Those who care about education reform learned a lot on February 5 when North Carolina released its first letter grades for public schools. The grades reflect three sets of information: average student performance on end-of-year tests, the amount of annual growth in those scores, and graduation...
Published: Tuesday, February 10th, 2015 @ 10:07 pm
By: John Locke Foundation
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At the beginning of Shakespeare's Macbeth, three grotesque witches enter the stage with thunder rumbling in the background. You may recall that the witches ending up chanting in unison: "Fair is foul, and foul is fair/Hover through the fog and filthy air."
Published: Sunday, February 8th, 2015 @ 5:19 am
By: John Locke Foundation
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Legislators will have two options this year to pursue election redistricting reform for North Carolina. Supporters of both options unveiled their plans during a Tuesday news conference in Raleigh.
Published: Wednesday, February 4th, 2015 @ 12:07 am
By: John Locke Foundation
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Ever since conservatives won majorities in the North Carolina General Assembly and began reducing taxes, spending, and state regulation, liberals have predicted doom.
Published: Saturday, January 31st, 2015 @ 11:26 pm
By: John Locke Foundation
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I don't exercise my editorial muscles as much as I used to, and even when editing was a major element of my daily routine, I was never as tough on my writers as I probably should have been.
Published: Tuesday, January 20th, 2015 @ 9:25 pm
By: John Locke Foundation
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Another wave of bad publicity and legal questions isn't what the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill needs right now. But that's exactly what the school is getting, thanks to its longstanding and troubling use of race as a major factor in admissions.
Published: Thursday, January 15th, 2015 @ 9:03 pm
By: John Locke Foundation
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Now that Republicans are leading both chambers in Congress and in the North Carolina legislature, intra-party differences will garner more attention than they have in the past - particularly from those hoping the new GOP majorities will be chaotic, disastrous, and short-lived.
Published: Monday, January 12th, 2015 @ 5:02 pm
By: John Locke Foundation
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Because of the tremendous benefits conferred by better education, it would be great if policymakers knew precisely what silver bullets to fire to eliminate obstacles to higher achievement.
Published: Sunday, January 11th, 2015 @ 12:02 am
By: John Locke Foundation
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Pretty much as soon as the polls closed on Election Day 2014, the political prognosticators began laying bets on what will happen by Election Day 2016. At the national level, attention quickly focused on the seemingly endless parade of Republicans seeking to take on Hillary Clinton.
Published: Saturday, January 10th, 2015 @ 9:59 pm
By: John Locke Foundation
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Is North Carolina ready to be an early stop on the road to the White House? Thanks to recent legislation, the Tar Heel State has abandoned its traditionally late presidential primary, held in May. State lawmakers couldn't let Iowa, New Hampshire, and especially South Carolina have all the fun...
Published: Friday, January 2nd, 2015 @ 8:51 am
By: John Locke Foundation
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I know Christmas Day has come and gone, but we ought to try to retain the holiday spirit as long as we can. That's why I'm urging compassion for a downtrodden group that doesn't often receive it: North Carolina's liberal commentators.
Published: Thursday, January 1st, 2015 @ 10:27 pm
By: John Locke Foundation
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When state legislators created a new commission last summer to review North Carolina's participation in Common Core standards for elementary and secondary schools, they made an excellent decision.
Published: Saturday, December 27th, 2014 @ 10:10 am
By: John Locke Foundation
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Liberals are desperate to prove that North Carolina's new election law constitutes the second coming of Jim Crow-era voter suppression. Their desperation reflects three desires.
Published: Friday, December 19th, 2014 @ 6:25 pm
By: John Locke Foundation
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The plight of the low-wage fast-food worker has been a focus of some political activism lately. The ostensible goal is drumming up support for significantly raising the minimum wage. Sympathy for workers should not, however, lead one into supporting causes that merely seem to address the problem whi
Published: Friday, December 12th, 2014 @ 10:47 pm
By: John Locke Foundation
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If you've read Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist or seen the musical derived from it, Oliver!, you immediately recognize the name. Fagin is the rogue who takes in orphans and runaways, trains them to pick pockets and swindle marks, and then distributes the proceeds between himself and stre
Published: Wednesday, December 10th, 2014 @ 12:31 am
By: John Locke Foundation
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Not much, it would seem. Yet according to the latest data, they are among the states leading the national pack in economic performance. The closer you look at the list of top performers, the more you start to see patterns that help explain why some states are faring well and others aren't within...
Published: Sunday, December 7th, 2014 @ 10:06 am
By: John Locke Foundation
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According to the latest monthly report from State Controller Linda Combs, the state of North Carolina has collected about $6.5 billion in General Fund revenue during the first four months of the 2014-15 fiscal year. That's a lot of money. But it's almost $400 million less than what the state...
Published: Wednesday, December 3rd, 2014 @ 11:20 am
By: John Locke Foundation
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When the news broke that Rep. Tim Moore would be the Republican nominee for speaker of the North Carolina House and Rep. Mike Hager would be majority leader, the usual suspects did the usual things.
