Colleen Hroncich Conservative Christians probably aren’t generally seen as trailblazers, but they were at the forefront of homeschooling in the 1960s and 1970s. So it’s not surprising that curricula and resources for homeschoolers are often Christian in nature. When Blair Lee, a college professor with a background in chemistry and biology, began homeschooling her son in the early 2000s, she ...
Ivan G. Osorio Fred L. Smith, Jr., founder and long-time leading light of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), recently passed away peacefully at home, surrounded by family and friends. Fred’s place as a prime mover—or perhaps, a force of nature—in the libertarian movement is well known. Founding CEI out of his and his wife Fran’s apartment in 1984, he built ...
Marc Joffe Mecklenburg County residents in North Carolina have been paying a 0.5 percent transportation sales tax since 1999. Now local leaders would like to triple that tax, thereby raising the total sales tax Charlotte consumers pay to 8.25 percent. If approved by the state legislature and voters, the new tax revenue would fund an expensive new transit line and ...
Norbert Michel and Jerome Famularo In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States experienced a much higher rate of inflation than at any time during the prior few decades. Like the prices of many goods and services, the cost of housing rose rapidly. The median home price, for instance, jumped from less than $350,000 to almost $450,000. (Figure ...
Christian Schneider Any day is good to raise a cold glass full of spirits, but enjoying a stiff drink on December 5 is especially apt, given it is the day alcohol prohibition was repealed in 1933. The benefits of ending Prohibition immediately became evident: People stopped poisoning themselves with alcohol mixed with paint thinner in their bathtubs, organized crime lost much ...
Jennifer Huddleston This blog is part of a series on technology innovation and free expression. Parents and policymakers continue to express concerns about teens and tweens online, particularly in relation to their social media usage. The exact nature of these concerns varies from exposure to specific types of content to the amount of time spent online to more traditional online ...
Vanessa Brown Calder The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is a good place to start for an administration with an appetite for change. Failed programs like public housing should be abandoned permanently, and unfocused programs with mostly unmeasurable results, like Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), should be eliminated, while other HUD functions can be devolved to state governments. ...
Neal McCluskey This morning, Americans woke up to the latest scores from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), tests taken by students in 63 countries and other jurisdictions in fourth grade and 45 in eighth grade. The United States has participated since the exams began in 1995. In fourth-grade math, the US average hit its lowest level in ...
David Inserra This blog is part of a series on technology innovation and free expression. In the aftermath of the 2020 election and COVID-19 pandemic, many people accused social media companies and other private actors of suppressing expression. Details and records trickled out through the Twitter Files, congressional subpoenas, and discovery in court cases over the next few years. In ...
Andrew M. Grossman Don’t say that debanking is back, because it never went away. But with close allies of the new administration focused on the issue, reform may finally be in the offing. Three basic steps are needed, the first two of which can be done in no time at all: (1) block regulators from pressuring financial providers to drop ...