Libya’s interim government gradually is taking shape. On Monday the Transitional National Council (TNC) announced that it had elected a new Prime Minister, Abdurraheem el-Keib, who will serve until elections in June for a national assembly that will write a new constitution. El-Keib, a dual Libyan-American citizen, is a U.S.-educated engineering professor who taught for many years at the University of Alabama before joining the TNC earlier this year. El-Keib is a technocrat who emerged as a choice acceptable to both Islamists and secular factions and is the scion of …
The eight Republican presidential candidates have confirmed they will attend the Nov. 22 debate hosted by The Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute on CNN. The debate will focus exclusively on foreign policy and national security. The debate will take place in Washington, D.C., at a location to be announced shortly. It will air nationally on CNN and CNN en Español and worldwide on CNN International, CNN Radio and CNN.com. “Heritage is delighted to have this opportunity to increase public understanding of the candidates’ positions on critical foreign policy and …
With its November 23 deadline fast approaching, the “super committee” created by the Budget Control Act is back in the news, and it is still grappling with its mandate to find $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction savings. One of the ideas being bandied about is a continued call to raise taxes in order to reduce the deficit. But as the chart below shows, inadequate tax revenue is NOT the problem, too much spending is. (Article continued below infographic) In their new paper “Three Pillars of Reform for the Super Committee,” Heritage’s Alison …
In September, the Census Bureau reported that 46.2 million Americans are living in poverty, a steep increase from the previous year’s report of 43.6 million. However, in a New York Times piece yesterday, journalist Jason DeParle and colleagues assert that “most poverty experts” would call the Census Bureau’s measure “flawed.” “Concocted on the fly a half-century ago, the official poverty measure ignores ever more of what is happening to the poor person’s wallet—good and bad,” noted the authors. Heritage senior research fellow Robert Rector similarly points out that the Census …
Press pundits and many Latin American experts are predicting that Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas will easily win presidential elections in Nicaragua on Sunday, November 6. The Economist captures the tone of the elections quite accurately: “Buoyed by a growing economy and Venezuelan cash, the Sandinista leader who toppled a dictator is set to win an unconstitutional third term.” A win for Ortega would be bad news for Nicaragua, the U.S., and friends of democracy around the world. A recent Heritage WebMemo by former Ambassador Robert Callahan and Heritage senior …
There are many ways to balance a budget. Most of us, for example, spend 30 percent or more of our income on housing. Skipping mortgage payments is a sure-fire way to make ends meet – until they take your house away. Health insurance can be a real waste, too, if you’re healthy. Dropping it may seem like a great idea – until you get sick or have an accident. These are, of course, clear-cut examples of misguided fiscal thinking. Which brings us to the latest craze in Washington when it …
Protests that began on Wall Street and spread to cities across America have now reached the pristine halls of Harvard. That’s right, the country’s oldest university is experiencing walkouts by students sympathizing with the “Occupy” movement. The source of their frustration: Students don’t like the content presented in an introductory course in economics. The professor, Greg Mankiw, is one of the world’s best-known economists and served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Bush. Never mind those credentials, however. According to some students, Mankiw is indoctrinating America’s …
Following a devastating suicide blast earlier in the week in Somalia’s capital city of Mogadishu, leaders from the regional terror group al Shabaab issued a statement declaring that the perpetrator of the attack was American Abdisalan Hussein Ali. In an audio tape released by al Shabaab, and purported to be of Abdisalan Ali, the speaker exhorts the virtues of jihad and calls on his Western brothers to join the fight: “My brothers and sisters, do jihad in America, do jihad in Canada, do jihad in England, anywhere in Europe, in …
No news is good news–except when it means that the story about America’s slow-moving economy remains the same. A new report this morning from the Department of Labor shows that despite all of President Barack Obama’s promises and policies to grow the economy, there are still 14 million unemployed Americans. Meanwhile, the President is still spinning his job creation wheels, signing executive orders and pushing for misguided and expensive policies that lack support in Congress. The word from the monthly jobs report shows that unemployment was little unchanged at 9 percent …
