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,...
An indelible image of people struggling under socialism is bread lines — people waiting hours, even days, for the bare minimum of food. The lesson they teach about free markets vs. socialism is this: Under socialism, you wait for bread. With a free market, the bread waits for you. Government doesn’t know how to make...
Below is a parody of the famous Christmas poem, “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas,” but redone to describe the 2022 NC blackouts the night before Christmas. For those who need a primer on the events of that night, please see the overview below. If not, you can skip down to the poem itself. Enjoy and...
On Oct. 17, John Stossel alerted “Stossel TV” viewers to the threat of California bureaucrats imposing their trucking regulations outside their own borders. The episode was given the ironic title “California’s Green Dream: Coming to Your State?” The episode focused on Pennsylvania, whose “Environmental Quality Board decided to automatically copy rules from California” and said...
On July 24, at the peak of a hot summer, a local news station in North Carolina reported on a new example of the sharing economy. It’s a swimming pool app that connects homeowners saddled with expensive swimming pools they rarely use to neighbors who’d like to take a peaceful dip in a private setting...
Jon Sanders, director of the Center for Food, Power, and Life at the John Locke Foundation, assesses Dr. Mandy Cohen’s record as head of North Carolina’s top health agency. Cohen is now director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Sanders offered these comments during an Aug. 22, 2023, interview on One America...
WRAL this week alerted people that higher electricity bills are looming. Duke Energy is seeking rate increases over the next three years of “10% in January 2024, then up another 4% in 2025 with a final 4% increase in 2026.” That’s 19% in three years. Worse, the next round of ratemaking could end in power...
On July 27, the US Supreme Court vacated the stay imposed by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals against the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP). The pipeline project is about 94% completed and was originally supposed to be finished by 2020, but desperate court challenges and permit delays had pushed its completion date to 2026. The...
Jon Sanders, director of the Center for Food, Power, and Life at the John Locke Foundation, testifies Wednesday about occupational licensing before the N.C. House Regulatory Reform Committee.
“You can fool all of the people some of the time; you can fool some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time.” The fact that this quote is attributed either to Abraham Lincoln or P.T. Barnum perhaps testifies to its originator’s bona fides at fooling...
Now we’re cooking with gas!” This classic Americanism carries the sense of definite progress, things working according to plan, and being headed to success (perhaps after an uncertain start). It has the same rhetorical heft as “Full steam ahead.” It was popularized by radio stars Bob Hope and Jack Benny in the 1930s, and was...
Freedom and whisky go together. I first heard that line a few years ago at a Burns Night supper in a local pub outside Raleigh. It’s from Scottish national poet Robert “Rabbie” Burns (1759–1796), and the gathering was the annual celebration of his birthday, Jan. 25. I heard it spoken properly — Freedom and whisky...