“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
– Joseph Goebbels, January 12, 1941
If I were to write a headline over a story summarizing the essence of the 2024 elections, it would be this: the year of the new Big Lie.
You’d think by now that my generation would be inured to deceit, exaggerations, cheating and false claims from those in high office. We came of age when President Lyndon Johnson cooked up the Tonkin Gulf incident to pull this country and many of us into the Vietnam War.
Richard Nixon brought us Watergate and his ironic line “I am not a crook,” which he was. Dick Cheney convinced George W. Bush that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, justifying that invasion and a decade of war costing tens of thousands of lives. None was found.
Yet the unending eruption of lies flooding the political discourse throughout 2024 exceeded anything I have seen in my 52 years of covering campaigns from school boards to the White House.
Deceit touched the top of both major tickets. The Democratic Party leadership engaged in a conspiracy of silence, pretending that its incumbent 82-year-old standard-bearer retained his full faculties despite what our eyes were seeing. After Joe Biden finally faced reality and stepped aside, he shattered the faith of many admirers — not to mention his legacy — by extending a presidential pardon to his son despite numerous pledges never to interfere with the justice system. He had lied.
The scale of falsehood on the Democratic side was more than counter balanced by even a partial list from the Republican side.
It included such cruel fallacies as pet-eating Haitian refugees; the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump; his claim that the leaders of the January 6 attack on the Capitol were patriots, not insurrectionists; and his claim during a post-Helene stop in Swannanoa that FEMA was broke because it was spending public money on illegal refugees.
The list goes on, though I won’t.
What matters is that we don’t paper over what happened and ignore the central question dominating the 2024 campaign.
It’s this: Do truth and personal integrity matter in politics anymore? Do we no longer care when politicians and office holders lie to us, even when we know they’re lying and they know we know?
Was 2024 the dawn – or the approaching dark – of the new normal?
Throughout history many powerful people have lied for political gain. But never in my journalism career has perpetual lying carried no penalty when caught.
Richard Nixon paid a penalty in 1973, forced to resign though he had won a landslide reelection a year before. In being vanquished, Nixon perp-walked out of the White House months after his bribe-taking vice president, Spiro Agnew.
Disgusted voters punished Nixon’s successor Gerald Ford because he spared Nixon from criminal prosecution by pardoning him.
Then-President Jimmy Carter visited Asheville in 1978 just days after negotiating a lasting peace between Israel and Egypt at Camp David, the presidential retreat. Credit: White House
Instead, in 1976 we elected a peanut farmer and ex-Navy nuclear submariner named Jimmy Carter who rose from relative obscurity in Georgia. The media had dubbed him “Jimmy Who?”
But voters rallied to Carter’s unpretentious ways (when traveling he carried his own suitcase and preferred staying with supporters, always making the bed) and his single-sentence campaign promise: “I will never lie to you.”
Carter, who died Sunday at age 100, was a teetotaling Sunday school teacher and behaved as one. He married his high-school sweetheart Rosalynn, and throughout their lives treated her as a full partner. Even many friends found him sanctimonious, others thought him endearingly “weird.” No one could brand him as a hypocrite.
When a Playboy magazine interviewer implied that Carter was such a prude he might lose the votes of less abstemious men, he insisted he had moral flaws: “Many times I have committed lust in my heart.”
I believe that remembering Carter is relevant to us in 2024. His success after the Watergate scandal offers the hope that a reckoning will come to those who pursue Goebbels’s “lie-big-and-often” playbook. The Nazi propagandist warned, “Truth is the mortal enemy of the lie,” and thus to the liar.
Voters, of course, want more than truth-telling, which should be expected for all candidates. Although Carter’s moral compass was true, he could be politically inept.
I learned this from being assigned to cover Carter’s two presidential campaigns and his four years in the White House.
Although his single term ended in a landslide defeat to Ronald Reagan, historians in retrospect give it high marks for substance and decency, if not for style.
