Stories written by Mark Pellin
An award-winning journalist and former editor of The Rhinoceros Times in Charlotte, Pellin has been called everything from a misguided troglodyte to a professional agitator. He prefers the label of a realist, the guy in the crowd telling everybody that not only doesn’t the emperor have any clothes; he’s trying to steal ours. Pellin has covered the Char-Meck scene for the better part of two decades, earning his fair share of fans and more than a few critics who wish he’d move to Nome, Alaska, and be eaten by wild bears. When he’s not writing, he stays busy enjoying time with his wife and two kids. When he can break away for some R&R, he likes to fly fish (even if he doesn’t catch anything) and camp (even if it rains).

Trash Talk

No, this doesn’t have anything to do with the left smearing Sarah Palin or trying to link the Tea Party to the tragedy in Tucson; this is actual, for-real trash talk – as in garbage. If yours is starting to stack up higher than Al Gore’s carbon footprint, hang in there, help is on the […]

January 14, 2011 | Posted in City Beat,Mark Pellin | Read More »

More Turbulence At CLT-Douglas

This is definitely not the kind of news that Mayor Anthony Foxx and the uptown crowd clawing desperately to land the DNC in Charlotte want floating around the country. It was strange and disturbing enough when reports first surfaced that Delvonte Tisdale had fallen to his death from an airplane over Boston, after breaching security […]

January 14, 2011 | Posted in Char-Meck Beat,City Beat,Mark Pellin | Read More »

Dim Efforts From The Best And Brightest

What happens when city and county governments shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars in lucrative salaries and bonuses to justify luring the supposedly “best and brightest” away from the private sector? Bad things happen. Take three high-profile cases from Charlotte’s entertainment circus as prime examples: the NASCAR Hall of Fame, Bojangles’ Coliseum, and Ovens […]

January 13, 2011 | Posted in Char-Meck Beat,City Beat,Mark Pellin | Read More »

Dark Clouds For Bright Beginnings; CMS Budget Cuts $100 Million

Superintendent Peter Gorman on Tuesday afternoon rolled out recommended cuts of about $100 million for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools that include scuttling more than half of the district’s Bright Beginnings classes, eliminating more than 1,500 jobs, including hundreds of teachers and teachers assistants and school security staff, while increasing classroom sizes and lengthening the school day for […]

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January 12, 2011 | Posted in CMS Beat,House Specials,Mark Pellin | Read More »

MLK Snow Day For CMS – UPDATE: Cannon, NAACP Blast CMS

UPDATE: Gee, imagine that Pete Gorman & Co. must be hitting the crack pipe extra hard these days if they think there won’t be a huge backlash for using Jan. 17 as a snow make-up day, as the district’s website currently indicates is the intent. Gotta wonder what genius in CMS’ platinum-plated PR Department gave this […]

January 10, 2011 | Posted in Char-Meck Beat,CMS Beat,Mark Pellin | Read More »

Vilmapocalypse

You might recall last year when Commissioner Vilma Leake proclaimed that Mecklenburg County had its own fire department (it doesn’t) and expressed confusion over why volunteer firefighters are being paid for their volunteer service (they aren’t). Or when Leake let slip that she considered business incentive grants the equivalent of a personal slush fund to help […]

January 10, 2011 | Posted in Char-Meck Beat,County Beat,Mark Pellin | Read More »

About That Global Warming

Alternate Headline: Somebody Bitch-Slap Al Gore And I don’t want to hear any arguments about how cooler temperatures and blizzards are also leading indicators of global warming, and that up is really down because of the earth’s equatorial gravity pull and rotational kinematics interacting with atmospheric compression settling*. All I know is there are like […]

January 10, 2011 | Posted in House Blends,Mark Pellin | Read More »

Saturday Night House Party

Send us a youtube clip of your favorite tunes (editor@pundithouse.com) and we’ll work them into the mix. This is The Black Keys:

January 8, 2011 | Posted in Mark Pellin | Read More »

Gorman Cranks Up Doomsday Machine

And right on cue, Commissioners Chairman Jennifer Roberts floats warnings about how it might be impossible to avoid a tax increase as part of the reval process, given the dramatic cuts looming for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. And now along comes Mayor Anthony Foxx, with a crafty piece of politicking that pitches a plan having the city […]

January 7, 2011 | Posted in Char-Meck Beat,County Beat,Mark Pellin | Read More »

CBO Shell Game On Repeal Of Obamacare

Before everyone starts hyperventilating and buying into the narrative being pushed wholesale by aggressively liberal Democrats and their cohorts in the mainstream media that efforts to repeal Obamacare will skyrocket the national deficit, let’s take a deep breath of sanity and consider the source: a horribly flawed Congressional Budget Office scoring of the healthcare legislation, […]

January 7, 2011 | Posted in House Blends,Mark Pellin,National | Read More »

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