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Thursday, December 23, 2010

Remember the corrosive effect on NC politics of video poker and the lottery? Alabama is the latest state where gambling interests have upturned the political establishment - with federal indictments of state legislators involving six- and seven-figure bribes. The confession of a top lobbyist is awesome reading. You have to wonder how eager Gov. Perdue [...]

By | 2017-01-03T12:05:43-05:00 December 23rd, 2010|Ethics, Link-of-the-Day, Money in Politics|0 Comments

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

The end of 2010 marks the eighth year that North Carolina’s voluntary public campaign financing program for statewide judicial candidates has been in effect – long enough for it to be used or rejected in the staggered election cycles that have now involved all 22 seats on the state’s Supreme Court and Court of Appeals. [...]

Monday, December 20, 2010

The Census Bureau will begin releasing data from the 2010 Census tomorrow – just the US and state populations totals - at a webcast/press conference that you can attend by signing in. The Bureau’s website features several nifty resources that you can begin to play with and keep up with as new levels of data [...]

By | 2017-01-03T12:05:43-05:00 December 20th, 2010|Link-of-the-Day, Redistricting|0 Comments

Friday, December 17, 2010

Ten years ago this week, the US Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore turned over the White House to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, the losers of the national popular vote. The blatantly political decision to stop the Florida recount launched a new era of anti-social ideologues undermining the rights of real people in [...]

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Get ready: redistricting is coming! Redistricting is the process of redrawing the boundaries of political districts to make their population sizes roughly equal after the Census numbers are released. It can be a mischief filled adventure. What people get included or excluded in a district will heavily impact who gets elected and how that district’s [...]

By | 2010-12-16T13:08:00-05:00 December 16th, 2010|Link-of-the-Day, Redistricting|1 Comment

Monday, December 13, 2010

Our friend Gene Nichol at UNC Law School has an op-ed column in today’s News & Observer that not only says democracy is under attack by the money-is-speech ideologues on the US Supreme Court; his words (contrary to his everyday deeds) could even lead you to think it’s time to declare total defeat. Indeed, there is [...]

Friday, December 10, 2010

This is a level of corruption that we don’t often see: The new government in Nigeria wants to charge Dick Cheney, the former vice president and chairman of Halliburton, in connection with $180 million in bribes paid to Nigerian lawmakers. The lawmakers awarded a $6 billion construction contract for a natural gas pipeline to Halliburton [...]