As if Texans don’t have enough to worry about with the current pandemic and labor market woes, some cities are threatening to make things worse with massive tax increases. On July 14, the Pflugerville City Council passed a resolution directing the Travis County Tax Assessor-Collector “to calculate the voter-approval tax rate of the City of...
First, local officials were rumored to be considering raising taxes by 8% in the next fiscal year, using the statewide disaster declaration as its excuse. And now, in the same year as a global pandemic and resulting economic turmoil, the Austin City Council wants to increase property taxes by hundreds of dollars a year to pay for light...
The U.S. is exceptional in many positive ways, from its Founding ideals to the dynamism of its free market economy and technological innovations. It is also distinguished by having less than 5 percent of the world’s population, but 20 percent of those behind bars. The U.S. has 8.5 times the incarceration rate of Germany. Of course, there are many...
Comparing the Texas Rangers to the Washington Redskins is nonsense—and not just because one is baseball and the other is football. Even before the Washington Redskins elected to change their name, the Texas Rangers baseball team had come under increasing scrutiny. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune referred to the Rangers moniker, which refers to the storied law...
As of Friday, Texas reported more than 3.2 million tests for the active COVID-19 virus had been completed. These tests are vital on several levels: for individuals, for those treating the sick, for first responders, for the health care system and for policymakers. But this unprecedented testing effort hasn’t been quickly reported and analyzed, leaving our state...
The Hollywood scene used to be filled with Joe Rogans — free spirits who spoke their minds. Sure, liberals dominated the world of entertainment, but non-liberals, at least those who had already made it or who possessed a certain level of moral courage, could, and did, speak out. The era of free speech has come to a close in...
Despite a major economic meltdown and rampant unemployment, Dallas ISD appears poised to ask voters to sign off on the largest bond request in Texas history. The district’s jaw-dropping bond package totals approximately $3.7 billion, proposing to fund improvements at most of the district’s facilities and campuses and replacements at two dozen schools. Community members...
Is your retirement plan safe? No, I don’t mean from the uncertainty caused by the coronavirus. I mean from the political whims of self-serving investment managers and environmental activists. There’s a growing trend in the financial community, driven by boisterous public shaming campaigns, towards environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing — meaning giving more funds to...
As Americans seek a return to some modicum of normalcy, when it comes to criminal justice, we must not be the handcuffed to the past. Much of that past was abnormal, especially in view of new possibilities. Not only does the United States have a fifth of the world’s population compared to 25 percent of its...
In a recent poll, parents’ top concern was whether their children will miss in-person school instruction time. And they have good reason to be concerned as 67% of teachers said completion rates of student assignments were worse than in-person instruction. This hurts disadvantaged students the most, as the Texas Education Agency recently noted that students...
Every year, the U.S. Census Bureau publishes estimates on state and local revenue and spending. The most recent estimate is for 2017. The top five states in per capita state and local revenue collection, including federal transfer payments to state and local government (mostly Medicaid) are New York, Alaska, Wyoming, California, and Hawaii. In the case...
Universal theories can have a certain tidy attraction. In science, they can result in revolutionary breakthroughs — Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity comes to mind. In the messy realm of human affairs, however, universal theories have a tendency to fall apart. Ruy Teixeira, of the leftist Center for American Progress, provides a textbook example of...