The Heartland Institute

Government officials promoting the use of bioenergy feedstocks should be very careful not to unleash a new wave of invasive species on U.S. soil, more than 200 scientists warn in a letter sent to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and four other top Obama administration officials. Energy Benefits, Environment Harms “Studies have shown ...

Plans to build streetcar lines in San Antonio are based on several critical fallacies, including claims that streetcars are superior to buses in their ability to attract riders and that streetcars promote economic development. In fact, streetcars are slower, less flexible, less capable of moving large numbers of people, and far ...

In the wake of the presidential election, state governors must decide whether to take federal funding to expand their Medicaid programs. The U.S. Supreme Court decided in June states can reject the Medicaid expansion without losing access to their previously negotiated matching funds. According to Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, incoming ...

Editor’s Note: This is the fourth and final installment in a series of articles by Mischa Popoff and Jay Lehr on modern agriculture and organic farming. With only rare exceptions, all food production is completely unnatural. The means by which science has allowed us to increase production on a smaller piece of land, and to ...

A new reform majority on the Indianapolis School Board is poised to make significant changes in the low-performing Indiana school district. In several close races, voters elected newcomers Gayle Cosby, a Lawrence Township teacher; Caitlin Hannon, a former IPS teacher; and businessman Sam Odle to the board in November, while reelecting ...

CONTENTS INTRODUCTION .... 1 CURRENT STRESSES .... 6 The Policy Maze: California's Renewable and Distributed Power Programs .... 6 Rising Utility Costs and Rates: Electricity “Sticker Shock” .... 11 Cost Allocation: Uneven Cost Burdens on Utility Customers .... 16 INSTITUTIONAL CONCERNS .... 20 The Regulatory Institutional Framework ...

Critics of the Bush tax cuts often dismiss the tax changes as a failed experiment in free-market economics. Noting that economic growth was slower in the years following the cuts than in the years preceding them, some critics see the experience as evidence that tax cuts do not work. But the claim that these tax cuts exemplified ...

Entitlement reform and the fiscal cliff with Ben Domenech and Francis Cianfrocca. ...

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 ...