Famed free-market economist Thomas Sowell once remarked that “Although the big word on the left is ‘compassion,’ the big agenda on the left is dependency.” Sowell’s insight is not only correct, but it’s also a fitting lens through which to view Harris County’s new guaranteed income pilot program, Uplift Harris. To start, Uplift Harris is...
The following commentary is published on Thursdays as part of TPPF’s subscriber-only newsletter The Post. If you would like to subscribe to The Post, click here. With less than two weeks until the Iowa Caucus and exactly two months (tomorrow) until the Texas primaries, election season is in full swing. America’s election system should be the...
Congress has a chance to help millions of Americans move from welfare to work while fixing one of the country’s most broken federal programs. Lawmakers are preparing to reauthorize the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, which controls the vast and failed federal workforce-development system. Instead of doubling down on the longstanding approach of wasting money...
It is not the best of times. Our country is so hopelessly and hatefully divided that we can’t even agree on enough facts to have a decent argument. Millions of people from all over the world are streaming across the border, it seems like half the country is marching in the streets in support of...
Elections officials can learn tangible lessons from Charles Dickens’ classic novel, A Christmas Carol. As we head into the 2024 presidential election, it would be wise to learn from the Ghosts of Elections Past, Present, and Future. Ebenezer Scrooge spent years in recurring misery, making the same mistakes over and over again. His cycle of...
Famed free-market economist Milton Friedman once quipped that: “I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it’s possible.” Today, many Americans, beset by the twin troubles of Bidenomics and rampant inflation, are echoing Friedman’s call for tax relief and are looking to the nation’s leaders...
The following commentary is published on Thursdays as part of TPPF’s subscriber-only newsletter The Post. If you would like to subscribe to The Post, click here. The media and the left spend a lot of time criticizing Texas for the number of people in the state without health insurance. Texas has the highest percentage of uninsured...
The city of Austin finally did something right. On Thursday, Dec. 7, a supermajority on the Austin city council approved the first phase of the Home Options for Middle-Income Empowerment (HOME) initiative, which seeks to “allow up to three units on one single-family lot and would remove restrictions on how many nonrelated adults can live...
The most progressive city in the most progressive state in the nation is a feces-filled, crime-riddled ghost town that resembles something like “a failed state,” according to California expat Joe Rogan. All of which is to say, San Francisco is an utter disaster. Curious minds might look at the city’s ruinous condition and wonder its...
Democrats and Mexican officials have responded to Texas’ new law with fear-mongering and threats. President Biden’s border crisis shows no signs of abating as the state of Texas, overwhelmed with would-be migrants, fortifies its defenses with new laws. Chief among the new measures is Senate Bill 4, expected to be signed into law in days by Republican Gov....
Leges sine moribus vanae: “Laws without character are in vain.” That’s the motto of the University of Pennsylvania—but it could also be the epitaph of elite higher education. While they almost certainly did not intend to, last week, the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, and MIT gave America a Latin lesson. Penn’s motto...
Introduction: This spring, Rep. Patterson and Sen. Paxton authored and passed HB 900, the READER Act, which Gov. Abbott signed into law in June alongside HB 1605, another law that refocuses schools on core instruction while empowering parents. As detailed below, the READER Act empowers parents with transparency into library materials while removing explicit content...