The Latest
Decision Texas, East Texas, State
State Rep. Ernest Bailes Faces Primary Challengers for House District 18
The candidates are competing primarily over the issues of school choice and illegal immigration.
Denison Superintendent Encourages Staff to Vote for ‘Pro-Public Education’ Candidates
The superintendent used the district’s email system to message staff, raising questions as to whether Texas Election Code needs to be strengthened in regards to electioneering.
Texas Buses 100k Illegal Aliens Out of State
The Texas Department of Emergency Management is facilitating the busing of illegal aliens to sanctuary cities but does not appear to be screening them for criminal backgrounds.
‘Pastors for Texas Children’ Accused of Abusing Tax Exempt Status
The anti-school choice group may have run afoul of IRS guidelines.
The Archive
Costly Proposed New Bond Would Push Denton ISD Toward State Cap
The Denton ISD school board has announced it will ask voters to approve a $282 million new bond initiative in November. Interestingly, $2 million of the proposal has nothing to do with students - it is to build a child care center for district employees. If this bond...
Lawmaker Math
You might recall a few weeks ago I noted that the Legislature's new $3 billion-over-10-year cancer fund was probably not going to accomplish much more than spend a lot of your money. Not my opinion, but that of scientists actually in the field. "(T)he question is how...
School Tax Scam
Here's a nice little scam floating around school districts: claiming credit for cutting taxes when they haven’t. You’ll remember that the Legislature bought down school “maintenance & operations” property taxes to $1, using proceeds from their new business tax....
The Taxman Cometh
Do you hear that knocking at your door? It’s the taxman, and he wants more money. Pay up. It’s bad enough that appraisal creep and unrestrained spending is taking a bigger and bigger bite out of taxpayers’ take-home pay, but now comes word that local...
Newspaper: Never, Never, Never Cut Taxes
Josef Stalin and Vladimir Lenin would be proud of their ideological progeny at the San Antonio Express-News. The long-dead communists, whose utopian Soviet state collapsed in disrepute and bankruptcy after an 80-year experiment in tyranny, Â focused on the collective...
Austin Apparatchiks Have Waste and Nepotism in Store for Taxpayers
For those outside Austin, there have been a flurry of reports lately illustrating why Austin is known as the People's Republic of Travis County. The City Council is considering banning plastic bags from stores and they gave a $750,000 forgivable loan to a...
Bad Tax Ideas Never Go Away
Fighting tax-and-spendoholics is like playing Wack-A-Mole at the arcade. You knock them down, only to find they pop right back up. The lesson? We have to move faster and hit harder. Last legislative session, taxpayers were successful in stopping tax-and-spendoholics...
Road Taxes Should Fund Roads? What A Crazy Idea…
State Sen. John Carona says in today’s Dallas Morning News that Texas must “stop the diversion of gas tax funds for other uses.†That’s welcome news. While the state’s constitution currently requires transportation funds to be used for transportation...
Got Tax Relief? Not In Houston…
So you think you’re getting tax relief? If you live in Houston, chances are you are not. The school district there are doing everything they can to reach into your family’s pocket-book and exact every last dollar they can.Houston ISD and Cypress-Fairbanks ISD are...