North Carolina’s primary election is less than two months away, and North Carolina is once again in the national spotlight, particularly when it comes to the race for North Carolina’s U.S. Senate seat now held by Democrat Kay Hagan. Carolina Journal Managing Editor Rick Henderson discusses the candidate field and why both Democrats and Republicans see the race as key to control of the U.S. Senate. Then we turn to state education policy news. A new state law dubbed Read to Achieve is designed to ensure that third-grade public school students are able to read at grade level before they move on to the fourth grade. But critics have raised concerns that as many as three-quarters of all North Carolina third-graders might need to attend summer school to meet the law’s requirements. State Senate leader Phil Berger and Superintendent of Public Instruction recently discussed concerns about the Read to Achieve law’s implementation. Next is a look at the functions of a key area of state government. As the N.C. Division of Employment Security continues to look for ways to improve the state’s unemployment insurance system, staffers will focus this year on the volume of mail flowing through the division. Assistant Commerce Secretary Dale Folwell explained why during a recent public presentation. That’s followed by a look at the role of government, the role of the private sector, and the debate over the right path to prosperity. Some businesses would rather rely on special breaks or handouts from the government rather than face free-market competition. Fred Smith, founder and chairman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute and director of CEI’s Center for Advancing Capitalism, is fighting that trend. He discusses his latest efforts to promote the benefits of a market economy. And finally, Carolina Journal Publisher Jon Ham offers two examples of political correctness in journalism, which he says is now commonplace in the industry. The first deals with editors’ decisions about how and when to reach into a person’s background for a story. The second deals with sanitizing stories of words and phrases deemed politically incorrect.
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