In case you weren’t reading the New York Times front page today, we wanted to point you to an especially disturbing story. The Times wrote about The Story of Stuff, “a 20-minute video about the effects of human consumption, [which] has become a sleeper hit in classrooms across the nation.” What classrooms? Very likely the school your child attends, since over 7,000 American schools or churches have ordered the DVD. The Story of Stuff highlights the very extreme left’s Greenpeace view of America. Essentially it tells the story of how America …
This past week, we live-blogged about Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano’s admission during a Senate hearing that she still supports the Dream Act, a bill that would grant amnesty to individuals unlawfully in the United States who arrived before the age of 16. Amnesty advocates like America’s Voice are now touting the Secretary’s answer as a sign that the Obama administration will move for a full amnesty this year. Despite its humanitarian pitch, the DREAM Act is bad public policy. Heritage fellow James Carafano wrote in 2007: The bill …
Looking to revive health care reform in Congress, the Obama administration is touting an announcement today by large health care trade associations including the American Medical Association, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the American Hospital Association, America’s Health Insurance Plans, as well as the Service Employees International Union. Together these big health care giants, allied with the SEIU, have “offered to squeeze $2 trillion in savings from projected increases over the next decade.” But before we sign off on any new health care spending, lets see them actually …
Last week we noted that the Obama administration’s stimulus package had made the federal government, for the first time in our nation’s history, the main source of income for state and local governments. We warned at the time: [A]s states become more dependent on federal funding, they begin to lose their ability to set priorities and make policy decisions that are best-suited to their specific needs. This Friday the Obama administration made that fear a reality when they threatened to rescind billions of dollars in federal stimulus money from California …
In a surprisingly frank statement this morning, General Motors CEO Fritz Henderson confirmed that the Treasury Department is calling the shots on the company’s on-going restructuring. As reported by the New York Times, Henderson stated that GM was told by the Treasury Department to offer bondholders only up to 10 percent of GM’s equity in return for $27 billion of debt. “They didn’t support us going above 10 percent,” Mr. Henderson said. “We went to the maximum that they permitted us.” Why 10 percent? According to Henderson, Treasury didn’t give …
The Washington Post editorialized today in favor of a compromise on card-check, including snap elections or mandatory union access to company premises, because – they argue – the current process too heavily favors management. They also criticized the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace for refusing to admit this. So here is a question for the Washington Post: If the current process heavily favors management, why did unions win over two-thirds of organizing elections last year? In fact, as I have written before, labor law heavily tilts the scales in favor …
This past Friday the Department of Labor released the nation’s employment’s figures showing that employers shed 611,000 private sector jobs in the first three months of this year. This brought the unemployment rate to 8.9% and revealed that in President Barack Obama’s first 100 days in office, employment has dropped about 2 million jobs. Of course, President Obama’s policies cannot be blamed for all of these job losses. They are due to the Great Global Recession, which was well underway before President Obama was sworn in. The Obama administration will …
Earlier today we noted that a recent MIT study showed that cap and trade energy tax proposals would cost the average American household $3,900 per year. Fortunately for us, the enviro-left has not yet succeeded in leveling their energy tax on the American people. The British are not so lucky. The British Parliament passed their Climate Change Act last year, despite the fact that the government’s Impact Assessment did not accurately reflect what was in the legislation. Well the British government recently released the corrected Impact Assessment and guess what? …
On Wednesday we exposed the farcical nature of President Barack Obama’s proposed spending “cuts” and today we posted a graphic putting his spending transfers in perspective. Senior White House economic advisor to President George W. Bush Keith Hennessey adds another angle comparing President Bush’s last spending cut request with Obama’s latest effort: This graphic does a great job exposing the Obama administration’s effort to cut our nation’s defenses while exploding every other area of federal spending
Last year Former South Dakota senator and 1972 Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern came out against the Orwellian named “Employee Free Choice Act” because it would destroy a worker’s right to secret ballot elections. This week, McGovern has another op-ed, this time explaining how the binding arbitration portions of EFCA enable the federal government to take control of basic management decisions for every American business. This feature would give the government the power to step into labor disputes where employers and labor leaders cannot reach an agreement and compel both …
