The Heartland Institute

In his 2014 budget, President Barack Obama called for a strategic review of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). The budget stated selling or privatizing the TVA could result in a significant cut in the federal deficit and “put the nation on a sustainable fiscal path.” Born during the Great Depression as part of President ...

Georgia charter schools have started their own first-in-the nation teacher certification program that is already inspiring charters in other states. Teacher certification is a chokepoint for recruiting talented potential teachers, because it often requires years of preparation and thousands of dollars for applicants before they ever ...

This Obamacare thing is not going as well as some had hoped. Democratic senators, at a caucus meeting with White House officials, expressed concerns on Thursday about how the Obama administration was carrying out the health care law they adopted three years ago. Democrats in both houses of Congress said some members of ...

Legislation pending in Georgia would raise the state’s tax-credit scholarship cap from $50 million to $80 million. The program allows residents to receive a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for donations to nonprofits that give students scholarships to private schools. Donations to scholarship funds “reach [the] cap way before the ...

A lawmaker has filed a bill that would withdraw Georgia from Common Core national education standards and prohibit personal information collected on the tests from being shared outside the state. That makes Georgia the eighth state to formally reconsider the Common Core, a list defining what K-12 tests and curricula must cover ...

Global temperatures are warming much more slowly than claimed by British and U.S. government agencies that produce temperature data reports, according to data compiled by the Japanese Meteorological Agency. According to meteorologist Anthony Watts, Japan is reporting that global temperatures during the past decade are approximately ...

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 ...

A coalition of advocacy groups has sued Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal to overturn a constitutional amendment 59 percent of voters approved in November. Constitutional Amendment One allows the General Assembly to authorize charter schools that have been denied by local school districts. Organizations including the Georgia School Boards ...

Georgia voters have approved an amendment to the state constitution that allows the General Assembly to authorize charter schools even if they have been denied by local school districts. Constitutional Amendment One won 58 percent to 41 percent in the November 6 election. Groups including the Georgia School Boards Association ...

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 ...

A Georgia legislator plans to propose an education reform that has garnered significant national attention: the Parent Trigger. The legislation, first passed in California, has been considered in approximately 20 other states, and state legislators in four have stated their intentions to propose it in early 2013. Though the Georgia ...

So why is it that the governors of Alabama, Alaska, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming have all said no to a state-implemented health insurance exchange? Scott Walker’s letter explaining ...

This overview of Georgia students’ abilities in reading, math, writing, and science shows them below the national average in nearly all instances. Just about one third of Georgia students in all grades tested count as “proficient” in these core subjects. The National Assessment of Educational Progress is the country’s most respected ...

A judge has appointed a lawyer to defend a Georgia pit bull on death row after the dog savagely attacked a young child. The dog has been classified by county authorities as a “dangerous animal” and will be euthanized unless the owners protest the “dangerous animal” classification. But the owners have given up ownership ...

As Congress decides whether to allow the national capital gains tax rate to increase at the beginning of next year, states across the country are debating whether to change their own capital gains taxes. These are taxes paid by individuals and corporations on their capital gains, or profits realized when investors sell a capital ...

The United States has the highest corporate tax rate among the 34 nations in the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) in addition to being one of the few nations still using a “worldwide system.” These are two reasons the United States is in dire need of fundamental corporate tax reform. Under the ...

A bipartisan group of seven governors petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to waive its ethanol fuel mandate until corn prices recede. Rising Prices Hurt States The governors of Arkansas, Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Texas petitioned EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to issue the waiver ...

Since the 2006–07 financial crisis the Federal Reserve has taken several steps to stimulate the economy and unfreeze credit markets, which had ground to a halt after the bursting of the housing bubble. The Federal Reserve launched its current monetary strategy in 2007, lowering the federal funds rate from 5.25 percent to effectively ...

A product that is quickly changing the telecom industry and how people communicate is voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) calling, where voice and multimedia communication are conducted and transmitted over Internet protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. VoIP subscriptions have grown rapidly in recent years: According to ...

We’ve documented in the past the concerns among America’s physicians about how they will adapt to a new reality under President Barack Obama’s health care law, particularly considering the need for more than 30,000 primary care physicians by 2015 even under the most optimistic assumptions of the law’s effects. Now comes a new ...