democrat, is vice chair. Observers say the chair's job will go to one of the three. Democrats hold a 5-3 advantage (one seat is unfilled since District 6 representative won an at-large seat in November) so the edge seems to go to Tate or Ellis-Stewart in the voting Tuesday. But who knows?

Women have come a long way in Charlotte-Mecklenburg politics regardless. But if Roberts had held onto her chairman's job there would have been the rare possibility of having two of the top three local political leadership jobs held by a woman.

- Posted By Associate Editor Fannie Flono

Bets on presidential race premature, risky

2011-12-12T09:26:00.006-05:00

Good morning. Welcome to O-Pinion, the editorial board's daily blog. I'm associate editor Fannie Flono, your host for today.

So, everybody's still talking about that $10,000 bet that Mitt Romney made Texas Gov. Rick Perry during in the Iowa GOP presidential debate Saturday. Romney was challenging Perry on his assertion that Romney had said in the first edition of his book that he wanted to impose a health insurance mandate at the federal level.

Romney had a right to challenge Perry because Perry was apparently WRONG. Romney never said that in his book, "No Apology," according to The Associated Press and the nonpartisan Factcheck.org. Both say Perry is wrong. PolitiFact.com, another nonpartisan fact-checking group, also said the claim inaccurate.

But that truth has gotten lost in the smoke surrounding Romney's tone-deaf, bizarre of-the-cuff bet. With most Americans struggling to make ends meet, some say the millionaire Romney seemed out of step with the plight of everyday citizens with his cavalier bet.

Both the Democratic National Committee and Perry have launched ads calling attention to the gaffe. "Romneycare - A losing bet for America," Perry's video says. Even Jon Huntsman, perennially low in polling among Republican rivals for the GOP nomination, got in the act by saying pointing to other instances where Romney praised health mandates. Huntsman’s campaign is also running a website called http://www.10kbet.com/, with a main headline on Sunday afternoon that read, “Why Mitt Romney Owes Rick Perry $10,000.,” according to the Fiscal Times.

Romney's people say no harm was done, according to the Washington Post. They say Romney came off looking assertive for forcing Perry to back down from his charge.

Maybe. But Ronald Brownstein in the National Journal in an article titled the "Five Takeaways from Saturday's debate" said "the 'bet' could be a costly swagger."

Other takeaways? "Bachmann did herself the most good on Saturday night. It's unclear whether voters will accept her attempt to yoke together the two front-runners as 'Newt Romney' on immigration, health care and climate change, but she made a strong case that conservative true believers should not settle for either. "

As for the opponent the Republicans would face, President Barack Obama, polls continue to show he'll have a hard campaign ahead if voters views on the economy and his job performance are a gauge. The Rasmussen Poll on Monday showed just 33 percent rate Obama's handling of the economy as good or excellent; 48 percent rate Obama's handling of the economy as poor. Only 20 percent strongly approve of his performance as president; 39 percent disapprove.

Obama is trying to put the best face as he treks from place to place trying to sell his jobs package but even with all the ups and downs on the GOP side, this presidential race looks like it will come down to the wire next November unless the economy takes a big upswing.

Cogdell: Let's have full investigation into my hiring

2011-12-09T11:50:00.005-05:00

Mecklenburg commissioners Chairman Harold Cogdell said this morning that he will ask the board of C.W. Williams Community Health Center to make public how much the nonprofit is paying him.

"I'm going to seek their permission to release the employment contract," Cogdell told me this morning. "It describes the scope of services, and what I get paid, and what I get paid to do and when that relationship was formed."

Cogdell, a Democrat, has come under scrutiny for being hired by C.W. Williams about two months after he fought for a 39 percent hike in the county's allocation to the group.

Cogdell said he wants all the information about the arrangement to come out. He said he will ask commissioners at their Dec. 20 meeting to authorize a full investigation into his hiring.

"I absolutely want to bring that out. I think the public is entitled to that. We need to make sure there are answers to the questions that have been raised."

We called for such transparency in an editorial in this morning's paper, an opinion Cogdell said he doesn't disagree with.

Cogdell said he first started talking with C.W. Williams about a job in mid to late July, about a month after the budget talks. The group provides medical care to the poor.

He said he and other commissioners were lobbied by C.W. Williams for more than $1.7 million in county money, compared with the $280,000 that County Manager Harry Jones recommended. Cogdell said he supported giving C.W. Williams $110,000 more than Jones' recommendation in part because of difficult talks the county had been having with Carolinas Healthcare System about indigent care.

"I could see the potential moving forward that these centers are going to play a bigger role in providing indigent health care," Cogdell said.

We repeat our call for a thorough look into this matter, and applaud Cogdell for being open to that.

-- Taylor Batten

Cogdell hiring needs independent probe

2011-12-08T17:38:00.004-05:00

Friday's Observer editorial:

The public does not yet know all the details surrounding Harold Cogdell and how he landed a job with a local nonprofit. But if this thing that walks and quacks like a duck is indeed a duck, Mecklenburg County’s new commissioners chairman should resign from public office and authorities should determine whether he broke the law.

The county should have an independent investigation launched to determine exactly what happened. A dismissive “it’s politics” from Cogdell is not enough.

Here’s what we know: During county budget talks last summer, County Manager Harry Jones proposed cutting less than $2,000 from the county’s $281,957 allocation to C.W. Williams Community Health Center, a nonprofit that provides medical care for the poor. Cogdell, who supported cuts to other social service spending, successfully pushed for a $110,000 increase for C.W. Williams – a 39 percent hike in a tough budget year. Two months later, Cogdell took a job as a lawyer for the group.

Cogdell, a Democrat, says there’s no connection. That’s possible. But it looks extremely suspicious and the public deserves a full accounting of what happened. Had Cogdell started talking with C.W. Williams about a job before he pushed for sharply higher county funding for it? What promises, if any, were made? How much is Cogdell, now the county’s top public official, being paid by an organization he helps fund? How did this one nonprofit, of the many the county funded, get to the top of Cogdell’s funding priorities?

The public deserves answers to these and other questions. Cogdell and C.W. Williams CEO Beverly Irby did not return calls from the Observer editorial board before our deadline Thursday.

Even if there was no explicit quid pro quo, it would at a minimum be unethical to fight for more funding for an agency that is a prospective employer. If any talks of a job had already been held, Cogdell should have recused himself. And fellow Democrats should have raised questions as soon as they had them, not only after Cogdell sided with Republicans to become chairman.

If Cogdell used his public office and control of taxpayers’ wallets for his personal gain, it would be a betrayal of public trust of the highest order. Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was sentenced to 14 years in prison this week for public corruption. We don’t want that kind of pay-to-play culture in our local government.

Maybe this is all a big misunderstanding. Maybe Cogdell was just a big C.W. Williams fan and pushed for a sizable budget increase because he thought the group does good work. Maybe C.W. Williams then offered Cogdell a job just weeks later completely independent from his work on its behalf at county budget meetings. Maybe. An investigation needs to find out.

When Cogdell dethroned fellow Democrat Jennifer Roberts for the chairman’s title this week, he said it was about getting away from politics as usual. But if Cogdell won a job by pushing tax dollars toward one nonprofit, it’s politics at its worst.

How to sell transit? Dumb it down, McCrory says

2011-12-08T14:15:00.015-05:00

We've long believed one of Pat McCrory's strengths as Charlotte mayor - and a big reason he was never really challenged in elections here - was his willingness to buck his party on issues he felt were critical to the city's future.

