Our friends at ReasonTV have put out a great new video highlighting the strides that have been made towards school choice in New Orleans following the Hurricane Katrina disaster. As ReasonTV Editor Nick Gillespie says in the video, few people could have predicted the improvements in education that would result, but “sometimes things get so bad that radical change can happen.” Before Katrina, the New Orleans school system was in terrible shape. As one mother explains, when they were displaced to Baton Rouge during the cleanup, she found much better schools …
A bill signed by President Barack Obama on August 10th was supposed to save teachers’ jobs. It was a $26 Billion dollar spending bill that allocated $10 billion for education spending so school districts could rehire laid off teachers or prevent districts from having to fire more teachers. Speaker Nancy Pelosi thought it was so important that she called the House of Representatives back from August recess to pass it. However, there seems to be a problem. A report that came out last week notes that some of the states …
“Operation Iraqi Freedom ends on your watch!” exclaimed Col. John Norris of the the 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, as the final U.S. combat brigade crossed into Kuwait from Iraq early this morning. “Hooah!” his soldiers roared back. Norris later told The Washington Post: “They’re leaving as heroes. I want them to walk home with pride in their hearts.” By the end of August the United States will still have about 50,000 troops in six brigades in Iraq. These “advise and assist brigades” will be primarily tasked with training …
The Obama administration has been on the defensive about exorbitant federal pay ever since a Heritage Foundation report revealed government workers earn significantly more money than their private-sector counterparts. Now the administration’s personnel office has resorted to attacking the report under the false pretense that Heritage failed to compare the correct data. Heritage economist James Sherk estimated that salaries and benefits — for identical jobs — are 30 percent to 40 percent higher in the federal government than in the private sector. In effort to refute Heritage’s study, Office of …
The New Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty (New START) has been in the news for over a year now. First there were the negotiations with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in the fall of 2009. Then President Obama signed the new treaty with president Medvedev in April 2010. Now the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has two options: put the treaty up for a vote and send it to the Senate or acquiesce to a GOP request to release the negotiating record to the committee. Before the Senate decides they should first consider …
Businesswoman Lori Davis didn’t mince words at Tuesday’s U.S. Senate field hearing in Lafayette, LA: “The Obama administration has done absolutely nothing to protect, help or support us as an industry that feeds and powers this nation.” Davis told the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, “We need answers, we deserve answers, we need to return to work.” Davis, owner of RIG-CHEM, was one of many victims who gave a very human face to President Obama’s ongoing Gulf drilling moratorium, currently not scheduled to be lifted until November. The adjustments …
In the age of media saturation and extravagant federal budget deficits, the question does comes up: Why does the United States need to spend some $750 million on international broadcasting every year? As with every taxpayer dollar spent, this question deserves an answer, and rarely has a more eloquent one been provided than the statement by expert communicator P.J. O’Rourke on the World Affairs Journal’s Editor’s blog. P. J. O’Rourke was a recent guest of Radio Free Europe in Prague, and recounted in the blog some of his thoughts on …
Revving up its trade dispute with the Obama Administration over trucking, on August 16 the Mexican government announced revisions to the list of U.S. goods subject to tariffs when they are imported into Mexico. Although Mexico will remove 16 U.S. products from the list of 89 that are currently subject to tariffs, 26 will be added for a net gain of 10. Among the new targets: U.S.-produced pork, oranges, grapefruit, apples, corn, pistachios, chewing gum, cheese, ketchup, and chocolate. The new tariffs will affect as much as $2.5 billion in …
In the three months since President Barack Obama released his first National Security Strategy (NSS), the news has been dominated by his responses to domestic problems—from the economy to the Gulf oil spill to more stimulus spending. And that focus on traditionally domestic issues is reflected in the 2010 National Security Strategy. At 34,314 words, the document is nearly twice as long as Bush’s 2006 edition (19,731 words) and nearly three times as long as Bush’s 2002 edition (12,745 words). The 2010 NSS is notable in that it dramatically changes …
In many respects, Dan L. Duncan was the embodiment of the American dream, the self-made man incarnate. He transformed $10,000 and two propane trucks into a natural gas empire and a personal net worth of $9 billion—making him the richest person in Houston, and the 74th wealthiest individual in the world. Even though Duncan died last March, his story provides the “only in America” narrative that seems to be lacking in this brave new era of big government and dwindling faith in the individual.
