The Latest

• The chief of staff and Trump voters

  Noah Bierman offers Los Angeles Times readers interesting observations about the Trump administration’s chief of staff. In the roughly three months since President Trump chose John F. Kelly as his second chief of staff, observers have puzzled over the retired Marine general’s occasional scowls and downcast gazes, wondering…

  Mitch Kokai, October 23, 2017, 214 words

• Policy optimism drives recent stock gains

  Randall Forsyth of Barron’s probes key factors in the Dow’s recent surge. Spurring the overall market’s advance was optimism on two policy fronts, fiscal and monetary. On the former, the Senate on Thursday passed a budget resolution that seemed to pave the way for debate on tax legislation…

  Mitch Kokai, October 23, 2017, 309 words

• The long-term challenge of federal debt

  Gene Epstein of Barron’s explains why it won’t be easy to erase the federal government’s debt. Those who deny that soaring debt can ever be a worry for the U.S. often point out that this debt is denominated in the same U.S. dollars the Fed has the ability…

  Mitch Kokai, October 23, 2017, 308 words

• Writing For National Review: JLF Senior Fellow Garland Tucker’s Thought-Provoking Piece On Europe

  What is happening in Europe, and where is it headed? JLF Senior Fellow Garland Tucker writes a thoughtful and thought-provoking piece for national review.com. It begins: During my recent vacation to Scotland, the National Centre for Social Research released a major new survey, which documented the continuing decline of…

  Donna Martinez, October 21, 2017, 211 words

  

• Dear me, the N&O editors have lost all faith in Obamacare

  Four years ago, the editors of the N&O said Obamacare "will work and people will like it and wonder why it took so long to put something as sensible as the Affordable Care Act into place." Now they want to replace it with something else. What happened?

  Jon Sanders, October 20, 2017, 689 words

• Triad’s Amazon HQ2 pitch

  #TriadisPrime—“perhaps the largest collaborative recruitment effort by the Triad’s four economic-development groups: Piedmont Triad Partnership, Winston-Salem Business Inc., High Point Economic Development Corp. and Greensboro Chamber of Commerce”—as the Winston-Salem Journal reports.

  Sam Hieb, October 20, 2017, 32 words

• N&O publishes abysmal op-ed on N.C. Innovative School District

  Someone at the News & Observer thought it was a good idea to publish a second-rate op-ed attacking the N.C. Innovative School District.  The piece was written by UNC-Chapel Hill education professor Brian Gibbs.  Here are some of the highlights: 1. Gibbs assumes…

  Terry Stoops, October 20, 2017, 496 words

• Carolina Journal: N.C. Supreme Court Delays Transfer of Power to DPI

  The legal battle over public school authority continues, as Carolina Journal reports: The N.C. Supreme Court has granted a temporary stay in a lawsuit involving State Superintendent Mark Johnson and the State Board of Education. The board filed the lawsuit after passage of House Bill 17, which…

  Donna Martinez, October 20, 2017, 165 words