The Arena

So why won’t they allow the Keystone XL project to go forward? The U.S. energy boom is making us all more prosperous.

Holly Hansen over at Williamson County Conservative is keeping herself busy blowing the lid off the local debt bomb which in many respects is a hidden debt source. The numbers are there for folks who want to dig around but the eye-popping federal debt of nearly $17 Trillion gets all the attention and the growing local debt problem continues to grow largely unnoticed. Of course local governments do their level best to keep taxpayers from knowing exactly what they’re signing on for when they approve new debt. Here’s the money quote:

“While many Texans are self-righteously clucking their respective tongues over the financial demise of cities like San Bernardino and Detroit, the truth is we have growing debt problem right here in the Lone Star State.  According to the Texas Bond Review Board, state taxpayers are now on the hook for $324 billion in local debt, and local taxes are on the rise.”

Be sure to read the whole thing here.

On a related note, Thursday is the last day Austin will have public hearings on the city’s ...

You can’t argue with science. Via HotAIr Harvard study concludes gun bans don’t reduce the murder rate. 

The Houston Chronicle has a rundown of the 20 worst college majors for post college employment prospects.

The protectionist war on entrepreneurship continues apace in Dallas. To be clear, government stifling of new entrants to the market to protect entrenched industry interests is a form of corruption. Just because it happens on a routine basis doesn’t make it anything other than corrupt. The legendary Walter Williams puts it succinctly when he says “The purpose of these licenses is to keep outsiders out so the ins can charge us higher prices.”

This is the very antithesis of The Texas Model and the city of Dallas should rethink its position. It’s time for Texas to lead the fight against the government-industrial protectionist complex.

The Texas Model strikes once again. The Statesman reports this morning that another 140 California jobs are moving to Texas. Low taxes, light regulation, and a reasonable lawsuit environment are the core principles of The Texas Model that make it a no brainer for businesses to set up shop in Texas.

Texas continues to hold out as one of only four states not to adopt Common Core standards in education. At the same time many other states that have adopted the national standards in whole or in part are revisiting the issue as they rethink the value of giving control of K-12 education over to Washington, DC.

Progress in education choice as options for full-time online education expand in Texas. Expanding choices and introducing competition to the education marketplace will increase the quality, efficiency, and value of education in Texas. Good for Texas and great for students!

In an effort to protect the entrenched taxi and limo industry from competition, the city of Dallas is poised to rewrite limo regulations. As a reminder for officials who may not remember, a simple, standard, and time honored rule of the free market is that business must innovate and adapt in order to keep up with competitors – businesses that fail to do so lose market share and wither away. 

It appears Dallas is willing to engage in a different time honored (but anti-free market) tradition: the protectionist racket. By increasing barriers to entry for market competitors, the city will preserve the 19th century business model of an industry that doesn’t want to adapt to the 21st century. The economy and consumers will suffer from lack of choice and innovation while entrenched politicians and businesses benefit from a cozy relationship that preserves the status quo. Nice work, Big D.

Over at The American Interest they are discussing income flight – the growing trend of taxpayers disembarking high tax and regulation states for the greener pastures of low tax and regulation states. This is a topic that Chuck DeVore has dissected in detail in his authoritative book The Texas Model. Distilling data from the Tax Foundation, the folks at The American Interest came to largely the same conclusions as Devore. Texas, of course, is a major beneficiary of income flight at the expense of such formerly desirable locations as New York, California, and Illinois.

Blue states like California and Illinois are  struggling meeting obligations for their own public pension funds, so they certainly don’t need this latest bit of news—their tax bases are shrinking drastically. A new study on state-by-state income migration from the Tax Foundation (h/t WSJ), found that New York, California, and Illinois—the largest blue states in the country—led the country in income flight during the last decade. New York was hit particularly hard, losing $46 billion dollars of taxable income to people leaving the state over the past ten years. And these states were not alone: ...