Published: Thursday, November 27th, 2014 @ 10:18 am
By: John Locke Foundation
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One of the legacies of the George W. Bush era was the codification of the red-blue color scheme for American politics. Newspapers and TV networks used the results of the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections to produce maps characterized by dollops of blue in the Northeast, along the Great Lakes...
Published: Friday, November 21st, 2014 @ 2:33 pm
By: John Locke Foundation
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Why did Democrats have a disappointing midterm election? Ask the Democrats. They've been thinking about this a lot and offer many explanations. Let's explore their various legends of the fall campaign.
Published: Wednesday, November 19th, 2014 @ 12:04 am
By: John Locke Foundation
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Government is far, far bigger than it used to be. Liberals generally cheer this development. Conservatives regret it. To understand the disagreement about this change, one must first understand the magnitude of the change.
Published: Saturday, November 8th, 2014 @ 10:05 am
By: John Locke Foundation
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As the 2014 election cycle draws to a close, few states have drawn so much national attention as North Carolina, thanks to the tight Hagan-Tillis race, the dramatic turn in state government from blue to red, and our status as a presidential swing state in 2008 and 2012.
Published: Friday, October 31st, 2014 @ 10:37 pm
By: John Locke Foundation
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Which picture of North Carolina's recent past is more accurate? I'll call the two alternatives Tar Heel Limbo and Tar Heel Heaven. (And, no, I'm not referring to the fake-class scandal at UNC-Chapel Hill. That's clearly Tar Heel Hell.)
Published: Friday, October 31st, 2014 @ 5:30 am
By: John Locke Foundation
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I know my editors will appreciate it, but I promise I'm not pandering when I say this: advertising gets results. Although academic scolds and professional worrywarts have been complaining about advertising ever since it was invented, the truth is that when institutions spend money effectively to...
Published: Tuesday, October 28th, 2014 @ 10:25 am
By: John Locke Foundation
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The latest federal employment report delivers excellent news for North Carolina. That's the assessment from the John Locke Foundation's chairman, who notes that state employers added 14,000 new jobs in September. That means a net employment gain of 108,500 over the past year.
Published: Thursday, October 23rd, 2014 @ 12:24 am
By: John Locke Foundation
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In 1925, advertising executive and future Congressman Bruce Barton wrote the book that made his national reputation, The Man Nobody Knows. In it, he imagined what Jesus Christ would be like if he resided in the modern world. Barton drew lessons from his thought experiment about business, personal re
Published: Wednesday, October 22nd, 2014 @ 1:02 pm
By: John Locke Foundation
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Except when complaining that North Carolina isn't giving enough targeted tax incentives to Hollywood studios, solar-panel manufacturers, and commercial real-estate developers, liberals contend that cutting taxes on business has no effect on business starts, corporate relocation, or job creation.
Published: Wednesday, October 8th, 2014 @ 5:47 pm
By: John Locke Foundation
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The first and only time I ever helped take a political survey was during my undergraduate days at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill back in the 1980s. I was one of many journalism students who made phone calls on behalf of the Carolina Poll, a regular survey of North Carolinians on...
Published: Saturday, October 4th, 2014 @ 5:12 pm
By: John Locke Foundation
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How is North Carolina's economy doing? That is always an important question. During election season, however, it takes on added significance. Fairly or not, voters often hold incumbent politicians responsible for the condition and recent performance of the economy.
Published: Monday, September 29th, 2014 @ 11:45 pm
By: John Locke Foundation
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Fiscal conservatives tend to look askance at large issuances of public debt. In this sentiment, they are in good company. "I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse," wrote James Madison, "and in a Republican Government a greater curse than any other." His mentor and friend...
Published: Friday, September 26th, 2014 @ 11:03 am
By: John Locke Foundation
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If Republican Thom Tillis were running for the U.S. Senate from the state of North Piedmont, he'd be clearly favored to defeat incumbent Democrat Kay Hagan. Alternatively, if Hagan represented the state of Trianglia, she'd be such a shoo-in that we'd all lose interest in the race.
Published: Tuesday, September 23rd, 2014 @ 3:42 pm
By: John Locke Foundation
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Just before Labor Day, the publicly available polls of likely voters had incumbent U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan roughly tied with her Republican challenger, Thom Tillis. Since Labor Day, the polling average has shifted about three points in Hagan's direction.
Published: Friday, September 19th, 2014 @ 12:03 am
By: John Locke Foundation
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The latest poll on North Carolina's U.S. Senate race has Republican Thom Tillis (43 percent) and Democrat Kay Hagan (42 percent) neck-and-neck, with Libertarian Sean Haugh at 5 percent and 10 percent of likely voters still undecided.
Published: Tuesday, September 9th, 2014 @ 12:37 am
By: John Locke Foundation
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When Republicans won their legislative majorities in 2010 and expanded them in 2012, they ran on a platform of fiscal conservatism and reform.
Published: Thursday, September 4th, 2014 @ 5:13 pm
By: John Locke Foundation
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