The most prominent example of that? Transportation. McCrory understood the value of mass transit, and he encouraged people to bike and walk as well as drive. Many in his own party railed against his support of Charlotte's light rail system, but he didn't waver, and the system has been an early success.

How did he help get it done? On Wednesday, he told a group of transit managers in Georgia that selling a rail system to the public requires a combination of dumbing down and offering a big picture.

Says the Macon Telegraph:

McCrory's theme was "Mayberry & Metropolis," a discussion of how to get public transit projects done and integrate them into effective community revitalization.

Transit and revitalization efforts alike are not individual projects that can be considered finished at any point, he told the group. They're constant and eternal processes, with each project connected to the others, McCrory said.

And without an overall vision for an area, plus a strategy to achieve it, "you're wasting your time on the process," he said.

When selling that vision to the electorate, planners can't use technical language, McCrory said.

"The public does not understand the written word," he said. "They want pictures."

When selling that vision to the electorate, planners can't use technical language, McCrory said.

"The public does not understand the written word," he said. "They want pictures."

McCrory said those pictures should show not just shiny new stations, but the blight that might come to corridors that don't places that don't take advantage of rail. He also said that for transit systems to succeed, they must be integrated with other developments and have routes that transcend political boundaries.

That's all true, and it's also interesting. As McCrory continues to veer to the right in advance of his inevitable run for N.C. governor next year, he's still championing the thing N.C. conservatives most detest about his policies - rail.

That kind of big-picture McCrory could serve North Carolina well. Or maybe he just didn't think anyone here would find out.

Peter St. Onge

How do we dislike thee, Newt?

2011-12-08T10:35:00.001-05:00

It's not surprising that Newt Gingrich's sudden ascendancy would be followed by a thorough examination of his flaws, real and perceived. What's surprising is that most of the criticism is coming from his own party.

This week, as Gingrich has begun to top Mitt Romney in national polls and key early primary states, conservatives have gone hard after the Georgian for transgressions past and present. Certainly, intra-party squabbling isn't unprecedented during primary season - Barack Obama still has scars left by Hillary Clinton supporters - but the range and depth of Republican distaste for Gingrich is startling.

What do they dislike about Newt this week? A lot of things.

It's his raging ego, says the Washington Post's right-wing blogger Jennifer Rubin, who says:

So one of Gingrich’s actual rivals will have to call out Gingrich, expose him as a charlatan and make the case that the GOP is heading for a trainwreck if Gingrich is the nominee. Is there someone able to do all that?

It's the serial infidelity, says Redstate's Eric Erickson, who says he has difficulty supporting a man who is on his third wife after cheating on the first two. Erickson says he'd have to support Gingrich over Obama, but it clearly would be a tortured choice. "At what point does winning so badly mean willing to risk one's principles or one's soul," he asks.

It's the grotesque opportunism, says conservative George Will, who is no fan of Romney, either. Will recounts how on the eve of the 1994 election, Gingrich said South Carolina mother Susan Smith's drowning of her children "Vividly reminds" Americans "how sick society is getting, and how much we need to change things ... The only way you get change is to vote Republican."

It's that the Christian right probably shouldn't be associated with him, says the New York Times Russ Douthat. He explains:

To many younger Americans, religious conservatism as they know it often seems to stand for a kind of institutionalized hypocrisy ... that's incensed by the idea of gay wedlock but tolerant of straight divorce, forgiving of Republican sins but judgmental about Democratic indiscretions, and eager to apply moral litmus tests only on issues that benefit the political right.

Rallying around Newt Gingrich, effectively making him the face of Christian conservatism in this Republican primary season, would ratify all these impressions.

It's the mind-blowingly bad idea, writes the Washington Post's Kathleen Parker (who's more conservative-lite). The idea, of course, is Gingrich's suggestion that kids from poor neighborhoods should work janitorial jobs at schools to learn a work ethic. Says Parker:

The former speaker's fumble is precisely what some Republicans have feared and others have breathlessly anticipated. The Washington Wager was whether Gingrich could make it four weeks without self-immolating before Iowa. Or would he find himself so irresistible that he just had to express himself?
Voila.

It's that he's a poor leader, says Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who served under then House speaker Gingrich in 1994 and told FOX News: “There’s all types of leaders. Leaders that instill confidence, leaders that are somewhat abrupt and brisk. Leaders that have one standard for the people that they’re leading and a different standard for themselves. I just found his leadership lacking.”

And that's just a sampling. From one week. The easy explanation here is that the anti-Newt conservatives are pro-Mitt conservatives working for their guy. But Erickson, Will and others have been hard on Romney, too.

The other easy explanation is electability - Republicans see Newt's weaknesses as fatal in a general election, which would hand the White House back to Obama.

But there's one more explanation, offered up by Salon's Gene Lyons, who says that Gingrich's love of crude smears and absolutism about complex issues reflects the kind of tea party conservatism sweeping the GOP, and it's signaling the end of Republican intellectualism.

What you're seeing this week are Republican thinkers fighting back. At risk is not just an election, but perhaps the future of the party.

Peter St. Onge

Welcome! You sure you want this job?

2011-12-07T19:45:00.001-05:00

Tomorrow's editorial tonight:

A hearty welcome to Tom Murray, named Monday the new chief executive of the Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority. Murray comes to Charlotte after three decades of hospitality work, mostly in hotels but most recently running a luxury cruise business. He’s going to need all that experience.

Here’s what Murray will face in his new job: A wacky organizational chart in which one of his subordinates is former CEO Tim Newman, now deposed but still with a great deal of influence in the organization and city. Murray also will work for a board that thoroughly bungled its handling of that deposed CEO, earning the ire and meddling of Mayor Anthony Foxx and Charlotte’s City Council, not to mention the public’s distrust.

And oh yes – in nine months, Murray also will be navigating the most important hospitality event in Charlotte’s history, the Democratic National Convention. We wouldn’t blame him if he decided instead to take the next cruise to the Galapagos.

Murray surely knows what he’s getting into, but just in case, a recap. Newman was demoted for a series of misdeeds and missteps, including lavishing thousands of dollars of dinners and tickets on local business leaders and public officials who weren’t clients; funneling bonus money from a client to an employee in a way that got around the organization’s ethics policy; and wildly overestimating attendance figures for the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

The board did its best to keep Newman atop the CRVA, at first promising reform and pretending to mean it by spending $25,000 on a consultant’s report. But that resulted in a few pages of laughably non-specific recommendations. Only when the mayor and council held a lit match to $10 million in CRVA money did the board stir in earnest.

But instead of firing Newman and starting over with a new culture, the board has saddled the CRVA with two quarter-million-dollar salaries – Newman at $240,000 and Murray at $275,000 – along with an awkward boss-subordinate dynamic.

Our hope is that another reality emerges. Murray comes to Charlotte with significant management and organizational experience. Newman, who wasn’t able to handle the challenges of running the CRVA, will oversee sales and marketing – a position that plays to his strength as an advocate for Charlotte. It’s a match, albeit an expensive one, that could serve the city well as the DNC revs up.

We’re encouraged that the CRVA has adopted policy changes regarding bonuses and perks, and the board has added new members such as Russ Sizemore, who helped lead United Way of Central Carolinas out of a public relations disaster over executive pay in 2008. Murray may lead the CRVA the rest of the way to credibility.

But to do so, he’ll have to remember that while the CRVA operates in the Wild West of hospitality, where perks and winks seem to be a part of life, the organization gets its money from the public and therefore must abide by standards of conduct and transparency. It’s something the board and Newman didn’t seem to get, and that created the mess we welcome Murray to repair.

