This November, Texas voters will be asked to make up their minds about 8 constitutional amendments that cover a wide range of issues, including: religious freedom, running for office, property taxes, and more. Here’s a little more detail on each. Proposition 1 (HJR 143): The constitutional amendment authorizing the professional sports team charitable foundations of...
Recent events in response to COVID-19 expose the illegal and immoral practice of medicine. By law, only licensed clinical physicians can practice medicine. Particularly, only physicians or specially trained nurses can perform triage, often a life-or-death decision. With a large increase in symptomatic COVID-19 cases in certain locales, there are insufficient numbers of hospital beds...
Today, dedicated platforms search dozens of airlines for destinations and prices and allow consumers accessibility to their results even as conveniently as from their personal phone. A few clicks puts consumers in control. They decide the airline, the destination and what they’ll spend. It wasn’t always this way. And that’s why it’s a good lesson...
Mollie Hemingway’s new book, Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections, is important for what it says—and doesn’t say. In more than 400 pages of carefully footnoted documentation, Hemingway details how the 2020 election was, according to Time magazine, “fortified” by “a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and...
A Los Angeles Times reporter wrote earlier this month that the media should stop even trying to cover both sides of political issues — since the conservative side is just wrong. She tells her fellow journalists to stop reporting what she calls “both-siderism.” The idea of only reporting one-side of a political debate is not...
California’s green mafia has done it again. Rather than letting people choose what kind of landscaping tools they want to use—including lawn mowers and leaf blowers—California is imposing a ban on the sale of new gas-powered small off-road engines (SORE) in the name of reducing engine exhaust and evaporative emissions. The bill, signed by Gov....
I borrowed over $30,000 for college, and after many years of repayment, I am now officially (student loan) debt-free. By a bizarre twist of fate, much of my professional life has been devoted to studying financial aid programs like student loans. In this essay, I reflect back on how my student loan experience compares to...
Good ideas are our stock-in-trade. Solid research is our brand. That’s why it was so refreshing—even rewarding—to see TPPF Chief Economist Vance Ginn’s debut in the Wall Street Journal, “’Build Back Better’ Would Sink the Labor Market,” receive much-deserved attention and praise in recent days. “It would tax those who produce and subsidize those who...
It’s playoff baseball time here in Texas—go ‘Stros! But baseball fans know everything depends on the umpires—as the great Bill Klem said, when asked whether a ball was fair or foul, “It ain’t nothing until I call it.” It’s time for us to call fair and foul on the Texas Legislature; there were some homeruns,...
An energy crisis is rocking the world the likes of which we haven’t seen since the 1970s. Although headlines about energy costs in faraway nations may not breach busy families’ political radar, the energy shortages and skyrocketing prices spreading across Europe and Asia are a warning sign for America. If we allow the anti-energy, anti-prosperity climate cartel...
Given Texas’s commitment to lower taxes and limited government, it’s not surprising that the economy here is booming. Allowing people and businesses to keep more of their hard-earned money is the not-so-secret reason Texas often leads the country in job creation, economic growth, and inbound domestic migration. Unfortunately, Democrats in Washington are trying to enact...
In June 2020, Travis Warner received a diagnostic PCR COVID-19 test at SignatureCare Emergency Center in Lewisville, Texas. In August, he received a $54,000 bill. While his insurer’s negotiated rate for the test and included fees totaled at $16,915 and was paid in full by the insurer, the outrageous and unexpected charge distressed him. After...