newsobserver.com projects - Moody's - Comments

Re: Dems get high marks for finances

outraged1 — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 17:10:50 -0400

GaryJ it is a tribute to the sound budgeting of Democrats in the Legislature and the Governor's office that the state retains their AAA bond rating during this downturn.

Re: Dems get high marks for finances

GrayJ — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 10:26:58 -0400

This headline is misleading; while the Democrats do "control state government" Moody's, Standard & Poor's and Fitch Ratings rated North Carolina's finances not the Democrats' finances.

Re: Cowell warns of furlough fallout

jemphd — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 22:04:35 -0400

Because we would have less to spend, hurting sales tax; be paid less, hurting income taxes, and might let the inmates go spend their time out with all the Repubs.

Re: Cowell warns of furlough fallout

FFC1304 — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 19:52:50 -0400

again, why would furloughs HURT the once great state of NC, now in shambles at the hands of 100+ years of democrackkk RULE???

Gov. Ronald Reagan: The Great Taxer

AquaMan — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 18:40:44 -0400

Dear Bev,

A little history lession about a fellow governor you said you admnired during the campaign last year:

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RONALD REAGAN: THE TRIUMPH OF PRAGMATISM By Lou Cannon, July 1, 2008

The tip-off on Governor Ronald Reagan’s unsuspected pragmatism came two days after his inaugural speech on January 2, 1967, in which he promised to “squeeze, cut and trim” the cost of government. On January 4, however, he told aides that all the cutting and trimming in the world might not suffice. A tax increase could be necessary, said Reagan, and, if so, he didn’t want to wait “until everyone forgets that we did not cause the problem—we only inherited it.” Reagan’s comment reflected a practical streak that would serve him well in public life. His rhetoric was often unsophisticated—“there are simple answers, just not easy ones,” he often said—but his governance was more nuanced. This pleasantly surprised future Gov. George Deukmejian, a freshman state senator whom Reagan chose to carry his tax bill. Deukmejian had campaigned with Reagan and considered him a fire-eater. “A lot of people, including me, thought he would be ideological,” Deukmejian recalled years later. “We learned quickly that he was very practical.” Reagan faced a serious budget shortfall. In 1966, Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown had dodged an election-year tax increase by changing the state’s accounting practices to count anticipated revenue. This left Reagan with nine months of revenue to pay for a year of services and programs. When he took office the budget gap was estimated by the state Department of Finance at $400 million (more than $2.5 billion in 2008 dollars). Dire as this was, the shortfall estimate soon increased because of weak economic conditions that further reduced state revenues. Within a few months, analysts were warning of a potential $700 million shortfall. Neither Reagan nor his inexperienced aides were prepared for the magnitude of the deficit. “We were not only amateurs, we were novice amateurs,” said Reagan’s communications director Lyn Nofziger. This amateurism was compounded by Reagan’s naïve belief that the brightest lights in California business would be willing to drop what they were doing to serve their state. Then, as now, the post of state finance director is a California governor’s most crucial appointment. The director is charged with the task of consulting with the nonpartisan professionals in the finance department and preparing a budget that in Reagan’s era was supposed to be balanced annually. Reagan hoped when he was elected that some of the best brains in California’s leading corporations would volunteer to serve as finance director. When no one in the business community stepped forward, Reagan offered the post to A. Alan Post, the pioneer legislative analyst who at the time was considered the leading expert on California fiscal issues. But Post turned down the job, and the appointment process lagged. After another highly rated expert also declined the post, Reagan appointed a management consultant who lacked budget expertise. The budget that the new finance director prepared and that Reagan submitted to the Legislature sought 10 percent across-the-board cuts in every agency. As Assembly Republican leader Robert Monagan observed, this “cookie-cutter” approach would have punished the best-managed departments and rewarded those with slack.
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Reagan was disappointed in this lack of support from the legislative leader of his party, but he withdrew the budget. Meanwhile, he pursued symbolic economies, including hiring and purchasing freezes, that one analyst of the Reagan transition called “ludicrous diseconomies.” As an example, the analyst observed that the Department of Public Works had purchased cabs for 40 trucks before the freeze and was prohibited from buying the rest of the vehicles. Reagan also sold the state airplane and cut down on out-of-state travel by government employees. Although the savings of such squeezing and trimming were small, the effort enabled Reagan to make the case to the public that he had done all he could to economize and needed to raise taxes. In March, along with a new budget that proposed controversial cutbacks in the Department of Mental Hygiene, Reagan sent the Legislature a wide-ranging menu of proposed tax increases carrying a price tag of $946 million. It was the largest tax increase ever sought by a U.S. governor and four times as large as Gov. Brown’s previous record in 1959. By the time the bill cleared the State Senate the price tag was $1 billion, more than $6 billion in 2008 dollars!!

