Over the past few months we’ve seen President Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama (last week) and a variety of Obama campaign surrogates visit North Carolina. Today the Mitt Romney campaign announced that the former Massachusetts governor and presumptive Republican presidential nominee will bring his bus tour to North Carolina on August 12. Following is text of the e-mail.
Mitt Romney Launches “The Romney Plan For A Stronger Middle Class” Bus Tour
Boston, MA – On Saturday, Mitt Romney will launch “The Romney Plan For A Stronger Middle Class” bus tour. He will begin in Virginia and continue on to towns in North Carolina, Florida, and Ohio. More details will be announced in the coming days.
“The Romney Plan For A Stronger Middle Class” Bus Tour
Candidate policy views can be found at:
Read full article » No Comments »At JLF sister blog The Locker Room, Jon Sanders posts about a dispute in Fuquay-Varina over who will provide sports opportunities for town kids. A volunteer group has been administering the programs successfully for 22 years. Now the town wants to step in. Why? Clearly, public money and resources aren’t necessary.
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The former president of Def Jam Records, Kevin Liles, spoke to a group of local students who participated in a two-week program about entrepreneurship, held at NC Central University. The Herald-Sun reports on some of the advice Liles gave to the students about making their own way and succeeding in life. I found this passage in the story particularly thought provoking.
Three kinds of people exist in the world, he said: People who make it happen, people who watch it happen, and people to whom things happen. He urged students not to worry so much about reality TV or that basketball player who just signed a $50 million contract.
“You’re watching someone else’s movie,” he said. “Make your own.”
Kudos to Mr. Liles for encouraging these teens to see themselves as individuals, a message we hear too little about these days. But on his point about the types of people in the world, I see his description as incomplete. I think these teens need to realize where we are in society and what faces them when they succeed and, as Mr. Liles put it, make their own movie.
Today, those who do exactly as Mr. Liles advises are demonized for their success. They are cast as not paying their “fair share.” They are derided as having succeeded on the backs of others. They are objects of ridicule and protests.
Thus, I say there are four kinds of people in the world: the three Mr. Liles noted, along with a fourth category of those who want to denigrate achievement. I applaud Mr. Liles for his efforts and his success in life. Perhaps if he and others would explain to young people that when their work yields fruit, they must push back against those whose envy and mean-spirited nature will cast the successful as a problem, rather than a role model.
Read full article » No Comments »Carolina Journal’s Barry Smith reports today on the negative impact on the economy, should the U.S. Congress decide not to extend the Bush-era tax rates and not fix the alternative minimum tax problem. The consequences could be huge. This story is a must-read.
Read full article » 1 Comment »North Carolina taxpayers could be out almost $9 billion if the Bush-era tax rates and a patch for the Alternative Minimum Tax aren’t extended, a report by the Tax Foundation says. Nationwide, the total tax relief is estimated to be $403 billion, or about 2.7 percent of the economy.
The Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate and Republican-controlled U.S. House have approved differing versions of an extension, which would have to be reconciled by the end of the year to prevent the tax cuts from expiring.
Congress is in recess now and isn’t expected back until after Labor Day. A public policy expert at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill expects that Congress won’t act then, but instead will wait until a lame duck session after the November election.
“It’s become a campaign issue, so you really cant, as a matter of policy, know what’s going to happen until after the election,” said John Scott, an assistant professor of public policy at the university.
Supporters of extending the cuts have labeled the potential fallout of not extending them “Taxmageddon.” Scott said that higher taxes could have a detrimental effect on the economy, which is still trying to recover from the Great Recession.
“On average, higher tax rates will affect the economy negatively,” Scott said.
