Unemployment rates (not seasonally adjusted) increased in all 100 of North Carolina’s counties in January. Scotland County had the highest unemployment rate at 8.1 percent while Orange County had the lowest at 2.6 percent.
It costs a lot more to train a future engineer than to train a future journalist. Some smart aleck might suggest the cost differential is entirely understandable, since a poorly trained engineer will tend to wash out of her profession while a poorly trained journalist might well rise to the top of his.
The North Carolina General Assembly is going to stay in Republican hands after the 2022 midterms. For state Democrats, this is a bitter pill to swallow. That they’ve already managed to swallow it, however, is evident in their manifest failure to recruit enough candidates to put up a credible fight this year for control of the legislature.
Governor Cooper has commuted the sentences of three people who were convicted for crimes committed when they were teenagers. The commutations follow an intensive review of their cases, including the length of their sentences, their records in prison, and their readiness to succeed outside of prison.
Senate Leader Phil Berger (R-Rockingham) sent a letter to North Carolina's Congressional delegation today calling on them to take immediate action to stop American dollars from being spent on Russian oil.
With the two-year anniversary of Gov. Cooper’s COVID-19 state of emergency declaration this Thursday, March 10th, the entire House Republican Caucus today sent a letter organized by Majority Leader John Bell to the Governor calling on him to end his emergency order and allow the state to move forward.
I promise I’m no math geek. So why do my columns about North Carolina politics and public policy so often feature rankings, economic data, or other statistics?
The Office of State Budget and Management (OSBM) distributed more than $330 million in directed grants to local governments and community organizations in the last 10 days. More than 170 entities across North Carolina received funds in this first round of grant disbursements.
Governor Roy Cooper held a roundtable at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte to highlight the Longleaf Commitment community college grant program. Cooper met with education leaders and grant recipients to spotlight the program and raise awareness for current high school seniors who may be eligible to get a grant to attend community college debt-free.
Over the past couple of weeks, North Carolina politicos have focused intently on the outcome of the state’s latest redistricting saga. After the GOP-majority General Assembly saw its original set of electoral districts thrown out by the courts, lawmakers tried again. Their new legislative maps were accepted. A three-judge panel rejected the Republicans’ newly crafted congressional districts, however, and enacted a “remedial” map for the 2022 cycle.
Governor Roy Cooper signed Executive Order No. 251 in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that directs state government agencies and departments to review all existing contracts and operations and to terminate any agreements or operations that directly benefit Russian entities.
The early history of North Carolina is full of fascinating characters. John Kincaid was one of them.
