"Power, Money, & Flesh" -- True Words, Spoken Eight Years Ago by Pat McCrory

Back on February 2, 2007, on the Mayor Pat McCrory radio show in Charlotte ("The Inside Story with Mayor Pat McCrory"), the Mayor of North Carolina said this:

We all have to be reminded when we're in positions of power and influence, that we have to keep our ego in place, and we have to be careful of three things: power, money, and flesh....

And I'll tell you what else happens with power, and I seen it with eight mayors ... friends of mine who have been elected in the past eight years. They then started believing that they deserved more money because many of their decisions make other people money. Eight friends of mine throughout the U.S. that are now in federal jail. Because they took money believing that it was okay to take money because they're working hard and their decisions are making other people money. You justify the sin, you justify the behavior in the name of "I'm doing good for my city, I'm doing good for my community, my state, my neighborhood." When in fact, what you're trying to do is line your own pockets.

Prescient on his part. We're sorry to be reminding him of those words in the same year that he failed to report expensive luxury trips on other men's credit cards. And failed to report ownership of Duke Energy stock and failed to report income from Tree.com ($185,000+) after he was sworn in as governor.

He probably feels like he earned it.