John Locke Updates: 2021

Data from the CDC and state DHHS show that North Carolina has not been suffering excess deaths from Covid-19 since mid-March 2021. While Covid-19 is still out there, its effect on North Carolina is no longer causing a statistical anomaly in terms of deaths, meaning it is behaving more and more like an endemic virus, such as a flu, not a pandemic. If North Carolina is no longer witnessing excess deaths owing to Covid-19, then why does Gov. Cooper still keep the state in the minority of U.S. states still under a "State of Emergency"?

An investigation by the North Carolina Office of the State Auditor exposed corruption and incompetence in the city government of Rocky Mount. State Senator Lisa Barnes has introduced legislation that would ban the corrupt practices exposed by the investigation. The North Carolina NAACP claims that the anti-corruption bill would "strip black people of their vote and their voice."

A new report published by a left-wing group included policy recommendations they claim will help hourly workers. The recommendations, however, largely introduce more restrictions, costs, and burdens to hiring hourly workers, which leads to less hiring. A better recipe to help hourly workers would be to peel back layers of government meddling in the labor market, not introduce more layers.

The state licensing board for massage and bodywork said reflexologists didn't practice massage and bodywork — then they changed their mind. House Bill 434 would ward off this licensing threat by creating a state healing arts commission to oversee reflexologists and music therapists, with other practices sure to be added. North Carolina needs structural overhaul of its occupational regulation, especially a careful, thoughtful approach in law to make sure any future regulation of a practice is the "least restrictive regulation necessary to protect consumers" and "demonstrably necessary and narrowly tailored to legitimate health, safety, and welfare objectives."

North Carolina is one of only ten states that continue to schoolchildren to all be masked. Elected officials want mask policies to be in the hands of local communities and not the Cooper administration. A recent ABC Science Collaborative study of COVID-19 transmission in schools is misleading and ignores scientific research on the harms of face coverings.

K-12 public school districts in North Carolina have received about $6 billion in federal funds to help address the coronavirus pandemic. On average, since last March, school districts have spent about 11% of funds appropriated for Covid relief. The low level of expenditures raise legitimate questions about the nature of the emergency and how federal dollars are spent.

In 2018, the state Division of Health Service Regulation determined that the people of North Carolina "needed" one — and only one — new mobile PET scanner. Three years and a fight in the courts later, we still don't even have that, but we do have a record of the bad behavior inspired by this "Soviet-style" central planning. This episode illustrates why North Carolina should join the 15 states that have already repealed their CON laws.

State reopening mandates led to sizable increases in home and private school enrollment during the 2020-21 school year. According to statistics published by the North Carolina Division of Non-Public Education, homeschool enrollment soared by 20.6% (not a typo) and private school enrollment increased by 3.3%. An estimated 23% of North Carolina families selected a home, private, or charter school last school year.

Despite weak opposition to the Senate tax plan, tax cuts benefit more than just the one with the reduced legal tax liability. Low- and median-income households receive a much larger benefit from the Senate’s rate cuts.

A majority of State Board of Education members approved the controversial K-12 social studies standards in February 2021. A new report by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute awarded North Carolina’s new civics and government standards a D− and our U.S. history standards an F. Despite this assessment, plans are underway to implement the new standards in the fall unless the General Assembly intervenes.