by Frank Williams
My two most recent columns focused on building business relationships that stand the test of time. In April, we focused on the foundation of business relationships: trust. In May, we explored the importance of being a giver rather than a taker. Today, we begin discussing a component of business relationships that is important but increasingly rare: loyalty.
John Hood
by John Hood
John Hood
by John Hood
John Hood
by John Hood
While the national Democratic ticket is enjoying a modest lift in the polls after the convention in Charlotte, the party’s gubernatorial nominee, Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton, remains significantly behind Republican Pat McCrory.
The political plight of Dalton is “over-determined,” as a social scientist might put it. There are many plausible explanations for why he trails McCrory. Thanks to Gov. Bev Perdue’s last-minute decision not to file for reelection, Dalton’s campaign came together quickly and remains underfunded. Perdue is the most unpopular governor in modern North Carolina history, so running to succeed her as a Democrat is obviously a challenge.
John Hood
By JOHN HOOD
RALEIGH — Spending tax dollars on preschool intervention for at-risk North Carolina children may be a worthwhile idea. In fact, I have long favored a carefully designed, carefully targeted early-childhood program as part of a comprehensive strategy for education reform. But this policy is not required by the state constitution – as a N.C. Court of Appeals panel has just ruled in a case about the program that used to be called More At Four and is now called North Carolina Pre-K.
John Hood
By JOHN HOOD
RALEIGH — Don’t look now, but North Carolina seems to have survived a significant reduction in the duration of the state’s legislative sessions.
According to the official count, the 2011-12 biennium of the Republican-led General Assembly convened on January 26, 2011 and adjourned for good on July 3, 2012. In-between those dates were two regular sessions – the “long” session in 2011 and the “short” session in 2012 – plus several special sessions devoted to redistricting, veto overrides, or other matters.
John Hood
By JOHN HOOD
RALEIGH — Along with most other states, North Carolina is in the process of adopting new Common Core national standards for reading and mathematics. The good news is that the Common Core is much better than North Carolina’s previously reading and math standards. The bad news is that, at least in the area of math, the new standards are inadequate to the task of raising North Carolina’s math performance to that of the highest-performing states and nations.
John Hood
By JOHN HOOD
I’ve changed my mind about the 2012 campaigns for North Carolina governor. I now think they may actually matter.
Well, perhaps that’s not the best choice of words. The outcome of the governor’s race was always going to matter. If Pat McCrory wins, the likely result will be a unified Republican government in Raleigh for the first time since Reconstruction – and major initiatives in 2013 to rewrite the state’s tax code, restructure the state’s education system, and continue to reform the state’s regulatory process.
John Hood
By JOHN HOOD
RALEIGH — While hardball politics is not the place one should ever go looking for intellectual rigor, North Carolina’s political culture seems especially prone to hyperbole and silliness.
These characteristics were in full display when the news broke that the graduation rate in North Carolina schools had exceeded 80 percent for the first time. As recently as 2006, only two-thirds of freshmen completed high school in four years. For the 2011-12, the rate was 80.2 percent.
John Hood
RALEIGH, N.C. — If during the past few years of fiscal instability, you consoled yourself with the fact that at least North Carolina’s pension fund for teachers and state employees was sound, I’m going to ruin your day.
Bond-rating agencies and regulators are about to change the system for evaluating state and local pension funds. Rather than use the average stock-market return to estimate the future returns of pension funds, they are going to use the average rate of return on bonds.
John Hood
By JOHN HOOD
I have no problem offering electoral predictions. Until 2008, I had a fairly good record pegging races, and my 2010 predictions proved to be within a couple of seats of the actual congressional and legislative results. But President Obama’s autumn surge in North Carolina confounded my model in 2008, tossing many of my statewide predictions into the trash heap — no, make that the dung heap — of history.
John Hood
By JOHN HOOD
RALEIGH — American politicians, parties, and interest groups spend relatively little on their electoral campaigns. The side that spends the most money doesn’t always win. And if we really want to improve our political system, we’ll know we’re succeeding if total spending on campaigns goes way up.
If these propositions strike you as strange, I’m not surprised. They clash with years of relentless media spin and political agitation by those who want to socialize the financing of political campaigns (much as they want to further socialize the financing of health care and education).
John Hood
By JOHN HOOD
RALEIGH – When North Carolina’s first Republican legislature in more than a century adjourned just before the July 4th holiday, assessments of its handiwork couldn’t have been more varied.
by Frank Williams
This Wednesday we will once again celebrate the birth of the greatest free society this world has ever known: the United States of America. Every day, we in America enjoy a level of freedom that is unprecedented in human history. I pray that we never take our freedom for granted.
We call July 4 our “Independence Day.” With that in mind, we should consider what exactly our forefathers fought and died to gain independence from.
John Hood
By JOHN HOOD
RALEIGH – I don’t often agree with Joe Hackney, the minority leader of the North Carolina House. A longtime Orange County representative who is retiring this year, Hackney previously served as majority leader and speaker. His political philosophy lies to the left not just of the overall House but also of the Democratic caucus.
Still, I’ve always respected Joe Hackney. Now I have reason to thank him.
