Despite the media’s negative portrayal, support for the Tea Party is growing at astonishing speed. Over half of the electorate now consider themselves favorable to the Tea Party, according to recent polls. Just this weekend, the Virginia Tea Party Convention, co-hosted by The Heritage Foundation, attracted over 2,000 attendees – the largest state-wide rally to date. Such broad support is remarkable for a movement that began not quite two years ago in scattered local gatherings of frustrated and concerned citizens. Yet when considering the Tea Party’s grounding in the principles …
The successful rescue of 33 Chilean miners trapped for 69 days has produced an outpouring of joy and triumph around the world. A well-deserved round of kudos goes to the miners themselves for maintaining their discipline and faith and to the engineers, scientists, and Chilean government officials who made the daring operation work. A share of the credit also belongs to Chile’s conservative President Sebastian Piñera, whose capacity for crisis management was proven by the nation’s impressive recovery from the February 27 earthquake. The Wall Street Journal reports: Observers say …
The biggest foreclosure yet may begin on November 2nd, as voters start foreclosure proceedings against big government. It’s run up more debt than we can afford to pay. The paperwork has been validated. It’s found in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, duly approved and signed by our Founding Fathers. Previous proceedings went awry. President Bill Clinton’s 1996 pronouncement that “the era of big government is over” proved to be empty words, as demonstrated by the subsequent free spending of Congress and Presidents George W. Bush and Barack …
Earlier this month, liberals, leftists and unions staged a sparsely attended “march” in Washington called the “One Nation Rally.” After the event, Americans for Prosperity put together an excellent video that shows the great extent that socialists made up the audience. But now, Heritage has been sent video that shows Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) addressing the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) before the march. Conyers gives the crowd his thoughts on the Tea Party, the war in Afghanistan, President Obama and White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. In the video, …
Yesterday the Obama Administration lifted the moratorium on deepwater drilling that it imposed on the oil industry following the BP oil spill in late April. This announcement comes ahead of the expected November 30 end date for the moratorium. According to The New York Times: We have made and continue to make significant progress in reducing the risks associated with deepwater drilling,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told reporters on a conference call. Therefore, he said, “I have decided that it is now appropriate to lift the suspension on deepwater drilling …
A recent letter from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) reveals how Obamacare will erode patients’ access to certain preventive services. The new health care law requires insurers to cover all preventive measures rated “A” or “B” by the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) with zero cost-sharing. Otherwise, “a plan or issuer has the discretion to either cover or not cover additional preventive services not recommended by the USPSTF,” according to the CRS letter. While many of the more specific task force recommendations are already included in most health …
Would you like a $14-billion taxpayer-funded tunnel in your town? How about a $500 million light rail train to nowhere? As state and local governments are under crushing budget constraints, mega-sized infrastructure boondoggles are cropping up all over the country. With the promise of “free money” from the federal government, these projects are proving too tempting for state governments to turn down. In the City of Detroit, a $500 million light rail train is being built to connect the downtown area with outlying suburbs. Critics say that the train is …
Anyone who picks up the U.S. edition of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s brand new political autobiography, A Journey: My Political Life, will understand why Americans came to admire and trust Blair as a leader and an ally during the tough early years of the war in Iraq. It is also clear why Blair became so controversial at home, and this is not just because he staunchly supported a military engagement that came to be unpopular with many Britons. While some of Blair’s countrymen have ambivalent views about the …
Since the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, states and individuals have been on the offensive against the new law and many are following in the footsteps of Virginia and Florida. Obamacare is now being challenged by 20 different lawsuits with 21 different states as plaintiffs, but it is difficult to find all the different court documents and key arguments for the ongoing cases. The Independent Women’s Forum, a nonprofit group supporting limited government and economic freedom, has just launched a new Web site that will track …
Today, The Heritage Foundation released its 2010 Index of Dependence on Government. This annual report tracks the growth of dependence-creating federal programs, programs that crowd-out what was once America’s great civil society. At one time, social obligations and services were carried out by community groups, family networks and even local governments. Now, an ever growing and ever more unaccountable federal bureaucracy undermines our spirit of self-reliance and self-improvement by making more and more Americans dependent on Big Government. In 2010, we witnessed a record-breaking surge in American dependence on the …
