At the two nights of the most recent Democratic Party presidential debates, 20 candidates warned in ever more alarming terms about the supposedly looming apocalypse. “Literally the survival of humanity on this planet in civilization is in the hands of the next president,” Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said on the second night. “And we have to have...
In his op-ed piece for the Washington Post, former NFL tight end, and Texas A&M graduate, Martellus Bennett provides his personal perspective on why young black boys aren’t encouraged to dream of being something other than athletes. I was blessed enough to be a kid in Chicago in the ’90s. This means I grew up...
As a former college professor and university senior administrator, I was saddened to read a recent op-ed by Columbia University’s president, Lee Bollinger. Titled, “Free Speech on Campus Is Doing Just Fine, Thank You,” the immediate object of Bollinger’s ire is President Trump’s March Executive Order, which threatens universities that fail to uphold the First...
If you get past the over-the-top political rhetoric—that special interests are “trying to steal” a benefit conferred by private employers to their employees—this is exactly the kind of policy discussion we should be having: What’s more fundamental, liberty or “local democracy”? In her Dallas Morning News opinion piece, New America’s Lydia Bean takes the local...
The issue of persistent poverty in many of America’s urban centers is once again in the news. U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Dr. Ben Carson commented this week that when, as pediatric neurosurgeon, he had a young patient from East Baltimore, he faced a “horrible dilemma,” when having to discharge patients back to homes, “infested...
In his argument earlier this month before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Robert Henneke once again demonstrated how Obamacare’s individual mandate provision harms hard-working, law-abiding citizens. (Full disclosure: I too work for the Texas Public Policy Foundation.) Henneke represents individuals who continue to be injured by the Affordable Care Act — working Americans whose...
Ongoing blackouts in New York City offer a wakeup call: If you enjoy electricity, then the Green New Deal isn’t for you. Thousands in the Big Apple are still dealing with power outages as work continues on the mechanical issues behind last week’s massive blackout in Brooklyn, when over 70,000 customers went without power for hours,...
When President Trump signed the First Step Act into law in December 2018, he was flanked by conservative senators and law enforcement officials. They were on hand to see him enact a carefully cultivated collection of criminal justice reforms, emulating on the federal level smart policy changes already successfully passed in red states such as...
Low state tax rates appear to be driving faster job growth since President Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 into law in December of that year. The law limited state and local tax (SALT) deductions for individual income tax filers who itemized to $10,000 per household, having the economic effect of...
If a man is from Texas, he’ll tell you, Chicago Journalist John Gunther once wrote. If he’s not, why embarrass him by asking? It’s true that Texans are plain-spoken. And for years, Texas taxpayers have told their lawmakers that property taxes are just too high, and getting higher at an unsustainable pace. And we have...
The Trump administration’s new asylum rule will limit the ability of Central Americans to claim asylum at the southwest border. If implemented, it might ease overcrowding at border detention facilities in the near term. But the rule, announced Monday, is at best a stopgap measure, not a permanent solution. The border crisis will never end until we overhaul...
Eric Helland and Alex Tabarrok’s new book, Why Are the Prices So D*mn High?, has reignited a debate about why the costs of higher education to students and taxpayers have grown so quickly. Their answer traces back to an idea put forth a half-century ago by economists William Baumol and William G. Bowen. Traditionally referred to as Baumol’s...