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Three ways our state governs differently

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Tuesday, 22 April 2025

Written by John Hood

North Carolina’s motto is a Latin phrase: Esse quam videri. Popularized by the ancient Roman statesman and philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero, who likely first read the Greek version from Plato and Aeschylus, the phrase means “to be rather than to seem.”
The General Assembly adopted it as our official state motto in 1893. Ever since then, North Carolinians have disputed whether we’ve ever really lived up to it, that we have truly been rather than just seemed.
Guess what? That makes North Carolina just like every other country, state, city, or club that espouses high ideals and then argues about them.
What sets our state apart politically isn’t a motto, or arguments about a motto, or even the specific issues our state and local leaders are currently trying to tackle. What truly makes North Carolina distinctive are several longstanding practices — some formal rules, others informal traditions — that shape our public policy debates.
One of them is how our state constitution apportions the coercive power of government. All states have legislative, executive, and judicial branches. But North Carolina’s legislative branch is one of the strongest in the country. It possesses fully the power to make laws and policies in our state. When executive officers or agencies issue rules and make decisions, they do so in most cases only because the legislature has specifically granted them the power to do so. That means lawmakers can also take it back.
Correspondingly, our executive branch is one of the weakest, its responsibilities distributed across 10 independently elected officers and our governor enjoying comparatively limited powers of appointment and veto. Unlike other states, North Carolina gives its governors no formal control over our public institutions of higher education. That power is specifically awarded to the General Assembly, like it or not.
All states also apportion power between localities and a central government. In North Carolina, however, localities don’t have home rule. They are legislative creations and have only the powers delegated to them by the General Assembly, which the latter is free to revise.
Here’s a second distinguishing characteristic, related to the first but extending beyond our constitutional structure: North Carolina governs and funds roads and schools primarily at the state level, not the local level.
Most states have county (or parish) road systems. We don’t. Even our city streets are technically state roads administered by localities. As for K-12 education, while we have elected school boards with the power to hire district superintendents and make some policy choices, the most important actors are the General Assembly and the State Board of Education.
So when you read that North Carolina has one of the highest gas taxes in the United States, that’s just another way of saying our county taxes are relatively low (because they don’t fund county roads). And on a per-pupil basis, our state spends more than twice as much on schools as counties do. Nationally, the two funding sources tend to be roughly comparable.
A third policy difference between North Carolina and most other states involves public finance. For nearly a century, it has been our common practice to borrow relatively little and pay for public assets with cash. According to the latest Facts & Figures report from the Tax Foundation, North Carolina ranks 48th in state and local debt, at $4,314 per person.
Only Idaho ($1,915) and Wyoming ($3,913) have lower debt burdens than we do. Neighboring Tennessee ($6,312), South Carolina ($7,254), and Virginia ($9,236) borrow quite a bit more, although none is quite in the league of a California ($14,273) or New York ($17,846).
Now, you and I might argue about whether North Carolina ought to strengthen the hand of the governor, or give localities more responsibility for roads and schools, or finance more infrastructure with debt. Still, productive argument requires some common definitions and at least some shared understanding of the facts.
Our state doesn’t just appear to be distinctive. It really is. Esse quam videri, indeed.

Editor’s Note: John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His books Mountain Folk, Forest Folk, and Water Folk combine epic fantasy with American history (FolkloreCycle.com).

