In The News

Abbott says he’s about had it with red-light cameras.

If a new NAFTA doesn’t improve intellectual property protections, it’s not a better deal, says a new publication released today by the Institute for Policy Innovation.

In more recent years federal environmental authorities have worked to keep the proportion of ethanol to gasoline in U.S. supplies at 10%. Generally, the auto and boating industries alike have resisted the use of ethanol, but the Trump administration may be poised to reverse that, according to a commentary on the Institute for Policy Innovation blog by Merrill Mathews, who equates the administration's interest to providing pork barrel offsets to Iowa farmers.

"The primary purpose of the Trump tariffs isn’t necessarily to raise tax revenue, as in centuries past, but to make something more expensive to U.S. consumers so that they will buy less of that item and buy more from domestic manufacturers, who, incidentally, typically raise their domestic prices," says IPI.

Increasing the blend wall to E15 means more demand for corn, which means higher prices and more money in farmers’ pockets — or maybe it just offsets some of their tariff-related losses.

The trick is keeping an eye on potential challenges to the good news. For instance, education — the training of minds, the cultivation of skills. The news here is less celebratory.

If the U.S. and China don’t defuse this conflict, China’s retaliatory tariffs could hammer America’s booming energy industry, wiping out thousands of current or future oil and gas jobs.

Dr. Merrill Matthews discusses the concerns of those in the heartland who are being hit the hardest by the tariffs.

Conservatives in Texas are applauding their attorney general for efforts involving plastic bag bans.

In his presentation, titled “Trumponomics: How and Why It’s Working,” Moore said that the heart of “Trumponomics” is growing the economy as rapidly as possible and that many of the major issues facing our country today — including poverty, the national debt, income inequality and education — will be easier to solve if the economy is growing faster.