Business

In today’s edition of The Heartland Daily Podcast, we listen in as Research Fellow Jesse Hathaway joins the Late Afternoons With Mike Schickman show where he discussed the recent passage of the Highway Bill that reauthorized the Export-Import Bank.

Many state governments facing budget crises are still trying outdated, proven-failed policy ideas such as higher taxes and increased government spending, hoping they’ll work this time, somehow. Instead, they should copy tried-and-true ideas for successfully attracting residents and fostering an economic environment in which people can prosper.

President Barack Obama has dramatically ramped up the Washington, D.C., giant Crony-fest. Where economic sectors and companies Obama and his Democrats like get the gold mine – and the rest of us get the shaft. For instance, there was $80 billion for “green energy” in the awful 2009 “Stimulus” bill –80% of that coin went to Obama donors.

Bill Gates of Microsoft is one of the wealthiest individuals in the world, so when he speaks it is not surprising that the world tends to listen. In a recent interview, Gates has said that capitalism is inherently unable to solve the problem of global warming, and instead there have to be world-encompassing government-business “partnerships” to save Planet Earth.

The Democrat Party is currently conducting a presidential primary. The alleged moderate alternative to avowed Socialist Bernie Sanders is Hillary Clinton (despite the fact that she voted 0.1% less Left than he when they served together in the Senate). In last week’s debate, the candidates were asked “Which enemy are you most proud of?” Secretary Moderate’s response?

Beginning in 1983 the government changed its method of calculation to show lower inflation by excluding food and energy, claiming they were too volatile to be reliable indicators. The result is the so-called “core inflation” CPI, which is a favorite of the Federal Reserve. The latest figure for this CPI reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics is 0.4% (for August and also July), but if calculated by the method used in 1980 the inflation rate would be 7½ percent, as shown by Shadow Government Statistics (ShadowStats.com).

Chicago faces a significant and growing public pension problem. Instead of tackling the problem head-on by holding down cost increases, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel proposes several new or expanded taxes, which he says will slow down the debt growth from the revenue end. Emanuel’s half-billion-dollar property tax hike is getting most of the headlines, but he has also been pushing for taxes on e-cigarettes, ridesharing, and cloud computing.

Being Leftist means never having to say you’re sorry. Being a huge Barack Obama-Democrat donor doesn’t hurt either. Being incredibly generous in support of Leftism also allows you to enact incredibly anti-free market, anti-Reality policies that are a huge boon to you – at the exorbitant expense of the private sector players who made your successes possible.

Paring it down to size will require a death by a thousand cuts, which, in environmental and energy policy, may have begun with the passage of the Cromnibus budget bill in late 2014. The Cromnibus might mark the beginning of a slow reduction of the federal government’s overreach in environmental issues.

So how do White House, EPA, UN, EU, Big Green, Big Wind, liberal media, and even Google, GE and Defense Department officials justify their fixation on climate change as the greatest crisis facing humanity? How do they excuse saying government must control our energy system, our economy and nearly every aspect of our lives – deciding which jobs will be protected and which ones destroyed, even who will live and who will die – in the name of saving the planet? What drives their intense ideology?

With many cities and states struggling to balance their budgets and financially strained taxpayers unable to sustain liberal spending sprees, elected officials are being compelled to choose between raising taxes and service fees or cutting back on the quality and quantity of services provided.

In today’s edition of The Heartland Daily Podcast, Jesse Hathaway, managing editor of Budget & Tax News speaks with Leonard Gilroy. Gilroy is director of government reform at the Reason Foundation. Gilroy joins Hathaway to discuss the benefits of privatization.

While the FCC’s Open Internet Order fact sheet stated: “the Order makes clear that broadband providers shall not be subject to tariffs or other form of rate approval, unbundling, or other forms of utility regulation,” will the FCC majority — in its first post-Open-Internet-order ruling — cynically do the exact opposite by imposing de facto “utility-style rate regulation” to the IP transition from copper to fiber networks?