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 …
Three weeks ago, Democrats took what President Obama dubbed a “shellacking” at the polls: Republicans picked up 62 seats in the House, enough to gain a majority, and six in the Senate. The next day, the post-election analysis and finger-pointing began. Defeated Democrats blamed the President. Defeated Republicans blamed the media and the Washington establishment. The President (whose usual reaction is to blame Bush) blamed the American people’s anxiety over not feeling the change he had promised. All blame games aside, the real question remains unanswered: what did the 2010 …
This cartoon from the 1934 Chicago Tribune has appeared more than once in our inbox. Hopefully, unlike 1934, we have already endured the worst of new federal government central planning in the U.S. economy. By 1934 the Depression had already lasted five years, but would still go on for another eight. In that time the left would go on to establish such monstrosities as the Works Progress Administration, the Fair Labor Standards, the Wagner Act, the Tennesse Valley Authority, and Fannie Mae. In 1939 President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Treasury Secretary …
Add together NASA since its inception, the cost of Hurricane Katrina and spending on the New Deal. Adjust for inflation. What do you get? Not quite the amount of money a cap and trade program would generate in energy taxes on consumers. The $1.9 trillion generated over eight years from a cap-and-trade bill would still be larger than the $1.5 trillion from NASA, the New Deal, and Hurricane Katrina. Granted, this is comparing apples to oranges to lemons as NASA and the New Deal are government spending projects, Hurricane Katrina …
George Mason University economics professor Don Boudreaux offered a grim assessment of the economic stimulus package that’s making its way through Capitol Hill, questioning President Barack Obama’s contention that government must do something. “Conventional wisdom in Washington is that we must do something regardless of how wise or prudent it is,” said Boudreaux, the keynote speaker at an economic recovery event cosponsored by Heritage and the Club for Growth. “It’s taken as a matter of course that we must spend wildly.” Instead, Boudreaux said, history offers a lesson that shows …
The Heritage Foundation and the Club for Growth are co-hosting a conference this morning titled “Economic Recovery: Free Markets vs. Big Government”. Kicking off is a panel on “Why the Stimulus Won’t Work” featuring Hillsdale history professor Burton Fulsom, Heritage Foundation senior fellow J.D. Foster, and CATO adjunct scholar Arnold Kling. Fulsom speaks first recounting the thesis of his book New Deal or Raw Deal?: How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America. According to Folsum, the history most Americans are taught in high school about the New Deal is a …
The “cash for clunkers” plan recently proposed in Congress would provide a subsidy for a new car purchase to anyone willing to have their current car destroyed. But the economic rationale is eerily similar to the New Deal program most widely agreed to be a catastrophic failure: FDR’s agriculture plan that slaughtered pigs. The reasoning goes like this: Crushing the old car has two benefits. First, it ensures that the consumer’s purchase of a more efficient vehicle actually has a net environmental benefit. Second, it prevents a glut of used …
Committed to the belief that bigger government is always better, Media Matters and Campaign for America’s Future are pushing back data showing that the New Deal never solved unemployment. Cutting through their rhetoric, both leftist organizations make the same narrow objection: that the data we use does not count make work government programs like the Civil Conservation Corps as employed. Now we will always maintain that not counting government work programs as employment is the more accurate measure. It is the way the government counted the numbers back then, it …
“We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work.” Sound like, oh, Rep. John Boehner of Ohio or some other exasperated Republican stalwart lamenting proposals to spend our way out of the recession? Listen again: “I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises.” Sound more like a liberal Democrat pushing job creation — say, Harlem’s …
President-elect Barack Obama wants to blow at least $1 trillion, and probably more, on a New New Deal. Before he does, perhaps we should take a look at the real record of the Old New Deal on unemployment.
