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Are Cultural Currents Imperiling Students' Mental Health?
There’s been a lot of talk over the past year about the toll that COVID has taken on the mental health of our nation’s youth. New results from 138,000 college students surveyed by the University of Michigan’s Healthy Minds Network add to a troubling picture. Thirty-four percent of college students reported that they have anxiety, a quarter that they often felt isolated, 40 percent that they experienced depression, and more than one-in-five that they had inflicted “self-injury” within the past year.
“Freshmen and sophomores are struggling the most,”...
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Five Facts on Community College in America
The Democratic social spending and climate reconciliation bill being advanced on Capitol Hill includes funding to provide universal community college tuition funding for two years. Who goes to community colleges, how do they currently pay for it, and what is the value of their degrees? Here are five facts on community college in America.
No Labels
Trade school attendees often earn more than those who graduated from community college.
A 2015 study found that Coloradans with associate’s degrees earned on average $36,920 after five years and $42,484 after 10 years. Those with...
Protect Equity and Inclusion for Deaf Americans
In 1990, President George H. W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) —bipartisan, landmark legislation that affirmed the right of Americans with disabilities, like me, to fully participate in our communities. Like other civil rights laws that came before it, the ADA reinforced that our nation’s founding ideals — chief among them equality, independence and self-determination — are not a given, but rather a goal toward which we must continuously strive.
For me and so many deaf Americans, key to achieving these ideals is the ability to effectively...
Ohio State University Pays $12,000 For White Privilege Activist to Lecture
Ohio State University spent $12,000 in March 2021 to show white people how racist they are.
The public university hired Robin DiAngelo, a University of Washington professor known for her focus on racism studies along with her books “White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism” and “Nice Racism: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm.”
She spoke at Ohio State’s 22nd Annual President and Provost’s Diversity Lecture & Cultural Arts Series over Zoom for about an hour and didn’t take questions.
As an...
To Meet Biden's Solar Goal, Working Families Need Equitable Access to Affordable Solar
The White House announced a goal last week of producing 45 percent of our nation’s electricity from solar power by 2050. This is an encouraging target and reaching it will require all Americans to have the opportunity to access affordable solar energy generation. Unfortunately, the way existing federal policy is designed, many families – particularly in communities of color – are being left behind.
Recent extreme weather events have shone a spotlight on this unfortunate reality. If policies don't make clean energy technologies more affordable to low- to-moderate income...
Government's Free Speech Crackdown Risks Hampering Medical Innovation
As our knowledge about the COVID-19 virus has grown and shifted, so too has the guidance about what to do to stop its spread. That’s why the Biden administration’s new guidelines to halt the sharing of so-called misinformation are troubling: Not only do they pose a clear and growing threat to our free speech rights, they ignore the fact that what we know about public health is constantly evolving, and that being able to communicate freely about these changes and about medical innovations can make a life-or-death difference — for this virus and for many other diseases.
In a...
Sen. Wyden's ETF Tax Proposal Proves that the Government is Too Big
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden recently proposed a policy that would change the way that exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are taxed. Not only would it not bring in additional revenue but it is also proof that our government is too big. Senator Wyden’s proposal is a band-aid on a band-aid to a policy that was written to address something that shouldn’t have been needed in the first place.
ETFs are great. They are an investment vehicle that large and small investors use to diversify their holdings. They give small investors the ability to invest like big investors, but...
$2.5 Million In Taxpayer Funds Used to Determine Why Rats, Monkeys Clench Their Jaws
While they don’t have bills to pay or worldwide pandemics to worry about, even rats and monkeys experience stress.
The National Science Foundation, National Aeronautics and Space Administrationb and the Office of Naval Research spent more than $500,000 — more than $2.5 million in inflation adjusted 2021 dollars — over a decade to determine under what conditions rats, monkeys, and humans bite and clench their jaws.
In 1975, Sen. William Proxmire, a Democrat from Wisconsin, gave the agencies a Golden Fleece award, deeming the funds a waste of taxpayer money.
Proxmire called...
Federal Student Loan Repayment Freeze is Putting Some Well-Off Borrowers on a Fast Track to Forgiveness
The student loan repayment moratorium, which has allowed all borrowers with federal student loans to take a break from making payments without penalty, saw its fourth and final extension last month and is set to end early next year. Giving borrowers a break during a time of national economic crisis might seem reasonable, but the break has gone on for far too long. And thanks to the intricacies of the loan repayment system, some high-earning borrowers are reaping a windfall.
Borrowers who are repaying their student debt on an income-driven repayment (IDR) plan are generally expected to...
Northeast Pennsylvania Reflects the Need for Regional Collaboration
If you drive around northeastern Pennsylvania, you’ll notice the ubiquitous presence of roadside signs marking a seemingly endless succession of boroughs and townships.
Luzerne County alone has 76 municipal jurisdictions, including four cities. In the region’s industrial past, the anthracite coal industry fueled the growth of dense, immigrant-majority “patch” towns. But today, after decades of profound economic change, many Luzerne boroughs are a fraction of their early-twentieth-century size. The county’s smallest borough, Jeddo, is home to just 108...
