The idea of college-for-all puts a lot of students in a bad position, because not all high school seniors have a firm grasp of the financial risk being taken – the average graduating college senior in 2017 was $28,650 in debt. Students should fully understand the ramifications of incurring student loan debt and that there...
California is again facing widespread blackouts. Politicians are scrambling to assign blame to Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) a heavily regulated utility that can only do what the politically appointed regulators say it can do. In recent years this has meant building a bunch of solar and wind projects, while decommissioning reliable sources of power and...
A recent study on state film incentives (SFIs) examined their effects on filming location for TV series and feature films, employment, establishments, wages, and related industries—hotels, caterers, costumes, buildings, and transportation rentals. The study’s results indicate that the taxpayer dollars handed out to TV and movie productions to generate economic development could have little to no...
Texans received a stronger safeguard this month against any state tax being imposed on the income they earn through their hard work and initiative. That’s because Texans voted overwhelmingly Nov. 5 to amend the state constitution to make the future imposition of a state income tax even more difficult. To be clear, Texas does not...
With high-profile gun violence incidents such as those in Odessa, El Paso, Santa Fe and Sutherland Springs fresh in the minds of Texans, the call for policymakers to “do something” has steadily grown louder. From the expansion of background checks to the regulation of magazines or outright confiscation, everyone seems to have an idea of...
President Trump recently shed light on a little-acknowledged but critical fact: Free-market American ingenuity, not the Paris Agreement, is improving our environment. “The Paris Accord would’ve been a giant transfer of American wealth to foreign nations that are responsible for most of the world’s pollution,” President Trump said at the Shale Insight conference in Pittsburgh....
My friend David was a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers when the Affordable Care Act (ACA) passed in 2010. The next time the union contract was up, his health insurance premiums, deductibles and copays shot up so much that he and his wife elected to go with Medicare and a supplement, even...
Society cannot incarcerate its way out of the public health crisis that is drug addiction. But in making the possession of drugs a felony rather than a misdemeanor, Kentucky shows a stubborn willingness to continue to try. Meanwhile, the drug addicts incarcerated alongside drug traffickers and violent criminals continue to suffer a health crisis, along...
In my prior piece, “Resistance on the Right: Will Conservatives Ever Come Together on an Article V Convention of the States?” I explained that under Article V of the U.S. Constitution, if two-thirds of the states approve resolutions calling on Congress to hold an amendments convention, Congress has no choice but to obey. I then...
Most Democratic presidential candidates are supporting some version of Medicare for All, a radical proposal to put Washington in complete control of the health-care system. Joe Biden, however, promises to “protect and build on the Affordable Care Act,” the last Washington health-care experiment, which is better known as ObamaCare. Yet ObamaCare largely failed in its...
In 1975, at the height of New York City’s financial crisis, President Ford announced he would deny federal aid to help the city avoid bankruptcy. The Daily News ran an iconic headline the next day: “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD.” Today the headline might read: “NEW YORK TO MILLIONAIRES: DROP DEAD.” The latest example of New York’s politicians bitterly...
Steve Adler, the mayor of Austin, Texas, was on Fox News defending his city’s homeless policies Tuesday during an interview with Bill Hemmer. Last summer, the all-Democratic 10-member Austin City Council voted to lift the city’s ban on sleeping or camping on public property, such as sidewalks and parks – except for City Hall itself. Immediately following the vote, Austin’s...