Public schools are handing bags of cash to superintendents as they walk out the door. And the bags keep getting bigger. The latest example of excessive superintendent severance pay comes courtesy of Lancaster ISD, a small school district in Dallas County with only about 7,500 students. Two weeks after finalizing a five-year, $1.6-million contract, the...
Elon Musk, the inventor, investor and capitalist, has called it quits on California, his home for the past 25 years. He’s gone to Texas. As reported by FOX Business on Tuesday, “For myself, yes, I have moved to Texas,” Musk told Wall Street Journal editor in chief Matt Murray at a CEO Council Summit. “We’ve got the Starship development here in...
The Affordable Care Act—with its promise of reining in costs—was passed into law more than 10 years ago, yet today small businesses are still fighting the rising price tag of health care. One owner of a local restaurant chain here in Austin has told me that it’s precisely the flaws of the Patient Protection and...
“We need to stay home if you can. This is not the time to relax … We may have to close things down if we are not careful,” Austin Mayor Steve Adler pleaded in a Facebook live video Nov. 9. What he failed to mention is that he was filming that video while vacationing in Cabo …...
The Texas elections are over and one thing is clear: Voters want small government. Despite a flood of outside money pushing liberal causes and candidates, Texans rejected the siren call of socialism and sent many of its most ardent supporters packing. The electorate left no doubt that the Lone Star State remains red and its...
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), the California firm that literally kickstarted Silicon Valley in a garage in 1939, is moving to Texas. The low-key announcement was made via an SEC filing on Dec. 1. If California’s anti-jobs policies, its high taxes, capricious regulatory enforcement, and blackout-inducing energy policy can chase out the company that launched Silicon Valley, is any...
Since March, state and local governments have been exercising broad, but temporary, emergency powers in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. While limited use of such powers may be reasonable, there have been many instances of government overreach and abuse of these powers—the most egregious occurring at the local level. However, for the city of Austin,...
The COVID-19 pandemic delivered a staggering blow to the U.S. economy, leaving millions of Americans unemployed. Low-income families were hit particularly hard and continue to struggle as the recovery rate for low-wage jobs lags behind that for high-wage jobs. Prolonged periods of unemployment for low-income families carry a number of risks, most notably an increased...
Public safety is of paramount importance. To achieve it, those who commit a crime must be held to account. But it can’t end there. Ideally, after accountability comes restoration—and a clean slate. One of us writing this op-ed, Scott, is a former probation and parole officer. The other, Josh, is a former incarceree who has...
Just when you thought school spending couldn’t get any worse, this happens. Two weeks after signing a five-year, $1.6 million contract, Lancaster ISD’s superintendent was let go for unknown reasons—but not before being sent away with a severance package worth more than $2 million. The buyout is so massive that it threatens to “virtually clear...
COVID-19 continues to take a toll in the U.S., with more than 13 million cases and over 260,000 deaths. The rise in cases has led to interventions by state governments. Given that the health threat is real, we should learn from what has worked —and what has not. That means we must work hard on a...
Democrats are scrambling to explain away the inroads Republicans have made with minorities, as evidenced in the November election results. Instead of listening to the concerns of the Black and Hispanic voters who voted for President Trump — after years of being assured that Trump is one of the “most racist presidents” in history — Democrats are instead blaming...