It’s hard to find a problem in America Barack Obama can’t blame on a corporation. Public opinion has whip-lashed against big business so viciously it’s like some genie popped out of a bottle and turned back the hands of the clock to the Era of the Trustbusters. The corporations – the politicians say – are melting the ice caps and wreaking havoc on the middle class and, by God, they’re going to stop them.

The corporations, for their part, are having a hard time adjusting to their new role as a political football. For years businessmen have been the good guys. They’ve been wearing white hats. Now, suddenly, they’re wearing black hats.

Political warriors – like Obama – thrive on controversy. Obama’s got no qualms about hammering away at corporations. But corporations have a different chemistry. They don’t like fights or debates. They like to minimize risks and go on about their business. They don’t want to hammer back – they want the politicians to go away and leave them alone. But, the way the politicians see it, corporations not shooting back makes them the political equivalent of sitting ducks.

Politically American businessmen face a pretty tall order. They have to figure out how to get their white hats back. But there’s hardly a political trend anywhere they can grab onto. The days of “What’s good for General Motors is good for America” are gone; we’re back to the days of Franklin Roosevelt having a “filet of grilled millionaire” each morning for breakfast.

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House Republican Leader ‘Skip’ Stam is turning thumbs down on North Carolina casting its electoral votes for the candidate for President who wins the popular vote – but it may turn out to be a political gamble that backfires.

Last year – when Democrats put electing the President by popular vote on the table – the Republican powers that be in Washington quickly did the math and said, Well, there’s a chance we could lose the popular vote but win in the Electoral College. Why give that up? So they want Republican legislators in North Carolina to stop the bill – which is fine if you’re, say, a Washington politico. You’re not running for office. Your name’s not on any ballot. But there may be a risk if you’re a Republican legislator seeking reelection.

Every election in America – Senators, Governors and Congressmen – is decided by popular vote. So how safe – politically – is it for a Republican legislator to vote to make the one exception – the only race where the candidate who loses can win – the President?

Here’s what Skip’s betting on: Right now the bill’s buried in a House committee; like a lot of bills hardly anyone – outside the legislature – even knows it exists and Skip’s betting in November no one will either. The theory works like this: What voters don’t know can’t hurt us.

But what if, say, in five key races Democrats decide to tell voters what’s going on?

Skip sent an email to legislators telling them three ways to explain to constituents why they oppose the bill. But none of Skip’s arguments solve legislators’ political problem – or lessen their risk. And each argument has other holes in it as well.

For instance, Skip blasted the bill (in the News and Observer, 5-19-08) saying, “That thing tells our voters that the state would support the very candidate they repudiated.” Politically that sounds fine – until you stop a minute to think about it. Looked at another way what Skip’s saying is if a majority of the American people elect a candidate President we should tell them, We don’t give a toot who you voted for – we’re going to elect the other guy. If you think about it Skip’s saying it’s right for Republicans to make the candidate who lost the election President.

Skip also says the bill is an end-run around the Constitution. But Republicans just tried to change the way California picks its presidential electors – so they’d be picked by congressional districts, not statewide. How could they do that without a constitutional amendment? Because Article 2, Section 1, of the Constitution states: “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors…” That’s the same clause supporters of the popular vote base their bill on. So, how can Republicans argue the Constitution means one thing in California and another in North Carolina?

Beyond that Democrats can just say, Presidential electors were once chosen by the State Legislatures – not voters. That was changed without a Constitutional Amendment. Thirty states (starting with Wyoming in 1869) gave women the right to vote for President – without a constitutional amendment – before the Nineteenth Amendment was passed in 1920. Let’s get down to brass tacks. This is really about one thing: You’re thinking what happened in the 2000 election may happen again.

And that’s right. We are.

But how on earth does a Republican candidate explain to swing voters he’s for electing the candidate who lost the popular vote for President?

Polls show almost all Democratic voters, almost all Independents and a majority of Republicans favor the bill. Skip’s gambling Democrats are so dumb they won’t run ads in October saying, Listen to this. It’s hard to believe. My opponent actually voted against electing the candidate for President who receives the most votes.

My question is, How could they resist?

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A Republican consultant figures there is a direct relationship between the price of gas and Barack Obama’s vote in North Carolina.

He told me he spent four days running numbers on turnout and election models.

His conclusion: If gas stays under $4 a gallon, Obama’s maximum vote in the state is 46.5 percent.

But if gas goes over $4, Obama could get 50 percent.

I’m impressed by his precision. But even if he has the exact numbers wrong, I think he has the big picture clearly in focus.

Even at the low estimate, that means Obama is adding four more points to the Democrats than in previous presidential years.

