According to the Tax Foundation, today is Tax Freedom Day: That means Americans have worked about three and a half months of the year, from January 1 to April 13, before they have earned enough money to pay this year’s tax burden at the federal, state and local levels. Thanks in part to both President George Bush’s tax cuts and President Barack Obama’s temporary tax cuts, this year’s April 13 Tax Freedom Day is the earliest it has been since 1967. But do not celebrate yet. The Tax Foundation also …
The Heritage Foundation never has been more important than it is today, especially in raising up “the next generation of conservative leaders,” says the first new chairman of the Board of Trustees since Bill Clinton ended George H.W. Bush’s residency at the White House. The founders of the think tank, Heritage Chairman Thomas A. Saunders III recalls, “realized there was a void of conservative thought in America in the aftermath of the policies of the New Deal and the Great Society.”
In an otherwise fine article on how cap and trade legislation would lead to exploding energy bills that would hurt families and kill economic growth, the New York Times reports: But few pay attention to the origin of their little-noticed savings: 21 coal-fired power plants that emit more than 75 million tons of carbon dioxide annually and generate 80 percent of Missouri’s electricity. Even residents who endorse wind and solar energy have grown accustomed to the benefits of state policies that favor coal by putting a premium on low-cost electricity. …
The Washington Independent‘s David Weigel has a very fair piece on conservative efforts to educate the public about State Department legal advisor nominee Harold Koh’s “transnationalist” legal beliefs. Weigel quotes National Review’s Ed Whelan: “What judicial transnationalism is really all about is depriving American citizens of their powers of representative government by selectively imposing on them the favored policies of Europe’s leftist elites.” Also engaging Koh’s substantive views, former Koh student Julian Ku who has identified 10 Questions for Koh at Opinio Juris, including: 2) You have argued in your …
This cartoon from the 1934 Chicago Tribune has appeared more than once in our inbox. Hopefully, unlike 1934, we have already endured the worst of new federal government central planning in the U.S. economy. By 1934 the Depression had already lasted five years, but would still go on for another eight. In that time the left would go on to establish such monstrosities as the Works Progress Administration, the Fair Labor Standards, the Wagner Act, the Tennesse Valley Authority, and Fannie Mae. In 1939 President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Treasury Secretary …
School choice can be more than just a “lifeboat” for students needing to escape troubled public schools. When structured correctly, school choice can create competition among both private and public schools to improve their performance. That, say Jay Greene and Ryan Marsh, is what’s going on in Milwaukee right now. Milwaukee has one of the nation’s largest and longest-running school choice programs. Green, the head of the University of Arkansas’s Department of Education Reform, and Marsh, a graduate student at Northwestern University, did a study recently to see if the …
It is not every day that the Washington Post and the Heritage Foundation sing from the same sheet of music. Today, on the problem of Cuba, we generally do. One must read the Post’s lead editorial “Coddling Cuba.” The reaction to the recent visit of the Black Congressional Caucus to Cuba will, we predict, do little to strengthen the hand of those anxious to rush the Obama Administration unconditionally toward a complete normalizing of relations with Cuba. The adulation and exoneration lavished on the Castro brothers, the readiness to shift …
The April 6, William Broad article “North Korean Missile Launch Was a Failure, Experts Say” in the New York Times diminishes the scope of the threat posed by the North Korean ballistic missile program by omitting some key facts. Analysis of the Taepodong-2 missile flight path does indicate that a payload was not delivered into earth orbit as the North Koreans claim. In this respect, the effort as a “space launch” did fail. Broad’s conclusion, however, that “[a]nalysts dismissed the idea that the rocket could represent a furtive, calling the …
The New York Times reports this morning: “He is not a mortgage broker. But for a time on Thursday, President Obama seemed to be playing one on television, urging Americans not to miss out on rock-bottom refinancing rates. … Seldom has the president sounded so much like the host of a late-night infomercial, stopping just shy of imploring people to call the toll-free number at the bottom of their television screens.” We don’t get to say this very often, but the New York Times is dead right. Here are some …
Over the past month, the press in predominantly Muslim countries was abuzz that President Barack Obama was scheduled to attend the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations Forum during his recent visit to Turkey. The AoC is an attempt by the U.N. to quell perceived tensions between Muslim and Western nations by promoting “dialogue” – an interesting word choice for what is, in effect, a one way conversation. The base document for the Alliance of Civilizations focuses on the supposed failings of Western countries while largely ignoring the faults of Muslim …
