Frequently Asked Questions

Do you have a question for the candidate? Email it to him at jack@jack4texas.com.

1. What is your level of civic involvement, past and present?
2. How long have you lived in Texas and House District 99?
3. What is the biggest challenge your constituents face and how would you address it?
4. Do you agree that both major parties seem to have shifted further from center? How will your leadership promote compromise and not division?
5. How should Texas improve school funding? What does the next chapter of Texas education look like?
6. Do you support education savings accounts or vouchers? If so, please outline the specific proposals you favor.
7. What would you do as a legislator to ensure Texas children are safe at school? Would you support red flag laws or expanded background checks?
8. Should Texas expand Medicaid eligibility? Why or why not?
9. What should our state’s role be in border security and addressing crises at the border?
10. How should Texas support and regulate its energy industry? And how can the state also ensure public safety and environmental stewardship?
11. There has been conflict recently over books in Texas public schools that may not be appropriate for kids. What role should politicians play in deciding what’s appropriate? What categories of books concern you most?
12. Would you consider expanding gambling in Texas?
13. Are you happy with Texas’ abortion laws? If not, what reforms do you favor? (Please be specific about things like gestational ages, exceptions for rape, etc.)

I currently sit on the Municipal Development District Board for the City of Azle. I have worked in education for almost 15 years. I am not sure if this would count, but from 2002-2005, I coached little league baseball, and from 2007-2009, I volunteered as an umpire for the intramural softball league in Stephenville, Texas.
As a full-time economics professor, I was elected to the Faculty Senate at Tarrant County College.

How long have you lived in Texas and House District 99?

I was born and raised in Texas. I have lived in Texas for most of the last 55 years, save for my time in the military (from 1987-1990, 1991) and a brief period of about 6 months in 1997 when I lived in Rifle, CO.

I have lived in Texas House District 99 since August 2018.

What is the biggest challenge your constituents face and how would you address it?

Education is a big issue. First, I support school choice and so do most of the Republican primary voters in this district (87.5% according to 2022 primary proposal). In fact, multiple polls shows that school choice enjoys broad bipartisan support. 

Second, I know first-hand that our teachers are undervalued and underappreciated. I will fight hard for teachers to be paid better and treated better. 

Third, we have to acknowledge that the current public education system is NOT working for most of our students. In my district alone, almost half of our students read below grade level, and almost two-thirds are below grade level in math. This should be unacceptable to everyone. The solution cannot be simply to continue throwing good money after bad. We have to work toward significant reforms in Texas' public education system.

Another challenge is property taxes. I believe the current system is unjust and antithetical to capitalism and private property ownership, which is the foundation of our economy. We need to eliminate property taxes and replace it with a consumption tax.

Do you agree that both major parties seem to have shifted further from center? How will your leadership promote compromise and not division?

Yes, but respectfully, I am not running to "promote compromise," I am running to promote conservative ideals. 

Sadly, the Democrats of today are not your parent's Democrats; these are not Tip O'Neill Democrats that President Reagan negotiated with. I have no objection to working with Democrats, but we are not simply divided for the sake of division. The modern Democratic party, including many Democrats in Texas, are openly anti-straight, anti-white, anti-male, anti-capitalist, and even anti-American. I am a straight white male capitalist American. I have little in common with the current incarnation of the Democrat party. Nonetheless, I am certainly open to working with everyone to implement good policies for my constituents in  District 99, regardless of what side of the aisle the idea comes from.

How should Texas improve school funding? What does the next chapter of Texas education look like?

First, pass a robust school choice program.  Second, our primary and secondary education system should be funded based on the economic benefits it provides to its graduates using what is known as the returned-value funding model. 

This funding model is used ty Texas State Technical College (TSTC) system. It uses the aggregate of a districts "value add" as calculated by its direct and indirect contributions to the state's economy for each member of a graduating class. Those direct and indirect contributions are determined in part by their wages earned after graduating minus the minimum wage. This calculation should be made for the first 5-10 years after a student graduates. 

The district's funding is derived by calculating the additional tax revenue from this higher wage for each of the students they successfully graduated, with the state and the schools splitting the additional tax revenue. Adjustments will need to be made, of course, but this model has been shown to be very effective. There are obvious differences between K12 and post-secondary schooling that make the application of such a funding model challenging, but not impossible.

Do you support education savings accounts or vouchers? If so, please outline the specific proposals you favor.

YES! We should have one of the most robust school choice programs in the nation. No parent - rich or poor, black or white - should have to pay for both private AND public education. Let the parent(s) choose how best to spend their own tax dollars earmarked for education. This has the added advantage of forcing schools to compete for each student's education dollars. As an economist, I have much more faith in markets than I do in bureaucrats.

What would you do as a legislator to ensure Texas children are safe at school? Would you support red flag laws or expanded background checks?

I am an advocate of the 2nd Amendment and will not support laws that restrict our constitutional rights. Full stop.

