Art Pope

I know that many of us worked towards achieving less Merritt, and for a while it seemed like we might actually have accomplished no Merritt. But alas, that is not to be:

In downtown Raleigh - just down the street from the State Capitol - a new watchdog group is working to expose government corruption. It's called the Foundation for Ethics in Public Service.

"We believe this could be a significant complement to counter public corruption, which I do believe is growing," offered Frank Perry.

Perry spent 22 years with the FBI and ran the Raleigh Bureau office in the years after the September 11 attacks. Most recently, he worked for the State Ethics Commission and the State Auditor's Office.

Now, he's joining forces with former State Auditor Les Merritt in creating the foundation.Read more

The war for control of the North Carolina Republican Party entered a new phase last weekend when nostalgic faithful chose Helms acolyte Tom Fetzer over Pope protege Chad Adams to preside over their ascendance. And while it's tempting to say Fetzer won the hearts and minds of grassroots party officers, that would be a distortion of what really happened. There were, simply put, few minds involved.Read more

Among the right's more colorful characters, former NC Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr stands distinguished, both in terms of intellect and good humor. After a career on the court, and a quixotic run for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, today he heads one of the smaller fiefdoms in Art Pope's Holy Empire, focusing his energies on matters of constitutional law in North Carolina. Said another way, he spends most of his time suing Democrats. And it seems he's looking for more opportunities.Read more

Last month I resubscribed to the Raleigh News and Observer after nearly three years of protest. Though I still consider the editorial pages the weakest link in their value chain, Zabouti helped me understand that having a subscription was part of my civic duty. Today, as a full-price paying customer, I recognize I have another duty as well - to call out the good, the bad and the ugly when I see it. This weekend's editorial pages offer an excellent case in point.Read more

Last week the NAACP celebrated its 100 year anniversary. Saturday the NAACP of NC and partners led thousands in the 3rd annual “Historic Thousands on Jones Street”, the HKonJ rally in Raleigh to support a 14 point People’s Agenda for better schools and health care, equal justice, affordable housing, worker fairness, voting rights, environmental justice, and more. Point #1 advocates that “All Children Need High Quality, Well Funded, Diverse Schools”. Point #11 calls for “Collective Bargaining for Public Employees and Support Smithfield Workers Right to Unionize.”

The NAACP of NC and 12 local branches have signed on to support the NC Hope Coalition in calling for the repeal of the ban in GS 95-98 on collective bargaining by public employees. The Coalition has a core of 11 labor groups including the SEANC, SEIU and NCAE and was an important element of the HKonJ rally. Some marchers wore yellow gags with the words “Repeal 95-98”. Just Monday the NAACP again showed its support for NC unions by awarding Richard Burr, Howard Coble and Americans for Prosperity a “Hypocrisy Award” for the misleading "Defense of the American Worker" campaign which opposes the "card check" bill. Just yesterday the NAACP of NC again expressed support for the “Employee Free Choice Act” even as conservative patron Art Pope stood with Richard Burr to oppose it.

So it comes as some surprise that the Executive Director of SEANC, Dana Cope, and the Legislative Director of SEANC, Ardis Watkins, have together taken steps to undermine the school diversity policy in effect in Wake County and to give succor to opponents of public education and in some cases, collective bargaining.Read more

Most people consider themselves fairly well-informed, and are not likely to admit that they (personally) are vulnerable to manipulation. Those other people are, of course, but not me. And while we might think we carefully "choose" the sources of our information, our brains often store and edit things according to a different set of often less "enlightened" rules. Whatever. It's part of our psychological makeup, and not likely to change any time soon.Read more

Rumor has it that the knight of the right, Art Pope, is gearing up his electioneering machine to target a small handful of NC House districts. Reliable sources say he intends to fund a big city consultant who would work on defeating three candidates for state House: Rep. Alice Bordsen, Rep. Graham Underhill, and Rep. Dickson.

We saw Pope crank his machine into action two years ago to unseat arch-rival Richard Morgan, so it's a safe bet that's what's happening again.Read more

There’s a new puppet show in town, but you wouldn’t know it from their website. Capitol Monitor claims to “shed daylight into the darkest corners of our "citizen" government”:

It's all about transparency.

The problem is, there is no transparency about the website and its owners. But, it's got Art Pope's fingerprints all over it Read more

Of all the millions of people in North Carolina who could offer opinions about stormwater management and coastal pollution, the Charlotte Observer turned this week to a reliable source at the John Locke Foundation, Mitch Kokai, whose main qualification is the fact that he's part of Art Pope's multi-million-dollar opinion manufacturing machine. Read more