Jon Sanders

Years ago I wrote about how "They probably expect you don’t know we didn’t have film incentives until 2005." That's still a problem, as illustrated by a recent WRAL piece discussing about the 1984 film "Firestarter" in the context of film incentives.

North Carolina's Alcoholic Beverage Control system is extremely bureaucratic and highly regulated. My new report discusses the ramifications of this state government control over a legal product and considers an alternative system, licensing, already in use by the majority of states.

Back in 2013, the editors of The News & Observer were so adamant that Republican economic reforms would fail that they sneered that "Perhaps years hence, North Carolina will be thriving economically, and credit will belong to these stout Republicans who persevered…"

The John Locke Foundation has released my follow-up report on the need to modernize and free up our alcoholic beverage control system. It opens with a tale of two North Carolina entrepreneurs: Bob, a sweet potato farmer, and Amber, a distiller who makes rum.

George and West are ideological foes, but they are friends. Their lesson is vitally important for higher education, which has become so warped over the past couple of decades.

Although there still is legislation to revert the state's film grant program back to the open-ended and likely unconstitutional refundable film tax incentives program, the state House budget does not make such a change.

North Carolina is partly responsible for the de-licensing revolution going on in other states. But oddly enough, so far we've been sitting it out. So the Wall Street Journal writes about "Arizona's Licensing Liberation."

What point would this serve? Even if this new requirement were supposed to address a burning need in the state (which is highly unlikely), the fact that only two of the eight hours would be of a mandatory course strongly suggests it's unnecessary. Requiring six hours a year on elective instruction? What is that but to enrich the board and the instructors?