An entire cottage industry has sprung up around the nation, with books, articles, and pundits warning about an impending Electoral College blue shift. The theory is simple; blue-state economic migrants, in search of the opportunity they can’t find in their high-tax states, bring their liberal voting attitudes to their new homes, and then vote to enact the...
Public education advocates regularly criticize the Legislature for what they perceive as limited resources, tight budgets, and low salaries within the education system. But that narrative often doesn’t quite align with the facts. Case in point: sky-high superintendent pay. As the Foundation has noted in the past, superintendents in Texas frequently bring home six-figure salaries...
New open government legislation went into effect recently, letting the public finally get answers to some long-lingering questions, like how much did the city of McAllen pay entertainer Enrique Iglesias for a 2015 concert? According to the Texas Tribune, Iglesias was paid $485,000 for his performance and “provided with a chartered flight from Guadalajara, Mexico;...
John Merline, writing in Issues and Insights notes the elite left’s “apoplectic fit when President Donald Trump started talking about dishwashers at his Milwaukee rally this week.” This isn’t the first time Trump talked dishwashers and it likely won’t be the last. Republican electeds and their consultants have been openly fretting about professional suburban women. These largely...
Last week, the New York Times published an editorial declaring the seemingly imminent extinction of Republican women at multiple levels of government. Largely crediting the rise of Donald Trump, the article ends with a discouraging statement — and thinly veiled wishful thinking — that the “future for Republican women in politics looks very bleak indeed.” While unquestionably...
In November, the Department of Education released post graduate earnings and debt data broken down by college program — which will have a revolutionary impact on higher education. Students (and policymakers) can now get accurate information about how much recent graduates earned by college and degree (e.g., a Bachelor’s in Physics from Ohio State University). While the...
I have a confession to make. My recent study on state funding of higher education was about the simplest piece of research I’ve done in a dozen years. So was the finding; there’s been no trend of state disinvestment in higher education. But what a ruckus it caused. The key finding entailed simply downloading and graphing data...
The Feb. 3 Democratic Iowa caucuses are only weeks away, followed eight days later by the New Hampshire primary. Prior to these two key skirmishes in the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination, national polling suggests that former Vice President Joe Biden is leading the pack, followed by Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, with South Bend...
Here’s the good news: the Texas Legislature put hundreds of millions of additional dollars into mental health for Texas in the new biennial budget. The state now allocates $8 billion for services ranging from community mental health services to substance abuse treatment, and more. The bad news is it isn’t always about the money. Texas still faces...
An article in the Wall Street Journal says there’s growing demand for college degrees, even for manufacturing jobs. It’s a trend that will have negative consequences for American workers and American businesses. The Journal’s analysis of federal data found that “U.S. manufacturers have added more than a million jobs since the recession, with the growth going to...
China’s social credit system is planned to go active throughout that nation this year. It’s both a totalitarian dream and a civil libertarian nightmare. Here, it is important to understand that “totalitarian” means a form of government in which everything is the concern of the state: where and how you live, your faith, how many...
Texas has a lot going for it—low unemployment, population growth, and a favorable regulatory environment. People want to come here, and it’s not just for our brisket and breakfast tacos. But our prosperity is unevenly distributed, with some regions experiencing a disheartening “tale of two cities” dynamic. Port Arthur is one such place. With the enormous...