newsobserver.com projects - Bob Rucho - Comments

Re: State may transfer road duties

ThomasPaine — Wed, 06 May 2009 10:25:44 -0400

Absolutely stupid discrimatory bill. Enormous burden on all rural counties which make up the vast majority of North Carolina while attempting to stuff the pockets of the metropolitan areas. Road conditions of paved secondary-roads would decay and become horrific. Horrible Horrible idea. You can't have it both ways Rocho. There is no second-class, first-class North Carolina. We are all North Carolina.

Re: State may transfer road duties

nc4me — Tue, 05 May 2009 12:10:49 -0400

Seriously??? So why are we paying a huge gas tax???

Why don't they just use the money in the highway trust fund? (sarcasm)

Re: State may transfer road duties

informed — Tue, 05 May 2009 11:04:52 -0400

Not without a corresponding reduction in State taxes or fees. Tit for tat, no free rides, not even for state gummit.

Re: Two challengers for GOP Senate leader

Prospero — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 16:49:43 -0500

Senator Brunstetter is correct about "what needs to happen in 2010," insofar as the next, very important, election is concerned. Meanwhile, there's the 2009 General Assembly and the difficult job of helping your Caucus, and preventing them from being the Senate Democrat's rodeo clowns, cannot be avoided. Phil Berger has done enough of a good job at the latter that his colleagues may have already forgotten that problem.

Senator Brunstetter's friend, the late Ham Horton, knew well the shortage of "institutional memory" there is among the Members of the General Assembly.

Among thousands upon thousands of possibilities, as just one example, the decision in the Pender/Stephenson case may be coming your way, requiring the redrawing of legislative districts, possibly just in the Pender-New Hanover House county cluster. Possibly the whole ball of wax.

Should the Majority be required to use the Census data they used in November 2003 or the corrected data they had the previous September and should have used but didn't, the data they didn't tell the Republicans they had...the data that didn't over-populate Orange County.

Court precedent required them to use the corrected data.

Will Brunstetter base a decision on whether Forsyth County becomes a fraction too small to support two Senate Districts? Which decision will be in his best interests as opposed to doing the right thing?

That's just one example. While the next election is underway, and te filing deadline for 2010 is already only 14 months away, there is a lot needs doing on Jones Street, too. It is a good thing to hold on to one thing without losing track of the other.

Cracking the greater than ten to one fundraising advantage held by the Senate Democrats, cracking what Rob Christensen calls the Democrat coalition with "progressive business" will take more than determination. It will take boldness and skill.

The likely voters know that a delayed sunset of a temporary tax is "a tax increase," which came as a surprise to Mike Easley and Tony Rand most of all.

And yet those same polls show a plurality believes Jim Black was a Republican, and that the Republicans control the General Assembly.

Just what will any leader of the Senate or House Republicans do to change that one, persistant perception? Yes, the last election is history, but elections have consequences, and the difference between a loyal opposition respected from fear or collaboration, and a bunch of rodeo clowns is a tough row to hoe.

Re: Perdue loses the Senate name game

Proctor — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 02:03:48 -0400

Some more side-splitting, deadpan humor from Dan Clodfelter of Mecklenburg County. Who says Charlotte politics is dull and no fun? No wonder Charlotteans are always trying to catch up in N.C. politics: Mecklenburg's stand-up legislators keep them in stiches with all their choice wisecracks.

David McKnight

Re: Perdue loses the Senate name game

ryanteaguebeckwith — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 22:19:07 -0400

Comment deleted for profanity.

— RTB