The Heartland Institute

In this "Best of" Heartland podcast, Many government efforts to make U.S. colleges more affordable and accessible has actually made them more expensive and inaccessible, writes Vicki Alger in a new report for the Independent Women’s Forum. Alger joins the podcast to discuss her report, the moral hazard of student loans, and ...

With the passing of the deadline for states to inform the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services whether they will implement an exchange under President Obama’s law, the next big decision facing governors and legislatures is whether to participate in expansion of the Medicaid program—a decision HHS recently announced would ...

This Report to Congress on State Collection and Distribution of 911 and Enhanced 911 Fees and Charges is submitted by the Chairman, Federal Communications Commission (Commission), pursuant to the New and Emerging Technologies 911 Improvement Act of 2008 (NET 911 Act). Prepared by Commission staff in the Public Safety and Homeland ...

Wealthy suburban school districts lack the academic heft many believe they have, according to the Global Report Card 2.0 . The updated 2012 findings match the 2011 edition’s conclusion: Even the best U.S. school districts rate mediocre when compared to international peers. “Suburbanites falsely believe that education reform has ...

North Carolina has the region's highest income tax burden, high unemployment, and slow personal income growth. The Civitas Institute in Raleigh, N.C., proposes ending the state's personal and corporate income taxes and franchise tax and replacing them with a consumption-based tax that research shows could boost employment and ...

It has been nearly 25 years since James Hansen first regaled Congress with predictions of imminent global warming doom and gloom. At the time, the Earth had only recently emerged from a 30-year cooling period and projections of future warming had little empirical data to back them up. Accordingly, computer models ruled the ...

The idea of a grand bargain is very much on the minds of Washington, DC insiders these days. But any grand bargain that promises to cut spending in return for higher tax rates is unlikely to come to fruition, because the spending cuts are likely to be only an illusion. Just prior to the election, more than 80 CEOs from ...

Friday's ed news: More than two dozen Missouri lawmakers want to give teachers the freedom to bear guns . Indiana already allows designated teachers to bring guns to school. Parents are rushing to buy bullet-proof backpacks for their children. The U.S. Department of Education took four years to release data indicating federal preschool ...

A new tax levied by President Obama’s health care law will likely hike veterinary bills for the nation’s pet owners as businesses pass their increased costs along to consumers. The news comes as even Senate Democrats who voted for the law are demanding the tax in question be postponed. The Internal Revenue Service will administer ...

A Buffalo Bills fan is suing the football team, alleging it sent him too many text messages. The man signed up on the team’s Web site to receive text message updates on scores and other team news. He alleges the site stated he would receive three to five messages per week, but says he received six messages one week and ...

This article accounts for the failed BTU tax offered by the Clinton administration, and assesses the chances of a revived carbon tax in President Obama's 2nd term. ...

Jim Lakely talks with Taylor Smith, policy analyst at The Heartland Institute, about a Policy Brief he wrote with James M. Taylor titled "PricewaterhouseCoopers' 'Too Late' Report: Poor Science, No Practical Solutions." The brief is a rebuttal to a PWC report from November that predicts at least 2 degrees Celsius warming ...

Michel Nasibu, an advisor in the International Development Advisory Section of KPMG East Africa, attempted this week to salvage his claims that global warming is devastating the African continent after I debunked his initial claims in an October Forbes.com article . As was the case with Nasibu’s October column, I empathize with ...

The quality of regulation depends heavily on its transparency. Taking to heart Justice Louis Brandeis’ stated belief that sunshine is the best disinfectant, the purpose of this report card is to put important information from scattered sources into one easily accessible place. This report card focuses on the U.S. Environmental ...

Ever since then-candidate Obama's brief exchange with "Joe the Plumber" there has been plenty of mention of wealth redistribution in the major media. Then came the recovery of a 2001 interview in which the former Senator faulted the framers of the US Constitution and the Founders who authored the Declaration of Independence ...

A for-profit publishing corporation won an injunction against the Obama administration’s implementation of the president’s health reform law, which could prove the basis for the next challenge to the law to arrive before the U.S. Supreme Court. Judge Reggie Walton, of the U.S. District Court in Washington, DC, granted the injunction ...

New teachers need not take education philosophy and methods classes or major in education to enter an Indiana classroom, after a 9-2 State Board of Education vote easing teacher license requirements. Although incoming state superintendent and union president Glenda Ritz objected to the changes, board members adopted what they ...

Pennsylvania’s renewable energy mandate will likely cost the state $2 billion per year during the next eight years, the Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University reports in a newly published economic analysis. Despite the high cost, the renewable energy mandate will provide few if any environmental benefits, the study concluded ...

Pennsylvania’s current Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard law will raise the cost of electricity by $2.55 billion for the state’selectricity consumers in 2021, within a range of $1.71 billion and $3.24 billion. Pennsylvania’s electricity prices will rise by 11.9 percent by 2021, due to the current AEPS law. ...

With respect to the implications of their several findings, Jaafar et al. say they point to “the possible improvement of [the] health-promoting quality of Malaysian L. pumila under high CO2 enrichment conditions, as atmospheric CO2 enrichment increased the quantity of several phenolic and flavonoid compounds between 100 and 1100 ...