The Heartland Institute

Federal Bureau of Reclamation officials opened up turbines and bypass tubes in the Glen Canyon Dam in northern Arizona, unleashing a simulated flood designed to mimic a natural flood in the Colorado River and Grand Canyon ecosystems. The simulated flood, which began Nov. 19, increased the Colorado River’s flow from 8,000 cubic ...

Actor Gérard Depardieu's decision to flee France for Belgium to avoid a 75 percent marginal tax rate on incomes above $1.3 million sends a message we here in America should heed: Those who are singled out for tax increases are not stationary targets. The means of avoiding and evading the taxman are legion. U.S. government ...

Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project squared off against The Heartland Institute in a global warming debate January 8 in Tallahassee, Florida. More than 260 people attended the hour-long debate, which resulted in standing room only at the Tallahassee Elks Club Lodge, which hosted the event. Video footage of the debate is now posted ...

Muskegon County, Michigan wants to build a new jail, and the county's prevailing wage law means local taxpayers could be on the hook for an extra $2 million for the project. Prevailing wage laws mandate union-scale wages be paid on construction work funded by taxpayer dollars, regardless of the winning bidder. Local governments ...

You might think the Affordable Care Act’s primary aim, as the name indicates, would be to make affordable health insurance available to every American. You’d be wrong: Its aim was actually to make health insurance available to every American and empower the federal government to manage the insurance marketplace from on high ...

Collaboration and group work are all the rage in education right now. But research indicates people do their best work individually. One of the latest such studies comes from the Netherlands, and was recently published in the European Journal of Social Psychology. Bernard Nijstad, a professor at the University of Groningen ...

A Louisiana woman has the constitutional right to hang Christmas lights on her house in a pattern giving her neighbors the middle finger. She had been in the midst of an argument with the neighbors when she hung the lights last month. The neighbors called the police, who threatened to arrest her for violating the local ...

Public education has taken many forms over the last 300 years. Early in our history, public education referred to formal instruction in public settings outside the home. As public teaching became increasingly common in the latter half of the 18th century, communities began creating tuition-free schools that operated independently ...

Robert Murphy writes for the Institute for Energy Research that nobody denies a carbon tax would damage the conventional economy. He further argues that a carbon tax would not really make a significant impact on global warming. ...

Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project squared off against The Heartland Institute in a global warming debate January 8 in Tallahassee, Florida. More than 260 people attended the hour-long debate, which resulted in standing room only at the Tallahassee Elks Club Lodge, which hosted the debate. [See video at left.] Ray Bellamy, a ...

Democrats are desperately hoping the states will accept the Medicaid expansion being foisted on them by President Obama’s health care law, but they may be disappointed. The primary reason for their concern is blatantly self-serving: ObamaCare’s success, like its RomneyCare prequel in Massachusetts, will be judged solely by how ...

Hawaii is cutting back on solar power subsidies, as the spending is consuming an increasingly large chunk of the state budget and the recent surge in rooftop solar production threatens the stability of the state’s electric grid. Budget, Power Grid Imperiled Hawaii has experienced a surge in rooftop solar power systems due to ...

Different increases in wealth among countries are strongly linked to student achievement. But in the most recent international achievement survey, U.S. students ranked 27th in mathematics and 21st in science. Seventy percent of our eighth graders can't read proficiently, and most never catch up. About 1.2 million students drop ...

Friday's ed news: 1. One in five Arizona students is now eligible for a voucher-like education savings account. 2. Learning basic math predicts SAT success, a new study finds. 3. College admission will get less competitive in the next decade because of fewer kids. 4. NYC schools spend $6,900 per student per year on busing . 5 ...

The authors of this study report that “coral reefs in the southern Great Barrier Reef are frequently influenced by periods of high storm activity,” and that the reefs in that part of the world “show strong resilience to natural disturbances over the past century,” indicative of the fact that the continued existence of that ...

Maureen Martin , senior fellow for legal affairs at The Heartland Institute, talks with Jim Lakely about her recent piece in the Daily Caller titled " The Truth About Armed Guards in Schools. " ...

It was legal for a Fort Dodge dentist to fire his long-time female dental assistant because of his “irresistible attraction” to her, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled recently. The dentist had complained to the assistant her clothing was too tight and revealing and that he found it “distracting.” The assistant had worked for the ...

It’s the New Year, the pre-dawn of President Barack Obama’s second term – in which he is free to be more “ flexible ,” and is resolved to engage in even more illegal, unilateral power grabs. Long on the Obama-Leftist power grab hit list has been the Internet. Pre-Obama, the ‘Net was just about regulation-free – and thus ...

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) has announced he plans to ask legislators to end the state’s personal income tax and corporate tax and replace them with a higher sales tax. Jindal said in a statement released January 10: "We are meeting with every legislator over the coming weeks to discuss the details of the tax reform ...

In Massachusetts, as in many other states and municipalities across the country, the high cost of traditional defined-benefit public pensions has become an important issue as unfunded liabilities have grown out of control. According to Jim Lamenzo, actuary for the state’s Public Employee Retirement Association Commission, Massachusetts ...