Can’t really improve on that headline about a recent incident just south of Wilmington.
[...]The StarNews‘ Patrick Cannon caught up with newly reelected Wilmington Mayor Bill Saffo and asked him about the pervasive rumor that state Democrats have recruited him to run for the nomination to replace Julia Boseman in Senate District 9. Saffo’s answer was interesting:
Saffo said people have approached him about [...]
Brunswick County Sheriff John Ingram changed his registration from Democratic to Republican yesterday, which has set the local politicos to sizing up the general political trends in the county. Admittedly, it does have a whiff of 1994 about it, but let’s not get carried away with the analogy.
Anyway, Ingram [...]
Word is out that Gov. Beverly Perdue will consider some new ethics rules related to political appointees refusing to cooperate with investigations about government corruption. We would suggest that she look into some existing laws on ethics in government; specifically, conflicts of interest by state employees.
Article 2 of [...]
Columbus County’s only charter school, founded by JLF board member Baker Mitchell, is looking to expand.
That would be great news for school-aged children in and around the community. Check out the performance of the school compared with the average public school.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if successful charter-school operators [...]
Remember how big a deal it was a while back when one of Wilmington’s most prominent insurance agents, Don Bullard, was arrested on serious drug charges? Well, now the district attorney has dropped them all:
He was charged with intent to manufacture, sell and deliver ecstasy, along with destroying evidence.
Bullard’s [...]
Citizens of North Carolina: Be assured. You are safe from Demon rum. It’s codified in state law. Chapter 18B “Regulations of Alcoholic Beverages,” guarantee it. Check it out in 98 pages of legal language. Nothing is left to chance in 13 articles that “shall be liberally construed to [...]
I just realized that we are about to celebrate the 4th anniversary of “Squall Lines” next week. My JLF colleague and I have been delighted to provide you with this site, devoted to discussing politics and public policy issues in Wilmington, New Hanover County, and the surrounding counties and communities [...]
Long ago North Carolina’s pious, pandering politicians decided that selling the “Devil’s elixir” couldn’t be trusted to private enterprise. Presumably, if state government totally controlled sales, distribution and marketing of “hard liquor” consumption would be reduced; else Tar Heels would be seen falling-down drunk in the streets. Worse, they [...]
Visiting Morehead City recently, Gov. Beverly Perdue spoke to the local media about North Carolina’s struggling economy. She made a rather strange observation:
“Education is the only hope we have to re-ignite North Carolina’s labor market,” Gov. Perdue said in the interview.
She said schools are the basis for economic [...]
Whatever you think of the current efforts of Rhett and Julie Taber to halt a dredge-and-renourishment plan on Wrightsville Beach, you’ve got to stand back and marvel at the sheer gall of it all.
A little background, c/o the Lumina News. The Army Corps of Engineers plans to dredge sand [...]
Julia Boseman announced this past week that she will not seek re-election to the state Senate in 2010. She says that parenting always comes first, as it should, although she hasn’t ruled out a future political career.
A Wilmington Star-News news story by David Reynolds reminds us of how [...]
Check out the StarNews story about the refusal of some local ABC officials to provide public information to the newspaper upon request:
While some officials handed over the information quickly and without complaint, those who dragged their feet did so for similar reasons: They argued that revealing worker pay would [...]
The Pender County NAACP contends that the local school system is so biased against minorities that litigation may be warranted. In a new Pender Post piece, Pender school officials push back hard against the allegations, citing efforts to broaden their recruitment pool without hiring on the basis of race. [...]
My prior post on Julia Boseman’s impending retirement from the state senate reminded me to look over the Civitas Institute’s handy North Carolina Partisan Index, which uses prior votes for federal and state offices to determine the partisan lean in each of the state’s 120 House and 50 [...]
I’ve mentioned this bit of political scuttlebutt in these parts before, but now it’s official: New Hanover’s Julia Boseman will retire from the state senate at the end of her current term, creating an open seat for the 2010 election cycle in one of North Carolina’s most competitive [...]
A recent testy editorial about bureaucratic rules related to the proposed Titan America Carolinas Cement plant acknowledges the frustration business people and other citizens’ experience with government rules and restrictions. Usually, Star-News editorialists quietly tolerate or support government functions and ignore the insidiously destructive conditions they often impose [...]
Writing in the Lumina News, Brian Freskos offers a fascinating account of how defeated incumbents in both Wilmington and Wrightsville Beach are handling their election-day losses. Some of them aren’t handling it very well, it seems.
I learned several things from the article, including the fact that while my longtime friend [...]
