Texas looks to receive $41 billion in taxpayer money provided by Congress in the $1.9 trillion American Relief Plan Act (ARPA). With $31 billion being sent to the state, this is 25% of the state’s annual budget. This excessive spending in D.C. has become the norm and now they’re trying to push their profligate spending...
President Joe Biden has made so-called “fairness” a central facet of his tax proposals. This prompts the question: what is fair? We all have different definitions of the word. It is dangerous, then, to desultorily apply opinions and envy in the progressives’ flawed attempt to solve perceived social injustices through the federal income tax code....
On Earth Day 2021, President Biden announced that the U.S. will cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 50% by 2030. The pledge marked a radical about-face from the Trump administration’s prioritization of poverty reduction, economic growth, and U.S. energy dominance over GHG emissions. It is also twice the size of the Obama administration’s pledge to...
Where use of incarceration is concerned, thoughtful criminal justice advocates tend to draw a distinction between those to be “scared of” versus others “we are mad at.” This makes sense. Conservative leaders in Tennessee, led by Gov. Bill Lee, are enacting policies that recognize this distinction in order to improve the overall effectiveness of the state’s criminal justice system. The 2021 Tennessee...
Schools are supposed to be places of learning. But at least one district has made it more about wheeling and dealing. In Houston Chronicle, readers learned about Barbers Hills ISD, a small school district located about 30 miles east of Houston, and its zeal for Chapter 313 agreements, which has enabled administrators to offer massive...
Growing up in San Antonio’s Southside, I am extremely concerned about the defund the police effort that has gripped our country, our state, and my hometown. Like many urban areas, San Antonio has been targeted by radical, anti-police activists funded by out-of-state, dark money special interests. In San Antonio, their tactic was to put forward...
Good Jobs First, an organization focused on tracking corporate subsidies, published a report analyzing the effects of tax abatements for economic development on school funding. The results should be a wakeup call to Texas legislators considering whether to renew these controversial corporate property tax breaks. Abating Our Future – How Students Pay for Corporate Tax...
In 1962, President John F. Kennedy signed Proclamation 3537 to give us the Peace Officers Memorial Day and the corresponding Police Week (May 9-15 this year). In its text were an apt description of what most of us believe Police Week should be about “commemorating law enforcement officers, past and present, who by their faithful...
To say Texas is a big state is an understatement—there are over 800 miles between Beaumont and El Paso and another 760 between Amarillo and Harlingen. Because the state is so large it’s no surprise there is diversity in cultures, norms, political beliefs, and legislative priorities in the Lone Star State. In fact, there are...
As in Georgia, Florida, and other states, the Texas legislature is working to strengthen the state’s election law against the left’s largely successful 2020 effort to subvert it. Texas last passed an election code omnibus bill in 2017 (I testified in favor of the bill). That bill, as with 2021’s efforts, aimed to increase safeguards...
You’d think ERCOT would have learned its lesson. I warned last year that summer blackouts were coming to Texas; it is likely we would have had outages in August 2020 if not for lower electricity demand caused by the COVID-19 economic shutdowns. The winter outages that killed 111 Texans — and the close call on...
There is an astounding amount of disinformation surrounding Texas Legislature’s election integrity bills. Among the many mischaracterizations, two stand out: claims of racism buttressed by fabricated history, and the objections to letting poll watchers do their jobs. Let’s start with that fabricated history. Texas House Bill 6 wisely quoted the Texas Constitution for the Legislature’s...