Roberts: I didn't get shoved aside because I'm a woman

2011-12-07T12:15:00.007-05:00

Jennifer Roberts talked with me this morning about why she decided to drop a provocative statement about men shoving women aside that was in a draft of her remarks at Tuesday night’s county commissioners meeting. Democrat Harold Cogdell seized the commissioners’ chairmanship from Roberts with the backing of the board’s four Republicans.

In a draft of her remarks, Roberts said: “I am not the first woman who has been shoved aside by a man, and I won’t be the last.” But she did not say that at the meeting.

“I struck it because I realized it was not what I wanted to say. It is what women have said to me and it’s not what I wanted to say,” Roberts told me. “It’s not really about that at all. These things happen in politics regardless of race or gender. It’s politics. It’s not one particular gender or category.

“A lot of women have expressed their anger to me because they do feel like it might have been different had I been Parks Helms or someone else. I don’t have any reason to believe that’s true. If people can make a deal to get something they want, then they do it.

“You want to appreciate your constituents and understand their perspective but sometimes you get carried away and realize it’s more their perspective than yours and you realize, ‘I don’t feel that way.’ Being overly empathetic, I don’t know. That’s why you have several drafts of something, to convey what you really mean.”

Roberts was smart to strike the line. It would have been unnecessarily divisive – and wrong. Roberts wasn’t shoved aside because Cogdell’s a man and she’s a woman. She was shoved aside by an overly ambitious politician who saw an opportunity and took it.

On related fronts:

-- Roberts said it’s “a misinterpretation” to say that she has suggested that women are discriminated against in politics. “What I have said is we govern ourselves better when we have the voice of women as well as the voice of men. Certain issues get more attention when women’s voices are stronger. … Where we can increase (the number of elected women) we usually have better outcomes because there are more diverse voices at the table.” She cited issues around child care and preschool education as one example of something that is harmed when women aren’t at the political table.

-- Women are underrepresented in public office in part, she said, because they sometimes have a harder time raising money than men. “I don’t know if it’s because you’re the newcomer, you don’t have that old guys network of people who are all in your law firm and they all give a thousand bucks.”

-- I told her it was notable that she said in her concession speech “I have kept my promises to the Democratic Party.” She said: “I do believe in being fair. I do believe in inclusion, not just racial, ethnic, religious, etc., but also sexual orientation. We need all those different voices and I don’t believe the Republican Party has that same sense that they celebrate diverse voices because diverse voices learn from each other. I don’t get that feeling from the Republican Party at all.”

She may have kept her promises to the Democratic Party, but emphasizing that party loyalty could make it harder for her to appeal to a broader base of voters in her next run for higher office.

-- Speaking of her next run, there might not be one in 2012. Roberts suggested she was eyeing higher office when she announced last month that she wouldn’t run for county commissioner again. This morning, she said that might be on hold. “I’m pretty sure I’m not a candidate in 2012 but I can’t say that for sure. I’m pretty sure I want to take that step back and be more deliberative. … You really need to step out every so often and keep your ideas fresh.”

-- Taylor Batten

How many politicians does it take to govern?

2011-12-06T20:00:00.001-05:00

It’s hardly a popular springboard to higher office, but Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx has made merging Charlotte and Mecklenburg County governments one of his top priorities. At his and the City Council’s swearing in on Monday, Foxx renewed his push for it, saying government could work better, “perhaps even less expensively, for the people who pay the bills.”

We doubt that consolidation would cut taxpayers’ bills much. Mountains of research on other city-county mergers have found a mixed bag; indeed, costs went up a bit in Jacksonville, Miami and other places. In Charlotte, there’s little redundancy to root out. One government or the other handles most services for both city and county residents. City Manager Curt Walton said officials examining the idea in 1996 found a “few million dollars” in savings out of combined budgets of $3 billion.

Still, Foxx is on the right track. An independent commission should study how it could be done here, lay out approaches for the City Council and county commissioners and let voters decide.
Here’s why: One elected body and one manager overseeing one bureaucracy should be held accountable for the governance of our one community. Precisely because so much of local government has already been functionally consolidated, it is anachronistic to have (and pay) two boards of directors, with 21 elected officials, and two chief executives. Not to mention two budget directors, two human resources directors, two PR departments, and so on. Even if it doesn’t amount to much, those are salaries worth saving.

More than the money, though, is the accountability. Who do you call to fix that pothole in the road? What if your garbage doesn’t get picked up in the unincorporated area of the county? Who do you boot from office if you don’t like how much money schools have to spend? The average voter can’t be blamed for not being sure.

We’ve seen recently how having two governments over one area can hurt a community’s ability to set priorities, have flexibility in budgeting and react to crises. The city stepped in to help libraries, which are a county responsibility. The city and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools have disagreed over who should pay for school police officers. When the county was forced to cut $150 million from its budget over two years, it had limited choices. It couldn’t spread those cuts across city departments serving county residents.

This issue has been batted around in Charlotte for decades. Politics and public officials’ concerns about self-preservation have blocked it in the past. That’s why the planning this time should start there. Tackle the politics successfully and the rest will fall into place. Perhaps voters could agree to a plan that doesn’t kick in for a few years to ease some politicians’ and staffers’ fears that it could cost them their jobs.

Opponents worry about concentrating power in one government. But it’s not like the two current governments are checking each other’s power now. Better to have one body setting priorities, and one body that has to answer to voters.

Tricia Cotham: N.C. school superintendent?

2011-12-06T13:31:00.010-05:00

Under the Dome, the politics blog of The Observer's sister paper, The Raleigh News and Observer, had some interesting news today. Apparently some folks aren't very happy with June Atkinson, North Carolina's state schools superintendent. And those folks are fellow Democrats.

That's right. It's her fellow Democrats who are apparently disaffected. According to the Dome, Progress North Carolina, a liberal advocacy group, is ticked off at Atkinson about her silence on Republican-driven education budget cuts this year. Today, as Atkinson appeared before a legislative committee, Progress NC sent a statement asking her for action. "As state superintendent, it’s her job to be the state’s biggest advocate for public schools," said Gerrick Brenner, the group's executive director. "Right now, June Atkinson is failing teachers and students, by not standing up to lawmakers who continue to hide behind false rhetoric after they slashed school budgets."

The Dome also said Mecklenburg Rep. Tricia Cotham seems interested in the job, and when I e-mailed her about that she said yes she was. If Atkinson decides not to seek reelection, Cotham said she plans to run for the job.

Cotham has been keenly focused on education issues ever since she was elected and began serving in the N.C. legislature in 2007. Her interest is well-rooted. She's a former teacher and assistant principal in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. The youngest female to ever hold public office in North Carolina, she is vice-chair of the education committee and has co-sponsored or sponsored several pieces of legislation on education and children's welfare over the years.

All that's to say that she has great credentials for the job.

As for Atkinson, she battled mightily for the job when Gov. Bev Perdue tried in 2009 to elevate state school board chair Bill Harrison to CEO of North Carolina's schools and relegate the elected school board job to a largely ceremonial role. Atkinson sued on constitutional grounds, arguing that Perdue did not have the authority to put Harrison in charge of schools. She won that case, but Harrison remained as chairman of the state school board.

