This commentary was originally featured in Forbes on August 22, 2017. By the official definition of poverty in America, New Mexico has the nation’s highest poverty rate, 21.8 percent, while New Hampshire has the lowest, 6.6 percent. But a newer, more comprehensive measure of poverty by the U.S. Census Bureau tells a different story, with California having the highest poverty...
This commentary was originally featured in Forbes on August 8, 2017. States With the Highest Rate of Opioid Overdose Deaths in 2014 Earlier this year the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a report that suggested a significant number of opioid related deaths were incorrectly attributed to pneumonia and other infectious diseases...
Had Ms. Hubler looked beyond the ubiquitous Lone Stars, she would have seen something else: liberty – the kind that doesn’t require other people’s money.
This commentary originally appeared in Forbes on June 31, 2017. The public school district in Austin, Texas has seen declining student enrollments for years. Austin, America’s 11th-largest city is also one of the nation’s fastest growing, adding some 25,000 residents annually. Losing students in this environment is remarkable. Officials at the Austin Independent School District...
Austin ISD would be well-advised to drop its public-relations program and instead redouble its efforts to improve its educational offering to students.
This commentary originally appeared in The Federalist on April 28, 2017. The age of cell phone video ubiquity treats us with daily outrages over people in authority behaving badly towards the powerless. Unreasoned passion leads to a thirst for justice, or at least the appearance of justice. In 1991, there were no cell-phone cameras and...
Organizations with authority over others are vulnerable to any suggestion that they are abusing their power. Further, while corporations must correct bad behavior or risk going out of business, government often just continues with business as usual.
To continue to attract entrepreneurs and workers from all across America, Texas policymakers need to build on the Lone Star State’s competitive advantages in taxation—the Tax Foundation puts Texas’ state and local tax burden as the 46th-lowest in the nation—and light and predictable regulation.
For the fourth time in a row California’s cap-and-trade auction for greenhouse gas emissions fell flat, raising only $8.2 million out of a hoped for $600 million, leaving revenues $1.9 billion short over the past 12 months.
In Northern Arizona, the Navajo Generating Station (NGS) and a coal mine team to produce reliable, affordable electricity while providing 755 good-paying jobs, about 90 percent of whom are Native Americans. A federal report now threatens these jobs.
Manufacturing as a share of real GDP in America has hovered around 12 percent since 1960, even as manufacturing’s share of employment has dropped by about a quarter due to a steady increase in productivity. But, what if corporate America brings even half of the more than $2 trillion it has stashed overseas and invests it at home under more favorable tax treatment?
The bigger issue is that of a systemic lack of government accountability, especially at the federal level with what amounts to virtually inexhaustible supplies of “free” money.