The Heartland Institute

Angelika Weiss’s family “technically can’t afford” online Latin classes for their sixth grader and for all four kids to attend a private school in their southern Minnesota town, “but we’re making it a priority,” she said. “Online high school is a lot cheaper than if he would go to a private school.” Their private online ...

Louisiana parents remain largely satisfied with their kids’ new private schools four months after joining a program that expanded New Orleans vouchers statewide, according to numbers from the state’s education department. Of the 4,944 voucher students in September 2012, 4,815 remained in December, according to two of the four ...

A majority of the senior scientists responsible for producing the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s draft report are affiliated with environmental activist groups, investigative journalist Donna Laframboise reports. Of the 13 senior scientists who put together USGCRP’s January 2013 draft report, seven have ties to such groups ...

Restricting greenhouse gas emissions, whether unilaterally or multilaterally, would result in significant economic costs for the U.S. economy. This is a serious decision with grave consequences. The U.S. should not unilaterally assume these burdens as a symbolic gesture hoping that other countries might emulate our example—repeated ...

Heartland’s director of government relations John Nothdurft talks with Jim Lakely about states raiding their 9-1-1 funds. Nothdurft notes that “Diverting these taxes from their original purpose only creates slush funds for big-spending politicians.” ...

States To Tackle Income Taxes While Congress and the president recently hiked taxes for 77 percent of the nation’s taxpayers, proposals for sweeping tax cuts continue to gain momentum at the state level. In the new year governors and influential state lawmakers from Indiana, Louisiana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio ...

Rep. Edward Lindsey wants to make Georgia the eighth state to pass a Parent Trigger law. House Bill 123 , which Lindsey and five other legislators are cosponsoring, follows a new constitutional amendment permitting independent charter schools, which voters passed in November. The legislation will simplify the process for letting ...

An upstate New York man “gave the finger” to a cop using a radar gun and now may get paid for it. After the incident, the police officer followed the man, a passenger in a car driven by his wife, to their destination and arrested him. Here’s where the stories diverge. The cop said he called for backup police and said ...

In this news story for Spiegel , Stonington notes that carbon trading is not doing well--for government. There is a view that there should be a reduction of carbon credits available in the market, forcing prices up and pollution down. However, too many carbon credits were issued in the early years and companies produced less ...

Friday's ed news: 1. How the federal government is taking over education . 2. A Tennessee lawmaker introduces Parent Trigger legislation . 3. A South Carolina lawmaker re-introduces voucher and education tax credit legislation . 4. The Spokane school district is adoptng fuzzy math curriculum because of the Common Core. 5. A law school ...

The following ideas and issues are derived from town hall forums and personal meetings I conducted with small business owners from all across Oklahoma. I will continue to work with policymakers to address these issues. WORKERS’ COMPENSATION Over the years, the state legislature has approved numerous workers’ compensation reform ...

Increasing broadcast retransmission fees have caused much tension between multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) and broadcasters. This has led to blackouts, often of major television events, when the two sides cannot reach agreement. These disputes are not normal market realities but instead a product of the FCC regulatory ...

Did it really occur? ... way out there in the middle of the North Pacific Ocean?... Read More Calcification and Productivity in Symbiont-Bearing Foraminifera (22 Jan 2013) As seawater CO2 conditions rise, calcification and productivity in the species studied showed no negative impacts. In fact, growth rates actually increased ...

Michigan property owners in Oceana County are paying more in taxes thanks to a school district merger the two districts approved without a public vote. Taxpayers in Oceana will now have to pay the higher millage rate assessed in Mason-Lake Intermediate School District. According to the Oceana County treasurer, this will cost ...

Cate Long of Reuters' Muniland talks with Ben Domenech about how California's funny math results in a "balanced" budget. ...

A jury award in West Virginia will require two lawyers and a doctor to pay CSX Rail $429,240 for racketeering and fraud in the reading of x-rays in asbestos cases. The two attorneys hired the doctor to read tens of thousands of x-rays. One of the lawyers filed 14,000 asbestos claims against the railroad. The doctor’s questionable ...

Did you know that 44 percent of America’s corn crop is used for ethanol production rather than food? Did you know that corn prices and food prices as a whole have increased dramatically during the past several years after federal ethanol mandates began diverting corn to ethanol? The Mackinac Institute’s Bruce Walker published ...

Michael Whatley of the Consumer Energy Alliance talks with Ben Domenech about the Keystone XL pipeline and what to expect from the Obama administration on energy policy. ...

While housing affordability challenges were greatest for extremely low-income (ELI) renters, affordability indicators worsened across the board for renters in the Third Federal Reserve District between 2005 and 2010, according to a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s Community Development Studies Education Department ...

SPRINGFIELD —Lottery tickets can give 1,000 Chicago kids school choice, one Chicago Democrat says. State Rep. LaShawn Ford (D-Chicago) has introduced legislation that would pull nearly $6 million from the Illinois lottery for K-8 private school “scholarships.” Lawmakers started the lottery in the 1980s to “save” public education ...