Research Brief

Lives are at stake. Are Gov. Cooper's lockdowns, business shutdowns and partial shutdowns, social-distancing policies, gathering bans, and myriad other restrictions on people, places, and events having devastating health effects on North Carolinians?

As Milton Friedman often remarked, the bill always comes due. Today’s spending must be paid by taxes, regardless whether those taxes were collected in the past, are collected this year, or will be collected in the future.

For many weeks I have been producing contextualized looks at North Carolina’s COVID-19 numbers. Recently, I’ve started calling it the “NC Threat-Free Index.” Here’s why. Round-the-clock virus coverage in…

We know that the issues that confront public school parents and local taxpayers vary from one school district to another.  School board races highlight specific local concerns about property taxes,…

The Democrats' lawyers admit those ballots that were possessed by “someone who was not authorized to possess the ballot” — a clear violation of the law, and a Class I felony to boot — but demand under a memo signed by an unelected bureaucrat that those ballots should still be counted, immediately.

Each election cycle we all wonder if voter fraud is really a problem. For years we have been assured that voter fraud is difficult and is a punishable offense. Under…

If the candidate who appears to have lost on election day eventually wins because of late arriving ballots, the public is going to suspect fraud, and with good reason. Late arriving ballots have always been a hallmark of election fraud.

The race is a dead heat even though Mangrum maintained a 6-to-1 fundraising advantage thanks to hefty contributions from the North Carolina Democratic Party, Lillian’s List, and the NCAE PAC. Notable individual donors included former governor James Hunt, documentary filmmaker Barb Lee, retired executive director of the National Education Association John Wilson, and Silicon Valley megadonor Karla Jurvetson.

What accounted for the extraordinary net decrease in public school students? A cursory review of the data offers few patterns or common characteristics of note.

From this we see the governor expects (a) multiple violations, (b) escalating fines, (c) slapped on people without warning, (d) immediate payment, and (e) this crackdown behavior to be going on well beyond a year from now.