RALEIGH — The single most important issue during every legislative session is the approval or revision of North Carolina’s state budget. For the 2019-20 session about to get underway, the political implications of the budget debate are going to be nearly as important as the policy implications.
State budget battle is looming
John Hood is chairman of the John Locke Foundation and appears on the talk show “NC SPIN.” You can follow him @JohnHoodNC.
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Last week, the world watched as President Donald Trump delivered his second State of the Union Address. In his speech, the President highlight…
RALEIGH — Friar Laurence has the best of intentions. But in William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the friar’s well-intended interventions do…
RALEIGH — If the most important factor determining the welfare of workers is the growth rate of the economy, that has policy implications that…
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We all share the same goal to end gun violence in this country. But in the course of this debate, House Democrats say they want to “do somethi…
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…
Here’s a good news-bad news story that needs a happy ending. The good news is that as of January our state’s unemployment rate was 3.6 percent…
From the opening moments of Apollo 11, as a missile crawler-transporter is delivering a Saturn rocket to its launch pad, viewers know that som…
RALEIGH — Milton Friedman once observed that “nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.” To be sure, spending bills or regula…
RALEIGH — Over the past eight years, conservative lawmakers have done much to constrain the excesses, expenses, and abuses of governmental pow…
RALEIGH — The average public-school district in the United States enrolls about 3,700 students, according to a recent Governing magazine analy…
RALEIGH — As dysfunctional as Congress has become, it does manage to enact some useful bills. One of them, the Evidence-Based Policymaking Act…
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…
