Fitzsimon File Archive

First the non-follies—state revenue update

State General Fund revenues came in $230 million less than expected in the first quarter of the fiscal year, according to a report released Friday by the Fiscal Research Division of the General Assembly.

It’s easy to say that Senate Minority Leader Phil Berger should have picked a better time to release the Senate Republicans 2009 Agenda for Change than the day of the last debates in the presidential and gubernatorial races and the day that the stock market plummeted another 700 points.

It took them a little while, but the market-worshipping talking point factories inside the Washington Beltway figured out a way to blame the current economic crisis on who they always blame things on, poor people and the government.

A legislative committee spent most of Tuesday on the most discussed education issue this campaign season, the fact that almost one out of every three ninth graders in North Carolina fails to earn a high school diploma four years later.

It is virtually impossible to keep up with all the advocacy groups weighing in on this election, running ads for and against candidates for governor, president, and Congress. The names of the groups in the database at the Federal Elections Commission reads like a list of vague, focus-group words designed to say nothing.

Adjunct science

Some interesting news from the market-fundamentalists this week. Turns out that all that effort to help people stop smoking and to protect people from deadly secondhand smoke is misguided. That’s what the newest adjunct scholar let loose in Lockeville wants to believe.

It seems like every political candidate running for office this year uses the term “Main Street” to define who they want us to think they want to help. The debate about the Wall Street bailout increased the frequency of the reference, providing symmetry to the talking point.

Nine months ago, before the housing bubble burst and most people had ever heard of Sarah Palin, people in the Triangle were shocked when UNC-CH student body president Eve Carson and Duke graduate student Abajhit Mahato were murdered.

The folks who start each morning pledging philosophical allegiance to the holy free market must be in a panic these days. There is close to a consensus in Washington that the financial markets need more regulation and oversight from the federal government.

The last two weeks have been like the last seven years in the state mental health system, a discouraging, infuriating, frustrating mess that raise questions about financial management, access to services and patient safety.

Half a misleading loaf

The Wall Street bailout and worries over the economy may be dominating campaign speeches these days, but that doesn’t mean some pandering politicians and the think thanks that support them aren’t still willing to demagogue immigration every chance they get.

A member of Congress who voted for the Wall Street bailout this week told a reform group that the $50,000 he received in campaign contributions from banks did not influence his decision to support the legislation. And maybe that’s true.

The last 34 days of the most hotly contested gubernatorial campaign in a generation isn’t going to be pretty if the last few days are any indication. Lieutenant Governor Beverly Perdue complained recently that Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory has been “whining” about crime, and she made the remarks at an appearance in Charlotte, McCrory’s hometown.

The General Assembly will consider a $5 billion transportation bond next session if House Majority Leader Hugh Holliman gets his way. Holliman wants as much as $450 million of the bond to pay to replace the bridge over the Yadkin River.

There could be an unexpected benefit from the Congressional debate and public outrage about the Bush Administration’s $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, a new understanding of the extent of support for corporate welfare among policymakers at the state and national levels.