Texas is facing another hot summer with record-breaking projections for electricity demand with a supply that is having a hard time keeping up. As the Houston Chronicle reports, “If Texas runs short of electricity, ERCOT expects to import additional power from neighboring states if it’s available and issue emergency alerts to ask consumers to reduce...
On Friday, Pope Francis met with a group of energy and investment executives to make an appeal for carbon pricing and a “radical energy transition” to renewable energy to address the “undeniable reality of the climate crisis.” The meeting is part of a multiyear dialogue organized by the University of Notre Dame and the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral...
An underreported news item showing that approvals for U.S. citizenship applications have reached a five-year high proves America isn’t anti-immigrant. Nor was it anti-immigrant at the beginning of my time in Congress when I represented 300 miles of the Texas-Mexico border. In 1994, a Democrat-led commission made many of the same recommendations on immigration reform the Trump administration is now making — and I included...
The Trump administration’s new Affordable Clean Energy rule is a promising move toward refocusing the Environmental Protection Agency on sound science, transparency, and the rule of law, rather than its history of bureaucratic overreach and party politics. In August 2015, when the Obama administration rolled out its Clean Power Plan, the New York Times editorial board...
When President Trump announced Friday that the United States and Mexico reached a deal to avert tariffs and that Mexico would step up efforts to reduce illegal immigration from Central America, both governments hailed the deal as a big victory. Mexico agreed to allow Central Americans to wait in Mexico while their asylum claims are processed. They...
Proponents argue that economic development incentives – such as tax credits – provide a multitude of benefits to taxpayers and society at large. This apparent popularity could be due to the perception that government subsidies effectively “have no downside and cost taxpayers nothing.” However, this is simply not the case. Tax breaks do in fact have...
With a no shortage of candidates vying for attention ahead of the 2020 presidential election, health care reform remains a popular talking point. Universal coverage is back with a vengeance, but remains a complex issue that looks pretty on the surface and gets uglier the closer one looks. Plenty of universal healthcare plans are being proposed...
When the Sons of Liberty rioted in Boston Harbor over a small tax on their beloved tea, they surely had no idea what lay ahead for what would soon become the United States of America. Imagine if Sam Adams and his crew had known that nearly 250 years later, the nation’s duly and constitutionally elected...
One of the joys of writing for the public is that, occasionally, the public contacts you. If it’s on Twitter, you learn not to take it personally—especially if the tweeter is anonymous. Same with email—sometimes the responses are supportive, sometimes they’re not. And almost always, anonymous comments tend towards the downright hateful or weird. Over...
Today, the Texas Public Policy Foundation filed a second lawsuit on behalf of Michigan clients who are in trouble with the township of Canton for clearing a 16-acred lot—their own land—of brush, dead trees and undergrowth so they could start a Christmas tree farm. The township said they violated a tree ordinance and initially sought...
Bob Dylan said it best: “For the times they are a-changin.’” It used to be that cities had their way at the Texas Capitol. By wielding local control as a cudgel, city officials and their favorite trade association expertly advanced their agenda and killed any bills that threatened their power or revenue. But no longer....
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...