Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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22 UCW MAY 2-8, 2018 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM LITERATURE Judge government by value added by JOHN HOOD New novels from four of North Carolina's best writers by D.G. MARTIN Want to know why conservatives are more skepti- cal than progressives of the idea of government confiscating more of our money to throw at social programs? I've already given you the answer in my choice of words. Our disagreements begin, but do not end, with defi- nitions. Look at the way I worded my question. I could have instead asked "why conservatives are more hos- tile than progressives to the idea of all of us investing more of our money together to solve social problems"? Hostility sounds more unreasonable than skepticism. "All of us investing" sounds cooperative, while "govern- ment confiscating" sounds invasive. And obviously there's a big difference between "throwing money" at programs and "solving problems." My purpose isn't to endorse the more positively stated proposition. As a conservative, I'd reject it as misleading and biased. For example, I think using the term "all of us" to describe an inherently coercive institution, gov- ernment, is erroneous. Taxes are surrendered, not voluntarily contributed. People get a say in electing politicians every two to four years, if they want it, but that's not the same thing as saying "we" collectively constitute the government, which is a discrete social institution (there are others) with clearly identifiable rules, structures, employees and vendors. Just to be clear: the vast majority of right-leaning folks are not anarchists. We grant that government plays a legitimate and necessary role. We also think it should be tightly circumscribed, so as to minimize how much we get bossed around by government offi- cials who may not share our values, goals or priorities. Take education. With the exception of a few "separation of school and state" hard-liners, most conservatives and libertarians favor a government role in education, at least at the state and local levels. at means we favor tax- ing North Carolinians to ensure that all children are offered the opportu- nity to receive a sound, basic education. But how high should those taxes be? Remember that every dollar government takes from us to spend represents a dollar we cannot spend for ourselves on food, clothing, shelter, rearing children, receiving medical care, supporting religious and community organizations, enjoying recreation and leisure or building valuable capital to generate future income. You can't answer the question satisfactorily with platitudes. Education is highly valuable and criti- cally important. We all agree about that. But other things are valuable, too. One productive way to approach the question is to try to gauge the value added for each additional dollar spent. If the value added by public schools, for example, rose consistently with public expenditure – such that the highest-spending schools, districts and states delivered the most value – that might constitute a persuasive argument for North Carolina, which ranks below the national average in per-pupil spend- ing, to raise its public expenditure on schools quickly and significantly, even if that meant higher taxes. In reality, however, there is no consistent relationship between expenditure and the value added by public schools, at least not in modern times. Even states with relatively low expendi- tures spend far more today than any did in the early days of public education. at's what most empirical studies show. at's also consistent with the distribution of just-released national test scores. e Urban Institute has a handy tool for adjust- ing state averages by student characteristics such as pov- erty and native languages other than English. After such adjustments, only four states rank in the top 10 for all four tests – for reading and math, in 4th and 8th grades. Two of them, Massachusetts and New Jersey, are high-spending blue states. e other two, Florida and Indiana, are low-spending red states. If we broaden the analysis to include high-scoring states on at least three of the four tests, three more states join the ranks of highest-value-added: Georgia (35th in spending), Virginia (26th) and our own North Carolina (38th). Conservatives look at these and other facts and conclude that North Carolina can continue to improve our education system – and that we don't need tax hikes to get the job done. Is the cold weather really over at last? And if the warmer season is here, what are some good books you should consider for your spring reading list? Here are four recent novels from three of North Carolina's most popular writers and a promising debut author, all of them featured on recent or upcoming North Carolina Book- watch broadcasts. When "Long Upon the Land" was pub- lished in 2015, North Carolina's beloved mys- tery writer Margaret Maron told us it was her final in her 20-book series featuring District Court Judge Deborah Knott, the daughter of a bootlegger and the wife of a deputy sheriff. Sadly, we said goodbye to Knott and to Ma- ron's storytelling talents. Last year, we got a happy surprise. Although the Judge Knott series was over, Maron had one more novel to share. "Take Out" is a murder mystery, the last in Ma- ron's nine-book Sigrid Harald series. She is a New York City police detective. Harald may not be as popular as Knott, but she has many fans. e novel opens with the discovery of two dead men on a park bench in downtown Manhattan. Both had apparently been poisoned. But why? And by whom? Maron takes us all over the city to solve the mystery. Along the way, at a book fair, we meet a North Carolina bookseller who shares a name with the former owner of Quail Ridge Books, the late and beloved Nancy Olson. UNC-Chapel Hill's Daniel Wal- lace's recent "Extraordinary Adven- tures" may be his best novel. at is saying something because his "Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions" delighted thousands even before it became a great movie. In "Extraordinary Adventures," he tells us the story of Edsel Bronfman, a 34-year-old socially awkward shipping clerk who wins a free vacation. ere is only one condition, "you have to bring your spouse or partner or girl friend." Edsel's crusade to find that partner makes for another wild, happy and troubling Daniel Wallace adventure. Local governments on the coast are adopt- ing resolutions opposing President Trump's propos- al to open the Atlantic waters to offshore oil drilling. Master storyteller and UNC-Wilmington writing professor Phillip Gerard's recent novel, "e Dark of the Island," weaves a storyline that brings together German submarines and spying along our coastline and recent efforts to find and exploit oil deposits off those same shores. Into this tapestry he blends other compelling themes such as complicated families, race, romance and the special history of the people of the Outer Banks. e main character, Nick Wolf, is a researcher and publicist for the fictional NorthAm Oil Company, which is searching for oil off the North Carolina coast. His grandfather was a German immigrant who died off the coast of Hatteras Island in 1942, reportedly while serving in the U.S. Merchant Marines, but possibly as a part of the German military. In her debut novel "Maranatha Road," attorney, mother and author Heather Bell Adams takes her readers to the North Caro- lina mountains where two women battle over the memory of a man each loved. e man's mother, Sadie Caswell, mourns the loss of her son, who died shortly before his scheduled wedding. e other woman, Tinley Greene, is a young stranger, recently orphaned and alone. She now claims she is pregnant with the man's child. Adams sympathizes with both these characters. Like Tinley, Adams lost a parent while she was still in her teens. And she is now a mother like Sadie. "Now that I'm a mother, I'm often struck by the fierce desire to shield our son from harm and un- happiness, especially knowing how arbitrary life can be. e character of Sadie first appeared to me as an older woman who sees that her adult son is headed for disaster, but she is powerless to stop it." JOHN HOOD, Chairman of the John Locke Foundation. COMMENTS? Editor@upandcomingweekly.com. 910-484-6200. POLITICS D.G. MARTIN, Host of UNC's Book Watch. COMMENTS? Edi- tor@upandcomingweekly.com. 910-484-6200. Try to gauge the value added for each additional dollar spent.