President Barack Obama was getting credit for “taking on teachers’ unions” before he even gave his speech on education today, and nothing he ended up saying contained enough substance to honestly be called courage. True, he did vaguely endorse “merit pay” but it is still completely unclear what type of merit pay he will end up proposing. If Obama just provides bonuses for teachers who put in extra hours or receive more training, then there will be no real change at all. Even his call for more charter schools, which …
The Geneva meeting of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hardly attracted Russian spotlight. Moscow does not have much faith in a fast track success toward improving bilateral relations and resolving multiple thorny issues. Nevertheless, the Kremlin is viewing with hope some of the signals the Washington Administration has been sending Moscow, especially those concerning missile defenses in Europe, as helping to meet Russia’s objectives. Some Moscow observers believe that the Obama Administration’s approach to the U.S.-Russian relations that is currently taking shape is …
The left is growing frustrated with the success conservatives are having in framing the omnibus spending bill as classic wasteful government spending. Pushing back, the Center for American Progress claims that Cutting Earmarks Doesn’t Save Money and Roll Call’s Stan Collender writes: “Saying That Cutting Earmarks Will Reduce Spending Is A Lie.” Collender reasons: An earmark simply is a congressional decision to allocate part of appropriation for a particular purpose. Eliminating the allocation doesn’t reduce the appropriation, it simply leaves the allocation decision to a federal department or agency rather …
The Washington Post reports: Speaking of doctors, former Democratic National Committee chairman and six-term Vermont governor Howard Dean is the latest star to join the government affairs practice of law and lobbying mega-firm McKenna Long & Aldridge. He’s not only a physician but also a “thought leader” on politics and policy, a man whose “network of relationships will benefit clients who are working in states and municipalities across the U.S.,” the firm announced last week. Ah, yes, we knew that 50-state strategy made sense. … Dean joins an impressive lobbying …
Liberals are introducing the misnamed Employee Free Choice Act today on Capitol Hill. The legislation would effectively eliminate workers’ rights to a secret ballot vote on joining a union. Heritage’s James Sherk has done extensive research on card check, including a new paper that outlines why the bill would create government-run workplaces. Last month at a Heritage event, former UFCW Local 700 Organizing Director Rian Wathen described how unions will creatively manipulate workers into signing union cards if EFCA takes away their right to a secret vote. Click here to see …
Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) is a long-lived El Niño-like pattern of Pacific climate variability. Primarily found in the North Pacific, PDO moves through warm phases and cool phases that last from ten years to forty years at a time. George Taylor’s talk, The Pacific Decadal Oscillation: A Dominant Mode of Climate Variability, stresses that the PDO appears to be a permanent feature of the earth’s climate system, and PDO changes correlate well with the variation in temperature over the last century. There are two radiative ways to cause global warming: …
The final day of the conference begins with breakfast with the Honorable John Henry Sununu, former governor of New Hampshire and former White House Chief of Staff under George H.W. Bush. Sununu, as Heritage analyst Ben Lieberman often notes, asserts that the global warming environmental activists are anti-growth, anti-development proponents in disguise. As former Chief of Staff, Sununu has experience dealing with environmental activists. He tells a story of global warming proponents knocking on the White House door warning if the United States doesn’t enact a global warming policy, the …
The Senate is expected to vote on the $410 billion Omnibus bill today, which includes a provision that would effectively end the successful D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program – potentially disrupting the lives of more than 1,700 scholarship students while sending a signal that school choice is not welcome in Washington. The scholarship program, which has dramatically changed the lives of the students involved, provides scholarships of up to $7,500 per student to attend a private school of their choice. With an average scholarship being less than $6,000, enrolled children are …
Unions Rally against Democratic Elections Card Check: The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) would replace secret ballot organizing elections with publicly signed union cards, allowing union organizers to deceive, harass, and threaten workers into signing these cards and thereby unionizing. Stripping Away Privacy and Freedom: A worker may vote “no” against a union behind a curtain but may be less courageous if pressured in public. This is why most union organizers currently don’t call for elections until between 60% and 75% of a shop notes interest, knowing that there will …
National Journal’s National Security Expert blog asks: Al Qaeda-led or -inspired terrorist attacks in Europe, Iraq and Saudi Arabia have all declined, but Al Qaeda still has significant capacity to launch attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan and perhaps India. It also has a growing presence in Algeria and Yemen, and it has used the latter two countries and Pakistan as staging grounds for successful regional, but not international, attacks. Does this signal a change in Al Qaeda’s strategy from a global one to a regional one, or is it that their …
