The Texas Model

The Texas Model: Prosperity in the Lone Star State and Lessons for America, 2014 Edition, is a project of the Texas Public Policy Foundation. The book compares Texas to its large state peers and details why Texas is increasingly the destination for Americans seeking a better life. The Texas Model describes a state with low taxes, modest government, and a lawsuit climate that allows entrepreneurship to flourish while encouraging job creation. The book also introduces and details the "Soft Tyranny Index" for both the federal government and the 50 states, looking at the extent to which government exerts a controlling influence on the lives of Americans in a manner Alexis de Tocqueville presciently warned about in Democracy in America in 1835. The Texas Public Policy Foundation is a 501(c)3 non-profit, non-partisan research institute based in Austin, Texas with Brooke Rollins as its President and CEO. The Foundation's mission is to promote and defend liberty, personal responsibility and free enterprise in Texas and the nation by educating and affecting policymakers and the Texas public policy debate with academically sound research and outreach. The public is demanding a different direction for their government, and the Texas Public Policy Foundation is providing the ideas that enable policymakers to chart that new course guided by these principles: - Individual Liberty - Personal Responsibility - Free Markets - Private Property Rights - Limited government Chuck DeVore is Vice President of Policy at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. From 2004 to 2010, Chuck represented almost 500,000 people in the California State Assembly in Orange County. He was the Vice Chairman of the Assembly Committee on Revenue and Taxation and served on the Budget Committee and Joint Legislative Audit Committee. In 2010, Chuck competed for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in California. Chuck worked as an executive in the aerospace industry before starting his service as an elected official. Chuck was a Reagan White House appointee in the Office of the Secretary of Defense where he was a Special Assistant for Foreign Affairs. Chuck is a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army (retired) Reserve. He graduated with honors from Claremont McKenna College with a degree in Strategic Studies in 1985. Chuck and his wife Diane were married in 1988. They have two daughters and make their home in Dripping Springs, Texas.