Criminal Justice

Crime, punishment and taxes

  Local corrections costs have quadrupled over the past 40 years. And paying for jails’ rising financial burden has inflicted a severe punishment against one group in particular — local taxpayers. Operating jails has contributed to the doubling of local tax burdens since 1977. This trend is not surprising given that the nation’s average daily local jail population quadrupled to 630,000 since 1970. Unfortunately, the incomes of most...

October 24, 2017

Economy

Texas model supports miraculous prosperity

  Some folks never miss an opportunity to discount Texas’ prosperity by ascribing the Lone Star State’s good fortune to its oil and gas deposits. A recent example from The New York Times, “Why Texas No Longer Feels Miraculous,” argues that the oil and gas sector boom led to the “Texas Miracle” even as conservative...

October 23, 2017

Economy

Tax Foundation’s Business Tax Climate Index Ranks Texas 13th Best Nationwide

You may often wonder how Texas’ business tax climate ranks with other states. Well, the Tax Foundation has an answer in their recently released 2018 State Business Tax Climate Index report rankings all fifty states based on the burdens of each state’s corporate income tax, individual income tax, sales tax, unemployment insurance, and property tax....

October 19, 2017

Taxes & Spending

Speaking Freely: Visit Austin

The hotel occupancy tax (HOT) is sometimes called a “waste tax” because it can’t be spent on much more than fluff. Here’s another example of that. KXAN launched an investigation recently into money spent by Visit Austin, a private 501(c)6 that markets the city internationally and “receives a substantial portion of its revenue from the...

October 16, 2017

Economy

Texans Support, Prosper from Free Trade

  Criticism of the North American Free Trade Agreement is nothing new. In 1992, U.S. presidential candidate Ross Perot notoriously implied that if NAFTA passed there would be a “giant sucking sound” as jobs and wealth left the country. Recently, there’s discussion of adding sunset clauses and other measures that could weaken the agreement because...

October 15, 2017

Economy

Stop development deals. Get Amazon with the ‘Texas Model’

  Austin is vying for Amazon’s impressive new “HQ2” — a second company headquarters that could supercharge the local economy with $5 billion in capital investment and 50,000 new, good-paying jobs. Landing the state-of-the-art campus would be nothing short of blockbuster. While Austin has much to offer and much to gain, it shouldn’t fall into...

October 15, 2017

Taxes & Spending

Speaking Freely: Audit Finds Austin Has Nicer Stuff Than You

Do you have a custom pecan wood table in your house that costs as much as a car? If not, then the city has nicer stuff than you. A new city audit found that, during recent renovations at City Hall, the previous city manager submitted a Purchase Order for “a custom pecan wood table” costing...

October 12, 2017

Taxes & Spending

Speaking Freely Audit: City of Austin Stinks at Estimating Project Costs

A new report from the Austin city auditor confirms what many of us knew already—that construction costs often balloon far beyond their original estimates. The auditor’s review of the Public Works Department, the branch of city government that “designs, manages, and inspects major capital improvement projects,” identified a slew of problems with the city’s construction...

October 12, 2017

K-12 Education

MOOCs Reborn: Online Education’s Student-Friendly Makeover Promises Better Results

  Although the public’s faith in traditional, brick and mortar higher education is dwindling, college tuition prices keep rising. A Pew Research Center national pollfound that 57 percent of prospective college students believe that a college degree no longer offers a value commensurate with the price of tuition and fees. The same poll revealed that 75...

October 11, 2017

Health Care

Obamacare empowers middlemen, not patients

  The United States spends more on healthcare than any other country, but it spends it on the wrong people. There are 15.8 million healthcare professionals nationwide, and 95 percent of them are non-doctors. Why? The healthcare system is built for middlemen, not patients and providers. Healthcare middlemen include insurance companies, government administrators, actuaries, billers,...

October 9, 2017

Local Government

Think tank wants ‘endangerment’ review during repeal

  A conservative think tank with ties to the Trump administration is lobbying the White House to go big when it reconsiders the Obama administration’s signature climate change rule. U.S. EPA is expected to soon announce its plans to repeal the Obama-era Clean Power Plan rule to limit power plants’ greenhouse gas emissions. And the...

October 9, 2017

Local Government

Rolling back the red tape

  There is nothing quite like the power of American ingenuity and innovation. And nowhere in the country is there a better example of economic growth and empowerment on display than right here in Texas. A primary reason for that? Freedom. Specifically, there is simply less government intrusion into the daily lives of families and...

October 5, 2017