The Heartland Institute

For insurers, the most salient fact about tobacco use can be summarized simply: overwhelming scientificevidence indicates that all widely used forms of tobacco harm human health. A significant body of evidence also indicates tobacco use correlates strongly with other risky behaviors. According to the Centers for Disease Control ...

In the wake of the recent financial crisis, several commentators have suggested a transaction tax on financial markets. The potential consequences of such a tax could be hazardous to the financial markets affected as well as to the economy. In this paper, we review the relevant theoretical and empirical literature and apply ...

This document from the Arkansas Department of Education gives data about the debt load of Arkansas school districts as it stood by June 2012. School district debt and local property tax rates increased steadily over the previous five years. It now stands at approximately $3.6 billion, nearly two-thirds of what the state spends ...

Today, North Carolina is expected to vote to allow the process of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” for natural gas. This comes just a month after Vermont became the first state to completely ban the process, even though the state has no known resources that actually could be tapped this way. Many environmental activists ...

Telecommunications services are regulated by a combination of rules from Congress, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), state public utility commissions (PUCs), and state legislatures. State legislatures give PUCs the authority to develop and enforce rules about the way in which telecommunications companies behave, including ...

Although gasoline taxes have long been the main source of funding for building, maintaining, and operating America’s network of highways, roads, and streets, the tax is at best an imperfect user fee. As such, Congress and the states should take action to transition from gas taxes to more efficient vehicle-mile fees. One of ...

State Rep. Kathy Webb is seeking to have Arkansas declare a state of emergency due to people failing to scrape grease from their dishes or trap the grease in special grease collectors before washing the dishes in dishwashers or the kitchen sink. Webb has submitted Interim Study Proposal 2011-201, an act “to declare an emergency ...

The policy centerpiece of House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget proposal this year is his Medicare reform. While Ryan’s approach builds on prior efforts, it differs in important ways from his prior legislative solutions, including last year’s Path to Prosperity. Ryan’s modified approach is essentially the same as one ...

With transportation coffers barely able to maintain highways, let alone adding new capacity to relieve congestion, many transportation economists and urban planners have concluded that the best solution to U.S. freeway congestion is to implement variable pricing on all congested freeways. At the same time, many political scientists ...

With transportation coffers barely able to maintain highways, let alone adding new capacity to relieve congestion, many transportation economists and urban planners have concluded that the best solution to U.S. freeway congestion is to implement variable pricing on all congested freeways. At the same time, many political scientists ...

Hydraulic fracturing has enabled profitable extraction of oil and gas in diverse areas of the country. As a result, many states sitting atop the country’s shale formations are reconsidering the way they tax these resources, to fill budget holes. Many of these debates are occurring in states with unconventional deposits and where ...

The recent discovery of vast deposits of oil and natural gas trapped in shale rock formations has revolutionized our nation’s short-term, mid-term, and long-term energy outlook. For example, proven natural gas reserves in the United States rose by 40 percent between 2004 and 2009. At the same time, new technological advancements ...

For the past year, we’ve been warning you about the evidence that Obamacare’s health insurance exchanges will be larger, and far more costly, than the administration originally claimed. The subsidies within the exchanges are simply too appealing, and it makes all too much mathematical sense for employers to shed coverage and ...

The current economic environment of low—virtually zero—interest rates has hit savers hard, but the US Federal Reserve’s accommodative monetary policy is actually having a stabilizing effect on the economy. Abruptly raising interest rates could harm economic growth and the housing market. Until the economy stabilizes enough that ...

This one-page overview of Arkansas education from the American Legislative Exchange Council report considers the broad state policies on school choice, teacher quality, and online learning, as well as its per-pupil spending and national testing outcomes. It grades the state as a C, and ranks it 45th compared to the other states ...

Executive Summary Following the passage of “Chemicals of Concern” legislation in Maine, Washington, and California, several states are considering adopting similar statutes. Although everyone supports reasonable measures aimed at protecting human health and the environment, these particular efforts are ill-considered and unnecessary ...

This report is the summary of extensive research that examined the criticism that has been leveled over the past three years at the national efforts to improve intercity passenger rail and introduce true high-speed passenger rail in the United States. In the course of this research it has been heartening to discover that there ...

As states across the nation wrangle with the challenge of choosing whether to comply with President Obama’s health care law, legislators, governors, and advisory boards are making key decisions with major ramifications in advance of the verdict from the Supreme Court expected in the spring of 2012. Michigan Haggles Over Timing ...

In the face of widespread opposition from top Republicans in the House and five other lawmakers, Arkansas Democrat Gov. Mike Beebe has declined the Obama administration’s $3.8 million grant to research how to establish a new health insurance exchange. Opposition from Lawmakers A health care exchange is essentially a state-run ...

After testing 71 water wells near hydraulic fracturing natural gas production sites, the U.S. Geological Survey reports no signs of any water pollution. The tests were conducted in Van Buren County, Arkansas after local residents expressed fears hydraulic fracturing— known as fracking—might be polluting local water resources. Seventy ...