RALEIGH – It’s official: the Easley administration is the kookiest in recent North Carolina history.
Its latest miscue sounds like a bad joke, or like it is out of the fevered imagination of a conservative conspiracy nut. But I promise it is absolutely true. On Friday, a key aide to Gov. Mike Easley, John Merritt, was asked by the Wilmington Star what he thought of the idea of his home county of New Hanover joining a lawsuit to recover local tax funds confiscated by the governor in a budget-balancing plan.
Merritt’s response is destined to go down in the annals of state political history. Basically, he threatened the county with political retaliation if it pursued the legal rights of its taxpayers in court. And, some-to-be famously, he compared North Carolina’s local governments with teenagers rebelling against their stern but wise dad (click here).
If this was calculated to warn New Hanover and other localities off, I presume it will backfire. How can self-respecting mayors, city councilors, and county commissioners, duly elected to make decisions on behalf of their constituents, knuckle under such blatant and patronizing blackmail? What precedent would that set for the future?
Perhaps I’m missing something. Perhaps Merritt’s real intention was, indeed, to encourage other localities to join the half-dozen or so that have already hired Gene Boyce and his law partners – you know, he of the billion-dollar win against then-Attorney Gen. Easley for years of illegally collected taxes. Is the goal to make Easley, unpopular and to date feckless in his quest for a state lottery, look good? Is the image of the governor as some kind of long-suffering Ozzie Nelson supposed to sell to swing voters, to the all-important “Nick at Nite” demographic? Are people expected to feel sympathy if dozens of cities and counties gang up on him in court?
Actually, I know quite a few of the conspiratorial-minded set, and (judging by my emails) many of them read the Daily Journal. So let me take this opportunity to disabuse them of the notion that Easley is at the center of a vast and wide-ranging plot to raise our taxes to record highs, seize unprecedented power into his hands, and make North Carolina the next Atlantic City. You’ve got the wrong conspiracy. As I wrote some months ago, it has long been obvious that our governor is in fact a Republican mole, a deep-cover agent taking his orders from state GOP chair Bill Cobey and single-minded in his goal of destroying the Democratic Party.
So far, it’s working like a charm.