People filing into the Charlotte Convention Center make their way around a small commotion. A woman robed as Lady Justice, glowing with gold paint, points her sword at a few chunks of coal on the sidewalk. Other protesters with signs and a megaphone denounce “the Hypocrite of the Year” about to be honored inside. The target of their ire: Jim Rogers, chairman, president and CEO of Duke Energy Corp., the Charlotte-based utility that is expanding a power plant an hour’s drive away in Cliffside.

While the builders of Daytona and Atlanta made significant gambles to see their projects come to fruition and experienced their share of delays and shortfalls, these paled in comparison with the outlandish risks and the obstacles faced by Curtis Turner and Bruton Smith in constructing Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Pond Mountain rises 5,000 feet above sea level in Ashe County, and views from its peak take in parts of North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee.

Even at $5.6 million and just a fraction of its total acreage, Peter Loftin’s estate in north Raleigh was probably a bargain.

It’s no secret that the Greensboro-High Point metro area — which covers Guilford, Randolph and Rockingham counties — has struggled, but just how bad has the job market been?

A 58% increase in pay for a chief executive can raise a few eyebrows, even in a good year.

Michael Jordan gained fame on the basketball court but earned most of his fortune — estimated at $800 million during the course of his career — off of it.

With the hyperventilation over health care having abated a bit — which is to say, now that we all understand civilization has neither been saved nor destroyed, that angels didn’t sing nor did evil triumph — let’s ponder how North Carolina’s capitalist pie might get resliced as a result.

The General Assembly may get the chance this year to perform that rarest of legislative feats — shrink government and promote free enterprise.

Shaking, she poked a shotgun in my face. They called her “The Witch of Micro,” a stooped old woman in a flour-sack dress, living in a shack with several rheumy-eyed dogs and some chickens.