People passionate about public policy don’t aspire to make a dollar. They strive to make a difference. And having an impact is almost always deeply satisfying. That was certainly the case with Pflugerville this week. On Tuesday, the Texas Public Policy Foundation hosted Senator Paul Bettencourt and Representative Dustin Burrows to talk taxes and the...
Congress should scrap what’s currently being discussed in the next round of COVID-19-related recovery efforts. Instead, it should focus on getting businesses operating and workers working again after governments’ lockdowns severely disrupted the lives and livelihoods of Americans. This can be done with the Foundation’s proposal of the Rehire America Workplace Recovery Act that includes the essential...
School supply lists are an annual tradition; parents know that every August, they’ll start filling backpacks with pencils and paper and three-ring binders. This year is different: It includes masks, hand sanitizer, and an awful lot of uncertainty. That uncertainty isn’t good for families. For our children’s sake, we must reopen schools for in-person learning. President Trump’s...
This week, the Harris County Commissioner’s Court met to discuss the possibility of raising taxes next year. The reason? “People need more of us,” according to Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo. Judge Hidalgo is partially right—people are in need. The government lockdown and oil market chaos has unleashed a wave of human suffering. Consider that...
The government lockdowns due to COVID-19 over the past several months have devastated American families. And that means Medicare is in trouble. According to the recent jobs report, the unemployment rate fell to 10.2%, almost triple the unemployment rate in February before the lockdowns began. In July, the number of insured unemployment was 16.2 million and the four-week...
The joyful response from anti-pipeline organizations to the recent news about the scrapping of the Atlantic Coast pipeline and the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to permit delay of the Keystone XL pipeline project demonstrates the need for anti-pipeline groups to take a refresher course on energy. For the foreseeable future, fossil fuels will remain by necessity our primary energy...
Some Texans have simply given up. Mick Larkin in Wichita Falls, Texas, has closed down his karaoke club for good. The Lone Star State’s COVID-19 lockdown rules were changed again June 26; Mr. Larkin and his partner dumped the $1,000 in perishable goods they’d just purchased for the weekend and walked away. No decision to...
It now looks unlikely that Austinites will get to make their voices heard this November in the controversy over the city’s homelessness policies. The Austin city clerk recently rejected a petition that would have allowed voters to reinstate the camping ban the City Council dismantled last year. Save Austin Now, a nonprofit that supported bringing back the...
Credential inflation refers to an increase in the education credentials required for a job—for example, a job that used to be done by high school graduates but now requires new hires to have a college degree. Credential inflation has been going on for decades. One of the earliest mentions of it is in professor Randall...
The 2020 Louisiana Regular Session convened with a freshman class of 46 representatives and 18 senators, with Republicans holding a majority in both chambers. A conservative, pro-business legislature brought a refreshed interest in criminal justice reforms focused on making Louisiana reentry ready. These reforms included the removal of barriers for the formerly incarcerated through expanded...
In the 1940s and 1950s, U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) led a movement to purge communists from positions of power. Many government employees, academics, writers, labor union leaders, and entertainers were inappropriately fired or blacklisted for the “crime” of having (or being suspected of having) a different ideology than Sen. McCarthy. Later generations use the...
It’s time for some hard truths about education. Our current system is failing too many Texas students, especially low-income and minority children. This has been the case for a long time, but the current coronavirus situation has shined a much-needed spotlight on the problem. Unfortunately, Texas isn’t prepared for the fall semester because no matter...