Texas is flooded with extra cash—and Gov. Greg Abbott supports using at least some of it to reduce property taxes for Texans. Thanks to the Texas Legislature’s fiscal stewardship and the Texas economy’s resilience, Texas governments have amassed major surpluses. Consider that tax collections are up 30.62% over this time last year, generating a budget...
Local government budgeting season is underway in most areas, which means that it’s time for Texas taxpayers to tell their city, county, and school board officials to adopt lower property tax rates. Much lower, in fact. There are several reasons to press for radically reduced tax rates this year. The most obvious is that people...
A University of Texas running back is driving around Austin in a Lamborghini. A Kansas State hoops star transferred to the University of Miami for $800,000—and a car. And the current recipient of the Biletnikoff Award—the top college wide receiver in the nation—left the University of Pittsburgh and is shopping around for the best deal,...
“Shoot them! Shoot them!” drug cartel thugs shouted as they chased Mexican soldiers out of Nueva Italia, a weigh station amid the lime groves of Tierra Caliente in western Michoacán state. The scenes of soldiers fleeing thugs scandalized Mexico – going viral on social media and offering a rude reminder of the increasing brazenness of...
Liberty Hamilton describes her time in foster care as “the most traumatic experience I ever had.” Her foster mother abused alcohol and drugs, she told a Texas Senate Committee on Monday. “She would always leave pipes lying around that she used to smoke,” she said. “She would party all night with loud music and random...
California policymakers wholeheartedly demonstrated they remain wedded to their homelessness narrative—that the sole answer to homelessness is life-long, subsidized housing—despite the fact that this one-size-fits-all policy, called “Housing First,” has epically failed the Golden State and the nation. Pre-COVID-19 data shows California’s experiment with Housing First resulted in a 47.1 percent rise in unsheltered homelessness. But...
“OK Boomer” won’t suffice this time—older and middle-age Americans who oppose student loan “forgiveness” plans are old enough to know the truth: Nothing as expensive as a college education can ever be free. The burden for that loan would merely be shifted onto the backs of taxpaying Americans. Yet the Democrats see student loan forgiveness...
What an ugly irony that the Houston Chronicle—which may be the most out-of-touch and Texas-hating newspaper of the metropolitan big five—has just won a Pulitzer Prize for a series they called “The Big Lie.” Predictably, the left-wing Pulitzer crowd is lauding a series written by four editorial writers that they say “reveals voter suppression tactics…”...
Summer comes quickly in Texas, with the high approaching 100 degrees in Austin over the weekend. We walk outside, grab the mail, and walk inside to turn the thermostat down a little cooler to combat the warmth of Texas summer. We reach in the freezer for ice to fill our glasses and the refrigerator for...
When we met Adolphus at the age of 58, he had been arrested over 90 times. He had served six prison terms and was preparing yet again to re-enter society here in the state of Georgia. During the re-entry process, he received a statement from the Social Security Administration that told him he had not...
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) took a rare foreign trip, traveling for the first time as president to Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Belize and Cuba from May 5 to May 8. (He traveled twice previously to Washington, meeting Presidents Trump and Biden, and once to address the United Nations Security Council in New York.) He...
Conservative candidates won a bunch of closely watched school board elections in Texas on Saturday. One of the higher-profile losses was suffered by Jim Rice, a member of the Fort Bend Independent School District (ISD) since 2010. He is also the immediate past president of the Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) where he has served on...