Every Friday morning at 8:30 a.m., I join the Cardle & Woolley show, Talk 1370 Radio, in Austin to pick the week’s top Winners & Losers. This week the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee grabbed almost all the awards in the final tally. I was in Milwaukee for a couple days, but also viewed the...
When Hurricane Beryl approached the Texas coast, families in the storm’s path were rightly worried about gale-force winds and flooding. Power outages are always expected in hurricane season — but nobody anticipated over a million households and businesses losing power, and nobody expected 500,000 to be left high and dry a week or more later. The problem...
If simply throwing money at a problem worked, then all of our problems would have been solved many years ago. Sadly, for lawmakers, simply spending does not produce results—you, at the very least, need accountability too. In a state where you are more likely to step in human waste than dog waste, in a state...
Growing up as the son of a Naval Reserves surgeon and medical school professor, I witnessed top-notch medical care, but I also saw firsthand the many obstacles that hinder doctors. One of the most frustrating obstacles is the burden of government regulations. In rural Texas, numerous patients rely on government-run insurance programs such as Medicare...
The 45th Legislature established the Texas Local Fire Fighters Retirement Act (TLFFRA) in 1937 to create local retirement systems for the benefit of full-time, part-time, and volunteer firefighters in participating cities. At the time, lawmakers intended to create a general governance structure while still “leav[ing] administration, plan design, contributions, and specific investments to each system’s...
Natural gas is the reason you can tweet. Coal powers your Facebook stalking and snapchat streaks. Oil allows you to post outfits of the day and vacation updates on your Instagram. Bottom line, fossil fuels make possible the connections and conversations facilitated by social media. Without the utilization of fossil fuels, like many things in...
If you’re like me — if you’re like nearly every American last night — you reacted to the attempted assassination of President Donald J. Trump with shock. I’ve been fielding a million questions from my twelve-year old since we got the news, and my answers to her are tinged with the reflexive disbelief that this...
Every Friday morning I join the Cardle & Woolley show, Talk 1370 Radio, in Austin to pick the week’s top Winners & Losers in public policy, politics, sports and culture in Texas, America and the world. After wading through the post-debate fog for the last couple weeks, here’s my list for the week ending July 12. The...
President Joe Biden and the Democrats talk a lot these days about the need to “defend democracy.” But what does that mean? A president is the sole U.S. elected official chosen by all the people. But in recent decades, a large unelected bureaucracy wielding great power sees the people’s government as its exclusive domain. As...
It’s been a bad couple of weeks for Biden and new polling from RMG Research shows things are getting worse. Forty-six percent (46%) of voters think Donald Trump is likely to win the presidency to only 38% who think Biden will win. Forty-six percent (46%) of voters think that White House staff, cabinet members, and...
A growing number of states have withdrawn their membership from the Electronic Registration Information Center, known as ERIC, which is used by state governments for voter list maintenance. Alabama is one of these states, and its Secretary of State Wes Allen is helping lead the way on election integrity nationwide. ERIC is a nonprofit organization...
With the general election right around the corner, it is important to take inventory of some of the most pressing unresolved issues in the nation’s key swing states, like Georgia. Weeks after Georgia’s last primary election, issues continue to come to light, highlighting significant procedural problems that must be addressed prior to the November elections....