File this away in the “I told you so” budget commentary section. Last April, legislators hobbled together nearly $5 billion in one-time funds to balance the budget–including about $3 billion in federal stimulus funds ($4.1 billion total if you count the 2007-09 supplemental). In their eagerness to gobble up as many dollars as the feds would offer, legislators (and Governor Gregoire) forgot two of the most fundamental life lessons in a world of scarce resources. First, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Second, if it seems too good …
Last night Heritage hosted the world premiere of “Not Evil Just Wrong,” a feature-length documentary that reveals the true cost of global warming hysteria and the unintended consequences of radical environmental policies that have been going on for decades. The film was broadcast live on Ustream.tv and screened at 6,000 different locations in 27 countries. The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis recently exposed what would be the unintended consequences of the Waxman-Markey cap and trade legislation. CDA found that far more jobs would be destroyed than green jobs created, …
The Pakistan military began a long-awaited offensive in South Waziristan along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border over the weekend. The region has served as the principal base of operations for an amalgam of terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda, the Pakistani Taliban, and groups formerly based in the Punjab, including Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. The Pakistanis launched the operation on Saturday following a string of major terrorist attacks across the country over the last two weeks, including a 20-hour hostage stand-off at the Army’s General Headquarters in Rawalpindi. If the militants were hoping to deter …
The Washington Post reports: [A]s a Senate vote on health-care legislation nears, those negotiations are occurring in a setting that is anything but revolutionary in Washington: Three senators are working on the bill behind closed doors. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) sits at the head of a wooden table at his office as he and Sens. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) and Max Baucus (D-Mont.) work to merge two competing versions of health-care legislation into one bill. The three men will be joined by top aides as well as …
It seems that every week the administration tries to find a new excuse cut and run in Afghanistan. This week the line is that without a stable government and a clear winner in the elections sending more troops to the country would be unwise. On the other hand, Secretary Clinton is about ready to roll out a new strategy on the Sudan that calls for greater US engagement with Khartoum –offering the its leaders “incentives” for good behavior. So apparently in the Obama era, US foreign policy means being overly …
This summer, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal outlining a pro-consumer, pro-market vision for health care reform that would take our country in the opposite direction of Obamacare. This September, he sat down with Reason’s Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch to talk health care and capitalism: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYcFCyZC8Sc[/youtube]
Some wonder whether the stock market’s rebound to over 10,000 is a sign not of economic recovery but of inflation. Is the simultaneous rise in gold prices another symptom of dramatic inflation ahead, sparked by big government blunders? An article at Smart Money includes Jonathan Hoenig’s warning of government-caused hyperinflation. Rather than pointing to Germany’s Weimar Republic of the 1930’s, he points to Zimbabwe during the last year. That African nation printed a supply of bills valued at $100-trillion apiece—and now worthless already. Hoenig writes:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DhabZ2N8U8[/youtube] FCC Commissioner McDowell recently spoke at Heritage’s Blogger Briefing and then sat down with the Foundry to discuss the ongoing process to add unnecessary regulation across the entire internet. The complicated proposed rules for the new medium are an old story of regulation: It does put government in the unprecedented role of perhaps sitting between the producer and the consumer in the internet space. There you have it. Wedging itself between two mutually benefiting parties in the name of fairness is perhaps what government regulation does best. Also see …
Last night Heritage hosted the world premiere of “Not Evil Just Wrong,” a feature-length documentary that reveals the true cost of global warming hysteria. The film was broadcast live on Ustream.tv. Following last night’s screening at Heritage, Andrew Breitbart moderated a panel featuring Richard Lindzen, a professor of meteorology at MIT; Donald Roberts, professor emeritus of tropical health in the Department of Preventive Medicine and Biometrics at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences; and John Fund, an author and columnist at the Wall Street Journal. Here’s video of …
In his primetime health care address before a Joint Session of Congress, President Barack Obama promised the American people: “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits – either now or in the future. Period.” But it is hard work adding $1 trillion in government spending while claiming with a straight face that you are not adding to the deficit. Enter White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel who has just the solution: just strip out $247 billion of the spending in the bill, pass …