This editorial board has posited that the case really didn't answer a long-lingering question of who ought to be in charge of public schools - and thus who ought to be accountable to the public. Atkinson as Superintendent of Public Instruction at least nominally has that authority, but the legislature also regularly makes education policy by what it chooses to emphasize. And as a top adviser to Perdue as he chairs the Governor’s Education Transformation Commission which oversees the state's $400 million in federal Race to the Top funds, Harrison still manages to have more clout and visibility than Atkinson anyway.

This editorial board still thinks the N.C. education governance system is screwy, and that the job of superintendent of public instruction should be appointed - not elected. Cotham though does have the legislative skills, education background and the outspokenness to give the job a higher profile than it has now - and get more done to benefit North Carolina's children.

Posted by associate editor Fannie Flono

Money, money, money - and politics

2011-12-06T09:09:00.004-05:00

Good morning. I'm associate editor Fannie Flono, host today on the Observer's O-pinion blog.

So what are the pundits talking about today? Money, money, money - and politics, of course.

The conservative National Journal is touting a new survey it did with United Technologies asking Americans about their views on the extending that payroll-tax cut that Congress - surprise! - is divided on.

No division among a majority of Americans though. According to this poll, most support extending the payroll-tax cut despite concerns that an extension of the short-term reduction would increase the federal budget deficit.

As the Democratic-controlled Senate and the GOP-led House advance competing plans for extending the payroll-tax reduction, the new poll shows that 58 percent of Americans think Congress should extend the tax cut. Just 32 percent think they should not extend the tax cut.

Support for extending the payroll-tax cut—despite concerns about the budget deficit—is broad and bipartisan. Democrats favor an extension, 68 percent to 25 percent. Half of Republicans think Congress should extend the payroll-tax reduction, while 39 percent think they should not. Among independents, 57 percent favor an extension, while a third do not.
Gentlemen and gentlewomen of the Congress, are you listening? Don't be a Grinch. Extend that tax-cut before Christmas.

Speaking of Grinches, Newt Gingrich (What? It is Grinch-like to want to ditch child labor laws) was also in polling news today. The National Journal quoted two polls showing he leads the field of Republican presidential contenders in the key early states of Iowa and South Carolina.

Gingrich leads the field in the Hawkeye State with support from 33 percent of likely Iowa Republican caucusgoers, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll released early on Tuesday. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, are tied for second place, with 18 percent each.

In South Carolina, which holds its primary on Jan. 21, Gingrich held a significant lead over Romney of 38 percent to 22 percent, according to a Winthrop University poll. Perry was third, with 9 percent, followed by Cain with 7 percent, Bachmann at 5 percent, Paul at 4 percent, Santorum at 3 percent and Huntsman at 1 percent. Nine percent of likely primary voters are undecided.

It's great to see national news outlets giving the survey from nearby Winthrop University in Rock Hill the nod as a significant poll.

Arianna Huffington gives her take on Gingrich's chances of taking the nomination in a Huffington Post column today. She says Gingrich's main opponent isn't just Mitt Romney but Gingrich himself. "This task is complicated by the fact that there isn't just one Gingrich," she writes. "He's a very Walt Whitmanesque candidate -- he celebrates himself, he sings of himself, he is large, and he contains multitudes."

And what's that about President Barack Obama trying to channel Republican president Teddy Roosevelt in a speech today on the economy on the 100th anniversary of a speech the former president gave on a similar topic? Ron Fournier doesn't think Obama lives up to Roosevelt's legacy just yet.

But NPR and other news outlets report that President Obama will try to follow in the footsteps of Teddy Roosevelt when he delivers an economic speech in Osawatomie, Kan., the same city where Roosevelt issued a famous call for a 'New Nationalism' more than 100 years ago.
"For Obama, this is a 'connect-the-dots' speech," said NPR's Scott Horsley. "White House spokesman Jay Carney said it's a chance to show how the president's various economic proposals — from stricter banking oversight to payroll tax cuts — fit together, as Obama prepares for a re-election battle."
Roosevelt's speech — delivered after he had left the White House and as he was beginning a bid to return there on the Bull Moose Party ticket (he didn't succeed) — has become known for his words about "the square deal."

"I stand for the square deal," Roosevelt said. "But when I say that I am for the square deal, I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under the present rules of the game, but that I stand for having those rules changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and of reward for equally good service." Read more of the 26th president's speech at NPR. Read the entire speech here: http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=501.

Locally, fireworks are still expected at the Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners meeting where Democrats Harold Cogdell and Jennifer Roberts will duke it out for board chair. And a new Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority chief is on board. Tom Murray takes over the job Dec. 15 after Tim Newman was demoted to an executive sales position following a series of controversies. Newman's salary is $240,000 and Murray's will be only $30,000 more at $275,000. Ummm. If Tim stays on - and at his present salary, will Tim and Tom be duking it out too to see who actually runs the CRVA and who just holds the title? Just asking.

Posted by Fannie Flono

'Harold has sold his soul'

2011-12-05T12:25:00.001-05:00

By Wednesday morning, Harold Cogdell will likely be chair of the Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners. Nothing is certain, of course, as we learned last year when Cogdell bowed out at the last minute and allowed fellow Democrat Jennifer Roberts to retain the gavel. But we're told Roberts has called the four Republicans on the board asking for their support again this year, and only two have returned her calls. Those two told her that she wouldn't get their vote.

Democrats are furious at Cogdell's power grab - first because of the naked ambition behind it, but also because of how it might impact board votes in the coming year. The ambition charge is a little dubious - yes, Cogdell is covetous of the more powerful seat, and he shoved aside protocol in grabbing the chair from a fellow party member who got more votes than he did the last time they ran, in 2010. But Roberts isn't devoid of ambition. She's likely running for higher office soon and knows that being board chair will bring her a very public stage when the Democratic National Convention comes to town next year.

Still, Democrats are rightly concerned with how Cogdell's maneuvering will steal power from the 5-4 majority they have on the board. By pledging to Republicans that he'll consider a more conservative view on taxes and spending, he may be committing himself to a worldview that doesn't fit with the rest of his party.

That'll be critical in 2012, with commissioners facing possible cuts to schools and programs for the poor. Will Cogdell feel obligated to side more with Republicans on tax rates and spending cuts than he previously has been? Democrats and Republicans in Mecklenburg tell us yes. Said one: "Harold has sold his soul."

What did he get in return? We're not sure. He'll have plenty of cameras pointed his way in this busy upcoming year for Charlotte. But if his aim is to use that exposure to propel himself toward higher office, he'll have to do so without the support of his party's establishment, which believes he's shown himself to be about Harold first, everyone else later. He also shouldn't expect much loyalty from Republicans, who are embracing him only for the possibility of policy support. Privately, they don't really trust him, either.

That's not a reputation you want for your next citywide, countywide - or perhaps bigger - election. But it's what Cogdell has brought himself. He'll get tomorrow what he's wanted for two years. But it's going to be a very lonely throne.

Peter St. Onge

A primary focus on South Carolina

2011-12-05T08:07:00.011-05:00

UPDATED: 10 A.M.: Good morning, and welcome to O-pinion, the Observer's home for perspective and discussion on the issues of the day. I'm Peter St. Onge, associate editor of the O's editorial pages, and I'll be your host today.

Here's a roundup of what people are talking about this morning:

The primaries are coming, and the GOP's eyes are turning to ... South Carolina? Maybe. The Associated Press reports today that Newt Gingrich understands what Republicans have known for three decades - the winner of the South Carolina primary goes on to win the GOP nomination.

