Students must read to achieve
What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate. I’m talking about the political struggle over North Carolina’s 3rd grade reading standard, not the violent struggle between Paul Newman and the... Read More
NC SPIN Posts by John Hood
Same whine, different squabbles
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again,” wrote the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes. “There is nothing new under the sun.” More than two millennia later, Karl Marx... Read More
How are North Carolina students? About average
Fair warning: I may be about to bore you to distraction.Is there any more potent political issue in North Carolina than education? Probably not. As allies of the teachers union, Democrats hope to ride... Read More
Par for the course
If North Carolina Democrats were to gain some legislative seats this year, state and national pundits would probably spill gobs of ink — or at least fill gobs of pixels — with elaborate... Read More
Look before you (statistically) leap
Last Friday, some 44,000 discouraged North Carolina workers suddenly disappeared. Relax. It’s not as mysterious and tragic as it sounds. What happened was that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics... Read More
NC is boringly average
Fair warning: I may be about to bore you to distraction. Is there any more potent political issue in North Carolina than education? Probably not. As allies of the teachers union, Democrats hope to... Read More
Duke gets bum rap
I’ve had my disagreements with Duke Energy, both historically andrecently. But the company got a bum rap in a new story stumbling its way through media circles: that Duke Energy uses abusive tax... Read More
NC Doesn't pay more for less
When politicians admit they don’t know something, that makes me respect them more. Admitted ignorance is a sign of maturity, of a willingness to learn. It can be remedied with facts. What really... Read More
NC Workers make above-average gains
It’s certainly reasonable for people to use the unemployment rate and the number of jobs created to evaluate the performance of an economy. Robust growth typically means greater opportunities for... Read More
N.C. Politics split
I am hurt,” says the dying Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet after trying to stand up for his friend Romeo and getting stabbed for it. “A plague o’ both your houses!” In popular remembrance, we... Read More
