RALEIGH – Every day, there’s some news event, data release, or political speech that could make even the most naturally cheerful North Carolinian feel down in the dumps.

The state’s unemployment rate is now up to 10.4 percent, well above the national average. The share of jobless North Carolinians who have been out of work for more than a year is higher than we’ve seen in decades. President Obama was in Raleigh last week to demand that his political base fight for his political program – which consists of doing pretty much the same sort of crony-capitalist stimulus that brought us the Solyndra scandal and the ”Bite Me” boat, only more so.

Depressed yet? Well, I submit that there are reasons to be optimistic about North Carolina’s future, as well. Here are some potential stimuli that come to mind:

• The tort-reform stimulus. The General Assembly enacted legislation this summer to reform North Carolina’s malpractice-insurance laws. While defensive medicine is not as much of a driver of health care costs as some believe – our system of third-party payments is a far greater problem – neither is it insignificant.

In Texas, tort reform has driven the cost of malpractice insurance down substantially, as much as 75 percent according to some sources. North Carolina won’t see a similar reduction, in part because the cap on noneconomic damages was left at the still-sizable sum of $500,000. Still, it will get a bit less expensive for medical practices to operate in our state as the reforms are implemented. That, in turn, will alleviate some medical inflation and make the state more attractive to businesses worried about health care costs.

• The right-to-work stimulus. During 2009 and 2010, organized labor in North Carolina and Washington, DC sought to increase its power through such policies as strengthening formal collective-bargaining authority, obtaining it in the public sector for the first time (as in our state), and getting rid of secret-ballot elections for organizing unions so that recalcitrant workers could be “encouraged” to opt for unionization.

These efforts failed. In states such as Wisconsin, the subsequent election of conservative lawmakers and governors led to the adoption of free-labor policies instead. Here in North Carolina, we can at least argue to potential employers and entrepreneurs that the high tide of union power achieved little, and that for the foreseeable future wage rates, benefits, and work rules will be set by competitive markets, not politics.

• The tape-cutting stimulus. One of the unalloyed successes of the 2011 legislative session was the passage of a regulatory reform bill that promises to reduce the adoption of wrongheaded and costly rules. For many North Carolina firms, regulatory compliance has been a bigger disincentive to business development and expansion than the tax burden.

These are just a start. Another boost to North Carolina’s future would come from what might be called the rational-discourse stimulus, should it ever arrive. Perhaps it’s on its way. As the Left’s increasingly conspiratorial, increasingly shrill, increasingly risible rhetoric is exposed as both shameless and ineffective, the prospect of new taxes, regulations, and attacks on free enterprise will diminish.

If you’d like to learn more about how that effort is going, I’d urge you to watch Carolina Journal Managing Editor Rick Henderson’s Monday presentation on the misuse of government employment data by the Perdue administration, the mainstream media, and liberal activists. If you live in the Triangle area, you can see Rick in person at noon at JLF. If not, visit the Locker Room or CarolinaJournal.tv late Monday afternoon to watch the recorded presentation.

Attending the luncheon would be your best bet. But, hey, I know many of you have just gotten new government jobs, thanks to the sudden creation of thousands of new government jobs in North Carolina. Don’t worry – you can watch it when you get home. Wouldn’t want to get you in trouble with the new boss.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.