The plastic bag police scored a victory in Seattle this week. The liberal enclave imposed a ban on plastic bags and a 5-cent tax on paper bags, joining other major cities in the latest nanny-state crackdown sweeping the nation. Seattle’s ban applies to all grocery, retail and convenience stores. It exempts farmers’ markets, however. The ordinance takes effect in July 2012. Seattle’s action comes three years after the City Council tried to impose a 20-cent tax on all bags. That idea was shot down by voters in a referendum. It’s …
As environmentalism has become more trendy, the value of appearing green is now more important than helping the environment, argues Todd Myers in a new book called “Eco-Fads.” He spoke at Heritage this week and joined us for Scribecast. Myers cited the Obama administration’s $535 million Solyndra scandal as a high-profile example of how environmentalism is actually harming the environment. Myers noted that solar panels are among the worst performing as far as reducing carbon dioxide emissions. “Waste of money is waste of resources,” Myers said. “And anybody who believes …
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) has a powerful ally in the fight to eliminate wasteful duplication in government programs: House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) announced the two lawmakers are teaming up for a bipartisan, House-Senate effort to eliminate overlapping and unaccountable government services that cost taxpayers more than $100 billion a year. A recent Government Accountability Office report on government waste revealed the extent of duplication. Now the two Republicans want Congress to do something about it. Cantor has directed House committee chairmen to look at the GAO’s recommendations for …
Recent hearings in both the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation and the Senate Finance Committee took a closer look at fraud within Medicare and Medicaid. Spending on Medicare and Medicaid is on an unsustainable path due to rising health care costs and an aging population. Meanwhile, fraud within the program contributes to the program’s cost by an estimated $60 billion a year. Medicaid, the federal–state partnership to provide health care to the poor and disabled, is a victim of abuse as well. Reducing health care costs …
House Republicans could fulfill their Pledge to America promise of cutting $100 billion simply by eliminating duplicative government programs. That’s the startling news from a new Government Accountability Office report today that exposes widespread waste in the federal government. GAO’s 345-page report (PDF) was initiated more than a year ago when Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) forced a 94-0 Senate vote on the issue. Now, each year GAO must identify federal programs, agencies, offices and initiatives with duplicative goals and activities. It’s up to Congress to act, but given the recent …
Centrally planned job creation and scientific research pose many of the same problems: extraordinary expense, a pattern of politically shaped insider transactions, and less than promising results. This occurs for substantially the same reason: government attempts to pick winners and losers in developing fields ignore the discipline of the marketplace and the wisdom of personal investment. Consider the story of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). California voters approved Proposition 71 in 2004, which authorized the creation of the institute and permitted it to raise up to $3 billion …
The EPA recently proposed a new grading requirement for new car stickers. The A–D grading system would rank cars according to their fuel efficiency and carbon dioxide emissions to help consumers make better choices. In the new grading scheme, the Ford Focus gets a B and the Toyota Prius gets an A–. What does this tell consumers? As it turns out, not much. Already on the new car sticker are two more useful bits of information. The first is the EPA’s estimate of annual fuel cost. For the Focus it …
Last week, Sens. Tom Coburn (R-OK) and John McCain (R-AZ) released a report detailing 100 wasteful economic stimulus projects including $144,541 in stimulus funds to study the effect of cocaine use on monkeys. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. The creative team at Bankrupting America has highlighted some other big government spending doozies and turned them into this hilarious but troubling video. You can track and share more leftist spending disaster’s at Bankrupting America‘s Spending #FAIL Map. And be sure to also check out Heritage’s 50 Examples …
In a recent press release touting a federal fire grant, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) noted that because “firefighters put their lives on the line every day,” we face a “moral issue” that required us to use federal funds to buy the Somerville Fire Department equipment. The reality is that despite billions in grants across the United States, the Fire Act program has not reduced the number of firefighter deaths or fires. As David Muhlhausen pointed out in his seminal data analysis paper on the Fire Act program, “fire grants, including …
The 2010 United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen ended as another colossal failure for the Obama administration, but the loss did not come cheap to American taxpayers. As CBS News reported last night, over 101 people (including Senators, Representatives, their spouses, and staff) took three military planes and racked up 321 hotel nights and ate tens of thousands of dollars in meals … all on the taxpayers dime. Watch CBS News Videos Online
