By: Vance Ginn & Charlie Katebi – texaspolicy.com – October 22, 2018 We’ve set some pretty high goals for Texas’ budget for the upcoming biennium. And to achieve them, Texas need to overhaul its arcane and opaque budget-making process. On Sept. 25, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Heartland Institute, and 16 other member-groups of the Conservative Texas Budget Coalition held...

By: Vance Ginn – vanceginn.com – September 14, 2018 Despite the economic success of the Texas Model of relatively fiscally conservative governance, a skyrocketing local property tax burden remains one of the state’s most pressing policy challenges. While Texans have the luxury of not paying a state personal income tax, which should be constitutionally banned, they’re currently weighed down by...

By: David French – nationalreview.com – October 16, 2018 A good man’s legal ordeal is at an end. Yesterday, my friends and former colleagues at the Alliance Defending Freedom announced that former Atlanta fire chief Kelvin Cochran had reached a $1.2 million settlement, ending a case he brought after the city fired him for writing — and distributing to a...

By: Joanna Sugden – WSJ.com – October 16, 2018 The U.S. is back on top as the most competitive country in the world, regaining the No. 1 spot for the first time since 2008 in an index produced by the World Economic Forum, which said the country could still do better on social issues. America climbed one place in the...

By: Merrill Matthews – ipi.org – July 24, 2018 Congress has, over several decades, slowly delegated to the president its constitutionally prescribed role of setting tariffs—which are taxes—and regulating international commerce. It’s time for Congress to take back that authority, and it may do just that. Article 1, Section 8, of the U.S. Constitution says, “The Congress shall have Power...

By: Michael Brendan Dougherty – nationalreview.com – July 29, 2018 I suspect we’re in for a massive economic disruption soon, probably moving very quickly from a downturn in real estate to the financial sector. It’s sometimes destabilizing to consider that it is your personality that determines your thoughts. I suspect that one reason I’m a conservative is that I’m just...

By: Fred Imbert & Gina Francolla – cnbc.com – July 26, 2018 Facebook on Thursday posted the largest one-day loss in market value by any company in U.S. stock market history after releasing a disastrous quarterly report. The social media giant’s market capitalization plummeted by $119 billion to $510 billion as its stock price plummeted by 19 percent. At Wednesday’s...

By: Staff – newsmax.com – July 26, 2018 President Donald Trump declared victory for American farmers Thursday after brokering a ceasefire in a trade dispute with the European Union, but it is unclear how soon it will bring relief to those hurt by tit-for-tat tariffs. The White House painted the agreement as a vindication of the US president’s bare-knuckle tactics,...

By: Ben Shapiro – nationalreview.com – July 16, 2018 On Monday, President Trump gave a deeply disgraceful press conference with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. The presser began with Trump announcing that although the Russia–U.S. relationship has “never been worse than it is now,” all of that “changed as of about four hours ago.” It was downhill from there. Trump proceeded...

By: Victor Davis Hanson – townhall.com – July 12, 2018 Critics of Donald Trump claim there is no rhyme or reason to his foreign policy. But if there is a consistency, it might be called reciprocity. Trump tries to force other countries to treat the U.S. as it treats them. In “don’t tread on me” style, he also warns enemies...