Having spent the past decade working in law enforcement, I hold a special reflection on the upcoming 10th anniversary of the attacks of September 11. On that day, of the more than 400 rescue workers who perished, 343 firefighters and 60 police officers from New York City and the Port Authority died while responding to the call of duty. Never in American history has our nation’s public safety infrastructure suffered such a tragic day. The nearly 3,000 innocent men, women, and children who died that day at the hands of …
There continues to be a great deal of talk about “the China Model.” It is supposed to be a way to organize an economy, especially a developing economy, that is superior to the American or Western model of competitive capitalism. This debate has many important parts, but it has largely missed one critical point: There are two China models, not one. The first model brought China remarkable economic success and should be emulated in development. It is now largely being ignored. The second model has actually weakened China’s economy and …
How does a trillion dollars in more federal government spending sound to you? For most Americans, the idea of growing government at a time when deficits are sky high might seem preposterous. But for many on the left, it’s the only way they can think of to get the economy moving again, and they think some sort of new New Deal should be included in President Obama’s much-touted jobs speech on Thursday. Their end goal? The continued rise of big government. Case in point: Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA). On Sunday’s Meet …
President Obama will likely call for more education spending in his jobs speech scheduled for Thursday, and it’s anticipated that he will make a pitch specifically for new federal funding for school construction. But federally financed school construction is problematic on constitutional and practical grounds. The U.S. Constitution does not mention the word education and certainly doesn’t permit Washington to fund the construction of schools, which have historically been, and should remain, under the direction of states and localities. In calling for federal funding for school construction—which has been rare …
For 14 million unemployed Americans and their families, this Labor Day will not be a happy one. Instead of enjoying a day off of work, they’re suffering a disturbing trend under the Obama economy: Jobs are not being created, the unemployment rate has not improved, and the economy is at a near standstill. Even worse, the labor market’s stall might be turning into a decline. And today, in Detroit—which in July had the highest unemployment rate of any metropolitan area in the country—President Obama is due to stand with labor …
The newly formed Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction holds its first meeting this week. The 12-member panel will gather at 10:30 a.m. Thursday for an organizational session, then meet again on Sept. 13 at 10:30 a.m. for a hearing on “The History and Drivers of Our Nation’s Debt and Its Threats.” The committee is chaired by Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) and tasked with the goal of finding $1.5 trillion in savings to reduce the federal deficit. It’s not an easy goal, made even more …
Liberals have spent the past two weeks asking Congress to write a blank check for federal disaster funding. They’ve concentrated their attacks on House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) for seeking offsets in other areas of the budget to cover the additional aid. They’ve portrayed Cantor as a callous conservative, suggesting that his stance is extreme and hypocritical. The facts tell another story. The Wall Street Journal reveals that it’s actually congressional Democrats, not Cantor, standing in the way of additional disaster funding. House Republicans have offered a plan that …
Shannen Rossmiller doesn’t look like your typical Islamic terrorist. But somehow the blonde mother of three from Montana figured out a way to fit in, posing a terrorist in jihadist chat rooms to help law enforcement hunt enemies of America. Ten years after 9/11 inspired her to study Islamic culture and teach herself Arabic, Rossmiller is telling the amazing story of her foray into cyber-counterintelligence. Her work paved the way for the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies to find terrorists and disrupt their plots. Rossmiller spoke at Heritage this week …
Heritage’s Jim Carafano appeared on CBS’s “Early Show” to discuss the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) wanting a blank check. FEMA says it has too little money in the Disaster Relief Fund (DRF) due to its federalizing a record number of natural disasters this year. (Watch the video here.) As Carafano notes, FEMA needs to save its resources—funding especially—for truly catastrophic events, and get out of the business of bailing out states for natural disasters that occur with fairly predictable regularity. This issue of federalization of disasters is vividly illustrated …
News reports say that the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) will sue about 12 major banks in order to recover some of the losses that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac sustained on mortgage-backed securities the banks issued. The suits will seek to make the banks repay a share of about $30 billion in losses from securities that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bought before they essentially failed and the FHFA took them into conservatorship in September 2008. Since any recovered money would reduce the over $150 billion the taxpayers have …
