The Heartland Institute

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo missed a Nov. 29 deadline to finalize long-awaited hydraulic fracturing regulations. The missed deadline left state residents uncertain whether and when they would join the current shale gas revolution that is creating jobs and wealth in nearby states such as Pennsylvania and Ohio. Panel Studies Health ...

A bill to create a state health insurance exchange in Michigan in compliance with President Obama’s health care law was rejected by the state House of Representatives Health Policy Committee. With the committee’s 5-9 vote on Nov. 30, Michigan now looks likely to form a “partnership” exchange managed primarily by the U.S. Department ...

Though 46 states will spend an estimated $5 to $12 billion to implement a new set of national education standards called the Common Core, public officials are arranging these standards in hundreds of closed-door meetings. Meetings between members of the Council of Chief State School Officers to write and discuss these standards ...

First established as part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the Federal Universal Service Fund was designed to provide telephone service to underserved areas of the country. Soon after, individual states began to launch universal service funds to target underserved areas in their states. USFs use fees applied to telephone ...

Michigan voters sent a strong message to the U.S. renewable energy industry, rejecting a proposed state constitutional amendment that would have forced consumers to purchase 25 percent of their electricity from so-called renewable sources by the year 2025. Proposition 3, also known as 25x25, would have required consumers to purchase ...

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon has allowed a lawsuit seeking an injunction by R.J. Reynolds and Lorillard Tobacco to proceed against the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee. It alleges a conflict of interest on the scientific panel responsible for regulating tobacco products. FDA officials asked Judge Leon to ...

Voters elected Teresa Rogers, a parent who helped pull a Parent Trigger in Adelanto, California, to the district’s school board. That school board had opposed parents’ efforts to convert a failing school under its purview into a charter school. It took a lawsuit, but parents won. “We need to change the culture of the schools ...

Were they unusual during the 20th century? No, not during the past two millennia, as this study suggests that modern warming cannot be distinguished from warming induced by “natural processes,” which ultimately suggests there is no compelling reason to attribute modern warming to anthropogenic CO2 emissions... Read More Cyanobacteria ...

Adults who speak English poorly lose $3,000 per year in wages, which totals $37.7 billion annual loss in U.S. earnings, concludes a new report from the Lexington Institute. Institute president and report coauthor Don Soifer joins the podcast to talk English language learners and their growing impact on public schools and ...

Georgia voters have approved an amendment to the state constitution that allows the General Assembly to authorize charter schools even if they have been denied by local school districts. Constitutional Amendment One won 58 percent to 41 percent in the November 6 election. Groups including the Georgia School Boards Association ...

As part of the deal to avoid tax increases and spending cuts required by the so-called fiscal cliff, Congress extended controversial wind power subsidies known as the Production Tax Credit. Taxpayers will have to hand over $12 billion to wind power companies in 2013 as a result. ‘Temporary’ Subsidies Continue Congress created ...

In this Backgrounder & Report, David North writes that would-be Wall Street bomber Quazi Mohammed Nafis had a student visa, as did Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad , and as did the 9/11 pilots Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi 11 years earlier. Perhaps it is time to look a little more closely at the sleepy agency that ...

Minerals play an invaluable role in enhancing our quality of life, powering the economy and strengthening the national security of the United States. Yet, while America is home to a wealth of mineral resources, our ability to secure these critical materials in the face of rising global competition is threatened by an outdated ...

According to Keynesian economic theory, many recessions have little or nothing to do with underlying (structural) economic problems. Instead, recessions are the result of a crisis in confidence. People are scared and therefore not spending. And when they are not spending, others are not earning income and so the economy suffers ...

In this Backgrounder & Report, W.D. Reasoner notes that a surprising number of naturalized citizens who have been charged and convicted of serious national security crimes — including terrorism, espionage, and theft of sensitive information and technology — in the last several years. It compares the relative ease with which aliens ...

In this "Best of" Heartland podcast, Michigan is one of 18 states where the state government acts as liquor wholesaler. Liquor reforms are being mulled in Michigan, where a new report from the Mackinac Center for Public Policy concludes the state's liquor monopoly harms consumers without delivering health and safety benefits ...

California voters approved Proposition 39, which raises taxes on multistate businesses and directs half the revenues to go to so-called green energy projects. $1.1 Billion Tax Hike Proposition 39, which supporters dubbed the Clean Energy Job Creation Fund, targets multistate businesses by eliminating one of the formulas by which ...

Oklahoma Republican Gov. Mary Fallin announced the Sooner State will not create a state-based health insurance exchange under President Obama’s health care law, while reserving final determination of Medicaid eligibility for people referred from a likely federal exchange. Exercising an “opt-out” allowed in last summer’s U.S. Supreme ...

In this Backgrounder & Report, David North contends that it would be useful to review what we as a nation learned from our last experiment regarding the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA). Both a major foundation (Ford) and a minor federal agency (the no-longer existing Administrative Conference of the United ...

HAZLEWOOD, MISSOURI — In response to the December school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, more than two dozen Missouri Republicans are cosponsoring a bill that would allow teachers and administrators to carry guns into public schools if they have a concealed-weapon permit. “They are the people that we already entrust to educate ...