Continuing our examination of Capitol Monitor’s data on federal bailout spending in North Carolina counties, today’s focus is Pender County. As of now, some $5.8 million in (borrowed) federal funds has gone into Pender, including a pivotal $15,643 grant to “Big Daddy (c/o Brian Todd)” for a clean [...]
We have discussed the incompatibility of political conservatives and the anti-capitalist agenda of organized environmentalists at this site. We identified some of the concepts and ideas that define a conservative such as, limited government, reduced taxes and freedom to own and use property. However, these terms are abstract. What [...]
Following up on yesterday’s post about stimulus spending in Brunswick, here is Capitol Monitor’s analysis of the $23 million in grants and contracts awarded to date in New Hanover County.
I am particularly intrigued by the $102, 381 awarded to the Skeets Winner Corporation for “clean diesel” and the [...]
Kenneth Lewis, a Chapel Hill attorney and former Democratic campaign aide, spoke yesterday at UNC-Wilmington. If his message there was similar to his previous speeches around the state, Lewis sounded the usual notes. For example, in Salisbury:
Lewis called Washington “broken,” a system that runs on contributions from lobbyists [...]
Have our elected representatives forgotten what their governmental role should be? Mostly we hear, or read, that they create jobs. For example, our governor, Bev Perdue, is “working to create jobs and build North Carolina’s economic future.” I thought that jobs and the “economic future” resulted from decisions [...]
In a piece published in the Whiteville News Reporter, Rep. Mike McIntyre explained the reasoning behind his “no” vote on the House health care legislation:
The need for health care reform is clear, but the legislation just passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, which I voted against, represented an [...]
Over months of turmoil surrounding the problematic hiring of criminal and fabulist Jeremy Cribb to be town administrator, Calabash has replaced him with Hiram Marziano, assistant manager of the town of Troy in Montgomery County. He’s been a full-time employee of Troy since 2007, serving as an intern [...]
Our friend Perri Morgan at Capitol Monitor in Raleigh has been hard at work creating a handy tool for tracking federal “stimulus” spending in North Carolina. Check out the result: the NC Stimulus Watch site.
I’ll periodically post some of the data about Southeastern NC. Let’s begin with Brunswick County.
Stimulus [...]
Following up on the earlier post about how area state senators fared in recent scorecards, here are the scores from Civitas Action’s Conservative Effectiveness Ratings and the NC Free Enterprise Foundation’s Business Ratings.
Let’s start with the Civitas ratings of votes on issues of interest to both social [...]
The Jacksonville Daily News has the right idea in response to an evaluation of the state’s lackadaisical oversight of taxpayer grants to nonprofit organizations:
Although the Legislature increased its oversight of funds given to nonprofits earlier in this decade, many believe current measures are not sufficient. Considering that the money [...]
Two sets of state legislator rankings have just come out: the Conservative Effectiveness Ratings from Civitas and the Business Ratings from NC Free Enterprise Foundation. I’ll summarize the findings for state senators in Southeastern NC here and follow up later with the state representatives.
Starting with the Civitas ratings [...]
Investigators conducting the ongoing federal probe of former Gov. Mike Easley have issued subpoenas to state environmental officials, reports the Raleigh News & Observer. They are checking out allegations that the Easley administration gave preferential treatment to real-estate developers with close personal or political ties to the governor. The [...]
In town to sign a bill reauthorizing the NC Film Council, Gov. Beverly Perdue took the opportunity to defend the use of targeted business incentives in the wake of Dell’s closure of a subsidized manufactured plant in Forsyth County. From the WHQR coverage:
“I have the secretary of commerce and' [...]
Speaking to the Whiteville News Reporter, longtime Sen. R.C. Soles clarified the remarks he made in his earlier interview with the Tabor City paper. He denied plans to step down from the legislature immediately but did indicate that another run for his Senate seat — which includes Columbus, Brunswick, [...]
How about $800 million from one fund. Well, actually, only $400 million has been wasted, so far. The Tar Heel take from Big Tobacco funneled through the Golden Leaf Foundation has doled out 825 grants to mostly obscure political interests in the state. Tom Campbell, former state treasurer [...]
The longtime state senator from Columbus County just gave an interview with the Tribune in Tabor City in which he appears to be signaling an end to his political career. From Deuce Niven’s story, reprinted in the Fayetteville Observer:
Whether Soles will face any charges for anything before the primary [...]
It’s said that charity begins at home. Star-News editors tell us to be attentive to our “less fortunate neighbors” and “dig just a little deeper” into our pockets to help fund the “many wonderful nonprofit agencies” in this area. Editors promote the Salvation Army and the United Way. [...]
