As federal government leaders debate the best way to handle the nation’s public debt, John Locke Foundation Director of Fiscal Policy Studies Fergus Hodgson warned Fayetteville Observer readers this week that some high-profile figures are advocating counterproductive ideas.

The nation’s No. 1-rated radio talk show host, Rush Limbaugh, kicked off one of his shows this week with observations about the David Petraeus sex scandal that mirrored a Facebook status update from John Hood. The Winston-Salem Journal quoted Hood in a recent article about the latest business climate rankings from Site Selection magazine. (John Hood, president of the John Locke Foundation, a libertarian policy-research group in Raleigh, said that since North Carolina’s actual economic performance has lagged behind the regional and national averages the past 12 years, “that should tell you that the Site Selection ranking is not a good predictor of whether businesses will start, grow, and employ people in a given state.”) N.C. Senate Republicans promoted Hood’s column about charities that make an off-pitch pitch for donations.

A News & Observer editorial about the debate surrounding Wake County’s proposed transit plan cited JLF. A letter in the Clay County Progress from the local school superintendent cited Director of Reearch and Education Studies Terry Stoops‘ November 2009 recognition of Clay County schools’ parent-friendliness. (A couple of years ago, the Clay County school system was ranked the No. 1 school system in the state by the very conservative John Locke Foundation in Raleigh, N.C All of this while being one of the poorest locally per capita funded school systems in the state (99th out of 100 counties).)

A Sanford Herald editorial on class-size reduction cited Stoops’ work. (Another reason to question the value of class size reduction programs was given by Dr. Terry Stoops, director of Research and Education Studies at the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh. Stoops, a former teacher, recently said, “Research shows that most teachers do not change their instructional approaches after class sizes are lowered. In other words, individualized attention seldom materializes in the classroom.”)

The Cato Institute featured on its website a CarolinaJournal.tv video clip of Cato’s John Samples discussing the future viability of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United campaign-finance decision.