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Troy's Perspective: Do your homework and vote

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Tuesday, 20 October 2026

Written by Troy Williams

French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte is often credited with saying, “If you wish to be a success in the world, promise everything, deliver nothing.”
Napoleon died in 1821, but his alleged political philosophy appears alive and well in 21st-century politics. As Americans begin early voting in the midterm elections, we are once again bombarded with political promises, questionable claims, and carefully crafted rhetoric designed to win votes.
I don't mean to sound cynical, but I'm amazed by how readily some citizens believe promises that any reasonably informed person should recognize as unrealistic. Being deceived once is understandable. But believing the same empty promises election after election raises an uncomfortable question: Do we blame politicians for deceiving us, or should we look in the mirror and accept responsibility for allowing the deception to continue? Democracy is a wonderful system, but it requires informed and engaged citizens. Its strength depends not simply on how many people vote, but on how seriously voters examine the issues and evaluate candidates seeking public office. Unfortunately, finding reliable information has become increasingly challenging.
I sometimes long for the days of legendary CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite, once considered "the most trusted man in America." Americans trusted Cronkite to report the news without allowing his personal political preferences to dominate the broadcast. Those days seem distant. Today, reporting, commentary, and political advocacy are frequently blurred. Some news organizations appear more interested in controlling narratives than informing citizens. Frankly, certain claims from behind a television news desk deserve no more unquestioning confidence than barbershop or beauty salon gossip. If you want the truth, be prepared to do your own research.
Then come the political attack ads. Most voters claim to dislike negative campaigning, yet candidates continue spending enormous sums attacking opponents. Sometimes the criticism is legitimate. Too often, however, facts are taken out of context, exaggerated, or distorted to damage an opponent's reputation. Negative advertising is frequently employed by campaigns seeking to change political momentum. But here's what bothers me most: A candidate may spend an entire commercial explaining why an opponent shouldn't be elected without offering one convincing reason why that candidate deserves our vote.
Beyond television and radio commercials, voters face mailers, billboards, robocalls, text messages, social media promotions, and countless yard signs. And just when you think you've escaped the political noise, you arrive at the polls. North Carolina permits electioneering outside designated voting-site buffer zones. Consequently, expect campaign workers distributing literature and encouraging support for their preferred candidates.
Some citizens dread election season. Others, political junkies like me, can hardly wait for our next political fix. But whether you love politics or despise it, remember this: Democracy cannot fulfill its promise if citizens neglect their responsibility. Question the rhetoric. Examine the facts. Study voting records. Demand accountability. Never surrender your judgment to politicians or media personalities. Politicians may promise everything and deliver nothing, but informed voters can demand better.
Like it or not, this is our political system. Do your homework, think for yourself, and for goodness' sake, VOTE!

