“Trainwreck” isn’t a bad description of my academic career. Bored, more interested in reading real books than textbooks, not caring about the things I was expected to in junior high and high school—athletics and social status—I ignored assignments, skipped classes and eventually dropped out. I got nothing from Mesquite High School, and to be fair,...
Gov. Kim Reynolds and Republican legislative leaders are making tax reform a priority for the upcoming 2022 legislative session. The path to keeping government from excessively burdening people with taxes and allowing for pro-growth tax reform starts with conservative budgeting. Fortunately, Iowa has been practicing prudent budgeting. Iowa will end the current FY 2021 with a $1.24 billion budget surplus in...
The dollar is buying less food, fuel, and other necessities these days. Inflation, something Americans who were around in the 1970s contended with, is making an unwelcome comeback. Contrary to the repeated assertions of the Biden administration and its allies, inflation may be with us for a while. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) jumped by...
When Donald Trump was president and filling the federal court system with conservative jurists, some leftists yearned for a “national divorce.” Richard Kreitner, in “Break It Up: Secession, Division, and the Secret History of America’s Imperfect Union,” argues that a unified America does terrible things such as promoting slavery, instituting Jim Crow, starting wars, and incarcerating minorities....
I enlisted in the U.S. Army in February 1983 at the age of 20. I was motivated to do so for two reasons. First, the draft had ended 10 years earlier. If America and our Constitution were to be defended, someone had to do it, and having been a high school athlete and avid sportsman,...
If the public had been largely unaware of the pervasiveness of critical race theory in America’s public schools, the shock waves of Virginia’s election have made sure people, particularly parents, are now paying attention. The Texas Legislature joined several other states and passed an anti-CRT bill earlier this year. To fight back, proponents of the...
In response to the pandemic, Congress passed several bills, including the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act and the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), that boosted public education funding by “nearly $190.5 billion.” The massive aid was provided in hopes of reversing learning loss, but instead, many school districts seem to be frittering...
Something happened last week that hasn’t happened in a long time—for the first time in a decade, Texas voters said “NO” to most school district bonds. Here’s more from The Texan: “Last week, a majority of proposed bonds on the November ballot failed for the first time since 2011, when only 17 of the 37...
Prices are rising at the fastest pace in 30 years, according to Wednesday’s report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on the consumer price index for October. The report showed a rapid 6.2% increase over the last 12 months, a pace which, if continued, would see prices double in fewer than 12 years....
The October job report showed solid growth in the U.S. labor market, with 531,000 nonfarm jobs added last month, but earnings increases are not keeping up with inflation. The unemployment rate fell 0.2 percentage points to 4.6%, but the labor force participation rate remained at 61.6%, the same rate as a year ago, and well...
Thank you for your service. It’s a five-word sentence that sounds so simple, and to the person saying it, it is. But to the person on the receiving end of the compliment, there is just never the right response. I knew I wanted to be a Marine when I was 7 years old. After 9/11,...
Local governments appealed to Texas voters seeking lots of new debt this election cycle. According to The Texan: “Eighty-one localities have placed 149 different bond issues before their constituents on ballots across Texas, totaling nearly $11 billion.” For better or worse, voters approved a great deal of it. But not every bond proposition passed. In...