The Heartland Institute

The Center on Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate is one of five centers at The Heartland Institute, each dedicated to discovering, developing, and promoting free-market solutions to social and economic problems in a particular area. History The Heartland Institute’s participation in the finance, insurance, and real estate (FIRE ...

An article in the May 26, 2012 issue of The Economist titled “Toxic shock” begins with these promising words: “The Heartland Institute, the world’s most prominent think-tank promoting scepticism about man-made climate change, is getting a lot of heat.” We appreciate the acknowledgment of our international stature in the climate ...

The Heartland Institute, a free-market think tank whose researchers have questioned government subsidies to sports stadiums since the mid 1980s, has released a new Policy Brief proposing fan ownership of teams as a solution to “sports stadium madness.” Author Joseph Bast , president of the institute, notes “sports stadium subsidies ...

Click the links below to download a PDF of the series of cease and desist letters The Heartland Institute sent to blogs and online publications that linked to and reproduced excerpts from the stolen and faked documents in the Fakegate scandal surrounding Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute. ...

References to Climate Change Reconsidered – 2009 Compiled by Joseph Bast December 18, 2011 These citations were generated using Google Scholar on December 18, 2011. Most references are to peer-reviewed journals or books. Affiliations of authors are sometimes provided as background. Foreign language citations are not included. ...

This issue of FIRE Policy News once again chronicles the descent of America from a land of freedom and opportunity into a second-rate country dominated by government regulators, politicians, and rent-seekers. From housing markets to banking, from insurance regulations to management of the country's money supply, the trend always ...

The August 5 issue of Science, the venerable journal published by the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, contains an article by Sara Reardon that discusses the controversy over how climate change is presented in K-12 science classrooms. First, the good news: Ms. Reardon reports that an informal survey of members ...

Nature , the well-known British science journal, has a feature story and an unsigned editorial in its latest issue addressing The Heartland Institute’s contribution to the global debate over climate change. The articles can be read (for free) at the following links: http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110727/full/475440a.html and http ...

On July 7, Media Matters for America posted a lengthy piece by Jocelyn Fong about The Heartland Institute s Sixth International Conference on Climate Change , which took place in Washington DC the week before. Although Media Matters is known for its liberal partisanship and ad hominem attacks, this article is actually a serious ...

Contrary to what you read repeatedly in daily newspapers or hear on television, most scientists do not believe there is a scientific consensus that man-made climate change (often labeled anthropogenic global warming, or AGW) is or will be a catastrophe. Unfortunately, the old/mainstream/dead media will be the last folks to acknowledge ...

Jon Huntsman, the former governor of Utah running for the Republican nomination for President of the United States, recently made this unfortunate comment during an interview with Time magaine’s Melinda Henneberger: "[Climate change] is an issue that ought to be answered by the scientific community; I’m not a meteorologist. All ...

CLICK BELOW FOR FULL-TEXT PDF The Indiana School Scholarship Act (ISSA), signed into law by Gov. Mitch Daniels in May 2011, creates a school voucher program for low- and middle-income families in Indiana, doubles the preexisting cap on a scholarship tax-credit program, and creates a tax deduction for any family that pays out ...

Texas Representative Sid Miller introduced HB 33, the Taxpayers Savings Grant (TSG) program, at the start of the legislature s 2011 Special Session. The Texas Legislative Budget Board (LBB) released its fiscal note on the bill on June 6. The author was asked to review the fiscal note and correct any errors, of which several ...

The official unemployment rate is back up to more than 9 percent, and the percent of workers who are unemployed or have given up trying to find jobs is higher than it was during the Great Depression. George W. Bush may have owned the Great Recession of 2008 2009, but Barack Obama owns the Second Great Depression of 2011 ...

Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 opened in theaters on April 15. For libertarians of a certain age, it is an opportunity to reflect on the genius of Ayn Rand and a book that changed the world. For younger folks, it is an opportunity to discover a battle of ideas taking place around them. The Film I watched the movie on the day ...

Efforts to reform K-12 schooling in America are as old as schooling itself. Benjamin Franklin, among others, criticized the public schools of his time, called Latin schools, for focusing on preparing a small elite for lives in religious and academic institutions rather than teaching practical skills to the larger public. The ...

The Taxpayers’ Savings Grant Program (TSGP) is a very concise piece of legislation, apparently intended to address the state’s looming biannual budget deficit by reducing enrollment and associated costs in he state’s public K-12 schools at a time of budget shortfalls. By reimbursing parents and legal guardians for “the amount ...

Teacher unions often lead the opposition to legislation that would expand the ability of parents to choose the schools – whether public or private – their children attend. Many observers assume individual teachers also oppose school choice initiatives and that they do so because school choice is somehow against their self-interest ...

This is the second half of an essay that sets out to answer the question, Who has the best plan to restore American prosperity? The answer to this question could determine the outcome of many elections in 2012. Part one , which reviewed the policies of presidents from Kennedy to Reagan, appeared in the November-December 2010 ...

In October I was asked to moderate a debate for the World President s Organization on the topic, Who has the best plan to restore American prosperity? In preparation for that debate I read up on the history of economic growth and public policy in the United States, including an excellent book titled The End of Prosperity ...