Some years, that's simply a matter of the Palmetto State giving a nod to the clear GOP frontrunner, but this year, S.C. should play a pivotal role in nudging someone to the front. The Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses are up for grabs, with Gingrich leading Ron Paul and Mitt Romney in a Des Moines Register poll this weekend. New Hampshire will likely give the nod on Jan. 10 to former neighbor Mitt Romney, who leads comfortably there.

UPDATE: Those numbers could change quickly, however, with another potential boost for Gingrich today. FOX 5 in Atlanta is reporting that Herman Cain will endorse Gingrich, and that details for an announcement are being worked out. ABC's The Note, however, is reporting that no such endorsement will come today.

Should Gingrich take Iowa and Romney grab New Hampshire, that leaves South Carolina to perhaps sort things out on Jan. 21. Gingrich is making a big push there, opening five offices and hiring nine staffers, the most of any Republican candidate. The latest polling shows him in a strong position, leading Romney 38-15 in an Insider Advantage poll taken last week before Herman Cain dropped out of the race.

Romney had seemed to overcome South Carolinians' reluctance - he led in earlier polls before Gingrich's national surge. Romney abandoned the state in 2008 before finishing fourth in the primary won by John McCain. Romney went on to lose to McCain in Florida and drop out 10 days later.

Romney seems undecided thus far about South Carolina. He only has three paid S.C. staffers, according to AP, and he hasn't visited the state much. Expect Romney to continue a recent push in Iowa, where he had his first TV spot last week, and where voters consider him the most likeable and electable in a general election. If Romney can win Iowa and New Hampshire, that would mute the impact of a Gingrich win in S.C.

The Weekly Standard says that Romney TV spot left no doubt Romney is "playing to win" Iowa by appealing to Iowa's conservatives.

The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne says Gingrich's emergence makes sense, if you understand Republicans.

And finally, here's Ron Paul's fun, new in-your-face TV ad, up in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Closer to home

In today's Observer editorial, we wonder (along with others) why the Democrat-led N.C. Board of Elections prematurely shut down an investigation into Gov. Bev Perdue's campaign. A Wake County grand jury issued indictments to campaign staffers last week.

Our letters to the editor focus today on what to do about our economic hard times, including one approach that comes from way back in 1621.

This week in politics: Newt and Trust.

2011-12-02T08:12:00.010-05:00

We began the week with two frontrunners for the Republican nomination for president. We ended the week the same way - yet there are lots of folks still not ready to believe it.

It's not that any other candidates are threatening to make a run at Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. Rick Perry is still being Rick Perry. Herman Cain is finally thinking about taking a knee under the weight of his alleged past. (You know it's time to go when previous scandal-ridden politicos say "It's time to go.")

As for Michelle Bachmann - voters nationally may be fickle in the flings they have with candidates, but once they knock you from double to single digits, they rarely give you another good look. Ask Ron Paul, who had his moment four years ago.

So that leaves Mitt against Newt to run against the very vulnerable Barack Obama. Obama did get some good news this week - his approval ratings rose slightly in November, putting him better than where Jimmy Carter was in his third November as president, but worse than everyone else.

Romney, who has run a textbook primary campaign, had his first stumble this week, offering testy answers on immigration and health care in an interview with Brett Baier of FOX News. Worse, he complained to Baier about the aggressiveness of the questions (which were, by the way, fair and representative of what FOX's largely conservative viewership would have asked.) Romney will have to do better, because with the GOP field narrowing, the focus will intensify on policy and how his conservatism differs from Gingrich.

Still, some prominent conservatives are wary of Gingrich's politics and demeanor. The Washington Post's Charles Krauthammer speculates that Gingrich might be a moderate who came late to conservatism. And, said Krauthammer:

Gingrich has a self-regard so immense that it rivals Obama’s — but, unlike Obama’s, is untamed by self-discipline.

That leads to the biggest question on Gingrich. Yes, he's smart and has legitimate conservative chops (despite his occasional forays across the ideological aisle), but can Republicans trust him not to say something politically lethal next September?

Here's Newt on poor children this week, via FOX News:

“Really poor children, in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works so they have no habit of showing up on Monday,” Gingrich claimed.

“They have no habit of staying all day, they have no habit of I do this and you give me cash unless it is illegal,” he added.

That might fly with the far right of his party in December 2011, but it will hand the White House back to Obama 11 months from now.

Peter St. Onge

It's time to finally end online tax advantage

2011-12-01T20:21:00.000-05:00

While millions of courageous consumers donned elbow pads and confronted Black Friday crowds last week, more shoppers than ever decided Monday to work through Christmas lists the newfangled way – with swipes and clicks on their favorite electronic devices.

Cyber Monday 2011 was the best online shopping day in history, with online sales rising 22 percent to $1.3 billion this year. That’s good news for our sluggish national economy, but for brick-and-mortar businesses closer to home, it’s the season once again to rue revenue that might’ve been.

Last year, local businesses across the country lost billions in sales – and North Carolina lost $190 million in fiscal year tax revenue – because online retailers are not compelled to collect state taxes on purchases. That puts brick-and-mortar businesses at a 5- to 10-percent disadvantage when shoppers start comparing prices, says the Alliance for Main Street Fairness, a national collection of mom-and-pop retailers that’s been joined in their online outrage by retail giants such as Wal-Mart, Target and Best Buy.

On Thursday, four N.C. retailers from the group participated in a conference call with reporters to protest the advantage current laws give to online retailers like Amazon.com. The group’s complaint is this: States, including North Carolina, obligate consumers to pay state sales taxes on online purchases, but under a 1992 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, only merchants who have a physical presence in a state are required to collect those taxes. That means states are collecting mostly from consumers who add up all their uncollected online sales taxes and include them on their tax forms each April. You can guess how that’s working out.

Retailers say that physical presence in a state, called a “nexus,” should be redefined in the modern marketplace. Andrew Riddle, owner of Aging in Place in Hendersonville, explained why Thursday: When an Iinternet retailer sells brass bars for a shower to an N.C. consumer, he said, our roads are used to deliver those goods, and our landfills are used for the boxes that are thrown away. That constitutes a nexus, yet the online retailer doesn’t have to collect the sales taxes that Riddle would if he sold the same brass bars.

Now, after years of wrangling with online retailers, Congress is on the edge of a breakthrough, with bi-partisan bills in the U.S. House and Senate. The Senate bill even has the early, critical backing of Amazon.com. The bills would allow states to compel Internet retailers to collect taxes, but they would require those states to adopt streamlined and simplified rules that make it easier for online retailers to collect from different states.

The bills each would exempt smaller online retailers from collecting sales taxes. Companies with less than $500,000 in annual online sales get the waiver in the Senate bill. In the House version, which is co-sponsored by N.C. Rep. Renee Elmers, the threshold is $1 million in annual sales.

Those exemptions might elicit a rightful humbug from brick-and-mortar businesses, who receive no such break on collecting sales taxes. But the legislation, overall, is fair, and it would end years of an unlevel playing field. The bills haven’t progressed past the committee stage yet, so there’s no hope for passage this holiday season. But we urge Congress to provide prompt delivery on a new law.

Bill James: We all say stupid things

2011-12-01T15:11:00.006-05:00

When Observer cartoonist Kevin Siers draws a particularly scathing cartoon of Mecklenburg County commissioner Bill James, the Republican James doesn't hold a grudge. In fact, he usually gets a laugh out of it and asks for a copy.

It's that outlook on politics that allows James to support Democrat Harold Cogdell in his fight to be chairman of the board despite a recent dustup between the two of them. John Grooms over at Creative Loafing calls Cogdell's attempt to dethrone Jennifer Roberts "shameless" and reminds readers that Cogdell lashed out at James recently but now seeks his support.

