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...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Chuck Devore, former California assemblyman, says the cost of high-speed rail tickets would cost twice as much as an airline ticket. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, under budgetary pressure to provide more government health care for illegal immigrants and more housing for the working poor, just threw the Green New Deal’s nationwide train network under the...