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Taxpayer Bill of Rights: A Needed End to the Budget Roller Coaster
This article originally appeared in the Raleigh News and Observer. North Carolina’s tax structure is almost assuredly going to receive an overhaul in 2013. Legislative leaders and newly elected Gov. Pat McCrory have made no secret of this. It is vital, however, that while addressing the revenue side of the state’s ledger, they don’t ignore [...]
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VIDEO: The Real Victims of the Racial Justice Act
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Civitas President Explains Need for Voter Photo ID
With the General Assembly considering legislation requiring voters to show photo identification to vote, a House panel recently heard from experts on the issue. Among those testifying was Civitas President Francis X. De Luca. Here are his remarks with accompanying charts. Remarks to House Committee on Elections, State Legislative Building, Rm. 643 March 13, 2013 [...]
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North Carolina Sales Tax Shift Could Help Workers
This article originally appeared in the Fayetteville Observer. A change in North Carolina’s tax code is coming this year. The most likely outcome will be a reduction in the reliance on our state’s income taxes and more of a reliance on an expanded sales tax. Critics complain the new tax structure would ask too much [...]
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SB 125: Putting Teeth into Public Records and Open Meeting Laws
Let’s give three cheers for two North Carolina Senators. Last week state Sens. Thom Goolsby (R-New Hanover) and Tom Apodaca (R-Buncombe) sponsored legislation (SB 125) to make it a class 3 misdemeanor to violate public records and open meetings laws, which would at long last give those laws some teeth. North Carolina’s Public Records law [...]
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Missing Connection: WRAL and Blueprint NC, $1.7 million in support
When reporting on Blueprint NC’s leaked documents, WRAL was all over the story, with one exception: It somehow failed to mention in any of its stories that the owners of the station are deeply entangled with the left-wing group and some of its allies. A strategy memo from liberal policy group Blueprint North Carolina details [...]
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Elections Bureaucrats Ran Amok
In a blatantly partisan move, the staff of the North Carolina State Board of Elections (SBE) successfully subverted state law to facilitate online voter registration in North Carolina by the 2012 Barack Obama campaign. In doing so they coordinated with partisans behind closed doors, lied about the NC Attorney General’s Office concurring with the SBE [...]
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Pre-K Programs Deserve Skeptical Look
It’s time for North Carolina and federal leaders to develop healthy skepticism about large-scale government-run pre-kindergarten education in schools – because there’s mounting evidence that the programs do little or no good. Dianna Lightfoot had been set to become director of childhood development and early education in the North Carolina Department of Health and Human [...]
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House Bill 35: Giving a Voice Back to the People
House Bill 35, with primary sponsors Rayne Brown (R-Davidson) and George Cleveland (R-Onslow), would repeal the statutory authority enabling the state to issue Certificates of Participation (COPs) as a form of debt financing. COPs have been the preferred method of non-voter approved debt for the state since 2000. Traditional, general obligation bonds require a vote [...]
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‘Regressive’ Sales Tax is a Relative Term
This article originally appeared in the News & Observer. There is one talking point that has become the go-to objection to eliminating North Carolina’s state income taxes and replacing the revenue by expanding the sales tax: “This will shift the tax burden from the rich and onto the backs of the poor!” But that complaint [...]
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The Path to Prosperity: Spending Cuts, No Income Tax, and Free-Market Schools
Our state has been suffering with high unemployment and sluggish economic growth since the 2008 financial crisis primarily because of an inadequate educational system, high taxes and poor investments by state government. It is instructive to remember that North Carolina, devastated in 1880 from the post Civil War era, emerged in 1900 as one of [...]
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Famed Economist: NC Can Get Ahead of the Curve
Famed economist Arthur Laffer provided real-world economic solutions at the Civitas Institute’s legislative training session recently in Raleigh. First, though he is best known for “the Laffer Curve” showing how tax cuts can bring in more revenue, and for advising President Reagan, he’s not about party or ideology, he said. “It’s economics.” And it’s the [...]
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Critics of Tax Modernization Plan Need to Explain Flaws in Data
Critics of Tax Modernization Plan Need to Explain Flaws in Data Reporters, legislators, analysts and the public should all be advised to be leery of the statistics in a new report criticizing tax modernization proposals. A recent report produced by the N.C. Budget & Tax Center (BTC) purporting to show the impact of an income [...]
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Why All U.S. States Should Eliminate The Income Tax
This article originally appeared in Forbes Magazine. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman, and Kansas Governor Sam Brownback have all called for their states to eliminate their income tax and replace it with a sales tax over the past week. They were joined yesterday morning by North Carolina, where the Senate President Pro [...]
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A Tale of Two Bridges
This article originally appeared in the Fayetteville Observer. Many scandals are about crimes and money, but equally destructive are scandals that corrode our sense of honor. Consider this sad moment from the waning days of Gov. Bev Perdue’s administration: Last week a bridge in Wilmington was named the Lanny T. Wilson Bridge. “To name a [...]
Weekly Newsletter
@NCCivitas
- NC to Seek Federal Waiver to Pursue Medicaid Reform http://t.co/Uj6pBnDUwF #ncpol
- Why do liberals hate eagles? http://t.co/xCfCb058GK #nccivitas #eaglekillers http://t.co/SSFob4zRCc
- House unveils tax plan – less significant than the Senate plan. http://t.co/7HACM0Q1gx #ncga #ncpol
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