The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has set its regulatory sights on wireless telephone providers for instigating a supposed epidemic of “bill shock” across the land. But a review of complaints to the agency, as well as government survey data, casts considerable doubt on the agency’s claim that consumers are terrorized by their mobile phone charges. As illustrated in the accompanying graph, complaints to the FCC related to billing and rates for wireless telephone service accounted for a mere 3 percent of complaints overall in 2009—a significant decline from 17 percent …
Last week, George Osborne, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, unveiled the results of a wide-ranging review of spending, designed to bring the government’s share of the economy down from today’s 47.5 percent to 41 percent by 2014–15. In the main, the review’s results are welcome, though they do not go far enough. Unwisely, though, the government included defense spending—which had already taken a beating from the previous Labour government—in its review. The result, as defined by the government, is that after inflation, defense spending in Britain will shrink by …
Rasmussen Reports released poll results yesterday showing that 23% of Americans say they receive some form of cash benefits from the government. This is remarkably close to the truth. As The Heritage Foundation’s 2010 Index of Dependence on Government documents, 21% of the total U.S. population (64.3 million people) receive some level of assistance from dependence-creating federal programs. Contrast that with the United States in 1962, before President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Pverty, when only 11.7% of the population (21.7 million people) were dependent on the government. Once federal programs …
Buried in the WikiLeaks avalanche of documents related to the war in Iraq are various reports about the discovery of chemical weapons caches inside Iraq—reports which contradict the revisionist narrative about the genesis of the war. Scattered throughout the roughly 392,000 documents illegally published by WikiLeaks are accounts of U.S., coalition and Iraqi forces recovering chemical munitions left behind by Saddam Hussein’s overthrown regime. While the chemical munitions recovered appeared to be manufactured before the 1991 Gulf War, after which Iraqi forces were required to surrender and destroy their illegal …
Proposition 23 seeks to put some of California’s more egregious energy regulations on hold—at least until the California economy recovers. Current law will force consumers to switch to energy sources that can be four or more times as expensive as conventional energy, driving energy prices up, employers out, and consumers crazy. The current rules make especially little sense in the current economic environment. In addition to the standard environmental groups, those financing the opposition to Proposition 23 are mainly financiers who stand to gain from restrictions on conventional energy and …
Families USA is out with a new report, Lower Taxes, Lower Premiums: The New Health Insurance Tax Credit, which lauds the health insurance tax credits (subsidies) in Obamacare. But the report tells only half of the story. It is true that the tax credits will reduce the effective premium that many households will face for health insurance coverage. However, the key question from a policy perspective is whether the benefits of the Obamacare tax credits outweigh their costs. Since the Families USA report failed to list any of the costs …
Yesterday, the FBI announced the arrest of a Virginia man, Farooque Ahmed, on charges of “providing material support to terrorists and collecting information for a terrorist attack.” Ahmed is suspected of plotting to bomb several locations around the D.C. area, including several stations in the Metro rail system. This arrest will have quite a few commuters on edge. Yet, this is a good example of the right way to stop terrorist plots against the United States—early on and before a plan of attack can ever get off the ground. In …
The Washington Post reports today that the Obama administration is entering “the politically sensitive debate” on sex education by spending $110 million on 115 programs in 38 states and the District of Columbia that “teach about the risks of specific sexual activities and the benefits of contraception and others that focus primarily on encouraging teens to delay sex.” But as the Post later reports, only five of these 110 programs are “authentic” abstinence programs and they will receive less than $5 million. So how did the Obama administration choose which …
The Heritage Foundation mourns the passing of Hall W. Thompson of Birmingham, Alabama: a patriot, an entrepreneur, a philanthropist. A stroke took him at age 87 while he spoke to a gathering of politically active Alabamans about the importance of getting America back to its philosophical roots. While we celebrate his entire life, it is this part of it—this commitment to our founding principles—that sustained so many at Heritage and throughout the country. Hall belongs to the unsung heroes of the free-market movement. Many today know about the case for …
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) announced today that he is standing by his decision to cancel the under-construction ARC (Access to the Regional Core) rail tunnel under the Hudson River from New Jersey to New York. According to the AP, Christie was given four financial options for salvaging the project, but said no agreement could guarantee that New Jersey taxpayers would not pay more than $2.7 billion for the completed project. Earlier this month when Christie first voiced concern for the project, Wendell Cox defended his decision at Newgeography.com: …