In August, Cogdell called James "an embarrassment to Mecklenburg County," and said: "It continues to mystify me that you are repeatedly provided the privilege of serving Mecklenburg County in elected office. Especially considering you so rarely offer any value to any productive public discourse or dialogue, but rather seek every opportunity to incite polarization and divisiveness.”

Cogdell now seeks James' vote for chairman, and James is happy to provide it. Observer reporter Fred Kelly and I separately asked James about that. "It is a fact that human beings often react inappropriately with excess passion or language on occasion," James responded. "In politics you can’t hold grudges or dwell on slights. If you do, it damages you and your ability to get things done. I don’t know anyone in politics that hasn’t said something or done something that they later thought could have been said better (myself included)."

The man has a point there. And it's an attitude that could win Cogdell the gavel.

-- Taylor Batten

Did Chiquita swindle Charlotte taxpayers?

2011-12-01T11:10:00.003-05:00

Does it matter how Chiquita spends taxpayers’ millions?

A fascinating story from the Observer’s Steve Harrison peeks inside the City Council’s closed session where it debated providing incentives to the banana giant to move its corporate headquarters to Charlotte.

In a highly unsual move, Charlotte and Mecklenburg County agreed to each pay $875,000 over three years, plus some property tax relief, to help offset Chiquita’s moving expenses. The state will give $2.5 million toward the movers. This has people upset.

Chiquita’s demand was unique, to be sure. But what’s the difference? If state and local governments agree to give almost $23 million to attract the company, it doesn’t matter if the company uses it for moving expenses or planting more banana trees. It’s true the moving-expense money is cash up front (though spread over three years) versus forgiven taxes, which is the typical incentive. But the moving money is subject to clawback provisions that require the company to pay it back if it doesn’t meet certain criteria around job creation, salary levels and staying in Charlotte for at least 10 years. And even if the city stipulated that the money wasn’t for moving expenses, it still goes to Chiquita, which could use it to move money around from somewhere else.

Whether taxpayers ponied up too much to attract Chiquita’s corporate headquarters (and its $40 million payroll) to Charlotte is a legitimate debate. We think states need to be reserved and selective in employing incentives, but that the Chiquita deal was not over the top. But sweating about whether the money defrays the cost of a move or defrays some other cost seems beside the point.

-- Taylor Batten

Roberts vs. Cogdell: Tale of the tape

2011-11-30T13:32:00.002-05:00

Most years, we wouldn't spend much energy contemplating who might be the next chair of the Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners. It's largely a ceremonial gig - the chair leads commission meetings, smiles at the most public appearances and is usually the first person the cameras and notebooks turn to for quotes.

But in 2012, ceremony is a little more important, with the Democratic National Convention coming to town. That kind of potential exposure might be why we have a battle for board chair on our hands. Current Chair Jennifer Roberts, who announced she won't be running for a commission seat in 2012, would nevertheless like to remain chair before a likely run for a higher public office. Fellow Democrat Harold Cogdell, who briefly made a run at Roberts before backing down last year, wants the job for real this year.

In a letter to his fellow commissioners this week, Cogdell touted his pragmatism, communication skills and willingness to compromise - all traits that might convince Republicans on the board to throw their support his way. Roberts says she and Cogdell aren't much different in approach or policy, and she hopes Republicans remember that she got more votes than Cogdell in the 2010 election, which often is how the board chair is decided.

How do Roberts and Cogdell compare? Here's a brief breakdown of three critical roles of the job, plus what we think the commissioners will decide when they vote next week.

First up: Cheerleader.

Curt Walton's raise: An annual study in tone deafness

2011-11-30T07:14:00.006-05:00

Good morning, and welcome to O-pinion, the Observer's home for opinion and discussion on the issues of the day. I’m Peter St. Onge, associate editor of the O's editorial page, and I’ll be your host today.

What are people talking about this morning? The City Council debated City Manager Curt Walton's annual pay Tuesday, deciding ultimately that because the city's economy and budget continue to face harsh challenges, it would be a powerful gesture if Walton received no more of a pay bump than the average city employee.

No, of course not, silly. He got a nice raise.

The council actually considered a range between 1-6 percent, we're told.

He could've received 2 percent, the average that was given to city employees last fiscal year.

He could've received 1 percent, which is what city employees are getting this coming year.

Instead, he got 3 percent, which means that yet again his salary continues to rise at a faster clip than other city employees . And yet again, council members exhibited a remarkable tone deafness with the public and public workforce.

The vote on Walton's salary was 9-1, with Democrat Patsy Kinsey voting no only because she wanted Walton to receive more. Walton's total compensation is $243,654, and council members say they want him to keep pace with other city managers.

Last year, you might remember, Walton's salary was part of a bigger controversy. During a closed session of a council meeting last September, Mayor Anthony Foxx and council members were discussing compensation for Walton and City Attorney Mac McCarley. Foxx had publicly and rightfully frowned on giving Walton a raise or bonus in a difficult budget year, but about halfway through the discussion, he was surprised to learn that he wouldn't get to vote on the matter.

That news came from McCarley, who told Foxx the city charter said the mayor's official responsibilities didn't include voting on those salaries. Problem was, the previous mayor, Pat McCrory, had voted on the city manager's pay at least twice, and Foxx was understandably peeved. But he let the pay increases pass.

This year, the talk went smoothly - perhaps too much so. Walton said his biggest strength in the past year was proposing a revenue-neutral budget, the Observer's Steve Harrison reported. That budget lowered the property tax rate, Harrison writes, but it raised the same amount of revenue as the prior year thanks to the county revaluation of property. Which is great. But it's also, you know, his job.

We don't really blame Walton here. It would be easy to call for him to reject his salary bump - or at least accept the average raise given to others as a gesture to the public and the public workforce. But most of us probably wouldn't do so in his position.

But we're told by someone close to the process that the council doesn't give Walton explicit goals at the beginning of the year that are tied to pay raises, instead just kind of making it up at the end. That means that when it's time for the pay raise to come each year, the council has no precise criteria on which to evaluate Walton, and no good way to explain to the public and other city employees exactly why it is that the city manager is immune once again from the same budget pain so many others are feeling.

Tell us what you think.

Other stuff

Our editorial today says that Gov. Bev Perdue has a better alternative than vetoing a watered down Racial Justice Act that the N.C. House and Senate sent her.

Observer columnist Mark Washburn says Charlotte lured Chiquita because it's a vibrant, terrific place with a lot ... ok, it was the incentives.

Chiquita a strong player in the community?

2011-11-29T16:56:00.006-05:00

The people who know Chiquita best -- Cincinnati residents -- say their loss is Charlotte's considerable gain.

Some in Cincinnati had been trying to portray the departure of the banana company as no big deal. But The Cincinnati Enquirer bemoaned the move, calling it "deeply disappointing."

"Through the years, Chiquita has been a good corporate citizen, contributing to many civic efforts, and we will miss them," the Enquirer's editorial board wrote. "We may understand their decision, but we still regret it..."

The Enquirer seemed undecided on whether the $22.7 million in state and local incentives are worth landing the Chiquita headquarters and its 400 jobs. At first blush, it doesn't seem outlandish to us, given the realities of economic development these days. The Enquirer also rightly pointed to Charlotte/Douglas International Airport and its 700 daily departures -- more than triple Cincinnati's -- as key to the deal.

We welcome Chiquita (and its well-paying jobs) to Charlotte, and hope it will be an active corporate citizen here as well, working for the good of this community beyond its office doors.

