The Heartland Institute

Florida’s Republican-dominated legislature passed legislation this month that will impose new obstacles on coal and natural gas power plants, grease the wheels for expensive wind and solar power plants, create new Solyndra-style subsidies for wind and solar power, and hand over millions of taxpayer dollars to ethanol producers ...

Although Ohio is party to the 26-state lawsuit questioning the constitutionality of President Obama’s health care law, an internal split has developed within Republican Gov. John Kasich’s administration concerning implementation of the law. Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor, who heads the Ohio Department of Insurance, has described the law ...

C-FIRE Deputy Director R.J. Lehmann talks with Randy Binner, an equity analyst with FBR Capital Markets, about MetLife's failing grade in the Federal Reserve Board's recent stress tests, and why the Fed apparently doesn't understand the insurance business. ...

Pro football’s St. Louis Rams have rejected a proposal by the St. Louis Convention & Visitors Commission (CVC) for a $124 million renovation of the Edward Jones Dome, with approximately $60 million coming from taxpayers. The team is expected to submit an alternate proposal by May 1. The rejection, announced in March, is fueling ...

President Obama’s fiscal year 2013 budget includes a request for significant expansion in the mandatory outlays for taxpayer-funded subsidies through the health insurance exchanges—a figure which may formally eliminate any estimated advantages of his signature health care law in lowering the federal deficit. The budget requested ...

Patients enrolled in Medicaid have worse survival rates than those with private insurance or even no insurance at all, according to a new study focused on Ohio Medicaid recipients published in the journal Cancer . Researchers Siran Koroukian, Paul Bakaki, and Derek Raghavan compared survival and five-year mortality with Medicaid ...

Two recent surveys of Louisiana parents and voters reveal high satisfaction with the New Orleans vouchers system and overall approval for major components of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s education reform proposals. “The program is exactly what I was looking for in an education for my daughter,” said Deetta Holmes, mother of a Louisiana ...

The current spike in oil and gasoline prices is like that bad penny that just keeps turning up. And when this happens in an election year, the blame game is played at its most vitriolic level. The Republicans fault the President for refusing to open up federal and offshore lands to drilling, the President faults the Republicans ...

At long last, two years after its passage, President Barack Obama’s nationalized government takeover of health insurance is headed to the Supreme Court’s chambers. This week marks the beginning of unprecedented arguments about a number of legal topics related to the law and its constitutionality. But this event is not just a ...

Washington DC’s famous cherry blossoms are arriving a little early this year. If you listen to environmental activist groups and their media allies, this is yet another undeniable sign of catastrophic global warming. But is this really the case? Perhaps we should take a look across the Pacific Ocean and see how the cherry ...

An Orlando-based law firm is suing the Better Business Bureau of Central Florida for giving the firm an “F” rating on its services. The firm flunked in mid-2011 due to its failure “to resolve the underlying cause of a pattern of [client] complaints.” The complaints came from clients involved in the defense of foreclosure ...

An official with the Audubon Society has called for a five-year moratorium on permitting new solar arrays near the nation’s largest wind farm, at Altamont Pass, California. Arrays Worsen Wind Impacts Rich Cimino, conservation director for the Ohlone Audubon Society, says new solar arrays near Altamont Pass will worsen serious ...

Detroit record store owner Warren Westfall discusses how he uses the Internet to supplement his bricks-and-mortar retail operation, and how online sales now represent 20 percent of his business. ...

On December 12, 2009, the California Air Resources Board (CARB), a subdivision of the California Environmental Protection Agency, published its final rule to reduce diesel exhaust emissions in the state, the “Goods Movement Emission Reduction Plan” (GMERP). The controversial plan set up a draconian, regressive tax, one of the ...

Warmists often fail to understand what defines a global warming “skeptic.” The myth so frequently asserted by global warming alarmists and their media allies is that skeptics dispute that the planet is warming and that human activity has been a contributing factor to the warming. In reality, most skeptics believe the planet ...

Last week, The Heartland Institute held a conference call on the policy issues related to the booming natural gas industry. Heartland’s energy and environment legislative specialist, John Monaghan, and James M. Taylor, Heartland’s senior fellow for environment issues and managing editor of Environment & Climate News, discussed ...

Sheriffs’ deputies in two counties in Washington State recently apprehended a suspect in numerous cases of stealing checks, forging his name on them, and then cashing them. Detectives from Snohomish and King Counties asked the man if he stole to feed a drug habit. He said no. “I don’t have an addiction. I don’t need ...

The Common Core State Standards Initiative is unlikely to improve academic outcomes, concludes a new report from the Brookings Institution. The Core, a set of grade-level requirements for what students should know in math and language arts, was adopted by 45 states under pressure from the Obama administration. The report concludes ...

Ben Domenech talks to Congresswoman Ann Marke Buerkle about the conscience overruns of the Obama administration and her plans for a replacement for Obamacare. ...

The latest Massachusetts request for a Medicaid waiver renewal from the federal government assumes Safety Net Hospitals will significantly reduce costs for the state’s Medicaid program. Unfortunately, no new methods for such cost reductions are specified in the waiver request. Considering that the Bay State depends on this waiver ...