A return to competition and personal responsibility will cure America’s health care crisis...if we let it.

Texas is the appropriate state to call for a change in federal ethanol mandates. The indirect costs of ethanol hurt Texans in the grocery store as well as key agricultural sectors of the state economy.

It goes with the robins and the roses – the bad news of what property ownership costs in a society that leans heavily, for the satisfaction of public wants, upon the owners of homes and businesses.

Who knew a “free” source of energy could be so expensive?

All too often, it takes cutbacks to force government to re-prioritize its core functions and correct its indulgences.

Characterized by the EPA as perhaps its most expensive rule ever, this 75-ppb standard begs for solid scientific justification.

Performance and results are commonly rewarded in the private sector via bonuses and raises tied to positive performance reviews. The same should hold true for education.

The only things that have skyrocketed since full deregulation took effect in January 2007 are consumer choice and competition.

As policymakers review the Texas homeowners’ insurance market, they should keep in mind that Texas insurers and Texas consumers are the proper parties to determine homeowners’ and windstorm insurance rates. Markets, not governments, will ultimately find the proper balance.

The "right" price, every time, is that on which a willing buyer and willing seller agree in an encounter perfected by the tender of a credit card or a handful of pennies. A buyer who doesn't want your Edsel won't be induced at any price to acquire it. A buyer, by contrast, who truly, deeply wants a certain doll will calculate need, resources, and the present or future availability of this wonderful contrivance. He'll buy if he wants; he won't if he doesn't.

Ultimately, Texas farmers and food vendors don’t profit from making their customers sick. In such very rare instances, they can face incredibly costly lawsuits. Instead of producing another crop of rules that stifle entrepreneurship and criminalize ordinary business activities, government should leave the field and let the market for food and flowers bloom.

Of course, a single mandate does not have a crushing impact on the cost of health insurance. However, researchers have found that the combined effect of the mandates drive up the cost of a basic health plan by nearly 50%.

Last month, dozens of Austin parents camped out on the cold concrete of the Austin Independent School District headquarters parking lot with one goal in mind: securing a better learning environment for their children.

Rather than being handcuffed to the past – to the detriment of the taxpayers – legislators charted a new course that emphasizes alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent offenders while continuing to lock up violent and sexual offenders.

As the presidential candidates discuss their plans for the American health care system, they point their fingers of blame in several directions – toward insurers, toward employers, and even toward over-eaters and non-exercisers. But none of the leading candidates are pointing toward the main culprit – the government.

Combine inflated ridership projections and enormous cost overruns that have plagued rail projects like this across the country with the reality that people have not given up their cars en masse despite the construction of fancy rail lines, and the only promise taxpayers can count on is that this will require their continued and growing financial obligation for decades to come.

The purpose of a state accountability system is to evaluate school performance and provide that information to parents and the public so they can determine the quality of a particular school or district. The current accountability system fails in this regard and needs to be redesigned.

Energy production from fossil fuels, e.g., coal, oil and natural gas, is often blamed for many of the world’s environmental ills. But no one today was around to experience firsthand how dirty the world was before the invention of the internal combustion engine, when horses—and horse manure—were prevalent on city streets.

The label of a “Do Nothing” Congress might well serve as a badge of honor, given the misguided national energy bills now being debated.

The “Football Follies” series of films contains classic highlights of players bumbling, stumbling, and fumbling their way across the gridiron. While highly entertaining – such as ex-Minnesota Viking Jim Marshall’s fumble recovery and ensuing 65 yard run to the wrong end zone – they also provide excellent examples of how not to play football. Recent government forays into consumer regulation provide similar examples of how not to intervene in markets.

Among the report’s dozens of observations and recommendations, perhaps the most astonishing finding is that none of the best practices require any changes in law by the legislature or Texas Education Agency. These innovative public schools are working within existing budgetary and legal guidelines to implement strategies that provide greater support to teachers and result in greater achievement for students.

Though there is much room for improvement, Texas is showing the rest of the country what happens when doctors are freer to practice their trade and less encumbered by frivolous lawsuits and runaway juries.

Remember the big school property tax cut you were supposed to get? Your local school district might be about to take it away.

Today, there are too few people willing to follow the facts when it comes to the Texas electric market. Though the facts clearly point to the success of deregulation, many still refuse to believe that consumer choice is a good idea.

