As big-government advocates sang the public sector’s praises and spewed faulty arguments about the multiplier effect associated with government spending, John Locke Foundation President John Hood served as the lone voice of reason during a discussion of the state budget this week on WUNC Public Radio’s “The State of Things.” Meanwhile, an article in the Swansboro Tideland News about the slow progress of a bill to permit coastal terminal groins cited Hood’s concerns about the proposal. (It was the cost factor that led the John Locke Foundation, a conservative think tank, to join forces with the coastal federation to call, successfully, for the House to include the provision that would require a local public vote before construction of a groin could take place.) A guest columnist in the Lexington Dispatch cited Hood’s syndicated column on high-speed rail. N.C. Senate Republicans promoted in their daily press emails Hood’s columns this week on Gov. Beverly Perdue’s outlandish layoff claims, liberals’ devotion to the sales tax, and agreement between Perdue and legislative Republicans to cut North Carolina’s corporate income tax.