The Heartland Institute

The latest polling on Obamacare is the worst it has ever been, with majorities of Americans saying they expect their family will be worse off under it and majorities saying it would be better to go back to the pre-Obamacare health care system. A Fox News poll found only 26 percent of voters say their health care situation ...

Tuesday's ed news Michigan's governor has signed the state budget, which prohibits funds for Common Core . A bill to repeal Common Core has hit New York . Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal signs a new kind of Parent Trigger into law. A New Hampshire court rules that tax-credit scholarship students may not attend religious schools ...

The California Assembly recently defeated a proposed moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, a technology requiring water mixed with trace amounts of sand and chemical additives to be injected under pressure to fracture underground shale formations and stimulate the flow of oil and natural gas for collection. Advances in hydraulic ...

The California State Assembly overwhelmingly rejected a bill that would have banned oil and natural gas fracking in the state. By a vote of 37-24, the Democrat-dominated Assembly voted down AB 1323. Supporters of a fracking ban held back two similar bills after realizing the Assembly would likely reject those bills, also. Anti ...

Federal wildlife officials announced they will allow wind producers in California’s Tehachapi Mountains to kill endangered California condors without fear of prosecution. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said the free pass will apply only when wind power companies inadvertently kill or harass the large and highly endangered birds ...

Two major school districts are employing “sex apps” and sites to help kids access contraception and STD testing, and share STD test results with potential partners, all while bypassing parents. In New York City and Los Angeles, students are reminded their parents don’t need to give consent or, in New York, even know their ...

California Gov. Jerry Brown is seeking to revise Proposition 65, formally titled The Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, to reduce instances of lawyers filing frivolous lawsuits under the Act for the purpose of monetary gain. Multiple Reforms Proposed The goal of Prop. 65 was to protect drinking water sources ...

The California Public Utilities Commission approved large rate hikes in electricity prices due in part to high costs associated with the state’s global warming restrictions. The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) approved a 12 percent hike in San Diego Gas & Electric Co. (SDG& E) rates and a 10 percent hike in Southern ...

Amidst all the other scandals capturing Washington’s attention at this moment, the forgotten one is also one of the most obviously egregious: Health & Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’s solicitation of donations from entities she holds enormous power over through the regulatory state. Alana Goodman reports: Health and ...

This editorial in the Wall Street Journal (p. A14) notes a political development in California, where the environmentalists have been delivered a setback in their attempt to ban fracking. State Democrats are not supporting the ban. This development represents a serious blow to the Sierra Club which believes fracking pollutes ...

The Obama administration announced it is cancelling legally required oil and gas lease sales in California for at least the rest of the year. Bureau of Land Management officials ironically blamed the “sequester” reduction of future budget increases for cancelling the lease sales, even though the lease sales generate tremendous ...

The California State Assembly overwhelmingly rejected a bill that would have banned oil and natural gas fracking in the state. By a vote of 37-24, the Democrat-dominated Assembly voted down AB 1323. Supporters of a fracking ban held back two similar bills after realizing the Assembly would likely reject those bills, also. Anti ...

It’s official: We have another significant delay in the implementation of Obamacare. A few months back, the Obama administration took flak for initial plans to delay part of Obamacare’s small-business exchange. The idea, floated in regulations last month, wouldn’t put off the Small Business Health Options Program, or SHOP ...

We all know the stories about what price transparency can do within the health care marketplace. It’s amazing how, unlike any other industry, the simple act of posting prices online is worthy of a news story. One great example of how health care marketplaces can work, if only they’re allowed to, is within the realm of ...

As reported in the March 3, 2013 Idaho Statesman , a woman who has been designated a vexatious litigant by three western states for filing frivolous lawsuits--as well as by federal courts at the trial, appellate court, and U. S. Supreme Court levels--has filed yet another suit, this time challenging her designation as ...

The Sacramento Kings of the National Basketball Association have a new billionaire team owner, and that billionaire will have a new stadium for his team, courtesy of local taxpayers. Two days after the NBA rejected a bid to move the Kings to Seattle, the Maloof family agreed to sell the Kings to a new group of investors ...

Another secretive budget is in the near future as California Democrats passed 37 empty budget “spot bills” Monday. Assemblyman Bob Blumenfield (D-Los Angeles), the author of AB 74, the budget bills and chairman of the Assembly Budget Committee, called the bills “budget vehicles.” Blumenfield said Republicans began to care about ...

San Jose State University faculty recently decided the best way to address scientific criticisms of alarmist global warming theory was to burn the books containing such criticisms . Pierre Gosselin, administrator of the No Tricks Zone website, pointed out disturbing parallels between the book burning at San Jose State and book ...

The California Supreme Court has given a victory to taxpayers in its unanimous ruling that the City of Long Beach must recognize class claims to refund illegally collected telephone taxes. McWilliams v. City of Long Beach revolved around the city’s refusal to refund the tax except to individual taxpayers who demanded their ...

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 ...