North Carolina lawmakers are reportedly considering some form of Medicaid expansion as part of a final budget deal with Gov. Roy Cooper that would also bring tax cuts and other free-market policy gains on key issues.
The overall crime rate, defined as the total number of reported crimes divided by North Carolina’s population, was lower in 2020 than in 2010. But most of these reports concern property crimes: arson, burglary, larceny, and motor-vehicle theft. Their frequency certainly affects the security of our homes and possessions. Places with high rates of property crime also struggle to attract business investment and residential development.
Closing down school buildings for many months last year — and offering poorly planned and executed virtual schooling as an inadequate substitute — proved to be a disaster for North Carolina children, families, and the education system itself.
I’ve been spending a lot of time recently in conversation with right-leaning leaders, policy experts, donors, and activists. My purpose is to assess the health and trajectory of American conservatism at this critical moment.
The latest news about North Carolina transportation was no surprise. In a pattern all too familiar, our leaders have planned for and promised more highway projects than can be financed with current revenue sources.
In the England of the early 20th century, there were no two writers more dissimilar than G.K. Chesterton and George Bernard Shaw. Chesterton was a conservative who wrote literary essays, a long-running newspaper column, and the popular Father Brown series of detective stories. Shaw was a socialist whose famous plays include Man and Superman, Saint Joan, and Pygmalion, from which the popular musical My Fair Lady was later adapted.
When President Joe Biden’s approval numbers began to plummet in early August, driven by public disgust with the disastrous American withdrawal from Afghanistan, hopeful Democrats suggested that as the news cycle moved on, Biden would recover.
Before The Andy Griffith Show, before nearby Pilot Mountain became the nucleus of a popular state park, Mount Airy had the Rock.
North Carolina’s economy has enjoyed a substantial recovery from the depths of the Great Suppression — that is, from the COVID-19 downturn of 2020. Most businesses are back up and operating. So are schools and universities. More employees than ever before are working from home. That’s had positive consequences for worker satisfaction and traffic congestion (although the consequences for productivity are admittedly unclear). State government is flush with revenue. North Carolina’s headline unemployment rate was just 4.3% in August.
I got the COVID-19 vaccine shortly after it became publicly available. I did so because I was persuaded that the benefits of vaccination far outweighed the risk.
Do the ends justify the means? This familiar question produces strong feelings precisely because its answer is necessarily complicated. Just about all of us admit to a scenario, such as the proverbial ticking time-bomb, in which we would countenance unsavory means if required to save lives. In general, however, most religious and ethical traditions teach that we are not permitted to use injurious or unethical means to accomplish even noble ends.
When North Carolinians are free to trade with whomever they choose, be it South Carolinians or South Koreans, some local businesses may lose sales. The case for markets isn’t based on promises of cost-free benefits or perfect outcomes. No such promises could ever be honored in the real world.
