This Fourth of July, many Americans are spun up, protesting against President Trump with a long list of grievances – most recently his plans to appoint a conservative justice to the Supreme Court, as well as his immigration policies, his foreign policy, his trade policy, his tweeting … his everything. Calls for the president’s impeachment...
These are tough times for newspapers, particularly local papers that are still an integral part of their communities. They serve many vital functions, because no 24-hour news channel and no national political website will likely keep track of the varsity boys’ basketball scores or the proposed teachers’ raise that the school board is discussing. What’s...
Although never explicitly codified in the Constitution, the axiom that a person is considered innocent until he or she has been proven guilty of a crime is a bedrock principle of our justice system. Indeed, the Supreme Court held in 1987 that while it is sometimes necessary to jail defendants before their trials — e.g.,...
People come to the United States to build a better life. A large part of that is the opportunity to earn a living in a land where hard work can pay off – literally. Ohioan Rustem Kazazi learned that first-hand. At the age of 64, and after many years of hard work, he decided to...
Hello. I'm Kara Belew. One of the most important responsibilities we have is to make sure our kiddos are getting a good education. We should ask ourselves, "can they read and do math at grade level?" Across Texas, the quality of education varies from school to school. And the truth is many children are not...
Texas ports contribute $650 billion in trade and support 1.6 million Texas jobs. But as goods travel through Texas ports, Texans and all Americans are paying a higher price than necessary from an uncompetitive market of harbor pilots. Ships entering a U.S. port must be guided by a licensed harbor pilot, which is noted as...
Recently, the city of Denton passed a resolution to move to 100% renewable energy by 2020. This will be the second city in Texas to do so, and the 58th in the country. But what does 100% renewable energy mean? This question was asked a lot when Georgetown, the first city in Texas to move...
Six months ago the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Trump. Proof that Americans keep winning from pro-growth tax reform is evident with each new economic report. So far more than 4 million Americans will receive bonuses and millions more are receiving additional benefits from at...
If some public universities have lost sight of the fact that freedom of speech is essential to both education and American democracy, the American people are fortunate that a growing number of state legislatures have not. Several weeks ago, Louisiana Governor John Edwards signed SB 364, a bill crafted to restore students’ free speech at the...
The Production Tax Credit (PTC) “is an inflation-adjusted per-kilowatt-hour (kWh) tax credit for electricity generated by qualified energy resources and sold by the taxpayer to an unrelated person during the taxable year.” Originally conceived and passed into law as a short-term measure in 1992 in order to grow the nascent American wind energy industry by...
Conflation is a commonly used rhetorical ploy: combining two things that don’t belong together or using one word to imply another when they don’t exactly mean the same thing. When the Affordable Care Act was pushed through Congress, advocates conflated health care with health insurance. The act was intended to reform health insurance, not health care. And...
Property rights are paramount. That’s one of the key takeaways from a new Texas Supreme Court decision involving short-term rentals (STRs). In Tarr vs. Timberwood Park Owners Association Inc., the high court ruled in favor of Kenneth Tarr, a San Antonio-area homeowner-turned-STR-owner whose plan to earn a little extra money landed him in hot water...