I think a lot of us would agree that 2020 has been a bit of a dumpster fire. It's not quite a nuclear holocaust, but it's a hell of a lot worse than a cup of spilled milk. We know better than to cry over one of those, but some folks I have been talking to lately just want to sit down and cry. 

Recently, I told my wife that the 2020 election follies made me think of John Milton. She commented that I may have been the only one in America to make that connection to the second most important author in the English language, after Shakespeare, best known for his poetry. After all, very little of this year’s politics has been poetic (though it could be argued to fit somewhere in Paradise Lost). I was thinking of Milton’s prose.

Former Vice President Joe Biden has not been officially declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election, but that has not stopped him from forming a coronavirus task force. The task force is composed of supporters of increased government control.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 recession in March, North Carolina policymakers have been watching government revenues and expenditures carefully. How big a hole would the economic downturn poke in the state budget? Would cash-strapped localities come begging for aid? Would lawmakers feel compelled to raise taxes or cut spending drastically to balance the books?