Toyota has seen better months than February when the automaker recalled millions of vehicles amidst a sticky pedal and unintended acceleration problem that led to sales decline of 8.7 percent. To win back the consumer, Toyota offered incentives including extended warrantees, auto maintenance plans and zero percent financing, and it appears to be working as Toyota sales in the United States are up 47 percent for the first 8 days of March compared to last year. David Strickland, administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), spoke in front …
Knowing what we know now, would the U.S. be able to stop another attack like that of Christmas Day 2009? This is certainly the question on the minds of many Americans today. It is also one that Jamie McIntyre, veteran journalist and blogger for Military.com, had the opportunity to ask of Rand Beers, Under Secretary for National Protection and Programs Directorate from DHS, at a Heritage Foundation National Security Bloggers Luncheon. Mr. Beers’ response can be seen here at LineOfDeparture.com thanks to a video posted by Jamie on his blog. …
After enacting 93,000 earmarks at a cost of $200 billion over the past decade, lawmakers are finally taking the first steps to rein them in. First, House Democrats hinted they may announce a moratorium on earmarks to for-profit companies (while retaining them for non-profit organizations and state and local governments). Then, not be outdone, the House Republican conference today announced that they will not seek any earmarks in this year’s budget. This is a strong positive development. Earmarks distribute government grants by politics rather than by merit. Instead of submitting …
President Barack Obama announced Monday that $900 million in federal grants in the proposed FY 2011 budget would be available to school districts and administrators who work to transform roughly 5,000 failing school across the nation. While the proposal encourages transformation of the few thousand schools that produce half of America’s yearly 1.2 million high school dropouts, the reliance on federal government resources and direction to rescue America’s educational system falls short of true reform. The President’s proposal, detailed in a subsequent press release, encourages early intervention programs for students …
No greater dilemma faced the Colombian political system in recent months than the issue of presidential re-election. Should a constitutional referendum be held to allow a popular, extremely effective leader to run, and likely win, a third term as president? For many Colombians, President Alvaro Uribe had become the indispensable leader. Yet, across the political spectrum, many friends of Colombia worried about the impact of such concentrated power on the congress and judiciary. A third term for Uribe would damage democratic belief in the alterability of executive power and resemble …
Discussion of Chinese investment in the United States usually focuses on U.S. government bonds held by China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE). While SAFE directs the majority of Chinese investment in the United States, including all China’s bond purchases, it plays very little role in non-bond investment. The China Investment Corporation (CIC) is the sovereign wealth fund responsible for allocating a portion of China’s foreign exchange reserves through non-bond investments. Indeed, CIC activities have accounted for more than 80% of Chinese non-bond investment in the U.S. since it was …
President Obama has received criticism from yet another Supreme Court justice concerning his inappropriate and unprecedented chastisement of the Court during the State of the Union address. Obama criticized the Court’s recent campaign finance opinion while six of the justices sat before him, obviously unable to respond to the criticism during the address. Tuesday, Chief Justice John Roberts told a group of University of Alabama law students that the State of the Union has “degenerated into a political pep rally” and, like his colleague Justice Thomas did just days after …
After President Barack Obama nominated Eric Holder to be Attorney General, the Senate Judiciary Committee sent Holder a questionnaire that required him to provide copies of any briefs he had filed with the Supreme Court. Holder told the Senate he had participated in a total of five such briefs and that none of them dealt with terrorism-related issues. But as National Review Online has now confirmed, that was false. Specifically, Holder signed his name to an amicus brief arguing that President Bush lacked the authority to indefinitely detain Jose Padilla …
The alphabet is expensive. The Obama administration’s FY 2011 budget includes $9.3 billion in new spending on an Early Learning Challenge Fund, a new federal preschool program contained within the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA). The SAFRA, a higher education bill, has passed the House and is awaiting action in the Senate. Heritage education policy expert Lindsey Burke outlines current federal spending on preschool programs and illustrates that further federal involvement in early childhood education is unnecessary. Burke points out: The ultimate goal of the myriad early education …
The EU’s beleaguered Foreign Minister, Baroness Ashton, stated yesterday that she is no longer opposed to the creation of a permanent EU military headquarters to support a European army that will stand separate from NATO. In a flip-flop that would make John Kerry blush, first she was against the idea and now she’s in favor. How quickly the world’s highest paid politician changes her mind. A permanent EU headquarters is yet another step toward an independent EU defense identity to undermine the primacy of NATO in European security structures, and …