DFW Transportation Improvements Should Be Market-Based
The Dallas Forth Worth region needs to improve transportation capacity to respond to its massive transportation growth and has billions of dollars of new projects planned. DART’s billion-dollar Silver Line commuter line will connect many of Dallas’s northern exurbs to DFW airport, joining a suite of other rail investments that the region has made in recent years. The state Department of Transportation plans to spend $3 billion on new freeway projects in the region over the next ten years.
But as I discuss in a Manhattan Institute report, these projects may not be the fix DFW is...
Reese Witherspoon, Jason Bateman Films Among Those Getting $1.6B from Taxpayers
Every year, the California Film Commission gives $330 million in tax credits to movie and TV programs being filmed in the Golden State.
The film commission’s Film & Television Tax Credit Program 3.0 runs for five years, ending on June 30, 2025, totaling $1.6 billion in tax credits, Variety reported.
The latest round of $86.9 million goes to recipients including the Coen brothers, Steven Soderbergh, Reese Witherspoon, and Jason Bateman.
“Here Comes the Flood,” directed by Bateman, will get a $13.8 million subsidy and air on Netflix, as will “Me Time,” a...
Three Questions About the Democratic Spending Plan
The Biden administration and its allies in Congress want to use fast-track rules — budget reconciliation — to push their $3.5 trillion spending plan through the House and Senate, with votes possible in both chambers within weeks. They seem to believe that a more deliberative and careful process will not be helpful to their cause. Perhaps that is because there are many legitimate and unanswered questions about its contents and merits, and also about the rushed process for considering it.
Proponents of the emerging plan are trying to build political momentum by touting its historic...
Election Updates for the Week of September 13, 2021
Today is California’s recall election, marking the first major election of the cycle. Below are the latest election updates.
States
In Arizona, although the audit continues to be dragged out, two Republican state legislators are claiming that the results show that the 2020 election was invalid. Some are criticizing the audit’s cyber firm for hiring a former fringe candidate to assist.
In California, there is concern over election rumors regarding the validity of the recall election. Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has stated that the election atmosphere is similar to the one...
CivXNow Policy Summit to Celebrate Progress, Promote Nationwide Efforts to Strengthen K-12 Civic Education
The fate of our constitutional democracy is dependent upon stronger state and federal K-12 civic education policies. High-quality, school-based civic learning opportunities foster civic friendship, civil disagreement, and reflective patriotism among our youngest citizens, empowering them to extend the blessings of liberty in the United States for our posterity.
To these ends, the CivXNow Coalition, a project of iCivics, will host its inaugural Policy Summit later this month, September 21-22, where progress on both state and federal civic education policies will be celebrated, and the...
Duplicative Federal Programs Cost U.S. Taxpayers Much More Than $23 Billion a Year
President Donald Trump’s 2021 budget to Congress touted his “pro-growth policies” as being responsible for “one of the strongest economies in American history” but it also noted how much of federal spending is wasteful.
“A bloated federal government, with duplicative programs and wasteful spending, remains a critical threat to America’s future,” according to the budget section “Stopping Wasteful and Unnecessary Spending.”
To eliminate waste, the budget proposed eliminating duplicative programs and gave 10 examples – including...
We Need to Change How We Measure Poverty
On September 14th, the Census Bureau will report the official poverty rate for 2020. In a typical year the poverty rate receives widespread attention as a key indicator of well-being in the United States. This year’s report is especially important given the toll COVID-19 took on American families in 2020, and because it comes on the heels of the lowest poverty rate ever recorded in 2019.
Unfortunately, the official poverty measure will not provide an accurate assessment of deprivation in 2020, or in any other year, because it has widely recognized flaws. For example, it omits key...
End-of-Year Spending Spree Wastes Up to $100 Billion Each Year
During September 2019, federal agencies spent $91 billion on 642,567 transactions — an average of $3 billion on 21,418 transactions each day. In September 2018, the feds spent $97 billion.
If those figures are shocking, they should be.
Federal agencies worry that if they spend less than their budget allows, Congress may give them less funding next fiscal year.
So, they begin an annual spending spree with a “use-it or lose-it” mentality to spend all their budgeted funds by the end of the fiscal year, Sept. 30.
That led to spending $91 billion in just one month in 2019, with...
The War over Face Masks Meets School Choice
Parents hoped they could safely send their children back to school this fall. The Delta variant of COVID-19 has dashed that hope. What’s worse, families have found themselves thrust into a war over face masks. Those who don’t want their children to be forced to wear masks all day might reside in districts with mask mandates. Those who are worried about their children being around unmasked and unvaccinated children are just as likely to wind up in mask-optional districts. School board meetings across the nation are erupting into shouting matches, parents are protesting, and many...
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Five Facts on Weather Disasters in the US
Hurricane Ida and its aftermath have exposed the need for infrastructure upgrades of the sort provided for in the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which includes billions in funding to build more resilience into our coastlines, our power grid and our communities against major storms, wildfires, and drought. Here are five facts on weather and climate disasters in America.
No Labels
1. Since 2018, more than 50 severe weather events have caused losses exceeding $1 billion.
In 2020 alone, there were 22 such disasters. The infrastructure...
