In the face of a national outcry, the Obama administration has decided to delay its Christmas Tree Tax—first reported here on the Foundry—though they haven’t said till when (presumably until the criticism blows over). ABC’s Jake Tapper reports: The U.S. Department of Agriculture is going to delay implementation a revisit a proposed new 15 cent fee on fresh-cut Christmas trees, sources tell ABC News. The fee, requested by the National Christmas Tree Association in 2009, was first announced in the Federal Registry yesterday, and has generated criticism of President Obama from conservative media …
In a move that is sure to intensify the already testy exchanges between the White House and congressional investigators, the House Energy and Commerce Committee today released a series of emails showing that Obama donor and Solyndra investor George Kaiser explicitly mentioned the now-bankrupt solar company in talks with administration staffers. The emails suggest that Kaiser, who bundled $50,000 for the president’s 2008 campaign, was more involved in Solyndra’s loan guarantee process than either he or the administration would care to admit. The White House had previously insisted that Kaiser …
The left continues to resist any suggestion of spending cuts right now. In their view, a depressed economy is no time to slash spending; that would only further weaken demand. The successful austerity policies adopted in response to the downturn of 1920, however, offer a clear rebuttal to this notion. And this is not an isolated instance in the heap of economic history. Similar government restraint and cutbacks marshaled strong recoveries from the depressions of 1837 and 1893. In 1837, financial panic swept the country. According to economist Jim Powell, …
Yesterday, the Department of Interior released its new five-year offshore drilling plan. Unfortunately, the program is far less expansive when it comes to opening areas to access, exploration, and drilling than it should be. The plan schedules 15 possible lease sales in the 2012–2017 time horizon—10 in the central and western Gulf of Mexico, two in the central Gulf, and three off the coast of Alaska. More glaring, however, is the areas that are still off-limits. The Atlantic and Pacific coasts, areas the Obama Administration once considered opening, remain closed …
The political debate over China seems familiar because they’ve been on the political table for years. Is China taking American jobs? How cooperative is the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on issues like nuclear programs in North Korea and Iran? China rises; America frets, and Presidential candidates talk about roughly the same things every four years. But what if China is about to change? By the time America holds its presidential election next year, China will have begun a leadership transition of its own. The current leadership group headed by Hu …
On November 22, Republican candidates will gather together in Washington, D.C., for a presidential debate presented by The Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute on CNN. The subject: foreign policy and national security. Chief among the foreign policy issues that the President of the United States must address is the matter of an increasingly dangerous, hostile, and emboldened Iran. Yesterday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released a report confirming that Iran has made substantial progress in its nuclear weapons program. The IAEA says it “has serious concerns regarding possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear …
It was no coincidence that “Atlas Shrugged Part 1” made its box-office debut on tax day, April 15, earlier this year. So it was only appropriate that the DVD release would fall on Election Day. Harmon Kaslow, the movie’s producer, visited Heritage’s Bloggers Briefing today to talk about the film and preview “Atlas Shrugged Part 2,” which is slatted for a fall 2012 release. He also visited our Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio to share his thoughts on Hollywood, how the Internet has transformed movie marketing and the relevance of …
The International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) long-awaited report on Iran’s nuclear program was released today, confirming longstanding suspicions that Iran has made substantial progress in its nuclear weapons program. The IAEA’s quarterly report concluded: The Agency has serious concerns regarding possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme. After assessing carefully and critically the extensive information available to it, the Agency finds the information to be, overall, credible. The information indicates that Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device. The IAEA report urged Tehran …
President Obama’s Agriculture Department today announced that it will impose a new 15-cent charge on all fresh Christmas trees—the Christmas Tree Tax—to support a new Federal program to improve the image and marketing of Christmas trees. In the Federal Register of November 8, 2011, Acting Administrator of Agricultural Marketing David R. Shipman announced that the Secretary of Agriculture will appoint a Christmas Tree Promotion Board. The purpose of the Board is to run a “program of promotion, research, evaluation, and information designed to strengthen the Christmas tree industry’s position in …
These days, everybody loves Reagan. It’s not just the eight GOP candidates who are trying to out-Reagan each other on the campaign trail. Liberals, too—including President Obama—have developed a fondness for the Gipper (or at least their reconstituted version of Reagan). Most attempts to claim President Ronald Reagan’s mantle have focused on domestic policy. But Reagan did not only overcome malaise at home and launch the longest uninterrupted peacetime economic expansion in the 20th century. He also reinvigorated American foreign policy, strengthened the military, and won the Cold War. With …
