The Honorable Jason Isaac is the Director of Life:Powered at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Prior to joining the Foundation, Jason, a fourth-generation native Texan, was elected four times as the State Representative for Hays and Blanco counties in the Texas Hill Country. During his eight years of service, he successfully passed legislation to reduce taxes, strengthen election integrity, improve public education, preserve Second Amendment rights, protect local groundwater, and protect private property rights.
It’s been a few winters since gas prices were at the top of Americans’ list of concerns. But the pain many of us are feeling at the pump—and the drastic increase in home heating costs expected this winter—has changed public sentiment on energy policy. Unfortunately, the Biden administration is pointing the finger in all the...
An electric co-op serving over 360,000 households across Central Texas is under fire for restructuring its solar customers’ rates. But without the change, all Pedernales Electric Cooperative (PEC) customers face higher bills in order to subsidize the few who choose to install solar panels on their homes. With prices for home heating, gasoline, and most...
Since 1920, Texas’ economy has been hindered by a little-known protectionist law called the Jones Act. In fact, Wayne Christian, the current chairman of the Railroad Commission of Texas, noted in a 2018 letter that this act hurts Texas and the nation and should be reevaluated. At a time when energy prices are soaring and...
An energy crisis is rocking the world the likes of which we haven’t seen since the 1970s. Although headlines about energy costs in faraway nations may not breach busy families’ political radar, the energy shortages and skyrocketing prices spreading across Europe and Asia are a warning sign for America. If we allow the anti-energy, anti-prosperity climate cartel...
In a recent Dallas Morning News op-ed, former Bush advisor Margaret Spellings and Texas’ state climatologist Dr. John Nielsen-Gammon waxed poetic about the impending climate apocalypse, claiming Texas as a victim based on dubious predictions of weather we “might expect” — hardly the standard for scientific certainty or sound policy decisions. While the report the...
Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised anymore. Congress is deliberately sidestepping the legislative process enshrined in the Constitution, abusing procedural gimmicks to force the radical climate agenda down the American people’s throats through the budget reconciliation package. The reconciliation bill is loaded with pork-barrel spending and sweeping policy changes that are entirely inappropriate for budget legislation....
The climate army is coming. Dissatisfied with the American people’s lack of concern for their issue du jour, self-righteous coastal elites are moving on from slick PR campaigns and headline-grabbing protests to deploy a legion of climate activists across the nation — paid for by your tax dollars, whether you like it or not. President Joe Biden’s proposed Civilian Climate Corps (CCC) would be the biggest mobilization of government labor since the New Deal, a...
The United Nations’ latest climate change report sparked predictable hyperventilating. You’ve seen the headlines crying, “Code Red for Humanity” and clamoring about “extreme” and “unprecedented” warming likely to be “irreversible” — accompanied by fear-mongering images of raging wildfires and flooded towns. Fortunately, the true state of our climate is far from disastrous. In fact, both climate...
The Biden administration is at it again, frantically trying to erase Trump-era regulatory reforms without regard for their benefit to the American people. The latest red-tape gambit, a hasty and misguided attempt to delay and ultimately undo a major permitting reform, is not only bad policy, it’s a violation of the public’s trust. The Biden...
In the eight months since inauguration, the Biden administration has been hard at work frantically unraveling President Donald Trump’s “America First” policies. Amid the flurry of executive fiats and new agency rules, President Joe Biden’s ban on solar panel materials from certain Chinese companies is the first move we’ve seen that doesn’t put America dead...
President Joe Biden followed his raft of heavy-handed climate executive orders by announcing his loftiest goal yet: slashing U.S. carbon dioxide emissions in half by the end of the decade. Biden’s ambitious climate fantasy is doomed to fail—not only failing to reach his emissions target but also failing utterly to have the slightest effect on climate change. The best solution...
When the novel coronavirus first began to spread, the news was abuzz with predictions of mass infections overwhelming hospitals, and dizzying death tolls. We were told COVID-19 would kill millions in the United States alone, with carnage rivaling post-apocalyptic pandemic blockbusters, and dying patients would be left on the streets. We hoarded toilet paper and canned goods...