The Heartland Institute

Before Bill Ritter became Governor of Colorado, state regulators required utilities to deliver power to ratepayers at the least possible cost. Ritter’s New Energy Economy changed the rules so that clean energy took priority above affordable energy. In fact, it seemed not to matter whether the electricity generated by these “new ...

The biggest problem facing the U.S. highway system is inadequate funding. The U.S. Department of Transportation’s latest biennial “conditions and performance” report finds that just to maintain the current state of repair of highways and bridges and to prevent congestion from getting worse, would require annual spending of $101 ...

Paul Beard of the Pacific Legal Foundation recently appeared before the US Supreme Court for a family whose permit to develop a small tract of land was denied because they refused to improve government-owned land miles away from their property. Beard argues the permit demand amounted to extortion. Such demands are becoming ...

In January’s State of the State speech, Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam outlined a proposal to let poor students assigned to low-performing public schools attend private schools using tax dollars. State Sen. Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown), who sponsored similar legislation in 2011, expects his colleagues will pass it. “Tennessee in recent ...

A major motivation for private schools to enter voucher programs is to “help needy children in the community” and expand their reach, according to a new survey of 241 schools in Indiana, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Eighty-seven percent of schools surveyed for a Thomas B. Fordham Institute study chose “expand mission to a larger community ...

Scientists, mathematicians, and curriculum experts reviewing the second Common Core draft science standards conclude they are vague, omit large sections of crucial content, and emphasize failed progressive pedagogy over the actual science knowledge students need. The authors give examples of the many crucial omissions, such as acids ...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency cannot lawfully restrict the amount of rainwater that enters a creek, a federal district judge ruled, in a victory for Virginia state officials. Virginia government officials and the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors sued EPA after the federal agency issued a regulation that would force ...

The Bundesbank (the German central bank) surprised markets around the world in January by announcing it will repatriate a sizable portion of its gold bullion reserves held in France and the United States. To many, the news from the world’s second-largest holder of gold signaled a growing, if clandestine, mistrust among central ...

Suffolk County, New York became the first government entity in the nation to ban Bisphenol-A from cash register receipts. The decision by the Suffolk County Legislature defies the findings of government health and science bodies around the world. The Suffolk County Legislature voted 16-1 to approve the Safer Sales Slip Act. On ...

The world’s 14th-largest deposit of known recoverable uranium is in southern Virginia at Coles Hill in Pittsylvania County. It is valued at $7 billion, is economically recoverable, and sits entirely on private property. In 1982 the Virginia General Assembly placed a moratorium on uranium mining until a thorough study could be ...

In his 2013 State of the State Address, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker proposed cuts in the state’s income tax rates to be phased in over a few years. According to Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester), the tax cut, which could take effect in 2013, would amount to $300 million to $350 million over two years. According to ...

A wave of political rhetoric and action immediately followed the Newtown, Connecticut school shooting that ended 27 lives, in which a mentally ill young man used his mother’s legally acquired guns to kill her, 20 children, and five educators before shooting himself. Many prominent politicians insisted this atrocity showed the ...

According to Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton, topping the list of environmental issues for the 2013 state legislative session is silica or “frac” sand mining. Frac sand has high compressive strength ideal for industrial use, including hydraulic fracturing. Newly usable reserves of natural gas, enough to last the nation for generations ...

It’s clear that under President Barack Obama’s new health care reality, there will be at least two sets of people who will see the most significant premium increases from what they’ve experienced in recent years: people who are young and healthy who no longer experience any premium cost benefit from being young and healthy ...

Education leaders are beginning to publicly worry that two coalitions attempting to determine mandatory tests for some 40 million U.S. students by 2014 can’t pull their massive enterprise together by deadline or at all. This threatens the entire Common Core project, which in 2014 will tie national tests to grade-by-grade education ...

After more than 50 years of declining food prices, ethanol subsidies and mandates have caused a dramatic rise in U.S. food prices since 2005, data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture show. The data were pulled together in a new study by FarmEcon LLC, an agriculture and food industry consulting firm. Historical Price Trends ...

Fort Berthold Indian Reservation sits at the center of the Bakken Oil Field in North Dakota. Since 2010, hundreds of reservation wells have generated more than 30 million barrels of oil, earning the tribal nation more than $500 million. But capitalizing on the boom has not been easy. All Indian minerals are managed in trust ...

Michael Cannon of the libertarian Cato Institute has laid down the gauntlet to supporters of President Obama's health care law, inviting them to debate him anytime or anywhere on a critical point of the law's implementation: whether state refusal to implement health insurance exchanges blocks the penalties packaged within Obama ...

A U.S. Department of Energy-commissioned study finds natural gas exports would benefit the nation’s economy. The study throws cold water on efforts by trade protectionists to pass legislation banning energy companies from transporting natural gas for sale in other countries. All Scenarios Show Benefits The study—produced for the ...

An Ohio teacher is suing her school district for discrimination after they reassigned her from a high school to a junior high school and pressed her to resign. She claims she has a disability, a phobia called “pedophobia, an extreme fear or anxiety around young children.” Around them, she suffers chest pains, anxiety, vomiting ...