The true promise of competition in corrections lies not in saving money while providing the same product as state-run prisons, but in harnessing the innovation of the private sector to develop programming that will reduce recidivism, since 99 percent of inmates are ultimately released.

Last year, 35 percent of all freshmen at Texas public higher education institutions had to enroll in at least one remedial education course because they were unprepared for college-level work in math, reading, or writing. This equates to more than 162,000 incoming freshmen expending time and energy on remedial coursework that does not count toward their degree.

If the popular press is your source for climate science, you are probably terrified the end is near—moving as far inland as possible and staying inside to avoid heat stroke. You might be altering your lifestyle to combat the effects of carbon dioxide emissions. But if you look at the facts about “global warming,” the picture is not as bleak as it may seem.

Our criminal justice system is bursting at the seams. There are simply not enough law enforcement and correctional resources to keep up with the glut of lawbreakers. Federal and local authorities are recognizing that it is more efficient to use carrots in addition to sticks.

While the public school lobby has traditionally opposed any introduction of competition into the education system, the state’s largest school district seems to have embraced it.

“Many people want the government to protect the consumer,” said the late economist Milton Friedman. “A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.”

Give George W. Bush credit. He's drawn a lot of criticism for not doing more to control federal spending over the past six years. But he is now deep into a spending fight against a sacred liberal program. And he isn't backing away.

If student learning is the main objective, then it defies common sense to bar a genius like Albert Einstein or business guru Jack Welch from the classroom because he doesn’t have a teaching certificate.

What’s in a name? Apparently, to a government school monopoly, it’s everything.

Even the wealthiest man in Texas may be no match for the gargantuan growth in criminal law.

The recent decisions by Farmers Insurance and Allstate Insurance to withdraw their proposed homeowners’ insurance rate increases in the face of opposition from the Texas Department of Insurance are an unfortunate turn of events for Texas consumers and taxpayers. The regulation of homeowners’ insurance in Texas has for years produced poor results for consumers.

Twenty years of incremental expansions took the percentage of children on government health care from 17 percent to 47 percent. Today’s proposals would push that past 70 percent.

"The words of a prophet are written on the subway wall,” Simon and Garfunkel once sang. Perhaps "I love Alex" could be a hit record, but in Katy these words written on a gymnasium wall instantly made a 12-year-old a potential felon.

“Whenever the people are well-informed,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1789, “they can be trusted with their own government.” No doubt the Founding Fathers’ faith in self-government would be challenged today with the reality of how little Americans know about their heritage.

People suffering from depression must often hit rock bottom before they get better. The same can be said for criminal justice in Texas. Few could have imagined the abuses that surfaced earlier this year at the Texas Youth Commission, but they led to landmark reform legislation. Indeed, reforms made this session indicate that lawmakers are finally rethinking all aspects of the criminal justice system.

Despite previous lessons learned and the overwhelming evidence that price controls simply do not work, Congress is again looking to shelve the requisite leadership needed to implement sound energy policies based on supply and demand. Rather than helping to increase domestic refining capacity and reduce our dependence on foreign oil, they instead have chosen a purely political strategy void of economic fundamentals.

To be employable in today’s economy, students need a solid foundation of reading, writing and arithmetic; strong technical skills; and problem-solving and creative thinking skills. To meet these new demands, vocational education must continue to change.

What is more important for our children than a rigorous education? Strong math, reading, and writing skills enable all students from a range of backgrounds to achieve their dreams.

Across Texas, hundreds of charter schools educate thousands of the state’s neediest students. But a bill scheduled for vote today by the Texas House would shut down many of these schools.

While many Texas families rightfully fear violent criminals and child predators, no police alert has yet gone out for an interior decorator on the loose. Yet, as the Legislature continues to produce solutions in search of problems, a pending bill would criminalize thousands of interior decorators.

A common saying around the Texas Legislature is that bad facts make bad law, meaning that lawmakers too often respond to an isolated bad situation or actor with an overreaching law that applies to everyone in every situation. Imagine, then, how bad the law can be when lawmakers respond not to facts, but to myths and misrepresentations.

The issue boils down to basic honesty and fairness. The TIF was created for a specific purpose and for a specific period of time. The original goal has been met and the policy rationale has disappeared. Given the disproportionate taxes they already pay on telecommunications, Texas consumers deserve relief. And yet the tax lives on.

