John Locke Updates: 2017

In a previous Legal Update, I discussed four cases in which the North Carolina appellate courts had struggled with “the problem of how to prevent people from abusing the…

This week, the North Carolina General Assembly released its 2017-18 conference committee budget.  And there are certainly implications for local governments!  I’ve spent this week trying to figure out just…

In 44 states and the District of Columbia, the age at which young offenders age out of the juvenile justice system is now 18. In five states, it is 17.

It is easy to become complacent, to think that things now are as they always have been and always will be. But as Heraclitus and Disney’s Pocahontas both remind us,…

North Carolina’s final $23 billion budget for the fiscal years 2017-19 has arrived. Some takeaways from the money report and bill text of the Health and Human Services (HHS) section are…

A progressive tax system is based on the premise that it is a moral imperative for government to tax people at increasingly higher rates as their incomes go up.  The…

House Bill 589, “Competitive Energy Solutions for NC,” would be a major restructuring of energy policy in North Carolina. Here is a brief look into select aspects of the…

Readers who are new to this publication may be shocked to learn that between 1933 when the General Assembly created the state Eugenics Board, and 1977 when the Board was…

A recently released report paid for by the NC Hospital Association (NCHA) and prepared by the Research Triangle Institute (RTI) has, from an economics perspective, a number of flaws. …

Pay for teachers and other state employees has generated headlines in news coverage of the budget this year, in part because there have been no legislative salary increases in five…