Texas ports contribute $650 billion in trade and support 1.6 million Texas jobs. But as goods travel through Texas ports, Texans and all Americans are paying a higher price than necessary from an uncompetitive market of harbor pilots. Ships entering a U.S. port must be guided by a licensed harbor pilot, which is noted as...
Recently, the city of Denton passed a resolution to move to 100% renewable energy by 2020. This will be the second city in Texas to do so, and the 58th in the country. But what does 100% renewable energy mean? This question was asked a lot when Georgetown, the first city in Texas to move...
Six months ago the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Trump. Proof that Americans keep winning from pro-growth tax reform is evident with each new economic report. So far more than 4 million Americans will receive bonuses and millions more are receiving additional benefits from at...
If some public universities have lost sight of the fact that freedom of speech is essential to both education and American democracy, the American people are fortunate that a growing number of state legislatures have not. Several weeks ago, Louisiana Governor John Edwards signed SB 364, a bill crafted to restore students’ free speech at the...
The Production Tax Credit (PTC) “is an inflation-adjusted per-kilowatt-hour (kWh) tax credit for electricity generated by qualified energy resources and sold by the taxpayer to an unrelated person during the taxable year.” Originally conceived and passed into law as a short-term measure in 1992 in order to grow the nascent American wind energy industry by...
Conflation is a commonly used rhetorical ploy: combining two things that don’t belong together or using one word to imply another when they don’t exactly mean the same thing. When the Affordable Care Act was pushed through Congress, advocates conflated health care with health insurance. The act was intended to reform health insurance, not health care. And...
Property rights are paramount. That’s one of the key takeaways from a new Texas Supreme Court decision involving short-term rentals (STRs). In Tarr vs. Timberwood Park Owners Association Inc., the high court ruled in favor of Kenneth Tarr, a San Antonio-area homeowner-turned-STR-owner whose plan to earn a little extra money landed him in hot water...
More than 100 people shuffled into a warm room at the Comanche Community Center last week, on June 18th. These rural Texans gathered to tell stories of the real-life impacts of wind development—the side that is often unheard. “There is flicker and there is noise,” one gentleman recounted, echoing numerous comments about the hours of...
Gasoline prices have been rising recently as tensions heighten in the global oil market. These increases may soon be exacerbated if some advocates of a carbon tax get their way. With its flawed assumptions and high costs, politicians should ignore the hype and just say no to a carbon tax. It is expensive and ineffective,...
Owning a home is a cornerstone of the American dream. Homeownership can feel extremely freeing and fulfilling — until it’s not. In the sleepy suburb of Doraville, Georgia, homeowner Hilda Brucker received a call out of the blue from the municipal court threatening her with a failure to appear violation. She had never received a ticket...
A recent United Nations report blasting President Trump and America in general for harboring “contempt” and “hatred for the poor” is based on highly inaccurate data that can’t easily be used to compare the U.S. to other nations. The U.N. report’s main contentions read like an attack on the Trump administration by the Democratic Party: America has...
Multifamily developers are seeing their costs increase as a result of government regulation. According to a new study from the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) and the National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC), federal, state, and local regulations account for 32.1 percent of the cost of a multifamily development The study highlights the fact that...