We should challenge the Imperial City

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Tuesday, 20 October 2026

Written by John Hood

Over the past decade and a half, North Carolina’s policy environment has become increasingly favorable to growth, development, and progress. State lawmakers have improved how government taxes, regulates, budgets, and funds such services as transportation and education. Our universities are more efficient and friendlier to free speech. Our community colleges are better at targeting high-demand occupations and hard-to-serve populations. North Carolina ranks seventh in economic freedom, 13th in educational freedom and tax competitiveness, and 15th in economic growth (GDP adjusted for inflation over the past decade).
Many challenges remain, however. We overregulate healthcare, raising its cost by restricting competition. Our state budgets are increasingly stuffed with pork. Education reform hasn’t gone nearly far enough. And North Carolina has not been a leader in the fight against the federal government’s unwise and unconstitutional centralization of power in Washington.
That last fact, in particular, should trouble history-minded Carolinians. During the Founding Era, our state was a champion of constitutionalism and decentralization. We were the only state to hold a ratification convention and then refuse to ratify the original constitution, which left America’s third-most-populous state out of its first presidential election in 1788. Why? Because the constitution didn’t contain a bill of rights, as the constitutions of North Carolina and many other states already included.
Back then, our leaders believed in belts and suspenders. They recognized that the design of the U.S. Constitution would limit abuses of power by creating checks and balances among the three branches and enumerating a limited number of topics about which Congress should legislate. These were necessary safeguards, they reasoned, but not sufficient ones. North Carolina leaders insisted that the document should also specify individual liberties that even duly elected presidents and congresses could not restrict (what became the 1st through 8th Amendments), that specifying those liberties should not be construed as leaving other liberties unrecognized (the 9th Amendment), and that powers not specifically granted to the Feds would be retained by the previously constituted states and the people themselves (the 10th Amendment).
To embrace federalism (in the original, decentralized sense of the term) was not to deny the importance of an effective national government. It was, however, to affirm that self-government grew harder at a distance and at scale, and that what would become a continent-spanning republic should leave room for states and communities to choose differing paths so that Americans could themselves choose to live in polities most consistent with their own preferences.
Over the ensuing 250 years, Americans have amended our constitution to remove some matters from state-by-state discretion — and properly so. No state or locality should be permitted to deny the franchise or equal protection under the laws based on race, ethnicity, sex, or creed. In many other areas of public policy, however, Washington has supplanted the proper role of states. In some instances, Congress has done it by legislation. In others, presidents have done it by executive orders or administrative “guidance” that, their appointees strongly suggest, states and localities must heed in order to avoid litigation or retain access to federal funds.
The State Policy Network’s Center for Practical Federalism has been urging states for years to resist these and other national encroachments on their constitutional powers. They’ve urged state administrators to question so-called guidance and challenge other usurpations. They’ve urged legislative committees to investigate and hold hearings on these abuses. And they’ve created a tracker for evaluating how effectively states are pushing back against Washington’s excesses.
In SPN’s most-recent federalism scorecard, the six states with the highest ratings were Utah (86.9), Vermont (56.7), Tennessee (53.95), Idaho (50.15), Wisconsin (48.8), and South Carolina (42.45). North Carolina was in the middle of the pack, with an unimpressive 13.25.
I think the General Assembly, the Stein administration, other state executives, and local governments should make this a priority in 2027 and beyond. Forbid the automatic acceptance of federal grants and the strings that come with them. Challenge the Imperial City. It’s the Carolina way.

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).

Thinking before you vote is always a good idea

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Tuesday, 20 October 2026

Written by Margaret Dickson

By the time you read this, voting will likely be underway for our state and nation’s much anticipated midterm elections. It began Oct. 15. North Carolinians will elect a United States Senator, and the outcome of that race will affect not only us but the rest of the nation as well for at least the next six years. We will also choose state legislators and various local officials, all of whom will make decisions that affect us and our families.
In short, elections have consequences.
Also on our ballots, though less talked about than candidates, are three proposed amendments to the North Carolina Constitution.
Do not be tempted to support them.
They are legislative stunts designed to bring out certain voters, many of whom do not understand what the amendments would actually do.
Legislative proponents of the first two proposed amendments say they will lower taxes by capping state income tax at 3.5% and by stripping cities and counties of the ability to set their own property tax rates, a blatant power grab from the elected officials closest to their communities and giving it to those in Raleigh.
We would all like to pay less in all sorts of taxes, but instead of a collective “Whoopie, let’s pass this law,” let’s put on our personal thinking caps. A tax reduction as in the first proposed amendment sounds terrific on its face, but we North Carolinians also like our professional law enforcement agencies, our public schools, and our world class university system, all of which are funded in large part by the state. There is no way around the reality that less revenue means reduced services. Our state income tax rate is already capped at 7%, and a further reduction would give an even bigger break to higher income earners while expecting lower income earners to pick up the slack.
A number of communities across North Carolina drew the ire of residents in what was perceived as unfair tax revaluations in recent years that resulted in significantly higher property taxes. But taking the power of taxation away from on-the-ground local officials who see their constituents daily at the grocery, schools, and church and know first hand of their needs and desires is not the answer. It would merely put big government, not the locals, in charge. Ask yourself what a legislator from Murphy or Manteo knows—or cares—about the people of Cumberland County. Do you want that legislator deciding local tax rates for communities he or she has never visited and may never have thought about at all?
The third proposal is yet another effort to restrict our right to vote in free and fair elections. It would require that mail in votes also include photo identification. No one is asserting that this is a major problem in North Carolina, and it certainly is not. What it is a problem is erecting one more hurdle on the road to voting. It is intended to keep the increasing numbers of mail in voters in our state away from the polls, not heading to the post office.
If you look carefully at these three proposed amendments, you will likely see them for what they are—legislative sleights of hand to bring out certain voters susceptible to knee jerk words like “tax relief” and “election reform” without investigating and thinking through these proposals.
Don’t be one of those voters being led by the nose.
Up and Coming Weekly readers are smarter than that.