Re: Cowell warns of furlough fallout

tangoz — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 18:11:26 -0400

You know how you fix this? You stop borrowing and spending more that you take in. And if you lower taxes on those that actually pay taxes you will get much more back when the economy takes off again. The Democrats have squandered oppoertunity after opportunity the past 10 years or so. Time to pay the piper as they say.

Re: Cowell warns of furlough fallout

mommakat — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 15:42:45 -0400

Many lawmakers said they were more interested in furloughs or pay cuts for state employees.

"Everything is on the table. I like the furlough personally better, but we'll see how the caucus feels on the whole," House Majority Leader Hugh Holliman said.

Perdue also plans to freeze longevity pay and state worker salaries. Teachers would see an average 1.8 percent pay increase, however, because salary steps are built into their contracts.

Re: Cowell warns of furlough fallout

moehawk — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 15:21:52 -0400

It will hurt the state cause it will show that we are so bad off financially that we can't even afford to pay our employees.

Re: Cowell warns of furlough fallout

ryanteaguebeckwith — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 14:42:44 -0400

As I understand it, she's saying that you're not reducing the long-term financial pressure on the state, since those workers will still be there next year.

— RTB

Re: Cowell warns of furlough fallout

dwcatty — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 14:23:01 -0400

Why would ordering state workers to take furloughs hurt the state?

Re: Pelosi: Bill would create 132k N.C. jobs

CitizenOpinionated — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 10:34:01 -0500

Really Nancy...I do believe you are mistaken.

This guy doesn't seem to agree...

Nancy, where are you getting these numbers?

Re: Claims Dept: NRSC's 'Gold Medals'

JohnHood — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 18:36:40 -0400

I understand what your task is here, Ryan. I was just observing that differentiating between the Southeast and the Deep South/Gulf Coast is hardly bizarre.

Re: Claims Dept: NRSC's 'Gold Medals'

ryanteaguebeckwith — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 16:18:57 -0400

Word choice matters. If you want to say we have "one of the highest rates" in the Southeast, I've got no problem with that. If you want to define the Southeast in a way that most people would agree with, same deal. If you want to say we have the highest tax rate of our bordering states, or the Atlantic South Coast or whatever, again no problem.

The goal of the Claims Department is not to evaluate who has the best tax plan etc. etc. but to determine if the claims made in an ad are true.

— RTB

Re: Claims Dept: NRSC's 'Gold Medals'

JohnHood — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 13:17:03 -0400

Ryan,

I know you explored many different definitions of the Southeast, and regional delineations are debatable, but JLF's use of the term "Southeast" to describe the Southern coast of the U.S. is hardly "bizarre." Plenty of folks distinguish between the Virginia-to-Florida region, called various things, and the Deep South. The two groups have distinguishable political and economic cultures (as I learned a couple of decades ago in a class taught by John Shelton Reed, as it happens). For example, check out how the election-projection site FiveThirtyEight.com groups the states:

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/

And you'll see that their "South Coast" grouping includes VA, NC, SC, GA, and FL and their "Gulf Coast" grouping includes the Deep South states of AL, MS, LA, and TX. They then chose to put Arkansas and Tennessee into a "Highlands" group that includes border states. I think it makes more sense to group the former into the Deep South and the latter into the Southeast, but neither choice should be seen as "bizarre."

I also don't think the issue matters all that much. If politicians said NC has "one of the highest tax burdens in the Southeast" or "South," they would be stating the truth.

Re: Claims Dept: NRSC's 'Gold Medals'

ryanteaguebeckwith — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 10:33:20 -0400

Interesting point. Thanks for sharing.

— RTB