Lost in last Wednesday’s presidential debate was a major slander made by Barack Obama against one of our best allies in the United States. Obama asserted: “The history in Colombia right now is that labor leaders have been targeted for assassination, on a fairly consistent basis, and there have not been prosecutions.” The Wall Street Journal details today just how wrong Obama was: By the time President Alvaro Uribe took office in August 2002, Colombia was almost a failed state. That year there were 28,837 homicides nationwide, making it one …
The Washington Post has a fine editorial on the current financial crisis first noting: As financial panic spread across the globe and governments scrambled to contain the damage, reality seemed to announce the doom of U.S.-style free markets and President Bush’s ideology. But this is wrong in two ways. The deregulation of U.S. financial markets did not reflect only the narrow ideology of a particular party or administration. And the problem with the U.S. economy, more than lack of regulation, has been government’s failure to control systemic risks that government …
Last week at Heritage, representatives from the Idaho National Laboratory (INL), Thorium Reactors, Hyperion and General Atomics discussed the potential of new nuclear technologies for America. The full event is available and accessible by going to Heritage’s event site. The INL’s Next Generation Nuclear Plant (NGNP) project, which is a private-public partnership that focuses on high temperature gas-cooled reactors, broadly expands the applications of nuclear energy beyond electricity production (by the way, the U.S. currently gets 20 percent of its electricity from 104 reactors). The heat produced from high temperature …
Barack Obama’s energy adviser Jason Grumet told Bloomberg last week that an Obama administration would not “insert political judgments to interrupt the recommendations of the scientific efforts.” His promise was made in reference to the Environmental Protection Agency’s impending decision on whether or not to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. Later in that same interview Grumet also said: “The EPA is obligated to move forward in the absence of congressional action. If there’s no action by Congress in those 18 months, I think any responsible president …
A Round-up of Op-Eds by The Heritage Foundation Financial Forensics – Ed Feulner Yet Fannie and Freddie evaded attempts to regulate them. A big reason is that they cultivated powerful friends in Congress, such as Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn. As chair of the Senate banking committee, he pocketed more than $165,000 in campaign contributions from people associated with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.[...] A Model of Successful Education Reform – Dan Lips Thanks largely to the leadership of former Gov. Jeb Bush, Florida implemented sweeping education reforms to set challenging …
Nickel & Dimed in San Francisco Health Care – Pacific Research Institute Still Not Enough Taxes to Pay for All the Government’s Needs Despite a (possibly short-term) victory in court, San Francisco’s Health Access Program faces an uphill struggle to provide so-called “universal” health care to San Franciscans. SF HAP, a.k.a. “Healthy San Francisco”… Be Afraid of Obama’s Social Security Plan – The Club For Growth Here’s what Obama adviser Jason Furman relayed to the Des Moines Register: [Obama] believes that one strong option to improve Social Security’s long-term solvency …
Desperate to defend the incoming corporate-socialist order, the Center for American Progress again defended Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac after Wednesday’s presidential debate. CAP’s Wonkroom notes that John McCain accused Fannie and Freddie of causing the current financial crisis and then offers the following refutation: As McClatchy reported this week “federal housing data reveal that the charges [against Fannie and Freddie] aren’t true, and that the private sector, not the government or government-backed companies, was behind the soaring subprime lending at the core of the crisis.” In 2006, during the …
Over the course of three presidential debates, John McCain and Barack Obama have tackled many policy issues — but often in the form of sound bites without much context or detail. Enter a project called VoterWatch. By making it easy to annotate video with its interactive media player, VoterWatch allows users to add their own commentary to the screen itself as the candidates are talking. Several organizations and pundits agreeed to use VoterWatch during the presidential debates, including Heritage. With so many familiar topics playing a major role in Wednesday’s …
The news from Hawaii that the state is ending its experiment in universal health coverage for children may well be the timely warning that Washington needs to avert bankruptcy. Hawaii has learned what some have known all along–that the cost of free care is unaffordable. The AP reports: “People who were already able to afford health care began to stop paying for it so they could get it for free,” said Dr. Kenny Fink, the administrator for Med-QUEST at the Department of Human Services. “I don’t believe that was the …
The left is in full attack mode against Joe the Plumber. The leftist website Daily Kos has even posted his home address (and, mistakenly, even the home address of his ex-wife). Now the plumber’s union in Toledo, Ohio, is moving to put him out of business. Joe’s crime? He doesn’t like Barak Obama’s redistributionist tax policy and he does not have an official state plumbing license. The Toledo Blade reports that even though Joe’s employer has a state plumbing license and one with the City of Toledo, it is illegal …
