October 26, 2010

N.C. business tax climate is the nation's 10th worst

Posted by Mitch Kokai at 3:02 PM

North Carolina ranks No. 41 in the Tax Foundation's latest State Business Tax Climate Index. (The No. 1 ranking goes to the state with the best climate.)

Sales-tax increases like the ones now on the ballot in 11 counties hurt the Tar Heel State in the latest rankings.

Along with the overall ranking of No. 41, here's how North Carolina fared in the Tar Foundation's subcategories:

• Corporate — 25
• Individual income — 36
• Sales — 44
• Unemployment insurance — 6
• Property — 33

HT: Joe Coletti

Update: The property tax ranking has been corrected.

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New Carolina Journal Online exclusive

Posted by Mitch Kokai at 2:44 PM

The latest Carolina Journal Online exclusive features David Bass' report about lawsuit claims that have caused controversy in the N.C. House District 51 race. 

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The difference between heaven and hell

Posted by Dr. Michael Sanera at 2:43 PM

I know it is not Friday, but Roy was bragging about the Italians so I had to offer this as a rejoinder.  

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A fix for what ails the American banking and monetary system

Posted by Mitch Kokai at 2:27 PM

Many politicians and pundits believe the recent financial crisis means American banks need more regulation.

George Mason University economics professor Lawrence H. White offers a different perspective. White discussed the causes of the banking and monetary system's ills and offered some ideas for reform during a presentation today to the John Locke Foundation's Shaftesbury Society. 

In the video clip below, White discussed the ideal alternative to the current system.

2:55 p.m. update: Click play below to watch the full 54:09 presentation.

You'll find other John Locke Foundation video presentations here.

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N.C. GOP chairman believes Perdue will be gone by 2012 election

Posted by Mitch Kokai at 11:48 AM

N.C. Republican Party chairman Tom Fetzer says he doesn't believe Gov. Beverly Perdue will serve a second term.

Fetzer offered that prediction during a 19:05 news briefing this morning, reacting to the news that federal investigators have issued subpoenas in connection with Perdue's campaign. Fetzer says he thinks the investigation will lead either to Perdue's removal or the Democrats' decision to drop her from their ticket in 2012.

Click play below for more on Perdue, campaign ad controversies, and other topics:

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The growing influence of public-sector unions

Posted by Mitch Kokai at 09:17 AM

Regular readers of this forum have seen plenty of evidence of the harmful impact of overly influential public-sector unions.

Now the Manhattan Institute's Steven Malanga explores the subject in the new book Shakedown. Watch the video below for a sense of the book's message:

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Boudreaux does it again!

Posted by Dr. Michael Sanera at 08:15 AM

In one short letter to the editor he slays the liberal dragon.

Here’s a letter to the New York Times Book Review:

A theme that runs with approval throughout Jonathan Alter’s review of recent books on modern “liberalism” is that “liberals,” in contrast to their mindless Cro-Magnon opposites, overflow with ideas (“The State of Liberalism,” Oct. 24).

Indeed they do.  But these ideas are almost exclusively about how other people should live their lives.  These are ideas about how one group of people (the politically successful) should engineer everyone else’s contracts, social relations, diets, habits, and even moral sentiments.

Put differently, modern “liberalism’s” ideas are about replacing an unimaginably large multitude of diverse and competing ideas – each one individually chosen, practiced, assessed, and modified in light of what F.A. Hayek called “the particular circumstances of time and place” – with a relatively paltry set of ‘Big Ideas’ that are politically selected, centrally imposed, and enforced not by the natural give, take, and compromise of the everyday interactions of millions of people but, rather, by guns wielded by those whose overriding ‘idea’ is among the most simple-minded and antediluvian notions in history, namely, that those with the power of the sword are anointed to lord it over the rest of us.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux

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Latest dispatches from the campaign trail

Posted by David N. Bass at 08:00 AM

• Hill-Patterson race in state House District 20 turns ugly.

• The Charlotte Observer, Wilmington Star-News endorse Elaine Marshall for U.S. Senate.

• Three-way race for the 12th Congressional District focuses on economic policies.

• Democratic incumbent Ray Rapp zeros in on jobs and education in his bid for re-election.

• The Wilkes Journal-Patriot covers the Goss-Soucek matchup in Senate District 45.

• Political climate has changed in the 45th, 93rd House districts.

• Incumbent faces newcomer in House 22 race.

• GOP hopes national wave extends to the state legislature.

• The AP profiles key state House and Senate races.

In a television spot, B.J. Lawson, Republican candidate in the 4th Congressional District, plays off U.S. Rep. David Price's history of voting with Nancy Pelosi.

Price blasts Lawson as an "extremist."

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Goldberg on progressive ‘branding’

Posted by Mitch Kokai at 07:07 AM

Progressives do have a branding problem. But it stems from the nature of progressivism. What progressivism stands for is having progressives be in charge. Period. Progressivism, stripped of all its pretensions and its many good intentions (and it does have many good intentions), is at its core the dogmatic belief that the familiar band of technocratic, egalitarian statists should be calling the shots.

This is the upshot of liberalism’s much vaunted “empiricism” and hostility to “labels,” “ideology,” etc. When liberals claim they don’t believe in labels, what they are saying is that they don’t want to be locked into a view, an idea, a principle, that will constrain them later.

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Tea Party reading habits

Posted by Mitch Kokai at 07:05 AM

The New York Times recently uncovered another curious fact about tea partiers: They reach to “dusty bookshelves” for “once-obscure texts by dead writers.” The writers, including Friedrich Hayek and Frederic Bastiat, are indeed dead, although it seems a little strange to call a work by the Nobel Prize-winning Hayek “obscure.” By bravely plunging into this kooky book-reading, the Times discovered such “out there” concepts as the “rule of law,” which it explains is “Hayek’s term for the unwritten code that prohibits the government from interfering with the pursuit of ‘personal ends and desires.’” We bet it would be news to Hayek that he had come up with an idea invoked by Aristotle and John Locke, or that he believed that the best way to ensure predictable and fair treatment of citizens by the law was to have an unwritten code. Will the next news-flash be that Keynesian Democrats too read books by the dead? (Or is literacy exclusive to the Tea Party?)

If you’re going to read a book by a dead guy, Hayek or Bastiat (or Locke) would be a better choice than Keynes.

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New Carolina Journal Online features

Posted by Mitch Kokai at 06:54 AM

The latest Carolina Journal Online exclusive features Kristy Bailey's report on gaps in the voter registration process that could open the door to fraud. 

John Hood's Daily Journal examines trends in North Carolina news-talk radio.

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