Obamacare was supposed to fix all of this — so why are so many Americans still uninsured, even when they qualify for subsidized and even free insurance? According to a new analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation, “28 percent of uninsured individuals who could shop on the Marketplace, or 4.7 million people nationwide, are eligible to purchase...
The tide turned for the Soviet Union in 1989. It wasn’t just the Polish national elections in June of that year, which saw the rise of the Solidarity Party. And it wasn’t merely the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. It was also Boris Yeltsin’s visit to a Houston-area supermarket. Yeltsin, then serving as...
The Pardo family’s nightmare is finally over. A Texas judge signed an order dismissing the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services’ (DFPS) case against the family, ending a nearly six-month ordeal. The case attracted statewide attention following the wrongful removal of Ashley and Daniel Pardo’s 4-year-old son, Drake, by DFPS based on a tenuous allegation of...
The inner-city community of Bonton, near downtown Dallas, is thousands of miles and nearly two centuries removed from the Victorian London of Charles Dickens. But there are some important parallels. If I’m hesitant to cast Daron Babcock, of Bonton Farms, in the role of Scrooge for this re-telling, it’s only because we focus too much...
The wind industry once again has received a holiday season extension of its multi-billion-dollar tax break, the production tax credit (PTC). The extension—one of the many times Congress has refused to let the PTC expire over the last 27 years—is included in the $1.4 trillion government spending package approved by Congress last week, despite claims...
It’s that time of year. As New Year’s Eve approaches, we look back on 2019 seeking nuggets of wisdom from twelve more months of the human experience. Unfortunately, the Word of the Year selections from two top dictionaries reveal just how misplaced this year’s priorities were. The Oxford English Dictionary selected “climate crisis” as the...
President Trump signed the Tax Cut and Jobs Act into law on December 22, 2017. The tax cut, combined with billions in federal regulatory relief, reinvigorated the economic expansion which is now in its 126th month, making it the longest recovery in U.S. history. While the tax reform law cut taxes for most individual taxpayers and...
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision on Wednesday holding the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate unconstitutional does two things. First, it affirms the argument we’ve been making all along — that despite the promises and assurances all Americans received, Obamacare hurt families by taking away their insurance, taking away their doctors, limiting their choices and...
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics just released its 2018 data for fatal occupational injuries. As with many government reports, much of the data reflects common sense with a few interesting outliers. In 2018, 5,250 people sustained fatal injuries at work. To put that into perspective, an estimated 609,640 Americans died of cancer in 2018, 116 times as many...
Hollywood actor Hugh Jackman once said: “Giving people a hand up, not a handout, is the way forward.” The Trump administration seems to agree, having announced new rules for the nation’s food stamp program that could help people transition faster from welfare to work. The new rules, set to take effect in April, take aim at a loophole...
Greenhouse gas negotiations in Madrid adjourned after two weeks without an agreement, leaving delegates to jet back home in failure. In response, an executive with the Environmental Defense Fund admonished nations to go their own way on carbon markets, setting up rules for “international emissions trading.” A U.N. report released last month said greenhouse gas emissions must...
In less than a week, Houstonians will once again head to the polls to select their next mayor and chart the city’s course over the next few years. But before voters decide on which direction the city ought to go, they should first understand where it is. To get a sense of things, voters can look to...