The Greater Wilmington Business Journal has an interesting piece about the collapse of Cape Fear Bank earlier this year. There’s enough blame to go around, writes Josh Spilker, including oversight by the FDIC and the bank’s lack of a strategic plan:
According to the report, the bank in 2006 had [...]
That’s the argument William Killough advances in the latest edition of the Carolina Beach Island Gazette:
Why does this legislation have to be composed of so many pages of text? Entire individual Town’s and Counties are governed by laws and ordinances that don’t take up 2,000 pages of text. Leo [...]
Writing in the Lumina News, Pat Bradford sums up the poll results in Wrightsville Beach, one of several area communities where mayors and other incumbents went down to defeat on Election Day. The turnout was high in the town, despite pre-vote predictions to the contrary, and the winning candidates [...]
The NAACP, born when governments segregated people by race and enshrined oppression in law, now exhibits some strange priorities. In recent years, it has taken on causes either far removed from its original mission or lacking in practical significance.
I think an example of the latter phenomenon is the investigation of [...]
The Wilmington Star-News editorial page editor recently praised efforts by the UNCW to save energy under “A powerful example” headline. Fine. Conservation good, waste bad as every third-grader in America is taught.
Why the big deal about the university turning off lights and turning down thermostats? Doesn’t [...]
In response to the state’s problems with prison overcrowding and budgetary balance, the Jacksonville Daily News suggests that North Carolina do a better job of distinguishing between those offenders who must be incarcerated and those who should be handled in some other way:
As of Sept. 30, the state prison [...]
UNCW Professor Lawrence B. Cahoon in a letter to the Wilmington Star-News editor titled, “Consequences of global warming real,” reveals his bias toward alarmist views predicting unfounded cataclysmic world events. He also damages his professional credibility when he says that we skeptics “offer nothing but nonsense.”
Within the [...]
While the U.S. House gave ObamaCare an initial victory Saturday night, a majority of the North Carolina delegation voted against it, including three Democrats: Heath Shuler, Larry Kissell, and Mike McIntyre.
Of the three, the 7th District’s McIntyre is the longest-serving member and represents a Democratic-leaning district. Why did he vote [...]
WECT offers a full spread of stories about Kimberly Munley, the Carolina Beach native and former Wrightsville Beach police officer who shot Nidal Malik Hasan and thus cut short his deadly shooting rampage at Fort Hood. Munley, who has a history of heroism, was herself wounded in [...]
The Star-News “Community Editorial Board” opines about a new zoning scheme hatched up by planning bureaucrats to coerce developers to arrange land use that will suit their cosmic vision of how people should live. I know, this sounds bizarre, even Orwellian, but editors say, “the concept is a [...]
The Jacksonville Daily News pulls back the curtain to expose the real story on climate change policy:
The world can breathe a sigh of relief. Unnecessary economic destruction at the hands of climate zealots is becoming more likely to be averted — at least for this year. An international treaty [...]
Was there an incumbency-mood in Tuesday’s electorate? Sure, I’d say so. Two incumbents on the Wilmington city council got canned, including the longest-serving member. Five incumbents mayors in Brunswick County went down to defeat. Outside of the Cape Fear region, voters gave conservatives a chance to run the [...]
Star-News editorial editors say that the state Alcoholic Beverage Control commission system “needs shaking up.” I suggest it needs a shake down—to the level of elimination. Editors rightly note that it is antiquated and unaccountable. This and other state government creations, better left to private decision makers, do [...]
While incumbent Wilmington Mayor Bill Saffo easily won reelection last night, other incumbents around the region didn’t fare as well. Two incumbent council members in Wilmington were defeated. So were several mayors in smaller towns such as Wrightsville Beach, Boiling Springs Lakes, Southport, and Oak Island.
In Jacksonville, the Daily News [...]
Sorry to be late to the gate, but I had to speak at an evening in Asheville this evening. On to the election results for Southeast NC:
Bill Saffo has won an easy reelection as mayor of Wilmington. In the city council races, three seats were up for grabs. It looks [...]
Last month, Rep. Mike McIntyre announced that the Brunswick town of Calabash would receive a $2.6 million federal loan, along with a $137,000 federal grant, to build a new fire station.
Only, apparently no one asked Calabash about the idea. Last week, the fire department board unanimously rejected the federal [...]
The student legislature at UNC-Wilmington has voted against a proposal to impose a “sustainability fee” on students to fund an unspecified range of recycling and awareness programs on campus. The majority appears to have gotten to the heart of the matter:
In a formal statement from the Student Government [...]
Is the lack of party labels in most municipal and school-board elections. Removing party labels removes one piece of information about the candidates that many voters value, with the result that some of those voters don’t bother to cast ballots. I explained a bit more about this in a recent [...]
