Pat McCrory

Pat McCrory is a big fan of Mitt Romney and thinks ol' Mitt is the right man to be our commander in chief. He truly does trust Romney's judgment. So I can't help wondering what McCrory thinks about the fact that Romney asked Paul Ryan, his running mate, for TEN FREAKING YEARS OF TAX RETURNS as part of his vetting process?

Do you know how many years of tax returns McCrory is sharing with we the people of North Carolina ... the very same people he wants to hire him to be our chief executive?

That number would be exactly zero. None. Nada. Zilch.

Coward.
Double coward.
And triple coward.

And it's not all the same stale ideas:

The two-dozen or so ideas in Dalton’s plan include tax breaks for small businesses, a $2,000 tax credit for employers hiring a long-term jobless worker, and funds to encourage manufacturing, biotechnology and multi-state infrastructure projects. Employers also could reduce worker hours and wages temporarily to get through tough spots while employees get partial unemployment benefits.

That last part reminds me of a conversation I had with a couple of really smart people this weekend about the largely un-reported issue of under-employment in our state. More than any other (single) factor, the missing consumer dollars related to wage contraction are going to keep our economy anemic, and we must at least attempt some of the remedies in Dalton's plan:

Ripped off, with much appreciation, from Left Out Loud.

So a guy walks into my office the other day looking for high leadership position in our company.

ME: I see here on your resume that you’ve worked in a highly successful law firm in the past, and also with a large energy company. Can you tell us a little about your time at that business?

APPLICANT: I can tell you a little, but only a little. I did important things and got paid a lot of money. But I really don’t like to talk too much about that part of my life.

An ideological chasm, or election year posturing?

Democrats are holding their political convention in the urban landscape of Charlotte, North Carolina, which is studded with more than $800 million worth of public projects that wouldn’t exist without local Republicans. “That’s kind of ironic, isn’t it?” McCrory said in a phone interview yesterday. “I’m not hearing my name mentioned, but that’s OK.”

Of course it's okay, since you're trying to conceal your "government sponsored growth" past from all the anti-government zealots barking from the GOP's back yard. If you want to make them wag their tails, you have to speak their language:

I was the captain of my track team in high school and also ran at the college level at Annapolis. I ran the quarter and the mile relay. My best time for the quarter was 48.8 at the Penn Relays in 1971. I came in a distant fourth.

Commentary by Michael Weisel

Pat McCrory is trying to have it both ways and he seems to be getting away with a monstrous act of hypocrisy.

On May 24th, McCrory’s campaign lawyers filed a lawsuit against N.C. Citizens for Progress for making false statements about McCrory in a television ad. In the previous six days, McCrory’s lawyers filed an FCC complaint and relentlessly threatened TV stations to take down the ad or face litigation. McCrory was indignant. N.C. news outlets dutifully reported his indignation.

The same day, N.C. Citizens called McCrory’s bluff, filing a complaint in court asking that its ad be declared true and lawful. The bully McCrory went limp. His lawyers must have wet their pants when it dawned on them that McCrory would actually have to answer questions under oath about his business dealings.

So Team McCrory attempted to slither out of the lawsuit – to avoid putting the would-be governor under oath to answer questions.

The richest irony is that McCrory’s barristers this week accused N.C. Citizens for Progress of abusing the court system. This from the legal team who used lawsuits as a threat in the first place and then filed a lawsuit that Team McCrory used as a political tactic to discredit the ad?

To be clear, N.C. Citizens would never have gone to court had it not been for McCrory’s lawsuit.

None of this should be a surprise to N.C. journalists. If it sounds familiar, it’s because McCrory’s lawyers used this same intimidation tactic in 2008 - effectively.

This latest attempt at intimidation didn’t work on N.C. Citizens for Progress. But it must have worked on N.C. news media, which by and large have ignored this story. It’s not too late to set the record straight. Readers and viewers deserve it.

Afterthought? Now there's an understatement.

... Pat McCrory, the Republican nominee, took his message of economic recovery to the Charlotte Chamber on Monday, but his eight-minute speech skimped on specifics and felt like an afterthought.