The United States will soon have the highest corporate tax rate in the world once Japan enacts its pledge to cut its rate. This dishonorable distinction is driving both Washington lawmakers and the business community to finally call for long-overdue reform. Politico reports that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will release the Obama Administration’s plan for corporate tax reform in the coming weeks. There are many outlines the plan could take, because there are so many problems with the corporate tax code that need fixing. But no matter what form the …
With the killing of Osama bin Laden, a significant strategic and symbolic blow was dealt to al-Qaeda and its network of affiliated terrorist organizations. The cache of intelligence obtained during the raid on bin Laden’s compound revealed the terrorist mastermind to be an active and integral player in the engineering of al-Qaeda’s ongoing attempts to wreak havoc against the West. The long-term implications of having killed bin Laden are no doubt favorable to the ongoing efforts of the United States and our allies to contain and eradicate the jihadi threat. …
The four co-authors of Why Obamacare is Wrong for America recently addressed The Bloggers Briefing at The Heritage Foundation. Grace-Marie Turner provided the Foundry exclusive highlights from her remarks. Obamacare may be fading from the headlines, but the health law still is steaming toward us like a freight train. Obamacare is the most sweeping single piece of social policy legislation in the nation’s history, and the very real and legitimate fears of a government take-over of our health sector caused millions of people to take to the streets in protest. Opposition to …
A battle is raging within the conservative movement on Capitol Hill whether to shoot at the flag stick or lay up (in golf terms). The battle is between the Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA) versus a statutory spending cap bill. Both factions have good points. The bold, shoot-at-the-flag-stick faction of the movement wants to push for a BBA strategy or bust. This strategy includes taking the debt limit increase hostage for the demand of a BBA passing both the House and the Senate. Another other faction of the movement is pushing …
Large majorities of the public favor parental notice before an abortion can be performed on a minor girl, and the laxity of current laws on the issue continues to draw the attention of policymakers- and the support of abortion providers like Planned Parenthood, which routinely challenges parental rights in this area. But Planned Parenthood is fully capable of setting a standard of parental rights when they align with their interest, as news out of California demonstrates. Planned Parenthood there is requiring parental consent for Sacramento teens to lobby against legislation …
The Obama Administration appears absolutely intent on engaging the PRC in space cooperation. How else to explain the claim by White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director John Holdren that the congressional restriction banning U.S.–Chinese space cooperation under just about any circumstances was not, in fact, a ban? According to Holdren, the White House has concluded that the provision doesn’t extend to “prohibiting interactions that are part of the president’s constitutional authority to conduct negotiations.” That includes, he said, a bilateral agreement on scientific cooperation between the two …
Fed up with the federal government’s ban of the traditional incandescent light bulb, state representatives in South Carolina are pushing for the state to produce and use incandescents solely for its state. The Incandescent Light Bulb Freedom Act, which unanimously passed South Carolina’s Senate panel, would allow South Carolina manufacturers to continue to sell incandescent bulbs so long as they have “Made in South Carolina” on them and are sold only within the state. Other states have floated the idea, and last year Arizona passed a bill that would have …
Competition beat regulation in a big way two weeks ago in El Paso, Texas. Recently, the city made it illegal for mobile food vendors to sell anywhere within 1,000 feet of a restaurant or grocery store. The vendors of El Paso weren’t happy about the business killing regulation, which served to protect the restaurants and grocers from outside competition. If broken, the law required vendors to pay steep fines and essentially forced them out of business. Four independent mobile food vendors partnered with the Institute for Justice to file a …
In the 1970s, rather than rebuilding the military after the Vietnam War, President Jimmy Carter let it go hollow—the military looked okay on paper, but readiness dropped to appalling levels. President Bill Clinton adopted a similar strategy after the Cold War. They both did it for the same reasons: Wanting to respond to criticisms of “big government” spending, they cut defense—hence less government spending—but they could save as much of their precious “big government” as possible. Clinton’s neglect of the military was less apparent, because Reagan had built up the …
You might think that a U.S. company’s decision to expand its manufacturing facilities and create 1,000 new jobs here at home — rather than overseas — would be hailed by the Obama Administration as a step in the right direction, especially with nine percent unemployment. You’d be wrong. Instead, President Barack Obama’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is doing all it can to throw a wrench in the machinery of private industry. The story begins with Boeing Corporation’s decision to build a new assembly plant in Charleston, South Carolina, in order …
