The Heartland Institute

Several states either have begun transitioning away from franchise taxes or are considering repeal. A franchise tax is a state tax levied on businesses and partnerships chartered within a state. It acts as a privilege tax: A company paying the tax is allowed to do business in a state under its corporate name. Franchise taxes ...

The Obama administration maintains that pushing hospitals and physicians to adopt electronic medical records will improve efficiency, increase patient safety, and reduce health care costs. But as more providers transition to EMRs, there has been an unexpected consequence: Billions of dollars in higher costs for Medicare, private ...

Residents of certain states banning payment of an entry fee, or other payments, for participation in a game of skill can’t enter the National Geographic magazine photography contest, which requires a $15 entry fee from participants. That means, the National Geographic Web site warns, “Contest is void in Cuba, Iran, New Jersey ...

With the reelection of President Barack Obama, the implementation of the federal health care law is moving forward, leaving states that have resisted implementation to make some key health care decisions. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has long encouraged states to implement their own health insurance ...

Will Obama Tax the Internet? Seton Motley, President of LessGovernment.org discusses the future of the internet under President Obama. ...

Arizona Department of Environmental Quality officials denounced the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to impose unnecessarily strict air pollution controls at the AEPCO Apache Generating Station near Benson, the APS Cholla Power Plant near Joseph City, and the SRP Coronado Generating Station near St. Johns under a ...

The Administration has now released a draft executive order (EO) on cybersecurity, and with President Obama’s recent re-election, the likelihood that the EO will be issued has only increased. Furthermore, Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D–NV) has promised to bring the similarly flawed Cybersecurity Act of 2012 up for another ...

Working Paper Series At issue is an EPA regulation, known as Regional Haze, which requires that states improve visibility at federal National Parks. In June 2011, New Mexico proposed a Regional Haze plan that required a $36-million retrofit at the San Juan Generating Station. Three months later, in August 2011, the EPA rejected ...

James M. Taylor, senior fellow for environment policy at The Heartland Institute and managing editor of Environment & Climate News, talks with Jim Lakely about the future of energy and environment policy in a second term for Barack Obama. Taylor and Lakely cover the Interior Department’s decision to put 1.6 million acres ...

Friday's news roundup: 1. Political advocacy has no place in classrooms, writes Esther Cepeda. 2. Tennessee's Commercial Appeal comes out in support of school vouchers . 3. A federal court strikes down a voter-approved ban on affirmative action in Michigan university admissions. 4. Virginia parents complain their district paid $7 ...

There is a rich variety of data from the USA that demonstrates that raising tax rates often reduces revenues and vice versa. This is especially so when raising taxes from the high rates that are currently in place. So-called fiscal stimulus policy does not work. A stimulus has to be financed and the income effects on those ...

Thirty-five Mississippi schools have performed so poorly for three years in a row that parents can now convert them into charter schools under the state’s 2010 Parent Trigger law. This is the first year any Mississippi schools are eligible. About 50 schools improved their performance and thus avoided the eligible list. “Mississippi ...

Now that President Barack Obama has won reelection, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has extended the deadlines for states to implement health insurance exchanges. Instead of having formal plans due to HHS by November 16, HHS is requiring states simply to say “yes” or “no” to state implementation by that date ...

Renewable power mandates in Missouri are likely to cost state residents nearly $6 billion between now and the year 2021, economists at the Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University report. Electricity costs by 2021 will be 15 percent higher than would be the case without the mandates, the Beacon Hill study finds. “The mandate ...

Regardless of whether they are supporters or opponents of President Obama’s health care law. members of Congress will have to revisit the legislation soon to correct some serious flaws. Here is a revenue-neutral approach to begin the necessary corrections: Delay the scheduled cuts in Medicare spending by five years and pay for ...

Call it the televised debate Al Gore has been avoiding for years. Tonight, as Gore hosts another 24-hour televised snooze-fest, meteorologist Anthony Watts launches WUWT-TV (Watt’s Up With That TV). At the same time Gore drones on and on with character assassinations, straw man arguments and out-of-context weather anecdotes, more ...

A girl who became frightened and fell down during a tour through a southern Illinois haunted house on Halloween in 2011 is suing those who sponsored the site. The girl is suing the city of Alton and the local American Legion post for damages of at least $50,000. She claims the haunted house was dangerous. “American ...

The captain of an Italian cruise ship that hit a rock and sank in January, killing 32 passengers, was fired from his job. So now, of course, he’s suing for wrongful termination. An investigation disclosed the Costa Concordia, with 4,000 passengers aboard, was brought too close to shore and capsized. The captain bailed ...

Having squandered most of 2012 with posturing and delay, Congress and the President are now careening toward a budgetary precipice of their own making. The so-called fiscal cliff will be reached just after New Year’s Eve—bringing a nearly $500 billion tax hike in 2013 and a devastating 10 percent reduction in national defense ...

At a bare minimum, renewable energy subsidies in Texas run on average about $1.3 billion a year, with the Production Tax Credit (PTC) taking up almost half of that cost. Because of the PTC’s per megawatt hour subsidy, it causes substantially more distortion to the market than other renewable subsidies. A credible case could ...