Thom Tillis is Not a Conservative

Not when Tillis spends more on his staff than Joe Hackney spent on his.

I’ve seen this play before. Newt Gingrich did the same thing in DC 15 years ago. He never recovered, nor did the Republican Party as an actually fiscally conservative entity.

North Carolina Republicans are about to go through exactly the same process. Their tiny, measured steps toward limited government will soon be swamped because — at heart — Tillis et al really have no principled governing philosophy.

HUD IG: BAC “Hindered” Foreclosure Review

Short answer: Of course Bank of America did. You been under a rock?

Slightly longer answer: Legal costs are still a mortal threat to BAC’s future earnings.

City Council: Cartels-R-US

Only in Charlotte.

Only in the QC would city staff and the dopey pols who rubber stamp them argue that outlawing nine cab companies would be good for consumers. But hey, once you understand the city-owned airport’s business model — serve cartels, gouge local consumers — then it all makes sense.

I am more baffled — outraged really, as if it mattered — that the city attorney’s office is running interference for the deal and downplaying an FBI investigation of local cab companies defrauding the county’s DSS minions. City attorneys have no role in characterizing an ongoing federal investigation of local government contractors. None.

Quite unbelievable. But like I said…

CMUD Exposed

Can’t really add much to this Cedar Posts run down of recent CMUD water rate hikes. Like so much of local government it was conceived and operated with the assumption that boom years would be the norm, in this case new hook-up fees would keep rolling in.

But I will add that CMUD has been something of a victim in that both the city of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County have dumped infrastructure costs onto it and CMUD ratepayers that should have been paid out of local tax revenue. This would make the cost of favored redevelopment schemes more obvious, but local pols don’t do obvious.

The upshot is another little notch higher for the cost of government in Mecklenburg County.