Another sign of the Apocalypse for Republicans – and Glory Days for Democrats?

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The School Board’s shocked, just shocked. And mad. “Who on the Wake County Board of Commissioners,” growls one board member, “Wants the dubious honor of putting Wake County on a downward spiral?”

What’s up? The Board asked the County Commissioners to almost double its budget over the next five years – and the Commissioners said they didn’t have that much money. So the Board’s in a snit.

When it comes to spending taxpayers’ money the School Board gets a great deal. It doesn’t have to find the money. Or raise taxes. That’s the County Commissioners’ problem. All the Board has to do is spend it. And it’s good at it.

This year with school enrollment up 5% the School Board demanded an 18% spending increase - $54 million. The commissioners gave it $18 million, which is more than any other department got. The School Board shot back it must have the other $36 million or the Wake County School System – “a shining example in North Carolina and in the nation” – is kaput. The Commissioners will have ruined it.

I tried to determine how much the School Board spends per pupil and how many of its employees are non-teachers; but you’d need an M.B.A. from Harvard – which I don’t have – to even begin to understand the School Board’s budget. I’m amazed the County Commissioners didn’t just give them the money to avoid reading the budget. I saw two numbers on how much the Board spends per student: $7500 and $8900. Also, according to its budget, the School Board has 17,500 employees (one for every eight students): Only 9,228 of them are teachers – but according to the School Board it has virtually no administrators.

Here’s an admittedly biased conclusion: People like to spend money. They especially like to spend other people’s money. And there’s hardly a better excuse on earth for spending other people’s money than getting on a School Board. The ‘handful’ of folks at school administration headquarters have figured out they can sell almost anything – politically – by saying the Wake County schools will collapse and the world will end if they have to cut their budget. (And their definition of cut is to ask for $56 million, get $18 million, and call that a $36 million shortfall.)

And it works. This morning in the News and Observer a headline read: Wake school board weighs budget cuts. The first line reads, “Wake County parents, students and teachers will find out today how wide the budget ax will swing to make up the school district’s $36 million shortfall…”

Doesn’t that beat all? The County Commissioners gave them an $18 million increase. And it’s a $36 million cut.

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The topic at breakfast downtown this morning was the cutbacks at the N&O – and consolidation with The Charlotte Observer.

“Society and democracy took a hit this week,” one friend said. He believes the cuts mean less competition among the papers, less news coverage and less scrutiny of government.

“But the papers have to face economic reality,” my other friend said. She believes that newspapers have to face tough times, just like other companies. Journalists need to stop whining and figure out ways to do their jobs better.

He said, “The people most likely to lose their jobs are the more senior and experienced reporters and editors.” He thinks that hurts the quality of coverage.

She said, “There are a lot of energetic young reporters.” She also said that blogs – by reporters and others – already are filling the gap.

He and she both agreed that the cuts are demoralizing to people who work at the papers – and give us our news every day.

And they agreed that reporters and editors will have less time to do the kind of talking, listening and poking around that is essential to good journalism.

He is pessimistic about the problems. She is optimistic about the opportunities.

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Yesterday was a red-letter day for enlightened modernists and a black day for the old-fashioned. Duke University hired its first Muslim chaplain, keeping pace with Princeton and Yale in the Ivy League. Gay couples were flocking to chapels and marrying in droves in California and a scientist in Sweden has discovered gay men’s brains resemble those of straight women.

Let’s start with Duke. You can’t fault Duke for educating its students about Islam. But it could lead to some interesting conversations. Let’s say the Dean of Duke Chapel believes what he’s been teaching from the pulpit each Sunday is the true faith – is he now going to be telling Duke’s newest Divinity School professor, respectfully, that when it comes to religion the followers of Mohammed have it all wrong? After all, the God of the faithful worshipping in Duke Chapel made His views on other gods pretty clear in the First Commandment, so the dean saying, Well, you and I worship different gods but that’s fine, seems out.

Now for the gays and scientists. There’s not much point in proselytizing about gay marriage – almost everyone has an opinion. But why is it so many folks feel a need to demand “gay couples” and “straight couples” be treated exactly the same. Multiculturalists, who pride themselves on tolerating all kinds of differences, turn into avenging Torquemadas in the blink of an eye when a Catholic Bishop – as one did in California – says marriage wasn’t meant for same-sex couples. A multiculturalist who’ll defend a Hindu’s not slaughtering cows to the teeth will turn around in a heartbeat and show no toleration at all for a Christian’s reverence of the sanctity of marriage.

