In 2011, Children’s Rights, a New York offshoot of the ACLU, filed a federal class action lawsuit against Texas, claiming to represent the interests of a subset of the state’s foster children. This month a federal court in Corpus Christi issued a final order in the case. The ruling threatens hard-won reforms to the...
The direct result of a new law will discourage out-of-state entrepreneurs from opening new breweries with taprooms in Texas and limit the growth of existing ones. Special interests are at work to obtain government favors, the bitter fruit of which can be partially seen in the recent shakeup at the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission....
This commentary was originally featured in The Daily Signal on January 31, 2018.
A stunning new audit of Austin’s Matched Savings Account (MSA) program reveals the city irresponsibly managed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the point of “basically giv[ing] away free money.” MSA’s stated purpose is to financially empower low-income citizens by amplifying their savings accounts, specifically to buy a house, start or grow a small business,...
The government shouldn’t pick winners and losers in the marketplace – but they try. Renewable energy, driven by state and federal subsidies, is driving out baseload producers and jeopardizing the reliability of the electricity grid. According to ERCOT’s 2017 Capacity, Demand, and Reserves report, the expected 2018 peak reserve margin for the Texas electricity market has...
Property taxes continue to skyrocket, at great expense to taxpayers and at great gain to Texas’ local governments. Despite repeated attempts to stifle a growing tax burden, the local property tax “remains the largest tax assessed in Texas” representing nearly half of all Texan tax revenue (47.92% in 2015). Not only is the property tax...
Texas’ public education spending, in inflation-adjusted dollars, has increased in recent years with little-to-no improvement in the quality of education received. A problem with the philosophy of throwing more money at the education problem expecting a different result is that it doesn’t work. As you can see in Figure 1, per-student education expenditures have been...
California is already seeing residents and businesses flee the state because of its sky-high taxes. Yet unbelievably, two Democratic state assemblymen have proposed to more than double the state business tax – hiking it from 8.84 percent to 18.84 percent on businesses with annual net incomes of more than $1 million. This would be the highest...
Just as Americans mutually benefit from voluntary exchange domestically, so can individuals in different countries within the rule of law. A perfect trade agreement would be one sentence that provides no more than a contractual obligation: “There shall be no trade barriers among countries X, Y, and Z.” The Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) recently...
Don’t California my Texas. That phrase has increasingly made its way into the vernacular of Texas freedom lovers, especially notable as we wait for a decision in the Texas Supreme Court case City of Laredo v. Laredo Merchants Association. At issue in the case, which could well establish a statewide precedent, is whether various overreaching...
Shoppers might soon discover that the grocery store is less expensive and more convenient. Two weeks ago, the Texas Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case questioning the legitimacy of municipal bans on plastic bags. If justices reaffirm an appellate court ruling, consumers will be unburdened from this clear example of government overreach....
When asked if earmarks are making a comeback at a press conference last week, Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) responded, “conversations are making a comeback.” But if Congress is serious about improving the lives of Americans by limiting the power of Washington and ensuring faith in our system, then this is a conversation that needs to end...