“Hey Florida! Help is Here.” That’s how Vice President Kamala Harris recently put a 21st Century spin on Ronald Reagan’s famous quote, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.” What does this have to do with the Texas budget and House Bill 3548?...
Some great news from our friends at Montana’s Frontier Institute! The Montana Legislature has passed a bill to permanently authorize Direct Primary Care (also called Direct Patient Care) in the state. Texas passed similar legislation several sessions ago, allowing doctors to contract with patients to provide regular medical care for a set monthly fee. It...
Engineers and mathematicians would call it an elegant solution. Texas is facing two problems: heavily encumbered “stimulus” dollars coming from the federal government, and a surge of migrants at our southern border that’s reaching crisis proportions. The solution to both is simple. Let’s use stimulus funds to build more wall. President Biden paused construction on...
Imagine a solution to a seemingly intractable problem that is both popular across the political spectrum and effective. It would make us safer, lower unemployment and protect wages. In honor of the start of baseball season, let’s call that solution a low and slow pitch just to the outside, begging to be knocked out of...
Government may soon decide whether a major multinational corporation should pay no taxes on a chip-making plant planned for the Austin area, stirring concerns that economic development programs are being abused. Samsung Semiconductor plans to build a new plant, and Austin, where it already has facilities, is on the short list. But Samsung is requesting...
Texans like to know up front what they’re paying for goods and services. That’s especially true of their health care services—yet prices in hospitals, where we spent the largest portion of our health care dollars—can remain a mystery. But now, state Rep. Tom Oliverson, a medical doctor himself, has filed a bill that would require...
A new property tax report is raising eyebrows—especially among Texans struggling to put food on the table. The newly-released report, published every other year by the Texas Comptroller’s Office, confirms what most already suspect: Property taxes are big and growing fast. In 2019, more than 4,200 local governments hit homeowners and businesses with property tax...
So far this school year, 14 Dallas County schools closed down at least temporarily because of COVID-19. A report in the Dallas Morning News cites a lack of clear guidelines and other inconsistencies for the closures. “The majority of policies are vague and don’t stipulate specific numbers that would trigger a campus closure,” the report...
When people vote – with a moving van or a U-Haul truck – they vote for lower taxes and smaller government. That’s the conclusion from comparing a new report on freedom at the state level with the most recent U.S. Census Bureau data. Over the course of a year, a net of 788,381 people moved to Florida, New Hampshire, Tennessee,...
“Stimulus” checks are in the mail to many (but not all) Americans, and the news is awash in stories about the best ways to spend that $1,400, and even speculation about whether we’ll see a “stimmy rally” on Wall Street. But Texans are smart enough to know that no check from the government comes without...
Property theft is a serious offense that should be treated as such. However, Kentucky’s threshold by which theft escalates from misdemeanor to felony has not been amended in over a decade and is outdated due to inflation. Meanwhile, the state’s corrections facilities are stretched and overcrowded, with the seventh highest incarceration rate in the country—the...
From 2012 to 2020, mail-in ballot use in Texas grew from 204,000 to about 1 million, a quintupling of mailed votes. This suggests Texas is moving from an excuse-required to vote by mail state to a de facto vote-by-mail state, all without a change in the state’s election code. Why does this matter? Because voting...