The Heartland Institute

New York Mayor Bloomberg’s office shut down the Trojan Company’s “Pleasure Carts” recently, just as the company started distributing 10,000 free vibrators to promote its new product lines. The shutdown occurred, the city said, because the sex-toy giveaway carts lacked city permits and attracted too many people. Trojan, best ...

Overall state tax collections have recovered from the Great Recession, according to a recent report from the Rockefeller Institute of Government at the University of Albany. “States’ tax collections grew for the ninth straight quarter in the first three months of 2012,” said the report’s author, Senior Policy Analyst Lucy Dadayan ...

The selection of Congressman Paul Ryan as the vice presidential nominee for the Republican ticket has brought the issue of Medicare reform to the forefront of people’s minds. But Medicaid is next up, according to the Wall Street Journal : Medicaid provides health insurance to more than 50 million poor Americans and nursing ...

Professor Susan Crockford, a zoologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Victoria, Canada, reports polar bears have successfully adapted to severe climate change many times in the past and will likely adapt to future climate change, as well. Crockford, who has been published many times in the peer-reviewed scientific ...

This comprehensive Parent Trigger report from the New York Foundation for Education Reform's B. Jason Brooks discusses and clarifies the complexities of parent-driven school overhauls, summarizes the experiences and best-practices in other states, and offers guidance for a model parent trigger law that would allow significant ...

Ron Muhlenkamp analyzes the environmental impacts of many competing forms of energy, and concludes shale gas to provide the best combined economic and environmental benefits of all pratical forms of energy ...

The American Civil Liberties Union has sued Michigan officials and a school district near Detroit, alleging they violated students’ “right to read” by providing abysmal instruction for decades. The ACLU complaint alleges students in Highland Park School District “have been denied the instruction necessary to attain basic literacy ...

A petition bearing more than 500,000 signatures has been turned in to state election officials to put the Michigan Energy Michigan Jobs initiative on the November ballot. The proposal is designed to constitutionally require 25 percent of energy produced in Michigan to come from renewable sources by 2025. Proponents of the initiative ...

Credit ratings agency Moody’s Investors Service recently downgraded the ratings of 15 major banks in a move that was expected to harm the financial results of these institutions. “The risks of this industry became apparent in the financial crisis,” said Robert Young, a managing director at Moody’s, about the downgrades. “These ...

Michigan labor unions are working to land a “Protect Our Jobs Amendment” on the state’s November ballot. If passed, unions’ collective bargaining rights would be added to the state’s constitution. “I think they should rename it the “Drive Our Jobs Away Amendment,” said Greg Mourad, vice president of the National Right to Work ...

Investors are seeking federal backing for a loan of more than $5 billion to build a high-speed rail line from Las Vegas to Victorville, nearly 100 miles from Los Angeles. Transportation expert Wendell Cox says this may be the worst high-speed rail proposal he's ever seen. The probable losses would make the government ...

While many conservatives have been suspiciously eyeing Common Core education standards because the Obama administration pushed them on states, several support these lists of what children should know in grades K-12 for math and language arts. Sol Stern, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Public Policy and contributing ...

Removing a major obstacle during contentious contract talks, Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union reached an agreement to lengthen students’ school day without lengthening most teachers’ workdays by hiring 477 new teachers. Under the agreement, the elementary school day will lengthen from five hours and 45 minutes ...

Friday's Top Ten: 1. A new $19 million grant is going to promote global-warming curriculum in K-12 public schools. 2. Nearly 500 New York school districts, including New York City, have ignored a state law requiring them to implement new teacher evaluations. 3. Virginia deserves an F for its restrictive charter school laws , concludes ...

Benjamin Domenech on the Paul Ryan pick and the policy and politics of Medicare. ...

Over the past week, the dueling presidential campaigns have been arguing back and forth about President Obama's cuts to Medicare, which total $716 billion over ten years . Now, these cuts aren't the worst thing in the world, and they're being demagogued to a disturbing degree, with the implication being that the cuts are ...

Nearly 50 million U.S. adults—more than a fifth of the total adult population—smoke cigarettes. After vigorous public health efforts including taxes, education, and outright bans on smoking, the percentage of Americans who smoke has fallen by almost half in the past four decades. In recent years, however, the number of Americans ...

California state government over the past few years has borrowed $4.3 billion from special funds that were designated for specific purposes to cover general fund expenses, according to an analysis by the Sacramento Bee newspaper. The news did not surprise Ed Howard, senior counsel of the Center for Public Interest Law. “I can ...

And now for another terrible housing idea: using eminent domain to "condemn" underwater mortgages, forcibly buy them from mortgage-backed securities (MBS) investors at rates below face value, then sell the new mortgages with lowered principal balances to other private investors. As terrible as this idea is, the debate cannot focus ...

Puerto Rico has instituted some of the most pro-growth tax reforms of any US state or territory, with no tax on passive income for high net-worth individuals, and, to boost exports, almost no tax on business income derived from customers outside the commonwealth. Deputy Secretary Edward Calvesbert discusses the measures ...