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Margaret Dickson: Have we no shame?

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Tuesday, 22 September 2026

Written by Margaret Dickson

When it comes to politics, apparently not.
Nothing—not child and domestic abuse, not illicit love affairs, not 60-something electeds traveling with 20-somethings of the opposite gender, not indictments for securities fraud, or allegations of bribery and obstruction of justice, even impeachment—seems to affect voters. We just keep electing these people year after year, state after state.
Nothing seems offensive, repulsive, or derelict enough to prevent anyone from serving in elective office from the Presidency down to our own North Carolina member of Congress who was censured by his colleagues but who remains in office as you read this. Our current President once bragged that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue without consequences, and that has been true so far. As Amanda Taub put it in The New York Times, “his political fortunes have remained buoyant even after he was impeached twice, was found civilly liable for sexual abuse and enriched himself by billions of dollars while in office.”
The entire concept that actions have consequences no longer appears to be true, as no action appears reprehensible enough to make individuals unelectable, much less shameful.
Given our state of affairs today, the premise of Nathanial Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter seems positively quaint.
That said, we have to wonder how we got to this truly dreadful and terrifying point. If no action is ever wrong, then is every action acceptable?
Political scientists are increasingly pointing at political polarization, not just in the United States but around much of the world.
The argument goes something like this. My political beliefs are superior to yours, and my “team” is promoting the correct policies while your beliefs and your team’s actions are hurting our nation. Therefore, whatever my “teammates” do must be ignored or excused for the good of all. This argument is made by both sides with varying degrees of strength and truthfulness. We are appalled by the crooks and perverts on the other team while we give our own guys and gals a pass no matter what they have done.
I would be massively relieved if I thought this were reparable by people of good will and faith in humanity, but I do not. People in other countries polarized by right and left suffer from the same loss of shame that apparently accompanies acute political division, and they seem no closer to healing than we are. Elected officials at all levels feel totally free to behave and take illegal actions with abandon, secure in the knowledge that the voting public that supports them will be fine with it.
Amanda Taub assessed the loss of shame in public life this way in the Times.
Our current political state “has serious implications for accountability. That chain reaction was traditionally one of the ways that norms and rules were enforced in democracies. If the power of scandal goes away, then we’re left with a vicious cycle in which moral or legal wrongdoing doesn’t lead to consequences, which undermines trust in government and public institutions, which in turn widens polarization and allows more corruption, abuse and lawbreaking. This cycle is hard to break.”
Abraham Lincoln understood the American people, and he said this almost 200 years ago about the danger to our nation.
“It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
I pray we can survive ourselves.

John Hood: You Can’t Have Stability and Growth

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Tuesday, 22 September 2026

Written by John Hood

On a single day of catching up on the latest business news, I happened across five stories with a direct bearing on a key sector of North Carolina’s economy. The Wall Street Journal, for example, reported on a severe downturn in the pulpwood market, including the closure of mills, potential delays in the replanting of commercial forests, and shifts in business practices and consumer preferences that don’t auger well for the industry. The Journal also noted the pending expiration of intellectual-property protections for key pharmaceuticals, calling it “the biggest patent cliff in decades.”
Closer to home, Triangle Business Journal covered surging interest in banking mergers and acquisitions, due in part to federal regulations, and reported that North Carolina hospitals have some of the longest emergency-department visit times in the country, due in part to capacity constraints. Meanwhile, sister publication Triad Business Journal described public opposition to new data centers and its potential to crimp new investment and growth in tech companies in the region and beyond.
I wouldn’t describe this day’s collection of business stories as unique — or uniquely troubling. On the same day, these and other media outlets also reported on business expansions, new commercial and residential development, and innovative new technologies that hold great promise for customers, workers, investors, and suppliers. Modern economies are dynamic, not static. If we want the many benefits of free enterprise, we can’t also have perfectly stable markets for goods, services, and labor. It’s simply not possible.
North Carolinians should understand the tradeoff better than anyone in the country. Since the founding of what became our state more than three centuries ago, our economy has undergone a series of radical transformations.
In its early decades, North Carolina was almost entirely agrarian. Plantations dependent on slavery and indentured servitude produced tobacco in the northeast and rice in the southeast, while subsistence farmers and Indian communities reliant on corn, squash, bean, fish, and game inhabited much of the backcountry. By the time of the American Revolution, wood products had become a major industry, generating hardwood timber for homebuilding and barrel-making as well as pine tar, pitch, and turpentine for the construction of commercial and military ships.
Cotton came later, as did the damming of North Carolina’s numerous but not easily navigated rivers, which laid the foundation for furniture, textile, and apparel manufacturing. Early gold rushes in the Carolina backcountry combined with the state’s traditionally light regulation of branch banking laid the foundation of another signature sector of our future economy: financial services.
As economist Michael Walden explained in two essential books — North Carolina in the Connected Age (2008) and North Carolina Beyond the Connected Age (2017) — a strategic triad of tobacco, textiles, and furniture emerged in the early 20th century and by the 1960s represented most of our industrial output and a quarter of the state’s total employment. By the entire of the century, however, this Big Three had been eclipsed by a Big Five: technology, pharmaceuticals, financial services, food processing, and vehicle parts.
Now, quarter-way through the 21st century, all these industries continue to evolve while others emerge, often powered by artificial intelligence. If “experts” tell you they know for sure how it will all turn out, treat their prognostications the same way you do sports commentators: for entertainment purposes, if that’s your thing, but not for investment purposes.
What I think we can forecast with great confidence is that, if markets are left free to discover and spread new information, allowing producers and consumers to adjust in real time, our economy will keep growing and North Carolinians will keep reaping its benefits. Remember that, contrary to popular belief, our state is not deindustrializing. North Carolina’s total manufacturing output was higher in inflation-adjusted terms in 2025 than it was in 1997. Manufacturing of non-durable goods (such as socks) went down 15%, yes, but durables manufacturing (such as trucks) nearly doubled.
The more things change, the more the laws of economics remain the same.

