Local television news reporter Joe Bruno put it nicely. After disgraced former mayor and convicted crook Patrick Cannon filed this month to run for an at-large seat on Charlotte City Council, Mayor Vi Lyles released a statement responding to his attempted political comeback: “There are a number of at-large city council candidates. As long as […]
Category: Corruption
In acquiescence to creeping authoritarianism, one of Charlotte’s premier corporate citizens recently bailed on an American employee wrongly convicted and imprisoned abroad. In May 2021, Charlotte-based Bank of America ended its eleven-year employment relationship with Samuel Bickett, a 37-year-old attorney who worked in Hong Kong for the bank’s Merrill Lynch operation. The move came a […]
Billionaire David Tepper threatened Charlotte last week in his latest play to extort hundreds of millions of public dollars from the city. The setting was a seemingly eleemosynary one: Tepper, who owns the Carolina Panthers, and his wife, Nicole, were in Rock Hill to announce a $500,000 donation to Miracle Park, a fifteen-acre playground for […]
Categories
Economic Incentives and Democracy
Once again, state and local officials have thrown millions of dollars in “economic incentives” at a for-profit business, offering us a chance to examine the system of legalized corporate blackmail and bribery that mars our civic life. North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper and Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles announced last month that in exchange for expansion […]
Charlotte Citizen 