Yesterday, the Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom hosted a panel on “The Implications of the G-20 Summit for the Political Sovereignty and Economic Freedom of the United States.” The panel, which was hosted by Dr. Ted R. Bromund and featured Dr. J.D. Foster (Heritage), Dr. Desmond Lachman (AEI), and Prof. Jeremy Rabkin (George Mason), was broadcast live by CSPAN. If you want a primer on the financial crisis and the Summit, you can watch the panel now, courtesy of CSPAN. The run-up to the Summit itself is now …
President Obama’s administration just can’t leave well enough alone. First, it couldn’t manage to be respectful to Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, during his visit. When a State Department official responsible for planning the visit was questioned about this by the Sunday Telegraph, the official’s response was: There’s nothing special about Britain. You’re just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn’t expect special treatment. Next, it was Russia’s turn. The “reset/overcharge” fiasco at least led to an internal apology by long-time Clinton …
In the run-up to the G-20 summit in London on April 2, a curious division has emerged. On one side stand the U.S. and Britain, both sounding like continental Europeans in their enthusiasm for deficit spending. On the other stand France and Germany, rejecting stimulus packages but eager to impose a new system of “global governance” on the world’s markets and nations. As Sally McNamara has noted, Britain’s stance is a problem for the EU, which, as always, is seeking to use the global financial crisis to advance its aim …
Several leading European and Canadian health economists, physicians and scholars — in Washington recently for the Galen Institute’s conference, “Lessons from Abroad for Health Reform in the US” — met with analysts from the Heritage Foundation and other conservative think-tank leaders. They wanted to explain why Americans should be concerned when officials push for government-controlled, universal health care coverage that includes innocuous-sounding but largely intrusive and prohibitive health measures. “We were told single-payer health care would be a true liberation for Canada when they enacted it 40 years ago, and …
Dangerous currents advocating protectionism are alive and well on both sides of the Atlantic. A “Buy American” clause in the latest U.S. stimulus package may have been eased to avoid violation of bilateral trade agreements, but its protectionist intentions remain. But the European Union is in no position to lecture America about protectionism. In what the Financial Times describe as the biggest European auto bail out, France will give Renault and Peugeot-Citroën €3bn ($3.9bn) each in preferential loans in exchange for keeping jobs in France. Italy has quickly followed suit …
European Union ministers are pressuring Poland and Lithuania to endorse the EU’s business-as-usual approach toward Russia, despite the fact that Russia remains in violation of the EU-negotiated truce over the Russian-Georgian war. The EU apparently wants to have Poland and Lithuania on board for this scurrilous betrayal, so that it is seen to “speak with one voice” on foreign policy. Poland and Lithuania are right to stick to their guns on this one and put their principles above political expediency, not to mention their own security. Russia recently announced that …
In economics we use a term called comparative advantage: Generally speaking, it is the theory that countries should specialize in the production of goods and services they can produce most efficiently. Sounds simple enough, right? It is often linked to that taboo word, globalization. While globalization is largely responsible for increasing the prosperity not only in the United States but also in developing countries, it still has its critics. A prime example is nuclear power and the French. An article in today’s Tennessean reports that Tennessee Valley Authority awarded the …
The economy is by far the No. 1 issue on most Americans’ minds. Gas prices are a close second. The two issues are intimately related. But the spike in oil prices this year is just the tip of the iceberg. Due to similar developments in supply and demand, electricity prices are set to skyrocket next year. While American oil consumption has grown only 15% since 1973, electricity use has shot up 115%. Right now the U.S. has 760 gigawatts of power to meet consumption. We will need 135 gigawatts of …
Skyrocketing gas prices and rising energy demands have policymakers considering some of the same bad policies of the 1970s. Chief among these are windfall profits taxes, setting price controls on oil and using subsidies to pick winners and losers. The French, on the other hand, took a different approach in the 1970s—sort of. They decided turn to nuclear energy to reduced its dependence on foreign oil. By developing an energy policy that was consistent with French values and national strengths, it transformed its energy profile. Before France became the nuclear …
It’s too dangerous. It’s too expensive. There’s no solution to the waste problem. Anti-nuclear activists have thrown every excuse in the book when it comes to the reemergence of nuclear power in the United States, and they’ve all been dispelled. Today, with the costs of energy rising with no end in sight. Joanne Von Alroth of Investor’s Business Daily says, “Until recently, many shunned nuclear energy thanks to Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. That’s changing thanks to screaming oil prices. Nuclear energy has developed a new and improved image — …