-- Taylor Batten

Democrats are spinning like teacups

2011-11-29T10:54:00.005-05:00

Good morning, and welcome to O-pinion, the Observer editorial board’s home for opinion and discussion on the issues of the day. I’m Editorial Page Editor Taylor Batten and I’ll be your host today.

Politics is bubbling this morning. Herman Cain’s presidential campaign is dead, Gov. Bev Perdue’s supporters are in full-blown damage control and Mecklenburg County commissioner Jennifer Roberts’ tenure as board chair is on life support.

Start with Cain. One measure of how far and how quickly his campaign has fallen is that when an Atlanta woman alleged that she had a 13-year affair with the married Cain, it was like stabbing a dead man in the back. Cain denies the allegation at the same time that his lawyer says it should be a private matter. But does anyone care? Cain is done, and the latest allegations are whatever comes after the final straw.

Closer to home, the Democrats are spinning faster than the teacups at Disney World after three of Gov. Perdue’s associates were indicted on campaign-related felonies Monday. Walton Robinson, the state party spokesman, sent out a press release highlighting Republican Tom Fetzer’s failure to file a campaign report 29 years ago, as well as the 2004 indictment of a field coordinator for Rep. Patrick McHenry. As if those have anything to do with Perdue’s troubles. This morning Robinson re-sent a statement from the Democratic Governors Association backing Perdue’s 2012 reelection. Earlier he sought to discredit N.C. Republican Party Chairman Robin Hayes by digging up a clip from last year about one of his staffers being indicted. And Democratic Chairman David Parker sent out a statement focused on Perdue’s supposedly robust reelection chances.

Obviously the Democrats are missing the point. Instead of trying to dismiss the felony charges as unimportant, focusing on others’ flaws from 30 years ago and talking about how they’re going to win an election a year from now, they should sympathize with what the majority of voters see: That the whole episode is yet another blow to public confidence in North Carolina’s elected officials. It’s especially disappointing because Perdue ran on a pledge of ethical behavior and openness. Yet members of her inner circle are just the latest instances of alleged public corruption.

Here was our take on the whole affair on this morning’s editorial page and cartoonist Kevin Siers draws a mean do-do bird.

A week from now, Jennifer Roberts may be ousted as chairman of the county commissioners. Fellow Democrat Harold Cogdell is attempting a coup, and it appears he’ll have the backing of the board’s four Republicans to pull it off. Roberts has been an ineffective leader at times but we don’t have tremendous faith that Cogdell will be any better. Whoever is chair will be the face of Mecklenburg County government when the Democratic National Convention comes to town next
year.

And don’t miss today’s stellar letters from readers, including one reader not quite in the Christmas spirit, and one who wrote an epitaph for hunters who shoot ducks in the wrong person’s yard.

Perdue's ethics pledge takes another stumble

2011-11-28T18:47:00.003-05:00

Tuesday's Observer editorial:

There was a time not too long ago, believe it or not, when North Carolina was regarded as having an unusually clean government. Then came Meg Scott Phipps and Jim Black and Michael Decker and Frank Ballance and Thomas Wright and Gov. Mike Easley, felons all.

Gov. Bev Perdue doesn’t belong on that list, at least based on what the public knows so far. Her campaign, though, must surely be added to the record of those that have brought shame on this great state. Authorities have said Perdue is not a target of their probe. But a Wake County grand jury on Monday indicted three of her associates with felonies, and the responsibility for her campaign’s actions ultimately rests with her.

Perdue’s campaign finance director, Peter Reichard, crafted a felonious scheme to have a wealthy campaign donor give $32,000 more than the law allows to Perdue’s campaign to help pay the salary of campaign worker Julia Leigh Sitton, the grand jury says. The indictment also says Trawick Stubbs, a partner at the law firm of Perdue’s late husband, obstructed justice by paying for more than $28,000 in free flights for Perdue’s campaign without reporting them as such.

Federal investigators have been looking into Perdue’s campaign as well, so the public may not yet know the whole story. Here’s what we do know: After running on a pledge of honesty and openness, and amid Easley’s conviction, Perdue had an opportunity – a responsibility, actually – to ensure that her campaign was beyond reproach. She failed.

Her backers will point to the fact that authorities have not accused her of any wrongdoing. They will also remind residents that Perdue initiated efforts to uncover her campaign’s failures to obey the law on reporting flights.

That’s true, but it omits that Perdue’s zeal on this coincidentally emerged just as Easley was getting in increasingly hot water over his illegal campaign flights. And it does nothing to assuage voters’ concerns over how Reichard, a member of the governor’s inner circle, could possibly be committing felonies under her nose.

N.C. Democratic Party Chairman David Parker’s full focus Monday was on the next election. He expressed no concern or outrage that some prominent Democrats were, according to authorities, breaking the law. Instead, he accused Republicans of trying “to score cheap political points.”

He said “it’s time to move on.” No, it’s not. It’s time for public corruption in North Carolina to stop. It’s time for Perdue to keep her campaign pledge of complete transparency. It’s time for the emergence of leaders who can be trusted to care more about the public than about raising campaign cash.

The courts’ interpretation of the First Amendment has helped let America’s elections become poisoned by many hundreds of millions of special-interest dollars. The 2012 elections will surely be more awash in cash than ever. All the more reason, then, for voters to demand that candidates fully reveal who is funding them, and that those who try to skirt the system face a punishment others will never forget.

The most conservative N.C. lawmaker is ...

2011-11-28T10:16:00.006-05:00

Which lawmakers are the true conservatives and liberals of the N.C. General Assembly?

Two conservative organizations released their ratings of North Carolina's legislators this morning. Civitas has been ranking N.C. legislators for three years, while The American Conservative Union, already renowned for its annual Ratings of Congress, is giving state legislators a try this year. Each set of ratings are based on selected votes taken in the N.C. House and Senate.

Enough with the intro. Your most conservative N.C. legislator is ... Sen. Harris Blake of Moore County.

Blake was the only lawmaker in the General Assembly to get a perfect 100 score from Civitas. ACU set the bar a little lower in handing out perfect scores to 60 "Defenders of Liberty," including House speaker Thom Tillis of Mecklenburg.

The most liberal N.C. legislator? There's some dispute over that title. Civitas says the most liberal was Democratic Rep. Alma Adams of Guilford, but she was not one of the 10 N.C. lawmakers who received a zero from ACU. None of those 10 were from the Charlotte area, but don't fret: ACU had Mecklenburg Democrat Charlie Dannelly as the second most liberal senator; Civitas had him fourth.

The best (and worst) of the rest, according to Civitas.

N.C. House, highest ranked:

1. Rep. John Blust (R - Guilford) - 98.0; Rep. Tim Moffitt (R -Buncombe) - 98.0 (tied for number 1 ranking).

N.C. House, lowest ranked:

118. Rep. Alma Adams (D - Guilford) - 12.2 - ranked 118
119. Rep. Earline Parmon (D - Forsyth) - 10.8 - ranked 119

N.C. Senate, highest ranked:

1. Sen. Harris Blake (R - Moore) - 100.0
2. Tie of 17 senators with a conservative score of 97.67.

N.C. Senate, lowest ranked:

49. Sen. Charlie Dannelly (D - Mecklenburg) - 26.8.
50. Sen. Ellie Kinnaird (D - Orange) - 20.9.

You can find Civitas' complete ratings, including which bills the lawmakers were judged on, at www.civitasaction.org. ACU will have its N.C. rankings available later today at conservative.org.