It was Carter who made human rights a central pillar of U.S. foreign policy. He is the only president to have ended a war in the Middle East. His Camp David accords in 1978 established enduring peace between Egypt and Israel and led to a Nobel Peace Prize.
He won allies and friends throughout Latin America by turning over U.S. control of the Panama Canal to Panamanians, ending a vestige of American imperialism – a vestige Donald Trump says he wants to bring back. Carter’s concern for the environment and additions to the nation’s natural treasures matched those of Theodore Roosevelt, father of the national parks.
But his reelection in 1980 was doomed by runaway inflation driven largely by an unprecedented Arab oil embargo, and the failure to rescue American diplomats held in humiliating captivity for 444 days by Iranian revolutionaries.
Carter seemed hapless in contrast to Reagan, his Republican opponent. The California governor and ex-movie star exuded swaggering confidence in promising to “make America great again,” a slogan adopted 36 years later by Trump.
Although his presidency ended in defeat, Carter wasn’t defeated.
His post-presidency’s achievements through The Carter Center far exceed those of any previous president and set a standard for statesmanship that may never be matched. To list a few: The Carter Center’s many invitations to oversee free and fair elections in troubled democracies is respected across the globe. It is credited with leading the eradication of many diseases afflicting millions in impoverished countries. His popularization of Habitat for Humanity, including his own hammer-wielding work, has helped countless thousands of people move into their own homes.
The common thread through all this is missing from our national fabric and many of our elected leaders: integrity in all things.
We deceive ourselves if we think that we can be a “great again” nation and yet tolerate lies and fear truth. This was a lesson learned too late by the “good Germans” nearly a century ago ensnared in Goebbels’s tactics.
Carter celebrated his 100th birthday in October and was by far the longest-living former president. After leaving the White House in 1981, he and Rosalynn returned to their two-bedroom house adjoining the peanut farm in Plains.
That’s where he died Sunday after spending his final months in hospice care in delicate condition.
Like our democracy.
Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. Tom Fiedler is a Pulitzer Prize-winning political reporter and dean emeritus from Boston University who lives in Asheville. Email him at tfiedler@avlwatchdog.org. The Watchdog’s reporting is made possible by donations from the community. To show your support for this vital public service go to avlwatchdog.org/support-our-publication/.
www.thecentersquare.com – By Alan Wooten | The Center Square – (The Center Square – ) 2025-05-01 08:16:00
(The Center Square) – Taxpayers in North Carolina will face an average tax increase of $2,382 if the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act expires at the end of the year, says the National Taxpayers Union Foundation.
Results of analysis were released Thursday morning by the nonprofit organization billing itself a “nonpartisan research and educational affiliate of the National Taxpayers Union.” Its four state neighbors were similar, with South Carolina lower ($2,319) and higher averages in Virginia ($2,787), Georgia ($2,680) and Tennessee ($2,660).
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of eight years ago was a significant update to individual and business taxes in the federal tax code. According to the Tax Foundation, it was considered pro-growth reform with an estimate to reduce federal revenue by $1.47 trillion over a decade.
Should no action be taken before Jan. 1 and the act expire, the federal standard deduction would be halved; the federal child tax credit would decrease; higher federal tax brackets would return; the federal estate tax threshold will be lower; and some business tax benefits will be gone.
The foundation, in summarizing the impact on North Carolina business expensing, says the state conforms to Section 168(k). This means “only 60% expensing for business investments this year and less in future years. State policymakers could adopt 100% full expensing, particularly since the state conforms to the Section 163(j) limit on interest expense and the two provisions were meant to work together.”
The foundation says business net operation loss treatment policies in the state “are less generous than the federal government and impose compliance costs due to lack of synchronization with the federal code and are uncompetitive with most other states.”
The National Taxpayers Union Foundation also says lawmakers “should at least be conscious of any retroactive provisions when selecting their date of fixed conformity.” North Carolina is among 21 states conforming to the federal income tax base “only as of a certain date” rather than automatically matching federal tax code changes – meaning definitions, calculations or rules.
