During most of my time at the White House over the last year, America was experiencing one of the best labor markets ever. The White House called it a blue-collar boom. And they were right. Then the Wuhan Virus changed everything. As Americans became infected, the resulting fear brought the dynamic blue-collar boom to a...
With the coronavirus still infecting and killing people, particularly the old and infirm, there have been increasing calls to move America to an all-mail-in ballot for this November’s election. This campaign is being advanced through legislation — the economic recovery package the House passed two weeks ago dubbed the HEROES Act, which would allocate $3.6 billion...
No one likes to diet. It’s hard and takes an awful lot of willpower. But sometimes life doesn’t give you a choice. Recent unemployment data from the Texas Workforce Commission has set off alarm bells and revealed some brutal new realities. For April, the state’s unemployment rate jumped to almost 13 percent as “the Texas...
Medical professionals know all about triage. When there’s a high demand for medical services — such as in a natural disaster or an outbreak of disease as we are unfortunately now facing — they must perform this risk assessment to determine who needs the most urgent and intensive care. Bail should be the same way....
With the coronavirus and now the urban unrest battering the economy, a large dose of unexpected good economic news crossed the wire this morning from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: the economy added 2.5 million nonfarm payroll jobs in May versus the forecast consensus of another steep decline of 7.5 million jobs. The unemployment rate fell...
The terrible situation caused by the coronavirus shutdowns across the world has led to an interesting experiment in air quality. What happens to the environment here and abroad when worldwide transportation and industrial production drop off significantly? Reading the news, the improvements seem to be significant. News reports with headlines such as “Coronavirus Got Rid of Smog”...
President Donald Trump has increasingly implored mayors and governors in the cities and states wracked by violence to do their jobs and keep the peace. Whether due to lack of will, to underestimating the coming night’s violence, or to an outright sympathy with the looters — erroneously conflating the legitimate grievances of the protesters with...
Russian president Vladimir Putin once described the meteoric rise of hydraulic fracturing in the U.S. as “dangerous” — not to the environment, but to the Kremlin. Putin should know. He is, after all, an expert. His Ph.D. thesis, entitled “Mineral and Raw Materials Resources and the Development Strategy for the Russian Economy” shows he understands both energy supply...
There are ways to stimulate the economy other than spending trillions of more taxpayer dollars. Lowering out of control health care costs, which are an enormous drag on the nation, would boost patients’ pocketbooks, employers’ balance sheets, and governments’ budgets – all of which are under tremendous pressure due to the coronavirus-induced economic crisis. Lawmakers can...
As some COVID-19 lockdowns begin to lift, life may look vastly different depending on where you live. In some states, freedom is returning. But in others, big government reigns supreme. The handling of COVID-19 in the United States has brought a renewed commitment to federalism with each governor making decisions tailored to their state. While...
Like state prisons across the country, prisons in Arkansas are too crowded to safely deal with the highly contagious COVID-19 pandemic. Already strained for capacity before the pandemic, Arkansas prisons are now facing a virus that preys on people in close quarters. This includes the Cummins Unit, which had nearly 900 infections in a facility...
More than 35 state representatives say Texas shouldn’t check whether applicants are actually unemployed before granting unemployment benefits. They have written a letter to Gov. Greg Abbott and the Texas Workforce Commission “requesting they temporarily suspend unemployment certifications in hopes of making better use of resources.” According to one of the letter’s authors, state Rep. Michelle Beckley, D-Carrollton,...