Heritage Foundation fellow Brett Schaefer delivered the following statement to the Durban Review Conference on Friday, April 24, 2009. Schaefer and Heritage fellow Steven Groves attended the conference during the week of April 20-24, and reported what they witnessed here on the Foundry as well as at National Review Online and The Corner. Thank you Mr. President, We share the sentiment of many in the NGO community that the treatment of our organizations this week has been disappointing to say the least. In this venue and for this conference, the …
The dispute over MIT professor John Reilly’s cap and trade cost study has exposed, again, how the left has no idea how wealth gets created. The MIT study estimates that the government revenue from a carbon cap and trade policy would amount to $366 billion per year, or roughly $3,128 per American household. As Reilly readily admitted in a an email to the Weekly Standard, the government revenue raised through cap and trade (which any economist and even Tom Friedman will tell you is just a tax) will be ultimately …
President Barack Obama may have written a best-selling book with the word “audacity” in the title, but so far Education Secretary Arne Duncan is the member of his administration that best embodies that word. Secretary Duncan wrote in the Wall Street Journal this week “When parents recognize which schools are failing to educate their children, they will demand more effective options for their kids. They won’t care whether they are charters, non-charters or some other model. … We must close the achievement gap by pursuing what works best for kids, …
Usually the time to give thanks is, well, Thanksgiving. But on Earth Day, economist Don Boudreaux had plenty of reasons to be thankful: “My son, Thomas (a sixth grader), has a homework assignment today: write an essay entitled “What Earth Day Means to Me.” I will help him out with my own essay. Earth Day, to me, means an opportunity to express thanks for all the ways that capitalism makes our lives and environment cleaner and healthier.
Yesterday Energy Secretary Steven Chu testified before the House Committee on Energy Commerce. When pressed by Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) on statements Chu made last year about the desirability of high gas prices, Chu admitted his ideas were “silly”. Watch: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZE50jeVC2w[/youtube]
DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano is tentatively scheduled to testify before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee about DHS immigration enforcement policies on May 6, 2009. Given Secretary Napolitano’s novel interpretations of federal law, the Heritage Foundation will be posting a series of questions (and suggested answers) for the Secretary. Questions for Napolitano # 2: Does the Obama Administration unequivocally support E-Verify and IMAGE?
When he decided to release selected and redacted documents on terrorist interrogation used by the CIA after 9/11, President Barack Obama said “we should be looking forward and not backwards.” It is impossible to tell whether this statement was calculated or just naive, however, the political firestorm the document release has created is indisputable. The debate over the rightness of releasing the memos will continue, but the danger of telegraphing operational practices to al-Qaeda is no longer relevant–all the facts about how the interrogators did their job are now available. …
This week, China celebrated the 60th anniversary of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) with a large military parade to display to the world how far the PLAN has come and where it intends to go. The scope of China’s military advancements in recent decades was summarized well in the Pentagon’s new 2009 Report to Congress: On March 4, 2008, Beijing announced a 17.6 percent increase in its military budget to approximately $60 billion. China’s military budget doubled between 1989 and 1994, and almost doubled again between 1994 and 1999. …
Since October Heritage has been writing about the need for an Independent Financial Markets Commission to look into causes and remedies of the market crisis. Now, thanks to Senator Johnny Isakson, the idea has been approved by the U.S. Senate in a remarkable 92-4 vote. The independent voices, and independent inquiry, involved can provide an important counterpoint to the biases of internal government efforts: whether by Congressional committees or bureaucrats. The broad support for the Isakson Amendment shows that good ideas can still win the day in Washington, even in …
We’ve noted before that President Barack Obama $787 billion stimulus package will lead to billions in waste, overload federal and state agencies not staffed to accommodate Obama’s unprecedented explosion of spending, and that Obama’s claims of job creation (or salvation) numbers are so vague that proper accountability is almost impossible. Testimony from acting Comptroller General Gene Dodaro today shows that the Government Accountability Office shares these same concerns. The GAO’s report, “RECOVERY ACT: As Initial Implementation Unfolds in States and Localities, Continued Attention to Accountability Issues Is Essential” reads: Recipients …
