In The News

The latest jobs report from the federal government shows unemployment is 5.9%, which is positive news, but an economic think tank predicts little improvement as long as Joe Biden is in the White House.

In a protracted 2013 debt-limit episode, Fitch Ratings put the U.S. rating on negative watch given the government’s failure then to raise its borrowing limit as the Treasury’s hard deadline neared. In 2011, a split House and Senate took the debt-limit debate down to the wire, prompting S&P Global Ratings to cut America’s sovereign credit grade for the first time.

In Texas it is illegal to buy a car directly from the manufacturer. Instead, you are required to buy through the traditional dealership business model. That isn’t free market; that’s protectionism, not of a particular business, but of a single business model.

“Right to repair” sounds sympathetic but it’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It’s not being pushed by small repair businesses but by ideological public-interest law firms and activists as an attack on intellectual property.

The world’s richest man who leads mega-powerful Amazon publicly supports Joe Biden’s plan to raise taxes on corporations but that support comes after the tax-avoiding company was called out by name by the president just days ago.

Sanders doesn’t have enough support to pass his “Medicare for All” bill—which would put every person in the country under a government-run, single-payer health care system. So he will settle for expanding Medicare from the current enrollment age of 65 to age 55 or 60—at least for now. Call it “Medicare for More.”

It’s time for Texas legislators to cut the video franchise fee. It is paid by Texas video customers and makes their bills higher than necessary. For 16 years Texas consumers have been footing the bill for a political payoff.

Over the decades, Congress has created a number of programs intended to help the poor, the sick, the downtrodden. But, certain businesses and industries find ways to exploit these efforts and profit in ways lawmakers never foresaw or intended — and even hurt the very people the program was supposed to help.

How did the man who would be president find himself in such a mess? By turning a pandemic crisis into a social justice effort.

President Biden wasted no time releasing a flurry of executive orders and legislative proposals. Some of them may be helpful in addressing the economic challenges imposed by the coronavirus pandemic. But others would almost certainly “cancel” his effort to create jobs, grow the economy and promote equity.