RALEIGH – Since this Daily Journal feature of CJ Online started back in 2001, I’ve probably received thousands of emails from our growing community of online readers. While I write pieces with far greater readership – such as occasional pieces for national magazines such as Reason and National Review and a syndicated column for NC newspapers serving a total circulation of nearly 600,000 – they don’t generate even close to the number of reader response I get from my online scribbles.

That’s the nature of the medium, I guess. The readership of CJ Online may only be in the thousands, rather than in the tens or hundreds of thousands, but it has characteristics favorable to response. It primarily consists of public officials, journalists, and activists – all atypically interested in the details of public policy and quite willing to argue over them. Also, these readers are obviously Web-oriented, and thus far more likely than the rest of the population is to shoot a quick email of commendation or condemnation.

While I try to keep up with the correspondence, at least to acknowledge receipt and often to engage in conversation, there are certainly many cases where I just can’t find the time. So to any readers who’ve emailed me recently to give me an attaboy – or, more likely, to give me grief – and have failed to get a reply, I hereby apologize. Consider it a blanket apology for all past and future sins of transmission.

Occasionally, I’ve gone beyond the private missive and used a Daily Journal column to respond to correspondence from past ones. Today is one of those cases. So, in the interest of clarification or amplification:

• In a recent piece about MCNC, a nonprofit founded by former Gov. Jim Hunt and the recipient of years of taxpayer funding, I relied on a Triangle Business Journal account of its finances that, it turns out, did not accurately portray those finances. TBJ has issued a correction, so I’ll do the same. It turns out that MCNC now consists of two different enterprises: MCNC Research & Development Institute and MCNC Grid Computing & Networking Services. The former is the unit that RTI International may buy, and which would have 10 employees afterwards. The other element, which provides computer grids and networking, has a current staff of 45. So it is not correct to say that MCNC’s total employment is about to drop to 10. Also, while MCNC has been dipping into its endowment to pay annual costs, one withdrawal was for a contribution to a rural-Internet initiative. I stand by my previous criticisms of MCNC subsidies.

• Mac McCorkle wrote the other day to complain that, among other things, I had erred in portraying Gov. Mike Easley’s budget as containing an increase in personal-income taxes. You can read more about Mac’s complaint, and my position, in Tuesday’s N&O. My characterization remains accurate.

Here’s a common-sense way to understand my point: imagine if you had a contract with someone to sell you a service for $1,000 this year and $500 next year. Then imagine that he came to you asking to raise the second-year price to $750. Would you consider that a price cut, since the first-year cost is $1,000? Of course not. If you say yes, your total bill rises by $250.

Similarly, the governor proposes to retain a fourth tax bracket in 2006 that, under current law, disappears at the end of 2005. Yes, he would change the bracket to an 8 percent rate, rather than the 8.25 percent in place in 2005. But that is still higher than the 7.75 rate that would exist under current law. That’s a tax increase – a proposition supported by the governor’s own budget office, which properly scores his proposal as raising $20 million in FY 2005-06 and $25 million in FY 2006-07.

• Some have written to challenge my suggestion that ending taxpayer subsidies for the arts in North Carolina would not harm valuable artists and organizations. They predict serious harm to such institutions as the North Carolina Symphony, museums, and ballet and opera companies that receive arts grants or use tax-subsidized theaters.

My answer is that I value classical music, museums, ballet, and opera. If they no longer received taxpayer largesse, I would be far more inclined to make a donation. I suspect many others would feel the same. But another, more fundamental point to make is that, let’s be frank, the demographics of the average audience for such fare bears no resemblance to that of the taxpaying public. It is far more affluent. Is it right to force lower-income North Carolinians to help foot their bill?

Keep the emails coming. I promise to read them, and if possible to respond. I don’t promise that you’ll like the response.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal Online.