Well, well. I leave town for a few days and hell breaks loose. We’ve got trouble with a capital T on several fronts, anyone of which could blow up into a full-form summer scandal. Let’s roll and see what might be on tap in the next few weeks:
- Oh poor Brian France. The boy billionaire has a $225m. sexual and racial harassment suit sitting on NASCAR’s door and tries to talk big, claiming “It didn’t happen. It just didn’t happen.” Meanwhile, NASCAR quietly suspends two officials named in the lawsuit and ramps up its own internal investigation of something that didn’t happen. Still, it is too early to go in the tank for Mauricia Grant’s charges of wildly offensive behavior by her former NASCAR co-workers. We — by which I mean Charlotte taxpayers, official partners of NASCAR and the France family — will just have to wait and see what facts shake out.
- Speaking of facts, anyone else find it odd that Mayor Pat McCrory is all out-front on news that two $50K-a-year CMPD officers got busted for cocaine trafficking? Not good news surely, and something that you want the city’s chief exec to be on top of — but so soon? Two dirty cops across almost 1700, not part of obvious pattern, and McCrory immediately gets a scolding news release out and asks the city manager for a review of city policies. Doth protest too much? Makes me wonder if the arrests are not part of a much, much bigger problem at CMPD — one that McCrory needs to get on top of lest his law-and-order campaign for government become a running joke.
- Message to Ken Lewis: Pull up. Abort. Abort. Countrywide is dirty. News that Countywide had a special “VIP” banking program that essentially tried to bribe members of congress with sweetheart loans is the latest warning sign that Bank of America is spending $4b. to acquire banking’s equivalent of Enron. Ken, buddy, if you don’t think the next step is the FBI and Main Justice climbing all over Countrywide’s books you are just not paying attention. You really want to be part of that — and explain it all to shareholders?
As always, let’s see if and how the Uptown paper of record handles these stories as they unfold.
