Fitzsimon File

Tillis no David Letterman

Here is one from the department of redundancy department. Rep. Thom Tillis from Charlotte is one of the leaders of the House Republicans spin brigade, blaming House Democrats for everything from the budget crisis to the poor play of the Carolina Panthers.

Tillis has even produced a video in which he delivers a top ten list in a pale imitation of Davis Letterman, with an accompanying fact sheet claiming to list the “top ten Democrat false claims about the NC budget.”  

Putting aside the fact it is the Democratic Party, not the Democrat Party that Tillis, a member of the Republica Party, has an issue with, several of the top ten don’t add up.

None more that the assertion that the Democrats are misleading the public by saying there is no pork in the budget. One of the two examples Tillis uses is the $26 million pier in Nags Head, in the district of Senate President Pro Tem Marc Basnight.

Tillis should know better.  As you have read here many times before, Tillis and all his fellow Republicans voted for the legislation authorizing the construction pier in a House floor session on April 9.  Might be time to revise the old top ten list.

Maybe call it the top ten misleading claims by Republicans about claims by Democrats about the state budget. Can’t wait for that video.

Hyperbole update

This week’s breathless hyperbole about President Obama comes from the website Wake Up America run by state Senator Andrew Brock.  The site includes a column presumably written by Brock or one of his associates pointing to the Republican lead in the polls in the gubernatorial election in Virginia as boding well for “the movement to take back our country from the radical socialist agenda that Obama and his cronies are subversively implementing.”

Subversively implementing? Fighting for legislation in Congress is now subversive?

Then there is former Republican Senator Rick Santorum quoted in a story on the Wake Up site. Santorum said “the left’s policies, especially those policies aggressively set forward by the Obama administration, target the family and Christian churches for destruction.”

Making sure everybody has access to health care is obviously an attempt to destroy churches and families. How could it possibly be anything else? 

Andrew Brock’s family must be so proud.

The Chamber without credibility

Duke Energy CEO James Rogers is the latest executive of a major corporation to question the U.S. Chamber’s fierce opposition to President Obama’s proposals for health care, regulation of the financial industry, and climate change.

Rogers told the Wall Street Journal that the chamber “has put Main Street businesses in a precarious place by taking a position that's not credible and doesn't allow them to shape legislation to their members' benefit.”

Now Rogers needs to talk to Lew Ebert, head of the North Carolina Chamber, the U.S. Chamber’s state affiliate.  Ebert complained to a crowd in Sanford recently about lawmakers in Raleigh and Washington, saying that he had “never seen more potential harm that could be done to business and to the creation of potential jobs.”

Speaking of not credible.

Various state political affairs

While reading more about McQueen Campbell, the star of the current reality show, Plane Trips and Home Repair with Mike Easley, I ran across a mention of Campbell’s name listed as a consultant in an $8 million land purchase by Wake Tech last year. 

His company was listed as the Campbell Property Group. The company website heralds its offering of “Commercial Real Estate from a Higher Perspective.” Like the governor’s mansion?

It also has a biography of Campbell that cites his experience as a pilot, contractor, and real estate broker, all of which the Board of Elections has discussed this week.

The bio ends with one of the better understatements made in a while, that Campbell’s interests “also include an active role in various state political affairs.”  Various state political affairs indeed.

 Email This Post  Print This Post

This entry was posted on Friday, October 30th, 2009 at 3:45 pm and is filed under Fitzsimon File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.