Local governments are addicted to debt. Over the past decade, cities, counties, school districts, and special districts have been on a borrowing binge—and last year was no exception. New data shows that local government debt grew to more than $365 billion in fiscal year 2019, an increase of almost $11 billion over the previous year....
After the warmup contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, 14 states and the territory of American Samoa are voting on Super Tuesday. California and Texas will award 48 percent of the delegates that day. Providing some perspective to the size of these two states, their most-populous counties, Los Angeles (10.1 million) and Harris (4.7 million), have a combined...
Recent headlines have touted the record $55 billion renewable sector investments last year. Yet these headlines hide the fact that the renewable energy industry has been engaged in a world-class scam for more than 20 years. If we don’t do something about it, it won’t be long before Americans find themselves living in European-style energy poverty....
Answer: $86,109,622,354. That’s right, pension debt owed by Texas’ state and local retirement systems grew to more than $86.1 billion in February 2020, according the Pension Review Board’s latest actuarial valuation report. That’s a marked increase from the previous report (in October 2019) when unfunded liabilities totaled $3.4 billion less, at $82.7 billion owed. Source:...
Former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg claimed in a recent Democratic presidential debate that the “number one place to live out the ‘American Dream’ right now” is Denmark. He couldn’t be more wrong. The American Dream is alive and well — and it’s thriving in Texas, which celebrates its own Independence Day on March 2. Opportunity is what...
Many media outlets and political leaders continue to promote the belief that more than 20 million people will lose health insurance if the Affordable Care Act is struck down. That’s most likely false. At the very least, the loss would not be immediate, as the case would likely be sent back to the district court to establish...
There is an ongoing dust up involving the First Amendment, allegations of prohibited viewpoint discrimination and legislative immunity in the Texas Senate. It’s fascinating stuff for political scientists, political practitioners, and journalists. It started on Thursday, February 27, when a man testified at a Texas State Senate hearing wearing a t-shirt that said, “F**K the...
Some on the left scapegoat for-profit colleges for the problems of higher education. The Obama administration crafted a set of “Gainful Employment” regulations primarily targeting these programs. If a pool of graduates had too much debt relative to earnings, the government would cut off financial aid to its students. These and other regulations helped drive...
The narrow passage of a nearly $10 billion high speed rail plan in California marked a triumph of pay-to-play ballot box corporate cronyism—otherwise known in politics as pork. Groups ranging from train manufacturers to multinational construction companies to trade unions brought the government train idea to the California Legislature back in the mid-1990s. Initially intended...
The fossil fuel follies continue. The environmentalists’ latest publicity campaign is a new name for more of the same: Stop the Money Pipeline, designed to bully banks, investment firms, and insurance providers into cutting ties with energy companies. What the climate activists don’t realize is that divesting from fossil fuels won’t have any meaningful effect...
There’s even an acronym for the way teachers feel about these late winter and early spring months: EDOFMA, the eternal darkness of February, March and April. It’s a time when education seems like an endless slog, with little visible progress. As one blogger puts it, “For the first few weeks back from the holidays in...
The Teacher Retirement System of Texas has a big problem on its hands. A few weeks ago, it was discovered that TRS — the state agency responsible for overseeing teacher pensions — had signed a multi-year lease for luxurious office space in downtown Austin costing more than $326,000 per month. That handsome sum secured 100,000...