As the twentieth century so tragically demonstrates, 'common plans' inevitably enforced through totalitarian polity lead to environmental squalor, poverty, and denial of inherent worth of the individual.
You cannot vote the bureaucrats out of office, after all, and yet their administrative edicts 'shall be obeyed, observed, and kept as though they were made by act of Parliament.'
Collectively, the Texas model of low taxes, including no individual income tax, less regulation, and a good lawsuit climate provides an essential path to greater prosperity.
On a broader level, this type of thinking from the city of Austin is emblematic of a much larger problem in Texas: liberty is frequently under threat, especially at the local level.
The cure for America’s long period of slow growth may be as simple as returning to the principles of the American Founding: government’s purpose is to secure liberty.
The Texas Comptroller recently released an interactive website to score all 50 states on various metrics during multiple years that can be used to evaluate each state or compare them among others. We applaud the Comptroller for making this valuable website available.
More than 100 years ago, the US Supreme Court acknowledged the cruelty of solitary confinement. Recently, the suicide of a New York teenager isolated for two years without ever being charged has created an uproar. Why is solitary still used? What are the alternatives?
Obama’s top Clean Power Plan priority would hurt the most vulnerable Texans by increasing the cost of electricity for those who can afford it the least.
Liberals and conservatives should agree that it is wrong to make the poor, the elderly and the unemployed suffer for a scientifically negligible change in global temperature, at best.
The Texas model of governance—low taxes, less regulation, and lawsuit reform—results in more prosperity and less poverty for all Americans than does the big government model pushed by the White House and epitomized by California.
“The rent is too damn high,” but, not to worry, your government is on the case, seeking to remedy problems largely of its own making with more market distorting rules that will drive housing costs even higher.
States like Texas made a clear choice not to go along with the ACA, and they should be allowed to remain free from it — all of it, including the subsidies and the regulations that make subsidies necessary.