news-record.com

It’s time to round up the flotsam that’s been meandering through the political jet stream this past week as I’ve been, um, distracted…yeah, that’s the ticket.

Taxing issues

Dome has already mentioned (Click here) Sen. Phil Berger’s wheelbarrow full of fun. But the Senate Republican leader had a few other things on his mind at Tuesday’s news conference, including tax reform.

Berger sounded cautious but open to Democratic efforts to remake the state’s tax system. (Click here for background.)

But upon further questioning, Berger laid out two big Republican “must-haves” that seem unlikely to come about when the Democrats who control the legislature dive into tax reform.

The first was a “stable” economic environment. I don’t know that anyone is going to feel the economy is really stable for a few years and this is a project that Democrats want to take on post haste.

Secondly, Berger emphasized that he would want to see measure to reign in spending attached to any tax package.

“There needs to be as serious commitment to controlling spending as the commitment that we seem to see from the Democrats to adjusting the tax policy of North Carolina,” Berger said. What would such a “serious commitment” look like? Berger said it would have to be a formal, legal mechanism more than just a handshake agreement.

Thus far, that doesn’t seem to be an idea that Democrats are embracing.

Click below to listen to the Q&A on this issue:

Erratic statements

Berger’s office has taken to using the word “erratic” to describe Gov. Bev Perdue and her policies. For example, in a release this week, Berger said that while Perdue is dismayed by a technicality that will lead to the early release of prisoners serving life sentences, she signed legislation that will revise sentencing guidelines lower for some crimes. From a release last week.

“Governor Perdue’s erratic behavior continues. In August, over Republican objections, Perdue signed two bills reducing the prison sentences for criminals convicted of rape and murder. Now she complains about convicted murderers being released from prison. This is just another example of Perdue’s hypocrisy…”

That “erratic behavior continues” line is something that Berger’s office has been using a lot. Recently, some bit of book-learnin’ (probably imposed, as my conservative friends would say, by some pinko-liberal psychology professor) began bugging me about the phrase. Not only is erratic pejorative but it seems to hit on the current governor’s gender, as in “Oh, the lady governor can’t make up her mind what she wants to do.”

Berger, however, had a great comeback for my question when asked about that.

“Gary Pearce was the first person who used the word “erratic” in conjunction with the governor,” Berger said. “And it struck me if a well known, very experience, Democratic political consultant – If he felt like what she was doing was erratic, that was a good enough word for me too.”

Pearce indeed described the governor as “erratic” in an Aug. 14 post (click here) “talking about Perdue hiring Pearse Edwards as her new communications guru. He wrote: "You’ll work for a governor who has a reputation for being tough on her staff – and erratic.”

Point Berger.

Burr statements

Dome and the AP (Click here and here) noted that Sen. Richard Burr came to tout federal money coming to a local fire station from the federal stimulus package which he opposed in Congress. From the AP report:

Burr appeared last week with local officials in Alexander County who were receiving $2 million in federal grants to help build a new fire station, according to the Hickory Daily Record. The money came from a federal stimulus program touted by Democrats and President Barack Obama.

Now, the following is not to say the story isn’t on the up and up or based on inaccurate information, but there is a back story here.

The DSCC and other Democratic political functionaries took the lead in pushing that story out to the news media, making calls and sending e-mails. Then once the story gained traction, they sent out a second round of news releases (click here) touting how all the MSM were reporting this story. Basically, they’ve laundered a talking point so it looks like it’s coming from reporters.

To be clear: Republicans do this sort of thing as well. Democrats are probably going to do more in the context of the coming U.S. Senate campaign because they’re aiming to take down an incumbent.

But for those who will be following the 2010 campaign, it’s worth being on the look out for this sort of thing. The tactic was used quite a bit during the 2008 Hagan-Dole race with varying degrees of results.

And for those in Greensboro, this is a charge that gets leveled at Rep. Howard Coble quite a bit. Coble, a Republican, often votes against spending bills but will tout the earmarks he got inserted into those bills.

Third party poopers

As editorial writer Doug Clark notes (click here) the Libertarian and Green parties lost a Court of Appeals decision (click here) challenging North Carolina’s ballot access laws.

The decision was a split decision so the defendants have a right of appeal to the North Carolina Supreme Court.

Perdue in Asia

Gov. Bev Perdue has been blogging her way through a two-week trip in Asia. You can catch her updates here.

Veterans

A veterans group has been pushing federal energy policy reform legislation here in North Carolina and elsewhere (click here) In addition to a multi-city bus stop, I caught a radio commercial this morning that featured Rep. Grier Martin, a Wake County Democrat, who was not identified as a legislator in the commercial. Martin urged Sens. Hagan and Burr to support the climate change bill. (A sample radio ad is here.)

Prisoner release

Families and policy makers are upset that prisoners who supposedly got life sentences are due to be released in the coming week. (Click here.)

I don’t have much to add to this story, other than that I’ve heard from multiple departments and folks at the legislature who are working on trying to keep these guys behind bars.

Sitting in

As I mentioned in my Washington Watch column and editorial writer Allen Johnson mentioned in a recent column (Click here  and here) U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan said today that she would be introducing legislation to mint a commemorative coin in honor of the 1960 sit-ins at the Woolworth’s lunch counters. Proceeds from the coin would help support the International Civil Rights Museum in downtown Greensboro. Hagan said that Rep. Howard Coble would introduce a companion measure. (Update: It turns out that the museum is in Rep. Brad Miller's district. Hagan's staff says that since that's the case, it will be Miller who introduced the bill in the House.) The only resistance, she said, would come if there were multiple projects competing for a slot among the limited number of coins the mint would issue in any one year.