The New York Times reports this morning, “Politicians like nothing more than a convenient foil, and Democrats locked in a stubborn impasse with Republicans over new rules to govern Wall Street believe they have found a gold-plated one in Goldman Sachs. Democrats say the convergence of their push for an overhaul of financial regulation and a prominent federal securities case against the prestigious investment firm is a matter of coincidence, not planning.” Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) added: “If the disclosures at these hearings are not the final nail that persuades …
In his latest article in Foreign Affairs, Carl J. Schramm, president and CEO of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, calls for “expeditionary economics” a new strategy for reconstructing economies of post-conflict countries. Pointing out that the current U.S. Army Stability Operations field manual “epitomizes the central-planning mindset that prevails in the international development community,” Mr. Schramm argues that a more strategic attention should be paid to a bottom up approach based on encouraging entrepreneurship that will greatly enhance reconstruction progress. According to Mr. Schramm, “Entrepreneurial capitalism is messy, since it …
Billie Tucker is a wife, a mom, a businesswoman, and now she’s a Tea Partier. At last weekend’s Heritage Resource Bank, she told an inspiring story about her frustrations with the direction our country is headed and why she became motivated to make her voice heard. “All of a sudden I wake up, and my country is in so much trouble,” she said. “It’s affecting my kids and their future, and I gotta tell you, when they say ‘You’re a bunch of angry people,’ well wouldn’t it make you angry?” …
By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’” Ecologist Kenneth Watt made that statement on the inaugural Earth Day in 1970. The “peak oil” warning has been going on long before that, but here we are ten years after Watt’s deadline and we’re globally consuming 85 million barrels of oil …
Seoul, South Korea – It is becoming increasingly obvious that a North Korean torpedo caused the March 26th sinking of a South Korean naval ship. The Cheonan, a 1200 ton corvette, was severed cleanly in half, a characteristic of torpedo attack rather than a naval mine. Seoul has already ruled out an internal explosion, running aground, or other accident as the cause. My discussions with government officials in Seoul this week revealed uncharacteristic reticence and nervousness. South Korea is now like a CSI investigator who, upon seeing a dead body …
Months after making an ill-fated stand for the “Cornhusker Kickback” in health care legislation, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) has again put himself in the spotlight. Yesterday he was the lone Democrat to vote against moving forward on the Senate’s financial regulation bill. Nelson claimed in a statement, “We need to regulate Wall Street without doing harm to Main Street, and I’m hearing from Main Street businesses in Nebraska that have concerns about the current bill adversely impacting them.” But given his past attempts to extract special favors for Nebraska, not …
Liberals, and especially unions, frequently claim that raising the minimum wage helps workers and the economy. They contend that if people earn more money through a higher minimum wage, then they will be able to spend more as well, creating more jobs, and making everybody better off as a consequence. Now two U.S. territories are putting these theories to the test. The Federal minimum wage increase passed in 2007 also applied to American Samoa and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). The law incrementally raises the minimum wage …
It appears that Saturday Night Live let their token conservative writer run wild last weekend producing this almost-too-real-to-be-funny sketch about government unions. If anything the clip is too harsh on government union employees, but the government unions themselves are already sapping our economic recovery. Just last January the Labor Department confirmed what Heritage fellow James Sherk predicted last year: under President Barack Obama, 2009 was the first time in the history of the United States that the number of government union employees outnumbered private sector union employees. There are two …
According to Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), the House will vote on H.R. 2499, the Puerto Rico Democracy Act, later this week. The legislation provides Puerto Rico a two stage voting process and makes some non-resident Puerto Ricans eligible to vote on Puerto Rican statehood. This legislation has rigged the process in favor of making Puerto Rico the 51st state and is not a fair way to force statehood on a Commonwealth whose people may not want it. Furthermore, this may be an expensive proposition for the American people who …
The April 22-25 visits of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Zimbabwe and to Uganda highlight Iran’s unrelenting quest for international partners ready to either associate with its anti-U.S., anti-West program or soften potential sanctions taking shape in the UN Security Council. The visits also allowed Iran to once-more denounce the meddling of the Obama Administration and proclaim itself the victim of U.S. discrimination and double standards. In Africa, Iran repeated tactics it is employing successfully in Latin America with Venezuela’s Chavez and Brazil’s influential but misguided President Lula da Silva, who promises …
