The Feb. 3 Democratic Iowa caucuses are only weeks away, followed eight days later by the New Hampshire primary. Prior to these two key skirmishes in the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination, national polling suggests that former Vice President Joe Biden is leading the pack, followed by Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, with South Bend...
Here’s the good news: the Texas Legislature put hundreds of millions of additional dollars into mental health for Texas in the new biennial budget. The state now allocates $8 billion for services ranging from community mental health services to substance abuse treatment, and more. The bad news is it isn’t always about the money. Texas still faces...
An article in the Wall Street Journal says there’s growing demand for college degrees, even for manufacturing jobs. It’s a trend that will have negative consequences for American workers and American businesses. The Journal’s analysis of federal data found that “U.S. manufacturers have added more than a million jobs since the recession, with the growth going to...
China’s social credit system is planned to go active throughout that nation this year. It’s both a totalitarian dream and a civil libertarian nightmare. Here, it is important to understand that “totalitarian” means a form of government in which everything is the concern of the state: where and how you live, your faith, how many...
Texas has a lot going for it—low unemployment, population growth, and a favorable regulatory environment. People want to come here, and it’s not just for our brisket and breakfast tacos. But our prosperity is unevenly distributed, with some regions experiencing a disheartening “tale of two cities” dynamic. Port Arthur is one such place. With the enormous...
The 2019 U-Haul state migration index is out, and the top states Americans are moving to are no surprise—Florida, Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina and Washington. These are states with light state and local tax burdens. Conversely, four of the top five states people are fleeing—Illinois, California, Michigan, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania—feature high taxes (though Michigan’s tax burden...
For House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), it’s time to fish or cut bait. Most Missouri voters are familiar with this colloquial expression; it means either take action or step back —and do something useful instead. That’s the position Pelosi finds herself in, now that Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) has introduced a resolution that would allow the Senate...
California’s Assembly Bill 5 just went into effect. With some exceptions, the law takes aim at the new gig economy and independent contractors, forcing businesses to choose between hiring contractors as employees or laying them off. A week before Christmas, Vox Media’s SB Nation, a sports website, sent notice to some 200 of its California-based freelancers that they...
The safety of our prison staff should be one of our paramount concerns — alongside the safety of inmates and the communities into which they eventually will be released. Some states are enacting reforms that enhance all of the above, through putting appropriate limits on solitary confinement. Why should we care about those in solitary?...
With a nod to “Auld Lang Syne,” there’s plenty about 2019 that shouldn’t be forgot. There were successes, slight improvements, and setbacks—which hopefully will be remedied in 2021 when the legislature meets again. The big win for Austinites came when an appeals court struck down the city of Austin’s attempted ban on short-term rentals. All...
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...