Tag: Gov. Pat McCrory

NC’s DOT Secretary: Keeping it classy

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December 5, 2013 at 9:56 amCategory:Uncategorized

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Anthony TataWhen will the members of the McCrory administration learn? It may be a lot to ask, but at some point, could someone please give these folks a lesson in acting like public servants instead of thin-skinned, right-wing talk show squawkers?

Check out the statement provided by Secretary of Transportation Anthony Tata to Raleigh’s News & Observer regarding the dedicated folks at the Southern Environmental Law Center and their longstanding involvement in the controversy surrounding the replacement for the decaying Bonner Bridge on the Outer Banks:

“These ivory tower elitists file these lawsuits from their air-conditioned offices in Chapel Hill. And they do so with their lattes and their contempt, and chuckle while the good people of the Outer Banks are fighting hard to scratch out a living here based on tourism and based on access.”

Wow. Who knew that the Secretary — a man who raked in a cool quarter-million bucks in severance from an underfunded public school system and who, no doubt, gets a public pension as well on top of his $135,000 per year gig at DOT and who resides in a tony, big bucks subdivision in one of North Carolina’s wealthiest cities just down the road from several upscale latte establishments — was such man of the people?

Somewhere,  Spiro Agnew, Joe McCarthy and George Wallace are smiling.

Now we know where Guv gets his tales about unemployment insurance: Art Pope

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December 3, 2013 at 10:13 amCategory:Uncategorized

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Art Pope 3Among the many topics on which Gov. McCrory has made repeated misleading statements and told downright whoppers in recent months, none has been more frequently front and center than unemployment insurance. Time and again, the Guv has claimed that the state did not take away benefits and/or that the reason for the cut off in federal emergency benefits was that it was President Obama’s fault for not granting North Carolina an exemption or allowing the GOP legislature’s changes to be “grandfathered.”

As has been reported repeatedly, however, these claims are simply false. That’s why the Guv has had to issue clarifications and retractions on more than one occasion. The simple truth is that when Congress put extended emergency benefits in place as part of the economic recovery/stimulus law back in 2009, it told states that they could only continue to access those federally-funded benefits if they didn’t cut benefits and eligibility at the state level. This is a standard congressional practice used by leaders of both parties to help make sure that federal initiatives aren’t undercut by free-riding states with no skin in the game. Federal officials repeatedly told North Carolina this and warned them not to cut benefits lest they jeopardize the state’s participation in the federal emergency program.

The state’s response: A big raspberry. Despite the plain warning (and pleas from advocates to merely delay new cuts until 2014 so as not to run afoul of federal law), legislative leaders and Gov. McCrory plunged ahead with unprecedented cuts to benefits and eligibility that were quite possibly the largest in American history. As a result, the federal government was left with no choice but to abide by the congressional mandate and cut North Carolina off July 1.

So why does McCrory keep making the bizarre claim that it was the feds who are responsible for the cuts? We got a hint as to the answer to that question yesterday when State Budget Director Art Pope made his strange appearance at a protest outside his office organized by the NAACP and others.  Read More…

Governor flippantly defends decision to deliver cookies to pro-choice protesters

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November 26, 2013 at 3:09 pmCategory:Uncategorized

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CookiesUnless you read all the way to the bottom of Sarah Ovaska’s remarkable post below, you may have missed this amazing nugget Ovaska culled from the Guv’s interview with WFAE in Charlotte yesterday:

“When asked by [interviewer] Collins about whether, his July delivery of a plate of cookies to abortion rights protestors outside the Governor’s Mansion was a good idea in hindsight, McCrory remarked he didn’t care.

‘I don’t care, I felt like doing it,’ he said. ‘Who cares?’”

Good lord, is this man really serious?

Look, reasonable people can have differeing positions on the important and emotionally-charged matter of abortion and reproductive rights generally, but when the elected leader of nine-million people engages in such patently juvenile behavior and then doubles down on it with such a dismissive and downright lunkheadedly disrespectful statement as this, all a body can do is slap one’s forehead and get ready for the next round of jokes at our once-respected state’s expense.

Governor made appointment of Pope-Civitas chief to Ethics Commission

November 22, 2013 at 10:31 amCategory:Uncategorized

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Pat McCrory 2There was some confusion this week as to who was ultimately responsible for the appointment of Pope-Civitas Institute executive director Francis De Luca to the state Ethics Commission. De Luca’s own press release said the appointment was made by the Governor on the recommendation of Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger. At first blush, this statement seemed to conflict with the terms of the Ethics Act itself, which gives the Governor four appointments (all of which are already filled) and the General Assembly four (two each to the House Speaker and Senate President Pro Tem).  

The answer appears to lie in the fact that the General Assembly is not currently in session and therefore could not, technically, make a new appointment. In such circumstances, the Ethics Act references another state statute (G.S. 120-122) which vests the authority in the Governor to make the appointment upon the recommendation of the relevant legislative officer.

The bottom line: Things are even more depressing than they originally appeared. The head of a political attack group that produces malicious attack ads is now a member of the Board of the State Ethics Commission and both the Governor and the leader of the state Senate had a hand in making it happen.

The McCrory administration’s slippery Medicaid messaging starts to unravel

November 20, 2013 at 9:13 amCategory:Uncategorized

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In some ways, you have to hand it to the McCrory administration for the way it has manipulated messages and public opinion on the state’s health insurance system for poor people, Medicaid.

The McCrory team came into office with a cynical and ideologically-based plan to sell off what has been a successful public program to private corporations. The key to making such a plan politically feasible, therefore, was to convince the news media and the public that the program was somehow “broken.” How better to do this than to repeatedly allege and attempt to show that the program had supposedly massive cost overruns?

And so the P.R. campaign began. Following up on the decision of the conservative General Assembly to demand unreasonable program savings and then complain about “runaway expenses” when the absurd targets weren’t met, the administration helped generate new “audit” numbers that supposedly showed a similar trend — all, of course, the fault of past Democratic governors.

For months the plan worked well as right-wing politicians and think tanks and numerous reporters dutifully repeated the “Medicaid is broken” mantra despite ample evidence to the contrary. The dishonest rap had the added bonus of helping to justify the decision not to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. It even provided a convenient excuse for dozens of other draconian budget cut to education and other essential services.

Now, however, the truth is starting to come out and the P.R. plan is faltering. Read More…