RALEIGH — As dysfunctional as Congress has become, it does manage to enact some useful bills. One of them, the Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018, was championed by outgoing Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Washington). It promotes data-sharing and policy evaluation throughout the federal government.
Evidence ought to shape policy
John Hood is chairman of the John Locke Foundation and appears on the talk show “NC SPIN.” You can follow him @JohnHoodNC.
RALEIGH — The average public-school district in the United States enrolls about 3,700 students, according to a recent Governing magazine analy…
2019 was only four days old when we got the announcement the U.S. Supreme Court was going to hear arguments on North Carolina’s redistricting …
RALEIGH — Over the past eight years, conservative lawmakers have done much to constrain the excesses, expenses, and abuses of governmental pow…
RALEIGH — Milton Friedman once observed that “nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.” To be sure, spending bills or regula…
Imagine travelling from Raleigh to Charlotte in about 22 minutes; not by train, plane or car, but instead in a pod, transported through an alm…
An FBI investigation of President Donald Trump should surprise no one who has followed current events in recent years. As we learned from the …
Last Friday marked the 46th annual March for Life, an event to celebrate life and honor it as a sacred and precious gift from God. This incred…
Chapel Hill is still stunned.
Lawmakers return to Raleigh next week for the 2019 session of the North Carolina General Assembly. Pledges of harmony and bipartisan cooperati…
The recent brouhaha surrounding the Catholic schoolboys from Kentucky demonstrated the partnering of social media and journalism for the absol…
RALEIGH — The single most important issue during every legislative session is the approval or revision of North Carolina’s state budget. For t…
Candidates are lining up to run in 2020 and we’ve heard those running on a more liberal or “progressive” platform, as well as those espousing …
The request was for me to talk to an audience about how to conduct civil, meaningful and honest discussions among people with different faiths…
RALEIGH — If you own it, you control it. That’s what it means to enjoy a property right, in a nutshell. It is a right safeguarded by North Car…
RALEIGH — There has always been a robust political debate between advocates of free trade and advocates of manipulating the terms of trade to …
RALEIGH — In the January 1953 edition of the magazine If: Worlds of Science Fiction, a fan of the genre from Texas, Marilyn Venable, made her …
RALEIGH — How should we respond to the urban-rural divide? The question has legions of politicians, scholars, journalists, and businesses scra…
RALEIGH — Whether your frame of reference is a country, a government, a business, or your own household, being better off in the long run requ…
RALEIGH — When it comes to giving parents more control over where their children attend elementary and secondary school, North Carolina has be…
RALEIGH — Democrats achieved significant victories this year in the “inner suburbs” of Charlotte, Raleigh, Greensboro, and North Carolina’s ot…
Besides circulation the most complaints I get is about the editorial page. So today’s Friday Five is about questions and complaints about poli…
RALEIGH — Do political movements ever really accomplish anything? The English writer G.K. Chesterton had his doubts. “The whole modern world h…
RALEIGH — When natural disasters or other emergencies hit our state, North Carolinians respond in droves — and I’m not just referring to the c…
RALEIGH — North Carolina politics can be exhausting. The past few weeks have brought us wrangling over redistricting and constitutional amendm…
RALEIGH — Wealthy North Carolinians pay a higher share of their incomes in taxes than do middle-income North Carolinians, who in turn have a h…
RALEIGH — My wife is angry at the government. No surprise there, I suppose — we do have a great deal in common.
RALEIGH — As elementary and secondary schools open their doors across North Carolina for the 2018-19 academic year, the cumulative effects of …
RALEIGH — According to a recent Gallup poll, 57 percent of Democratic voters view socialism positively, more than the 47 percent who view capi…
RALEIGH — North Carolina’s two most-populous counties, Mecklenburg and Wake, are home to about 21 percent of the state’s population and 28 per…
RALEIGH — If I told you that North Carolina had one of America’s top-ranked systems of public education, there are at least three ways you cou…
RALEIGH — After decades of debate and litigation, the U.S. Supreme Court has settled a contentious matter: governments will now be authorized…
RALEIGH — Whether North Carolina pays its public schoolteachers at a level close or equal to the national average is one of the most-debated i…
John Hood of the John Locke Foundation recently wrote an opinion piece for the Tribune; its headline was “Freedom is growth strategy.” He then…
RALEIGH — When pollsters ask voters to list the issues they care about most, economic concerns usually rank high on the list — even when unemp…
RALEIGH — When explaining modern American conservatism to students, both young and not-so-young, I mix my methods. There are tables and charts…
RALEIGH — There is a familiar kind of political argument that goes something like this: “I know we are politically divided. I think that parti…
RALEIGH — Over the past two weeks, government budget agencies have delivered two key reports to North Carolina taxpayers. One should infuriate…
RALEIGH — Proving that great minds think alike, both Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman and the Bard himself, William Shakespeare, …
RALEIGH — If you are a political junkie, you follow closely the daily ins and outs of elections and legislation. I do, too. Let’s step back fo…
