benefits

Unless pension funds around the nation continue to earn 7% or more per year on their investments, it’s likely that taxpayers will be on the hook for trillions of dollars of promises to government unions.

Where are you more likely to earn a better salaried income, in the private sector or working for the government?

In today’s edition of the Heartland Daily Podcast, Aaron Biebert joins hosts Donny Kendal and Director of Communications Jim Lakely to talk about e-cigarettes and the soon-to-be-released documentary, A Billion Lives.

The Republicans are at it again: trying to tweak a bad idea, make it “bipartisan,” and set a flawed system more firmly in concrete. What we really need is a Republican reform – one that can restore the republic, along with medicine.

In today’s edition of The Heartland Daily Podcast, Peter Ferrara, Heartland Senior Fellow and author of the Power to the People, joins host Michael Hamilton to discuss the different proposed plans to replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

North Carolina lawmakers recently backed away from a proposed bill that would have reformed the state’s occupational licensing laws. In testimony given before the state legislature’s Joint Legislative Administrative Procedure Oversight Committee, lobbyists convinced lawmakers to ditch plans to eliminate government licensing requirements for a dozen occupations and consolidate government licensing boards. The lobbyists argued removing government restrictions on occupations such as acupuncturists and athletic trainers would have endangered consumers’ health.

There have been numerous stories, rumors, and outright falsehoods reported in the media and by detractors regarding state Sen. Arthur Orr’s (R-Decatur) recently proposed welfare reform bill.

In today’s edition of The Heartland Daily Podcast, Charles Steele, the Herman and Suzanne Dettwiler Chair in Economics at Hillsdale College in Michigan, joins Managing Editor of Environment & Climate News H. Sterling Burnett. Steele joins Burnett to talk about research he conducted showing the benefits of increased natural gas supplies to the farm economy.

The administrators who run Chicago Public Schools, the taxpayers who fund the district and CPS parents have a real mess on their hands. CPS is facing a $500 million budget shortfall for the 2015-16 school year alone. Altogether, the district is over $1 billion in the hole, and the debt CPS is carrying has been labeled “junk” by Fitch Ratings, Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s.

Mississippi took a step in the right direction when, at the beginning of the month, the Mississippi Department of Human Services announced it would implement work requirements for single people between the ages of 18 and 49 who receive benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly called food stamps. Although this is a positive development, there is still much that could be done to better help the State of Mississippi move people in poverty from government dependency to self-sufficiency.

In this edition of The Heartland Daily Podcast, Ryan Yonk, Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Economics and Finance at Utah State University and Executive Director of Strata Policy joins Managing Editor of Environment & Climate News, H. Sterling Burnett. Yonk joins Burnett to discuss the environmental impacts, reliability, benefits, and costs of the various renewable energy sources.

It is important to note that falling oil prices create economic costs as well as benefits. But The Badger Herald article would have benefited from a discussion of the good that comes from lower prices, and it relies on a quote from Bill Davis of the Wisconsin Sierra Club that presents some inaccurate statements about the environmental impact of hydraulic fracturing.

In today’s edition of The Heartland Daily Podcast, H. Sterling Burnett, managing editor of Environment & Climate News speaks with Dan Kish. Kish is the vice-president of policy at the Institute for Energy Research (IER). Kish joins Burnett to discuss the high economic costs and the unmeasurable environmental benefits of President Obama’s new Clean Power Plan.