In a nationwide survey of Yelp reviews on homeowners associations, Raleigh tied for the city with the lowest ratings. Yelp’s lowest rating is 1 star out of 5, and Raleigh’s HOAs averaged 1.00 stars. Dissatisfaction with HOAs can cover a wide range of topics: from micromanaging the appearance of a member’s property, to increasing fees,...
In the almost 17 years I’ve spent working for conservative, free-market public policy organizations in North Carolina, I’ve devoted much of my time to one consistent theme: state legislators should reduce taxes and rein in spending. But why is this so important? First and foremost: it’s your money. Beginning with the concept of self-ownership, we...
One of the consequences of writing a syndicated column on politics and public policy for more than three decades is that I am constantly told what I think and why I think it. You may find this consequence perplexing. Isn’t my job here to tell readers what I think and why I think it? Sure....
The 2021 long legislative session was the longest in North Carolina history, lasting from January 2021 into March of this year. During the session, lawmakers faced many complex issues, such as dealing with the ongoing pandemic, passing a biennial budget, and redrawing voting district lines for the next decade. While those issues dominated the headlines,...
Editor’s note: This book review by Jon Sanders first appeared at the American Institute for Economic Research. “Jen realized she had never experienced this before — profound cognitive dissonance.” A moment of crisis strikes the title character of George Leef’s new novel, “The Awakening of Jennifer Van Arsdale”(Bombardier Books, 2022). How will Jen handle it? Does she...
Whenever we could, we let the servers, clerks, attendants, small business owners, and others we encountered in our mutually beneficial transactions know that they were welcome to doff the cloth.
The risk of “zero risk” tyranny is far, far too great for me.
Argument: If you are for the school system requiring students to be immunized against diseases, and COVID-19 is just another disease for which a reliable, safe vaccine is readily available, then you should not be against mandatory COVID-19 vaccines in schools. Readers may recognize that this is a syllogism—that is, it is an argument consisting...
I’m reticent to use this space as means of airing personal grievances, and when I do my goal is toward serving the greater good, so to speak. But I want to share an experience my wife and I had in Wilmington this past weekend as an example of the hysteria created by mask rules and...
A decision by the governor and his health secretary to further ease state lockdowns only when two-thirds of adults are vaccinated is shockingly silly. I wrote that last week. It’s silly because, not only is it wide government overreach, it’s possibly unconstitutional, as is the idea of vaccination “passports.” More than anything, it’s silly because...
The undercounted cost of the COVID pandemic is in the lives lost to despair, addiction, suicide, and other illnesses. Whether people have voluntarily cut off ties, albeit after government officials suggested shutting down for two weeks in March to “flatten the curve,” or were forced to do it by their employer or a government mandate,...
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