And, lastly, there are the scientists in Sweden who say they have used magnetic resonance imaging to measure left and brain volumes to prove gay men and straight women have the same kind of brains – which is clearly “scam” science. When the Swedes claim they can analyze and measure the female brain they have done something fifty-six years of dealing with women has convinced me is utterly impossible. The female brain is an abiding mystery. It cannot be penetrated. And anyone who claims it can be understood with a machine is obviously delusional.

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There’s hardly a problem in America today Barack Obama can’t blame on a corporation. They’re the whipping boys for everything from $4-a-gallon gasoline to soaring healthcare costs – Obama’s drawn a bulls eye on corporate lobbyists and voters are cheering him on.

So it came as a shock – politically – to open the newspaper and read, right there on the front page, another article about CEOs’ getting $80 million or $100 million bonuses again this year.

Back when corporations were making money in boatloads CEOs had a case when they argued tying executive compensation to performance – even if it did mean hundred-million-dollar bonuses – made sense. Now the corporations are hemorrhaging cash and the CEOs are arguing the salaries are justified because they’re dealing with one heck of a crisis.

They are. But you’d think they’d stop long enough to look around and figure out they’re also going to pay a price for making just about every voter in America mad at them; stigmatizing yourself by proving you can repeat the excess of The Gilded Age may not be the better part of wisdom in a modern internet-driven democracy.

After all, when voters get good and mad there are always plenty of politicians – whole parties full of them – happy to turn that anger into a political weapon. The other night this professor on Bill Moyer’s TV show was almost giddy about the prospect of the Democratic Party rediscovering its ‘populist roots’ this election.

Now, what exactly does ‘populist roots’ mean?

It means the politicians get together and screw the corporations.

For instance, McCain’s arguing to cut taxes on corporations and Obama’s arguing to cut them on working people and paying CEOs $80 million pretty much cuts the ground right out from under McCain as far as voters go.

This is a shooting war – between corporations and politicians – the politicians can hardly lose.

Pretty soon – say by January – CEOs may find themselves facing a whole new set of crises. Crises called excess profits taxes. And bundles of new regulations. And they’ll be scrambling to convince Obama voters their particular corporation is not one of the villains who needs to be singled out for special treatment.

The other day, in a blog, Gary mentioned two doctors who were talking about politics and healthcare a while back.

One doctor said: Well, I’m not interested in politics.

And the other said: Well, politics is interested in you.

Corporate America is an undisputed genius when it comes to making money – but has a hard time seeing beyond the end of its own sandbox on most anything else. It hasn’t figured out politics is now interested in it. Or that paying hundred-million-dollar salaries is just pouring gas on a political fire that’s already strong enough to elect a couple dozen new Barack Obamas to the U.S. House and Senate.

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I had dinner last night with my old friend Will, the lawyer, and, right off, after the first beer he said, President Bush is as dumb as a post.

Now, Will is an old Reagan man. He remembers seeing Reagan’s speech for Goldwater on TV in 1964 and he’s a purist. He still thinks of the Bushies who stole into Reagan’s tent at the Detroit Convention in 1980 as a horde of Vandals or Visigoths. Choosing George Bush, Sr., as his Vice President was about the only thing Reagan ever did he didn’t like.

And George Bush the Younger has pretty much fulfilled all his fears. In Will’s eyes, while flying conservative colors, George W. Bush has sold out conservatives (as Will says, ‘Just look at the deficit’) and left the Republican Party politically bankrupt.

But last night he wasn’t talking about history. He was talking about the Supreme Court ruling that the terrorists locked up at Guantanamo Bay have habeas corpus rights – and he was wearing his practical political hat.

“Look here,” he said. “Justice Kennedy writes, The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times. Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system they are reconciled within the framework of the law – and everyone in the Bush administration is screaming bloody murder because they can’t keep whomever the president says is a terrorist locked up a hundred years without a trial.

“Now, I can’t think of anything better for Bush – or McCain – than putting 400 terrorists on trial before the election. What if every one of them gets half as much publicity as this Paddock woman got at her trial here in Raleigh?”

Will’s painting his case with a bit of hyperbole and political overstatement – but he’s got a point.

The only way for democracies to give up hedonism and the pursuit of happiness long enough to confront an external threat for more than fifteen minutes – and win a war – requires them being scared silly. Then all the interest groups bent on getting their hands on power – or the federal treasury – stop fighting long enough to realize they have at least one thing in common. But it takes a real sustained burst of fear to accomplish that kind of unity. The Japanese did it for us in 1941 by destroying our fleet and conquering a good chunk of Asia in the first three months of World War II.

And Lincoln understood it during the Civil War – he figured out he only had one real goal: To unite the North and keep it fighting because if he did he couldn’t lose.

