Media Hit

Students from Howard Payne University's Guy D. Newman Honors Academy recently attended a public policy lecture through the Institute for Policy Innovation. Ajit Pai, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, spoke on the topic "Preserving a Free, Open and Innovative Internet."

Merrill Matthews, an analyst with the independent Institute for Policy Innovation, said while Harvey "was certainly a disruption event, the remarkable thing it wasn’t more disruptive," to energy markets.

The Chevy Bolt, touted by electric car advocates as the plug-in electric vehicle for the masses, has yet to make significant inroads into overall car and truck sales.

A so-called Medicare-For-All plan continues to add left-wing supporters on Capitol Hill but a right-wing critic suspects they wouldn't be part of it.

"They did achieve a decline in the uninsured, but they did it in the worst possible way," said Merrill Matthews. Matthews said he also thinks merely reporting uninsured rates does not tell the whole story as many who gained insurance have been unable to use it because of high deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs they cannot afford.

With the EU set to lift caps on sugar production, African producers could be squeezed out of a market that has propped up places like Swaziland for years.

More than 100 countries, from Cuba to India to Russia, produce sugar from sugarcane and sugar beet. Many of them are able to undercut the prices demanded by Swazi farmers, who receive no subsidies from their government, in markets such as West Africa and the Middle East.

The FCC needs to cut unnecessary regulation, starting with parts of the 2015 net neutrality rules, to spur the growth of broadband, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said Thursday at the Institute for Policy Innovation in Irving, Texas. 

Pai spoke at an event hosted by the Institute for Policy Innovation, an Irving think tank that advocates less government regulation and public policy driven by the free market. It drew an audience of tech executives, students and even AT&T's chief executive Randall Stephenson. 

The Institute for Policy Innovation, a think tank based in Texas, is bringing the FCC chairman outside the Beltway to Dallas to talk about net neutrality and the commission's current proceeding aimed at overturning the Open Internet Order of 2015.