Greed, Grifting, and Speaker Tim Moore

by | Nov 9, 2021 | Politics | 8 comments

North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore is hardly a beloved figure in Raleigh circles, but he commands the loyalty of his top lieutenants. Knowing that their maestro aspired to hold seat in Congress, top N.C. House mapmakers drew a juicy, ill-formed district in the southwestern part of the state that could hardly have been intended for anyone but the Jones Street Napoleon. Observers expected this to transpire, and hardly remarked upon the sordid corruption in the redistricting committee’s awarding of patronage to a man who sees politics as a means of becoming, wealthy without being wise.

Moore cares nothing about the human impact of policy in comparison to the trajectory of his political career. Having long held a softer stance on Medicaid expansion than the firebreathers in the state Senate, he turned against expansion the moment his congressional seat was out of the oven. While the district was drawn for him, he felt a need to take precautions against an (even more) right-wing primary challenger, and by so doing betrayed 600,000 uninsured North Carolinians. Seldom in his speakership has Tim Moore sacrificed his own ambitions for the good of the people. Facing a larger stage with relish, he sold us out once again.

Unconcerned with public policy, Moore likely sees a U.S. House seat as an entryway to feast of grifting. He’s certainly made out well in Raleigh. As the saying goes, he came to Jones Street in a beat-up Honda and came back to Cleveland County in a Maserati. That’s literally true. He drives a Maserati. How a small-town attorney could afford one of the most expensive cars on the market while drawing a salary of little over $30,000 for his work in the legislature, is a mystery less confounding than it ought to be. Moore has exploited every possible opportunity to get rich off of public service.

One of Moore’s most blatant acts of corruption was a land deal he cut in Chatham County. He purchased a parcel of property in Chatham for less than $100,000, and a few years later sold the land for the princely sum of $550,000. In the interim, he pressured state government to exercise a light touch in environmental review. It does not take a genius to see how one of the most powerful men in state government could get special treatment, or how that favor translated into a windfall profit for the Speaker from Kings Mountain.

You get the picture. For 18 years, Tim Moore has sought out the financial perks of a perch in the state legislature. He’s largely left the work of policy-making to the fire eaters in the Upper Chamber, to the point where the commentator Rob Schofield called Moore Phil Berger’s “sidekick.” This apathy toward the concrete results of state policy has had damaging effects; Moore, a double graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, has disappointed alumni who hoped he might save the University from Phil Berger’s wrecking crew. But take heart, aspiring grifters: you too can get rich off of a political career in which the footprint you leave on state government is essentially nonexistent.

8 Comments

  1. phoenix

    meh politicians get rich…. Both side and the sun comes up everyday. Same as it ever was.

    I see no way to impact it really

  2. Phoenix

    There is no such thing as corporate taxes. I wish there were but unfortunately corporations simply pass any tax onto consumers in the form of higher prices or fees or surcharges etc…. The check made out to the state revenue office may say “NC corporation X” but it was definitely your money that paid it.

    I wish there were some way around it.

    • cocodog

      Phoenix, if that inflated price due to higher taxes exceeds what folks want to pay, they will not buy it. Moreover, this is where capitalism comes in. Somebody will make a slight change in the design and market the product at a lower price, making less profit. Try to understand, taxes are not levied on sales, they are levied on profits.

      • phoenix

        I get it. I just figured that a company will know its tax rate that will be levied on its profits and it will simply add that cost to its overhead so that the taxes are covered.

        so essentially (Profit = their Margin + taxes) The taxes they write off and still meet their profit target. Taxes simply goes into their calacualtions as a fixed cost.

        I’m sure corporations would love the tax to be zero but unless its going to impact their business (as in your example a lack of competitiveness due to cost) They probably don’t care since the tax is baked into price.

        I suppose they have to do it that way to be able to pay every quarter.

        • cocodog

          Sorry Phoenix, you do not get it! After-tax profit margin is not exactly what I had in mind.

          What concerns me is the fat cat who owns that corporation and only pays 1% in taxes, where I and others pay more than 25 %. We pay this because we receive a paycheck which allows the government to tax us on a known amount.

          Moreover, we can not avail ourselves of the numerous tax scams conveniently provided the wealthy by Republicans.
          Put simply, if you control the source of your income, you can pay yourself a low salary an have your corporation make investments which allow you to acquire expensive goodies. Republicans refuse to tax wealth. This is the dark side that most Republican voters fail to grasp.

          St. Ronnie tried to cover this Republican tax scam with a tall tail that wealth will “trickle down”. Lots of folks bought it, thinking the wealthy will reinvest their profits in more jobs and higher benefits. Well, it just doesn’t work that way. It is not human nature. They are more likely to offshore these profits to cut costs and reduce their overhead. Like laying people off, etc.

          Democrats have put forth a tax plan that will curtail this nonsense. If you make less than 400 K a year, you will not see your taxes go up. Plowing those lost Republican profits back into Social Security, Medicare, and educational benefits for everybody. Moreover, tax breaks for the wealthy shift the cost of operating government to the middle class. I am sure most folks do not want to carry the owner of Amazon so he can buy yachts and expensive homes.

      • Alice Coleman

        I say amen to that. I am tired of being told that ths consumer will pay if we levy taxes on the corporations. Consumers make decisions every day about whether they are willing to pay a higher price or not. I have eliminated many products from my life because of higher pricing. I am sure theat I am not the only consumer who feels this way. There are a lot of things thast I can do without and will do without before I will be extorted by corporation greed.

  3. Shel W. Anderson

    Perhaps grifting is no worse than ideological nutso, though. Cutting all corporate taxes is a big hit on many programs and people.

    • Alice Coleman

      we certainly do not.

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