Fun with artificial intelligence and Oedipus Rex

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Tuesday, 13 October 2026

Written by Pitt Dickey

You know what is really fun? Ignore warnings. See how far your car can go on empty. Play refrigerator roulette and eat the crusty casserole hidden at the back of the Kelvinator. Live on the edge. Trust and obey the High-Tech Oligarchs. They know what is best. They care. Our Tech Bros recently met with Trump at the White House to decide that the dangers of AI are best left to be handled by themselves. They had previously warned AI could lead to the end of humanity. After consulting themselves, they decided they alone should regulate themselves. Whew. What a relief. After all, if you can’t trust Billionaires, who can you trust? What could go wrong?
Greek mythology left us a note about why ignoring warnings might not be a good plan. But those guys are all dead now. What did they know, anyway? However, let us ponder the story of Oedipus to see if happy days can be here again despite ignoring warnings to the contrary.
When Oedipus was born to the King and Queen of Thebes, they asked the Oracle of Delphi to conjure up his future. The Oracle made kind of a dark prediction: Oedipus would kill his father, marry his mother, and bring big trouble to Thebes. Yikes! To avoid this future, they sent baby Oedipus into the forest to be killed by a servant. The servant left Oedipus hanging by his ankles in a tree to be eaten by the wild things. Fortunately for Oedipus, a shepherd came along and pulled him out of the tree. The Shepherd gave Oedipus to King Polybus of Corinth, who raised Oedipus as his own son. As a young man, Oedipus kept hearing rumors he was adopted. He went to see the Oracle, who told him he was fated to kill his father, marry his mother, and bring trouble to his city.
Oedipus freaked out and decided to roam the Earth to avoid his bleak future. He found himself at a crossroads where a Herald ordered him to give way to an old rich dude in a chariot. Oedipus, raised as a Prince, refused to budge. A big ruckus ensued. Oedipus killed the chariot dude and his entourage. Unknown to Oedipus, the chariot dude was his biological father, the King of Thebes. Oops. Oedipus went into Thebes and learned their King was dead. Making matters worse, a Sphinx was outside the city walls eating everyone who could not answer a riddle. The citizens promised whoever got rid of the Sphinx could be the new king and marry the Queen.
The Sphinx’s riddle was “What walks on four feet in the morning, two in the afternoon, and three at night?’ Oedipus said it was man who crawls on all fours as an infant (morning); walks on two legs as adult (afternoon), and uses a cane for three legs in old age (night). The Sphinx was so distracted about Oedipus solving the riddle that she inadvertently let Oedipus kill her. The people of Thebes celebrated like New Yorkers after the Knicks won the NBA championship.
Oedipus was crowned King, married his Mom the Queen, and had two sons and two daughters with her. Then a plague came to Thebes. Oedipus asked the Oracle what would end the plague. He was told the murderer of the former King must be punished. He ordered an investigation by the Thebes CSI unit which determined Oedipus was the killer of the King.
Oedipus was so distraught he blinded himself. He made his daughter Antigone abandon him in the dark forest where the Furies lived. He was never seen again. His Mother/Wife killed herself. His two sons fought a civil war over succession to be King of Thebes. All of this because of an ignored warning.
Is there a moral in this story that might apply to ignoring the warnings about the impact of Artificial Intelligence on humanity? Of course not, trust the Tech Oligarchs. They warned us but then changed their minds, deciding to regulate themselves because Trump renamed Artificial Intelligence as Super Intelligence. With a nice abbreviation like “SI” instead of AI, all our troubles will be so far away. Even though SI is used by mental health professionals as an abbreviation for Suicidal Ideation. A mere coincidence. Learn to love Data Centers. Learn to drink sand. Learn to enjoy rolling electrical blackouts. Billionaires and SI must be fed.
Maybe an even nicer name for SI would be SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS INTELLIGENCE. Renaming things makes the medicine go down in the most delightful ways. Wear your blinders. Warnings are for sissies. Inflation and Middle East wars are good. Have a nice day.

(Illustration by Pitt Dickey)