Even though national gas prices have only been under $3 per gallon for less than five months, governments across the country have already started to propose major energy tax increases in an effort to find an easy way to alleviate budget shortfalls.
Budgets/Taxes · Featured · Podcast
On January 6, Heartland Institute Research Fellow Jesse Hathaway joined Genesis Communications Network’s Charles Butler to talk about how taxpayers lost billions of dollars on the U.S. Treasury Department’s bailout of banks and automobile manufacturing companies several years ago.
The cromnibus version of ITFA expires this fall, just in time for the annual budget fights on Capitol Hill. First passed in 1998 as a temporary law, ITFA has been renewed for more seasons than sleeper hit shows like Arrested Development and Invader Zim.
Competitive Enterprise Institute senior fellow John Berlau joins The Heartland Institute’s Budget & Tax News managing editor Jesse Hathaway to talk about the U.S. Treasury Department’s recent announcement that the “auto bailout” portion of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) had officially ended with the final repayment of taxpayer-funded loans to Ally Financial, formerly known as GMAC.
Budgets/Taxes · Economics · Environment/Energy · Featured
The recent brutal events in France have reminded us how small the world is that we all share. Violence and conflicts that have their origin in one part of the globe shows itself in another part of our planet. And mass media immediately shares those events to the rest of us, no matter where we are.
The old adage “numbers never lie” is true. Numbers can’t lie, but the people who use them can and very often do. Such is the case with the unemployment rate in Rhode Island.
More than 3.1 million workers across the nation received a late Christmas gift on Jan. 1, when minimum wages were increased in 21 states. Although the mandated wage hike was welcomed by many workers, they will soon find that their new pay raise will cause more harm than help.
This is part 4 of the 8 part series establishing that the laser-focus of the Compact for America approach to organizing an Article V convention with the specific job advancing and ratifying a pre-drafted, specific federal Balanced Budget Amendment is clearly, unequivocally, and overwhelmingly what the Founders expected from the state-originated amendment process.
Not only is Social Security in the worst shape it has ever been in, a recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report reveals the problem has grown significantly worse under the Obama administration.
This is part 3 of the 8 part series establishing that the laser-focus of the Compact for America approach to organizing an Article V convention with the specific job advancing and ratifying a pre-drafted, specific federal Balanced Budget Amendment is clearly, unequivocally, and overwhelmingly what the Founders expected from the state-originated amendment process.
This is part 1 of the 8 part series establishing that the laser-focus of the Compact for America approach to organizing an Article V convention with the specific job advancing and ratifying a pre-drafted, specific federal Balanced Budget Amendment is clearly, unequivocally, and overwhelmingly what the Founders expected from the state-originated amendment process.
A recent study of eminent domain takings and their associated state and local government tax revenues suggests buying grandma’s farmhouse to make room for a strip mall isn’t the automatic economic boon it’s claimed to be, leaving some wondering if the use of eminent domain as an economic booster is ethical.
Budgets/Taxes · Economics · Featured · Government · Health Care
How could it be that according to a new Gallup polling, President Obama’s approval rating is at its highest in over a year! This is less than two months after the November mid-term election when President Obama and the Democratic Party suffered a shellacking by Republicans over policies that did not set well with many voters.
Environment/Energy · Featured · Podcast
Director of Communications, Jim Lakely, and Managing Editor of Energy and Environment News, H. Sterling Burnett, talk about the recently passed Cromnibus bill and how it effects environmental policy in today’s podcast.
In 1811, British factory workers literally “fought the machine,” protesting against technology under the banner of mythical figurehead King Ludd. Upset about being replaced by more efficient machinery, cost-ineffective factory workers rebelled against the installation of threshing machines and other force-multipliers.
Early next year, Gov. Shumlin (D) will unveil a long-awaited financing plan for his proposed single-payer health care system. At least, that’s the expectation. Shumlin has so far defied the law requiring him to explain how Vermont will raise the roughly $2 billion in taxes needed to fund single-payer, blowing through a January 2013 deadline imposed by the legislature.
Our politicians have placed any number of barriers in the way of prosperity, and one of the most costly has been the Dodd-Frank financial reforms (DF). Congress passed this 2,300-page law in 2010. It has since spawned a massive new regulatory environment with an impact reaching far beyond the nation’s $1.1 trillion financial services industry.
In 2011, numerous local-government special-interest groups and elected officials fought against Gov. John Kasich’s proposed reduction to the Local Government Fund, a pool of taxpayers’ money collected by the state government and redistributed to local governments’ general revenue funds.
Forty years ago, on October 9, 1974, the Nobel Prize committee announced that the co-recipient of that year’s award for economics was the Austrian economist, Friedrich A. Hayek. Never was there a more deserving recognition for one of the truly great free market thinkers of modern times.
The New York Times’ utterly ridiculous Editorial Board recently as one addressed Title II Internet regulatory Reclassification and Network Neutrality – and they did so in utterly ridiculous fashion.
NEWS: The Heartlander
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