The inner-city community of Bonton, near downtown Dallas, is thousands of miles and nearly two centuries removed from the Victorian London of Charles Dickens. But there are some important parallels. If I’m hesitant to cast Daron Babcock, of Bonton Farms, in the role of Scrooge for this re-telling, it’s only because we focus too much...
The wind industry once again has received a holiday season extension of its multi-billion-dollar tax break, the production tax credit (PTC). The extension—one of the many times Congress has refused to let the PTC expire over the last 27 years—is included in the $1.4 trillion government spending package approved by Congress last week, despite claims...
It’s that time of year. As New Year’s Eve approaches, we look back on 2019 seeking nuggets of wisdom from twelve more months of the human experience. Unfortunately, the Word of the Year selections from two top dictionaries reveal just how misplaced this year’s priorities were. The Oxford English Dictionary selected “climate crisis” as the...
President Trump signed the Tax Cut and Jobs Act into law on December 22, 2017. The tax cut, combined with billions in federal regulatory relief, reinvigorated the economic expansion which is now in its 126th month, making it the longest recovery in U.S. history. While the tax reform law cut taxes for most individual taxpayers and...
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision on Wednesday holding the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate unconstitutional does two things. First, it affirms the argument we’ve been making all along — that despite the promises and assurances all Americans received, Obamacare hurt families by taking away their insurance, taking away their doctors, limiting their choices and...
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics just released its 2018 data for fatal occupational injuries. As with many government reports, much of the data reflects common sense with a few interesting outliers. In 2018, 5,250 people sustained fatal injuries at work. To put that into perspective, an estimated 609,640 Americans died of cancer in 2018, 116 times as many...
Hollywood actor Hugh Jackman once said: “Giving people a hand up, not a handout, is the way forward.” The Trump administration seems to agree, having announced new rules for the nation’s food stamp program that could help people transition faster from welfare to work. The new rules, set to take effect in April, take aim at a loophole...
Greenhouse gas negotiations in Madrid adjourned after two weeks without an agreement, leaving delegates to jet back home in failure. In response, an executive with the Environmental Defense Fund admonished nations to go their own way on carbon markets, setting up rules for “international emissions trading.” A U.N. report released last month said greenhouse gas emissions must...
In less than a week, Houstonians will once again head to the polls to select their next mayor and chart the city’s course over the next few years. But before voters decide on which direction the city ought to go, they should first understand where it is. To get a sense of things, voters can look to...
The academic left and the deep state — really, the same group of people — suffer from identical insufferable attributes: they’re smug, arrogant, and self-righteous. But even as they push our country to the brink of a presidential impeachment, the American people see through them. Their attitude permeates every television interview and op-ed. “Trust us,”...
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...