Despite promises of cleaning up what it called a “pay-to-play culture in Raleigh,” the new leadership in the General Assembly has done nothing to strengthen ethics or campaign finance laws. It hasn’t even enacted stronger disclosure laws to help the public’s right to know how money flows through the political system. Instead, as the Independent Weekly [...]
A new report by the National Institute on Money in State Politics examines the money behind the telecommunications industry’s recent success in passing legislation to restrict local governments from building broadband networks that hooked local businesses and residents to the Internet, even in areas long ignored by the private providers. According to the report, “The [...]
Last week brought a flurry of reporting about the moral decay of America's economic and political culture; the politics of greed is at the heart of the problem and the right target for the Occupy Movement and others. Somewhere in the 1980s, thanks to leadership at the top ranks of business and government, the transition accelerated [...]
Advocates for requiring photo ID checks at the polls may delight in a news story breaking in Statesville, where a city council member is charged with voter fraud along with his sister and two of her family members. But all these voters cast ballots in their own names; requiring them to flash a photo document with [...]
House Speaker Thom Tillis left out loads of information about his donors when he filed his campaign disclosure report for the last half of 2011. He got called out by Democracy NC and others; he said he’d fix the report and file an amendment. Well, the new report is in and there are still lots [...]
Here’s a sobering statistic from a Washington Post report: “Four years ago, just 6 percent of campaign advertising in the GOP primaries amounted to attacks on other Republicans; in this election, that figure has shot up to more than 50 percent, according to an analysis of advertising trends.” Most of the money for the negative ads [...]
NC House Speaker Thom Tillis deserves credit for his series of town hall meetings where he takes questions from the audience, including a sprinkling of dissenters. But his handlers apparently don’t want him exposed to an audience that is less overwhelmingly sympathetic to his message. Some voices are good, others are just not welcome, even [...]
Guess where Pat McCrory ended his swing across the state, announcing the official start of his campaign for governor as the candidate who will “turn North Carolina around” and end the “corruption” of the Democrats? The trip finished in Wilmington, with a large McCrory rally at a pool hall and grill - which is owned [...]
Dozens of news stories are telling the horrific impact of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision on 2012’s election, and we’ve barely begun. Super PACs, billionaires, and front groups for who-knows-what are the oxygen that candidates rely on for their lives. They'll also have a chokehold on them if they are elected. Election attorney Rick Hasen [...]
A trio of small business federations today released a survey showing that two thirds of small business owners across the nation believe the Citizens United decision gives big corporations an unfair advantage over them. The Supreme Court decision from January 2010 allows businesses to spend unlimited amounts from their treasury to tell people how to [...]