Newt's big endorsement: How big is it?

2011-11-28T08:24:00.004-05:00

Good morning, and welcome to O-pinion, the Observer's spot for perspective and discussion. I'm Peter St. Onge, associate editor of the O's editorial board, and I'll be hosting today.

I'm also a New Hampshire native, so I have a different perspective than many about the political news of note this weekend. Newt Gingrich nabbed the endorsement Sunday of New Hampshire's biggest and most politically influential newspaper, the Manchester Union-Leader.

This is big for Gingrich, as you'll hear today, for all the obvious reasons: The endorsement affirms Gingrich as the party's conservative choice heading into the primaries. It's one of few endorsements he's received thus far from establishment sources, and it comes in a critical early primary state in which Romney has comfortably led most polls.

That primary is January 10, and given New Hampshire's reputation for embracing surprising candidates, we could be looking at the kind of upset that gives Gingrich significant momentum heading into conservative South Carolina soon after.

Except for this: New Hampshire's reputation is undeserved. The notion that N.H. is a maverick state that follows the lead of its maverick conservative newspaper is largely based on one primary. In 1996, the state gave its primary nod to conservative candidate Pat Buchanan, endorsed by the Union-Leader instead of eventual nominee Bob Dole.

In other years, despite prodding from the Union-Leader, N.H. has been stubbornly mainstream. We voted for Nixon, Ford, Reagan and George W. Bush. We've voted for decidedly moderate candidates like George H.W. Bush and John McCain, the 2000 version. In short, we vote for frontrunners.

This year, that frontrunner also happens to be a moderate who was governor of a neighboring state, Massachusetts. The border is critical, because most of New Hampshire's population lives in the southern half of the state - less than an hour from Boston. Much of that population emigrated from Massachusetts, and most get their news from Boston TV, radio and media. They are unafraid to vote for moderates, and they remember Romney's successful stint as governor.

All of which wasn't enough to help Romney beat McCain in New Hampshire's 2008 primary, in which Romney finished a strong second. The Union-Leader endorsed McCain in that race, as well, but that synergy between N.H. residents and the state's biggest newspaper was the exception, not the rule. Romney is still the man to beat in the state that once called him neighbor.

Closer to home

The Observer's editorial lauds a new venture that puts Charlotte in a new role: home to food innovation.

In our letters to the editor, writers ask if we need tragedy to change hunting rules - and we get a solution to our unsophisticated clapping at the symphony.

Inmate conditions at N.C. prison troubling

2011-11-22T16:53:00.002-05:00

Tomorrow's Observer editorial:

The findings of an internal review of conditions for mentally ill inmates at North Carolina’s Central Prison – conditions made public last week – are stomach-churning, no matter what excuses or reasons officials offer. Gov. Bev Perdue rightly called them unacceptable.

We echo the comments she made when told of the neglect and unsanitary situations an internal review documented: “Nobody expects really luxurious treatment for any prisoners; they’re there for a reason. But we also expect there to be very decent, humane, healthy conditions for the prison population.”

What were those conditions?

Inmates with serious mental disorders were often isolated for weeks, sometimes naked, strapped to their bunks in an improper manner that allowed them to bang their heads against the concrete wall.

In some cells, inmates were left in filthy conditions with urine and feces on the floor and roaches and ants.

Staff failed to maintain up-to-date records, track medications or sometimes respond to calls for medical help.

Chronic understaffing led to sick patients sometimes going untreated and suicidal inmates going unmonitored.

Alvin Keller, outgoing N.C. Secretary of Correction, was in full “explain” mode last week after an Associated Press story made public the findings from the review his division requested. He said the report completed in May “generated great concern” and that within “one business day,” officials began to take corrective action.

But Keller also sought to minimize media descriptions of the report, calling some of them “exaggerations” and “mischaracterizations.”

That’s possible. Yet even Keller admitted there were serious issues raised in this review that demanded attention.

Warden Gerald J. Branker retired this month in wake of the report after a meeting with officials about it in July. Branker will be replaced by Kenneth Lassiter, the warden at Charlotte Correctional Center.

In a statement last week, Keller said the facility is now clean and staffing is appropriate. He said that conditions are expected to improve when the system opens a $155 million medical complex and mental-health facility just west of downtown Raleigh.

Perdue too believes the new facility will help. She blamed prison staffing cuts for creating the environment for the problems. To coincide with the opening of the new prison medical facility, funds to hire “more staff, especially nurses and doctors, were added to the budget for the current fiscal year,” she said.

But more than a change of address may be needed. Vicki Smith, executive director of the advocacy group Disability Rights North Carolina, said there are systemic problems in how N.C. officials provide care for “these very ill prisoners.”

If that’s so, officials must devote attention to addressing those systemic issues. As state Sen. Thom Goolsby, R-Wilmington, who co-chairs the Senate appropriations committee for Justice and Public Safety, rightly noted: “We punish people for their crimes but… not helping people, not seeing that they get their medication and are treated like human beings is just wrong in every sense of the word.”

Politics beats progress as debt committee fails

2011-11-21T18:32:00.002-05:00

Tomorrow's Observer editorial:

Let’s get the blame out of the way.

There’s plenty to pass out, now that the bi-partisan congressional supercommittee meekly conceded Monday that it was unable to do its job of trimming $1.2 trillion from the deficit over 10 years. That failure has markets dipping, credit agencies stirring and citizens wondering if our lawmakers could agree at this point on the color of the White House.

Republicans will take most of the public scorn for the failure, and rightly so. Although GOP moderates signaled a late willingness to peek out of their no-tax trenches and consider some revenue possibilities, they ultimately were unwilling to propose what most Americans said they wanted – an agreement with a blend of serious spending cuts and higher taxes.

Democrats contributed to the failure, too, shamefully disregarding a last-minute path to possibilities offered by Republican Sen. Patrick Toomey of Pennsylvania. Toomey proposed raising $250 billion over the decade by reducing many itemized deductions and adjusting tax rates so that tax increases would fall on the top two brackets. The $250 billion was barely a start, but it was certainly a breakthrough for the conservative side of the supercommittee. Democrats, apparently confident they will win the PR battle that comes with failure, ignored it.

Finally, let’s not spare President Barack Obama, who characteristically chose to cluck his tongue disapprovingly at the two sides, rather than taking the political risk of leading them toward a solution.

Where does that leave lawmakers? When their arms are worn out from finger pointing, they have important and urgent work to do. Among the other items the supercommittee didn’t accomplish was extending a 2 percent payroll tax cut and continuing unemployment benefits for people who have been out of work for more than six months. Both are set to expire at the end of the year.

Neither item is popular with Republicans, but most economists agree that extending both would add a percentage point or two to economic growth next year. Given the economic instability in Europe, that percentage point or two could be what prevents us from another recession next year, some economists warn.

There’s murmuring in Washington that Republicans might hold the payroll tax and unemployment extensions hostage by linking them to a bill that would exempt defense from the $1.2 trillion in cuts that are automatically triggered by the supercommittee’s failure. That would be a mistake. Although that $1.2 trillion “sequester” is an indiscriminate chop that doesn’t address our underlying entitlement and tax rate problems, the cuts are at least an acknowledgment of the pain that will only worsen if we run away.

That’s what happened Monday with the supercommittee’s demise. Politics again beat progress. Ideology again trumped what was best for our country. Meanwhile, U..S. debt topped $15 trillion last week, and the problem grows frighteningly larger, as does the gap our leaders must bridge to solve it.