“We’ve got to find a way to share the risks and lower the administrative costs.” So said former President Bill Clinton Monday night, and no, he wasn’t talking about Social Security–though he might have been. He was talking about health care. Clinton was the star attraction at ex-Gov. Jim Hunt’s 20th annual Emerging Issues Forum, […]
Bob Geary
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A mile high in Denver, and down to earth again in Raleigh
Ironic, surely, that I was in Vail, Colo., when my cell phone rang with the news from Raleigh that an inch of snow had reduced my hometown to gridlock. In Vail, when you’re not skiing, you walk or you ride a bus. Your car stays parked. Further irony: I spent most of the week in […]
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Who won? Who knows.
It’s not like we weren’t warned. In the months leading up to the Nov. 2 elections, citizen activists and computer geeks alike pleaded with the State Board of Elections not to depend on paperless touchscreen computers–the direct recording electronic devices, or DREs, you’ve heard so much about by now–to count our votes in North Carolina. […]
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Desperate Councilors is Raleigh’s Must-See TV
Doggone it, I’m going to be out of town this week. I need somebody to Tivo, or otherwise record, Thursday night’s episode of my favorite television show, Desperate Councilors. The Raleigh City Council meeting, I mean. 7 p.m. EST on cable channel 11. For you political junkies, it’s must-see TV. Thursday’s installment, according to the […]
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Backstage at Easley’s inauguration
The show must go on, and so it will Saturday evening in the Raleigh convention center at the gala celebrating Gov. Mike Easley’s inauguration to a second term. Hopefully, it will be quite a show, with a bit of everything from Jackie Gore (of “I Love Beach Music” fame) to the Triangle Youth Philharmonic to […]
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Turlington versus Meek puts state Democrats at a crossroads
Ed Turlington got his start in Democratic politics going door-to-door in Sampson County for George McGovern–at the age of 15. Four years later, at 19, he was the youngest member of the North Carolina delegation to the 1976 Democratic National Convention. But Jerry Meek can top that. He campaigned in Cumberland County for Walter Mondale […]
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Jesus loves a 4-Door
There’s nothing all that complicated about Wheels4Hope–except, of course, making it work. It’s a small nonprofit organization in Raleigh that will accept your donated car or other vehicle as long as it’s in pretty good shape, they can fix whatever’s wrong with it, and then sell it–for a flat rate of $500–to someone who really […]
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Affordable housing is the answer
The A.J. Fletcher Foundation in Raleigh, brought to us by the fortunate family behind Capitol Broadcasting (WRAL-TV etc.), got a new leader a year ago, and a new mission. Barbara Goodmon, wife of Capitol Broadcasting CEO Jim Goodmon, took over as the foundation’s executive director. In place of its old-timey interests in opera and the […]
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In the City of Oaks, conserving trees is–what else–‘up in the air’
Ted Shear is not a member of the Raleigh Planning Commission, though he’s tried. He’s been nominated twice, and his nominators included the City Council’s most pro-neighborhoods member, Thomas Crowder; developer Neal Hunt, the council’s senior Republican; and the man in the middle, by seat location and otherwise, Mayor Charles Meeker. Alas, Shear’s anathema to […]
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Scapegoats of 2004
Three weeks later, the pain is evident. There’s anger. There’s also alarm, verging on panic for some, that after the Great Leap Forward for gay equality that began in the U.S. Supreme Court two years ago and spread over in the last year to Massachusetts, San Francisco and everywhere in the country, the 2004 elections […]
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