Last Tuesday, in an extraordinary display of verbal efficiency, Hawaii Senator Mazie Hirono managed to pack an astonishing number of errors into just four short sentences. During a Judiciary Committee hearing on the legal ramifications of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on abortion, Senator Hirono remarked: “Originalism, the Justices who take that approach go all...
Illinois has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, yet policymakers are scrambling to explain the series of missed warning signs and communication failures that led to the Fourth of July mass shooting in Highland Park. Much like 9/11, when law enforcement agencies had information prior to that tragedy but failed to cohesively communicate, mass...
Austin ISD’s student enrollment has been hemorrhaging for years. But that hasn’t stopped the uber-progressive district from spending every dollar it can gets its hands on nor does it appear to be standing in the way of a borrowing binge. Earlier this week, Austin ISD announced that it was eyeing a big, new bond package...
Several days ago, Texas Governor Greg Abbott pledged that “a very large property tax cut” is coming next session. Today, the public got a sense of what is possible. According to Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar’s newly-updated Certification Revenue Estimate (CRE), the Texas Legislature is expected to have as much as a $27 billion budget surplus...
When I saw a June 30, Texas Tribune a story headlined: “State education board members push back on proposal to use “involuntary relocation” to describe slavery,” it was immediately clear that it was riddled with inaccuracies, misinformation and blatant left wing propaganda, but it was such non-news that it hardly seemed worth the effort to...
Only a bolt of lightning or a dose of radiation can awaken zombies in the movies; the same isn’t true for an economic zombie. In the latter’s case, it took many years—especially the last two years—of deficit-spending fueling excessive money printing to get this day of reckoning for the U.S. economy with frequent mentions of...
El Pasoans are bracing for a big-time tax increase. Earlier this month, the El Paso city council took up the matter of the city’s proposed tax rate which, if adopted, would hike tax bills as “it doesn’t offset a sharp rise in property valuations.” Here’s more from the nonprofit news organization El Paso Matters Under...
As most of the country struggles with the effects of stagflation and is either in or will soon be in a recession, Texas has been an economic leader. The Texas Model of economic freedom with the strongest state spending limit in the nation, no personal income tax, sensible regulations, and a relatively low cost of...
Comal ISD, a mid-sized school district located on the I-35 corridor between Austin and San Antonio, raised eyebrows recently with the adoption of its 2022-23 budget. Compared to the previous year, CISD’s newest All Funds budget (which includes spending out of the General Fund, the Child Nutrition Fund, and the Debt Service Fund) increased by...
Answer: $136,011.20—plus many handsome benefits. The new information comes courtesy of the city of Austin which, in response to a Public Information Act (PIA) request sent last month, provided the homeless strategy officer’s latest employment contract. While city officials have yet to fulfill the PIA request in full (the portion outstanding seeks: “Any bonuses paid...
It’s not just energy prices. Over the past year, the prices of a wide range of other commodities are also increasing—most notably the “critical minerals” needed for a wide range of advanced technologies. Lithium prices are up more than tenfold over the past two years, copper is up almost 50%, and nickel has roughly doubled....
As of this winter, 36 states had passed legislation aimed at keeping critical race theory and other “divisive concepts,” sometimes referred to in law as “prohibited concepts,” out of K-12 public school classrooms. Despite these efforts, these very concepts are still being taught under the guise of addressing mental health and well-being. And I fear it is...