The Heartland Institute

A coalition of free-market think tanks is holding a press conference this morning to urge Congress to allow the wind power Production Tax Credit to expire at the end of the year. The press conference is part of a 48-hour coordinated effort to restore fiscal responsibility and free markets to U.S. energy policy. The press ...

The chief executive of Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission is warning against allowing U.S. and European financial regulation in Asia, according to the Global Legal Post, an international legal media publication. Meanwhile, Ireland recently became one of the first countries in the world to agree to the U.S. Foreign ...

The idea that an expensive 19 th Century technology will help meet the transportation and economic development needs of 21 st Century urban areas makes sense only in a fantasy world where cost is no object and transport consumers are so hypnotized by shiny steel wheels on steel rails that they ignore the huge inherent disadvantages ...

Executive Summary This study examines the potential impacts that hydraulic fracturing of shale gas would have on Illinois economy in terms of direct, indirect, and induced jobs; earnings; and total economic activity. Illinois is home to the New Albany shale gas formation which covers a substantial portion of the southern part ...

Cyber-terrorism, hackers, identity theft, and viruses threaten to disrupt digital networks. Given the increased reliance of many industrialized nations on computers to manage their economies and basic infrastructure, digital attacks represent a severe threat. Sens. Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins proposed the Cybersecurity Act in ...

A new report from the General Accountability Office suggests federal and state officials are mishandling a prominent prevention program under President Obama’s health care law, with taxpayers forced to pay for billions of dollars in health promotion programs which may do little or nothing to improve the health of citizens or ...

Election results from all three of Portland, Oregon's largest suburban counties indicate a reaction against what has been called "Portland Creep”—the expansion of the expansive light rail system without voter approval, and the imposition of restrictive densification measures by Metro, the regional land-use agency. Portlanders in ...

This essay is the first of a series of Heartland Policy Briefs by the author on entitlement reform. Soon after World War II, U.S. federal government spending as a percent of gross domestic product (GDP) stabilized at around 20 percent. It remained there until President Barack Obama took office. That period covered close to ...

An Ohio community college forced a construction crew to stop working until its “Men Working” signs were removed because they violated the college’s diversity requirements. A Sinclair Community College administrator complained the sign was “sexist and non-inclusive.” Facing a shutdown on the job, the crew removed it. The college ...

Former President Obama grillout buddy and self-described communist Bill Ayers came out this month to discuss how leftists can mold America to their liking: through access to schools. Ayers is famous for, in 1969, helping found Weather Underground, a self-described communist revolutionary group that bombed public buildings including ...

In its initial fiscal cliff proposal to Republicans, the White House requested additional multi-year stimulus spending, most notably $50 billion in new infrastructure funds for FY 2013 and $25 billion a year for FYs 2014-2018. While rejected out of hand by Congressional Republicans, the potential economic benefits of infrastructure ...

Private investment is the most important driver of economic progress. Entrepreneurs need new structures, equipment, and software to produce new products, to produce existing products at lower cost, and to make use of new technology in machinery, plant layouts, and other aspects of the existing capital stock. When the rate of ...

Aaron Renn of the urbanophile.com Web site has just completed an excellent months-long series of articles on Chicago and joins us to discuss the unofficial capitol of the Midwest, its recent past under former Mayor Richard M. Daley, and its present and future under current Mayor Rahm Emanuel. ...

An audit of an Illinois children’s health insurance program which has struggled to meet its budget goals found the program spent thousands of dollars on people who were not eligible and didn’t investigate why children received multiple pairs of eyeglasses in a year. The audit focused on the expanded All Kids program, which ...

When thinking about the mining industry, one would probably picture a coal mine in West Virginia, maybe an ore mine in the Mesabi Iron Range, or perhaps even a gold mine somewhere in the American west. What might not come immediately to mind, however, are mines that recover uranium and other rare earth oxides (REO) such ...

If plunging over the fiscal cliff in January would threaten the nation’s economy, Congress and the President could also do harm in another way: by dodging the cliff through gimmicks and bogus budget cuts that create only illusory savings in a “grand” budget bargain. Both the White House and lawmakers have shown a propensity ...

Growing almost as fast as the wireless communications industry are the fees and taxes paid by wireless phone users. Even as revenue earned per wireless phone falls, taxes and fees climb. In a new report, Scott Mackey of KSE Partners examines the burden these taxes and fees add to wireless phone users’ monthly bills. Mackey ...

UPDATE: On March 13, 2013, The Heartland Institute was among 16 conservative think tanks and advocacy groups that signed a letter urging a sense of the Congress resolution opposing a carbon tax. You can read that letter here . On December 12, 2012, 14 conservative think tanks and advocacy groups joined forces to urge Congress ...

Benjamin Domenech speaks with Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli of Virginia, on the legal challenges to Obamacare. ...

Government-provided deposit insurance is not free. The reason is straightforward: Government-provided deposit insurance in practice differs significantly from that proposed in theory. First, the FDIC must expend real resources administering and operating the Deposit Insurance Fund. Second, the FDIC is committed to bailing out depositors ...