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 ...

( Originally posted at joannenova.com.au ) What does a study of 20 years of abstracts tell us about the global climate? Nothing. But it says quite a lot about the way government funding influences the scientific process. John Cook, a blogger who runs the site with the ambush title “SkepticalScience” (which unskeptically defends ...

Lawmakers in Maine have proposed a comprehensive tax reform plan that would cut the state’s personal and corporate income tax rates, increase sales taxes, change how property taxes are determined, increase “sin” taxes, and eliminate the estate tax. The bipartisan group of legislators sponsoring the bill , known collectively as ...

The federal government’s “Too Big to Fail” policy remains highly unpopular with the public. Previous bank bailouts have proven to be an expensive use of taxpayer dollars and a dubious act of government interference in the market. Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and David Vitter (R-LA) have proposed new legislation that would use ...

Nevada legislators are considering adjusting the state’s renewable portfolio standard (RPS). The RPS requires utilities to obtain a specified percentage of their power from renewable sources by a certain date. Twenty-two of the 29 states with such mandates in place have considered changing those laws in the past two years. Nevada ...

The increasing number of wireless devices, including cell phones, tablets, and laptops, has made wireless airspace a hot commodity. This airspace, known as spectrum, is a limited resource. Only certain portions of the spectrum are usable and available for communications purposes, so telecom companies fight for and pay high prices ...

The Obama administration recently made the establishment of a National Infrastructure Bank part of its proposed budget. The project would allocate $10 billion to the National Infrastructure Bank with the goal of leveraging up to $20 billion in total infrastructure investment. Three major legislative proposals establishing a National ...

Learning from Oregon's Medicaid Expansion? With many states still considering whether or not to expand their Medicaid programs a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine sheds some light on what health, financial, and other outcomes to expect. In 2008, Oregon expanded its Medicaid program to 30 ...

Executive Summary In 2013, New York's state government will decide whether to permit extraction of natural gas by hydraulic fracturing or, instead, turn its current moratorium into a permanent ban on this technology. In weighing their choice, New York officials have an abundance of useful data from neighboring Pennsylvania. There ...

Revenue shortfalls associated with the Great Recession and the corresponding slow recovery have hindered the ability of US state governments to balance their budgets. With lingering economic doldrums eroding governmental tax bases and strong resistance to proposals for cutting public spending or raising broad-based taxes, many states ...

Slides from a recent presentation given by Heartland Policy Advisor Hilary Till discussing the challenges to popular narratives on commodity futures speculation and responses to popular narratives on commodity price spikes. ...

Medicare Part D, the Medicare prescription drug benefit for low-income seniors, has been one of the few entitlement success stories since it was passed in 2003. Medicare Part D was designed to mobilize the market and use competition to provide prescription drug coverage to seniors at competitive prices. By almost all accounts ...

( Originally posted at Forbes.com ) Trofim Lysenko became the Director of the Soviet Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences in the 1930s under Josef Stalin. He was an advocate of the theory that characteristics acquired by plants during their lives could be inherited by later generations stemming from the changed plants ...

Interest in TBTF resolutions of insolvent large complex firms has intensified in recent years, particularly in banking. TBTF resolutions protect some in-the-money counterparties of the targeted insolvent firm from losses that would be suffered if the usual bankruptcy resolution regimes used in resolving other firms in the industry ...

Executive Summary In 1997, Nevada policymakers amended state law regulating public utilities — NRS Chapter 704 — to implement a Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS). Under that standard, NV Energy (formerly Nevada Power and Sierra Pacific Power) must use eligible renewable energy resources to supply 25 percent of the total retail ...

Is Common Core Becoming Less Common? Back in 2010, 45 states agreed to adopt a single set of requirements for what K-12 children should know in each grade in math and English. Approximately 80 percent of the public does not know about the Common Core education standards, which comprise one of the most comprehensive ...

The Michigan legislature is considering in its 2014 budget a measure that would prohibit the state department of education from using public funds to implement Common Core, national education standards and tests in math and English that 46 states, including Michigan, have adopted. Another bill is in play that would withdraw ...

Congress is debating major reforms of the corporate and individual income taxes. One expressed goal of the exercise is to promote economic growth while lowering the deficit. Growth is key. Without it, employment and incomes will suffer, and the hoped-for tax revenue will not appear. Proper tax treatment of the cost of plant ...

( Originally posted at the Huffington Post ) Americans place less importance on environmental issues than they did in 1971, a year after Earth Day was established, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll . But the poll also finds that more Americans are taking some steps to protect the environment, such as cutting down on electricity ...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed a new rule requiring gasoline refiners to reduce the sulfur content of their gasoline from 30 parts per million to 10 parts per million on an annual average basis by January 1, 2017. This rule is a further reduction from the previous Tier 2 standards, which lowered ...