Cold Warrior
What to know: A new biography of President Ronald Reagan seeks to “deflate” his legacy.
The TPPF take: The author, Max Boot, contends that Reagan had no strategy, that he was “no systematic thinker.”
“Yet Reagan was the president who summed up his strategy against the Soviet Union quite clearly as, ‘We win, they lose,’” says TPPF’s Chuck DeVore. “Reagan’s intellectual critics contend that he wasn’t a fox, understanding the world from many perspectives and knowing many things. True. Reagan was a hedgehog: he knew everything about one big idea — in this case, that the Soviet Union was an evil empire.”
For more on Ronald Reagan, click here.
Makes Sense
What to know: A San Antonio city councilmember is urging officials to implement periodic zero-based budgeting. The reason? “How we spend your money determines our city’s future, so let’s be good stewards.”
The TPPF take: San Antonio—and every other city in Texas—should utilize zero-based budgeting to control costs and weed out waste, fraud, and abuse.
“Zero-based budgeting is an excellent way to find efficiencies and redirect tax dollars to other higher priorities, like core services or tax relief. Every city in Texas ought to be using this tool today to get their fiscal houses in order” says TPPF’s James Quintero. “How we, as a society, budget matters.”
For more on zero-based budgeting, click here.
Short-Circuited
What to know: Smartphones are hurting our children, Virginia First Lady Suzanne Youngkin writes—and that’s why the state her husband leads has banned cell phones from public school classrooms.
The TPPF take: Smartphones have changed how we interact with the world. That’s even more true of children.
“We’re checking our phones hundreds of times a day and spending the equivalent of a 40-hour work week on digital devices every week,” says TPPF’s David Dunmoyer. “Call it convenience, familiarity, addiction, or anything you like, but since the advent of smartphones, we simply aren’t experiencing reality like we once did.”
For more on smartphones, click here.