With local elections approaching, the News & Observer published a letter this week from John Locke Foundation Research Director and Local Government Analyst Michael Sanera questioning election rules that are likely to reduce voter turnout. In other news, the Asheville Citizen-Times quoted Policy Analyst and Carolina Journal Associate Editor Michael Lowrey in an article about North Carolina communities that try to use local airports to build their economies. Meanwhile, the state’s recent release of new child death-rate statistics prompted the Winston-Salem Journal to turn to John Hood for reaction. (John Hood, the president of the John Locke Foundation, a research group in Raleigh that supports limited government, said that new programs and regulations may have played a role in the recent decline of the child death rate. “But it is also likely the product of steadily improving technology and medical care — trends over which state agencies and legislators have no control,” Hood said. “Death rates have been falling for decades.”) Meanwhile, N.C. Senate Republicans this week highlighted one of Hood’s Daily Journal columns on statistics that paint a poor picture of North Carolina’s economy. The same blast e-mail that featured Hood’s column also promoted Carolina Journal contributor Hal Young‘s exclusive report on budget-related changes in state community-college programs. Paul Chesser of Climate Strategies Watch warned in the Washington Examiner this week about the efforts of a group called the Alliance for Climate Education to spread alarmist views about global warming within the nation’s schools.
