People want answers, not fear-mongering

You wouldn't know it by some of the commercials blaring from your television these days, but people in North Carolina are not thinking much about who attended a candidate's fundraiser or who served on a board together ten years ago.

The latest Elon University Poll finds that when asked an open-ended question about the most important issue in North Carolina,  63 percent of people in the state say the economy. Education is the next most popular answer. Just over five percent mentioned it.

Religion and guilt by association didn't make the list, though the poll does list a catchall category that mighty apply, "family values and morals." That was the most important issue facing the state for 0.9 percent of the people.

In case you're wondering about immigration, that was most important to 3.1 percent of those who responded to the poll. That all might help explain why campaigns based on scaring voters  aren't doing very well this election cycle.

Realtor money is everywhere

The torrent of misleading mailers and robocalls continues from realtors and their allies in distortions, the N.C. Homebuilders Association. Most of the propaganda comes from the N.C. Homeowners Alliance, a creation of the realtors that is trying to influence state and local elections this year.

The efforts by the Alliance come on top of the $522,000 the realtors' PAC has given directly to candidates this year and the $419,000 the Homebuilders PAC has ponied up.  Then there are the individual contributions of realtors and homebuilders to campaigns. 

That is a hard total to come up with, but a search of the database at the State Board of Elections shows that people who list their occupation as realtor have donated a total of $324,000 to state candidates so far this election cycle. 

If builders and contractors gave that much, it adds up to more $1.5 million from people who don't want their industry to help pay for the costs of the state's growth that brings them their billions in profits.

Contributing millions to politicians must also be part of the American dream.

This week's Leef lunacy

It wouldn't be Friday Follies without some input from George Leef with the Pope Center for Higher Education, venting his paranoid spleen on the Locke Foundation as he so often does.

The election has Leef more than upset. He can apparently read the polls. Here is part of his take in the massive crowds turning out to see Barack Obama around the county, including in Raleigh this week.

"It's great political theater, but reality lurks just over the electoral horizon. All that Obama and his Democratic partisans will presumably have is one thing: coercion."

All those policy proposals must have made it to Leef's computer yet.

If the polls are right, what does Leef think will happen to America?

"If Obama and his leftist allies sweep the election, it probably means the completion of the project they began in 1933, namely turning the United States into another social democracy where the state holds the "commanding heights" of socio-economic power and the people have to be content with whatever scraps of liberty are left to them."

That follows this gem from Leef in an earlier posting this week.

"The relics of the New Deal are still millstones around the neck of the country, including the federalization of agriculture, Social Security, and the National Labor Relations Act."

Social Security a millstone around our neck? Who knew? And why should workers have any rights or protections at all when they try to organize and speak with one voice for better working conditions?

Start gathering up your scraps of liberty. The end is apparently near.