A recent e-mail from the Children’s Defense Fund, a leading lobby in the push to expand government-subsidized health care, asks its state coordinators to send “stories of children who have died because they did not have access to adequate health coverage” and adds that “a picture of the child to include with the story” would be especially valuable.

Public education is one of the few industries that deny management the ability to evaluate employees annually so that the top performers are rewarded and the ineffective ones dismissed.

Despite $14 billion in new revenue coming into the state’s coffers, any notion that the legislature will be measured by how it treats hardworking Texas taxpayers has been forgotten. Some lawmakers who wrapped themselves in the flag of limited government, limited spending, and low taxes during their election campaigns have removed it from display now that they are in Austin.

To the extent we put more money into our institutions of higher education, it should be targeted to producing the type of graduates Texas needs to preserve its competitive advantage.

Unfortunately, the Texas House stripped the promising incentive pay program last month, converting it to a meager across-the-board “pay raise” of $850 for every teacher, counselor, nurse, and librarian. Make no mistake: this is not a pay raise. No new money has been added, and average teacher pay will remain the same. The legislature merely reshuffled the existing money from the highest-performing teachers to give the most ineffective ones another $850. The best teachers could lose up to $10,000 each.

No Texan should be fooled into thinking that we need more prisons to keep up with population growth or lock up sex offenders. The real question is whether we need more prisons to lock up more nonviolent drug offenders.

From tort, tax, and budget reforms to deregulation of the telecom and electric markets, Texans have decided that markets are often a better solution to our problems than government intervention. The results have proven this to be the right approach.

Taxpayers have a right to know how and where their money is being spent. What better way to hold schools accountable than by letting the sun shine on their checkbooks and allowing taxpayers to examine their spending?

If the nation isn’t prepared for the aging baby boomers, it isn’t because the boomers sneaked up on us. For some time, we have seen the warnings and been conscious of the coming “age wave.” The problem is that few have taken heed and been moved to act thus far.

Texans have been horrified to learn that some of the 5,000 juveniles allegedly being rehabilitated at Texas Youth Commission facilities have instead been molested and mistreated.

Now that TXU will no longer exist as we knew it, what is left? Just the facts, which show a very different picture than what most people are trying to paint.

Texans need to understand that as long as current state spending increases at the low rate already proposed, a vote to exceed the constitutional spending cap is a vote for promised tax relief…and nothing more.

Private sector experts are too often kept out of the classroom because of antiquated state certification requirements. If our primary concern really is our children, the Texas Legislature will act this session to start removing those barriers.

When your cable TV bill gets too high, you can switch to satellite providers. Home telephone too expensive? Go with voice-over-Internet protocol. Don’t like your cellular service? The kiosk at the mall will give you a free camera phone if you’ll switch. We routinely comparison shop for cars, for groceries, for clothes, for insurance... Why not shop for electricity?

We must not view crime as simply an offense against the state, and instead ensure that crime victims have a place in the courtroom and a seat at the table. The marginalization of victims is not only unjust, but deprives us of the public safety benefits that are only realized when an offender’s conscience is awakened upon realizing the harm caused to another human being.

When U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm introduced the “Dickey Flatt test” to his colleagues and to the country, he brought a new conscience to budget writing and created an iconic image for fiscal discipline.

Opponents of school choice fight parent choice and competition among schools by arguing that school choice takes money from schools. Unfortunately, they turn a blind eye to what is both a serious problem in education and the largest drain on school funding: dropouts.

The chief argument for new spending is always the desire to “meet people’s needs.” As good as this might sound, it is a strategy often doomed to failure.

El Paso is set to be the new poster child in the battle over private property rights in Texas.

End-of-course exams can move Texas students in the right direction.

Texas will need more electric power in the coming years - lots more - and coal will be critical to meeting those power needs.

Competition and retail choice are working in the Texas electric market.

The wartime economy of the last century should no longer be allowed to dictate the health care choices available to this century’s health care consumers.

Milwaukee's school choice program benefits children, strengthens communities, and unites unlikely allies.

We are entering a period of great peril for Texans’ pocketbooks.

Less costly alternatives should be used for effective punishment.

Increased electric regulation will threaten innovation, investment and the reliability of supplies, harming our ability to bring new employers to Texas and maintain the strong job creation rate.

Research has shown preschool can actually hinder social development, especially for children from the poorest families.

Poorly defining poverty is the first step in making us all much poorer.

Many of the state's parks should be privatized.

