The struggle and the idea. Defining Texas and the Texans. This is the prepared text for my remarks at the Texas Center at Schreiner University in Kerrville, Texas, 25 March 2022. Texas identity. What is it? How do we understand it? What does it mean? What does it demand of us? Those of us who...
In Shel Silverstein’s bestselling book, “Where the Sidewalk Ends,” readers journey through a dizzying fictional tale in which boys are turned into television sets and diamonds grow in gardens. But for Nashville residents Jim Knight and Jason Mayes, their dizzying bureaucratic journey of attempting to develop their property was terrifyingly real. The story begins with...
Ghost gun—the very name invokes the image of something illegal, something hidden, something meant for unlawful ends. This name for unregistered firearms was chosen just for that purpose—to make it feel like such firearms are tainted by ill intent. The Biden administration has targeted them since ascending to office, and many liberal states have already...
It’s no surprise the Biden administration favors big government. But a new climate rule proposed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) takes Biden’s “whole of government” assault on our energy resources to whole new level. Under a new SEC rule proposed last month, all companies would be required to disclose their greenhouse gas...
The economic shock from the shutdowns in response to the COVID-19 pandemic were unprecedented. Never had state governors imposed stay-at-home orders that cut people off from their lives and livelihoods. Those costly policies were bad enough, but then came historic increases in deficit spending and money creation. While these may have been well-intentioned policies early...
What does a modern chemistry class have to do with classical education? Founders Classical Academy teacher Myles Dempsey doesn’t even pause for a moment: “Everything.” Students have just filed out from lab class, where they performed experiments with salt solutions. Mr. Dempsey is preparing for his next class. “Don’t you see?” he asks. “We’re in...
When Uvea was 9, Oregon’s foster care agency couldn’t find a placement in-state, so it sent her to Montana—to a poorly supervised facility where she was drugged, physically restrained and verbally abused by facility staff. “Can I say the two words she called me?” Uvea asked a lawmaker during a later legislative hearing. “They made...
When the Houston Chronicle reported on the Biden administration’s plans for offshore wind in the Gulf of Mexico last fall, it illustrated the piece with an old photo of construction of the Deepwater Wind project off Block Island. An old photo—because now, less than six years later, Deepwater Wind, with a grand total of five...
Americans have less money than they had last year—though taxes haven’t been raised. So what’s the problem? Inflation, which has increased at a 40-year high annual pace of 7.9%. It acts as a hidden tax because we don’t see it listed on our tax bills, but we sure see less money on our bank accounts....
In recent years, there’s been a growing consensus that the “Success Sequence” is a key pathway to avoiding poverty. Unfortunately, this prevailing theory doesn’t fully account for circumstances beyond one’s control. We need a more holistic approach to poverty prevention and alleviation. Brookings Institution fellows Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill originally coined the “Success Sequence”...
An MSNBC headline reporting on a recent interview of a White House economic advisor Jared Bernstein claimed that America has a “booming economy.” But that’s not what most Americans think about the economic situation. The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index for March, which gauges how consumers feel about the economy, fell to a decade...
Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman once famously derided the idea that government can spend money at nobody’s expense. He cheekily called it: “the free lunch myth.” That’s true even in Tyler, Texas. Friedman’s point—which remains as true today as it was back then—is that government doesn’t have any money of its own, and so every...