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.
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.
There is broad agreement that North Carolina is better suited to handle redistricting in a more transparent fashion than a decade ago, but further improvements can be made to the process according to a wide spectrum of speakers at Duke University's Redistricting and American Democracy two day symposium.
When it comes to our business climate and economic prospects, North Carolinians are used to receiving accolades. Let’s add another to the list. The Cato Institute just released a study of regulatory barriers facing entrepreneurs. North Carolina fared well in the analysis, ranking 12th-best in the nation.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Americans of Filipino descent had a median household income of just over $100,000 in 2019. The median household income of white Americans that year was about $66,000.
It’s hard not to play along when children come up with cute untruths. Unfortunately, many politicians have yet to grow out of the toddler phase when it comes to spotting and discarding spurious correlations. The most naïve and destructive examples stem from misusing the concept of the multiplier effect.
If you think about regional differences in North Carolina politics, economics, or culture in terms of urban blue and rural red, you are missing a thick slice of the story: the suburbs. And, no, you can’t just paint the suburbs purple. That’s an oversimplification.
In North Carolina politics, few issues are as contentious as education. For years, Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and the Republican-led General Assembly have locked horns on such issues as funding formulas, teacher pay, and parental choice.
In my role as president of the John William Pope Foundation, I’ve learned that while it’s easy to give money, it’s difficult to give money away well. There’s no shortage of promising ideas turned into well-meaning enterprises by well-meaning people. Alas, many have disappointing results.
If you think the cost of living is too low, I bear good tidings. The Biden administration and its allies in Congress, regulatory agencies, and state governments across the country are working nonstop to raise the cost of food, shelter, energy, and education. Help is on the way!
Taxing the income, sales, or property of a business is a means of paying for government services associated with that business activity. It pays for police, courts, and other means of protecting property and adjudicating disputes. It pays to train current workers and educate future ones. It helps pay for local streets and other infrastructure.
I’ve never really been a victim of cancel culture. But that’s not to say my critics haven’t tried to make me one. I began my syndicated column in 1986. It ran initially in a couple of newspapers in eastern North Carolina, then spread to dozens of others over the ensuing decade. On several occasions, left-wing activists have tried to get editors to drop my column. It never worked. In my experience, local newspaper folks didn’t like obviously orchestrated attempts to dictate editorial decisions.
