Charlotte Mayor didn't get the memo on how to play the game | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This article originally appeared in the Beaufort Observer.

    Charlotte Mayor Patrick Cannon has been arrested by the FBI for violating Federal corruption statutes. He has not yet resigned, but we expect that any time.

    There are a number of ways to look at this story. Of course, it is a personal tragedy for a man and his family. It is also a body blow to the floundering N. C. Democrat Party. And as Governor McCrory says, it is a shame for the City of Charlotte. But there is an angle here that we think the public should not miss.

    That is what the man is accused of doing. It is, simply stated as: "Economic development."
Charlotte Mayor Patrick Cannon with his family at his swearing of the oath: Above.
    The sin here is, of course, that he received personal benefit from the deals he made to help grease the skids for businessmen do business in Charlotte. He made the obvious mistake of accepting cash personally. Had he made the cops funnel the money through a political campaign he would probably not have anything to worry about.

    So what was the quid pro quo? In return for money the undercover cops provided him, the Mayor agreed to pull strings in the planning and zoning departments to help expedite business development. That is done every day, all across North Carolina. Most of the time it is called "economic development" and ends in a press conference where the politicians take credit for "creating jobs." The legal ones just don't collect brief cases of cash or take trips to Las Vegas as a payoff.

    But what does happen every day somewhere in this state is that special favors or disfavors are doled out by bureaucrats and politicians to either help or hurt business people who are seeking to deal with government regulations. In this case the complaint says that the Mayor agreed to share information with these pretend developers about where railroads and stops were going to be put in. Information is knowledge. If you can buy land before the landowner knows what you know then you can make more money with that knowledge. Knowledge is power.

    Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Bank on it.

    Tonight there are bureaucrats and politicians all across the state wondering if that guy they've been working with is an FBI agent. That's the way our government does business.