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John Hood, the president of the John Locke Foundation, argues that more money needs to be found for road building on his blog/column that can be found at johnlocke.org.

"Fiscal conservatism comes naturally to me. After all, my middle name is McDonald.

"But I am also persuaded by empirical evidence that fiscal conservatism is the best policy for promoting economic growth. North Carolina governments can improve our state’s competitiveness by limiting spending, finding ways to deliver core services more efficiently, and using the resulting fiscal capacity to reduce the state’s marginal tax rates on work, savings, and investment."

“People generally quarrel,” G.K. Chesterton once wryly observed, “because they cannot argue,” writes John Hood, writing on his blog at johnlocke.org.

To the extent North Carolina politics looks increasingly quarrelsome at the moment, it is because of a breakdown of argument — of constructive debate among people of good faith who happen to disagree on public policy. Instead, traditional and online media alike are filled with venom, personal attacks, conspiracy theories, and overall boorishness.

The Republicans now in power in Raleigh campaigned for and won their offices on the basis of specific policy promises. They promised to reform North Carolina’s decrepit, anti-competitive tax code and regulatory process. They promised to reduce government spending on bloated transfer programs and pork-barrel schemes in order to free up resources for core public services and tax relief. They promised not to hasten the implementation of what they perceive as the disastrously counterproductive Affordable Care Act. And they promised to enact a voter-identification bill.

"Now that Pat McCrory has passed the oh-so-important mark of 100 days in office, the political class in Raleigh feels obligated to offer a critique of his administration," writes John Hood in his column that can be found at johnlocke.org. "The most common one is that Gov. McCrory is playing “small ball.”

That is, the critics say that because the governor didn’t propose a major spending program in his 2013-15 budget plan, he’s not really doing anything of consequence. Even the reform initiatives McCrory has announced for Medicaid and transportation lack the rhyming names or other mnemonic devices of past gubernatorial projects.

"For a group of people who claim to believe in empirical study and higher learning, liberal politicians and other critics of North Carolina’s new conservative leaders seem remarkably uninformed or contemptuous of the research basis for the policy initiatives now being debated in Raleigh,'' writes John Hood of the John Locke Foundation in his column at johnlocke.org.

"For example, Gov. Pat McCrory’s budget proposes to convert teacher-assistant positions in second and third grade into funding for teaching positions. While generating some apocalyptic rhetoric from critics, this proposal is not only imminently sensible but also consistent with decades of research suggesting that adding aides to classrooms other than kindergarten and first grade does not produce measurable academic benefits. In higher grades, tax dollars are best spent on high-quality teachers and educational materials. Outside of a few interest groups and partisans, this fact is widely accepted by education researchers."

"There are many unknowns regarding the proposal Gov. Pat McCrory announced last week to use competitive contracting to reform North Carolina’s Medicaid program," writes John Hood of the John Locke Foundation. "But what I do know about it suggests the governor is heading in the right direction.''

His idea is to award contracts to three or four provider networks that would coordinate and deliver services to poor, disabled, and elderly Medicaid recipients. The state currently uses a single nonprofit, Community Care of North Carolina (CCNC), to perform this task, but it does not bear any financial responsibility if costs come in higher than budgeted. In other states, and in managed-care programs more generally, such at-risk contracts are commonplace.

State Rep. Nelson Dollar responded carefully last week when asked about Gov. Pat McCrory's plan to open the state's Medicaid business to management by private companies. ("We need more details"- that kind of thing.)

The Cary Republican was less guarded in an email responding to a column by John Hood, president of the John Locke Foundation. Hood praised McCrory's move.

Dollar has been big supporter of Community Care North Carolina, a home-grown Medicaid managed care network run by doctors. CCNC would not continue in its current form if McCrory's plan is approved.

"Read John's piece and there continues to be misconceptions as to the role of CCNC as well as the nature of the problems we've addressed the last two years," Dollar wrote.

"More important other states with co-called "competitive contracts" are having just as many challenges as everyone else. We have the foundation to do something truly innovative I hope we don't opt for the failures and traps of commercial managed care."

Dollar is a chairman of the House budget committee, a job he held last year.

John Hood, president of the John Locke Foundation, writes in his blog Daily Journal, that there is strong evidence that reducing unemployment benefits results in a drop in unemployment. The column can be read at www.carolinajournal.com.

"Noting that the unemployment rate continues to drop, albeit at a painfully slow rate, one think tanker told The Wall Street Journal that recent reductions in the generosity of the unemployment insurance system could be playing a role in boosting employment."

John Hood, president of the John Locke Foundation, says its time for the legislature to scrap the system of public financing for appellate judges and restore party labels. His column can be found at www.johnlocke.org. "North Carolina policymakers will have a lot on their plate in 2013," Hood writes. "The General Assembly will tackle education reform, a rewrite of the state tax code, the unemployment-insurance debt, and other pressing issues. Gov. Pat McCrory will propose initiatives of his own, likely to include regulatory reform and changes to the budget process. Nevertheless, I hope they make time early in the 2013 legislative session to take care of a lingering legal problem: North Carolina’s unwise and unconstitutional system for electing members of the state’s appellate courts

John Hood of the Locke Foundation writes, in his blog "Daily Journal," that a voter ID is not only a done deal when the legislature returns next year, but it shouldn't even be controversial.

"One of the first bills the North Carolina General Assembly will enact next year, and that new Gov. Pat McCrory will sign, will establish a photo ID requirement to vote in North Carolina. It will pass quickly because it is uncontroversial.

Yes, I know that left-wing activists and the news media consider voter ID laws to be controversial. But the public doesn’t agree. Clear majorities of Republicans, Democrats, and unaffiliated respondents have consistently supported such identification requirements in public opinion polls. Back in August, for example, three-quarters of Americans said they favored a policy that “required to show official, government-issued photo identification – such as a driver’s license – when they cast ballots.”

John Hood, president of the conservative John Locke Foundation, says its a myth that there are two Pat McCrory's - a moderate Pat and a conservative Pat. This is what he wrote on his column, Daily Journal.

"With Pat McCrory not yet inaugurated as the next governor of North Carolina, there is already a conventional wisdom about his administration – that he will have to choose “which Pat” will move into the governor’s mansion.

Will it be the former mayor of Charlotte, ask the pundits, who governed as a moderate booster of mass transit and urban development? Or will it be the conservative candidate of 2012, who moved to the Right to capture the Republican nomination and build relations with the conservatives who now run the General Assembly?