The latest report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) shows that many states economies improved in 2014. Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a measure of inflation-adjusted economic output, increased in 48 states and the District of Columbia, and the entire U.S. real GDP increased 2.2 percent last year after a 1.9 percent increase in 2013.
Allowing the bank’s charter to expire would be a good start toward rebuilding a strong U.S. economy.
Even before the last gavel ended the 84th Texas Legislature, much of the media coverage began centering on the failures and disappointments regarding many key issues. Unfortunately, this gloom-and-doom rhetoric has overshadowed many unprecedented successes and reforms, particularly in criminal justice.
Despite the potential for telemedicine to increase access to care in Texas, state regulatory agencies and lawmakers have failed to pave the way for innovation, and in fact have worked to thwart the innovative use of emerging health care technologies like telemedicine.
Nonetheless, population growth in the Lone Star State is expected to continue for the foreseeable future and Texas must create plans to develop, conserve, and use water resources responsibly.
How have universities, whose defining mission requires that students examine some thoughts and projects that might prove to be unsettling, become such havens of monochrome thinking?
From 1980 to 2010, the number of female prisoners multiplied by 646 percent — increasing from about 15,000 to 113,000 inmates nationally. That spike is 150 percent the rate of male prisoners during that time period.
With the ongoing weakness in the price of oil, the Legislature’s work will go a long way toward showing critics that Texas’ success has more to do with good public policy than with good luck. Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/other-voices/article23915161.html#storylink=cpy
Because pension reforms always will face a legal challenge, creative changes are needed.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute estimates that the Obama administration issued 81 major regulations per year for more than six years, more than one and a half per week, at a compliance cost exceeding the combined total of individual and corporate federal income taxes by $160 billion.
Hazlewood’s costs will continue to soar. Cash-strapped college students will still be made to foot most of the bill.
Much of that success has been fostered by reducing the number of restrictions on private enterprise. There’s even a moniker for the state’s particular combination of limited government policies -- the Texas Model.