All by John Hood
RALEIGH — In recent weeks, I’ve written several columns flagging areas where North Carolina lags behind other states. We don’t do a good job of providing patients access to telehealth services, for example, and our education system — previously among the best in the country in converting public investment into reading and math performance — has tumbled in the rankings since the school shutdowns of the COVID era.
North Carolina has become a national leader in such policy areas as tax reform, school choice, and transportation funding. Unfortunately, we lag far behind in providing telehealth options to patients.
Four Republicans members of the North Carolina House of Representatives — Erin Paré and Mike Schietzelt of Wake County, Donny Lambeth of Forsyth County, and Tricia Cotham of Mecklenburg County — have just launched this year’s policy debate on teacher pay in our state.
RALEIGH — “What’s in a name?” wrote the Bard in his masterpiece Romeo and Juliet. “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
RALEIGH — What does it mean to be a conservative? “I’ve always believed that conservatism is the politics of reality,” wrote National Review founder William F. Buckley, “and that reality ultimately asserts itself in a reasonably free society.” Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher put it succinctly: “The facts of life are conservative.”
Every citizen who meets the basic requirements — adulthood, residency, and the completion of sentence after a felony conviction — can cast a ballot in North Carolina. There’s no test of civic knowledge required to exercise the civil right to vote, nor should there be.
RALEIGH — There is room for reasonable debate about how the United States should respond to the current Russo-Ukrainian War and other challenges to our longstanding interests and alliances in Europe, the Middle East, East Asia, and elsewhere. Our leaders must allocate scarce resources across multiple priorities.
RALEIGH — The asymmetry is striking. In Washington, many Republicans take a maximalist position on the executive power of the president of the United States. All departments and agencies — even if created by Congress with the intent of limiting presidential authority over them — are as a constitutional matter subordinate to the president, who can fire their officers and overrule their decisions at will.
RALEIGH — The minimum wage in North Carolina is $7.25 an hour — no different than the federal minimum. Other jurisdictions have set higher wage floors, by legislation or referendum. In the District of Columbia, nearly all employers must pay at least $17.50 an hour.
North Carolina House Speaker Destin Hall earned at least two rounds of bipartisan applause at the start of this year’s legislative session. One was for assuming his new leadership post. The other was for releasing a House calendar for the next six months, complete with specific deadlines and a pledge to “give you some certainty in your schedule.”
RALEIGH — Last month, North Carolina House Speaker Destin Hall tapped Rep. John Torbett (R-Gaston) and Rep. Keith Kidwell (R-Beaufort) to lead a new select committee on government efficiency.
RALEIGH — Reacting a few days ago to President Donald Trump’s brief attempt to suspend payment on a broad swath of federal grants, U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer warned that “virtually any organization, school, state, police office, county, town or community depends on federal grant money to run its day-to-day operations, and they’re all now in danger.”
RALEIGH — As the North Carolina General Assembly begins its 2025 session, lawmakers have many pressing issues to tackle.
RALEIGH — Are we on the brink of World War III? Not necessarily, argue the coauthors of a new book, so long as we do what is necessary to deter revanchists threatening peace and freedom around the world. But America and its allies have already entered a new Cold War with the CRINK Axis — China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and their client states in Eurasia and Latin America — and policymakers inside and outside Washington need to understand fully its implications.
RALEIGH — In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, student performance fell across much of the United States. According to a new study of 2022 math and reading scores, however, North Carolina students suffered one of the country’s biggest tumbles.
