Let’s be clear, the Affordable Care Act was never about reform of health care it only reformed health insurance. Care is something different, and if we’re going to evaluate the ACA fairly—and honestly debate alternatives—our focus must be on how much care people are getting. Healthcare systems exist to optimize the health of individuals through timely access to...
Dark horse presidential candidate Sen. Kristen Gillibrand, D-N.Y., recently unveiled her “family bill of rights,” a plan she claims “will lift many of the financial burdens on families and help level the playing field for children” within her first 100 days as president. Unlike the actual Bill of Rights, Gillibrand’s proposal expands the role of government while...
Just one day after the conclusion of the 86th Texas Legislature, Hank Whitman announced that he will be retiring as commissioner of the Department of Family and Protective Services at the end of this month. Appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott in 2016, his tenure as the head of the state’s child welfare agency was a...
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics issued its May jobs report Friday morning, estimating that nonfarm payrolls went up 75,000 with the unemployment rate holding steady at 3.6%, remaining at low levels last seen in December 1969. The Hispanic unemployment rate remained at a record low of 4.2% in May while the unemployment rate for workers without...
A series of three seemingly unconnected events over five days in Ohio and California hint at a fundamental political realignment, underscoring the fragility of the American left’s coalition going into the 2020 election. There is a growing, and likely irreparable, rift between elite progressive environmentalists who are accustomed to dominating the narrative within the Democratic...
Los Angeles has a growing problem with diseases borne by both flea and feces. An LAPD officer was just diagnosed with typhoid fever along with two more from the same workplace displaying symptoms. Meanwhile, cases of typhus, caused by a different bacterium, have soared in California from 13 in 2008 to 167 in 2018. In addition, there have...
Within the broad sphere of the criminal justice system, it is perhaps understandable that physical entities — predominantly state prisons, but also increasingly county jails — have received most of the scrutiny among the reform-minded. Rapid growth in prison and jail populations, driven in large part by “tough on crime” sentencing policies that emphasized carceral sanctions for...
Too many students feel afraid to speak honestly on campus for fear of offending someone, a new national survey of college students says. University censorship regimes are teaching some students not only to live with but to embrace the conformism of thought inculcated through university speech codes, speaker dis-invitations, “safe spaces,” “trigger warnings,” and campus...
Pension Tracker, a project of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research led by former California State Assemblyman Joe Nation, Ph.D., is out with its updated assessment of the nation’s unfunded state and local government pension fund liabilities. It’s not a pretty picture—especially if you live in Alaska, California, Connecticut or Illinois where your per...
Career and technical education (CTE) used to be called vocational education but was successfully rebranded with the reauthorization of the Perkins Act in 2006. The push to rebrand at the time had to do with the twin issues of declining enrollment in these programs as well as a social stigma associated with a correct perception...
An investigative report by WDRB in Louisville, Kentucky recently exposed a particularly innovative — although likely illegal — method that the state’s child protective services caseworkers came up with to remove children from their families without court approval. According to the report, Cabinet for Health and Family Services workers kept stacks of blank emergency removal orders that...
For Eva Arriaga, the “skilled worker disconnect” was uncomfortably close to home. Though the Houston area economy is booming, the young single mother lacked the skills she needed to take advantage of the shortfall of as many as 8 million welders, plumbers, electricians and other skilled workers that the American workforce would need by 2027. The qualification...