The mouse that roared: A study in Woolly Mice

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Tuesday, 08 April 2025

Written by Pitt Dickey

Want to be absurdly adorable? Get some Woolly Mice genes. A former US Vice President, Thomas Marshall once said: “What this country needs is a good five-cent cigar.” Pause to reflect on this profound statement. You don’t remember Tom Marshall? He VEEPED for Woodrow Wilson. Yeah, that Tom Marshall. Tom’s statement also reveals what this country needs is herds of Woolly Mammoths roaming our fruited plains making America great again. His words echoed across the decades to be harkened by the esteemed firm Colossal Biosciences. With a name like Colossal Biosciences, you know it has to be good.
The scientists at Colossal recently presented the world with transgenic Woolly Mice who are the first step towards recreating Woolly Mammoths. Transgenic mice are not to be confused with transgender mice which is another column altogether. To make a transgenic mouse, Mr. Science must alter the genes of a regular mouse to produce a Woolly Mouse. According to Science News, America now has its very own herd of 32 Woolly Mice. The mice are described as having “long, luxurious golden locks of tufted fur inspired by the coats of Woolly Mammoths”, and are “so absurdly adorable.”
The invention of Woolly Mice proves America is the front runner in creating new, improved mice. As Lee Greenwood almost warbles: “I am proud to be an American, where at least I know Woolly Mice are free to enjoy genetic editing.” The goal of creating Woolly Mice is to ultimately use gene editing stylistics to recreate Woolly Mammoths. Beth Shapiro, the chief science officer at Colossal, is quoted as saying: “Of course, mice are not elephants, which people have helpfully pointed out to us, as if we didn’t know that.” The goal is to figure out how to insert genetically tweaked genes into Asian elephant cells to recreate Woolly Mammoths.
In case you are wondering, transgenic manipulation is not the same as cloning. There are a bunch of frozen Mammoths lying around in the tundra but the centuries have destroyed their gene cells that would allow cloning. Another science person is quoted saying: “A Mammoth is not an elephant in a fur coat.” Colossal has developed “elephant pluripotent stem cells” which can develop into any kind of elephant cell. Impress your friends by working the phrase “pluripotent stem cells” into your next discussion of ancient aliens from outer space or how NIL money has wrecked college sports.
Mice are better subjects for transgenic fooling around because they are pregnant for only 18-21 days. An elephant (which incidentally never forgets) is pregnant for 22 months. For quick and easy rodent results, like with Shake & Bake oven fried chicken, you gotta go with fast reproducing mice for Primo Woolly Mice. Colossal predicts it will have the first de-extincted Woolly Mammoth calves cavorting in various meadows by 2028. My heart be still. I can hardly wait.
If America is successful in de-extincting Woolly Mammoths, certain issues will remain. Where will we store them? Their habitat, which allowed them to thrive back in the Pleistocene days, vanished about 12,000 years ago. With the cutbacks in the National Parks Service, we don’t have park rangers available to protect our new woolly friends. Overprivileged, self-indulgent billionaires would pay big bucks for licenses to hunt and kill Woolly Mammoths. Imagine the thrill of hunting Woolly Mammoths from a helicopter armed only with rocket propelled grenades to blast the fuzzy buggers back into the Stone Age. Can we save Woolly Mammoths from the Oligarchs? The Magic 8 Ball says: “Outlook not so good.”
Why should we continue to try to bring back Woolly Mammoths if they are just going to be gunned down by billionaires? Obviously, to fund tax cuts for trillionaires. Think of what billionaires would pay to keep themselves from becoming personally extinct by using the Woolly Mouse genetic treatment. We are talking serious money. Imagine: a billionaire dies, he is flash frozen like a Birds Eye TV Dinner, and his cells are shoved into some unsuspecting stem cells. Voila, back he comes, tanned, rested, unfrozen, and ready to oppress the little people once again. Consider John Sibley’s quote: “If life was a thing that money could buy, the rich would live and the poor would die.”
Just because you can do something does not mean you should do it. There are lots of dead people out there who should not be de-extincted despite the fact they still have fans. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, OJ Simpson, and John Wilkes Booth to name a few. Careful what you wish for. Sometimes you get it.

(Illustration by Pitt Dickey)

Remembering a friend: A life in two centuries

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Tuesday, 15 April 2025

Written by Margaret Dickson

Now that it is over, I cannot help but think of all that happened and how much changed during Mary’s long life.

Budget slashing: Coming soon to a home near you

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Tuesday, 01 April 2025

Written by Margaret Dickson

Something in human nature allows us to recognize travails and misfortunes of others and, at the same time, believe such troubles will never land at our own doorstep. Accidents, illnesses, the consequences of poor decisions happen to other people, not us. We watch from afar with a detached lens.
Such is the case at this moment in the United States of America.
Americans are watching, first with disbelief and then with hair-on-fire dismay, as our governmental structure is being not just torn to shreds, but in some instances, dismantled altogether with total disregard for the human consequences.
So far, my little family and I have escaped the so-called “reduction” sledgehammer, but our day is surely coming. Several friends and friends of friends have either felt the hammer or know it is heading their way. These are American citizens I have known for many years. They are people whose lives are being rearranged and perhaps irreparably changed by the bulldozing of our government and our way of life.
These are not abstract people, not “other.” These are people I have known for decades, Americans not unlike you and me.
The daughter of my college roommate met the love of her life when they were Peace Corps volunteers in Africa. They met, married, and decided to devote their lives to helping people in developing nations. He holds a PhD. and helps farmers in emerging economies with best agricultural practices. She is a nurse practitioner providing health care in African communities where it is otherwise scarce. They are parents of 2 young children. He was fired from this position with USAID almost 2 months ago and has heard nothing more since. They remain in Africa awaiting whatever comes next.
A close friend has a beloved aunt in a western North Carolina county. Now 95 and bedridden, though mentally sharp and reading a book a day, the aunt resides in a nursing home paid for by Medicaid, as her own resources are long since exhausted. Her son, a MAGA soldier, was stunned when he learned that Medicaid is on the chopping block. When asked if he would take his mother into his home, her son was silent.
A teacher in the Triangle works in an independent school for children with learning differences. With the projected demise of the US Department of Education, this school, the teachers who work there and the children who go there to learn, face the end of funding, and therefore, the end of this school and others like it.
These are real Americans, real North Carolinians, hit by the deadly buzzsaw our national government has become. I know their names, of course, but do not use them here to protect their privacy. There are thousands, perhaps millions by now, of Americans staring down the barrel of “governmental efficiency” and waiting to be shot.
So, I have to ask Americans who voted for national slashing. Did you intend to harm families and children? Did you mean to leave young, well-meaning Americans stranded in foreign lands? Did you vote to turn 90-somethings out of nursing homes? Did you vote for special needs children to lose their teachers and their schools?
Are you happy about and proud of what has already happened and what is yet to come?
Whatever your answer to that question, the harsh reality is that the slasher train has left the station and is heading our way. It is coming to homes, jobs, and families across our nation and the world.
It may be on its way to a home near yours.
It may be on its way to you.