North Carolina officials have been celebrating the recent announcement that CSX will build a new transportation hub in Edgecombe County. But a Carolina Journal examination shows that government agencies have promised $700,000 in subsidies for every new job promised in connection with the project. CJ Editor-in-Chief Rick Henderson analyzes the project and the state’s decision to award CSX $100 million in taxpayer-funded incentives. Students have returned to college campuses across the country, but many of them have not returned to places interested in the free flow of often-controversial ideas. Robert Shibley, the N.C.-based executive director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, documents disturbing trends for free speech on campuses in North Carolina and nationwide. Health care involves collection of a great deal of data. People who provide health care and research health issues continue to look for ways to us that data more effectively. Professor Lesley Curtis of the Duke University Medical School recently shared with a West Coast audience the promising work of PCORnet, the National Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network. The latest twist in North Carolina’s long-running debate over the process of drawing election maps involves the work of a bipartisan group of retired state judges. Led by former UNC system president and current Duke University scholar Tom Ross, the judges drafted their own congressional redistricting plan for North Carolina. Unlike current maps, which Republican legislators drew to maximize the GOP’s potential advantage in congressional races, the judges’ maps would yield results that could swing control of the state’s congressional delegation between the two parties. Ross describes the process used to develop the maps. Plus you’ll hear from two of the former N.C. Supreme Court chief justices who participated in the process. As public school students across North Carolina deal with the opening weeks of a new school year, the N.C. Department of Public Instruction has unveiled the latest data on 2015-16 student standardized test scores. Terry Stoops, the John Locke Foundation’s director of research and education studies, assesses the latest results, compares performance of traditional and charter schools, and explains that the latest scores suggest some areas for future education reform.
CSX transportation hub subsidies attract scrutiny
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