The Heartland Institute

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Draft legislation in Michigan would restructure the school finance system so state funds predominantly follow children, allowing them to attend any public school in the state that will have them. Gov. Rick Snyder commissioned the 302-page proposal from the Oxford Foundation, a Michigan nonprofit. Districts would be free to choose ...

Bills that would make Michigan the 24th right-to-work state in the nation passed in the House and Senate on Dec. 11, with the backing of Gov. Rick Snyder (R), who signed them into law later that day. Workers in right-to-work states have the freedom to choose if they want to be members of a union and are not forced to ...

With the reelection of President Obama, there will be no movement at the federal level to repeal the President’s health care law. For Idaho, a state where Republican Gov. Butch Otter considered “nullifying” the law when it was passed, the future of Obama’s law is less certain. When the Supreme Court upheld the law, Otter ...

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal took the stage at a center-left think tank to promote school choice and competition as a bipartisan, “consensus issue.” “Equal opportunity in education should not be a conservative or liberal position; it should be an American position,” said Jindal, who chairs the Republican Governors Association. Since ...

The family of a teenager who stowed away in the wheel well of a Boeing 737 jet at an airport in Charlotte, North Carolina and fell to this death after the plane took off is suing the city, its airport, and the airline for negligence. The 16-year-old accessed the airport and climbed into the wheel well but didn’t fall ...