The United States is losing ground to its major competitors in the global marketplace, according to the 2010 Index of Economic Freedom released today by the Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal. This year, of the world’s 20 largest economies, the U.S. suffered the largest drop in overall economic freedom. Its score declined to 78 from 80.7 on the 0 to 100 Index scale. The U.S. lost ground on many fronts. Scores declined in seven of the 10 categories of economic freedom. Losses were particularly significant in the areas …
The White House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) have been in secret negotiations on ObamaCare for a few weeks now, yet the election yesterday in Massachusetts of Senator-elect Scott Brown has sent a thunderbolt from Boston to Washington that may push ObamaCare into the critical list. Senator Obama carried Massachusetts with 62% to 36% on his march to 365 electoral votes and an electoral mandate in 2008. Yesterday, that same state broke 52% to 47% for Republican State Senator Brown over Democrat Massachusetts Attorney …
President Obama has declared January 2010 National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. Human trafficking is a horrific reality of our world today. Millions of people are victimized worldwide, including thousands of people within America’s borders. Human trafficking is one of the issues explored in a brand new resource from The Heritage Foundation called Seek Social Justice: Transforming Lives in Need. This six-lesson small group DVD study guide profiles real-world examples of effective approaches to overcoming poverty, social breakdown and injustice. These problems are serious and complex. They require different …
Scott Brown’s shocking victory in Massachusetts on Tuesday was a shot across the bow of the liberal ruling class in Washington and declared one clear message: Americans do not like the direction the country is heading, and they’re not going to stand for it, even in the solidly-blue Bay State. The United States’ direction today is a dangerous one, even when compared to the country’s state of affairs just one year ago, as revealed in the 2010 Index of Economic Freedom, which we are releasing this morning in a joint …
President Barack Obama’s Russia policy is defined by the Administration’s view that America is overstretched globally, and that without assistance from a major power, such as Russia or China, Washington cannot achieve its goals. Some in the Administration believe that America is in decline and their job is to manage it. The policy of “outstretched hand” toward Russia (as well as other unfriendly powers) follows from this notion. So far, President Obama has failed to achieve any impressive results. The Administration did not succeed in gaining Russian concessions on issues …
The National Security Council is priding itself on a successful first year for President Barack Obama in terms of strategic communications. In a blog posting on the White House Web site, Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communication Ben Rhodes gave President Obama credit for his “steady diplomacy” and renewing America’s moral authority on the world stage. It is of course not surprising that the administration should want to spin its achievements at the first year mile-stone, yet for others it is hard to see the justification for the chest-pounding. …
President Obama has lavished time and attention on Europe in spades. He made Europe his first foreign port of call after his inauguration and since then has visited at least eight European countries (plus Russia). His popularity ratings in most of Europe, especially in Western Europe, would make the average Hollywood A-lister blush. He has even been referred to in some quarters as “the first European President of America.” And some in Europe – the utopian European elites and chattering intellectual classes of Brussels – are pretty pleased. President Obama …
The Missile Defense Agency is scheduled to test its Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) interceptor over the Pacific later this month. The test target it will be directed against is being designed to mimic an Iranian long-range missile attack on U.S. territory. This test is a valuable undertaking and will serve to educate the Missile Defense Agency and others in the U.S. government about important aspects of what is required to defend U.S. territory against such an attack. What the test will not reveal, however, is the extra level of protection …
While House and Senate leaders negotiate over the final version of a health care bill, they seem to have forgotten one thing: many of them, including the President, pledged to deny support to any bill which would add to the federal deficit. Until now, budgetary gimmicks have hidden the true cost of the health care bills, but neither chamber of Congress has succeeded at creating a bill which is deficit neutral and falls under $900 billion—the limit set by President Obama himself . In a recent paper, Heritage expert James …
Earlier this week, The Foundry carried a post by Jim Roberts, a Heritage Senior Research Fellow in Freedom and Growth, which wisely recommended that President Obama appoint former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to lead U.S. recovery efforts in the earthquake-stricken nation of Haiti. This type of high-level bipartisan leadership is critical in raising U.S. support and resources for the effort, as was demonstrated by Clinton and former President George H.W. Bush during the Tsunami relief effort in 2004. Some liberal voices including Daily Kos, Rachel Maddow and …
