Energy & Environment

Solar Mandates are Shady: The High Cost and Limited Benefits of Government-Driven Renewables

In recent years it has become fashionable to incorporate green energy solutions like solar wiring and electric vehicle charging stations in homes and buildings. California leads the way in the attempt to transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy alternatives— with limited success — but the unintended financial consequences of these sanctimonious initiatives fall invariably...

September 1, 2021

Economy

Economic Freedom Supports Opportunity

If you’re poor and reside where there’s little economic freedom, then you have fewer opportunities to improve your livelihood compared with those living in more economically free places. The freedom to have the flexibility to control your future and leave a legacy to future generations with little influence by government supports human flourishing. This too-often...

September 1, 2021

Public Safety

No, criminal justice reform isn’t causing the current crime wave

Conservative criminal justice reformers have faced occasional skepticism over our tried-and-true criminal justice solutions, but never something quite so outlandish as a recent suggestion, by an avowed conservative, no less, that conservative reformers somehow bear blame for rising violent crime in liberal bastions such as New York City and Portland. Sean Kennedy, in his recent Washington Examiner article ,...

August 31, 2021

Health Care

A New Vision for Women’s Care

“Where is the NuVision Women’s Care clinic?” is the wrong question—but we’ll get to that in a moment. The real question is why was NuVision Women’s Care established in the first place? “It came about through my own experience,” says founder Aly Bond. “Like many women, I felt like my provider didn’t listen to me....

August 30, 2021

Border Security

Afghanistan, Southern U.S. Border Show Biden Uninterested in Defending America

The debacle in Afghanistan is still unfolding, but it is already one of the signal disasters of American history. It’s usually premature to assess contemporary events in history’s light, so it’s a sign of just how bad things are in Kabul that I — a historian — am ready to put it alongside the Bay...

August 30, 2021

Taxes & Spending

As Newsom Recall Vote Looms, Corporations Are Fleeing California On The Double

California voters have started casting their ballots on their second gubernatorial recall ever and their first in 18 years, deciding whether to give Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom a new lease on his political life. Polling shows the recall on a knife’s edge. At the time of this writing, “Yes” — remove — narrowly leads with 48 percent...

August 27, 2021

K-12 Education

Don’t Discriminate Against Tyler Teachers

When Tyler ISD board members on Aug. 23 approved a $500 bonus for teachers who receive their COVID-19 vaccine (and show proof), and when they discussed additional sick leave benefits for those same teachers, they—perhaps unwittingly—undermined the lessons we’ve been teaching our children for generations. “It’s okay to discriminate against certain people” those policies say,...

August 27, 2021

Health Care

Don’t Fence Me In: Judge Backs Texas on Medicaid Waiver

It’s a truism—yet also true—that collectivism discourages innovation. If one size fits all, as the Affordable Care Act and its proponents insist, then we need not search for other fits—or other solutions. Yet a federal judge in Tyler, Texas has now sided with Texas and innovation in his ruling on a Medicaid waiver program that...

August 23, 2021

Economy

How U.S. Elites’ Focus On Afghanistan Helped China Become Our No. 1 Threat

The fiasco in Afghanistan should, by itself, bring a reckoning for the professionals who assured us it was a worthy effort. It won’t. We witnessed the sudden, embarrassing end to a misbegotten nation-building effort costing more than 2,300 American dead and some $2.3 trillion in expenditures for warfighting, civil works projects, the now non-existent Afghan...

August 23, 2021

Economy

A SNAP Judgment with Little Thought

By administrative fiat, federal bureaucrats in the Biden administration at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently expanded food stamp handouts by almost 30%. Yes, you read that correctly, your taxes are going to go up to pay for expenditures your elected members didn’t vote on. And the expansion of these handouts from the Supplemental...

August 19, 2021

Taxes & Spending

A “Vehicle Miles Traveled” Tax is a Bad Idea  

As if the $1.2 trillion “infrastructure” bill in Congress could not be worse, a closer look shows that among other bad ideas there is $125 million allocated  to fund the creation of pilot programs to evaluate a federal vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax. The idea behind the VMT tax is to tax drivers for every...

August 19, 2021

Economy

We Need Calvin Coolidge’s Fiscal Conservatism

The national debt is rapidly nearing $29 trillion, which is 25% more than our entire economy, and is orders of magnitude higher if you consider unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare. This threatens life as we know it and must be addressed now. Since the start of 2020, the debt has increased by $5.2...

August 19, 2021