policy

With all the attending awfulness you expect. The laxness, the arrogance – the terrible performance. (See: ObamaCare, the Post Office, “green energy,” your Department of Motor Vehicles,….) And the willful denial of the fact that innumerable past failures – portend more of the exact same, should we be foolish enough to yet again try the exact same.

John returns to the show to join Donny in their weekly exploration of think tanks across the country in episode #49 of the In The Tank Podcast. This weekly podcast features (as always) interviews, debates, and roundtable discussions that explore the work of think tanks across the country. The show is available for download as part of the Heartland Daily Podcast every Friday. Today’s podcast features work from the Platte Institute, the Illinois Policy Institute, and the Yankee Institute.

In his less-than-enthusiastic endorsement of Hillary Clinton as the Democrat’s choice for President, Sen. Bernie Sanders decried “Greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior” and declared that we couldn’t let “billionaires buy elections.” Perhaps his opposition research team discovered what we have about Clinton’s connections with the very entities he despises: Wall Street—which he’s accused of “gambling trillions in risky financial instruments;” and “huge financial institutions” that he says: “simply have too much economic and political power over this country.”

To wit: Unless I am mistaken, the Platform has called for the abolition of the Department of Education every cycle since the abomination’s 1979 creation by President Jimmy Carter (as a payoff to teachers unions for helping get him elected). Yet there the DoE still stands – bigger and worse than ever. A monument to terrible government policy and overreach – and GOP fecklessness. Heck, the GOP has contributed to its growth almost as much as have the Democrats.

In this episode of the weekly Budget & Tax News podcast, research fellow and managing editor Jesse Hathaway is joined by Scott Lincicome, an adjunct scholar with the Cato Institute and visiting lecturer at Duke University. Hathaway and Lincicome talk about how both major political parties used to believe in free-market trade, how both parties have been hijacked by cronyist anti-trade sentiment, and what conservatives can do to make American economic policy great again.

Lehr joins Health Care News managing editor Michael Hamilton on today’s Health Care News Podcast to review these subjects, all of which Lehr has written on atnews.heartland.org/health and in our print paper distributed to every state and federal lawmaker in the country, plus policy analysts, health care professionals, and astute citizens who recognize that health care policy should be free and clear.

In the first success of its nature for “nanny state” advocates after many years of trying, Philadelphia Thursday became the first major city to attempt to control the non-alcoholic drink choices of its residents by enacting a 1.5-cent-per-ounce tax on soda, tea, sports and energy drinks. This is expected to embolden nanny state tax advocates across the United States.

Peter Ferrara, senior fellow for entitlement and budget policy at The Heartland Institute, joined Michael Hamilton on the Health Care News Podcast to explain why and how the Sessions-Cassidy proposal would result in better, more affordable health care for 100 percent of Americans than the Affordable Care Act has been able to provide for only about 67 percent of Americans.

Time and again, humans have put into motion well-intentioned schemes to restore the environment to the condition people have come to believe is natural and pre-ordained by some higher authority, but they only made things worse.

The missed payment, due on May 1, was just another scene in the slow-motion train wreck that has been termed “Puerto Rico’s economic crisis,” but to call the territory’s status a “crisis” understates the severity of the problem. Over 12 percent of the workforce in Puerto Rico is unemployed, and one out of every four employed Puerto Ricans works for the government, instead of contributing to the territory’s economy.

On Monday, May 2 the Colorado Supreme Court ruled on what the New York Times (NYT) called: “a lengthy battle for energy production.” The court’s unanimous decision to strike down two cities’ limits on fracking is a victory for oil-and-gas companies and a “disappointment” to anti-fossil-fuel activists. Several states, including Colorado’s neighbors, New Mexico and Texas, have faced similar anti-oil-and-gas initiatives that have also been shot down.

Public Health England last in August of 2015 became the first national government agency to endorse e-cigarettes as safer options for current smokers. Its report also dispelled several bogus anti-tobacco claims. Why is it that e-Cigarettes are seen as life-savers by the UK Government, but condemned by the US? Find out why by checking this recent article of Wednesday, April 13, 2016.

In today’s edition of The Heartland Daily Podcast, we listen in as Bruno Behrend, Heartland Senior Fellow for education policy, speaks in front of the Great Homeschool Convention in Cincinnati, Ohio. He discusses Education Choice and How Homeschooling is blazing the trail.