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).

Fayetteville Works settlement more than a paycheck

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Tuesday, 22 September 2026

Written by Troy Williams

On Sept. 9, 2026, Chemours, DuPont and Corteva filed a PFAS settlement agreement involving North Carolina, publicly announced the following day. Although described as more favorable than the proposed federal settlement, whether it provides adequate compensation remains debatable, particularly for Cumberland County and communities closest to Fayetteville Works.
The settlement calls for approximately $455 million, generally paid over 15 years, with about $380 million designated for 11 affected local governments. Cumberland County is expected to receive approximately $161.5 million, paid over several years. However, more than $40 million, roughly 25 percent, is expected to go toward legal fees, substantially reducing the county's net recovery.
Importantly, the settlement does not replace Chemours' existing cleanup responsibilities. A 2019 North Carolina consent order already requires Chemours to provide replacement drinking water to qualifying residents, reduce GenX air emissions by 99.9 percent, control contaminated groundwater and surface-water discharges, and undertake major remediation measures.
For Cumberland County, this settlement should not be considered the end of the PFAS crisis.
The Grays Creek and Cedar Creek communities, located near Fayetteville Works, have endured contamination concerns for decades. Residents have confronted contaminated private wells, groundwater pollution, and other environmental impacts. PFAS contamination was also not limited to water. Air emissions provided another pathway, with compounds deposited onto soil and vegetation potentially entering groundwater through rainfall.
The long-term environmental and human consequences may take years to fully understand.
Under the settlement, Cumberland County's lawsuits are to be dismissed with prejudice, generally preventing the county from bringing those claims again. However, that does not necessarily mean individual citizens have surrendered their legal rights.
Depending on individual circumstances, residents may potentially have claims involving bodily injury, contaminated private wells, property damage or diminished property value, and medical-monitoring damages. Such claims would depend upon applicable law, statutes of limitation, scientific evidence, causation, and the settlement's precise language and should be evaluated by qualified counsel.
Another major question is how Cumberland County's settlement proceeds should be spent.
A strong argument exists that Grays Creek and Cedar Creek should receive a substantial share because residents closest to Fayetteville Works may have experienced some of the county's most serious nuisance, trespass, property, and environmental impacts. Those residents should have a meaningful voice in deciding how settlement funds are allocated.
Perhaps the greatest unanswered question concerns long-term health effects. Some residents report unexplained illnesses affecting family members and pets. One family, wishing to remain anonymous, reports losing a 14-year-old child and subsequently having a parent hospitalized with an unexplained illness. These circumstances deserve serious investigation, although PFAS causation cannot be assumed without medical and scientific evidence.
A financial settlement cannot erase decades of contamination, answer every health question, restore property owners' sense of security, or immediately repair environmental damage.
Chemours should not simply write a check and walk away from Fayetteville Works. Cleanup, environmental monitoring, health research, transparency, and public accountability must continue.
The people of Grays Creek, Cedar Creek, and Cumberland County deserve compensation, but they also deserve answers and a voice.
This has always been, and will continue to be, about more than a paycheck.

