Slush Fund City

The Raleigh News & Observer is full today of an investigative report into what some are already calling a "slush fund," for doling out favors to political allies, roughly $10 million bucks controlled by Speaker of the House Jim Black and Richard Morgan, a Moore County Republican who was co-speaker with Black last year in the state House. Call it bi-partisan corruption, or at least the appearance of corruption.

The list of non-profits that got unasked-for grants, doled out by N.C. legislators who in turn got the money doled out by Black and Morgan, all seem worthwhile enough and not very controversial. But passing out that kind of money just prior to the election last fall becomes a cause of embarrassment, if not outright scandal. And clearly the grants were intended to sway voters in favor of the legislators that Black and Morgan chose as conduits.