The Mecklenburg Times does a bang up job of peeling back the issues and people around the recent Rent Seekers Guild trip to Boston. To wit:
Hugh Stevens, a lawyer and president of the North Carolina Open Government Coalition, which champions public access to government activity, describes the elected officials’ participation on the trip as a “Catch-22.”
“If they are not discussing public business,” Stevens said, “then why the hell are the taxpayers paying for it?”
Boo-yah!
We also get the full list of those who went on the trip — a who’s who of the Uptown crowd with all the major players represented. Add this detail to the previously reported snorter that the Charlotte business community really did not care that BAC honcho Brian Moynihan has not moved to Charlotte and this was nothing less than a publicly funded lobbying trip.
Worse, our clueless cadre subjected themselves to the rantings of Larry Summers — the one guru most responsible for the insane federal response to financial bubble economics. All in all, the excursion was a disaster for hard-working, average Charlotteans.
