In recent years it has been fashionable for local governments to implement “living wage” laws. The laws mandate “super” minimum wages for local government employees and the employees of private contractors dealing with the government. The idea is that everyone should be paid a wage that guarantees a certain standard of living. In North Carolina both Durham and Orange County have instituted a living-wage policy.
How would you feel if a shrill San Francisco liberal followed you around for a year, videotaping every public moment of your life? President Bush handles it with aplomb in HBO’s new documentary, “Journeys With George.”
Advocates of Dumb Growth consider beltline highways to be a scourge. But sound research rebuts their assertions, which are based more on their antipathy for urban freedom (what they call “sprawl”) than on real data in the real world.
A new study by two think tanks puts North Carolina about average in economic freedom. But every other state in the region ranks higher, as do Massachusetts and Connecticut. What can we learn from them?
The legislature says the 2003-04 budget deficit will approach $2 billion. Gov. Easley says it will be less than $1 billion. The difference isn’t a rounding error, it’s a difference in political incentive.
There were several allegations of chicanery in North Carolina’s 2002 election cycle, but today’s subject is a strange case down in Fayetteville where a duly appointed elections official had his ruling trumped by an Election-Day injunction. What happened?
By next June the nation's highest court could finally issue a much-needed clarification of the constitutionality of using racial considerations in college admissions decisions. The Supreme Court took up two cases in which white applicants argued that their applications to the University of Michigan and its law school were turned down because of their race.
North Carolina politicians are fretting about big state and local budget gaps and a supposedly “inadequate” stream of tax revenue. Here are several reasons why the political class shouldn’t be taken seriously on fiscal policy.
Gov. Easley’s tax-reform commission has spoken, and there are some good ideas to consider. But making future tax reductions temporary, via rebates, isn’t one of them. Producers and consumers crave more certainty, not less.
Journalists are under the mistaken notion that the First Amendment gives them rights and prerogatives not provided to Microsoft, GE, GM, and their executives. But free speech applies to everyone, not that campaign finance reformers care.
After Sen. John Kerry announced with unadulterated liberal panache his presidential plans on “Meet the Press,” the way got a little clearer for our own, ideologically vague senator.
