Economy

Trump’s Economy Keeps Humming: Manufacturing Adding More Jobs Than Government, Reversing Obama Trend

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released its March employment report this morning, estimating that employers added 196,000 nonfarm jobs. The official unemployment rate remained unchanged at 3.8%. The federal bureau revised its January jobs estimate up by 1,000 to 312,000 jobs and revised February’s estimate upwards 13,000 to 33,000, for a total of 14,000 more nonfarm...

April 5, 2019

Taxes & Spending

What if ‘fair’ taxes don’t actually help the poor?

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy is at it again. The think tank, funded by organized labor, consistently pushes for higher, more progressive income tax rates. In a report profiled by major media, ITEP makes the case that “Fairness Matters” in who pays state and local taxes. Presumably, “fairness” is important because policymakers don’t want a tax...

April 5, 2019

Economy

President Trump Visits El Centro, California, An Area Hard-Hit By California’s Minimum Wage Law

President Donald Trump is flying to El Centro, California on Friday, April 5 and then traveling five miles south to the border town of Calexico to inspect a newly completed section of the border wall. He is also scheduled to hold a roundtable discussion with local law enforcement officials. As Pres. Trump tours California’s Imperial Valley—a...

April 4, 2019

Taxes & Spending

Since Trump’s Tax Cut, Low-Tax State Job Growth Is 77% Higher Than In High-Tax States

Since President Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 into law in December 2017, private sector job growth in states with smaller state and local tax burdens has run 77% ahead of states with heavier tax loads from December 2017 to February 2019. Among its provisions, the new law limited state and...

March 27, 2019

Taxes & Spending

On Property Taxes And Local Government Spending, Texas Already Is California

The Texas Legislature is grappling with its biennial budget negotiations, with Wednesday expected to be a long night in the state’s House of Representatives. That’s where 307 spending amendments will be debated. There are three main issues at stake: overall spending, public education finance reform including teacher salaries, and property tax relief. Starting with discretionary spending,...

March 25, 2019

Local Government

Scooters Conquer Austin’s SXSW, Beating Manhattan’s Redline, More Miles Than to the Moon and Back

During the first two weeks of March in Austin, Texas, dockless scooters propelled people almost 530,000 miles, a distance greater than to the Moon and back again, according to Jason JonMichael, an official with the Austin Transportation Department in a story posted by KLBJ News Radio. JonMichael told the Urban Transportation Commission that “…we are moving...

March 19, 2019

Economy

Trump’s Policy “Magic Wand” Boosts Manufacturing Jobs 399% In First 26 Months Over Obama’s Last 26

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump consistently promised to revive America’s manufacturing economy. Trump’s focus on manufacturing brought out high-profile critics who scoffed at the notion. President Obama notably said in June 2016 that manufacturing jobs “are just not going to come back.” He said this at a time when manufacturing job growth had...

March 11, 2019

Energy & Environment

Federally-Funded NPR Joins The Green New Deal Chorus, Citing A Flawed Climate Disaster Study

On March 5, National Public Radio (NPR) posted an investigatory piece entitled, “How Federal Disaster Money Favors The Rich,” which asserted that the U.S. is experiencing more disasters due to climate change and that federal disaster assistance favors the wealthy over the poor. This is a classic call to action: things are bad and getting...

March 5, 2019

Taxes & Spending

As Texas Property Taxes Soar, Local Governments Spend Taxpayer Dollars To Stymie Reform

Texas is one of seven states that doesn’t levy a personal income tax. And while Texas’ overall state and local tax burden is considered relatively light, putting Texas 15th on the Tax Foundation’s 2019 State Business Tax Climate Index, the Lone Star State’s property tax ranking is 37th, meaning that 36 other states have a...

February 26, 2019

Energy & Environment

Wildfires Caused By Bad Environmental Policy Are Causing California Forests To Be Net CO2 Emitters

In the past two years, wildfires scorched 2.9 million acres in California, including five of the state’s 20 deadliest fires killing 131 people. Former California Gov. Jerry Brown grimly warned that because of man-made climate change, these destructive wildfires are the “new abnormal” that threaten “our whole way of life.” Newly elected Gov. Gavin Newsom’s rhetoric has...

February 25, 2019

Energy & Environment

Texas Taxpayers, the French Government and Wind Power

At least 57 times in 2017, and many more last year, Georgetown’s residents paid EDF, a company owned 84.5% by the government of France, around 6 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity produced in the middle of the night when demand was low—so low, in fact, that because of tax incentives and government subsidies, the...

February 21, 2019

Taxes & Spending

Will Trump Put California’s Broken Bullet Train Out Of Its Misery?

A little more than a decade after California voters narrowly approved a ballot proposition to build an 800-mile high-speed rail system for $35 billion, with completion promised for next year, the project has been derailed by gross government incompetence and malfeasance. The remarkable (and very public) beginning of the end for the state-run rail project...

February 20, 2019