The posts in this category discuss our core issues.
For better or worse, a gaggle of “firsts” this year will have a lasting impact on North Carolina politics. Here’s the Top 10 list from Democracy North Carolina. Happy New Year!!
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 [...]
Fortunately, a healthy number of business leaders see big problems with the Supreme Court’s decision to encourage an arms race in secretive political spending; many are also opposed to the aggressive action by US Chamber of Commerce in the 2010 elections. If you’re a stockholder and get the proxy notices about how to vote your [...]
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. [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
The Coffee Party USA is gaining strength, percolating from the ground up, and it’s now joining forces with Public Citizen, People for the American Way and others to hold actions around the nation on January 21 to “commemorate” the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s disastrous Citizens United decision. (In another sign of disgust with buy-partisan [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]