Perdue's 'Wall Street' ad on Moore

Does the Perdue campaign prefer that North Carolina only have a one-way relationship with New York and the Northeast? We already have these oppressive schemes in which North Carolina writers have their work subjected to redistribution away from independent publishing and toward the hoppers of Northern academic institutions and political organizations courtesy of such McClatchy Newspapers as The (Columbia, S.C.) State, The Charlotte Observer and The (Raleigh) News & Observer. Let us hope things don't get any worse than they already are in this regard.

Fortunately, Richard Moore has demonstrated that it is possible for North Carolina to win and maintain respect in the financial and economic marketplaces and academic and journalistic corridors of New York and the Northeast so that North Carolina can chart its own course in national and international business and economic affairs. This is a lot more beneficial than newspaper writers being kept out of work in North Carolina so that well-endowed political organizations up north can get "free" labor "down home in North Carolina."

The Kennedy organization has the perfect right to support any candidate it chooses for President in 2008, but why should our newspapers in the Carolinas force our own writers, editors artists and scholars to divert all their efforts away from Southern marketplaces for the sake of the next preferred national political campaign by one particular group of Northern Democrats?

When it comes to banking, finance, business, education, journalism and politics, North Carolina had better help maintain at least a two-way avenue between the Southeast and the Northeast rather than settle for a one-way expressway over which our best ideas and research in journalism, academics and public policy are shipped off to points north just to prove that we're not "excessively Southern" in our regional and national outlook.

The Perdue campaign's incessant harping on the idea of encouraging a healthy balance in political fund-raising in the campaign for governor of North Carolina makes one wonder just what sort of economic future the lieutenant governor's team envisions for the Old North State in the coming decade.

David McKnight