In the coming months, lots of people will be cranking up their computers and burning up the airwaves with commentary on the just-announced departure of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates sometime in 2011. Evaluating his legacy as SECDEF when he ultimately leaves next year will be important for the historical record, but the challenges his yet-to-be-named successor will face are more important. For instance, there’s little doubt that the war in Afghanistan will still be a major focus in 2011 — not to mention the challenge of managing the White …
Last week we were attacked by the sun. For real. Huge solar eruptions sent a blast of radiation toward Earth. Thankfully, the planet’s natural magnetic shield warded off the worst effects. Life went on uninterrupted. That won’t always be the case. In 1859, Richard Carrington recorded what is now called the “Carrington Effect” — intense solar activity that can disrupt modern life dramatically. In Carrington’s day, there were few electromechanical systems for intense solar radiation to mess with. The new fangled telegraph systems suffered the most. Solar-induced power surges knocked …
The New York Times reports today that only 8.4% of the $3.2 billion Congress included in President Barack Obama’s failed stimulus to create green jobs by improving energy efficiency has been spent through July. From the NYT: The program was to provide money for the purchase of better lighting or heating and cooling equipment for buildings like city halls and schools. But it is off to the same slow start as a bigger program that was initiated at the same time to weatherize the homes of low-income people around the …
After months of speculation, it’s finally official: the Chinese economy, as measured by GDP, is larger than the Japanese economy. In the second quarter of 2010, the Japanese economy was valued at about $1.29 trillion, the Chinese economy at $1.34 trillion. The gap will widen next year and for the foreseeable future. The swap of the number two and three spots in the world, behind the U.S., is heralded as (i) a sign of Chinese ascendance and Japanese stagnation; and (ii) proof of the superiority of the PRC’s state-led development …
Benjamin Franklin famously said, “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” With America’s stagnant-as-a-swamp economy still stuck at 9.5% unemployment, an unexpected 484,000 new jobless claims, and reports of a slowed recovery, it might be time for old Ben to pull out his quill and add another certainty to his list: the continuing failure of Obamanomics. Judging by the words of one of President Barack Obama’s economic advisors, it doesn’t look like the Administration is going to change course anytime soon. On ABC’s …
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) likes to say that Congressional earmarking has become the gateway drug to federal overspending. Is there any better evidence of this theory than President Barack Obama’s $1 billion earmark for a special project in Illinois that was slipped into his failed $862 billion stimulus? According to Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, the Obama Administration awarded $1 billion on August 5th for a Carbon Capture and Storage Network in Illinois: Today’s announcement will help ensure the US remains competitive in a carbon constrained economy, creating jobs while reducing …
Is the modern incandescent light bulb ready to retire from society and find its final resting place in the halls of the American History Museum? Politicians seem to think so, but consumer behavior indicates otherwise. According to an article in The New York Times, Despite a decade of campaigns by the government and utilities to persuade people to switch to energy-saving compact fluorescents, incandescent bulbs still occupy an estimated 90 percent of household sockets in the United States. Aside from the aesthetic and practical objections to fluorescents, old-style incandescents have …
On Wednesday, Gen. Alexander Zelin, the commander of the Russian Air Force, announced that Moscow had deployed a state-of-the-art S-300 (SA-20 Favorit) long- range air defense system in Abkhazia, a region of the Republic of Georgia that Russia has occupied since the August 2008 war. Since then, Russia recognized breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent republics. According to Zelin, the task of the air defense systems is “to prevent violation of Abkhaz and South Ossetian airspace and to destroy any aircraft intruding into their airspace no matter what their …
Last week, Sens. Tom Coburn (R-OK) and John McCain (R-AZ) released a report detailing 100 wasteful economic stimulus projects including $144,541 in stimulus funds to study the effect of cocaine use on monkeys. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. The creative team at Bankrupting America has highlighted some other big government spending doozies and turned them into this hilarious but troubling video. You can track and share more leftist spending disaster’s at Bankrupting America‘s Spending #FAIL Map. And be sure to also check out Heritage’s 50 Examples …
With the introduction of new legislation to implement the Automatic IRA—a simple, low-cost retirement savings vehicle for employees of small businesses—the effort to enable many more Americans to use a payroll deduction to build retirement security moves to a more active phase. A new bill by Senator Jeff Bingaman (D–NM) and a somewhat different version by Congressman Richard Neal (D–MA) retain the basic features of the original version, but they also include major improvements over past efforts. The Automatic IRA is a conservative, market-oriented solution to help address our retirement …
