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Opinion

NC’s Innovations Waiver is lifesaving for 14k disabled, but 17k others languish on waitlist

My son, Nicholas, is 23, intellectually disabled, and autistic. He has a good life. But most North Carolinians with significant intellectual and developmental disabilities lack the services and support he receives.  In North Carolina, about 14,000 people — including my son — receive the Innovations Waiver. This Medicaid waiver is our state’s primary home- and...

Ray Hemachandra
Opinion

Winners still flirt with swing voters

Carolina Journal’s first post-primary survey is out. It shows our state’s 2024 general elections will be, as usual, quite competitive. That’s not to say North Carolina’s electorate is perfectly purple. It’s not. All other things being equal, Republicans enjoy a modest edge statewide of a few percentage points. As John Locke Foundation analyst Andy Jackson...

John Hood
Opinion

Save NC’s endangered farmland from overbuilding solar facilities

The American Farmland Trust (AFT) ranked North Carolina second in the nation for farmland threatened from residential development. It’s a big concern. Agriculture is the state’s top industry, employing about one-fifth of the state’s workforce. According to North Carolina Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler, North Carolina has about 8.3 million acres of farmland. Per AFT estimates,...

Jon Sanders
Opinion

Intellectual diversity missing at top NC law schools

Derek T. Muller, a Notre Dame Law School professor, recently published research on his personal site showing the political contributions of his fellow law professors at major American law schools. What he found is not surprising, but it is fairly disheartening to those who hold traditional American beliefs on things like freedom of speech, limited...

David Larson

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Opinion

NC should be first in financial freedom

Listen to talk radio long enough, or watch cable news for a segment or two, and you’re bound to hear an advertisement for physical gold. These commercials are probably playing in your head right now, complete with a recognizable (albeit past prime) actor or media personality, telling you that gold is a “safe haven asset”...

Jeff Moore
Opinion

Michael Whatley is the right choice to lead RNC

Chairman Michael Whatley is the right guy at the right time to lead the Republican National Committee. I have spent a decade working in Republican politics, mainly in opposition research, and had the privilege of serving as the NCGOP communications director in 2020, where I directly witnessed why Whatley would make a great RNC chairman....

Tim Wigginton
Opinion

How will Opportunity Scholarship boom affect NC charter schools?

According to the National School Choice Awareness Foundation (NSCAF), more Americans googled “school choice” during National School Choice Week in January 2023 than during any other time over the prior six years. This should come as no surprise to North Carolinians. Since January 2023, our state legislature has made major expansion possible in both charter...

Rhonda Dillingham
Opinion

Politicians play with fairy dust

It’s hard not to play along when children come up with cute untruths. Back when one of my now-grown sons was just an Opie Taylor-like tyke, for example, he used to tell me matter-of-factly that if he didn’t go to bed, the moon wouldn’t rise. It was a reasonable conclusion based on his experience at...

John Hood