The Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) recently announced that more children exited foster care into safe homes than entered the system during 2019. The department also announced that the number of adoptions during the year surpassed 6,000 for the first time. This good news has been a long time coming for the foster...
$8.7 billion. That’s the staggering amount of criminal justice fees and fines Texas’ criminal courts have imposed on defendants between 2012 and 2018. That may look like a windfall to the state, but imposing a fee or a fine shouldn’t be confused with actually collecting them. A recent study by the Brennan Center for Justice...
American employers added 266,000 jobs in November, far above the 180,000 expected by economists, while the unemployment rate fell to 3.5%, matching a 50-year low. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the employment numbers this morning in their monthly release. Employment rebounded by 54,000 in manufacturing following last month’s decline of 43,000. Most of this...
A new wind farm is being proposed in Knox County. The project – Griffin Trail Wind, LLC – is seeking significant tax breaks in return for bringing its investment to the area. Griffin Trail Wind’s application for Benjamin ISD was posted in March, and it also applied for a limitation from Seymore ISD in May....
We should always celebrate more freedom in our lives. December 5 is no different. Eighty-six years ago, Prohibition was repealed. This year, Texas can celebrate its own version of Repeal Day. This December marks three months since another kind of prohibition was abolished—on beer to go. On September 1, Texans were finally allowed to buy...
Time is running out, and Democrats are dragging their feet on the new North American trade deal. They’d rather focus on impeachment. Americans disagree. It might be — in the Democrats’ eyes — a short-term political win, but tanking the U.S. Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA) would cause lasting damage U.S. producers — including Texas farmers...
Last month, in a move that captured national attention, Oklahoma released 462 people early from prison after Gov. Kevin Stitt commuted their sentences. Each of these individuals was imprisoned for low-level, nonviolent offenses that, due to recent reforms, would not result in prison were they arrested today. Stitt’s order was the largest single-day commutation in...
Local government debt continues to soar. According to new data from the Bond Review Board, local debt service outstanding—or “the amount that is required to cover the repayment of principal and interest on a debt” held by political subdivisions in Texas—rose to more than $365 billion in FY 2019, which is an increase of almost...
The numbers are good—and suggest our nation’s economic expansion continues apace. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported today that the number of people who were unemployed at any time in 2018 as a proportion of the number of persons who worked or looked for work—called the “work-experience unemployment rate”—was 7.8%, down by 0.8%...
Every election year, politicians in Wisconsin take to the campaign trail and promise to spend taxpayer dollars wisely and to keep our streets safe. But in our state, we have a criminal justice system that often betrays those promises and undermines our shared values. Since 1980, Wisconsin’s prison population has grown more than fivefold. Today,...
‘Did you need to go to college to become a welder?” I asked. Jeff Jenkins answered with a chuckle. “No, no I didn’t.” Jenkins, owner of an HVAC company and a welding firm in Austin, educated me for the next 25 minutes on what it takes to get into — and succeed at — the...
The re-election of Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, who made protecting his state’s expanded Medicaid program a key campaign issue, has some pundits excited about the chances of expanding Texas’ own government-run healthcare system. What these pundits fail to realize, however, is that neither an election nor the elation surrounding it make Medicaid expansion a...