Cumberland County School Board Candidate Johnathaun Lee: A call to Cumberland County to Unite

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Tuesday, 22 September 2026

Written by Johnathaun Lee

Let me ask you to consider something simple: What if Cumberland County decided that education was one issue important enough for us to approach together?
You may be Republican, Democrat, independent, or uninterested in political labels altogether. But when a child cannot read at grade level, misses weeks of school, feels unsafe in the classroom, or graduates unprepared for what comes next, that problem does not ask how you voted.
It affects your community.
Cumberland County Schools is making progress. Districtwide proficiency increased from 50.8% to 55.7% in 2025–26, and the four-year graduation rate reached a record 88.7%. Those numbers deserve recognition. But 55.7% proficiency also tells us plainly that substantial work remains.
Attendance tells a similar story. Chronic absenteeism stood at 33.76% for 2024–25—roughly one in three students. By the middle of 2025–26, that rate had fallen to 27.4%, an encouraging improvement, but still far from the district's attendance goals.
So perhaps our common enemies are already visible.
They are low proficiency, chronic absenteeism, unsafe learning environments, unrealized potential and policies that fail to produce results.
And another obstacle deserves attention: not political parties themselves, but the instinct to judge an education idea by who proposed it before asking whether it works.
That is where the old expression “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” takes on a different meaning.
You and I do not have to agree on everything to recognize the same problem. What if we agreed on the destination? Imagine a Cumberland County education agenda that could survive one election, one superintendent and one political season.
It might begin with a few questions most of us can understand: Can our children read and perform mathematics at grade level? Are they attending school? Are schools safe? Are graduates prepared for college, employment, technical training, military service, entrepreneurship or a skilled trade? When public money is invested in a program, can we demonstrate that it worked?
Those questions do not require ideological agreement. They require clarity of purpose.
The North Carolina School Boards Association teaches an important distinction. The school board governs; the superintendent administers. The board establishes policy, approves goals, monitors progress and provides direction. The superintendent implements those policies and manages the school system.
That distinction matters because governing well is not about trying to run a classroom from the boardroom. It is about asking better questions.
What are we trying to accomplish? Why is the problem occurring? What does the evidence show? What policy affects it? Are our resources aligned with our priorities? And did what we tried work?
Imagine if that became the language of education in Cumberland County. Then look beyond Cumberland County There is another opportunity worth discussing.
What if Cumberland County deliberately developed school-board members who became exceptionally knowledgeable about education governance—not merely successful politicians, but people who understood budgets, policy, accountability, facilities, transportation, student achievement and the consequences of statewide decisions?
Over time, some of those individuals could become credible candidates for service at the state level. That distinction is important because Cumberland County cannot simply elect someone to the North Carolina State Board of Education.
The State Board consists of the lieutenant governor, state treasurer and eleven members appointed by the governor and confirmed by the General Assembly. Eight appointed members represent education districts and three serve at large.
There is no formal requirement that someone serve on a local school board first. But local board service can provide something difficult to obtain from theory alone: experience seeing what happens when statewide policy reaches an actual classroom.
The State Board has constitutional responsibility for supervising and administering North Carolina's public-school system and educational funds and for establishing necessary rules and regulations within laws enacted by the General Assembly.
Think about the value of having someone at that table who understands Cumberland County not from a report, but from experience. What does a transportation policy mean to a rural family. What chronic absenteeism looks like inside a school. What an academic intervention cost?
What works—and what merely sounds good on paper. One purpose does not require one opinion Unity does not mean silence.
It does not mean Republicans must become Democrats or Democrats must become Republicans. It does not mean every disagreement disappears. It means recognizing that disagreement over how we get somewhere does not prevent us from agreeing about where our children need to go.
You can challenge my solution while still sharing my concern. I can disagree with your method while still respecting your goal. That is not political weakness. It is community maturity. Cumberland County does not need one political voice.
It could benefit from one educational purpose:
Students before partisanship.
Evidence before assumption.
Policy tied to results.
Accountability without micromanagement.
And perhaps, over time, something larger could grow from that approach: a county known not only for debating education policy, but for developing people capable of helping shape it statewide.
The goal would not be to guarantee Cumberland County a seat at the table. The goal would be to make sure that when opportunities to serve arise, Cumberland County has prepared people worthy of consideration for one. The idea is Johnathaun Lee’s; the plan belongs to Cumberland County.

Editor's Note: Johnathaun Lee's letter to the editor is another submission we have printed from a Cumberland County School Board candidate.
We welcome all letters from candidates, and encourage our readers to vote in November!

(Photo: Photo courtesy of Johnathaun Lee)