Texas squanders $40 billion a year in taxpayer health care contributions
A huge percentage of our tax dollars are wasted by state laws and policies we could fix here in Texas.
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We need to keep North America working
Many voices are calling for the United States to retrench and retreat from the world, including distancing ourselves from neighbors in North America. Yet the reality of life across Mexico, Canada and the United States shows that we are connected to our neighbors in ways that benefit all of us.
Why it's so hard to fund public education in Texas
Texas' Constitution, courts and lawmakers have combined to make funding public education almost impossible.
Dear Lamar Smith: Climate change is real
Whether it's unprecedented droughts, or lengthening wildfire seasons, or dying forests, or shrinking glaciers, or warming, rising and acidifying seas along our coastlines, nature is sending us warnings we are fools — or worse — to ignore.
What the 1824 election can teach us about 2016
The candidates have beat and pilloried one another with innuendo, mud, slander, gossip — and sometimes even a little truth. But think of how odd it would be if, after all that, neither one of our major candidates gets a majority of electoral votes? It's happened before.
Texans will not abandon refugees in their hour of need
The thousands of compassionate Texans who have helped resettle refugees for over four decades in the Lone Star State — citizen volunteers, people of faith, community groups and social service professionals — will not abandon them in their hour of need.
When it comes to right medicines in Medicaid, let doctors, not insurance companies, decide
Some insurance companies are already signaling that they again will attempt to take doctors and other health care providers out of the driver’s seat when it comes to determining which medicines Medicaid patients can receive.
Dual credit: a chance to prepare students for a competitive world
A collaborative, thoughtful approach to dual-credit expansion will better prepare students either for further academic work at higher education institutions or for the workforce.
Texans benefit from alternatives to workers' compensation
Texas has become the nation's economic engine in large part by allowing competition to thrive in markets, even in such unlikely activities as providing benefits for injured workers.
Containing health care costs: four tips for Texas businesses
National health spending is projected to grow at an average rate of 5.8 percent per year through 2024 to more than $5.4 trillion. And more than $1 trillion of that figure is expected to come from the pockets of private businesses.
Tying Texas school funding to testing hurts students and taxpayers
If Texas uses STAAR testing as a basis for school funding, the state's slow creep toward a separate and unequal school system will turn into a sprint.
What's next for abortion rights in Texas
While HB 2 is gone, one of the harshest barriers to abortion access for Texans remains. The Hyde Amendment, a federal policy passed each year by Congress as part of the budget process, bans coverage for abortion services for people enrolled in Medicaid.
Affirmative action is always 13 years too late for those it's intended to help
For the millions facing these odds, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin to uphold UT’s affirmative action program blesses an effort that comes 13 years too late. What our minority students really need and deserve is a better K-12 education.
Police use of force: don't force it
The Texas Tribune's "Unholstered" series is to be commended for contributing to a critical public discussion. However, reducing a police-involved shooting to only a statistic based on city, race, armed, or unarmed suspects or other factors inevitably leaves out too much relevant detail.
Can Texas values transcend politics?
With emotions particularly high this year, Texans from both ends of the political spectrum are spending a lot of time demonizing each other. But are we really so different than our neighbors?
Impulse to conserve the Constitution could block Texas' call for a convention
Comparatively higher levels of support among liberals for a constitutional convention might well reinforce conservative impulses to defend the status quo — the threat of liberal change could outweigh the promise of changes justified in the name of conservatism.
Dancing with democracy
High-profile Texans are working the levers of our broken campaign finance system to the tune of millions of dollars in their race to the White House.
Time to get serious about securing the Texas border
Our nation needs the political courage necessary to ensure America's borders are secured in a way that stops the drug traffickers, human smugglers, waves of illegal immigrants and, God forbid, terrorist infiltrators from taking advantage of this vulnerable situation.
Texting while driving – it definitely can wait
It is going to take more than just scientific studies and education campaigns — it is time Texas takes up the banner of safety by passing a distracted driving law that will cover the entire state.
It's time for a showdown: convention of states vs. Texas independence
The issues championed by the Texas Nationalist Movement may seem complementary to supporters of a convention of states, but they are not. This is an internal battle, a domestic struggle, over the political and economic destiny of Texas.