John Hood
by John Hood
Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton wants a new job. President Barack Obama wants to keep his current job. The two Democrats have the same challenge, however. In order to win this fall, they have to persuade disaffected voters not to try a new direction in the executive branch.
John Hood
By JOHN HOOD
RALEIGH, N.C. – As the North Carolina House and Senate work out their differences over a 2012-13 spending plan, it’s not too early to be thinking about what the state’s fiscal policy choices will be in 2013.
There will be a new governor. There will be many new members of the General Assembly, although it seems likely that Republicans will retain control. I think 2013 may prove to be an opportune time for North Carolina to make fundamental changes in fiscal policy.
John Hood
By JOHN HOOD
RALEIGH – If you see the two major political parties as more polarized and more ideological than they used to be, congratulations! Your Spidey sense is working. But let’s be sure to interpret those tingles accurately.
John Hood
By JOHN HOOD
RALEIGH – If you say that North Carolina’s public schools are better than they used to be, you’ll get no argument from me.
A generation ago, educational attainment and quality in North Carolina ranked low by national standards. We had a low rate of high-school graduation. Our students ranked low in reading, math, and college readiness. In 1992, more than 60 percent of North Carolina students lacked even basic math skills.
by Harry M. Davis, Ph.D
A majority of Americans believe the U.S. economy is still in a recession even though the economy has been in an expansion for three years. The annualized rate of GDP growth in the first quarter of this year was a very disappointing 2.1 percent after a paltry rate of only 1.7% for 2011. These rates of economic growth are anemic compared to the post WWII experience.
John Hood
By JOHN HOOD
RALEIGH, N.C. – North Carolina’s unemployment rate fell in April by three-tenths of a point, to 9.4 percent. Good news? Not really.
When interpreting government statistics, you have to look at the details, not just the top-line number. North Carolina’s April decline in unemployment was attributable entirely to people leaving the workforce, according to the seasonally adjusted figures. At 9.4 percent, our state still has one of the highest unemployment rates in the United States – a dubious distinction North Carolina can claim for virtually the entire period since the onset of the Great Recession.
By JOHN HOOD
John Hood
RALEIGH, N.C. – North Carolina’s political culture is dysfunctional. No, I’m not just talking about sex scandals. These are merely a symptom of a more fundamental problem: arrogance.
North Carolina politicians exhibit a pretense of humility. They pretend to honor deeds over words, to “be rather than to seem” as the state motto puts it. They call their state “a vale of humility between two mountains of conceit,” meaning Virginia and South Carolina, even though it takes a fair amount of arrogance to say things like that.
John Hood
By JOHN HOOD
RALEIGH – Progressives make a point that conservatives ought to take to heart: taxes are far from the only factors that households and businesses take into consideration when deciding where to live, work, invest, shop, or create new businesses.
In other words, you can’t explain the performance of any economy simply on the basis of the prevailing tax rate. Some states and nations with above-average taxes have above-average growth rates. Some states and nations with below-average taxes have below-average growth rates.
John Hood
By JOHN HOOD
RALEIGH – If Gov. Bev Perdue and liberal activists want to know why their Edu-scare campaign against the Republican-led General Assembly hasn’t worked, they need only to consider the insight of essayist Kahil Gibran, who once wrote that “an exaggeration is a truth that has lost its temper.”
John Hood
By JOHN HOOD
RALEIGH – The next time you hear a North Carolina politician talk about the “need” to use tax dollars or public debt to build a new ballpark, convention center, rail line, or similar luxury, ask them this simple question: how much more do you think we can afford?
By JOHN HOOD
John Hood
RALEIGH – After the U.S. Supreme Court declined to protect private property from unjust government confiscation in its 2005 Kelo decision, the backlash from Americans across the political spectrum led many states to strengthen their protections against the abuse of eminent domain – that is, the government’s power to condemn and acquire private land.
By JOHN HOOD
John Hood
RALEIGH – In a previous column I described the political debate about North Carolina’s economy as a disagreement among three schools of thought about how best to stimulate growth. For the sake of convenience, I employed the familiar labels of Left, Center, and Right.
By JOHN HOOD
John Hood
RALEIGH – It’s an election year, and both major political parties have an interest in accentuating the differences between Democratic and Republican candidates for governor, legislature, and other North Carolina offices.
But as a nonpolitician, I have an interest in promoting a broader understanding of North Carolina government among the general public. To that end, let’s consider a few policy areas where the two major parties have grown closer together, not further apart, over the past couple of years.
John Hood
By JOHN HOOD
RALEIGH – If all you know about North Carolina’s state budget is what you see in headlines or hear in political ads, you don’t know enough. Most politicians and analysts talk only about the General Fund – the share of state spending paid for by North Carolina’s income tax, statewide sales tax, and a few other sources.
By JOHN HOOD
RALEIGH – Although those involved may wish us to forget, there were actually two attempts over the past year to
John Hood
make a certain statistic, one percent, into a political cause here in North Carolina. Both flopped in telling ways.
The obvious example is the Occupy movement, which began on Wall Street but soon spread to Charlotte, Raleigh,Greensboro, and other North Carolina communities. Protesters rallied against crony capitalism, bailouts, and insider influence. So far, so good. Then the rallies turned into squalid camps of bums and professional agitators, with no coherent message or goals. That far, that bad.