But President Bush never understood that. So he never built that kind of unity. Instead, during his presidency, the terrorists have gone from a threat to a kind of nuisance.

He locked the jihadists in jail in Cuba and tried them secretly (or not at all) in front of military tribunals when what should he have done, Will is saying, is put them all on trial down at the federal courthouse and let the American people have a good hard look at them. Now the Supreme Court’s told him that’s what he’s got to do – and his administration is howling like a stuck hog.

But the fact is letting folks get a good look at those terrorists in Cuba is a lot more important than any benefits to be gained by fighting them in secret. Courts no doubt will be messier than military tribunals but real trials will contribute to the only thing that matters – unity – and tribunals won’t.

Here’s Will’s bottom line: “If I were President Bush,” he says, “I’d start the trials tomorrow. That way they’ll have up a full head of steam by Election Day.”

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When it comes to brute cunning it’s hard to match the Wake County School Board – it’s budget time and they’ve met the County Commissioners in fiscal battle head-on.

The Board says it can cut dropout rates and graduate ninety percent of its students by 2013 – but there’s a catch. It needs more money. A lot more. How much more? It wants – just about – to double its budget. The Board wants an eighty-percent spending increase ($250 million a year) – and isn’t worried about how much County Commissioners have to raise taxes to pay for it.

The School Board’s put the Commissioners in a political corner, saying, Do you want to save these poor underprivileged students who’re dropping out? Then come up with the money.

But stop a moment to think. How certain is School Superintendent Del Burns – who drew up this plan – that he can deliver on his promise? Can we put it in the bank? Or is this – purely and simply – a political maneuver to get the Commissioners to double the School Board’s budget?

Right now, today, Wake County offers every student a world-class education. Free. We just spent a cool billion dollars to build shiny new schools – but 20% of the students still drop out.

The school board’s theory is if we spend twice as much money and give the students an even better world-class education – the dropouts will change their minds and stay in school.

But if free world-class schools don’t appeal to dropouts – would super-duper world-class schools ignite a thirst for knowledge? The school board will probably say they’ll hire mentors and surrogate parents and set up all kinds of special classrooms – but, it’s my experience most teenagers have a mind of their own when it comes to what they like and don’t like and a sixteen-year-old who doesn’t want to sit in a classroom isn’t likely to change his mind when you tell him, Well, you’ll be sitting in a better classroom next year.

I’m afraid the fact is Superintendent Burns has made a crafty political move – he’s checkmated the County Commissioners by selling a pig in a poke. After all, they give him the money now and he’s got five years before anyone can say, Well, that turned out to be a billion-dollar misjudgment on your part.

The Superintendent has also lined up the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce to support his proposal. In the old days Chambers of Commerce were conservative business organizations. Anti-taxes. Anti-regulations. But they’ve adapted to the modern age. Today they’re lobbying organizations. Their goal isn’t to stop regulations and red tape. It’s to get government to spend other people’s money to help them. And it’s hard to argue with their logic; they lobby for projects like civic centers and tax subsidies for corporations. It costs taxpayers billions. But costs them nothing. I’m not sure how schools fit into their equation; perhaps doubling the schools’ budget will bring more people to Raleigh to help the labor market.

Anyway, the county commissioners have to figure out how to (politically) say no to the business lobby and to cutting the dropout rate – or raise spending (and taxes) $250 million. What can they do? Well, they can offer the School Board to hold a vote – a real cut-and-dry, clearly-worded referendum that reads like this: The School Board would like to increase its budget 80% to cut the drop-out rage from 30% to 10%. Their plan will cost $250 million a year. To pay for it we’ll have to raise property taxes x%. Do you vote Yes or No?

That should settle it one way or the other.

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Frank Daniels, the acid-tongued former N&O publisher, greeted a Raleigh reporter recently thusly: “Still got a job?”

It’s a question of lot of newspaper employees are asking these days.

Two big trees fell last week: Paul O’Connor with the Winston-Salem Journal and Chuck Riesz with the Wilmington Star took buyouts. Word is that more axes will fall in newsrooms across the state.

It’s not just here. The St. Petersburg, Fla., Times announced big layoffs last week. 

The journalists don’t understand it. As the target of Daniels’ question mused: “I don’t understand why nobody at the newspapers can figure out how to make money on the web.”

Here’s the dilemma. The papers’ content is available free on their websites. So why buy a paper when you can get it free? So advertisers ask: Why buy a print ad when the readers are on the website?

Here’s the problem for us readers: When the papers lose money, they dump people. This means a poorer quality news product.

And here’s my bet: Somebody will solve this problem and make a bunch of money delivering news on the web.

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