…that ye shall pay for your transgressions against the realm!

What else can you do but make jokes about Jim Black and his inflated sense of importance? There aren’t enough words in the English language to explain why it is insipid, petty school-yard behavior to extract revenge on a UNCC economics professor who dared to opine that North Carolina’s marginal tax rates are too high. In Jim Black’s world you are either all for the ever-greater expansion of state government or an ignorant boob to be crushed by his political machine. Jim Black thinks all public university professors should think just like Jim Black. Is that hysterical or what?

But the underlying message is clear: playball and you’ll get money, if you do not I’ll cut you off. Is that really what the people of Matthews want representing them? Must be, judging from the stone-cold silence coming from those quarters on Black’s fitness for office. Do the powers-that-be in Mecklenburg — you know who you are — so hunger for a local speaker that they are willing to literally put up with anything? Must be, judging from lack of any serious criticism of Black’s conduct over and quite above the little Lotto tempest.

Friendly message for all the folks sitting on the sideline hoping this thing blows over before they have to take a stand: not a chance.