The Heartland Institute

California’s recycling program for aluminum cans and plastic containers suffers rampant fraud, with enterprising criminals claiming multiple refunds for a single recycled container and others bringing in truckloads of containers from out of state to claim illegal refunds. Budget-Busting Losses California officials estimate recycling ...

Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt has amended his state’s lawsuit against President Obama’s health care law to address a legal problem with the Internal Revenue Service’s distribution of insurance exchange subsidies—an issue which could effectively bar implementation of the law in certain states. Pruitt’s new challenge focuses ...

Alternative energy development has taken another hit as the world’s largest developer of wind turbines, Denmark-based Vestas Wind Systems, trimmed its U.S. workforce by approximately 20 percent. Vestas says the reason for the layoffs is lagging revenues and the uncertain future of federal subsidies. Bleeding Jobs, Value The job ...

A West Virginia lawyer who beat up his client with a baseball bat, and even continued to beat the client as he lay on the ground, has been disbarred for ethical violations. Aggravating factors were the lawyer previously took money belonging to another client and threw a propane tank through the window of his wife’s ...

Another dispute between a TV content provider and a multipoint distributor has arisen, as FierceCable reports : "AMC Networks is warning Verizon ( NYSE: VZ ) FiOS TV subscribers that they will lose AMC, IFC, WE, IFC and Sundance Channel unless the telco agrees to pay increased license fees by Dec. 31." AMC had been an also ...

Mitt Romney’s campaign musings about how he would cut income tax rates by 20 percent (when half of Americans don’t even pay federal income taxes) has now floated the ultimate loser for all taxpaying Americans. This is a $17,000 limit per person for all deductions including mortgage interest, charitable, and state taxes. The ...

Although some infrastructure advocates are hoping to use the current federal budget negotiations to win support for an increase in the federal gasoline tax, the idea is unlikely to gain support in Congress or the Obama administration. While the 2010 Simpson-Bowles deficit-reduction commission proposed raising the federal gas tax ...

School districts cannot sue parents who use state funds to send their special-needs children to private schools, the Oklahoma State Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in November. The state constitution requires the legislature, not districts, to provide a “free public education,” Vice Chief Justice Tom Colbert wrote in the majority opinion ...

Technology policy consultant Larry Downes, a columnist for Forbes.com, talks with Heartland’s Jim Lakely about proposals in the United Nations to regulate the Internet. Revisions of the International Telecommunications Regulations treaty will be debated at the World Conference on International Telecommunications in December. ...

The Heartland Institute on Tuesday held an event on Capitol Hill with Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) in which it presented petitions signed by more than 16,000 Americans demanding Congress rein in the Environmental Protection Agency . [Read the op-ed on today's event by Heartland Institute President Joseph Bast at The Daily Caller .] The ...

Michigan K-12 students would become free agents, able to attend any in-state public school that will enroll them and even take different classes at different schools, under a proposal Gov. Rick Snyder released in November. The idea alarms State Board of Education President John Austin: “This is a voucher system," he told the ...

This piece by Jonathan Cohn in The New Republic is amazing for a number of reasons. It lays blame for Obamacare’s potential failure at the hands of a few think-tank critics, particularly (and deservedly so) Cato’s Michael Cannon. Clearly worried about the future of the law’s implementation, Cohn says states that respond to ...

Political conservatives are known to be tough on crime, but the conservatives who support Right on Crime believe there's a serious need for prison reform, and that means fewer people in prisons, Vikrant Reddy of Right on Crime explains. ...

Scientific misconduct, such as fraud and suspected fraud, is responsible for two-thirds of retractions of papers published in life-science journals, concludes a survey published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The survey found more than 2,000 papers retracted after publication. Fraud accounted for 43 percent ...

U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials threatened a Native Alaskan artist with felony violations of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Lacey Act for adorning a hat and headdress with feathers from a raven and a flicker. The Native artist used the feathers in his artwork after finding them on the ground. Traditional Artwork Targeted ...

The California Department of Fish and Game is challenging National Park Service staff who are attempting to shut down a family-owned oyster farm in Point Reyes National Seashore. The California Department of Fish and Game, with the support of Gov. Jerry Brown (D) and U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D), sent an Oct. 10 letter ...

FAIRFAX, VA. — A technological leap forward is taking Virginia’s largest school district backward, say critics of a new math program. Fairfax County Public Schools’ decision to purchase $7.7 million in online textbooks surprised parents, who had been told the system had no money to spare, and is frustrating teachers and students ...

In this "Best of" Heartland podcast, Jim Lakely and Joy Pullmann discuss the new policy brief released by the Heartland Institute, titled "The Parent Trigger: Justification and Design Guidelines." ...

Ohio Gov. John Kasich made official his administration’s refusal to create a health insurance exchange in Ohio as mandated by President Obama’s health care law, instead deferring to the federal government. With a November 16 letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Kasich cited the higher costs and uncertainty ...

Parents of schoolchildren in a Massachusetts school district are invited to attend the third grade’s Thanksgiving celebration, but only if they have cleared a criminal background check. “Come have a snack with your child in a well-supervised setting,” the invitation read. The school district was not identified. Source: Lenore ...