Carolina Politics Online

Sen. Jim DeMint’s anti-earmarks bandwagon is getting mighty crowded these days.

The Senate is expected to vote today on DeMint’s measure to impose a one-year moratorium on funding earmarks that direct federal spending for lawmakers’ projects to cities, counties and states around the nation.

The moratorium gained momentum this week when Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, vying for the Democratic presidential nomination, joined other cosponsors of the DeMint measure.

“What it tells you is that as they get around the country, they’re hearing from people that spending is out of control, earmarks are symbolic of spending and corruption and they don’t want to be on the wrong side of the issue,” DeMint said Wednesday in an interview.

The State

DeMint deserves a lot of credit for pushing this and not backing down. Earmarks need to go for a number of reasons, waste and corruption being the two most important in my opinion. However, even if this passes it will not save us any tax dollars. Instead of that money going to earmarks the Senate will alternatively inflate some other wasteful social program using that money rather than doing the responsible thing which would be allocation as an additional payment on the national debt.

Like 40 percent of young adults in South Carolina, Matthews lost inclusion in her parents’ health care coverage when the insurance industry deemed that she was too old.

The state is now joining more than 30 others that have tried to find ways to increase age limits and extend coverage to their uninsured, although industry insiders warn that it could end up costing many families higher premium costs.

The Post and Courier

Of course it will raise the premiums.  If you are going to force insurance companies to cover people that they normally do not they are naturally going to raise the rates on everybody to guard against the added risk.  I don’t want to hear about the poor graduate students who are struggling to get by and can’t afford health insurance.  These people chose this path of extra schooling knowing full well they’d be dropped from their parent’s policy at a certain age.  There is no reason why some of them can’t start working full time so that they have health coverage and do the grad school part time.  That’s what I’m going to be doing.

I’m also not feeling the sorrow for Miss Matthews that Ms Wenger is trying to pour onto the readers of her article.  This girl is a 26 year old adult medical student who chose an educational path that accumulated her $200K in loan debt.  She is not a victim here the way Wenger is trying to portray her.  When she finishes school she’ll be making a pretty penny and she won’t have any problems wiping her debt away.  What the hell is another five grand anyway if you already owe 200?

These are not children we are talking about.  They are adults.  They need to act like it and accept responsibility for themselves, not expect others to do it for them.

Linda Daves, chairwoman of the N.C. Republican Party, is calling on Attorney General Roy Cooper to investigate claims that the governor’s office directed state officials to destroy public records.Daves sent a letter to Cooper today asking that he investigate claims by Debbie Crane, who was fired recently as the chief spokeswoman for the state Department of Health and Human Services, that she and her counterparts at other state agencies were instructed to destroy e-mails they sent to the governor’s office.

The News & Observer

This entire DHHS affair gives me a headache. It’s very difficult to follow. So in 2001, a sweeping mental health reform package passes the state legislature with near unanimous support. Easley claims that he did not support these reforms, yet he signed it into law anyway. He says his DHHS director at that time told him she did not support the reforms, yet she was quoted in a letter fully supporting it.

Fast forward to 2008 where the mental health changes have been an utter disaster. Easley has the new director of the DHHS fired after twenty years of service in the state government under the claim that she was insubordinate and did not cooperate with reporters who wanted access to the public records. The fired director claims that most of the communications have been destroyed because the policy of the Easley administration is to trash these internal memos/ emails immediately so that there is no public record. Some employees corroborate Crane’s story, others do not.

The shit has hit the fan and you got everyone in Raleigh playing the blame game. So what really happened? Who knows?  Yeah, I think an investigation is at hand.  If Easley is orchestrating the destruction of public records, particularly those that might indicate malfeasance, we have an ethics issue here.

Badgett, a Pinnacle resident now completing his first four-year term as a judge in District 17B, was suspended in the wake of an investigation launched in the fall of 2006 by the N.C. Judicial Standards Commission.

A series of hearings was held in Raleigh by the commission focusing on a business relationship Badgett had with an attorney who leased his old law office and allegedly received preferential treatment when his cases were tried in Badgett’s court. Judicial Standards officials also found that the judge had created a threatening and hostile work environment for District Attorney Ricky Bowman and his staff.

Evidence further showed that Badgett had coerced or attempted to coerce guilty pleas from two defendants in his court and was “habitually rude and condescending to those who appeared before him and demonstrated an arrogant and contemptuous demeanor.”

While the commission had made a disciplinary recommendation to the state Supreme Court that Badgett be censured, the court decided that Badgett’s actions were serious enough to merit a suspension as well as censure. A censure is a formal condemnation of a judge’s behavior that is entered onto his permanent record.

The court ruled that the local judge was guilty of “gross” and “willful” misconduct that went beyond any error in judgment or negligence.

Badgett’s integrity also was called into question by the Supreme Court, which found that he made untrue statements regarding his actions during testimony before the commission. The high court found this particularly disturbing, since Badgett was under oath and sworn to tell the truth at the time.

The Mount Airy News

There is no room for mistakes when you’re a judge.  You hold an individual’s future in your hands.  In extreme cases lapses in judgment have turned dangerous criminals loose and resulted in the death(s) of an innocent.

I think it’s clear to any sensible individual that this man does not belong behind a bench.  A judge has to be a person of integrity, honor, and trust.  Badgett possesses none of these qualities.   Nothing bars him from being re-elected other than the voters who will hopefully have the sense to know better.  It’s hard to say.  Sometimes the voting public is held to too high of a standard.

DURHAM — Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory was the target of his three rivals for the Republican gubernatorial nomination Wednesday.At an hour-long debate in Durham, state Sen. Fred Smith, Salisbury attorney Bill Graham and former Supreme Court justice Bob Orr worked to draw distinctions between themselves and McCrory, who has led most polls since entering the race six weeks ago.For his part, McCrory stressed his strength in hypothetical matchups against the two main Democratic candidates, Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue and state Treasurer Richard Moore, and his experience on issues like gangs and illegal immigration from running one of the state’s largest cities.

Charlotte Observer

McCrory is the front runner and the front runner always gets jumped on and pounded into the ground by his opponents. If the Republicans are interested in taking the governor’s mansion this year they’ll line up behind McCrory. Polling has consistently showed that the other three candidates can’t get over the line when matched up with the Democrats. McCrory, on the other hand, ties or slightly leads. His experience as mayor of the largest city in North Carolina will be invaluable and he’ll bring well needed attention to this area.