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2 days ago | 
restorationnewsmedia.com | Corey Friedman |John Hood
Recessions hurt. North Carolina’s headline unemployment rate hit 11.2% during the peak of the Great Recession in 2010. During the COVID-era Great Suppression of 2020, it briefly hit a mindboggling 14.2%. During such times, we pretty much all know someone who’s out of a job, even if we’re not. And for every 10 people deemed “unemployed” by the official definition […]
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1 week ago | 
restorationnewsmedia.com | Corey Friedman |John Hood
It was 250 years ago this week that the Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia to organize America’s rebellion against the British crown. War had broken out a few weeks earlier at Lexington and Concord. But there was as yet no national government, no formal American army or relations with foreign countries and no clear explanation of what the rebellious colonists sought to accomplish.
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2 weeks ago | 
restorationnewsmedia.com | Corey Friedman |John Hood
On April 2, President Donald Trump announced one of the largest tax hikes in modern times. Pointing to a long list of “reciprocal tariffs” — in reality, new taxes based entirely on differences between imports and exports, irrespective of cause — he proclaimed it “Liberation Day” for the American economy. A week later, having managed to “liberate” trillions of dollars in wealth from panicked investors, Trump made another announcement: most of the new taxes would be paused for 90 days.
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3 weeks ago | 
restorationnewsmedia.com | Corey Friedman |John Hood
When conservatives advocate lower taxes and less regulation, their critics often retort that we’re just advancing the interest of business. That’s either a misunderstanding or a purposeful mischaracterization. I have nothing against the business sector — some of my best friends are business executives, to paraphrase the old rationalization — but what I and my colleagues are actually defending is free enterprise.
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4 weeks ago | 
restorationnewsmedia.com | Corey Friedman |John Hood
North Carolina’s motto is a Latin phrase: Esse quam videri. Popularized by the ancient Roman statesman and philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero, who likely first read the Greek version from Plato and Aeschylus, the phrase means “to be rather than to seem.”The General Assembly adopted it as our official state motto in 1893. Ever since then, North Carolinians have disputed whether we’ve ever really lived up to it, that we have truly been rather than just seemed. Guess what?
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1 month ago | 
restorationnewsmedia.com | Corey Friedman |John Hood
For more than a decade, the North Carolina General Assembly has pursued a prudent and successful strategy of making our state one of the best places in the country to live, work and invest. I call the strategy prudent because it reflects conservative governance at its best, with a focus on reducing the cost of living and creating jobs (through tax and regulatory reform) while also improving the return on public investment in services such as transportation and education.
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1 month ago | 
restorationnewsmedia.com | Corey Friedman |John Hood
For universities, state governments, localities, medical providers and other institutions receiving lots of federal money, it’s time to batten down the hatches. Storm’s a-brewing. Last month, the U.S. House of Representatives narrowly approved a plan to extend the federal tax cuts enacted during the first Trump administration. It calls for up to $2 trillion in budget savings to (partially) offset […]
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1 month ago | 
restorationnewsmedia.com | Corey Friedman |John Hood
North Carolina is one of the fastest-growing states in the country. If present trends continue, we’ll surpass Georgia and become the eighth-most-populous state by 2030. There’s even an outside chance we’ll overtake seventh-ranked Ohio. This is a fact. What it means is contested. Indeed, for the past 15 years, Republicans and Democrats have argued incessantly about it. The former argue […]
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1 month ago | 
restorationnewsmedia.com | Corey Friedman |John Hood
In recent weeks, I’ve written several columns flagging areas where North Carolina lags behind other states. We don’t do a good job of providing patients access to telehealth services, for example, and our education system — previously among the best in the country in converting public investment into reading and math performance — has tumbled in the rankings since the school shutdowns of the COVID era. Ready for some good news?
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1 month ago | 
restorationnewsmedia.com | Corey Friedman |John Hood
North Carolina has become a national leader in such policy areas as tax reform, school choice and transportation funding. Unfortunately, we lag far behind in providing telehealth options to patients. That’s the finding of a new study written by Josh Archambault for the Cicero Institute. Archambault, a longtime health policy researcher and former legislative staffer, graded all 50 states on the policies they’ve enacted — or failed to enact — to foster telehealth innovation.
