The Washington Post published a front-page story on Sunday about Art Pope’s unique role as both a powerful inside and outside player in a state’s politics. The writer drew on interviews and material from several groups across the political spectrum, including Democracy NC, for the profile and a clever chart of Pope’s network of influence. The article [...]
Blue Cross and Reynolds Tobacco are teaming up with the Koch brothers to take over North Carolina’s Supreme Court. That sounds sensational but an article in today’s New York Times documents over $1 million that business and right-wing groups have spent just in the primary to defeat incumbent Justice Robin Hudson. Buying a seat is [...]
North Carolina is apparently becoming the poster child for how self-serving billionaires can protect their profits by buying a state’s elections. The New Yorker has a gruesome profile of the ramped-up manipulation of West Virginia’s people and politics by the energy/chemical industry after a disastrous spill ruined the drinking water for hundreds of thousands of [...]
Bob Hall, executive director of Democracy North Carolina, released two statements following news today about (1) the US Supreme Court's decision to repeal limits on the total amount a donor can contribute to all federal candidates and parties in an election cycle, and (2) the State Board of Elections's announcement that it found thousands of [...]
In his PBS broadcast last week, Bill Moyers showcased North Carolina as a battleground between the politics of greed symbolized by Art Pope and the vision of a moral society strengthened by our mutual ties to one another, symbolized by the Moral Monday movement. One point to clarify in the video’s important data and interviews: When [...]
Gov. Pat McCrory is expected to sign the monster anti-voting bill any day now. H-589 began in the state House as a photo ID bill but in the final days of the session, the state Senate rolled out a harsher version of the ID requirement, plus 40+ new provisions, including dozens that had never been discussed [...]
The Senate took a preliminary vote late Wednesday to pass the monster bill that aims to limit voting and expand ways for big money to influence North Carolina elections. This WRAL story gives a rundown of the provisions in the bill (H-589) and the action on the Senate floor. The Senate will take up the [...]
The parasite sucking life from the body politic is smaller than the 1%, according to a new study of the political money suppliers. The Sunlight Foundation found that just 1% of the top 1% gave 28% of all the disclosed political contributions influencing the 2012 federal elections - $1.7 billion of the nearly $6 billion [...]
The American Prospect magazine features a collection of articles about the South's changing political dynamics. Bob Moser, once with the NC Indy and now AP’s editor, writes the lead essay about the “End of the Solid South.” Chris Kromm and Sue Sturgis of the Institute for Southern Studies have a timely article about North Carolina’s [...]
More media outlets and bloggers are looking beyond the initial uproar over the IRS’s reprehensible targeting of 501(c)(4) applications from groups on one end of the political spectrum. The targeting is bad enough, but the scandal behind the scandal is the refusal of the IRS to challenge the biggest abusers of the c-4 tax-exempt privilege [...]