The Heartland Institute

Problem: The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), sometimes referred to as "Obamacare," requires states to establish and operate health insurance exchanges by 2014. States that create their own exchange must comply with federal requirements, and the exchange must be approved by the secretary of the Department of ...

Twelve Southern California water agencies are suing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for expanding critical habitat areas for the Santa Ana sucker fish. The water agencies say there is a lack of scientific evidence to justify Fish and Wildlife’s decision. Unintended Environmental Consequences The agencies fear the expansion of ...

California’s plans for high-speed rail, which envision tracks connecting Southern California to the Bay Area with riders traveling at speeds of 220 miles per hour, suffered a setback in mid-September as Congress cut billions of dollars from the Federal Railroad Administration’s budget. Federal Funding Cut President Obama, who is ...

The federal government has a longstanding “no-otter” zone off the coast of Southern California, but the feds apparently forgot to tell the sea otters. Despite their best efforts to keep sea otters away from coastal waters between the U.S.-Mexico border and a line approximately 40 miles south of Santa Barbara, the sea otters ...

With the price of fuel on the rise in recent years, millions of American workers are paying more attention to the growing cost of commuting to work. One of the largest government efforts to subsidize individual costs for fuel is the Qualified Transportation Fringe Benefit. First implemented as part of the 2009 stimulus bill ...

Internet retail giant Amazon.com has given up its battle against a proposed sales tax bill in California in return for a one-year window that grants Internet retailers a reprieve from collecting the taxes until September 2012. Despite concessions made between the online retailer and legislators, opponents of the so-called “Amazon ...

The Los Angeles Times has published a snarky editorial today, “Rick Perry and Galileo – pardners in science,” ridiculing the Texas governor for saying he doesn’t have all the answers on the evolution/creationism debate and the global warming debate. Amusingly, in the midst of directing childish condescension at Perry, the Times ...

A California high-speed rail proposal approved by voters in 2008 has strayed so far above original cost estimates and so far under ridership estimates that one key transportation analyst is calling it the greatest scam to hit the state—ever. “The California high-speed rail project is on track to be the biggest boondoggle in ...

The skyrocketing costs caused by Medicaid’s fee-for-service approach have states struggling to meet their government budgets, and access to quality health care is becoming scarcer. In hopes of improving access and reducing costs, many states are considering turning to managed care. Under a managed care system, health care providers ...

Public schools converted into charters in Philadelphia and Los Angeles have managed to dramatically boost students’ standardized test scores and graduation rates, says a new report from the Center for American Progress. In the schools studied, “Charter operators were able to secure some of the core principles that have made them ...

The heat may be rising for San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid System after revelations it intentionally blocked mobile devices of its passengers on August 11. The TechNewsWorld Web site reported August16 that the Federal Communications Commission is considering an investigation. BART admitted it blocked cell phone use for several hours ...

Princeton University physics professor Will Happer has published an outstanding paper explaining how the “climate crusade” of recent years has twisted science and moral values in the name of a scientifically unsupported global warming crisis. Happer explains the goal of his paper, “The Truth About Greenhouse Gases,” is to address ...

California lawmakers are attempting to stem the rise in counterfeit compact and digital video discs by proposing a law that would allow warrantless searches of disc manufacturing plants. SB 550, however, has provoked concerns it violates provisions in the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits warrantless search ...

Kids might notice some of their favorite menu items are missing when they return to school cafeterias this fall, as a new federal law and changing school regulations increasingly dictate what’s on their plates. The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, signed in December 2010 as part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity campaign ...

Tobacco use poses well-known health risks. Smokers, on average, die earlier than nonsmokers. Estimates of lost life expectancy range from two or three years to 14 years; most researchers agree on six to eight years. A 2004 Surgeon General’s report concluded that smoking contributes to at least 16 potentially fatal conditions ...

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services claim their new competitive bidding program has not resulted in any changes in beneficiary health outcomes. But CMS’s observations differ significantly from those of patients and providers of home health care. On January 1, 2011, CMS launched the first phase of its competitive bidding ...

California Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacremento) has shelved SB 23x, a bill that would have authorized cities, counties, and more than 1,000 school districts to levy a broad range of new taxes. The bill would have allowed local officials to seek voter approval to impose local personal income taxes, sales ...

Editors’ Note: In response to Jay Mathew’s Washington Post musings on the Parent Trigger in light of teachers union documents detailing a strategy to derail the parent empowerment legislation, Bruno Behrend, director of the Center for School Transformation, and Joy Pullmann, education research fellow and managing editor of School ...

Under the US National Flood Insurance Program, lands behind levees certifiedas protecting against the 100-year flood are considered to be out of the officially recognized‘‘floodplain.’’ However, such lands are still vulnerable to flooding that exceeds the designcapacity of the levees—known as residual risk. In the Sacramento-San Joaquin ...

California’s State Board of Education is on track to approve final, permanent regulations governing the state’s landmark Parent Trigger law at its September meeting. The state board on July 13 voted to approve the latest version of the rules, circulating the draft for another 15-day public comment period. The September vote ...