Federal
Texas Ban on Paid Vote Harvesting Is Back in Effect for Now
Attorney General Ken Paxton secured a temporary stay of a court order that blocked enforcement of the election integrity law.
San Antonio-area Teacher Arrested For Sexual Relationship With Student
Jennifer Massey worked as an art teacher in Comal ISD.
Dade Phelan Claims He is Democrats’ Choice for Speaker
Phelan’s repeated reliance on Democrats for political survival should serve as the final straw for any Republican who is still trying to portray him as a friend of conservative values.
Texas AG Paxton Demands Biden-Harris Administration Assist in Identifying Noncitizen Voters
Paxton is directly appealing to the federal government for the necessary data to verify voter rolls, insisting that the Biden-Harris administration comply with its legal obligations.
Federal Archive
Carole’s Campaign Cadre
The Beaumont Enterprise is reporting that outgoing-Comptroller Carole Keeten-Strayhorn has in her waning days in office hired on campaign staff and added employees. Cost to taxpayers? $40,000, for two months of work. For work that apparently wasn't needed while she...
National Report Finds Texas Has Some of the Nation’s Highest Property Taxes
The Tax Foundation has released a new report with some bad news for Texas taxpayers that many probably already knew all too well. The report, which focuses on property taxes across the nation, found that Texas has the ninth highest property taxes of the 50 states as...
Merry Christmas: Hand over your money
Economist Stuart Greenfield opined in the subscription-based Quorum Report this week that while Texans are incredibly more generous individuals than others in the country (that part is right), our public policies keep the "state" from being as generous as the people...
Gov. Perry Readies a Christmas Present for College Students and an Accountability Lesson for Higher Ed
How do Texas college students know their tuition money and the share of taxes their parents paid that go towards higher education are actually used for expenditures that enhance the education they receive? Unfortunately, they don't because the state's higher...
Helping People
Does big government help people? The assumption made all too often is that the bigger the government, the more expansive the program, the more helpful it is. Indeed, we see that in the metrics used to justify continuing big government programs: how much money we...
Where There is a Hill, Is There a Way for Taxpayers?
The Texas House Local Government Ways and Means Committee chaired by State Rep. Fred Hill (R-Richardson) has released its interim report. News coverage of the report has centered on its opposition to appraisal caps, which was hardly surprising since Chairman Hill...
Advocates for Big Government: Paid for by… your taxes!
Roddy Stinson, a columnist at the San Antonio Express-News, has hit the nail on the head with a piece in today's paper. He correctly describes the response of local governments to the idea of slowing down the amount of money they can grab as "Weeping, wailing and...
Sen. Carona would rather do the wrong thing… on taxes?
State Senator John Carona (R-Dallas) is quoted by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram as saying that he'd rather "something wrong than do nothing." The sad thing is that in this case, the "wrong thing" he'd rather do is raise local taxes to pay for more wasteful mass transit...
Killing the Business Tax…
 When Texas lawmakers instituted the “gross margins†business tax, it is a safe bet they didn’t expect trail-lawyer-extraordinaire Mark Lanier to sue them over it. But that’s exactly what he’s planning on doing, according to today’s Houston Chronicle. ...