The best thing we can to ensure Texas children are safe at school is to allow armed teachers in the classroom. I cannot support red flag law as I believe they are unconstitutional - they violate the right to due process. The phrase "expanded background checks" is too vague for me to comment, except to say that we have background checks already in place. Much of the gun violence we see is committed by those not subjected to such controls, like someone who stole the gun, so expanding them is not likely to help.

Should Texas expand Medicaid eligibility? Why or why not?

I am an economist. Economics is the study of how society chooses to allocate its limited resources to meet its unlimited wants.  The fact of the matter is our healthcare system has limited resources and how those resources are allocated is LITERALLY a matter of life and death.  We live in a world of scarcity and there is no magical exception for healthcare. Healthcare resources are limited. This means that every resource we use to treat patient #1 is a resource we no longer have to treat patient #2, etc. I understand that we do not like this, but it is a FACT! This is what is leading countries like Canada to encourage "assisted suicide" for older or chronically ill patients. 

I am in favor of helping those who cannot help themselves through no fault of their own - the elderly or those who are otherwise infirmed, physically or mentally, due to something other than old age. Respectfully, for the rest of us who are more than capable of being productive, we bear the responsibility of providing for our own healthcare. 

Do you recall last year there were a number of banks that failed? Most people were not in favor of bailing out those banks with our tax dollars. This is not unreasonable, as doing so would create what we economists call a moral hazard. If we bail the banks out when they fail due to the mistakes they made themselves, they are unlikely to learn from those mistakes. Why don't we apply this to people? For example, everyone knows they will likely get sick or injured and require medical treatment, correct? Then isn't it incumbent upon each of us to make choices that place us in a position to provide for our own healthcare? In so doing, we allow the supply of healthcare resources to rise and meet the growing needs of healthcare consumers.

What should our state’s role be in border security and addressing crises at the border?

Given that the federal government under President Biden's "leadership" has obfuscated their responsibilities regarding border security, Texas is compelled to take decisive action. We have to find and deploy the most effective infrastructure and technology for protecting our border. We must end in-state tuition for illegal aliens as it acts as an incentive for illegal immigration. We need legislation that works to reduce and eliminate child and drug trafficking - more investigative resources, stiffer penalties, etc. A nation without borders simply cannot survive.

How should Texas support and regulate its energy industry? And how can the state also ensure public safety and environmental stewardship?

To begin with, only Texans should have control of Texas' power grid. ERCOT needs to be managed by Texans for Texans. We need to move away from alternative energy production that doesn't produce enough to support Texas families during the coldest and hottest times of the year. We learned the hard way that wind turbines do not produce much electricity when they are frozen or when there is little to no wind. We learned the hard way that solar panels cannot produce much electricity when the sun doesn't shine. We need reliable sources of energy and there is zero excuse for Texas to not have it - between oil and natural gas production in this state, we are more than capable of providing for our own energy needs. If we want good environmental stewardship, then we have to recognize that we should move slowly to begin weening ourselves off non-renewable energy sources. For example, we should incentivize the production of self-charging hybrid vehicles, which get over 40 miles to the gallon on average. Widespread adoption of such vehicles would reduce our dependency on oil and buy us time to perfect more efficient alternative energy systems for production and storage.

There has been conflict recently over books in Texas public schools that may not be appropriate for kids. What role should politicians play in deciding what’s appropriate? What categories of books concern you most?

It is interesting to me that this "conflict" seemed to only arise after conservatives expressed concern about certain sexualized content. I did not hear a word from the media about any "conflict" when the left began removing such literary classics as Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, or To Kill a Mockingbird. Yet here we are embroiled in this "conflict."

Respectfully, if you want to read smut, you are free to do that. The very nature of freedom as enshrined in our founding documents include the freedom to make stupid choices so long as those choices do not come in conflict with anyone else's constitutionally protected rights. However, using tax dollars to pay for age-inappropriate books, many of which the students are encouraged to read, is a matter that should concern us all. It seems to me that an easy standard to apply would be if you cannot read it publicly at a school board meeting, then it should not be in a taxpayer-funded school library. 

Would you consider expanding gambling in Texas?

Personally, I am not a big fan of the idea. However, my job is not to go to Austin and do what I think is best for everyone, my job is to go to Austin and do what my voters tell me to do, constrained only by our Constitution and my faith. That is the nature of a representative Republic. If my voters want me to vote in favor of "expanding gambling in Texas," then I will do so. If not, I will not. And this goes for most any bill put before me to vote on. If I have strong views and ideas of my own, I certainly reserve the right to educate my constituents about my views and hope they come around to agree with me - I am an educator, afterall.

Are you happy with Texas’ abortion laws? If not, what reforms do you favor? (Please be specific about things like gestational ages, exceptions for rape, etc.)

I believe unequivocally that every human being, born or unborn, has a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Full stop.