Too many nonviolent offenders are entering state lockups while unreformed violent offenders go out the back door.

Consumers would adore a setting in which power companies beg for their business, encouraging them to turn thermostats to the coldest point.

Illegal immigration is certainly a public policy priority in its own right, but it cannot be confused as the silver bullet solution to rescue government budgets from insolvency.

With the start of a new school year, many Texas kids are missing the bus on math and science.

If Texans are serious about addressing the bite government takes out of our wallets, then we must be serious about restraining the size of the mouth doing the biting.

Without a meaningful limit, government tends to grow out of control.

The traditional and legitimate use of criminal law is being trivialized.

It shouldn't surprise people to know we are facing the Catch-22 of choosing between clean air and consumers’ pocketbooks because of a history of poorly thought out environmental regulations.

Rather than relying on in-person interviews in a field office with limited hours of operation, the new system allows applicants extended hours by phone, and 24-hour access online.

While the concept of paying for every child's preschool appears laudable, in reality it is an expensive notion that results in a bureaucracy and a massive financial hit to taxpayers.

Local governments taking private property from one person and giving to another cannot happen here, right? Wrong.

Government’s demand is unlimited. For any given program, no matter how generous, someone can be found who would benefit if the program was even more generously funded.

The newest Texas pipeline funnels children from schools to prison, by way of alternative education programs and juvenile detention centers.

Who is surprised that in its haste to show its big heart, the government lost millions of dollars in debit cards and fraudulent payments?

It is simply wrong for local governments to use eminent domain to take private property from one person and give it to another.

Competition creates better working conditions, more competitive salaries, and greater public esteem for teachers.

Studying the state’s budget and trying to get answers to basic questions is a little like a physicist studying the big bang. But the Texas state budget is not the cosmos.

Building new jails and hiring more personnel is a costly stopgap measure.

In a world where voice, video and data communications are merging into almost indistinguishable packets of electrons, taxes still discriminate based on the type of telecommunications service provided.

Texas has become the latest state to jump on the anti-Wal-Mart bandwagon.

Lawmakers and educators fail to recognize there is plenty of money in our education system to pay teachers more – it’s just a matter of prioritization.

It is contradictory to praise increased costs passed on to the poor on one hand, while criticizing increased costs passed on to the poor on the other.

The Texas Legislature has much to do to protect private property owners from the overreach of local governments.

Declining assistance rolls reveal a startling difference in worldview; one expects individuals to rely on government, while the other emphasizes personal responsibility and private charity.

Giving victims a seat at the table in plea bargaining is a matter of justice.

Texans are working longer just to pay the cost of government.

Shared services would enable districts to save thousands of dollars each year on non-academic expenses.

New regulations will soon require animal owners to tag their animals, creating new costs with few benefits.

In determining the best tax policy for Texas, class warfare should not be part of the debate.

Consumer choice, not government regulation, has provided the best value for policyholders. More of this, along with some fair weather, is what will lead to lower homeowners' insurance costs in Texas.

Greater price transparency within the health care industry will go a long way in helping to right the market, bring greater competition to the marketplace, and encourage more sensible pricing.

Current property tax reduction debate is only a temporary solution.

With the recently announced $4.3 billion revenue surplus, lawmakers have the solution to the state's school finance problem staring them in the face. Let's hope they put it to good use to buy-down property taxes, and not engage in more spending.

Criminal law is a blunt instrument and should be reserved for conduct that is blameworthy and threatens public safety, not wielded to enlarge the power of government at the expense of ordinary Americans.

To combat rising energy prices, we need to remove burdensome regulations, not add new taxes.

The current focus on renewable energy is doing little to meet America's energy challenges.

A new drug-labeling rule from the FDA aims to give medical providers and patients clearer information about prescription drugs.

According to some, bigger government extracting more resources from the economy will build a healthier and more prosperous middle class.

It's good news that telecommunications reform is moving forward in Texas. But there is a lot of work to be done before we enjoy the fruits of a truly deregulated marketplace.

Approximately half of all students in Texas’ state universities and colleges need remedial classes. But particularly in math and the sciences, Texas’ school children are lagging behind.

We have heard it before and no doubt we’ll hear it again: business must pony up more cash. It turns out Texas businesses pay just over 60 percent of all state and local taxes, the fourth highest business tax burden in the nation.

The impact of one teacher on student learning has gone unrecognized in public schools for far too long, but that is changing.