Health reform needs state leaders
As recent events have reminded us, North Carolina’s state government is not a precise analogue to the federal government. Its leadership is more diffuse. The state legislature is stronger, relative... Read More
NC Spin Articles
Who killed the HB2 repeal?
by Mark Binker, WRAL, December 22, 2016. Shortly after the state Senate finished a day filled with rancor and mistrust by rejecting efforts to repeal House Bill 2, the controversial measure dealing... Read More
NAACP to seek economic boycott to protest lawmakers' actions
by Matthew Burns, WRAL.com, December 22, 2016. The state NAACP will ask the national leaders of the civil rights group next month for a nationwide economic boycott of North Carolina to protest the... Read More
Special session V and where do we go from here?
The real barrier to repealing HB2 this week was trust. Efforts at some kind of compromise had been going on for months, starting in April and ongoing through the fall. But the 2016 elections got in... Read More
Government for the benefit of the GOP
Editorial by Wilmington Star-News, December 16, 2016. In the preamble of North Carolina’s Constitution, the authors listed the two reasons for its existence -- “the more certain security (of the... Read More
What will happen to the economy in 2017?
by Mike Walden, NC State Professor of Economics, December 9, 2017. I often begin my economic outlook presentations with the following joke: Professional economists are frequently called upon to make... Read More
Election data shows widening of NC's urban-rual divide
Now that the dust has finally settled on North Carolina’s elections, some preliminary analyses can be conducted on the voting patterns in the state, which experienced a 2-to-1 split in the big three... Read More
'Nice guy' Pat McCrory finally reappears
by Paul O'Connor, Capitol Press Association, published in Salisbury Post, December 15, 2016. North Carolina’s most popular politician reappeared last week, almost four years after disappearing from... Read More
Duke denies it will build a coal ash landfill at Lee, even though permitted
The line is easy to miss. On Page 2 of a highly technical 53-page document involving Duke Energy’s H.F. Lee plant, are four words: “new lined ash landfill.” Those four words, inserted in a... Read More
Not enough glory
There were a lot of folks patting themselves on the back in the newspaper the other morning: The head of the LGBT Human Rights Committee sat down with the editors of the News and Observer and told... Read More
