Topic of the week: Pat McCrory

There's a statement scheduled for today. This should be fun.

Whaddyabet he's all in favor of drilling our way to energy independence by way of a toxic coastline?

Well, shoot, I spent five minutes looking for that picture of McCrory and Bush together at the airport. Joke, ruined.

Sorry James if I'm a little off topic here but your post got me thinking about some other dynamics that might come into play during this election. When was the last time a Charlotte area politician won a statewide election? Jim Martin was always very careful to say he was from Lake Norman and I can't recall anyone else winning, Ghantt came about as close as anyone. Have our demographics changed that much? Will McCrory be viewed as the fresh new, urban/Piedmont candidate and win all those votes in the triad, triangle, & Charlotte area and Purdue be viewed as the old school down east rural candidate and just get overwhelmed by that enormous number of voters in the Piedmont? Has our historical sectionalism shifted to a new alignment?

Just like most things around here, MPP talks a good game but there is little substance. It is left to our majority Democratic city council and majority Democratic county commission to do the hard work of finding money for these programs.

I grew up here in Mecklenburg and several of my friends are officers with the CMPD. Of the men and women I know on the force, there is not much love for MPP.

Wake Forest won't play us anymore
Michigan last year
LSU - you are next
Go ASU!

Sorry for my ignorance but what is MPP?

Sorry about that, I should have explained the acronym. Myers Park is one of the high falutin area's of Charlotte and is seen as a bastion of Republicism. But I will have to add, I have seen quite a few Obama signs down there and I believe Betsy grew up there.

Wake Forest won't play us anymore
Michigan last year
LSU - you are next
Go ASU!

This came to me by email.

McCrory Supports Deep Sea Exploration
Will sign Executive Order

Greenville, N.C. – Mayor Pat McCrory today made the following statement:

"America is faced with an energy crisis that threatens our families. The solution to this crisis starts right here in North Carolina. As governor I will lead in a new direction with a balanced approach to meeting our goal of energy independence. We will actively pursue alternative sources of energy while also welcoming exploration and production of hydrocarbon reserves off our coast.

Executive Order

"One of my first acts as governor will be to meet with the Coastal Resources Commission to change coastal energy policies and then issue an Executive Order providing for safe, technologically sound deep sea exploration and drilling. (The present executive order was issued by Governor Hunt.) I will then petition the Federal Government to permit North Carolina the right to drill off our coast and I will insist upon changes in law to ensure N. C. receives 37.5% revenue share.

Perdue Scare Tactics

"Too many of our elected officials simply reject the possibility of offshore drilling with scare tactics. Lt. Gov. Perdue says she is "100 percent opposed" to the idea of examining deep sea drilling, claiming one "Exxon Valdez could destroy North Carolina coastline forever." (Maybe someone should inform the lieutenant governor that the Exxon Valdez was a boat with a drunken captain, not a rig.) Instead of a balanced and comprehensive approach, she endorses "green energy alternatives" as the only solution.

Improve Lives

"New leadership will provide a balanced approach to our energy policy along with a way to improve the lives of all our citizens. We can become energy independent and transform Eastern North Carolina at the same time. The east has a higher unemployment and lower per capita income than the rest of the state. But it does not have to be that way. With safe, environmentally sound drilling in the deep sea off our coast we can create new high paying jobs…more jobs than the people of our poor counties can fill.

Manteo Project

"The Manteo Project is 45 miles off our coast on the Continental Shelf. Exploration of this area indicates there are nearly 1.5 billion barrels of oil or equivalent gas in the Manteo Project. It has further been projected that it is most likely to generate natural gas, and could contain as much as 5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas which is equivalent to 833 billion barrels of oil.

"Drilling in the deep sea at the Manteo Project would be far beyond the ability to see from shore. If natural gas is discovered, it is free from the spills the alarmists predict. The product would be piped away from the coastal counties to more inland eastern counties for processing. Tourism will not be affected and jobs would be in areas where they are most needed.

Revenue

"In addition to jobs in the east, the new revenue to the state would permit us to protect our environment, re-nourish our beaches, and increase investment in conservation banking to protect some of our pristine lands across the state for future generations. It would provide the revenue to develop alternative sources of energy.

"We have a choice in this race for governor. We can continue to spend billions of dollars a day on an unstable energy policy which places our economy at risk while bolstering rogue regimes and supporting those who would do us harm, or we can choose to end our dependence on foreign sources of energy by encouraging conservation, investing in alternative energy technologies, and tapping into American sources of energy like the Manteo Project."

This statement is worth a double-take.

"In addition to jobs in the east, the new revenue to the state would permit us to protect our environment, re-nourish our beaches, and increase investment in conservation banking to protect some of our pristine lands across the state for future generations. It would provide the revenue to develop alternative sources of energy."

Riiiiiiiight. The whole reason to rape the North Carolina coast is to protect it and get money more money for Duke Energy.

What does this have to do with Duke Energy you ask?

Ocean Energy, Inc. (NYSE: OEI) and Duke Energy Hydrocarbons LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Duke Energy (NYSE: DUK) announced today a joint venture agreement on the Outer Continental Shelf, offshore Louisiana and Texas.

Under the terms of the agreement, Duke Energy Hydrocarbons has agreed to participate with up to a 50 percent working interest in 13 of OEI’s exploratory drilling prospects. The venture anticipates drilling costs in excess of $40 million through the remainder of 1999.

and then lying about it.

For years, he crowed about how his "good government" allowed Charlotte not to raise its property tax rate.

What he didn't say is that the policies he championed - runaway development, for example - affected Mecklenburg County's bottom line, not Charlotte's. So the tens of thousands of sprawl houses he endorsed on behalf of his developer cronies caused Mecklenburg County's taxes to soar (because the county has to pay for all the expensive growth-induced capital-intensive stuff, like schools, and libraries, and parks)...while Charlotte's tax revenue increases were just gravy.

If you live in Charlotte, you live in Mecklenburg County, right? So, McCrory's policies caused your overall tax bill to go through the roof...but he adeptly blamed it on county government rather than on his own corruption, cronyism, bad policy, and ego.

Even with all the increased revenue for the city, under McCrory's leadership" it was often spent unwisely. Now Charlotte's chickens have come home to roost: burying the real need for increases in public service while millions went to pet projects like arenas and NASCAR museums, the city let necessities such as police staffing suffer. Of course, McCrory likes to blame the crime problem on somebody else, too: the state. Those big, bad meanies in Raleigh just won't hand out more money for the local courts.

Maybe adequate (and adequately trained?) police would go a long way toward preventing crime. Wouldn't prevention be better than watching crime occur...then complaining that somebody else isn't paying enough to prosecute it? But no, McCrory can rest on his laurels and live by his "thug" comments...he's a crimefighter, don't you know, and Bush has him on speed dial to get homeland security advice, right?

It really is time to start using McCrory's failures in Charlotte against him. And they werent failures of happenstance...they were failures of abysmally bad public policy and priorities.