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Kentucky’s threshold by which theft escalates from misdemeanor to felony has not been amended in over a decade and is outdated due to inflation.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...
Everything that’s wrong with the H.R. 1 election takeover bill can be summed up with the propagandistic misnomer the Democrats have labeled it with—the “For the People Act.” It undermines the very right it purports to uphold, a citizen’s right to have a say in our representative democracy. Enabling fraudulent ballots to cancel out legitimate...
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner tweeted out a bold statement on Tuesday: “We don’t have voter fraud in Texas…” It was part of a longer tweet, which continued, “but we did have massive systemwide grid failure, statewide power outages, bursted water pipes, no water and high electricity bills. Um. Now I understand why some elected officials...
In a 2009 episode of HBO‘s Flight of the Conchords, Brian, the fictional prime minister of New Zealand, wants to meet the American president. Unable to convince the White House switchboard operator that New Zealand is a real country, Brian travels to Washington and instead takes a public White House tour hoping for a “chance” meeting with...
In January, police in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas found 19 charred corpses in two burned-out vehicles. The initial investigation showed they had been shot first, then set aflame. They were migrants, many from Central America, on their way to Texas. One of them was Marvin Alberto Tomás — “Lefty” to his friends. He left his family in Guatemala...
Indiana’s 2021 legislative session showed promising efforts to reform the criminal justice system and promote public safety, with lawmakers introducing several important bills. In particular, this session brought opportunities for the state to improve initiatives protecting women in prison, but these attempts ultimately failed when lawmakers hit the halfway marker of the 2021 session. As...