"Fake news" comes from an official source

"Fake News"? It's a real phenomenon — inaccurate, misleading, outlandish, incredible, mendacious — but out there.

Where does it come from? Turns out it's not just from frustrated, anti-social millennials sitting in their parents' basement in their pajamas or entrepreneurial Macedonian techies making a lucrative living by dreaming up wildly enticing stories that lure people to click on their social media posts. Fake news also comes from ... the majority leader of the N.C. Senate.

Phil Berger, the majority leader, has posted grossly exaggerated and mean-spirited headlines on his official Facebook page with links to actual news stories from legitimate news sources, including the News & Observer. Caught and challenged about his practice, which violated Facebook's terms of use policy, Berger was unrepentant, accusing Facebook of misinterpreting its own terms of use.

Any astute user of social media should recognize Berger's wildly accusatory headlines as unprofessional and beneath the standards of the news organizations his posts link to. But Berger knows that many people won't click on the link or read the actual headline, much less read the straight-news story without Berger's partisan twist to it. He knows the headline does its damage, accusing Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, of all sorts of malfeasance.

What is most disturbing to the legitimate news sources, such as the N&O, the Charlotte Observer and WBTV, is that they are listed as the source, the link, below the misleading headline. Experienced Facebook users will often check the source before clicking on a link. Berger's fake headline makes it look as though honest-to-goodness real news organizations (the "mainstream media") have the goods on the Democrats. Berger's fake news make its Democratic target and the news media both look bad.

For Berger, that's a perfect combination, a two-for-one score. No wonder he sees nothing wrong with fake news.

Cut taxes and cut taxes again

Just a year after revamping the state tax code and reducing the state income tax by 0.25 percent, Republicans in the N.C. Senate want to cut taxes again, by another 0.25 percent. Gov. Pat McCrory counsels his GOP colleagues to give last year's tax cut time to determine its full impact on the state's economy and taxpayers, but the Senate leadership seems determined to cut taxes again.

Isn't a tax cut the panacea for all political, governmental and economic problems? 

If a tax cut every year is the solution (whatever the problem might be), where does this strategy end? If cutting taxes is the answer, what then is the ideal level of taxation? Zero?

Staunch libertarians have asserted that nearly all government functions can be replaced by free enterprise and free, untaxed citizens. If you are concerned about crime, get together with your neighbors to hire a neighborhood police force. You'll also need to hire prosecutors, judges and prison guards. And, as U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis asserted not long ago, sanitation standards can be be eliminated; just post a notice in the restaurant that the staff is not required to wash hands after using the bathroom. "Caveat emptor!" Free citizens who do not want to contract food poisoning or worse will protect themselves, and offending restaurants will eventually go out of business.

So if lower taxes are good, and still lower taxes are even better, no taxes must be best. Coming soon to a legislative chamber near you.

Remarkable Basnight calls it quits

I met Marc Basnight about 20 years ago. He dropped by my office at the newspaper late one afternoon as he was headed either to Raleigh or Manteo, I don't remember which, and introduced himself. We shot the breeze a bit about North Carolina and politics, and we exchanged business cards. He seemed genuine, sincere and not the least bit pretentious. Years later, when one of my reporters interviewed Basnight, he asked about me, demonstrating his remarkable memory for names and people, a characteristic of nearly all successful politicians.

Basnight announced his retirement from the Senate Tuesday, and the decision deserved the mega-size headline in the News & Observer. After 23 years as president pro-tem of the Senate, the most powerful politician in North Carolina was stepping down. The N&O articles expressed some uncertainty whether Basnight or the governor was the most powerful Democrat in Raleigh. To my thinking, there was never any doubt. Nothing got through the Senate without Basnight's approval, and any legislation Basnight wanted passed was approved, sooner or later. Even with the rarely used veto, the governor could not sway legislation the way Basnight could. Not only could he control legislation, he could sway elections. From his secure coastal district, Basnight raised many thousands of unneeded campaign dollars, which he gave away to Democratic colleagues facing contested elections. Until last year, his fundraising capabilities assured Democratic dominance in the Senate. With his power sharply diminished, his electoral influence waning and his health in question, Basnight made a rational decision to resign.

He leaves a remarkable legacy, regardless of whether you approve of the way Basnight ran the state (and make no mistake, he ran the state as much as anyone did). With only a high school education and a remarkable drive to match an innate intelligence, Basnight molded himself into a well-informed historian and economist. His "people skills" assured his rise to power and the respect he won from legislators, lobbyists and others. Like Robert Byrd in the U.S. Senate, Basnight was not shy about using tax dollars to improve his state. The highways, museums, parks and other attractions in his coastal district testify to his power and generosity, as do the UNC cancer hospital, the building boom across UNC campuses and the ECU dental school. But his steadfast belief in state spending to boost the state and the state's economy is at least partly to blame for the huge deficit legislators face this year. Basnight promised that state spending on capital projects and new programs would help lift North Carolina out of the economic downturn. It hasn't worked, and now someone else has to fix the problems left behind.