The foundation said nationally the average filer will see taxes raised $2,955. It estimates an increase for 62% of Americans. The biggest average increases by state are in Massachusetts ($4,848), Washington ($4,567) and Wyoming ($4,493) and the lowest are in West Virginia ($1,423), Mississippi ($1,570) and Kentucky ($1,715).
Individual wages, nationally, are expected to go down 0.5%, reducing economic growth by 1.1% over 10 years.
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Center-Right
The content primarily reports on the potential impact of the expiration of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, relying heavily on analysis from the National Taxpayers Union Foundation, which describes itself as a nonpartisan organization but is known to advocate for lower taxes and limited government intervention, positions typically aligned with center-right economic policies. The article uses neutral language in presenting facts and data and does not explicitly advocate for a particular political viewpoint; however, the emphasis on tax increases and business expensing challenges following the expiration suggests a subtle alignment with pro-tax-cut, business-friendly perspectives associated with center-right ideology. Thus, while the article largely reports rather than overtly promotes an ideological stance, the framing and source choice reflect a center-right leaning.
www.thecentersquare.com – By David Beasley | The Center Square contributor – (The Center Square – ) 2025-04-30 21:25:00
(The Center Square) – Authorization of sports agents to sign North Carolina’s collegiate athletes for “name, image, and likeness” contracts used in product endorsements is in legislation approved Wednesday by a committee of the state Senate.
Authorize NIL Agency Contracts, known also as Senate Bill 229, is headed to the Rules Committee after gaining favor in the Judiciary Committee. It would likely next get a full floor vote.
Last year the NCAA approved NIL contracts for players.
Sen. Amy S. Galey, R-Alamance
NCLeg.gov
“Athletes can benefit from NIL by endorsing products, signing sponsorship deals, engaging in commercial opportunities and monetizing their social media presence, among other avenues,” the NCAA says on its website. “The NCAA fully supports these opportunities for student-athletes across all three divisions.”
SB229 spells out the information that the agent’s contract with the athlete must include, and requires a warning to the athlete that they could lose their eligibility if they do not notify the school’s athletic director within 72 hours of signing the contract.
“Consult with your institution of higher education prior to entering into any NIL contract,” the says the warning that would be required by the legislation. “Entering into an NIL contract that conflicts with state law or your institution’s policies may have negative consequences such as loss of athletic eligibility. You may cancel this NIL agency contract with 14 days after signing it.”
The legislation also exempts the NIL contracts from being disclosed under the state’s Open Records Act when public universities review them. The state’s two ACC members from the UNC System, Carolina and N.C. State, requested the exemption.
“They are concerned about disclosure of the student-athlete contracts when private universities don’t have to disclose the student-athlete contracts,” Sen. Amy Galey, R-Alamance, told the committee. “I feel very strongly that a state university should not be put at a disadvantage at recruitment or in program management because they have disclosure requirements through state law.”
Duke and Wake Forest are the other ACC members, each a private institution.
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Centrist
The article primarily reports on the legislative development regarding NIL (name, image, and likeness) contracts for collegiate athletes in North Carolina. It presents facts about the bill, committee actions, and includes statements from a state senator without using loaded or emotionally charged language. The piece neutrally covers the issue by explaining both the bill’s purpose and the concerns it addresses, such as eligibility warnings and disclosure exemptions. Overall, the article maintains a factual and informative tone without advocating for or against the legislation, reflecting a centrist, unbiased approach.
SUMMARY: Donald van der Vaart, a former North Carolina environmental secretary and climate skeptic, has been appointed to the North Carolina Utilities Commission by Republican Treasurer Brad Briner. Van der Vaart, who previously supported offshore drilling and fracking, would oversee the state’s transition to renewable energy while regulating utility services. His appointment, which requires approval from the state House and Senate, has drawn opposition from environmental groups. Critics argue that his views contradict clean energy progress. The appointment follows a controversial bill passed by the legislature, granting the treasurer appointment power to the commission.
