CHARLOTTE — So let me tell you about what happened to me this morning in the shower.
OK, straighten up. No giggles. I’m kinda, sorta, half-way serious about the analogy I’m about to set up here.
I am very nearsighted. I think the last time I asked my optometrist what my myopia translated into, he chuckled and said that my vision was about 20:800. So when I’m sans contacts or eyeglasses, such as in the shower, there’s little chance I’m going to see anything that is even remotely subtle.
This morning, however, as I lathered, I saw something distinctly non-subtle. It was a black shape, rather large, ambling along in the corner of the stall. I turned off the water, stepped out, put on my glasses, and looked back inside. And there I saw perhaps the longest, ugliest bug I have ever laid eyes on.
I guess it was a cockroach. But I’m afraid of attaching the term to this monster, as I fear that it will conjure up the wrong image in the reader’s mind. This wasn’t some little critter scuttling along. This was the RV of the insect world, moving so slowly and erratically that its driver might be thought of as, say, a retired accountant or perhaps a Canadian.
Couldn’t tell you much more about the specimen, as it was almost instanenously transformed from three dimensions to two. I’ll spare you the additional, plasmatic details.
So here’s my point — and I do have one. Before showering, I had glanced through Wednesday’s Raleigh News & Observer. I read a brief but tantalizing story revealing the return of old-fashioned, pork-barrel accounts tucked away in the corners of state government and tapped at the “discretion” of legislative leaders. In addition to being a wasteful and slimy practice, this is also a serious violation of the constitutional separation of powers.
North Carolina seems to be experiencing a spate of ethical, legal, and constitutional abrogations. There are serious concerns about the state’s lax lobbying laws. Redistricting has made competitive elections exceedingly rare. Legislative leaders think nothing of using taxpayers’ money to reward political hacks or fund pet road projects at the expense of safety and the public interest. They also seem little concerned about constitutional rules against enacting bills to bestow favors on individual private parties. I could go on.
What’s striking about many of these cases is how brazen North Carolina’s political class has become. Ensconsced in safe districts, with access to copious campaign cash and an unnecessarily pliant editorial culture, politicians no longer seem to feel the need to hide their misbehavior.
Like the bug in my shower, they aren’t sticking to the dry shadows any more. They’re out in the bright light, and luxuriating in the goodies raining down on them.
Of course, things didn’t turn out that well for the bug.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal Online.