PLEDGE DRIVE IN D-MAJOR: The struggling N.C. Symphony has begun its new season with an unusual fundraising drive to secure private donations to be eligible for additional state money. One patron bid $10,000 for a private recital by famed violinist Joshua Bell. (N&O)

PATIENTS BEGIN MOVING: Opposition to the safety of the new Central Regional Hospital in Butner is easing and a judge has allowed the first patients to move to the facility, which is eventually intended to replace Raleigh's Dorthea Dix Hospital. Dix will remain open with at least 100 mental patients for the foreseeable future. (N&O)

IT'S NOT YOU, IT'S ME: North Carolina aggressively courted Dell, but the company dumped the state Wednesday, announcing it was planning to walk away from a $150 million manufacturing facility and turning out nearly 1,000 workers. Maybe the state can find a rebound company. (N&O)

* The budget crunch and a $4 million debt has forced the N.C. Symphony to cut salaries and take other measures. (N&O)

* Disgraced financier Bernard Madoff arrived Tuesday at a federal prison in North Carolina to begin serving a 150-year sentence for what is believed to be the largest Ponzi scheme in history. (N&O)

* The N.C. Department of Correction was wrong when it said a probation officer phoned the Lincoln County jail on June 12 in an effort to keep Patrick Burris locked up. Burris went on to kill five people in South Carolina. (Char-O)

* Senators, giggling about unmentionables, kill a bill meant to encourage use of clotheslines to save energy. (G-N&R)

The John Locke Foundation will target some of Mike Easley's pet projects.

The conservative think tank's fiscal analyst told Dome that it will urge state lawmakers to cut newer programs and expansions of older ones in the state budget in the face of a massive drop in tax revenue, including expansions of dental schools, a research campus in Kannapolis and a Shanghai office for the N.C. Department of Commerce.

"Some of the more recent additions to the budget should be the things that are on the chopping block," said Joe Colletti. "We survived until 2008 without some of these things; we can do without them now."

He said the think tank will also argue for higher user fees on budget items such as the N.C. Zoo, the N.C. Symphony and college tuition.

Colletti said he is hopeful that an initiative to provide "Google transparency" to state contracts proposed by Gov.-elect Beverly Perdue will cut costs as similar measures have done in other states. He said private contractors who can provide services for less will be more likely to put a bid in if they can easily see on a public Web site what the state is already paying.

"Most of those other (Web) sites are less than a year old, but they're already having a tremendous impact on savings," he said. "The more we can make it open and allow people to see what we're spending money on, the better off we'll all be."

Previously: Liberal think tanks fire first shot on budget